That's My Book

my favourite inclusive YA books and shows discussed

[thatsmybook]

My favourite Young Adult mlm reads to celebrate London Pride and Omar's new music video Talk.

[comingatthecottage]

re: ilya's terrible therapist

okay i think i'm obligated to say that although i am a mental health professional very obviously nothing i post on my heated rivalry tumblr is professional advice nobody sue me or anything. i should also probably caveat that i am coming from a very specific perspective: i'm a relational psychoanalyst; i have adjunctive training in several behavioral modalities but i believe very, very strongly in relational psychodynamic work as being THE thing. for patients with complex relational trauma (aka mr. ilya rozanov), i don't believe anything else can create lasting change. i also don't believe in the medical model of mental health. these are things about which reasonable people can, of course, disagree, so i'll try to separate out things i think she does WRONG vs things i think are missed opportunities to do well/what i would do differently

[comingatthecottage]

THINGS THAT ARE WRONG the biggest and worst: patient presents for therapy for first time despite significant treatment barriers. patient discloses that he believes he is depressed. patient has a first-degree relative who died by suicide. your next question, your very next question, is "are you thinking of killing yourself". you don't beat around the bush, you don't imply it, you don't wait until the patient volunteers. you must ask directly and you must do so before the patient leaves your office, because there is a huge and immediate risk that this appointment is someone's last cry for help before an attempt, and the odds of a depressed patient with a trauma history related to the suicide of a parent attempting suicide is fucking staggering. it is in my opinion malpractice not to even screen for suicidal intent at this first appointment ANYWAY, i do this for all patients and to not do it for someone with ilya's history is outrageously dangerous. life-threateningly incompetent care. lack of treatment planning: doesn't take a history or anything at the first appointment. jumps directly into talking about a horrific trauma (finding his mother's dead body). sometimes people do come in to a first session in an escalated state and have to begin directly with discussing whatever is happening at that moment, and then you meet them where they're at, but ilya arrives in a calm if slightly nervous state. she should have started by laying out what therapy would look like and beginning to build rapport, not immediately being like "so how about your mom's corpse". the way she makes the diagnosis of depression is bizarre. “I think you are depressed”. she doesn't clarify whether or not she's actually diagnosing him with depression under the medical model, explain what that means, or ask what it means to him to hear that. it's also MONTHS in, after he came in suspecting depression, that she makes this diagnosis (in the US it has to be in the first session generally for insurance purposes, different, also bad). no actual screening for symptoms, no psychoeducation about what it means to have depression, no sense of prognosis which clearly upsets the patient. it is so important to contextualize a diagnosis, both what the particular diagnosis is and what the act of diagnosing means. no differential diagnosis. she knows that ilya has experienced at least one criterion A trauma for PTSD (his mother's death) but does nothing to screen for symptoms. she doesn't ask how old his sexual partners he had when he was fourteen were to screen for sexual abuse. she doesn't rule out bipolar which is a must when diagnosing depression. she doesn't ask any questions about substance use or screen for potential neurodivergence or any of a million other things. she doesn't refer to medical for potential physiological contributors for a guy whose career is "getting hit really hard in the head".

[comingatthecottage]

