About the geopolitical implications of Shane and Ilya coming out, the show has painted itself into a huge corner with Svetlana. She's the daughter of a (former?) Russian minister. We can safely assume her dad is definitely one of Putin's oligarchs. She regularly goes back home. Ilya coming out would paint a huge target on her back as well and put her in a great amount of danger. She wouldn't be able to go back home either.
So now you have Ilya wanting to come out despite this putting two POCs in danger. I'm really curious how they're going to handle this because the implications are bleak as hell.
There's also the matter of Ilya's brother and niece who would probably end up as political prisoners/pawns in Putin's game of one upmanship.
The more I think on it, the crazier it gets with their coming out. Suddenly, the entire continent of Europe would care about hockey so they can make memes about whether Ilya has fucked Putin or whether Putin has sucked Ilya's dick. There would be songs, sketches and endless commentary. JD Vance the couch fucker or Trump/Clinton would be peanuts in comparison.
Shane, Ilya, (show) Svetlana and everyone near them would have targets on their backs for the rest of their lives. The Long Game makes no fucking sense. Ilya would know all this. People from former Soviet/communist countries live in constant fear of the state. It's been 36 years since the fall of the Berlin wall and my parents are still cautioning me against saying too much against the government, even in the privacy of my own home. And I'm not even Russian, it's way worse over there.
Having citizenship certainly helps but it doesn't mean Ilya's safe from political repercussions. I am losing my mind thinking about it. Sorry if I'm not making sense but it's so crazy to me how Rachel has glossed over all of this so Ilya can throw a tantrum cause his boyfriend won't go with him to a party.
I really do wish we saw more about just who Ilya Rozanov is in Russia because it has the potential to inform so much of the conflict.
Canon suggests that Ilya is a big deal in Russia. He is the captain of their Olympic team at a very young age. They pick him over every single athlete actively playing in the KHL. His family is politically connected. He is personally and publicly linked to Putin’s Minister of Sport, and he is attending functions with him and his family while people go “wow, wouldn’t it be great if Ilya married his daughter?”
Again, hockey is very tied to Russian state propaganda. Hockey players are used to promote a sense of nationalism. Ilya has very likely been plastered over state propaganda for years. He has likely been photographed with Putin himself. Sincerely, what the fuck happens if the guy you’ve been pushing as the nationalist ideal citizens should aspire to defects from the goddamn country to go make passionate gay love to Canada’s own special hockey boy?
It would be very embarrassing for the Russian government. Legitimately, I have no idea what would happen. I don’t personally see them just taking it lying down.
And I think the conflict grows more interesting in the the sense that I think that canon is at least open to the interpretation that Ilya’s family purposefully pushed his hockey career as a political measure.
Canon suggests that Shane is someone who entered hockey out of genuine love for the sport, and that led him to achieve at a high level, and he ended up getting promoted because of that. But it also suggests that Ilya was someone who exhibited a talent for the sport and did not have much choice in pursuing it. His family was in control of his life, career, and training. His family was the driving force behind his career, and they continued to exert control over it even after he joins the NHL.
Why does his family do that?
The easiest interpretation is that it’s just about money. He is their golden goose and their cash cow and they will milk him fucking dry. But that interpretation is interesting in the sense that his family already seems to have money.
His brother has money troubles, to be clear, but that’s different from his family having money troubles. His brother may just not have access to the family accounts, and his brother was not the one to make the initial decision to push Ilya’s hockey career. That was most likely his father. And he doesn’t seem to have money troubles—I can’t even remember a time in canon where he asks Ilya for money.
Like. He lives in a fucking estate. His family home is palatial. That’s not mutually exclusive with money troubles—maybe it’s generational wealth that’s started to run dry—but I think canon’s at least open to the interpretation that the decision to pursue Ilya’s hockey career was not initially about the money. And I personally like the interpretation that the family saw it as a way to potentially climb the political and social ladder.
Sergei Vetrova achieved at a high level in hockey and became Putin’s Minister of Sport. And Russian hockey players are an important part of state propaganda. If they have a family member who’s succeeding in that space, that may be a way to integrate themselves even further with the government’s leadership. Here’s my son and his historical talent—put him on your posters, make him the captain of your Olympic team, tell the whole country to be like him. There is political capital that comes with that. I personally like the interpretation that Ilya was pushed so hard to achieve in part because his family saw an opportunity to exploit his ability for their own careers and social status.
And Ilya would know that. It would inform why he doesn’t want to come out or risk pursuing a real relationship with Shane in heated rivalry perfectly. But it cheapens all of his later actions in the long game.
