AMOTM

i don't think i've read or talked about one exactly like that, though i have posted a little about how this bit in stickhandling by moonlitgarden really bodied me:

initially i was really knocked out by the framing of the locker room showers as this punishing place where performance of white cisheteromasculinity gets surveilled and enforced, so ilya making this open expression of desire in that setting is this shocking and compelling thing. and that's the aspect i've posted about in the past. but when i revisited it i was more surprised by the fact that the author doesn't actually put it a strict binary as i'd remembered it. they give us a spectrum from this chaotic torturous youth leagues environment (characterized by threatening scrutiny, so shane looks away to avoid being noticed) to the sterile, orderly, fully disciplined-into-cisheteromasculinity environment of professional locker rooms (characterized by routine devoid of any charge of any valence), and shane and ilya's desire lives in "an in-between" where you can look and have it returned. there are still risks but the risk is not that you might look and be punished but that you might look and like it.

obviously the locker room shower scene in the book (and consequently the show) is a locker room shower scene in part because it's a convention of the hockey romance genre, it's a natural fantasy setting within that genre. so it's also interesting to me when fics comment specifically on that fantasy aspect as diegetic. that is to say, it's a fantasy convention for us as readers, but it's also a fantasy for the characters. for example, this bit from from cut to the feeling by Charlotte_Stant. for context, this is a 13-going-on-30 type premise where 18-year-old, full-closet shane wakes up in his post-retirement married life and is trying to figure out how the hell he got there:

so here, the shower scene (which for textual shane is a fantasy scenario, but we know it to be adjacent to what happened in-universe) is explicitly impossible within the framework and precedent of his experiences in the locker room (an expression and realization of desire "in the showers [doesn't] make any sense"). part of that impossibility, the heightened imagery of steam everywhere, gives it this hazy visuality that puts it in this dream dimension. the focus on the steam is actually super interesting given the lack of dialogue (both here and in the sexual parts of the actual shower scene), since it gives it a striking similarity to a steam room cruising scene, both aesthetically and in terms of the unhesitant pacing, which is really only broken in the show by shane's "not here", this little interjection that pops the bubble of the fantasy by reinscribing the shower as a space where queer eroticism and sexuality can't exist (or at least be acknowledged), nor can it be enacted. not "no" (we can't be sexual together) but "not here" (we can't be sexual together in this environment, even if no one is here but us, whether or not anyone else is likely to come in).

in general i find it super compelling when people talk or write about a tension between hockey (as signified by its spaces, practices, and rituals) and queerness not just in a "you can't be gay......you play hockey" way, or even a "you're gay and also you play hockey" way, but with interest in the actual eroticism of the sport and its settings and sensations. hockey can be mostly set dressing in the books and the writing of the show and that's fine too, but it feels like a missed opportunity! and even in the fanfics, there can be a tendency to dismiss hockey as something that's tangential (particularly with ilya and the "ilya doesn't really give a shit about hockey" reading) or as exclusively oppressive/forbidding (with both of them but especially with shane and the "hockey isn't fun anymore and he's just going through the motions he's memorized" school of thought). i don't personally find either of these reads super convincing wrt the characters, but again, they also miss a lot of chances for exploration.

it's really interesting to take "hockey is foreplay for shane and ilya" (which we get in the show text) and push it to "hockey is sex for shane and ilya" (which we also get somewhat in the show text) and then land on "hockey is sex to begin with and the taboo of experiencing that honestly is both a source of tension and part of the charge". take, for example, this really fun little aside, again from cut to the feeling by Charlotte_Stant:

you get this fascinating tension in just a few lines. getting slammed into the boards? regular and not subject to scrutiny. watching old tapes of yourself getting slammed into the boards? regular and not subject to scrutiny. the thing left implicit, the thing that makes this factually accurate, totally anodyne description of what shane's doing into a tense, furtive little lie-by-omission is that it's hot to him. getting slammed and watching and thinking about it later is sexy. so the issue isn't the action (people are slamming and getting slammed, people are watching their tapes of it back) but the internal experience you have during and about it. what you're thinking while watching. how you feel about it. if you're only looking to think about the technique and gameplay, or if it additionally gets you hard or makes you horny. i think it's especially interesting when fic writers explicitly eroticize that taboo, that getting slammed while being reminded that it's disgusting to experience hockey as an erotic space is actually like the hottest thing that can happen to you, like in this bit from the world-famous-to-me trans girl shane fic dustbowl by thathastu:

not to be like "the source text!" bc whatever, this is fandom and i'm playing in the space. but there's a line in the books about how it wouldn't be totally unforgivable to be gay in hockey, but it would cross the line into "perverted" if people knew that the NHL's headliner "rivals" were "very familiar with each other's dicks", that it would be this freakish prurient spectacle if everyone knew shane and ilya were fucking each other when they're competitors. when shane comes out to his parents and his mom asks if he ever let ilya win it gets played off quickly ("do you ever let dad win at cards?") but that's the read, y'know? are you compromising the integrity of the sport for dick? is this just a perverted little sex game for you? are you thinking and caring about the right things when you do it, and if not, can you really be performing as you're supposed to?