no clear treatment plan or goals, and no sense of how therapy is going to work besides… talking? the only goal ilya really sets is "be good enough for my boyfriend," and although she (rightly) pushes back on that she doesn't help him identify an alternate goal. she also doesn't explain what therapy is going to be like or how it works or help him get on board with what the project of therapy is going to be. she seems unshaken when he misses five appointments in a row (if i had a passively suicidal patient miss five appointments in a row i would not be brushing that off, we would be having a good chat about what the barriers to treatment were). culturally incompetent care: they're part of the same minority group (Russian immigrants) across one axis of identity, but Galina is not a queer hockey player (or as far as we know queer at all). she minimizes and dismisses the discrimination ilya is likely to face in his career from coming out, including the fact that he could get deported to Russia, jumping to a CBT technique that asks him to imagine the worst case scenario without engaging at all with how it feels to be in this position or validating his fears. mental health professionals have an ethical obligation to educate themselves about their patients' identities and to listen first. "I could lose my job and be deported and jailed because of my sexual identity" is not a cognitive distortion, it is a terrifying reality. perhaps an unlikely reality, but it exists. trying to use cognitive therapies to "reframe" real experiences of discrimination is, flat-out, therapeutic abuse. she also should have explicitly responded to his fear that she would out shane when he's afraid to say shane's name, not obliquely implied that she knows they're both hockey players: "i want to let you know that confidentiality extends to anything and everything you tell me, except (reiterate legal carveouts). there are no circumstances under which i would disclose your partner's identity to anyone. if you want to use his name, i won't repeat it to anyone except when we're in this room" THINGS THAT ARE POOR THERAPEUTIC STYLE IN MY OPINION AND WHAT I WOULD DO BETTER #MYNARCISSISM lack of curiosity: she does not prompt him to reflect emotionally, even when there are very obvious entry points to do so to do so. i.e. ilya says he's glad his father is dead, which is a huge emotional disclosure that is very risky for a patient to make, especially in a first appointment because he might expect judgment. and she just… asks a factual question about the timeline, rather than engaging with the emotional content in any way (as a relational analyst what i would do here is ask "what does it feel like to share that with me?", but i do not think any good therapist would like, change the subject away from the feeling)

[comingatthecottage]

she regularly offers direct opinions about/interpretations of things ilya says, very early in their therapeutic relationship. "that must have been very hard" in response to his father's expectations of him (which he interprets as being about sochi--he seems to hear 'it must have been hard for you to fail like that', which is, uh, bad!), "it's good that you had that," etc. in spite of the fact that he's already indicated a complex relationship with his family and himself that mean he might feel quite differently than someone else expects! was it good that he had hockey, or did it just create another burden on him and his relationship with his father, or is it somewhere in the middle? did his father's expectations feel hard? traumatizing? was he proud that so much was expected of him? when did he notice those feelings? just some questions i might ask. describing how ilya must feel about things closes off conversation. her affect and presentation in the session: ilya repeatedly notices her masking her reactions to things, like the fact that he became sexually active so young. i guess technically you're still allowed to be a blank slate style therapist, even though i don't know anyone who still does this. but if you're a blank slate, be a blank slate. don't let patients notice that you're hiding your reactions to things. so for instance i would approach that conversation by having whatever reaction i had and then saying, "you might notice i had a reaction to you saying that," and either asking the patient how they interpreted my reaction or asking them if they'd like to know what i'm thinking (and then how does it feel to know that i'm feeling concerned, etc, the relational field goes on forever). my way isn't the only way but if you're visibly swallowing reactions it's bad. she doesn't check in with ilya about how he's feeling about therapy and dismisses his fear that it's not working. tbh the only thing she says that i like is "i'm good, but i'm not that good," which IS something i might say. but she doesn't go from there, it becomes a way of dismissing his fears. i would have asked what it's like to have to tolerate such a slow and uncertain recovery process. does he think therapy can help? are there ways in which it has helped? how does it feel to talk about it? how does it feel to talk to me about it? bizarre attitude towards self-disclosure. she gives ilya next to no information about herself, which, again, is an old-fashioned but not per se wrong way to do it. just because i'm the relational yapper machine 3000 doesn't mean that every therapist needs to tell their patient anything about themselves. but she does self-disclose twice. she tells ilya that she's watching their season/is a hockey fan, and makes a weird comment that she also enjoys shopping as a coping mechanism but that bedsheets are more in her price range than sports cars. even though i'm the yappatron 3000 i would not choose to make these particular disclosures! admittedly if i had a famous patient and i knew about their career i would probably tell them that directly in the first session, i would not however make asides about it because now you're kind of creating a dual relationship. the bedsheets thing is weird bc you gotta keep a wiiiide birth around anything even quasi sexual, like don't invite a patient to imagine what your bed is like you weirdo. also finances are usually an inappropriate thing to self-disclose, because therapy is also a financial relationship! i would never joke about how a patient has more money than me (even though most of my patients have a lot more money than me), it seems likely to induce guilt and also to disturb the therapeutic frame around money which is hard to manage anyway