I just. I have trouble reconciling Ilya’s actions in the long game with his character. His trauma from his family and his treatment in Russia is a bedrock of his character and his motivations. His actions just don’t make sense to me if you just rip that away.
Someone mentioned how they were having a hard time creating a world for their fantasy fiction geographically because they kept reinventing the island of Britain, which also happened to my good close enemy George R. R. Martin. I would like to suggest North Carolina. I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous but North Carolina has an awesome geographic setup for a fantasy kingdom, I think. Inhospitable barrier islands, constantly shifting shoals in the sound, swamps with alligators, venomous snakes and carnivorous plants, lots of very flat and somewhat sparsely populated farmland, foothills, mines, mountains full of mysterious phenomenon that were originally very difficult to navigate and people still get lost in today. It kind of rocks.
There are actually 36 carnivorous plant species native to North Carolina, roughly half of all carnivorous plant species in the United States are found in North Carolina! I added the carnivorous plant detail because that’s something I love about the state. We have so many fucking bugs that the plants keep evolving to eat them.
I love that giant man eating Venus flytraps are worldbuilding staples in untamed tropical fantasy settings but they’re actually native to a small region in the Carolinas.
And I agree with the notes, the Chesapeake Bay + Great Dismal Swamp (partially in NC anyway) and the South Carolina Lowcountry would be good geographic additions to this.
Can we talk about how Rachel write David Hollander as skipping helping his own son get ready for his marriage so that he can help Ilya? Literally, how the fuck can any good father just be like, nah, I don't want to spend the morning before your marriage with you, son. Ilya has made friends with Troy and Bood by this point. Both of them could be helping him out while Shane is helped by his parents.
Or how Rachel is enforcing a fucked up heteronormative dynamic on two gay men by having the top helped by a man and the bottom helped by a woman to get ready? Despite the fact that Yuna is the one helping with the foundation, so reasonably she would be closer to Ilya than David?
The more I think about that part of the book the ickier it gets to me. Like, I don't think Reid was consciously like oh Shane is the woman bottom so he gets mom and Ilya is the man top so he gets dad, but like, certainly that bias contributed to nothing about her including that standing out to her. Then it feels weird too because it's like are we fr going to treat them like brothers at their fucking wedding? I know it is not the most unusual thing in the world for in-laws to be like hey your my kid now too, like that on its own is still not something I like but I know it's a thing - but the way Reid does it is just so fucking literal that it gets fucking weird. But like, the main reason she did this was just because again she just can't conceptualize Ilya being happy and complete and fulfilled as a human being without parents. Because yeah, why couldn't someone else have been there? Why did it have to be David saying Ilya's his son now? And I'm sorry but I still don't buy that this would mean anything to Ilya. Nowhere near as much as the fandom seems to think. I just think it would be really awkward, at most a relief to know he's welcomed by his in-laws. There is no replacing his real parents, for better or for worse, with literal replacement parents, much less his husband's parents. She is so fucking gripped by the nuclear family, I can't stand it. It makes the whole fucking ending feel so weird. And like this is part of why the fandom is so much more interested in Ilya's relationship to Yuna and David than Shane's and also why they think David is such a good dad but it's like he's not even being his son's dad! He's not even seeing Shane before the wedding! Why does suddenly his relationship with the son that's actually his no longer play a role in whether or not David is a good dad???
David's entire speech to Ilya is so weird in that chapter. First, he says he doesn't need to see his son because Yuna can handle it, which is like not the point? You don't help your son get ready because he needs his shoes tied. You do it to share an incredibly important emotional moment with him, which he knows, because he literally says as much to Ilya at the end of the scene. David just prefers to share this moment with his son-in-law instead of his actual son.
We thought about adopting, but we decided in the end to just focus on making Shane the best person we could.
Not supporting him to be happy and successful. Not even making him the best person he could be. But making him reach for perfection to their standards ("focus on making... the best person we could" is fucking load bearing). No fucking wonder Shane didn't want to come out to them.
Then, instead of giving any credit to Shane for growing into an amazing person, he pats himself on the back for doing a great job. And Ilya isn't like, wow, that is a fucking weird way to look at your own son.
So here is my overly long and overly personal essay on hopes and fears for S2 of Heated Rivalry, and especially Shane.
I’m very very much a “people be saying things so definitively, idk man I think it depends” mindset as a person. I like reading different perspectives and can often sympathise with more than one at a time. In this case, am always back and forth on how much goodwill I have for the books and the intentionality of their characterisation, esp in TLG. But have looked over and edited this a bunch of times and it’s the closest to a good-faith snapshot of what I’m thinking as am going to get at this stage, so 🤷🏻♀️.
