hello, would you mind expanding on your shane thrives in grroups of large men tag bc i would like to hear more if you're willing.
Okay so I'm gonna try to put this into words but I also need you to bear with me because it's gonna sound a bit wild at first.
Shane Hollander is a pick me.
STOP THROWING TOMATOES HEAR ME OUT. Yes I know pick me is a loaded term. I've known a couple of pick mes and they were actually really lovely girls who had been so conditioned to behave only in the most male-attention-oriented ways that it literally broke them. Yes I know this is not the universal experience but honestly I think it's more common than anybody realizes. We live in a society etc. etc.
So enter Shane Hollander who grew up in locker rooms. He has spent most of his life courting and thriving on male attention purely by necessity. If you want to do well at sport you need to perform at a level that catches the attention of your (male) coaches and your (male) teammates and your (male) rivals on the opposing team. As a gay man, this almost definitely crossed some wires for him. He wants every man in that room to want to be him. He wants every man in that room to want him, sickly and carnally. And some of this is latent and internalized to hell while some of it he is painfully aware of, most notably when he is jerking off and allows himself to think about kneeling in a room full of men who are all fighting over who gets to fuck him first--
I mean, you get the POINT.
So yeah Shane thrives in groups of men. He's their guy, he's their good hockey boy. The inherent assumed heterosexuality of the spaces he orbits in allow him to flirt kind of WILDLY with some of these guys and nobody is any the wiser because these highly masculine spaces are also, paradoxically, highly homoerotic to the point where male bonding is valued highest above almost any other relationship one can have. And Shane, who is Actually Gay and genuinely does WANT that attention, even latently, is very good at male bonding (read: flirting.) You'll look great in silver, Vaughny. See You In October [wink].
Crucially, Shane doesn't really realize that he's doing any of this.
It's probably part of how Ilya clocks his shit. The way Shane behaved around him at the CCM shoot is probably not all that different from how Shane approached other men in his social sphere who he wanted to impress or to be impressed by him. But Ilya, who is enlightened to those tactics by being actually queer, sees it for what it is.
The other major key factor in Shane's ability to thrive in rooms full of men is that he very early on becomes an object of envy for these guys. He's hockey Jesus. He's a generational talent. Honestly, some of these guys probably WOULD like to fuck Shane Hollander if they had it in writing that it didn't make them gay, no way, doesn't count if it's Shane Hollander, that's basically the same as putting your dick in hockey itself,
And yeah maybe that's also something that Shane has fantasies about.
Then again, the pick me analogy isn't perfect because Shane actually IS in a position to be coveted by the people whose attention he craves, just not in any way that is actually accessible to him. And not in any way that he would actually admit to himself he wants.
Again, this is part of the reason why his relationship with Ilya goes down the way it does. Part of Shane KNOWS that he is Ilya Rozanov's perfect little slut and that Ilya Does Not Know How To Quit Him. At some point years down the line Shane will actually be able to admit this to himself and it WILL make him a slightly worse version of himself, but only in ways that make Ilya that much more insane about him.
thinking about how hollanov are for sure a couple who games and how after they’re ~official~ (but still secret) they set aside time at the beginning of the season every year to play the newest release of EA’s NHL and compare which of them has the higher player rating and then try to destroy each other obviously because these are competitive mfs and facing each other four times a year doesn’t really scratch that itch of needing to play and win. And they probably rotate through a bunch of teams when they play each other, but for one of their matchups they definitely make a point of having Ilya play as the 2014 cup-winning Boston team against Shane as one of the cup-winning Montreal teams (multiple years to choose from, as he’s quick to point out, 😇) just to see which of the best version of their teams would’ve won.
and then after they get outed and Shane signs with the Cens, October comes around and EA releases a new NHL game and Ilya mentions it to Shane offhand and he’s sort of like, “oh, sure, we can do that sometime” but his heart’s clearly not in it and Ilya clocks that immediately. And even though things are going well with the Cens, it’s very reasonable that the shine of their little tradition would dim a fair bit given how sourly things ended with Montreal.