[comingatthecottage]

therapeutic interventions: i mean the biggest problem is that she doesn't really seem to have a consistent style or approach or anything. they just kind of chat. the things she does say are… weird. she directly gives advice about what he should do in his relationship with Shane repeatedly. She doesn’t otherwise tell ilya what to do, which would actually be more appropriate--there's a place for giving depressed patients clear instructions imo. but she doesn't do that, she tells him what to do with his boyfriend which is far riskier because she's never met shane! the worst bit is that she also directly predicts what the outcome of one of the conversations she tells him to have will be, which is… bad, because she does not know Shane, and this is like their fourth session, and she could be wrong. That’s how you destroy a therapeutic rapport forever btw, is make a promise you can’t keep. i have never in my career assured a patient that a conversation they were gonna have with someone else would turn out well, because i don't know that person. maybe shane is an abusive asshole who is going to say "well if you're depressed just kill yourself already". she doesn't know this man!

her ideas about how to treat depression seem limited to pills and exercise. which is crazy because the man is a professional athlete. and she's like "well maybe go on a bike ride." because rachel reid clearly doesn't know how therapy works or what the mechanism of action is! she doesn't lay out the many, many possibilities ("i recommend speaking to a psychiatrist, options might include ssris or snris, other antidepressants, mood stabilizers, etc. there are also interventional methods like intravenous ketamine, transcranial magnetic stimulation, or ECT. i mention those only so you understand that there are a lot of options, and a lot of hope). she doesn't actually offer psychoed about lifestyle interventions--why exercise? what does nutrition look like? sleep? she tells him he needs to come out to his friends but doesn't offer anything to help him actually understand how social isolation and depression interact. she doesn't look at any of his strengths, notably the fact that he has a partner who adores him, that he has survived a lifetime of immense trauma, that he has a brilliantly successful career, etc. there's a stab at one CBT exercise but otherwise no concrete skills (again not my thing but it would be something). and no information about different therapy modalities and how they could potentially help him. okay that's the end of my essay sorry to anyone who doesn't care and had to watch this get reblogged like 8 separate times becasue tumblr was mad abt how long it was if anyone wants to know My Case Formulation of fictional character Ilya Rozanov and how i would Fix Him let me know @stunkbug here is the essay!

[solarmane]

new fanfic writer who has marked their work completed ao3 only to leave a note at the end saying: thanks for all the support guys if you want to read the rest of the fic subscribe to my patreon :)

me, an elder fandom veteran, suddenly having anne rice flashbacks:

no.

NO.

starting to rock back and fourth.

you do not understand.

you were born into an age of peace. i was there Gandalf. i was there three thousand years ago. i remember the cease and desists. i remember authors hunting fanfic writers for sport. i remember when every fic opened with a disclaimer because we genuinely thought it might protect us.

we do not charge money for the copyrighted gay wizard stories.

do not tempt fate youngling.

step away from the paywall.

that is how you summon the ancient evils.

that is how you wake the lawyers.

[odins-price]

Remember people, this is against AO3s terms of service. If you see a fic that does this REPORT THAT THING!!! These people may not know better or they might, but them doing this has the potential to ruin things for everyone.

[peppermintquartz]

Tell the writer to read the TOS. Writers absolutely CANNOT ask for payment in exchange for fanfic. If they won't take it down ASAP, report it to AO3.