Also, a lot of this is probably the coldest of takes after what I imagine have been months of discourse (have been reading some really good insights over the last couple days), but I came to HR fandom fairly recently, and began writing this like a fortnight ago as very much an exercise in sketching out the overall shape of my thoughts on TLG. So probably not contributing anything new, but am trying to get used to having a blog and putting any thoughts out again, so! Here are some thoughts.
Also! This is Shane-focused bc I feel he was let down much more in TLG, but that doesn’t in any way mean I don’t want justice done to Ilya’s arc - just that I feel the material and therefore the roadmap already largely exists for it by comparison. In fact, though, I think giving Shane his dues would improve the story all round, contextualising BOTH their characters and perspectives as both understandable and flawed, and highlighting not just Ilya’s frustration but also why he loves Shane in the first place (which was also underdone in the book sometimes IMO, and can make him come across as uncaring too).
Why I can’t help but be worried about S2 and Shane’s character, and how I hope the series can continue to do him justice - an overly parasocial, neurodivergent perspective.
So I’ve seen a lot of posts about how Shane in TLG is villainised by some fans, when his situation and reactions would be just as understandable (flawed! but human) as Ilya’s. And I strongly agree - but the problem is that the book itself doesn’t adequately put that across. I wrote an angry post about this when I was in my feels at the end of this very extensive and interesting Reddit thread, but wanted to set it all out in a more considered way here.
TLG is heavily weighted towards Ilya’s POV, and there is a great deal to sympathise with there. He’s left behind the country he grew up in and the team that drafted him (and the latter for one that’s not as strong), he doesn’t have the same in-built support network as Shane has, and he has an undeniably tragic history of family trauma and depression. Plus, innately, he is a naturally bold, charming, and gregarious person who - once the Russia threat is eliminated - craves being out, and feels stifled in the shadows. All of that really makes you feel for him, and it’s absolutely right that it should.
But this is a two-person romance, where the characters love each other and we’re meant to love both of them. And this is where I feel Rachel Reid’s writing of TLG does the Shane she created in HR a disservice, because there’s a lot to sympathise with him about, too, and the book doesn’t make the most of that.
From the outset, we’ve known Shane as a nervy perfectionist who maybe only truly feels instinctively in control and comfortable when he’s on the ice. He’s intense, serious - someone who hates being caught out, who has to think through everything he says, who wears his heart on his sleeve despite his best efforts not to. And the thing is that this is not a flaw - we’ve been shown it’s precisely that earnestness and honesty that so charms Ilya. Where Ilya has had to learn to have layers of consciously, carefully constructed defences, Shane’s self-protection techniques are much more instinctive and transparent, a reflex reaction to how close to the surface his emotions and nerves are.
So HR is a classic opposites-attract romance where you can see just how good their differences are for each other. How Ilya could so easily bury himself forever in layers of detachment and wit and bravado, without Shane bulldozing through that straight to his heart with his sweetness and determination. And how Shane could, too, bury himself in people-pleasing and perfectionism and workaholism, without Ilya’s boldness and easiness and warmth pulling him out of that, making him more comfortable to be himself too. They were created as loving each other, specifically, for a reason.
Rachel Reid has said she accidentally wrote Shane as autistic, but that by the time of TLG, she’d realised he was and consciously wrote him as such then. What’s unsettling to me is how his character seems to be given much less grace after that realisation than he was before. Shane is an autistic, biracial, closeted gay man in one of the whitest and most conservative sports in North America. He would have been bombarded with microaggressions of every kind his entire life, and he is instinctively wired to be careful about how he deals with pressure from the outside world, as we see from how he answers interview questions. If he is anxious about coming out, if he finds it hard to deviate from the plan he carefully prepared together with Ilya, it fits exactly with who he is - with the person Ilya loves.
That doesn’t mean Ilya can’t change his mind about the timeframe, doesn’t invalidate his own feelings of frustration and how they impact his own mental state. It doesn’t and shouldn’t mean they can’t argue. But if this is a two-person romance story about how hard it is to keep a relationship strong, then the essential nature of BOTH of those characters is important and valid in every dispute. This is where the way TLG is written lets it down compared to HR, because the framing is so often through one character’s eyes and one character’s needs. We so often read Ilya’s intense, deep yearning to be out and to be free and to be loved out loud, as in the Fabian club scene and the infamous Boxing Day fight. We’re not shown the counterpart enough: the instinctive terror that would be crowding Shane’s mind at the thought of losing so much control, at changing the carefully-thought-out plan with no notice, knowing the person that the author had already established he was.
