Some people in this fandom are SO obsessed with the Power Imbalance. I wrote a whole fic where Rose is somewhat-ineptly psychoanalyzing Shane over the phone after their breakup, and is trying to help him make sense of the tuna meltdown, and the whole thesis of her argument in the fic was that Unnamed Mysterious Guy Whose Identity She Totally Can't Guess, Shane is not nearly as in-control as he thinks he is, and to proceed, Shane needs to take some responsibility and actually negotiate with him rather than passively allowing him to do whatever. And this commenter was like yes! They have such a power imbalance it's time someone pointed it out! Ilya had so much power over him in Vegas! and i'm like do you... think... ilya got what he wanted in Vegas?? do you think that went well for either of them?????????? People are just. So invested in Ilya being this mean daddy dom who's in control while poor woobie Shane is just helplessly being bullied. And like... WHERE??? They're putting each other MUTUALLY in saw traps because NEITHER of them knows what the fuck they're doing. it is really important to me that Ilya is also in the fucking saw trap. He's not some mastermind here!!! He has no idea what he is doing!! And crucially it is not going well for him!!! argh. anyway. i just figured this fit in with your Takes, somewhat.
The ENTIRE THING i like about this pairing in the FIRST PLACE is that they're EQUALS rhrhaghasdgkhgarhgh
and like there's nothing wrong with people writing whatever they want with one hand down their pants or whatever, that's fine and i don't judge, but this was a comment on the thing i wrote! which like, really specifically was not that! so.
ok i'm normal now. promise. (no)
Oh drop the fic link, this sounds like my shit. I appreciate when someone is like hey, you know, you're an adult here, things aren't just happening to you you're also making choices.
But the biological determinism of sex roles strikes again....The one who puts it in is in control we all know this....it says so in the bible....
Sorry I'll stop being snarky. This is such a fandom thing, it's not unique to HR at all, and I never really found a good single word for it---something like infantilization, or vulnerability kink, or woobification---but it's this intense desire to turn a character into a hurt sink who is only ever wronged, and must be comforted and aided. (This is not just a fanfic thing: the masterclass on this in the literary world is A Little Life.)
(Sorry this next bit is such an aside from your post but I got going there)
It's really fascinating actually I'd love a psych / lit class on this entire nexus of tendencies. Because I think there's kind of a spectrum where you have like, woobification on one axis and then identification on the other. So as a super simple cut you get kind of a punnet square:
high identification / high woobification: hurt comfort, you get to imagine yourself as being this weak morally pure little waif receiving care
low identification / high woobification: whump, the fascination with pain and suffering in an object
high identification / low woobification: power fantasies, competence fantasies, being able to imagine yourself as this mensch that pain bounces off of
low identification / low woobification: I think this is mostly external forces that act on the story, like a villain you as the author don't identify with but also don't sympathize with
In this fandom people are often putting Shane deeeeep in that high/high corner. Less so here on tumblr for sure but I see a lot of it via twitter.
As for *why* Shane rather than Ilya (mostly)....well I do think a huge amount of it is just top/bottom stereotype stuff. But I also think people find Ilya harder to identify with because he's foreign, and even more avoidant than Shane, and Storrie portrays him with this coldness early on that makes it easy to project a lot of strength onto him, even though with access to his internal monologue we know that Ilya is grappling with *more* insecurity than Shane is.
I do suspect the tables are going turn SO FAST we're all going to get dizzy when S2 drops and Ilya is sad and lonely in Ottawa and Shane is this distant golden boy figure over in Montreal winning more cups. Woobie Ilya stocks are going to skyrocket, invest early
Oh sure, the story is called Rosie and Rozy. And like-- it's not a didactic story, it's not like Rose Tells Shane How To Adult or whatever, it's not like Here's The Moral Of The Story, I fully intended Rose to not quite understand the whole thing and some of her advice is good and some maybe not so good, but. I'm not mad at the commenter either, I'm just mildly bewildered that that's what they got out of it.
But yeah, I agree, there's a lot of this kind of mapping that happens in fandoms-- not just in writing but in people's analysis and reactions to a show, they do a ton of mapping characters/archetypes/plots onto ideas they already have in their mind. And yeah, Shane is definitely pegged in a spot in that punnet square that I don't think Reid intended at all.
I think you've said elsewhere, and I've certainly thought, that actually Ilya is kind of Reid's woobie, but like. She's a pretty competent writer, so by that I mean he's her guy she likes to chew on. This doesn't mean she hates Shane! She made Shane a fantastic little bitchy guy who I love a lot, and I bet you anything the fandom would feel a lot differently if they'd found literally anyone but Hudson Williams to play him. Because Williams is beautiful, yes, and also has these beautiful wet eyes, yes. I do think he added a ton to the role, really added some nuance in some places, and I love his beautiful wet eyes and his perfectly transcendent pout. But. yeah. If they'd found someone who was less gorgeous I am certain people would have a very different read on the character.
(Somewhere I saw a discussion where someone was like "imagine if Ilya actually looked like Ovechkin" and I have not been able to stop thinking about that, lol. What if they had casted guys who looked like hockey players. God, I don't know.)
