wild surmise

Shane muffles a yawn into his elbow, rolls his shoulders and eyes the now empty coffee table, hears the soft thud of dishes in the sink and takes himself to the kitchen.

Ilya has his back to him, curls flat and loose and fizzy on the back of his head where he’d been laying on the couch. The shirt he was in was threadbare, white soft cotton worn in over many years, stretched across the bulk of his shoulders in a way that made Shane’s stomach tighten in appreciation. Shane presses his lips together, presses his socked toes down against the floor and swallows as he watches his husband do the dishes. Watches the bubbles of the soap slip off the side of the sink because Ilya always used far too much dishwashing liquid.

Watches him sway just so, side to side to the new song that had just started with a slow pull of full strings, a humming melody.

A warm female voice crooned, and Shane felt goose bumps prickle at the back of his neck.

At last my love has come along

His tongue goes heavy in his mouth, next swallow around a pebble in his throat as he started at the way Ilya’s back shifted with each deep breath, eyes the curve of his neck, the moles hiding at his hairline.

My lonely days are over

Shane blinks hard, picked up a hand and presses his palm to the centre of his chest for two small rubs. He feels like he’d had a bottle of wine, like he was heavy with water, dripping from a clothes line. Like he was half awake. Something he didn’t have words for lives behind his eyelids.

And life is like a song

Ilya’s swaying grew with the song, limbs relaxed, loose as he moved in the way Shane always envied, with such ease, fluid like gold ink from a pen, dragging out as stars were drawn. He was so relaxed here, so beautiful, in this kitchen in this home in this street, just a random warm light in a window to anyone walking past. From outside no one would have any idea the love that lived inside here, the supernova that drifted to music doing dishes. Ilya belonged here, radiant in their kitchen in their home in their street.

Shane hardly understood how sometimes.

Shane was moving without realising, his arms sliding around Ilya’s waist, who didn’t startle at the touch, he just hummed and leant back into Shane. His shadow, the other part of him.

“Your eyes don’t deceive you, your sexy husband is doing the dishes” Ilya mutters, still swaying with the music, with Shane now that he was wrapped around him.

“Just incase you wanted to kiss me about it” Ilya adds like he didn’t do the washing up most nights.

Shane smiles, but the ache living in the back of his throat stops his reply, he tucks his face into the curve of Ilya’s neck and draws his nose against the warm skin. Ilya smells like their sheets, like his shampoo, like sweat, like home. Shane’s home.

I found a dream that I could speak to, a dream that I can call my own

I found a thrill to press my cheek to

Shane rubs his nose in harder, slides his hands to Ilya’s hips, feels the movement of them. Shane had never cared much for music, had some songs he enjoyed but most of the time was content letting others pick songs, just let them wash over him.

He’s not sure he’d have thought much of this song if it had not been swelling through his home on a quiet night like they were his brain slow enough tonight to listen to the crooned lyrics.

Surely, a song had never made him feel like his heart was pushing up out through his ribs, wetting his eyes.

His instinct was to be embarrassed, but the safety of Ilya won over, whatever he held in his hands fit the shape of Ilya’s too, even when it was ugly or strange or confusing. Shane never held anything alone, not anymore. Shane watched over Ilya’s shoulders as he dried his hands, as Ilya reached up to place a hand on Shane’s head, rubbing at his scalp.

He didn’t question Shane’s lack of response and Shane’s love for him pulses in his knees and his wrist. He just pet at Shane gently, hand on the back of his head, humming one low noise. A silent I’m here. A silent I’ll wait. One that Shane knew he didn’t have to answer.

Shane tugs at Ilya’s hips, turning him towards him and Ilya moves easily, turns and wraps his arms around Shane’s waist as Shane’s hands slid up Ilya’s chest, one over his heart as the other wrapped around his neck. Shane’s face safely pressing somewhere between Ilya’s pulse point as his shoulder.

You smiled, you smiled the spell was cast and here we are in heaven

The lyrics float around the door frames and windows and Shane exhales against Ilya’s neck, thinks about the first time Ilya ever looked at him. He remembers it, even now. The first time. He wishes he remembered every single time, he loves how Ilya looks at him, how Ilya sees him, sees him.

Ilya sighs into Shane’s hair, rubs his cheek against the top of his head “O, moya dorogaya” he whispers barely there and Shane pushes his face further into his neck, closes his eyes to hold in the tears shimmering his lashline.

Ilya’s hand slides to his lower back and he pulls Shane in, hips together and they are swaying together now, Ilya has leant Shane the easy movement of his body to rock them together, slow small steps that shuffle them on the kitchen floor.