Then there’s Rachel Reid’s author notes written for TLG, which were disappointing to read, and explain a lot of the above IMO. I know these are only rough building blocks, but think they therefore show the book’s uneven foundation, in that Ilya is almost entirely defined by things that he is (cool, perceptive, intelligent, dealing with trauma) and Shane by things that he is not (except obsessed with hockey). For one thing, categorising an autistic person as less intelligent because he finds it hard to read people sits very uncomfortably with me. Categorising a neurodivergent, biracial, closeted gay man in a deeply conservative field as having no trauma at all also sits so badly when you consider the layers of bullshit he must have heard and internalised and guarded against his whole life, how much harder he must have had to work to be treated with the respect he deserves.
A massive element of all this is, of course, the complete absence of attention her writing gave to his being Asian even in HR: every character in the GCU has to navigate their own way around the ever-present spectre of homophobia, but we never hear anything about how the one POC player protagonist must also have had to deal with racism and role model/model minority pressure. Having your white character believe they’re aware of the “dark side” of hockey while your POC character is blissfully unaware is a hell of a choice, especially when the writing does so little to contradict it (other than one solitary suggestion when he’s threatened by Crowell).
All of this is to say that in TLG, I found Shane’s worries to be downplayed beside Ilya’s. His anxiety is not given the same interiority and understanding as Ilya’s depression. His need for privacy and planning and a comfort zone is framed too often from the outside as fussing, as stalling, as mere insensitivity. The internal and external demons he has to be facing are almost always off the page. Ilya is an unreliable narrator, but too often in TLG he’s the only one given the depth and weight that’s deserved, and that overbalances the narrative.
There are so many little touches that land too often on one side - for example, there are beautiful moments between Ilya and other characters, between him and the Hollanders as regards their own relationship. Yet when Shane interacts with his parents it’s usually him feeling guilty or being chided over Ilya (or food - there’s also that unfortunate accidental eating disorder written for laughs and not as its own response to fear, trauma even). Ilya’s character and other relationships have been built up lovingly over the whole GC series by TLG, but as far as Shane’s own world goes, we don’t even see his coming-out to his team, and famously, the fallout in Montreal/the hockey world AND his eating disorder are wrapped up in like one page near the end of the book, which is wild tbh. In an unnecessarily cruel little detail, we’re even told Shane is the only one not good at coaching kids - despite hockey camp having been his idea, despite being the captain of his team, despite being a beloved uncle to the Pike kids. It feels like outside of his eventual big declarations of love for Ilya, we’re shown almost no innate positives or inner struggles for Shane in his own right in this book, just the external circumstances of his mostly-lucky life. And this is a relationship and a romance that famously arose amid a rivalry between equals.
Then there’s the plot. Shane begins the book by having everything (in Ilya’s and too often the narrative’s view), and ends it by having almost all of his worst fears validated (bar losing Ilya and bar losing hockey entirely): outed in the worst and most public way, humiliated, ostracised, threatened, his integrity and reputation besmirched, his beloved team lost, his captaincy and first line position gone. Taken together with the imbalance in POVs, it does almost feel like his eventual demotion (played for laughs in the book’s last scene) is a punishment for perceived selfishness. Rachel Reid has said Shane has the hero’s arc, and I try to give that statement the benefit of the doubt in that he does have to make hard choices, as do we all, to prioritise important things like love and being your true self (I’d argue your career and life’s passion is also very important). I of course completely agree that a happy ending for Shane as much as for Ilya was always going to be to be able to come out and to be who they are and love each other publicly. But so often the way TLG was written felt to me like the Shane we know and love as anxious and private was being berated for how difficult the process of getting there was for him: as if this was a battle against his own complacency, instead of a very hard negotiation with his own innate nature (let alone the coldness and prejudice we presume, but are barely shown, he’s already facing from his own team). This shouldn’t be framed as a redemption arc of insensitivity or cowardice overcome. It is a crucible where he was always going to be badly hurt in a way that targeted his most vulnerable points, even if it is ultimately worth what’s gained.
Now for a personal moment where I unveil the full extent of my parasocialness and projection - I found this series and fell completely in love with it at a time when I, as an adult woman, have been finding out about my own neurodivergence. A GP, a psychiatrist and a psychologist all finally flagged me for probable autism after an entire adult life battling depression, and an extremely low patch last year - please believe, I sympathise with BOTH Ilya and Shane.