But Ilya misses playing against Shane for something, and he suspects Shane does too. So Ilya spends the next several nights off holed up in their gaming room and makes a big point of not letting Shane in for a few days. “Am playing online, you would be a distraction moy lyubimyy.” So Shane acquiesces and leaves Ilya to his own devices for a few nights.
It finally gets to the point where Shane is about to start making comments on Ilya’s poor sleep hygiene and doesn’t he know how much blue light exposure can fuck with your REM sleep, when after about a week of this Ilya finally emerges from the gaming room and asks if Shane will come and play with him.
Shane thinks about saying no — he’s not exactly feeling great about playing for Montreal in any capacity, even fictionally. But ultimately, Shane’s protests die in his throat because he’s never learned how to say no to this man, and also because he has a lot of FOMO where his husband is concerned. So he trudges in after him. Only instead of the usual setup, he sees that Ilya’s set up a Hockey Ultimate Team matchup for them, except that Shane’s team consists almost entirely of different versions of Shane Hollander, and Ilya’s team is made up of different versions of Ilya.
And that’s when Shane realizes that Ilya has spent like 50 hours grinding through this stupid game and unlocking different collectible versions of themselves and trading x-factor cards with very rude teenagers online just so he and Shane could keep up their tradition.
And Shane pretty much wants to jump his man right there, but first thing’s first. He kisses Ilya’s cheek, grabs his controller, and settles in. They’ve got a score to settle.
I think Ilya enjoys reinventing himself a bit after his move to Ottawa. Shedding components of his old self in favor of the new. He is now guy who loves dogs. Guy who is on friendly terms with the gay social media manager. Guy who is secretive about how he spends his private time. Guy who goes on mental health walks. Guy who goes to Scott Hunter’s gay bar. Guy who has made sacrifices for something important. Guy who has an air of quiet mystique. Guy who is so in love he thinks it must be written all over his face. Guy who is the most depressed he’s ever been despite occasional ecstatic happiness. Guy who looks forward to the Summer.
Yeah (as an immigrant myself) I think a lot about how epochal Ilya’s life must feel. I think in his head he’s almost three different people—in Russia he was the troubled son aching for a way out, in America the wild playboy trying to outrun his own pain, in Canada the devoted husband weighed down by secrets. Because it’s not really the first time he’s had a blank canvas—he had one when he moved to America too. And the person he invented is who we spend all of HR with, and then he reinvents in Ottawa
I do think that Ottawa!Ilya (vis a vis the depression) is the closest to the “true” Ilya in that as noted above it’s the first Ilya without the expectations of his family and his father.
But I bet Ilya finds it very strange to line up the cards in his mind and think about the different people he’s been. Especially compared to Shane, whose constancy is one of his most obvious traits
I think you touch on something that’s important here. The transformation and reinvention isn’t in itself difficult for Ilya, it’s the decision to “anchor” himself (arguably the best quote from heated rivalry) and once he accepts that the next step is navigating the unmoored feelings of nebulous closetedness (my brain is making up words I’m so tired) because he knows who he wants to be now, is arguably his most authentic self, but there are complications.
If, by some miracle, we get Punklee tonight - I give all of you permission to spoil it for me! My fragile little heart can't wait all day to find out! 🤞
Jesus Tapdancing Christ... THIS is a good welt pocket and the people who designed Simplicity 2895 ought to be blasted well ASHAMED of themselves for the crap way THEY wanted a welt pocket made. *SNARLS*
This is how I learned to do it and a good example of what you want to see in a short form tutorial: pinning, pressing, seam finishing, good fabric handling.
I would mention that you can make the pocket facing with a small panel of your matching fabric that is visible and the rest in a lighter fabric to reduce bulk. That's a lot of denim layers for comfort.
