Hi my name is Blondie Ice'rink Dementia Chiron Hollander and I have long shiny blonde hair (that’s how I got my name) with highlights and balayage tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Rose Landry (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Shane Hollander but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire like Cliff Marleau but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a hockey player, and I play for a professional men's team called the Centaurs in Ottawa where I’m a rookie (I’m nineteen). I’m a woman (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love CCM and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black Centaurs jersey with matching lace around it and black leather hockey pants, pink stick tape and black hockey skates. I was wearing Dior glow oil lip gloss, Laneige foundation, and no eye shadow because I'm a clean girl. I was walking outside the Canadian Tire Center. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of Metros fans stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.
Fighting pitchforks with facts: Hudson Williams edition
I see so much misinformation going around, and because as a lawyer by training, I'm a strong believer of facts, I decided to record everything that is FACTUAL about the Hudson Williams incident.
What is the discourse about?
On 6th June 2026, an anonymous Twitter account (@truthsosad - deleted by now) posted a picture from 2018, where a highschooler Hudson Williams, surrounded by 4 white teenagers (presumably schoolmates) was photographed in a completely scribbled over clothes, face and body, including an upside down cross and an incorrectly drawn swastika on his head. The other teenager on that picture do not have the same hate symbol, but do also have doodles. The 4 girls are smiling, Hudson isn't.
What is the context of the picture?
Several accounts (including a mom and one of the teachers from the school) confirm that the picture was taken during an end-of-year graffiti party, where underage teens of the two final years went drinking outside and doodled on each other clothes, faces and body. Several accounts confirm that it would not be unusual for some edgy or vile pictures being drawn, often as a prank without the other kids' knowledge.
Where did the picture come from?
The photo could be linked back to a publicly accessible VSCO (photo editor) account of a private citizen from Hudson's hometown that was linked to her bio on her instagram account. She had no other pictures of Hudson on her vsco, so presumably not a close friend, but rather a more distant school mate. She was one of the girls on the controversial photo. It is unlikely that she leaked the picture. Most likely it was found by a group of stalkers who combed through all of the publicly accessible posts/photos of people in Hudson's school and hometown to look for dirt. Either she was alerted quickly to the circulation of the picture or Hudson's PR team reached out, because the picture was deleted within a few hours. By today (9 June), the entire VSCO was unlinked from the profile.
Who spread the picture?
Anonymous accounts on X spread the picture, publicly boasting that their aim was to end Hudson's career and push him to self-harm. Burner accounts also appeared to other apps, including Tumblr, where these accounts published the picture to spread it in the tags. In a few hours, the picture broke containment and was published
Why did they do this?
This was a fairly blatant organized attack against Hudson to try to harm his career and mental health. Some anonymous accounts even wished him lethal self harm. Another group called for his removal from Heated Rivarly and demanded Shane to be recast. The endgame of the group is not clear - likely the goal was to taint his public image. Since there are many inf;uential Jewish people in the film industry, a controversy like this can have an impact on his career long term.
Did Hudson make any statements?
No, neither Hudson, nor his team released any official statements as of writing this. "An anonymous friend / sources close to Hudson" (likely someone from the PR team) provided the following quote:
Do we know if it is the truth?
From the context, it is very likely that this statement is the truth: 1. it was doodled by someone else (the placement high in his forehead would make it hard to draw it on himself) and 2. Hudson did not know what was on his face until the next morning (high on his forehead he can't see it, unless there were mirrors at the campout). He probably also had no idea of that picture existing.
It's also possible that if it was a prank, nobody told him what was on his face.
Could there be other explanations?
Sure. It's possible that it was a dare, a lost bet, a punishment game, a prank with Hudson's knowledge or even a hate crime against him. In previous interviews Hudson did talk about how trying to fit in as a teenager was hard. Other POCs living in white majority rural areas shared their experiences of the pressure of having to accept racist jokes to try to fit in. But so far, there is no evidence whatsoever that the source in TMZ is lying.
