Iâve been sort of turning this thought over in my head for a while but imho as soon as RR made Shane and Ilya preoccupied with âcoming outâ she sort of accidentally broke their characters?
IIRC there was a post a while ago that was like âShane would Never come out to his team he knows OpSecâ (I thiiink you made that post?) and its like. Yes exactly. They Both know OpSec. Theyâve been in the professional hockey pipeline since before puberty they know the material conditions at play.
Honestly the secretly is part of the enrichment for them, in terms of the insane separation of public persona and private self and also their intertwined rivalry and existence in the public eye?
Like not to Skip Divorce Post in my semi-serious meta thoughts but Skipâs preoccupation with being out vs the closet is one of the underpinnings of Skip Divorce in my mind. Meanwhile Shane and Ilya have rented a villa on an entirely private Greek Island and are doing saw trap shit to each other in their blissful privacy. Like, it feels very much like âbeing closetedâ vs âcoming outâ as like, end all be all concepts stems from RR herselfâs very base-level assumptions about queer relationships.
The very Most I can ever imagine either of them ever coming out is Ilya, once heâs safely shed his Russian passport via whatever means, very quietly leaning in to being more of a mean femme jock and not obsfucating his bisexuality as much but like Crucially there is no announcement there is no Post he just lives his life a little more cuntily.
Which is I think the reason that the Ottawa of it all strikes such a sour note for me because Shane and Ilyaâs dynamic is so Winners Who Fuck About It that I canât believe Shane would ever endorse a plan that hinged on Ilya deliberately Losing. Not to mention Shaneâs own horror show in TLG of being stripped of Everything and it being called âgoodâ since now heâs âoutâ. I think they should have been allowed to conveniently fix Ilyaâs citizenship and then carry on as Original Six Captains while inventing new and insane ways to do phone sex in a healthy long distance relationship and then disappear off the face of the earth during the summer to do absolutely diabolical sports conditioning sex roleplay.
Like they can live their unique truths but I just do not think that they are people who would ever live their truths Out Loud to a social media following of Millions? Shane back to Ottawa already so fucking fraught for him? Why Should either of them have to give up anything when i do think they were purpose built freak4freak MFEO and their insane long distance secret affair?
hm the opsec post wasnât me.
i mean i understand what youâre saying and i donât entirely disagree but also 1) reid is bisexual 2) she is writing a niche market mm romance with a very very narrow definition of happily ever after that has like strict repercussions if not met. if shane and ilya had stayed closeted then carina press would not have published the book, because there is 0 audience, and it would likely lead to other reid books being boycotted. so we can argue about it not being a good ending within the text but like outside of the text thereâs other factors at play here. and not that bisexual people canât have reductive views of queer relationships but i am kinda done with the âwoman author doesnât understand queer menâs romantic relationshipsâ narrative. sheâs not aiming for realism. sheâs aiming to write a fun light romance novel after work itâs hardly her fault that it became a global phenomenon and it doesnât seem fair to me to judge it for not meeting parameters it never set out to meet. there are flaws in her work but i will defend the ottawa ending being an institutional genre flaw and not a failing of reidâs.
and then like also yes shane and ilya understand opsec but like there is a post in my drafts i will now quote despite having not published it before, which is: in real life, if we are ascribing to realism, this would be a tragedy. and so if you donât want it to be a tragedy, youâre going to need to let go of some elements of the realism.
and i do understand why a coming out narrative doesnât ring true to you, why it feels trite and commercial (because it is deliberately trite and commercial in this situation) but i also think that shame corrodes and fear asphyxiates and idk. it sounds really sad to me, the relationship you described, and the way that relationship would make someone think about themself and their desires. more realistic for sure, but sad in a way thatâs not cathartic or fulfilling. itâs not rare to die wondering. most people do.
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