AMOTM

–He hates losing to Ilya, and it makes him so mad he goes home and drinks a beer.

–He sleeps with women because he thinks if he keeps doing it, he’ll eventually find the right one.

–He doesn't just take Ilya’s chirps. he is actually chirping him right back to the press.

There is also this conversation he has with Ilya that I think is very important to show their dynamic where Shane is an active participant in the teasing and bickering and is not sitting there taking it.

The epilogue also shows us Ilya taking care of Shane through sex because it’s their only language and he can tell that Shane is pretty mad about losing. But there is no power exchange dynamic going on.

The books have very clear cause and effect in their relationship, and I do give Reid credit for being the stronger romance plotter in HR than Tierney.

Sochi: Ilya gets scared of his feelings for Shane and pulls away, ghosting him ->

Vegas: Ilya tries to convince himself that he can have emotionless sex with Shane, fails, but Shane gets the message that this is fuck buddies only and is mad in the elevator at himself that he realizes he wishes it could be more ->

Prologue: Shane is fully in the mindset of fuck and get out, this is the emotional repression sex apartment, no feelings allowed, but Ilya is regretting the emotional distance and trying to flirt a bit without success ->

Tuna Melt: Ilya decides to up the stakes (stay over, eat) because he wants to be friends with benefits, but doesn't want to say the words and the lowkey flirting at hookups isn't working; Shane freaks out that Ilya is changing the parameters of their relationship again without talking clearly ->

Tampa: Shane has accepted what he wants and goes after it; they finally are brave enough to communicate

i'm no hockey fan, but my reading here as someone who casually follows professional basketball is that the text, filtered through ilya's confusion, actually does provide an explanation for why the centaurs are underperforming: all the pieces are there, they just haven't clicked yet. the team is having chemistry issues, which is pretty important for a team sport! wyatt has to block an insane number of shots per game, which is only necessary because the cens' defense is letting an awfully high amount of shots through (and defense isn't merely a matter of talent and size, it's also about constantly putting in effort and applying pressure and being in the right place at the right time, which requires seemless coordination between teammates). and lastly, ilya is "still scoring plenty of goals," but "he couldn't be a whole team."

this is where the reader connects the centaurs' poor teamwork with where ilya's character arc is currently at. he's lonely, he's not communicating his mental health struggles with his boyfriend, he's cut off his friends in boston whom he's afraid of coming out to because he thinks they might reject him, and he's not as close to his new teammates as he wants to be.

thematically, it makes sense to interpret this excerpt as implying that part of the blame for the centaurs' chemistry issues rests on ilya's shoulders as their star center and captain. ilya is good enough as an individual player to force goals through on his own, so if you check his points total you get the impression he's carrying the team. but when it comes to the parts of the game that need more communication and coordination with his teammates, the less flashy details that transform a collection of talent into a well-oiled machine, such as defensive positioning and playmaking, the team is struggling. ilya is struggling, as their leader and star player.

this doesn't make ilya a bad hockey player by any means, but the description TLG gave here reminds me of plenty of other offensive machines (not naming names) in team sports whose heroball (or, in this case, heropuck?) tendencies can end up hurting rather than benefiting their teams. and ilya isn't noted for having a high hockey IQ either, so this interpretation and his inability to understand why the cens are losing don't contradict his established competence or intelligence. he's a great hockey player and a good captain and like any other athlete he has his flaws. it's just unfortunate for him that in TLG those flaws are exacerbated by his depression.

and to cement the subtext that ilya's leadership earlier in the book had failed to reapond to the moment (if months of losing and arguably being one of the worst teams in the league can be called a singular "moment"), the centaurs' post-emergency landing winning streak starts with ilya giving a locker room pep talk that his own narration admits is rare.

we don't see the game itself, but ilya's newfound openness revitalizing his team's confidence is narratively significant. it's the beginning of their upward swing. he's finally starting to communicate with them and the implication is that this change is reflected in their chemistry on ice too

so where was i going with this? oh right. it's that the "ilya chose shane over hockey" narrative is just patently false. ilya's self-perception that signing with ottawa instead of staying with boston (which he was never going to do in the first place, why did TLG just completely forget this?) and winning cups (which is never a guarantee in a sport, hello???) was a sacrifice he made for shane is incorrect. sacrifice implies he signed with ottawa expecting to lose a lot, and he didn't. sacrifice implies that losing a lot was part of the plan, that it was a trade-off he willingly made, and it wasn't. it just happened because that's how sports are! a team underperforming relative to its talent and roster construction because of chemistry issues—which they later overcome with the power of friendship!—is not making a sacrifice, it's a skill issue.