I heard there was "AIDS" written on him?
There is a writing on his neck that could spell "AIDS" - it's not clear from the picture. Other teens pictures that resurfaced from the same party did have "AIDS" written on them. Some people speculate that it could simply be a nickname for Aidan, as most of the doodles are kids' names. Again, no context, if there was any kind of homophobic intent, or if Hudson even knew it. It's another doodle that's in a place he can't see.
I heard he had a second picture the following year with the same symbol?
False. The following year has a picture of Hudson with only a cross on his forehead, and with the caption "The nicest person ever".
What about the pool picture?
The pool picture of a group of teenagers including Hudson was published as "evidence" that Hudson did have white friends, presumably to refute the narrative that the symbol could have been bullying or hate crime against him. Of course, having a picture with friends is not proof that someone was never bullied. The two things can easily coexist, and these were clearly different events and different groups of peers. Also, please don't post half naked pictures taken from private accounts.
Did Crave, the Heated Rivalry crew /cast or sponsors make any statements?
No. There are no statements of support or condemnation. The Canadian Screen Awards posted a new video of him giving his speech to Sophie's award on Instagram. This could be taken as a small show of support.
But didn't Peloton pull his ads?
Peloton made his ad private, likely due to the contract length and not as a specific response to this incident.
Is there any indication that Hudson is or ever was a Nazi?
Duh. No. Even the accounts spreading the pictures don't believe that. Hudson is on record defending all kinds of minority groups and having left-leaning politics from well before he was cast in Heated Rivarly. The anti accounts also don't argue on his beliefs, an argument they would lose, but rather gaslight Hudson fans that they are bad people for "excusing" him.
He's a grown man. He should have known better. Why should we afford him any grace?
There is a rule in law called "innocent until proven guilty", because we as a society believe that it is more harmful to the overall good to hurt an innocent person, than maybe let a guilty person "get away with something". Sadly, in the public opinion, this rarely works. Rumours spread faster than facts, reputational damage can be done quickly. This is the mass psychology that this stalker group exploits.
I leave this write-up here, because I believe this is an issue we need to focus on more:
THIS IS A HATE CAMPAIGN.
There is no evidence that Hudson Williams has done anything wrong and in fact, very well could have been an actual victim of bullying or a hate crime at the time that picture was taken. In the present, he is very clearly a victim of a targeted hate campaign. Of course, basic human decency requires that we stand with someone being subjected to organized online violence, where the goal is simply to destroy his reputation.
Are there any good sources out there?
Paris Match article
Queerty article
What can I do?
Engage with positivity. Stick to facts. Remind people that anonymous stalkers running a hate campaign are the real culprits here.
Seeing @luulapants & others talking about issues with Ilya's representation as a second language speaker in fics made me want to list out some patterns of "Ilya speak" and how they do and don't align with real second language speakers of Russian.
My credentials: 2 graduate degrees researching multilingualism & second language phonology. Plus copyediting a book written by a first language speaker of Russian & Ukrainian after being her coworker for a decade <3
1. Pronoun drop: e.g. "is good". It is common with second language speakers, but I'm gonna support Luula's analysis of this as based on a mis-hearing of 'It's good' in a Russian accent - Russian has palatalized stops and the frication makes listeners reclassify them as fricatives. t^j -> s
2. Article issues: most common error, even amongst very fluent speakers. Includes mixing up indefinite (a/an) and definite (the) articles, dropping articles (e.g. 'I was going to store'), and hypercorrection (inserting unnecessary articles, e.g., 'I am going to the home').
3. Copula deletion: Russian has a null copula (when you can replace 'to be' with an =, that's the copula) so copula drop can happen in English (e.g., "I a teacher"). This one is drilled really hard for Russian learners so it doesn't come up as often as you would think. I can't think of canon examples of Ilya doing this.