Similarly to Shane out of the two, though, I’ve had a lucky personal background without big-T trauma (for which I am immensely, hugely grateful). However, that hasn’t stopped me feeling like I was fundamentally flawed, miserable, and increasingly exhausted through the years, decades even. There’s been burnout, self-destructive habits and thoughts and occasionally actions, self-isolation, panic attacks over things other people might find easy. There’s been immense guilt and self-loathing over how fucking hard I can find life, despite having had all the luck in the world compared to so many. In these recent months I have been trying hard to reframe things wrt both my neurodivergence and the depression that’s been exacerbated as a result - trying to give myself that kindness, that I am built a certain way, that the pain hasn’t always been my fault, and that I hopefully am who I am in positive ways as well.
Which is to say that when I watched HR and fell so completely in love with Shane and Ilya’s love story, one of the many reasons why was this beautiful portrayal of a neurodivergent person who is successful and confident in his field, and is loved fiercely and who loves fiercely BECAUSE of and INCLUDING the way he is, not despite of it. I am so very not a pro sportsperson or anything like Shane in so so many ways, lolol, but like many others I nonetheless connected on an instinctive level with so many things about how he processes life. These include but are not limited to: the cautious way he carries himself; the flicker in his eyes when he’s assessing a social situation or overthinking a text; his constant need to clarify things verbally; his instinctively direct and literal answers to questions; the deep relief and safety that is his special interest; how he only truly unmasks with the people he’s closest to (above all, Ilya); how he will set his mind to understanding and addressing a problem when it’s about something or someone he cares about.
That was my reaction to tv!Shane first (bless you forever, Hudson Williams), but I think in S1, both characters were built up from the groundwork laid by Rachel in the first book, with much more added depth and love. If there’s already a big disconnect between the books’ treatment of Shane in HR and TLG, then it would be that much more stark and sad in the tv version if this beautifully, subtly nuanced character were to be shortchanged in the understanding and exploration his feelings and journey are given, when everything about his nature has been so clear on the screen.
I didn’t know what they were called for much of my life, but I’ve always had hyperfixations - especially on movies, books, or tv series. Fiction has been my comfort zone and my conduit for relating to the world for as long as I can remember. And so this is why I’ve written over 1,500 words and counting on this, lol - and why I’ve undoubtedly taken all this far too personally. But also part of that understanding I’ve been trying to show myself for getting so deep into this is that actually, from what I’ve seen online, there’s so very many of us who’ve connected to this show for so many different reasons. Its portrayal of love, of queer joy, of unabashed intimacy, of emotional connection between equals and partners - and within that, its neurodivergent representation (which author, showrunner and actor have all agreed was intentional). Simply, it meant something to see Shane love and be loved just as he is, in his neurodivergence and also in his own particularities as a character. It is unfortunately, a little too parasocially important to me that that continues in S2.
So then - season two. Jacob Tierney did a brilliant job on S1 (along with, of course, the amazing Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams). He captured the fun, sweet, sparky nature of the first Hollanov book’s romance and layered into it so more emotion and depth, from exploring Ilya’s background (the abuse from his father and brother, the warmth and safe space that is his friendship with Svetlana) - to the very needed engagement with Shane’s ethnicity (eg. being hit with the Tiger Woods/Serena Williams comparison, the pressure of being a visible role model for the kids who’ll look up to him). You are emotionally eviscerated at least once an episode and usually more - but what an incredible, soul-warming journey and payoff.
This is what I wish for season two, and what I hope we all wish for (in addition ofc to the humour and the heat). For one thing, to see onscreen what it’s like for a confident, successful, charming, larger-than-life person to also be clinically depressed - something we so often are not shown in media. Sorry to be personal again, but I have a demanding and public-facing job, and have had bad experiences with counsellors being unable to tally that with being depressed, like one thing must cancel out the other. I have no doubt Connor will be heartbreaking in how he threads that needle, and that that representation, too, will be meaningful and important to so many people. But I also want to see his counterpart via the material given to Hudson: how someone also at the top of his game can still be fighting a daily battle with his anxiety over revealing his true self to the whole, huge, often hostile world - not out of shame or cowardice, but simply because that’s how he’s wired, that’s the nature of his soft underbelly.
I would like to see that coming-out scene with the Metros as well as its aftermath throughout the series - how their subsequent behaviour could affect the locker room and their team dynamic, could reinforce all his worries about the whole truth coming out, could contribute to his own anxiety spiral alongside Ilya’s depression. I would like that continued awareness of how the specific kinds of pressure Shane’s faced his whole life have shaped him, just as Ilya’s own have shaped him. I would like to see how Ilya’s (also understandable!) reticence to open up about his depression disconcerts Shane - who we know does not deal well with ambiguity and stonewalling, as in Sochi and Vegas. I would like to see Shane’s post-plane clarity framed not as catching up to a more emotionally-intelligent partner, but in its own right as the brave confronting of his own oldest fears, in the face of the very worst of all fears.