[lesbianroselandry]

man it's like . i understand why reading tlg might make some people hate on hayden and jj. however, reading tlg just made me hate the entirety of tlg, so. it's just not real to me. it's simply bad. it's a bad book that does massive disservices to just about every character with a significant role in it. shane gets hatecrimed, ilya is a horrible partner, hayden is incoherent, and jj doesn't comprehend the concept of outing people being bad, like. oh my god. it's not real to me, and i simply want shane hollander to have good friends, so i'm doing that.

plus, with regard to jj, rr never put any thought into how being the only two people of color in the montreal locker room would impact their relationship, but trust me, I Am Putting Thought Into It. I Am Thinking About It So Hard. JJ Boiziau/Dagenais I Will Save You

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

I love the sochi outing au for so many reasons (like omg it has Obama rpf and hollonov are having their everlark plot) but my favourite thing about it is that Shane's ending is so much better than canon. He gets to keep his dream of staying at montreal!! He's going to retire there!! That's his city!! This version of Shane is probably more traumatised then Canon and yet the ending is so much better that it really goes to show just how bad the tlg ending is. For so many reasons but also bc it ruins the hr ending for me. The reason shane brings up ottawa is bc they can afford to pay ilya what he's worth, he can be captain there, and he can be the first line centre. The fact that apparently none of this matters to ilya when he suggests Shane moves to ottawa just makes him look like a massive dick and also makes me think that ilya should just have gone to montreal at the end of hr. "Oh but the rivalry means - " if people found out Shane got Ilya to come to montreal they would be high fiving him on every street in the city. Ahhhhhhhh thank you for writing aus that are saving me from this dog shit ending that I pretend is not real

YOURE SO RIGHT THOUGH

In the books, when they’re talking about Ilya switching to a Canadian team, Ilya proposes leaving Boston for a Canadian team himself. It is brought up explicitly because America is bad for Russians at the moment, and he wants non-Russian citizenship. And during the conversation, Ilya has this moment where he can tell Shane wants him to come to Montreal, but Ilya doesn’t want to because Montreal could never afford both of them. Ilya says “Not Montreal,” and Shane immediately understands. He proposes Ottawa as an alternative because it needs a star center and has the cap space for Ilya.

And, critically, I cannot find a single mention of the fact that Ottawa is a bad team in Heated Rivalry itself.

Like. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I can’t remember any mention of the fact that Ottawa is terrible. I pulled up the pdf of the book and searched couldn’t find a single mention of the word “Centaurs” in it. I searched every mention of the word “Ottawa” and couldn’t find a single mention discussing how Ottawa was a bad team. The closest we get is Shane saying that they need a star center, but still needing a star for one position is a very different thing than it being the shittiest team in the whole league. And you’d think that Ilya would maybe bring up the fact that that team is absolute ass and would destroy his career if he went there if that was a legitimate concern. The Long Game rewrites its own canon to victimize Ilya and make Shane the villain in the Ottawa move. Its claims are fundamentally and irrevocably inconsistent with the explicit text of Heated Rivalry.

The entire dialogue around Shane being selfish in the Ottawa move drives me absolutely raving insane because it is fundamentally based in revisionist history. Shane is at no point in the conversation a driving factor in Ilya’s decision to leave Boston. Ilya decides he wants to be on a Canadian team before he even talks to Shane. The fact that he wants to come to Canada specifically is because of Russia, not Shane. And picking Ottawa is for the sake of Ilya’s career.

Signing with Montreal is outright considered and rejected by Ilya so he doesn’t have to take a pay cut. The explicit reason why he doesn’t want to sign with Montreal is the fact that Montreal cannot afford both of them. And that decision is later recast entirely into Ilya picking Shane over hockey. If Ilya wanted to pick Shane, he would have just taken the pay cut in heated rivalry and they would have been playing on the same team since fucking 2018–and it would have been on a team that Ilya himself describes as “the most legendary team in the entire league.” He would have had a great team and been tearing it up winning Stanley Cups but he didn’t want to take the pay cut or hit to his captaincy and his position and Shane fucking understood that and found him an alternative that wouldn’t require him to sacrifice his own position.

They explicitly pick Ottawa so that Ilya’s career doesn’t have to suffer and then the Long Game revises the entire narrative to turn it into how Ilya sacrificed his career for Shane. It is absolutely nonsensical when read in light of their conversation around the move itself. They outright reject playing on the same team so Ilya doesn’t have to sacrifice his own career.