4. Unfamiliarity with vocab: non-Russian fic writers - try checking a Russian/English dictionary because there are lots of English loanwords in Russian (or other Latinate loans) that share a common root. Luula's anon brought this up, but as an example, 'autism' in Russian is 'аутизм' and is basically pronounced the same - they are cognates. Ilya would have a very good guess of what this word means, along with other loanwords.
In my experience, idioms are some of the hardest/last vocab items to grasp because the words are common (so English speakers don't expect there to be a problem) but the meaning is non-obvious. Lots of English speakers won't even say the whole idiom, just expect people to understand from a partial recital. E.g. "When you assume..." ; "the best laid plans..." ; "speak of the devil" ; "when in Rome" etc.
5. Word order: English is pretty strict about word order, Russian has more free order (supported by their very robust case system + grammatical gender). This mostly comes up with subordinate clause order. For one example, I've noticed that English writers tend to put clarifying phrases before, Russian speakers after. (E.g., a Russian speaker might have written the previous sentence with 'as one example' at the end). These re-phrasings aren't necessarily ungrammatical in English, but they may come off as confusing (for very complex sentences) or the overall pattern across multiple sentences comes off as unnatural.
6. Question tags: fanfic writers love to give Ilya simple question tags as a vocab quirk (e.g. 'it's special, no?' ; 'You like this, yes?'. I haven't memorably experienced this from the Russian first language speakers I know, but Russian does have question tags like this (e.g., I understand that так is used pretty similarly to Canadian English 'eh?')
7. W vs V: I definitely exit out of fics if they give Ilya a use of "w" like Chekov from Star Trek. This is made up & fake.
8. Avoiding Do / Don't: English is weird about the verb 'to do' and lots of the time you can leave it out (even if native speakers would use it). Using question tags for yes/no questions is one way of avoiding constructions with 'do', another is using the target verb rather than replacing with do. E.g. 'Do you like to row?' An English native might reply 'yes, I do' while an ESL speaker might be more likely to use 'yes, I like to row' or 'yes, I like rowing'. Again, not incorrect but when it builds up as a pattern of speech it sounds less natural to a native speaker.
9. Skipping contractions: very common amongst all kinds of ESL speakers. English speakers will throw in a "had'nt've" and always use "doesn’t" over "does not". But lots of ESL speakers just pronounce each word always - especially if there is an auxiliary verb. It can be difficult to remember combinations like - is "I've not" or "I haven't" more natural (& the answer is different for different English varieties).
10. Verbs & nouns paired with prepositions: it's just really common to select the wrong preposition or drop it altogether. E.g., "baked with hands" instead of "baked by hand"; 'compliment about' vs. 'compliment on', etc.
Rule of thumb: just give Ilya good English. It's less inaccurate than 'caveman' Ilya and less xenophobic to boot!
I'll add that not knowing a cognate can make sense in some situations. Like, if you've never used that word in English before, you don't necessarily know if it's the same in both without looking it up. But there are categories of words where it's reasonably assumed: science, medicine, academic studies. For those categories, you can generally say your word in an English accent, which might not be quite exact. For example, Ilya might guess 'hypertonia' instead of 'hypertension.'
(When I was learning Turkish, we would guess at 50-cent words by saying the French word in a Turkish accent - our prof was really mad about how often it worked lol)
I finally finished the Heated Rivalry fic I’ve been working on for two months!
https://archiveofourown.org/works/86319411
It explores an alternate ending to the tuna melt scene by adding Svetlana to the mix. It doesn’t change much in the Hollanov timeline - it’s almost show canon compliant, actually. Kinda started because I was tired of seeing so many stories where, even if there’s a Svetlana POV, she’s mostly just a tool to witness and develop Hollanov. Which is fine for a romance, but I wanted a story where she gets the same amount of nuance and agency as Shane and Ilya. The original plan was that they’d have the same amount of POV time, too, but then the whole thing kind of ran away from me lmao. I’m still happy with the result, though.