I would like Shane’s half of the story and the fear and the pain to be given the same weight in a way I don’t feel the book did justice to, to be honest. And if the series is going to have to follow every plot beat, as I imagine it will, then I would like to see the outing and especially trip-gate also be properly devastating for everyone - especially for Shane, but also for Ilya and for the viewer - and not rushed through before we get to our next bittersweet HFN.
In S1, some of the early plot beats - especially Vegas - could in lesser hands have made Ilya a temporary villain: the unsympathetic, more emotionally withholding dom to Shane’s soft, naive sub. But instead, in Jacob and Connor’s depiction, you feel every bit of his frustration and guardedness and need for control and distance given just how unfair and cruel his home life is. You fully understand the pain on both sides of that penthouse door. You still root for them to be together, and you wouldn’t if you only liked or sympathised with one! I would like that same even-handedness and exploration of and sympathy for Shane in S2.
I fell in love with this story because it was a beautiful tale of two people who end up communicating despite themselves, and eventually loving each other for themselves. There is no loving Shane without loving Ilya, and also no loving Ilya without loving Shane. Above everything else, I hope that continues to be the north star throughout S2.
More TLG analysis/rantings (I promise I do actually love this show deeply and have derived a lot of happiness from it so far! but the thought of S2 keeps turning over and over in my brain like it’s a washing machine and unfortunately it’s on a long cycle)
(the below is on the book’s oddly punitive (IMO) framing and ending, as well as translating that to screen)
I wonder if there is serious talk in the S2 writers’ room (as I understand JT isn’t doing it all himself this time?) right now about tackling the imbalances and omissions and questionable decisions and framing in TLG. Hopefully genuine and heartfelt concerns about the material itself and how that will translate to their deeper, kinder, far more emotionally-nuanced series, but I’ll even take a little self-interested worry over the optics too if it helps towards the final outcome.
Because RR may have consistently neglected to tackle race in her books, but HR S1 kept it within focus in a subtle but recurring through line, and from my (limited and possibly skewed?) impression of the fandom, it also seems the larger TV audience is more attuned to this than the OG purely book loyalist base. That it’s more widely understood now that outside his own completely valid drive to be the best, there’s also the external and internalised pressure Shane feels to be perfect, to be unassailable, because they will always, always scrutinise and criticise you the most.
I just mean when your happy ending immediately follows your generationally-talented POC protagonist’s hockey-wide humiliation and then removal to a secondary position below his white partner but it’s totally OK because he’s learned (and then been forcibly taught in case he didn’t get the message) to prioritise True Love over his career … presumably there’s someone there going 😬 guys 😬 idk 😬 plot might be canon but can we at least shitcan the pay cut / captain jokes 😬
(I’m sorry if I’m being overly salty and cynical, because (a) based on S1 I do believe the show’s creative team genuinely cares and (b) I know it’s a romance and I do obviously want Hollanov to be happy together eventually in their aforementioned true love, and being on the same team allows them to do that! just really feel like those fuckass screenshots and recent interview broke something in me trust-wise with the book and how it gets there and deals with Shane and the multiple parts of his identity, and am still trying to work through it back to a place of greater optimism and joy about the series, or least greater idgafery.)
Separate but related: I’d also really like to unpick the fairness/punishment angle of it all again, because again it’s structured in such a simplistic, even childish way.
Because the truth is that it IS so unfair that Ilya had to give up the team who drafted him first, where he practically grew up, where he was a hero to his teammates and fans, where he made his name and brought home his first cup and restored the team’s legacy. And that he had to take his own generational talent to a team which was objectively much worse, and he couldn’t even explain why to anyone, either personally or professionally! And again even if it all works out in the end, it would obviously be so difficult, for so long, because even if Ilya is not as laser-focused on hockey as Shane is, he’s still rightfully proud of himself and his career and he’s still worked so fucking hard at it, even when all he got was contempt and greed from his own family instead of praise. And he’s dealing with trauma and depression throughout all of it. It is extremely bloody unfair!
But none of that is Shane’s fault - it’s Ilya’s family, it’s Russia, it’s geography, it’s the institutional homophobia this series was allegedly conceived as criticising (yet seemingly disappears at will when it’s time to call fears over coming out “selfish”). Shane should logically be able to extrapolate the cosmic injustice and practical imbalance of the situation (even without Ilya confirming the emotional impact it’s had) and be understanding and sympathetic about that as a baseline, and it’s definitely a failing whenever he doesn’t and isn’t. But he can’t be called selfish for setting the plan up in the first place. When they both agreed? When it was literally the only way they could conceive of being together by the end of HR?