I love lying to my landlord. “We’re currently looking at a comparable unit in the area at $[a hundred dollars less than our current rent]/month, so if your offer has any flexibility to come down on the rent, that would help us reach a decision about whether or not to renew our lease here” and the comparable unit exists only in my own beautiful mind
Actually, no! And since several people have replied asked for my script for negotiating lower rent, I’m gonna share that below, as well as the philosophy behind it. Full disclosure that I’m not a leasing office person or a realtor or god forbid, a landlord—I’m just someone who has been a renter for 10+ years across different states, and I know for a fact that I have saved myself thousands of dollars by successfully negotiating a lower monthly rent on almost every lease I’ve ever signed. (Also, I’ve only ever rented in the U.S., so this advice may not be as applicable elsewhere.)
Step 0: Know Thy Enemy
The key thing to understand about all residential landlords, whether they’re corporate conglomerates or Just Some Asshole, is that their asset—the property—is a Cinderella carriage that magically turns back into an expensive ass pumpkin of a liability any time it’s sitting empty. The property taxes, insurance, mortgage, HOA fees, and maintenance costs all still come due every month/quarter/year whether they have a tenant to cover it all and then some, or not.
Because of this, at the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to fill every unit at all times with someone who will reliably pay the rent on time and in full. And because everything else is secondary to that goal—and because with the exception of Just Some Asshole landlords, the person responding to your emails and writing up your lease paperwork is several degrees of separation removed from the shareholders who profit off your rent money—they’re almost always willing to negotiate with you. As long as it gets the liability converted into an asset faster or keeps the carriage from turning back into a pumpkin for longer, then in the long run, it’s actually in their best interest to give you a better price.
Step 1: Identify Your Leverage
If you understand how supply and demand works, you can figure out how much leverage you have pretty easily. High supply and low demand = you have more leverage, and vice versa. Do they have an “AVAILABLE NOW - MOVE IN TODAY” sandwich board on the sidewalk or a web banner that says “First month free”? Does their website and/or Apartments.com show a bunch of currently open listings? Do you already live there and know at least two families on your floor have moved out in the last several months with no one new moving in to replace them? These are all indications that they have more than one unit currently sitting empty, meaning higher supply and lower demand. No sandwich board and a website that just says “call for availability”? They might just suck at marketing, but more likely, supply is lower and demand is higher.
You have the least leverage if you’re a prospective tenant looking to move in somewhere that has a waitlist. They have no reason to offer you a discount if six other people are already in line to pay full price for apartments that aren’t even vacant yet (but you can still ask!). You also have no leverage to negotiate if you’ve already signed a lease and you’re in the middle of the lease period; you legally agreed to pay $X/month for Y months, so you’re stuck with that until the lease is up.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the most leverage if you’re a current tenant who has always paid your rent on time and you’re being offered a renewal on your existing lease with higher rent than you're currently paying, especially if they already have some units that have been empty for a while. If you move out, not only is your unit going to sit vacant for at least part of a month, they’re also probably going to have to put in some work to “turn” the unit (repainting, professional cleaning, etc) to get it in move-in condition for the next tenant.
All of this means that if you move out, even if they can fleece you out of your security deposit and find a new tenant the very next month, it’s still gonna cost them at least a few thousand dollars to turn that pumpkin back into a carriage again. They’re probably willing to come down by $100-$200/month or so on the renewal offer rent if you ask, because they know it’ll actually save them money in the long run. Similar situation if you’re a prospective new tenant—if they can’t get you or anyone else to sign a lease and move in this month, that’s $[whatever the monthly rent is] down the drain, and they’ll never get it back. It’s a perishable item about to spoil.
Step 2: Get Their Opening Offer
This is the first number they’ll quote you for the rent—the sticker price that you’ve always just accepted as set in stone. The truth is, they’ve built some buffer into that number. There’s almost always some room for them to come down, and depending on your leverage, they will if you ask nicely. But for reasons that baffle me, most people don’t!
Step 3: Wait, Research, & Counter
Don’t reply to their initial offer right away—unless there’s a waitlist (in which case, you have little haggling power anyway), wait a few days. It makes them sweat a bit, and it shows you aren’t desperate. The person who is rushing to reply is not the one who has more leverage in the negotiation, and making them wait reminds them of that. In the meantime, use Apartments.com or Zillow to get an idea of what similar units in the same area are currently going for. Then you come up with your counteroffer.