It’s the final few days of the Bluminarmour Project! After some issues with Kickstarter let’s see how far we can get!
If you want to see fantasy tropes, historical movement and silly tricks tested in authentic full plate armour, please consider chucking a few quid over (or like and share this post):
Blumineck is trying to fun a video series doing fun and serious historical and fantasy testing in fitted plate armour.
Okay I only lurked when it came to the Hudcon "Connie from Admin and Big Hud" AU but something that has been on my mind for AGES since someone suggested Connie the SCHOOL Admin specifically was Nicole Ciravolo's tiktok series from 2020 where she was LITERALLY a school admin NAMED CONNIE and it is the exact vibe I've been imagining but her videos were SO HARD TO FIND because she privated her tiktok and deleted her Instagram. BUT FINALLY I found her old Twitter that still has them so please take this humble offering even though everyone has moved on from this au 😭
One thing I’ve seen happens in this fandom- and honestly sometimes in real life discussions about Hudson too- is that people end up flattening all POC experiences into one universal experience.
Race absolutely matters. Racism absolutely exists. But different racial groups are stereotyped in different ways, and those stereotypes can produce completely different social expectations.
For example, I’ve seen people criticize Rachel and Jacob for joking about Hudson being unintelligent because he’s a person of color. If Hudson were Black, I would understand that criticism more, because there is a long history of anti-Black stereotypes portraying Black people as unintelligent. But Hudson is Asian. Asian men are stereotyped in almost the opposite way. They’re often assumed to be intelligent, studious, and academically successful. The stereotype is still racist, but it’s a different stereotype. It doesn’t suddenly become an anti-Asian stereotype just because we’ve replaced “Asian” with the broader category of “POC.”
The same thing happens constantly in fanfiction with Shane.
A lot of writers portray Shane as being afraid to fight because he knows he’ll be judged more harshly than white players. I understand where that idea is coming from, but as a black person I’ve never found it particularly convincing.
If Shane were black, that analysis would make more sense to me. Black men are often stereotyped as aggressive, which means behavior that is considered acceptable from white athletes is often interpreted differently when black ones do it.
But asian men occupy a very different place in the racial imagination. They’re frequently stereotyped as passive, non-threatening, weak, nerdy, emasculated, etc. If racial stereotypes were influencing Shane’s approach to hockey, I could just as easily imagine the opposite dynamic: feeling pressure to prove he’s aggressive enough to belong. Maybe he’s fighting TOO much.
But that doesn’t make sense for Shane. He’s the league’s golden boy. He’s polite, media-friendly, and heavily inspired by Sidney Crosby. He’s a superstar. Fighting is often delegated to players lower on the depth chart whose role is specifically to provide physicality. Star players generally aren’t expected to be enforcers. Teams usually want their elite talent scoring goals, not sitting in the penalty box after dropping the gloves.
So Shane not fighting much doesn’t strike me as evidence of racial pressure. It strikes me as evidence that he’s Shane Hollander.
Crosby is a useful comparison here. For years, people mocked him for not being physical enough (and for talking to the refs too much). They questioned his toughness and masculinity. They called him “Crybaby Crosby” or “Cindy Crosby.” Fans edited photos of him in dresses or makeup. The criticism wasn’t really about hockey. The joke was that he wasn’t a “real man.”
And that’s a white player.
Imagine how much worse those conversations could become if the player in question were Asian.
That’s the kind of racial dynamic I could actually see affecting Shane: not people thinking he’s too aggressive, but people questioning whether aggressive ENOUGH.
There’s a good chance that if Shane fought exactly like many white players, he probably still wouldn’t be viewed as tough enough. Meanwhile, if a Black player fought exactly like those same white players, he might be interpreted as more aggressive.
People often criticize Rachel for not doing much racial analysis in the books. But sometimes fandom fills that gap with racial analysis that feels disconnected from both hockey culture and the specific stereotypes that affect different racial groups.