And then!! All of the reasons why Ilya shouldn’t have to sign with Montreal suddenly do not matter at all when it’s Shane who has to suffer them. Shane has to take a pay cut? Laugh it off. Hubby will provide. He loses his entire career as narrative punishment for “making” Ilya sacrifice his career, but signing with Ottawa was explicitly so that Ilya wouldn’t have to sacrifice his career. Ilya actually does what Shane is accused of and villainized for in The Long Game, and Shane never did it to begin with. I feel like I’m being gaslit by an entire fucking fandom. Can anyone hear me hello

Shane gets to keep his team in the Sochi outing au. He gets to retire there. I put him through so much shit in the sochi outing au, but he gets to keep his team. I am building him a dream team in my mind and it will be so fucking narratively fulfilling so help me god

[lesbianroselandry]

that one scene with galina near the beginning of tlg: it's not very fair, ilya shouldn't have to choose between his hockey career and his relationship!

the rest of the book: shane should tho 👍

[hudkarma]

It is about fucking time a major media outlet actually writes about the smear campaign against Hudson. Not to give EW many props but it’s more than most have done.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

The rumblings the hockey insiders must have had about the metros locker room must have been insane. They don't even need anything substantial, but the tension must have been widely known even if they publicly didn't say anything. The metros org must run a really tight ship for nothing to have come out.

Weirdly, Theriault was the biggest factor keeping what was going on behind the scenes on lockdown.

The second Shane gets outed, the music stops. Yeah, Shane has to deal with being publicly gay, but they can’t hide behind the thin fucking sheet that is “oh we’re testing new strategies” anymore. And Shane has no reason to let them.

Shane’s secret became mutually assured destruction. I don’t get outed. You get to hurt me longer.

And Theriault wanted that. He wanted to keep his boot pressed firmly on Shane’s neck. This was the only time he had where he could freely beat Shane with birch for this. Once his sexuality becomes known, that all goes away.

So he put extreme pressure on everyone to not say shit, which was referenced a bit in the last chapter—the rookie got a call from a reporter who wanted the insider information and Theriault lost his entire shit. That is not the only time Theirault has done that this season. Theriault is overwhelmingly the driving force behind keeping everything quiet.

After all, no one wants to be the next Shane Hollander.

Theriault got to the point where he started going through players’ phones to make sure they weren’t saying shit. Shane put a stop to that, though, partially out of self preservation. He didn’t want to risk the coach getting ahold of his or Hayden’s phone and finding their chats with Ilya.

But partially it was because at the end of the day, Shane was still a good captain to his team even after his team turned on him. And that wasn’t out of charity or love for them. It was pride.

Shane Hollander is a good captain. No one gets to take that from him. He earned that.

Shane told him that he’d leave everyone else out of it and stop with the phone bullshit or Shane would stop playing along. And they both know who Montreal is backing if this comes out.

Theriault told him to stay out on the ice until he let him off again come the next game.

But he stopped going after the phones.

One of the more twisted aspects of this last season for Shane is how much of it had to happen with his consent. That is part of the humiliation ritual.

Because Shane has resources. He is Shane fucking Hollander. He has avenues to fight back that he has chosen not to take because he’s decided the cost is too high.

But that’s only true for as long as Theriault doesn’t make the cost of inaction too high. Shane is willing to risk himself. That’s less true of other people. He wouldn’t be a good captain then, and Theriault does not get to fucking take that from him.

[thatsmybook]

I wonder if show only watches know that Ilya's been with men other than Sasha & Shane? That he had way more encounters with other genders after Sasha, less with men because it was dangerous, but also during those 6 months he wasn't talking to Shane after Sochi. The only time he goes a long time with no sex is between Tampa & the Cottage, which puts a grin on Shane's face😉 Sasha is the point at which he realises he's really into Shane & likely turned one down because of thoughts of the other.