(Part of me wonders if - apart from the favouritism - she was just mad at herself for inadvertently having written Ilya into a box, and took it out on Shane.)
So the whole tit-for-tat tone just rubs me wrong and hints, I think, at such a moralistic and punitive tone to the whole thing. (Underlined by the “going into TLG my main notes were all the ways Shane had been selfish” thing, because again, just: what a bizarre way to conceptualise your two-person romance tbh. There’s a reason “Pride & Prejudice” assigns a flaw to each!)
Canonically, Ilya chose this because it was the best option in an imperfect and unfair world, in order to protect himself and to have a relationship at all. RR structured a story where he was going to have to be the one to make the choice/sacrifice, and then rewards him for it. He’s given the heartwarming arc of building a team and a support network and shoring up his professional reputation before the bomb hits, and then gets extra insulation from in-world criticism by the Centaurs’ win.
Because Shane was the “lucky” one who did not have to give up his home and team, he has to have his career and reputation blown up for him far more comprehensively, as what appears atp to have been intended as a moral lesson. And he can’t complain, because it’s his due after having been lucky till then - even if that stability also helped Ilya have safety and a future in the first place. He can’t complain because Ilya did it first, even if their circumstances were wildly different. He can’t complain because it’s his “turn”. Even if the unfairness wasn’t his fault, even if (as we know, but the book repeatedly fails to show) his world is unfair too in so many ways.
Jacob Tierney has called TLG an “emotionally sophisticated” book and honestly, that worries me a bit. I fervently agree that it is good to have stories that deal with the difficulty of keeping a relationship strong, not just the euphoria of the get-together and the honeymoon period. I think it swings for some big ideas and especially in Ilya’s POV it does some of them pretty well, like the dragging, swamping irrationality and unfairness of depression. But one of the ways it just severely lists to the side and flattens itself out is on the oddly retributory framing of its central relationship: a zero-sum game, where Shane must lose it all because Ilya lost it all, and he has to lose it worse because Ilya lost it first. Payback time - isn’t that romantic?
Everything about this meta is so well written. Although I actually hate the pervasive framing that Ilya sacrificed anything.
At the end of Heated Rivalry, Ilya explicitly says he wants 3 things:
Canadian citizenship, which requires living in Canada for all citizenship pathways,
to be with Shane, which requires living within a 2 hour flight zone of Montreal, even if they super commute with private planes, and
to not be on Montreal's team and take a pay cut. He wants to be the star of the team.
There are only 3 Canadian teams that are located in this region: Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto. Ilya specifically nixed MTL. Toronto is a toxic cesspit that supports rapist and homophobic players. Neither of them would ever want to play on a team with Kent.
I always thought it was stupid that Shane had to have this eureka moment to come up with Ottawa, because where else was Ilya thinking he was going to move to? Winnipeg, the next closest city is an additional hour on the flight each way (a 7 hour daily roundtrip commute?). It's also not in the same conference, so they won't have as many games against each other.
I really feel like she had Shane "come up" with the idea so that he could be blamed for it, when logically, Ilya should have already decided on Ottawa when he rejected Montreal because there is literally no other choice that gets him everything he asked for in that conversation.
So, more to the point, getting every single one of your priorities met isn't making a sacrifice. Tradeoffs are the norm, not the exception, and yes, it turns out that being in Ottawa is harder than either of them anticipated, but Ilya's choice to go to Ottawa actually doesn't require him to make a sacrifice of any of his three priorities. (Now, why the professional hockey player doesn't have playing on a Cup contending team as one of his priorities is something I side eye). If he didn't think the team quality was a concern, why is Shane to be held responsible for it by the narrative? If it was a concern, he was the one who rejected Montreal, which had just won two Cups!
