AMOTM

Silkwing art for Zagadkaa.

one’s character has no impact on whether they were/are a victim or not, victim status is not something that is only afforded to the palatable.

structural homophobia in a massively racist and bigoted environment? that's handwaved off because obviously the only reason scott would want to stay in the closet is if he's ashamed of kip and ashamed of being gay, i.e. it's a personal issue and not a structural or societal one. oh, sure, we pay lip service to the societal issues (and even mention kip struggling with the attention after they come out together), but overall? nahhh. nothing. this is rehashed even more poorly in the long game, when shane gets outed and dragged through the mud (unrealistically so, imo) by not only his team but all of montreal's administration and even the general public and media - but this is treated as a happy ending because he got married and plays with ilya now. structural, institutionalized homophobia blowing up his life and forcing him to take a massive career demotion? not an actual conflict; it gets resolved in about three paragraphs flat, and then ilya goes on to make fun of him for no longer being a captain or even an alternate at the end.

racism gets, like, a one line mention when scott looks at his coach and thinks about him having to deal with racism back in the day when he was a player. shane is a protagonist of color in a deeply bigoted environment but rachel reid has no interest in even paying lip service to this, because the only reason she even made him half-japanese is to describe him as a tiny hairless bottom.

misogyny and rape culture in hockey are the entire set dressing of troy barrett's book, and yet there isn't a single woman harmed by it who is relevant to the plot. the only relevant woman in the book is troy's mother. why, then, use rape culture as a plot point at all? if the intent was just to write a lighthearted smutty story about a guy with a shitty ex finding love again, why even bother invoking the specter of violence against women, just to prop him up as a Good guy or whatever?

reid is constantly invoking major social issues but doesn't want to take them seriously. and i see people respond to this criticism with like "oh it's just lighthearted romance, its not the genre for delving into that, it's escapism" - and i just have to wonder, like... escapisim for who? only the people with enough privilege to not to have to contend with racism or sexual trauma or institutionalized homophobia in the workplace?

is a book that invokes sexual violence against women in order to prop up a man's emotional journey, without having a single one of the women in question be relevant to the plot at all, "escapism"? or is it maybe just a book that uses rape culture as set dressing when it frankly didn't need to? is a book that deals with a closeted character by insisting that he has to be comfortable being very publicly out or else he's a shitty partner, because his worries about his career or even his physical safety are invalid, actually escapism for queer people, or is it just a book that wants to frame institutionalized bigotry as an interpersonal issue that can be solved by simply being loud and proud enough? why invoke the very real issue of homophobic legislation in russia as a major conflict for a major character if it's immediately going to get handwaved off as "actually he could just get a different job if he loses his work visa so he doesn't actually need to care about this at all anymore and he has no further thoughts on his immigration status whatsoever" as soon as you don't want to deal with it as a difficult plot beat anymore?

You cannot criticize and examine hockey culture without the foundational understanding of the role that whiteness plays in the toxicity of hockey culture.

When she said that Shane doesn’t carry grief or trauma it becomes glaringly obvious that she is missing one of the core problems of the toxicity of hockey culture in Canada. Whiteness is what enables this toxic and abusive behavior to continue. Yes, the NFL, NBA, and MLB all have them problems and issues and I’m not denying that, but those leagues all have players of color who would never be allowed to get away with what NHL players do.

I mean even when it comes to the rules of their sport, you think a 6’8, 300lb Black linebacker is getting a 5 minute penalty for shoving a ref or for getting in their face and yelling at them? You think a bunch of Black athletes could be living in billet homes in small towns with a reputation of violence against little white teenage girls and it would still be a national problem? Whiteness and racism is core and central to the problems in hockey. Look at Gavin McKenna, an indigenous man, being charged with a felony by State College police because they couldn’t wait to make an example out of him.

“Shane doesn’t carry grief or trauma.”

