reeeeally obsessed with shane hollander as a character that is Cursed. in that the fears that he has architected his life and psyche around avoiding and preventing All Come True. everything that haunts him, every ocd theme (if u choose to read him that way, and i do) is realized.
he's so terrified of being viewed as weak & feminine, especially as an asian man. the fear of being gay keeps him up at night. and has to confront that he is not only gay but exclusively a bottom. which is the girl one, the really gay one. and he fucking loves it, his response to sex make it completely undeniable that his deepest most true desire, the thing that frees and fulfills him the most is also the realization of his greatest fear and the worst thing anyone could know about him. every day terrified of how it will alter his relationships and his public image, terrified of how it will change what it means to be the product his manager is selling.
he lives perpetually terrified of being caught out as a fake bad version of the real Shane Hollander who is palatable and good and Normal. "yeah no it’s just that we were all working even to help you maintain your closet and you don’t really seem very grateful for it. you keep struggling against these ties we very lovingly bound you in. oh well, maybe we can monetize the disappointment you've become. please stop kicking."
of course it's the other thing he loves most, hockey, that necessitates this posturing and his closet. it's the thing that demands total discipline over his body and mind. went through hazing and stuck to stringent performance diets (orthorexia btw) and grueling training programs and the monetization of his life and a surveilled existence and season after season of full out, failure-is-not-an-option level effort at all times and the responsibilities of the captaincy and and and and. all to be the man he is expected to be, required to be. for so little thanks, for so little acknowledgement of what it takes, except as criticism. work so impossibly hard and it’s kind of weird and off putting, you know you can unclench a little right? that diet you’re on is kinda gay haha just kidding, but no really haha. but anything less than utter hockey robot perfection throws EVERYTHING into question. one bad game after a bad day, month, year, and where was shane hollander tonight?
not to speak of when the two halves overlap. did you trip on purpose?
did you work your entire life to build an airtight, unimpeachable legacy, to conceal the deep fundamental wrongness of who you are from everyone else? sorry baby it caught up, and ooh yeah we hate what we see. let up on that iron grip for even a single second and it will come back to bite you. brought ilya to the cottage -> outed to parents, caught in his lie, in need of forgiveness. shared ilya/intimacy with the tightest circle of friends -> a careless straight man who has never exercised a fraction of the caution your life depends upon outs you to the world and now your team is icing you out. his reticence to come out strains the relationship he had already given up so much for, almost to the breaking point. his struggle to give up what he had and give up control is itself a joke, even to his loved ones.
none of his fears were blown out of proportion, none of it was his choice, nothing he ever did helped. his entire life lived in a cage. none of which makes letting go of the fear any easier of course. some might say it actually makes it perhaps! a bit harder. anything he could have done to save himself would've involved some great sacrifice of one of his few sources of comfort and safety and pleasure. everything he ever wanted came at such a cost.