I only mention it because people either discount the women we see Ilya with or say that the bathroom convo with Sasha was him saying he's already 'taken'. Ilya's not taken (ew at taken, people aren't possessions), he's not committed even in his own mind to Shane and vice versa. Neither of them make that commitment even mentally for another three years.

[thatsmybook]

Consider that Shane Hollander cares a lot about being a Role Model to non white kids in the sport. He talks about doing interviews he hates because he remembers as a kid, looking forward to seeing his favourite players talk after their games. He decides on a hockey school for kids as a charity because that combines things both him and Ilya are interested in.

His name may not be Asian but he very visibly is Asian. His sponsorship deals put him on screens everywhere and often (we see him on TV screens everywhere in the show). Sponsors mean reputation and visibility, and it's why Yuna puts so much importance in it. It's not just the money. He would have experienced racist and homophobic abuse in locker rooms and on the ice worse as an adult than as a kid, but his good reputation can somewhat protect those kids like him, those who are compared to him. Those who are so proud to see him on their screens.

Coming out as gay and still showing his skill and winning cups is also a way to be a role model. Showing that nothing changes even now that he's gay, he's still Shane Hollander.

However, when he's accused of cheating by the hockey media and his team, who he's played closely with for a decade, now those kids compared to him are looked at differently. Now that comparison does not protect them, imply integrity, or open doors for them. Shane Hollander's reputation casts a long shadow, more than the queer white players in the sport. How all players perceive Shane carries weight more than for his own and Ilya's life.

Selfish, only child, self-absorbed Shane, is not a Shane I know.

[thatsmybook]

Rachel has said that she wanted to explore toxic masculinity culture in Ice Hockey, to critique it and imagine characters who navigate it to a place where they can overcome it. The key thing though is, the culture is external, and the queer characters are subject to it.

Ilya is not affected by it at all because he is characterised as being secure in his sexuality and masculinity. He is subject to homophobic pressure by his country, but as he is perceived as a womaniser and a white jock bro, he is never the brunt of toxic masculinity directly in the sport.

Fabian has grown up alongside very blatant toxic masculinity from the sport and has been subject to it in his own home. His arc is partly to realise that Ryan is not like those homophobic hockey players but a victim himself of the toxically masculine expectations on him because of his physicality. The neglect of his injuries and the mental health strain on players like him is to highlight the culture that pushes that 'real men' put up with physical and mental injury. Fabian and Ryan together work to leave behind the Tough Guy image, in Fabian's mind and externally for Ryan.

Like Fabian, Shane has grown up alongside very blatant toxic masculinity and has been subject to it in his own locker room and on the ice via chirping from other teams. Unlike Fabian, he wasn't able to escape it because the sport is also his passion. So he's been in it longer. It's led to his anxiety (not diagnosed like Ryan's is, just coped with on his own until Ilya helps in HR). Like Ryan, there are toxic masculine expectations on him but not based on his size, based on his race. The chirping (pretty) and homophobic slurs about him in the other GC books lead to his view of his own masculinity. So even when he is secure in his sexuality helped by Rose, he is very aware that he is already perceived in a misogynistic way. He has internalised a lot of that and his self worth is wrapped up in it. Unlike Ilya, he's always been directly subject to toxic masculinity on one side, and perceived as a Role Model of Asian male players in the sport on the other side. Racists too, often perceive racialised players with suspicion, so he has tried to ensure that his integrity is never called into question, by trying to be perfect. All these things would be ramped up once he comes out, and once he's out with Ilya, the smear campaign begins that he's been cheating to benefit Ilya (even though HE'S won three cups and Ilya's just won the one). Ilya is not accused of the same thing by the think pieces written because, once again, he's never been subject to the toxic masculinity that Shane has. Free of Russia and his family, hockey is a respite from that mentality for Ilya.

But we're told, by Rachel, that Shane is selfish in how he copes with these pressures. That Shane's selfishness was essential to create conflict. (The world she'd built outside their relationship not being enough conflict, apparently).