Not every POC experience is interchangeable.
A stereotype that affects Black athletes is not automatically a stereotype that affects Asian athletes. A stereotype that affects Latino athletes is not automatically a stereotype that affects Indigenous athletes.
If we’re going to talk about race- and we should- we have to talk about the actual racial dynamics at play, not just substitute “person of color” for a more specific analysis.
Sometimes no racial analysis is better than bad racial analysis.
Also, I understand that a lot of fanfiction writers aren’t hockey fans, which is completely fine. But I do think it can create a bit of a blind spot. People will research (if they even bother to research lol) maybe the rules, the stats, the league structure, etc., but not necessarily the culture surrounding the sport.
And hockey culture matters.
Hockey is one of the only major sports where players are allowed to drop their gloves and just start throwing punches. Losing teeth is practically a badge of honor. Violence isn’t some weird exception to hockey culture- t’s part of the culture.
The expectation isn’t simply that players avoid violence. A lot of the time, the expectation is that they embrace it.
One of Rachel’s other books, Tough Guy, is literally about a player whose whole struggle is that everyone expects him to fight because he’s huge. He’s a giant enforcer, and people assume physicality should be his role whether he wants it or not. The conflict isn’t that everyone thinks he’s too aggressive. The conflict is that hockey culture expects him to be aggressive.
(Honestly, if they can’t find a 6’7 white redheaded actor who perfectly matches the description, they could probably get away with casting a 6’2 Black guy and nothing would change).
That’s why I think people sometimes miss how much hockey culture itself matters when discussing race in fandom.
There are even real-world examples of this conversation. When the Team USA Olympic roster was announced, a lot of people were confused about why Jason Robertson wasn’t selected despite being the highest-scoring American player. And one of the arguments that kept coming up was that players like Robertson aren’t always perceived as bringing the same level of physicality or aggression as some of the other stars who made the team.
Whether you agree with that assessment or not isn’t really the point. The point is that toughness, aggression, and physicality are things hockey people talk about constantly when evaluating players.
Which is why I struggle with fandom interpretations that assume every racialized hockey experience would look the same.
I hope my rambling made sense and thanks for reading if you got this far lol.
This is probably the most fun discourse there’s been so far in the Hudson Williams tag: did he say “seeing Connor” or “sin(e) Connor?”
Now, I have my own opinion of course, but ultimately it doesn’t matter enough to me to make a whole post arguing my point. Although it started me thinking about why people are disagreeing in the first place.
Usually, arguments about what a celebrity said come from mumbling, recordings of low quality, or recordings that weren’t focused on that particular speaker. This, however, is from an interview conducted with a decent microphone that has a clear image of hudsons lip movements and provides full context for what he is saying.
Therefore, the reason must be linguistics. Specifically phonetics. And I love phonetics :)
In linguistics, speech sounds are written down using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
After listening to the video a bunch of times, my own transcription of what he says would come out as either /si:n/ (seen) or /si:ŋ/ (also a variation of seen). Since I’m not seeing anyone argue that Hudson meant “seen”, we need to move away a little from what words are supposed to be pronounced as, because speech is imperfect. So, let’s look at the words people do say they think he said.
I wasn’t entirely sure about my transcription of the word “seeing”, so I looked it up online and the page listed my transcription as the British version and this as the American one: /'siiŋ/.
For the other word I’m going with the Spanish version rather than the Latin, because there is no official pronunciation for Latin. And the following paragraph is copied from a page on the word “sin” from spanishstep.com which transcribes the word as /sin/: “The vowel “i” is pronounced as a close front unrounded vowel /i/, similar to the English “ee” in “seen” but shorter and more precise. Spanish vowels are generally more clipped and precise than English vowels, so the “i” in “sin” should be pronounced with a clear, sharp sound without the gliding quality common in English.”
This already establishes how similar these two words are in theory, but they can become almost identical in practice.