i know that every day is a new serious conversation about shane hollander on here but at some point i'd like to spend some time on the lack of agency he feels (and is afforded) when it comes to his sexuality. rose goads him out of the closet (not in a cruel way, but he's not necessarily prepared to come out to her), his father violates his privacy and therefore pushes him into a situation shane isn't ready for ("i did not want this to be how i told you"), in the books hayden makes the stupidest fucking choice ever and outs shane to the whole entire world without even giving it a second thought, in the books ilya actually gets legitimately MAD at shane over the fact he's not ready to publicly come out due to the vitriol/abuse he knows he would endure because of it (which happens, btw, he was 100% right to be scared of that). he never gets to do it his way. he never gets to have any control over it at all. i think it adds something else to "i tried really hard but i just can't help it" like he never gets to dictate the terms. he's gay, can't fix it or change it, for a long time he can't even accept it or say it out loud. people keep finding out, he can't stop them. people keep trying to force him to talk about it, he can't get out of it. he never gets to keep it, he never gets to be the one who decides the secret gets shared. there's just this real helplessness that sows itself inside of him as he continues to be forced into these situations that skin him raw every single time. forced out, over and over again. only rose does it as an act of kindness/with good intentions. he tried really hard but he should've known all along that this was never going to be his secret to keep or his decision to make. i just know it's absolute hell for him like i just know it absolutely tears a hole through him i know it's so painful to have this happen over and over. and it's not even like his control over the situation is slipping through his fingers—it keeps getting yanked straight out of his hands. he's never given the proper amount of agency. he's never given the choice or the chance. the lack of control he feels over this manifests itself in other ways. i know it's not a popular interpretation but i do firmly believe shane has a propensity for self harm/self destructive behavior and he absolutely punishes himself for everyone else's lack of consideration. he wouldn't be feeling like this if there wasn't something wrong with him that needed to be kept a secret at all costs. he's doing it to himself. he deserves it, in a way. and he never gets mad at these people for violating his trust and privacy. he relents to ilya (because it's not fair for him to expect ilya to hide), he forgives his parents (because he never should've lied to them in the first place), he dismisses hayden's mistake as if it didn't even matter (because it was his own fault for acting like that in a semi-public place). and he only does this because he's turning it all inward, he's keeping it all inside, he's blaming all of it on himself. every time he's faced with something like this he finds a way to make it his own fault. idk there's more to this the words aren't coming to me right now. i'll keep thinking about it though
Ilya - who laughs at him and mocks him that he's coming out as gay, as if Ilya hadn't been spiraling over the evidence of Shane's bisexuality for months
Montreal - who aren't supportive and basically have a don't ask, don't tell rule for Shane while also still have homophobic language in the locker room
what the fuck what the actual fuck did they do to my boy shane. why was 80% of his fucking development off-screen. why is he being put through an actual torture nexus. why is no one taking his fear about literally anything seriously?????? why is he being treated like cassandra of troy. what the fuck.
WHAT THE FUCK DID THEY DO TO MY EMPATHETIC BOY ILYA. WHY IS HE BEING MOTHER TERESA TO EVERYONE EXCEPT HIS HUSBAND WTHWTHWTH. WHY IS HE LAUGHING AT SHIT HE SHOULDN'T BE LAUGHING ABOUT.
why is the therapy not addressing the actual fucking issues. why is shane not in therapy atp. why is the romance book making me angry and not happy. why did i read this humiliation ritual bro.
It's such a minor thing compared with everything else but it really bothers me how much emphasis is put on Ottawa being Shane's hometown, as if that somehow makes it even more convenient for Shane and isolating to Ilya. It just serves as additional fodder for Ilya's resentment. It's mentioned three times in Long Game, notably during/after the Boxing Day fight:
Instead he’d chosen to come to Ottawa, when he could have gone to almost any team in the league. He’d chosen a team that hadn’t made the playoffs in over a decade. He’d chosen it because it was Shane’s hometown, and close to where Shane lived. He’d chosen it so he could build a life in Canada with the man he loved.
- The Long Game, Ch. 22
He’d set his boyfriend up in his hometown, not far from Montreal, because that was convenient for him.
- The Long Game, Ch. 23
Except that's revisionist history designed to make Shane look bad! They chose Ottawa for hockey reasons (cap space, roster needs) and logistics (it's the closest team to Montreal and Shane's contract isn't up so he can't move, it lets Ilya start the Canadian citizenship process). None of the reasons Ilya moves to Ottawa rather than another team has to do with Shane's connection to it - not even being close to Yuna and David, because they're not a factor when they make the original plan!
It's framing the move to Ottawa like a Hallmark movie where the significant other is forced to relocate to their partner's hometown where their partner lives and knows everyone and is woven into the fabric of the community while the person who moves is completely isolated from THEIR friends and family - except Shane ISN'T woven into the fabric of Ottawa like that because he doesn't live there. Ilya sees Shane's parents (aka his only emotional tie to Ottawa besides Ilya) more often than Shane does, and Shane hasn't lived in Ottawa since he was at least 18, if not earlier with billeting.
So the fact that he grew up there has zero bearing on the current circumstances, and it's just a clumsy way to reinforce the narrative that Shane fit Ilya perfectly into his life without making any changes to his own, except Ottawa being Shane's hometown is essentially a complete coincidence, so all it actually does is make Shane look bad for no reason.
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