As a general rule, anything more than about 20-25% below their opening offer (or below market rates) will probably just piss them off or make them take you less seriously. But when we’re talking about your monthly rent over the course of a year or two, even a 10% discount adds up to a lot of money!
When I negotiated our original lease for my current place, I also asked for and got a two year lease term instead of the standard one year. But whatever automated calendar event system they use to remind their leasing office staff when it’s time to send out renewal offers didn’t get the memo about that, so they mistakenly sent me a renewal offer the following year, meaning I got to see how much they would have jacked up the rent if they could’ve. For that second year of the lease alone, my negotiating saved us $3,000!
Step 4: BDE (Big Dick Emailing)
Here’s the tricky part. You need to write an email—always negotiate over email if you can, it’s too easy for a salesperson to bowl you over on the phone and anything they say that isn’t in writing means nothing—which simultaneously makes it sound like you would sign a lease with them in a heartbeat and like you are actively flirting with five other apartment complexes right now who all want you so bad it makes them look stupid, because you are just so sexy and fun and your credit score is eight inches flaccid. You need to make them believe you are both highly motivated and ready to sign on the dotted line and willing to just walk away from the table at any second, but if they could just come down a little bit on that number, you’d delete those other hoes’ numbers forever! Here’s the rough script I use every time:
“ Thank you for [your email/the tour/sending over the offer letter/etc]. I have had a chance to review and consider it. I think [name of apartment complex] would be the perfect fit for me, but I am also exploring and touring other options in the area, including a comparable unit nearby at $[a little below your counteroffer number]/month.
If we could come down to $[your counteroffer number]/month on the rent, I would be prepared to sign the lease today. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks! "
Step 6: You Win Either Way
Sometimes they really do just accept your counteroffer without question and send you over a revised lease to sign. (When this happens, I make a note for next time that my counteroffer was probably too high and I should’ve asked for more!) More often, they get approval from The Powers That Be and come back with a number that’s higher than your counteroffer but lower than their initial offer. Assuming I can afford it, I always accept this offer; you’ve achieved your goal of saving yourself money from sticker price, and they’re likely to lose patience if they have to keep going around and around with you. And sometimes (though only very rarely), they may come back and say the price is firm—in which case, guess what? You still didn’t lose anything by asking!
THIS!!! Exactly this. I didn’t mention it above because I just couldn’t fit it neatly anywhere, but once while negotiating a lease renewal, I got as far as receiving their counteroffer, which was basically “price firm :(”, but then life happened, so I forgot to respond and accept. The email sat in my inbox for a week. And then, completely unprompted, they magically replied again saying, “actually, nvm, how’s $[number that is lower than our opening offer] sound?”
To them, it looked like I was staring them down cold as ice like
I was literally just busy with other stuff! and they were sweating!!! BULLETS!!!
The thing about the argument in TLG y'all is that they were BOTH being crazy on account of, oh right, being closeted professional athletes under a huge amount of pressure playing a violent and famously homophobic sport while trying to keep their relationship a secret from everyone in their lives and also you know navigating the international situation for gay men and also your team sucks (either they keep losing or they're all dicks)
But yeah anyway they're both not doing well nor thinking rationally. Ilya's demanding stuff of Shane they've never talked about. Shane is letting his singlemindedness keep them locked onto a path that's hurting them both. They're not communicating they're having sex to avoid conversations. They're both falling apart because they're attempting to do something thats just too fucking difficult for almost anyone, let alone two traumatized kids with matching diagnoses
Shane is unequivocally one of the top two professional hockey players out there; arguably the best. The way he reads the game is beyond most professional player's comprehension. He's catching plays before they occur, as though the entire game is on a second's delay apart from him. He's every goalie's sleep paralysis demon. He's a hockey player who hardly ever fights. His checks are legal, his recovery is swift. He's consistently near the bottom of the Penalty Minutes leaderboard. Chirps slide off him, his face stoic and focused, hardly ever engaging with them, instead just absorbing them and channeling them into his gameplay. He's every PR person's dream, giving the occasional soundbite without ever taking it far enough to be considered a liability.
