it is soooo fascinating to me that shane hollander's "hero arc" in TLG is just him being sanded him down into a blow-up sex doll for his white partner, as if before that he wasn't already an effeminized racial other with thin characterization outside of his relationship with ilya, as if he doesn't already have zero agency, as if he's not already a doll molded into sexual and non-sexual submission by the wills of the characters around him to subordinate his own interiority, as if the ottawa plan that he's being punished for wasn't made with ilya's career interests in mind, as if he's somehow forcing ilya to cut off his boston friends and stay in the closet and to pay for that he has to be outed over and over and over again and get over the threat of systemic homophobia. it's just such a fascinating contradiction because like... where do you go from there? how do you make that the feel-good romance it's supposed to be and not a psychological horror in which a character of color is stripped of his personhood which the text deems an audacious act of selfishness?
some fans try to grapple with this contradiction by interpreting him as a homophobic or otherwise bigoted dudebro who needed to be narratively forcefemmed by the league's homophobia and ilya's magical healing white cock. i find this deeply dissatisfying because it's propelled by a reactionary impulse to justify the text's central (racist) conceit and, where it does seek to challenge the racial fetishization, it does so by reinforcing the implicit supremacy of hegemonic masculinity. canon shane is effeminized, fetishized, underwritten, and a frequent victim of his peers' bigotry, so fans respond by transforming him into a more masculine and bigoted character. his white hockey player counterparts who textually conform to the sport's gender roles in contrast with shane and have implications of being racist—scott travelled to "exotic" places to sleep with men, ryan and ilya both fetishize their respective partner's race—are excised of these complications to explore how they heroically overcome their white supremacist patriarchal sports culture.
both the books and the fandom actualize the occident through construction of the inferior orient. canon shane is repeatedly targeted by racially charged homophobia purely so the books can explore how this impacts the feelings of white gay characters. fanon shane is distorted into a perpetrator whose selfish cowardice foils his white counterparts' bravery. canon shane strives to be an unselfish lover to his female partners against every gay instinct in his body and pushes back at hayden for saying jackie got "fixed." fanon shane is a misogynistic creep, while ilya who canonically ignores shane's protests in bed without prior negotiation (the most egregious example that comes to mind is in chapter 27 of the long game, while cliff is right outside their hotel room) is reconfigured into a consent king who drinks his respect women juice in lieu of challenging the implications of this romance genre convention. canon shane worries about his former training mate who is an openly gay speed skater and thinks whichever nhl players comes out first would be "brave" but is reluctant to be that person due to the disproportionate harassment he already faces. fanon shane is judging other gay characters for being out and putting themselves at risk, while white characters are enthusiastic allies. canon shane wants to be more in tune with queer culture and be less ashamed of his queerness, and he admires characters like max and leah and fabian whom he is in community with. fanon shane rejects community and solidarity and has to be coaxed into being an ally by the white characters around him
i could keep listing examples but then i'd be here all day :/ and to be clear, i'm not saying shane is perfect or that there's no problematic subtext in his narration that should be challenged. because there is. rather, i'm questioning the fandom's impulses in regards to which characters are afforded grace and their presumption that adding texture to a fetishized, dehumanized character requires making said character conform more strictly to the culture they're excluded from. personally, i find it far more transgressive and meaningful to empathetically explore the ways in which that character is textually subjugated and in doing so disrupt the implicit hierarchies, but what do i know