where it gets confusing to me is that the text shows us that ilya's self-perception is incorrect, it tells us through galina that he shouldn't have to choose between hockey and his boyfriend. but when it comes to shane, the book hammers in over and over again that he does need to choose between hockey and ilya. it tells us that he needs to make career sacrifices for ilya (taking a pay cut, losing the C and his position on the first line) that ilya already refused to make for him (we know this because at the end of HR he straightforwardly rejected that option, and at the end of TLG the idea of giving up anything to make shane's move to the centaurs smoother and less of an optics nightmare doesn't even cross his mind. he doesn't even go hey maybe my extremely overqualified and underpaid husband should at least have the A, and the fact that nobody else does either is so crazy!).

Changing teams was Ilya's own idea.

It wasn't a Sacrifice 😩 for him because he knows Ottawa are a good team, with a good roster, and a good coach, who can afford his salary, and even give him a captaincy over more worthy veterans.

The only reason they lose is Ilya's untreated depression and concomitant executive dysfunction / failings as a captain.

He traded for the Canadian passport; not Shane. Because America was bad for Russians. So he was never going to stay in Boston anyway, and Shane could've dropped dead and he would still be playing in Canada.

Despite Shane doing nothing wrong, the book argues that the white man shouldn't be suffering but the POC man should suffer or his love doesn't count?? Is that right??

So, TLG has the fans being wild for Ilya and everyone on the team admiring and liking him, but is that actually reasonable?

When Ilya came to the Centaurs, he took a substantial portion of their salary cap (likely 16%-18% of the cap for 4% of the roster), a salary that was 2x+ more than any of the other players, and he wanted the C.

And then he apparently does the minimum as a leading player until the plane crash, refusing to attend team events to build bonds or lead his line.

Wyatt was a great goalie, and was regularly stopping forty shots or more to keep them from losing to badly. Ilya was still scoring plenty of goals, but it wasn't enough. He couldn't be the whole team.

This is a crazy take. If Ilya was a winger, fine, but he's the superstar center. It's his job to lead the offense as a playmaker. That means not only scoring goals himself, but getting his line going. Even in his best season, Ovechkin had 0.79 goals per game. Crosby's highest points per game in a season was 1.68 (Ovi, as a winger, was 1.51 because hockey is a team game, not heroball). Ilya is out here going, 'I'm scoring my 0.8 goals per game' while not setting up assists for his teammates, and you are telling me that his teammates don't care? That they wouldn't view this as him playing for highlights instead of playing for wins?

You are telling me that a Canadian hockey media market isn't pressing him on his tiny goals-to-assist ratio? No, everyone is just so happy this special hockey boy came to their team and then didn't improve it's record for years? And apparently can't work with anyone on the team?

Also, as soon as Ilya decides to start being present in the locker room after the plane crash, the team does a 180 and becomes good enough to knock out the reigning Stanley Cup champions in the playoffs. So, they had the assets for success and were being held back by dysfunctional chemistry. Doesn't that suggest that Ilya was a negative part of the team culture before? Wouldn't his teammates have resented him wanting the C and then not setting the mentality?

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

I'll be disregarding the first argument, as it very obviously comes from a place of blatant homophobia, but the second one never sat right with me either, and I never really understood why until I very recently made this realization:

Bucky and Steve work so well as lovers because they're not just lovers. Their love comes from decades of growing up together and knowing each other inside and out the way childhood best friends do. Their chemistry is so powerful because they were best friends before they became lovers, and because they remained best friends decades after still being in love with one another.

And I think this reading of their relationship might be due to my own experiences with friendship and love. As an aromantic person who has never had a crush on anyone, doesn't know what romantic love is like, but is in a queerplatonic relationship and values their friendships as much as I would've valued my romantic partner(s) if I'd ever had any, seeing a queer fanon ship share such an intimate friendship in canon must've spoken to me without realizing it. I mean, come on, they literally DIED for each other. In some cases, almost more than once. Who wouldn't trust their best friend with their own life??

All this to say: yes, Steve and Bucky are a great pair because they're super gay for each other. But part of the reason why they're that gay is also because they're such great friends in canon.

op disabled reblogs but I found this from this post. you should check out the reblogs they’re funny ash