and obviously the temptation is to be like "hockey and queerness are separate", or to argue that they can compartmentalize them and that it's reductive and homophobic to suggest otherwise, but i think that, idk, cedes some really interesting ground? is sort of an uninteresting read that doesn't do much to dig into the structure of the taboo? like basically the most simplistic queer theory reading you can get from the kind of sedgwick school is that modern homosocial relations between men, as in spaces like sports or fraternities, are fundamentally structured by a binary homosexual/heterosexual definition that requires the denial/rejection of homosexuality through which to build and practice acceptable bonds. so in sedgwick, you often get this triangulation through heterosexual competition (e.g. you relate intimately to a man through competing for a woman) but here you get, like. you relate intimately to a man through competing for The Cup. and it's fine if it's charged and intimate and you're totally devoted to it and it is the focus of your life. but if you even for a second say the quiet part out loud and acknowledge that it is erotic, that's a perversion of the intimate rituals and a violation of the rules of the space.

so the relief of it all is like, playing hockey is sexy to shane and ilya. beating one another and being beaten is sexy to them. beating other people when they're playing on the same team is sexy. it's taboo to find playing hockey sexy so you have to pretend it's not so no one will notice you're hard as hell about it, but the thrill of it is that when they're together, they both know. even if no one else does.

through that lens, yes, being two generational talents on rival teams is this source of scrutiny and surveillance that seems to make their relationship impossible. but it's also something that lets them connect with each other (sexually, mentally, emotionally) in a way that doesn't necessarily seem accessible for them outside of that context. shane and ilya being together allows them to sort of fully experience this erotic dimension of hockey that would be furtive and limited (or even closed off) to them otherwise. hockey has always been sex, but it's by being able to acknowledge it to each other that they're able to really give themselves over to this transcendent experience of it, and reciprocally to the experience of loving each other.

it's like that greta gerwig frances ha monologue but it's like:

and even more so, it's that little prose poem (written by someone who has since deactivated so i can only link a rb not the original) it's like

Part 1: WHY SHANE NEEDS THE RIVALRY

The rivalry is load bearing; it’s the literal foundation of their story and dismantling it is therefore akin to dropping a 5 ton boulder through the floorboards from a mile up. It might as well be a bomb at that point. And this is true both for the relationship itself and for the characters as individuals, though it may surprise you to see me argue this is true for SHANE most of all.

Let’s consider what we know of Shane Hollander (book and show, though I will be favouring show where there’s disagreement). We know he’s autistic, which means that from early childhood, he would have experienced that pervasive cloud of otherness to which so many of us here can relate and which is only partially navigable via masking. We know that in conjunction with his additional othering qualities as a queer and half-Asian kid, his default coping mechanism became one of perfectionism and his Mask a soul-crushing amalgam of Best Hockey Player and Model Minority under which the rest of his personality (and sexuality) could only cower.

I think it’s important to note that neither of these classifications are achievable for more than a flickering moment in public perception. And even if one could earn them for a heartbeat or a season, they are certainly not immutable characteristics. Just like any other of its nature, Shane’s mask requires constant adamantine effort to even hold its shape. It’s not a trophy that can be won and then sat gleaming on the mantle to shine over you for eternity. The real Shane is not his Mask; he is the striving for it. It’s exhausting. It’s painful. And he never gets to stop because Perfect is not a fixed or measurable endpoint.

But by far the most fascinating thing to me about Shane Hollander is that I don’t even think he wants to stop. He’s not the guy that would decide the endless competition is too much and he’d like to take a break please. He wants to win always, but to do that first requires a real opponent. It’s only the futility of it all without one that torments him. Solve that bit, and he actually kind of lives for it.

So why am I talking about this? What does this have to do with the rivalry? Glad you asked.

There’s a relief Shane finds in the existence of Ilya Rozanov that is more than just the salve to his perpetual loneliness at the top. As his true equal, and the only player actually capable of besting him even half the time, Ilya becomes the metric by which Shane can determine himself Best. Ilya at his most exceptional thus functionally replaces the nebulous shifting goalpost of perceived “perfection” and suddenly in Shane’s tortured psyche remoulds that self-cannibalising beast of unwinnable constant struggle into a contest of two. It becomes a game with real visible wins and losses. Of course it’s also sexual. As others like @thepoisonroom have previously pointed out in this post, the hockey is the sex is the hockey, but it’s also just Character. And, honestly, it’s why I think so many of us relate to him so deeply. The way Hudson plays him, he’s just so fucking Real.