I’ve been reading hockey player memoirs and one of them is about an “average” player in the NHL. He was by no means a super star or prodigy, just very good at his sport and he talked about how, as a 6 or 7 year old child, he was already facing bullying by adults for how good he was at hockey. Parents of other players resented him so much for scoring they would tell their kids to target him and would scream obscenities. He was even flipped off as a child and humiliated by coaches because he was good at hockey. And this was a white man.

Add in the fact that Shane is Asian Canadian and hockey is a matter of national identity and lm willing to bet that the first time Shane remembers being called a slur, it was while he was playing hockey, and it was by an adult. Because if they already hate that a child is better at hockey than their child to the point of harassing them, how much worse does it get when the parent realizes that it is Asian child who is better at hockey than their kid? Shane would’ve been punished at every level of hockey starting at 5 years old for being good at the sport and being Asian because he would make white teammates, coaches, and fans feels “threatened” because for so long hockey has been centered around their whiteness.

Not only would Shane have been called names, parents would’ve been calling for their kids to “take him out” to take cheap shots and probably screaming slurs at Shane. And I’m willing to bet the coaches and refs did nothing unless the Hollanders threatened to sue, and not Yuna, David had to go down there and flash some legal might around and also the fact that he works for the treasury board and probably knows a thing or two about hockey Canada.

But Shane would’ve been punished for being not white and being good at hockey and it would’ve been severe because whiteness is the cornerstone of this sport.

Laila Edwards has talked about experiencing misogynoir as a hockey player and has, probably in the best interest of her PWHL draft and desire not to be harassed by racist trolls, not been as outspoken on vocal as she could be.

Look at Jason Robertson’s exclusion from the Olympics roster and the handwringing of hockey podcasters who “don’t get why the coaches made the decisions they made.” It’s because the foundation of this sport and its success is whiteness and white people feel threatened when people of color succeed so they have to knock them down a peg even to their own detriment because that’s how much they hate seeing people of color succeed.

Whiteness is the foundation of this sport and racism is so imbedded that parents will scream at their 10 year old to hit a six year old just because they’re brown and good at hockey

Like Hockey Canada is struggling to recruit and retain players of colors even as Canada gets more diverse because of the racism.

Even the big book about toxic hockey culture in Canada brushes over the racism even though whiteness and the excuses we make for white men ar front and center as to why hockey culture in Canada got to be the way it is.

i mean, to be clear, i don't think rr is the devil or anything. a lot of my problems with the books are mostly a genre thing. they are intended as generic 'spicy romance books'. they're booktok fodder and that has mass appeal to a lot of people! the whole genre is designed for people who want to read fanfic-esque smut and a hallmark movie ending as escapism and/or porn, which is fine. but personally i don't read contemporary romance. i don't watch the gay hallmark-esque romcoms that occasionally come out. i know it was made with a lot of love but i also could not be less interested in things like heartstopper. what i love and read and watch are complex expressions of queerness and trauma and fascinating character dynamics with queer love at the centre of them. i like complicated relationships and stories that say something about the state of culture or humanity or the role of queerness and difference. so that's a taste and preference thing

what's unique about this show is that it took a source material from a very different genre and made it with so much care - partly due to jacob's directing, partly due to hudson and connor's skill and commitment - that it became something very tonally different from the source material. which is seriously rare and has created a lot of dissonance between the source and the product. because that complex depth is found in the show. ilya's relationship to russia, his family, his country, is given so much gravity even with limited screentime. shane's struggles with anxiety, his family pressure, his clear undiagnosed autism, actually play out in front of us. and especially in the last 3 episodes of the show (which are where i think the magic of it really lies), they hammer you with all of this in such a captivating way that it makes you see not just how well they did the things on screen, but also everything the show could have had with a bit less commitment to the source material and a bit more time (the show explores shane's race more than the books, but still not much; doesn't really have time to go into ilya's desire to have citizenship somewhere other than russia; there could definitely be more outright homophobia shown to build up the world of the hockey for people who don't already understand that environment. but it's all hinted at with enough gravity in the show that you get the feeling and taste of it even with minor details)