In fluent speech, people tend to simplify words they use a lot. /siiŋ/ (seeing) —> /si:ŋ/ or even /si:n/ (seen).
With foreign words, especially if they’re inserted into an English sentence, the speaker is likely to pronounce it with sounds that are more common in the English language. A short /i/ is very rare in English. So, if this was the word Hudson meant to use, it’s very likely he would lengthen the /i/ to become /i:/, getting us to /si:n/.
And then there’s the Connor of it all. Linguistically speaking, of course. The sounds that follow or precede a word can affect pronunciation. /k/ and /g/ are produced in the same place in the mouth. At the end of a word, if you have the letters n and g, it’s usually pronounced as /ŋ/. If you have an n at the end of a word (sin) and the next word starts with a /g/ or a /k/ (Connor), it often changes the pronunciation from /n/ to /ŋ/. Thus, /sin/ becomes /si:n/ becomes /si:ŋ/.
Which is how the words “seeing” and “sin(e)” could sound completely identical. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
I like to think that Heated Rivalry/Game Changers and Schitt's Creek exist in the same universe. David Rose hooked up with Ryan Price accidentally at some point. Ilya unironically loved the Crows franchise. Harris's first job in high school was at Rose Video. Troy met and flirted with Alexis at some bender in Ibiza. Fabian follows Moira on Instagram.
HOLY SHIT GUYS, I WAS INSPIRED BY THIS POST TO TRY MAKE THE SONG AND YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE THE SCREAM I SCRUMPT WHEN I DRAGGED THE TRAINING AUDIO OVER THE BACKING TRACK AND IT LINED UP PERFECTLY
I don't read as much fic as I used to but one "tell" for non Canadians writing us, besides the etransfer, is the units you use to describe us measuring something. I hate to tell you this but The Chart is real and it's completely subconscious. Please abide
you know the all the things she said club girl who is trying to use ilya to do her and her boyfriend’s little voyeurism dance floor cuck fantasy and for some reason ilya is opposed to this which is the number one most out of character decision reid has ever made. what you don’t see is that to me 4 years later ilya is the one on the dance floor while shane loiters demurely by the wall and ilya and this same woman run into each other again except this time
wait sorry really funny vision of shane at the club standing next to this woman’s straight boyfriend both just watching their partners getting freaky on the dance floor. just sipping their little drinks in silence. nodding because it’s too loud to talk.
like it absolutely started as a fun sex game but then i think that perhaps midway through ilya and gabby (her name is gabby now)’s Beautiful Bisexual Bird routine (woman now assigned bisexual by post author) while they’re doing their sexy little “everyone is looking at me but i’m going home with you” thing for their partners, shane and devon (boyfriend’s name is devon now) are standing there and devon is like. “soooooo. um. do you guys like… come to this place often?”
and shane is like “um not really. we live in ottawa and we’re mostly on the road for work.” and devon *polite and clueless* says “oh cool. what do you do?” “uh we play hockey.” “oh you’re hockey players? like professionally? sorry, i don’t really know anything about hockey. i’m a software engineer.” and shane sips his little ginger ale and is like “oh, that’s cool.” and devon is like “i mean not really, i don’t love it. i keep meaning to try for some kind of horizontal promotion or something… what i really like is woodworking but there isn’t a lot of money in that.” and shane is like “oh no shit you’re into woodworking? like you’ve got a home shop and everything?” and devon is like “yeah it’s a sweet little garage set up :) i actually started a website, just so i could show my family backin the states my stuff…”
until eventually ilya and gabby have exhausted their list of erotic maneuvers and the point where shane and or devon is meant to cut in has long since passed and ilya is like “ah. please excuse me i should… go find my husband…” and gabby is like “…yeah me too….” and then they find shane and devon not even paying any fucking attention huddled by a wall
and ilya is like “😡🤬😤shane. i wore the vetements for this.” and shane is like “oh there you are babe, oh my god you need to see what this guy does with reclaimed oak”
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