The books give sympathy to Ryan's mental health under these pressures, to Ilya's mental health under his family pressures, but Shane's mental health, is used for laughs, minimised, easily overcome at the end of the story. That shows that his coping mechanisms have been self-absorption the whole time, and putting aside his selfish ways makes both him and his boyfriend happy.

[penandinkprincess]

i do love and respect the idea of the world at large being stunned at finding out how long ilya and shane have been together, but i truly think that under NO circumstances would shane ever choose to offer ANY personal details about himself or their relationship willingly.

which combined with ilya loving just making things up and saying them (as seen in the "yes, the rumors are true-" scene) offers the very funny idea that ilya actively tries to offer as much privacy as possible by just throwing out stories about them at random so there IS no central story for people to hound shane about.

assorted backstories a la "ilya just started talking and found out with everyone else where he was going with this":

they got snowed in at all stars one year (b-but wasn't that year in florida?) and decided there was nothing better to do

it started as a bit and neither is willing to give up first

they paired off to combine forces like nato

they paired off to limit how many kids they could have in the future to make sure hockey stayed fair

ilya lost a bet six years ago

shane lost a bet three years ago

ilya got tired of remembering phone numbers for his hookups and shane's is easy

ilya got tired of having to look things up in english and french when talking to other people and decide to marry someone who speaks two languages to save time

shane is gifted enough (wink wink wink) that other people are cowards and only ilya was brave enough to rise to the challenge (this one gets him in trouble on the phone later but it also gets him laid that night at home and also confuses the online speculation about who tops and bottoms, so net positive tbh)

yuna hollander is the best manager in the business and a political marriage was the best way to secure her services longterm

with the end result that all shane has to do is shrug and "my husband has already told our story a thousand times by this point. no point in repeating it and boring people." in interviews to get out of people trying to dig into things he doesn't want to tell them.

[gaynehollander]

My biggest problem (in a long line of problems) with the outing plotline in The Long Game is Ilya's reaction to the video leaking. It feels so out of character that I literally cannot reconcile it with how I see Ilya's character.

So, Hayden breaks the news that Shane and Ilya kissing has now become public property to anyone with an internet connection and the insight we receive into Shane's reaction to this news through his POV is that "Shane's stomach plummeted. […] Shane couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t swallow. He was going to die from choking on his own saliva. [...] He was choking on rage and fear and humiliation, and trying to remember how to swallow." So, essentially, a pretty classic panic response.

May I remind you that Shane has been terrified of coming out for the entirety of the book? And, sure, he and Ilya have decided that they will do it this summer but that's still months away and we haven't really seen him work through is actual feelings on that - which I know is because Rachel isn't interested in exploring that but I can justify it internally with Shane pushing back his processing because it's a problem for a later date - Only, now they're out. No two ways about it. And once again, he didn't get the chance to tell people on his own terms. Once again, he was forced into it through circumstances outside of his control.

And Ilya's reaction to this is to reassure Hayden that it's okay, that they were going to come out anyway soon enough "but now [they] do not have to", and that it was their own fault for not having been more careful. Now, that last part is what really gets me because I read Shane as being entirely too prone to self-blame and here Ilya is, not only failing to help Shane through his worst nightmare becoming a reality but actively saying it's his fault that they're in this situation (their joint fault but still, there is no way Shane doesn't internalise that).

Hayden tells them "the video is fucking everywhere," that people's reactions are "mostly, like, 'what the fuck?' or 'holy fucking shit' or 'is this a fucking joke?'" That there are people who think Shane should not be allowed to attend practice with the team and, presumably, think he should be benched or dropped. That their teammates reactions are along the same lines, and that "practice is going to be weird this afternoon", if he's even allowed to attend it. At no point during that conversation does Ilya attempt to check in with Shane emotionally.