when looking at the books from the pov of someone who wants the dark depth of the story's potential, the main issues i find in the books are just how shallow they are. there's so many possible threads to pull on and it's not designed to pull on threads, so it doesn't do that. it gives you a really long scene about butt plugs to jerk off to and then a couple pages of angst - but described to you in easy-to-digest phrases, not actually manifested on the page - and then makes everyone get a puppy so you don't come away from your comfort-romance-read feeling sad. that's what the mass romance genre is supposed to do, but it's not what good literature is supposed to do, which is where they become frustrating if that's what you're looking for

a less subjective criticism is that they're also so rife with stereotypes. many people have said it better than i have, but mentioning shane being half-asian like, once, and then never mentioning it in any meaningful way except to be like 'oh he didn't look asian except he was so small short hairless submissive and well-behaved' is just gross. reid didn't seem to be interested in deconstructing any of the biases around shane's race in an incredibly white sport, nor did she reconcile the way she describes him sexually with either his race or his supposed role as a generational hockey talent - an extremely physically contact sport that he would need to be incredibly tough to play so well. she writes him like the 'girl' in the relationship, straight up, in a way that betrays a lot of unconscious bias both about gay relationships and the world in general

i think the books come across like reid designed these characters for their sexual roles, then put every other aspect of their lives around them like set dressing. sure, ilya is bisexual so he's a slutty playboy. he's the top so he's big and hairy and has tattoos. sure, shane is asian and gay so he's repressed and submissive and only likes to bottom ??? these things are fascinating parts of a character to explore if you actually dig into them, but in the books we never get more than surface-level descriptions of the characters so none of it is ever drawn out or explored

they're also so, so heteronormative. the sex is absolutely written like every ao3 work by someone in the fandom trenches for years who has not actually consulted any gay men on how sex between them works lmao. i view this as a sort of alternate-universe version of gay sex, like omegaverse. fanficverse. no real prep is needed for anal. the top/bottom dynamics are usually set in stone. the same phrases in this kind of smut are always parroted around ('let me hear you' 'it's too dry' 'i want to feel you' are some which always make me roll my eyes. jacob tierney said 'i didn't get why they kept mentioning 'the slit' so much, i guess this is a thing about being written by a woman' lmao). rimming feels like a woman getting oral would feel bc it's written by a woman using that experience. and i don't think we should like, ban people from writing about identities that aren't theirs, not at all! if she wants to write this sort of smut that's fine and it obviously appeals to plenty of people. but it is a valid criticism to have if you want to elevate the books above smut/mass-market romance, which the show is kind of making us do

the plot itself has even more heteronormativity and it makes me scream a bit tho. this is honestly the thing that irritates me most. the ultimate end goal of these characters seems to be 'marriage (big wedding with all our family!), house, dog (that we treat like a special little princess!), kids (probably biological, probably daughters, bc it's mostly straight women reading this and they find that cutest)'. shane and ilya are hyper-competitive, high-level athletes. they are on the road for over half the year. to play at their level, they have been skating since they were probably three or four years old and spent their entire lives chasing the nhl (mlh lmao). this is their lives. they've been severely injured and probably had multiple concussions from it. they've been trained since they were young teenagers in how to act with the media, the team, they've been drenched in toxic locker-room culture, they've been molded into faces of a franchise at cost to their own identities. you cannot be an athlete at that level without having an insane level of dedication and self-control that dominates your everyday life. i think that is fascinating. i think their commitment to the game - a difficult, violent sport - is fascinating. the way their love plays into that is fascinating bc it is fundamentally tied to hockey.