Off the ice, he's never been the most approachable person, hardly anyone gets close to him. People are scared to approach him, purely because of his talent, and he doesn't make it easy for those who try. He goes out with the team sometimes but he never gets drunk. He doesn't sacrifice his performance diet for anyone's comfort. He attends awards and All Stars games but never contributes much to the conversations others attempt to engage him in. He would seem almost haughty if he wasn't so goddamn nice. It seems that, no matter how wide you search, no one has a bad word to say about him beyond him being a little awkward or annoyingly good at hockey.
He's completely untouchable. Hardly human.
So it is an utter and complete fall from grace when he comes out, first as gay, and is then outed as Ilya Rozanov's partner.
I don't have to tell you that hockey culture is essentially synonymous with toxic masculinity in many ways. Within hockey, there is a deeply ingrained system that celebrates violence, stoicism, and aggression; hypermasculinity is the expectation with violence being seen as a sign of manhood. This culture fosters a code of silence, marginalises women and minorities, and anyone who fails to comply with the express expectation of the "correct" way to perform masculinity.
As soon as Shane Hollander is confirmed as gay, every trait that was viewed as admirable, purely on the basis of his raw talent, becomes confirmation of weakness. He never gets drunk because he's a pussy. He's prissy about food. He doesn't talk because he's weird. He doesn't fight because he can't. He can't handle aggression at all so he simply tries to ignore it, to hide from it. He's weak.
Every oddity that was tolerated and even admired because of his prowess on the ice becomes a marker of difference. A reason to hate him. A call for "we should have known".
is it late enough for me to say that i think people are scared of writing ilya OR shane angry, and its clipping the wings off their characterizations. if we wanna ask how we got such robust characters in the tv show, it's because hudcon approached their portrayals from a considered, culturally layered perspective that incorporates the grief and frustration and fear and anger that hollanov would feel in their perspective traumas, and then hudcon embodied it. you can see it in their bodies, in their miscommunication, in their families. ilya's got an exceptionally abusive, closeted-for-literal-fear-of-life past under a deeply oppressive regime and a heap of mental health fuckenings. shane's got a middlingly-homophobic and closeted, mixed race, autism-spec past in a deeply racist country and sport and a heap of mental health fuckenings. and that's just scratching the surface. they are both angry, both scared, both volatile, both playing one of the most violent, concussive sports in existence and they thrive on the edge of that. they are legitimately tough and rough and nasty and sometimes they take it out on people. they take it out on each other. so!!!! i just think we should let them be that angry. let them work through it and have to look at the broken pieces of what they touched, the bleeding lines across their fists.
i really think a lot of the long game conflict boils down to shane saying “hey i’m really scared” and ilya thinking “well i took a meat cleaver to MY life in order to have a chance at happiness and i survived it so why the fuck can’t you do the same for me??” while he grows paler and paler from blood loss and pointedly does NOT look at the ghost of his mother who appears in the rearview mirror of his porsche cayman gt4 and whispers for him to take his pregame cens v raiders nap in the garage with the engine running
hey guys you know a work can have challenging & disturbing & weird themes without it actually being a kink that the writers have, right? I know we all like to use that “the author’s barely disguised fetish” meme but i truly need y’all to understand that some things are just recurring themes & motifs in a body of work without it being sexual for the writers or anyone involved in the creation of art. It’s important to me that y’all know this.
There's an interesting trend in the responses to my Shane is kind of a selfish competitive asshole post to say something like "Yeah Shane IS this way, but Ilya isn't he naturally cares about people" and I mean sort of?
I think book!Ilya is just as selfish as book!Shane, though it comes out in different ways. Really Shane is more self-centered than he is selfish. While Ilya's more perceptive (and yes that word has been ruined for me by its overuse in fics but it's the canon trait so) and connects with people more easily but he's also self involved, especially to start out.