Shane knows he has to earn his masking superlatives over and over again every minute of every day, and he doesn’t (can’t) always succeed. Sometimes he fails, but the defeat only makes the victory mean something. There are stakes to it. He actually gets to win! It’s a challenge, but that just means there’s something to strive against that isn’t the grief and tragedy of his own disappointment. Imagine the relief of saying “I lost to Ilya” vs. “I lost to the concept of perfection” when your entire psychological makeup bends towards the need to win. It’s the difference between “I lost *this* time” and “I will lose always” when you’re pathologically incapable of accepting defeat. That doesn’t mean the latter doesn’t affect him. Of course it does. But notably, it’s only got real teeth when his playmate falters and the former becomes statistically insignificant. Without Ilya standing equally as golden and shining beside him, what does he have to compare himself to but the Horrors of his perfectionist’s invention? This is the saw trap of TLG for Shane Hollander. He’s won the rivalry and lost the Game in his victory.

What I haven’t seen talked about much in HR meta are the ways in which his internal arc in the second book is characterised by his attempts to recapture the magic of the first. His orthorexia and obsessive training are (literally, textually) about self-implementing discipline (leaning into non-sexual d/s would be so therapeutic for this man honestly, as again others such as @creamsiclemelt have noted) but also an attempt to conquer the bodily realities of aging and time. To win against the standards set by his own past self…and Ilya’s.

He trains Ilya’s trick shot and favoured skills contest at all stars (speed in the book but idk what they’ll do in the show) because competition is the root of their relationship and emotional co-regulation. Neither of them knows how to function without it, and it is not only Ilya that is suffering for it. Much has been and should continue to be said about Ilya’s depression in this book and its direct ties to the nosedive of his career and the loss of “good hockey”, but I’d argue Shane is grieving it just as deeply.

The resentment we see build up towards Ilya in his (inconsistent and jarring) inner monologue this book stems from this (or could be argued to do so if one first rejects the fallacy of probable authorial intention anyway). I headcanon Shane as alexithymic as from my own experience this can look like the sudden emergence of strong but confusing emotions without clear label or source. He simply knows he’s miserable and he misses competing with Ilya. And while Ilya himself is suicidally depressed over the same loss, he’s determined to pretend he’s totally fine actually. Don’t even worry about it, baby. So while it may be unfair and painful to the readers’ view, it’s not so insane Shane’s grief and misery would manifest as (psychosexual) frustration with Ilya’s professional downswing. Even if that means taking it out somewhat on Ilya himself in the privacy of his own thoughts (the proverbial ick if you will)

**and no I have not forgotten about The Ottawa Plan of it all. We will get there, trust me. But digging into the mess of that is going to need its own post. Probably more than one

Shane doesn’t want to be alone at the top in a league of his own as number one best hockey player to ever live. Ilya was meant to be there beside him. He WANTS Ilya right there beside him. And I would argue RR is at least partly aware of this, even if she’s mostly using it to vilify/scapegoat Shane and deflect from her own poor writing choices (and conflict avoidance) via simmering resentments on both sides, only one of which is justified by the narrative. We see this in the dramatic disparity b/w their current career trajectories, but it is equally clear when perceived at a doylist remove that this, too, is primarily to do with framing. In addition to the Cup dynasty of it all, she has Ilya declare Shane the better player (implicitly ending the rivalry in the eyes of the fandom) only once explicitly.

With the added context that this scene takes place following Ilya’s insistence that the .13 seconds by which Shane had beaten him in the skills contest amounted to a tie and Shane’s gloating “I smoked you” in response earlier that chapter, coupled with Ilya’s encyclopaedic knowledge of Shane Hollander’s kinky neurosis, I invite you to consider the possibility that Shane’s “It’s a tie” was in fact the goal of this exercise. That perhaps this was Ilya using sex to win an argument rather than an honest statement of objective fact. I’d argue too that it means something that Shane’s response was not “well, yeah, obviously” in the manner of his fanon counterpart. Something to consider.

The other scene sometimes pointed to for evidence is, of course, the trophy room scene, in which Ilya sets out to remind Shane “You are Shane fucking Hollander” post outing (the Metros of it all…post for another time). But while he points to Shane’s “many accomplishments” and dirty talk takes a turn to “Do you know how powerful it feels, fucking a king in his throne room?”, at no point here does he actually call Shane the better player. And, perhaps even more important to my point wrt the rivalry, we have reason to believe he wouldn’t actually want him to.