Even after Hayden leaves, he still doesn't ask how Shane feels or try to provide him with comfort. Instead he pulls up the video and laughs about it. I get that Rachel was trying to get him to diffuse the situation with humour and, supposedly, he succeeds at that since Ilya manages to get Shane to laugh too, but if that's going to be the approach then you need to give it more conscious thought and be more deliberate in engaging Shane in seeing the funny side of the situation. As is, his laughter here reads, to me, as a slightly hysterical panic response or him trying to mimic Ilya because he feels that's the "correct reaction" to have.

Ilya suggests calling their agent and Shane ends that call feeling "numb" at which point this conversation occurs, with absolutely no pacing, immediately after the phone call ends: Ilya: “Farah will help.” Shane: “I’m worried she can’t.” Ilya: “I know. I have to go back to Ottawa now. Our plane leaves in a few hours.” Ilya asks if Shane will be okay, he says no, he'll be "a fucking mess", he asks if Shane thinks his team will be okay with the news and Shane tells him "Probably not at first. I don’t think Coach is going to be okay with it. Or management. Or, like, anyone."

Ilya has no words of encouragement, no moment where he allows Shane to freak out about this, no actual check in over the fact that Shane's life has imploded and he's now left to sort out the debris. He just kisses his hand, tells him "one thing at a time," and then he leaves.

There is literally no way for me to read that as anything other than callous and insensitive and I just don't buy it, not from my Ilya. My Ilya has more emotional intelligence than that. My Ilya recognises Shane's anxiety and knows how to support him through it. My Ilya would never fucking downplay the dumpster fire of the leak to this degree and then just leave Shane to deal with the fallout which, crucially, Ilya knows will be worse for Shane than for him. He doesn't actually anticipate any problems with his own team, he says so himself.

It genuinely makes me furious whenever I think about it.

[thatsmybook]

[hothockey]

okay, so what we're NOT gonna do as white folks in fandom is say: 'it's easy to avoid racism, just filter it out' or 'people who think fandom/creator is racist are just deliberately looking for racist content.' we're not gonna do that !!!!!! because we are thoughtful anti-racist adults here. so what we ARE gonna do is call out racism and know that racism is embedded in our spaces and we must continuously push back against it and relearn our approach to dismantling it and check ourselves and others, and recognize that fans of color cannot escape racism -- it isn't possible to """"filter it out"""" when you are fucking experiencing it -- and we WILL always protect the right of fans of color to continue to critique the way several white people wrote an asian character however goddamn long they please. that's what we're gonna do, right. right ??????????

[deja-b00]

somehow it comes up that troy had a crush on shane and was going to ask for his number. and after troy gets ribbed by his teammates and ilya makes a big scene, shane is like, “well i never would’ve gone out with you lol.”

and troy smiles, “right, because you were with roz the whole time.”

“i mean, yes, but also because you and dallas kent spent years calling me and jj ‘rush hour’ and asking hayden if his wife was his beard to cover up his big gay relationship with me.”

the rest of the centaurs blink. harris puts his head in his hands and groans.

and troy’s like, “oh. right. sorry about that :/“

[hudsonswilliams]

for @ilya-roza

[hollandar]

Hudson Williams, #1 Shane Understander

I think Shane was a character who, soon as I read him, made all the sense to me. I felt immediately a kinship and an ownership over Shane. I was like, “I need to be the only person to tell this story. I get it. I want to be the person to be Shane and I want to spend time with him.” [x]

(sources below)

PANEL 1 Out

PANEL 2 (fear/desire) The Permanent Rain Press

PANEL 3 (vegas bathroom) Numero Netherlands

PANEL 4 (tears) Harper's Bazaar

PANEL 5 (ilya inverse) Teen Vogue Image: [x]

PANEL 6 (additions) (4 gifs) Numero Netherlands Entertainment Weekly

PANEL 7 (good job) Them

PANEL 8 (dichotomy) eTalk CTV CBC News Images: [x] [x] [x]

PANEL 9 (cottage home) Variety

PANEL 10 (heart eyes) Timid

PANEL 11 (evolution) Much Image: [x]

PANEL 12 (yuna) Variety

PANEL 13 Timid Numero Netherlands Out Image: [x]