This is a major point of contention people are going to fight me on but No I do not think book!Ilya was happy in Boston. The Ottawa plan is still questionable but it's not as simple as "Boston exciting and good Ottawa boring and bad." Book!Ilya doesn't have any friends and crucially, has never had any friends. He describes his life in Boston as a whirlwind of partying and meaningless sex:
This is not the picture of a guy who was living a fulfilled life. Not that there's anything wrong with partying, but you know, not being able to name a single close relationship from a place you lived in for eight years is maybe not great. (And yes I know fandom has endowed Cliff Marlow with Ilya bff status. He very simply isn't this in the books. I can write a post about it, but book!Marlow is obviously just Ilya's most reliable party friend. Every conversation they have is about having sex with random women.)
As far as we know Shane is Ilya's first ever friend and their relationship is, you know, gestures. And even post-cottage Ilya denies himself emotional intimacy with Shane because he's afraid of it ruining their romantic and sexual relationship. Ilya's captain of the Centaurs for two full years before TLG and the strong implication is that he barely knows any of them. He's not doing a great job and everyone kind of knows it.
Ultimately Ilya has to be therapized into basic relationship building because he doesn't know how to do it, because his entire life up until that point has been living entirely for himself except for meeting familial needs out of obligation, not love. When he moves to Ottawa he makes Shane his whole world instead but that's not sustainable either.
It's easy to assume Ilya struggles in Ottawa because it's boring and the hockey is bad and that's not not true. But the bigger thing is that Ilya is undergoing a very serious shift in his self-identity and that's uncomfortable. Ilya's entire life up until like 26 was about escaping to America to be successful and rich and materialistic and to fuck beautiful women, and he accomplishes it. And then throws it away for Shane. That's a deeply destablizing thing.
Ilya's journey in TLG is about how to reconcile the person he understood/understands himself to be (Mr. Sex-and-Hockey) with the new person he actually is, who's the kind of guy to give up peak years of his career to be near his (gay! secret! monogamous!) lover. This is nicely shown in how Ilya's persona slips away over the course of his sessions with Galina.
Which is all to say I like the whole "existential horror of Ottawa" thing but I think Ilya would have had a very similar crash-out to the one he has in TLG even if he'd stayed in Boston. Maybe the timeline would have been longer. But the identity dissonance would still occur, and so Ilya would still compensate by fixating on Shane, which would still make him perceive their relationship as fundamentally unequal, which would lead to conflict.
That was delicious. I genuinely don't think I've seen anyone line up those scene parallels so well before. This was a perfect snapshot of every branch, rock, and mattress they hit on their way down
So when I say Shane isn't a good person really I don't mean that he's like. Bad. Or malicious or evil. I just see so many fics that write him as this weird paragon of perpetual virtue, almost saintlike, where he's impossibly kind and an activist and sweet to Ilya like a little kitten and caring of his friends and I'm just sitting here thining....no??
Shane's canonically kind of a selfish guy! Not in a terrible way, he just doesn't really care about stuff outside of his direct sphere. He only gets into philanthropy when there's a direct benefit to him (laundering his relationship). He loves his friends but he's not super caring of them or all that invested in their lives (forgetting Hayden's baby's name is peak). Some of that is he's too wrapped up in his own shit and his secrets but I think a lot of it is just his personality. Shane's not selfish to the degree of it being a personality flaw (see: Shane giving up a day with Ilya to babysit Hayden's kids. I wouldn't have) but he's more selfish than selfless.
We don't hear about him sending signed pucks to sick kids or doing charity with the Voyageurs or that sort of thing. Maybe he's doing it in the background idk. Most likely he's got some assistant in charge of it. But that's not something he spends a lot of mental energy on.
He's not rude or cruel to people, but internally he's a bit judgemental. He sells himself pretty ruthlessly. He’s wealthier than anyone on this website can even comprehend. He’s a landlord.
