Some more elaboration on my previous post. Disclaimer: I'm not an authority on Troy Barrett, I barely know the guy xdd.
Regarding Troy’s character development:
Troy’s story is advertised and set up as him hitting rock bottom and that serving as a wake up call to finally improve his life. To me, that always implied that a part of his story would be him struggling with internal biases and more importantly, having to overcome at least a set of more unsavory personality traits. Personality traits that lead him to being former best friends with Kent e.g., that come from only gravitating to and spending all of your formative years with people like Kent, his dad or his former teammates, but the actual book is imo a bit different from that.
Regarding internal biases, we see him learning to be open about his own sexuality and learning to be out and proud, leading to him coming out and getting together with Harris; that is what Role Model is all about.
Regarding his personality tho, there isn’t a real exploration, because most of that already happened off screen, before the events of Role Model even start. We meet Troy and his flaw isn’t that he actually believes any of the past things he stood for, it’s that he’s a coward who chose to act like a bigoted asshole mostly *inspite* of his believes.
In the story, he confronts his fears, starts his social media activism and makes an effort to apologize to the people he wronged, going above and beyond what many people would expect a cis white male in his position to do. He learns to no longer be a coward and hide behind people like Kent or his dad, not to no longer be an asshole.
And, most importantly regarding his past wrongdoings, it is never a question posed by the narrative whether he deserves any more punishment, because Troy has already fully internatized that he does not deserve good. His character arc is about deserving to move on by doing better and about learning to ask for good things; completely opposite to what a character advertised as Troy would usually need to learn.
Now, on paper a person like Troy could exist in real life, someone who is perfectly fine with being gay, believes women, knows all people around him are assholes, knows that an apology does not absolve him of past wrongdoing, but just doesn’t care enough to change anything about that. When we meet Troy in Role Model, he has already learned a lot of exactly these hard lessons (and a lot of self hatred because of it), but for seemingly no reason, while chronically offline and spending his whole life in an environment actively pushing against it.
He has good fundamentals to build his book redemption arc on, but no life that justifies any of that, if that makes sense?
His whole life has existed in toxic hockey culture and it has seemingly left his internal views mostly unaffected except for self hatred because of his sexuality. This makes him a good pov character, because we don’t have to grapple with the nuances that might come with internalized bigotry, but imo it makes him a very safe character, bordering on unrealistic? It is a lot of work unlearning internal biases (which he would 100% have from growing up with his dad), but Troy apparently already did allat years ago, while actively working on fitting in with Toronto at the same time?? (talk about multitasking xd)
I think people outside of hockey aren’t really aware of the depths of what views a person in Troy’s position might have (also with Troy’s tendency to not confront his problems/run away), simply because they haven’t had to challenge them and I would’ve loved for Troy’s story to reflect that a bit more. Just look at actual NHL players, some are chronically online and still believe in bluetooth conspiracy theories, zero original thought, only concussions. That is the league were trying to comment on xdd
When I say, I want Troy’s character development to be less linear that primarily means more relapses to former behavior and a longer timeframe. It means saying something out of pocket, without realizing and apologizing and learning to do better, because trying is better than not doing anything at all. It would potentially mean someone blowing up at him and him growing into a better person as a result, because nobody is perfect, just because they decide to be one day. It would be him starting to tell a funny story about him and his Toronto buddies and realizing halfway through that it isn’t actually all that funny and instead very insulting. An instinctual comment, chirp or joke that crosses the line, where someone might even have to explain to him, why what he said was wrong or hurtful.
Learning to do better includes learning to respect boundaries you didn't even know exist beforehand, sometimes through trial and error. Instead he already knows all of the boundaries perfectly, doesn't overstep anything, because through all of that he is still romance protagonist. He needs to get the guy, he doesn’t have time being actively morally grey xd.
Is it too much to wish he had a few minutes more?
Now for part two: reading comprehension
I’ve already posted my opinion on #thediscourse and my two cents on Shane/Troy interactions, the whole Troy tag is already flooded with ppls opinions, a lot of them more thoughtful than I ever could, a lot commenting with book excerpts that disprove a lot of popular Troy/Shane headcanons and characterizations in #thediscourse stemming from people just not having read the books/not having understood either character.
In short imo, a lot of headcanons about Shane blowing up at Troy require Shane to be ooc from the books, Troy to be ooc from the books and for the whole thought experiment to happen losely placed in the timeline, but without timeline consequences. That doesn’t really make a satisfying headcanon to me, since it doesn’t develop either character in a way that feels like an extension to the existing canon material. To me, the whole scenario can be very interesting, if it is more Shane reacting irrationally and letting out his frustrations on Troy and being in turn frustrated when that doesn’t do anything, because his issues aren’t with Troy, but with the system as a whole. That would be ignoring Shane and Troy agreeing to be chill in The Long Game, but seems still interesting/vaguely possible, if that makes sense? It would also not fill the „let Shane crash out as a treat“ mold a lot of people want to fill with #thediscourse.
It would be nice, if people actually read the Troy book, before trying to write thinkpieces on Troy as a character, just to know when their well intentioned head canon becomes bashing and to then tag accordingly. In the end tho, there aren’t any restrictions on posting, it is what it is, I don’t care enough to start beef.