when you suddenly go 'oh but also now their priorities are a cute little puppy and their wedding and wanting to have babies' at the cost of everything else it strips away all the motivation and interest and conflict of the characters for me. i saw another post describe their dog in the long game as 'a sitcom baby' and that's really how it feels. it's just a cute thing to add in. she's a girl, of course, and has a human girl name, to make her extra cute and appealing to the people who want them to have a daughter they dote on, obviously. if shane and ilya got like 5 huge scary dogs that treat their house like a wolf pack's territory and chase them when they go on runs, i could be into it. but anya is something to dote on and baby and ultimately remove the edge from their lives; designed to make them more wholesome and content. that's just not what interests me about these characters !!! having a wedding - they spent a decade hiding this relationship, to the effect of huge personal trauma, and their whole lives hiding their sexualities. i don't personally buy them enjoying standing up in front of everyone and doing a traditional wedding ceremony. i think shane would have eighteen panic attacks. i think ilya would find it saccharine and belittling. you could sell me on them going to the courthouse with yuna and david because they're worried about legal stuff and citizenship; you could sell me on probably a lot of versions of marriage that look more queer, but i just don't understand the desire to make them fit into every possible mold of 'normal' society as soon as they come out

i am very gay. in real life all my friends are gay/queer/trans people. me and my partner are probably the most traditional couple out of all our friends, bc we have been living together for five years and want children. we have separate bedrooms and will never have a wedding or change our surnames. our bi friend in a 'straight' relationship will never get married or have kids. our only friend with kids is trans and co-parents with an ex. our oldest gay friend, in their fifties, is single and never wants a longterm relationship but has lots of exes they're on great terms with and dates regularly. none of that rlly means anything except that there are SO SO SO MANY WAYS TO BE QUEER and it's so glorious and the best part of being queer is getting to write your own place in the world. pick and choose which parts of 'expected' adult life you want to apply to you and disregard the rest! if you don't explore any of what it means to be queer and make your own path in the world, why are you writing queer characters with traumatic relationships and complex backstories? just to ignore all that and make them do exactly what a conservative straight person dating their high school sweetheart would do? obviously, i know there are millions of queer people irl who do all those things and really love their lives, but it's just not interesting to me narratively and i think in fiction it's a waste of a potentially fascinating dynamic to slap them into a cookie-cutter ending

outside of the content, my final issue with the books is basically: i studied writing for 5 years. i have 1st class bachelor's and master's degrees in it, am published in literary journals etc. so i'm not talking out of my ass when i say these books are not well written. they'd get a 2:2 if you submitted them for an assessment at one of my degrees. and again, that's not a unique criticism against reid! anyone who's pumping out a dozen-book series in a handful of years designed for this kind of market is not trying to write high literature. the people who these books are aimed at will enjoy this because it's what they've come here for - lighthearted romance with a predictable ending and smut. but i just cannot stomach reading 'shane thought about ilya. he always felt horny when he thought about ilya but sometimes he also regretted not kissing him more. the tall strong russian was really hot but shane also loved him but he didn't want to say that.' for more than a couple pages before i just wonder why i'm spending my time on this when i could get it from a sparknotes summary lmao. the prose doesn't add anything to the plot of the books that you couldn't get from a summary and therefore you never get into the internal lives of the characters in a way that matters, which leaves it feeling like you're trying to grab smoke when you try to examine their pasts, histories, friendships, family dynamics, or anything outside of the scenes written on the page

i didn't mean for this to turn into suuuuch a long thing but i haven't really explored why i don't like the books before so i figured i'd just write it all out lol. again, i'm not shitting on anyone who likes them because i completely understand they are built to fit genre conventions for a genre i just personally don't like. they are clearly built for a purpose because reid has had a lot of success that i don't begrudge her !! i'd never write out a big long criticism of them like this if it weren't for the show existing -- unfortunately it's just that i think the show elevated the characters so well, and kind of shifted the story into a different conversation and a different genre, so really the dissonance between the show and book tones is what feels frustrating to express sometimes

Literally so sick and twisted that I missed this important moment in our fandom anon,,, literally missed my calling,,,