To get to three cups in a decade Shane’s also got to be very locked in as captain. Like Theriault is this fandom villain (fair) but it just doesn’t make sense to have Shane constantly clashing with him and the Voyageurs and still winning over and over. We see Shane let homophobic comments slide in the locker room and I have to assume that’s his general approach to dealing with things in Montreal. Winning comes first.
I’ve said a million times I love Shane. I’m obviously obsessed with him, look at my many posts. But I just think he’s a grittier and more interesting than the fandom gives him credit for, they just turn him into like the anxious nagging wife who tells Ilya to pick up his socks and is Team Mom.
Hudson imbued Shane with a lot of gentleness, and the series centring the romance means we see a lot less of Shane when he isn't Ilyamaxxing but book!Shane is incredibly cutthroat. He's impatient, he might not ~showboat~ as much as Ilya does (and he judges him for it constantly) but he's just as much of an attention whore. He isn't just admired because he's Shane Motherfucking Hollander; he's genuinely a bro, he's inaccessible because of his routine and his diet (which gives him major 'you can't sit with us' vibes that he does precious little to counteract, both because he's too wrapped up in his Everything to notice, and he wouldn't care enough if he did).
He's the ice queen, not Ilya. As far as the league, and even his team, is concerned, all routes to Shane Hollander are through excellence, proximity, or work. Ilya and Scott Hunter get the time of day because they're good. Hayden is his friend and Assistant Captain. JJ is a teammate and is sort of the glue of the Voyagers. Rookies get Captain Hollander because he's responsible for them. That's all.
There is no 'Holzy'. His team feels a proximity to him because he's an indelible part of their careers. They're barely a footnote in his, and they know it. Shane does too; he does try to make their success about the team but even when he's thinking of his dynasty and the camaraderie of the locker room in TLG he's thinking of it as a transaction, as loyalty that is owed to him rather than relationships he can trust. Things imploding the way they do in TLG is predicated upon this power imbalance, and that's why the Centaurs are such a good foil.
I really like you pointing out how distant and inaccessible Shane is. He lives alone immediately, which is very unusual in hockey, being housed by older players during your rookie contract is almost seen as a guardianship or part of your training. The older players teach the younger guys how to sleep properly and cook good meals and such. Shane doesn't need any of that, he's already locked in. And he's very aware of the distance his talent and routines and diets creates between him and his teammates:
"all routes to Shane Hollander are through excellence, proximity, or work"
Yeah, exactly. Shane is so transactional---he thinks about his diet and routines as input / output. He doesn't eat red meat so that he skates better. He doesn't drink so that his muscle control is tighter. He's obviously an endorsement whore---and in the book it's HIM doing this, not his mom. He wants to be THE Shane Hollander, hockey phenom, and he sees this as a thing he can buy with his effort, his restriction, his repression, and his body. He didn't trip his way into being the greatest of all time, he planned it, piece by piece, and worked his ass off:
And yeah as to the friendships with Hayden and JJ, man. I don't know. I really feel like Ilya is the only person on the planet who gets Shane's platonic intimacy until very late into TLG, when Shane has a sweet moment with JJ. But like even his TLG convos with Hayden are very stilted. Shane makes a super rare vulnerability bid by admitting how he's thought about how tough it would be for him and Ilya to have kids and it flies right over Hayden's head.
These guys are friends because Hayden's his winger and because Hayden doesn't have much of a hockey ego and doesn't get insecure around Shane. That's what's happening there.
People adding in nicknames for Hollander is always funny to me because it feels very deliberate that they don't exist in the book. I think the fans call him all sorts of things, but I don't think a single person in that locker room is calling Shane Hollander by a nickname.
Honestly I think this is a hard thing for people to think about with a character which is why depictions of Shane file it away. Most of us have never had the experience of being the most important person in the room, the once without whom the room would not even exist. But that's Shane's day to day. Ilya (and Hunter, on the outside) are pretty much the only equals he ever interacts with. Everyone else is buying his time in various ways.
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