They dance together, hazy and half formed shapes, a shifting embrace by the sink. The solo movement of the room.

Shane flushes, he’d thinks of the grainy footage of his parents wedding, big white dress and pressed maroon suit. The crinkle of film and the way they’d shone, a heart shape of pressed heads as they swirled at the centre of a ballroom. Shane thinks this must look as beautiful as that, hopes it does. Hope the loves pushes the window glass right out and spills on the lawn. Hope it sends the whole street the message. Something so sweet lives here and it’s Shane’s.

The tap drips and the strings swell and shine around them, Shane takes the weight of Ilya closer, rubs his thumb where it bumps the gold glint of his cross.

Ilya’s hands are warm from the hot water in the kitchen sink as they push up under Shane’s jumper, hold him bare palms against the smooth of his back. Closer. closer still.

For you are mine at last

Shane presses a small soft open mouthed kiss to Ilya’s neck, the taste of his bare skin, takes a deep breath that presses their belly’s together and Ilya’s bare foot half steps on his socked one.

Shane feels drunk. Red wine on an empty stomach, this night is going well what if we got the whole bottle and have your eyes always looked that lovely at me drunk.

Dizzy with it.

All the love.

All the time it took them to get home. At last.

I explain it first in this post, but I am lying to you constantly in snapping birch. Snapping birch is meant to simulate two competing PR campaigns. The NHL camp is lying to you. The Hollanov camp is lying to you. A lot of the information you receive is going to be inaccurate, biased, or misrepresented in some way. Because this is a fic about the internet, and that is what the internet is like.

A lot of the news sources in snapping birch are very biased in favor of the NHL. Because those news sources all have press passes that the NHL commissioner’s office can and will revoke if they don’t play nice. Or because they’re owned by a megacorp that also owns a fucking hockey team. Or because they’re just a conservative sports blog who’s just pissed that the hockey boys turned out gay. A lot of news sources have reasons to mislead you and they will do so shamelessly. And those news sources all have reasons to rush into the fray early and set the tone. But Camp Hollanov does not have a fucking newspaper at their disposal. They cannot put pressure on the news to report in their favor early, and the most unbiased news sources would be more careful about conducting an investigation in the immediate aftermath. They would be more thorough and follow up on sources because they don’t want to fuck around with a defamation suit from the goddamn NHL. As a result, a lot of the official news articles you see at the beginning of the fic display a heavy bias against Shane, Ilya, and Co.

When you’re reading the news articles in particular, don’t believe everything they tell you, especially if what they’re sharing can be construed as someone’s subjective opinion. Subjective opinions can’t really form the basis of a defamation suit—you need more objective falsehoods for that. “Hayden pike is an unremarkable player” is a subjective opinion. They can get away with saying it even if it’s not really true.

Inspect the language each article uses carefully. Does the author exhibit a bias towards one side? What language do they tend towards using? Is it inflammatory?

What would they have to gain by misleading you?

The article that line is found in is interesting. Because it’s a biased source interviewing an unbiased source. Most of that article is just them quoting a historian who’s spewing straight statistics and historical facts. There’s not much bias in what he’s doing, so the article appears mostly unbiased. But if you look at the scant few paragraphs that aren’t just quotes from the interview, that article displays a heavy bias towards the NHL.

Here’s the opening paragraph from that article:

The hockey world took another blow this morning when the NHL’s first openly gay player, Scott Hunter, seemingly attempted to kickstart a strike on the NHL in response to its investigation into fellow gay athletes Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. Hollander and Rozanov, who have long marketed themselves as bitter rivals, have been accused of concealing a homosexual affair to rig games against each other.

Immediately, the opening sentence should raise red flags of bias. The strike is framed as a “blow” to the hockey world. It’s framing Scott’s actions and the strike as negative from the outset. It wants you to favor the NHL.

The writer displays an implicit skepticism towards the strike. They’re trying to make the reader doubt its legitimacy and likelihood of success from the jump. Scott Hunter “seemingly attempted to kickstart a strike.” Like. Buddy, there’s no seeming about it. He said straight up “I am not playing until they are allowed to play” in conjunction with another player. The intention’s pretty clear.

But the writer wants you to be sitting there thinking how half-asses this attempt is. Look, we can’t even tell what they’re doing. Meanwhile, the NHL’s actions are framed with a neutral “investigation.” It gets none of the added negative commentary that Scott’s actions get.

Lastly, that first sentence implies the conclusion that it wants readers to draw. First gay player does this for his fellow gay players. Oh, okay. So this is just the alphabet mafia ganging up together.

There’s other descriptors that Scott, Shane, and Ilya have in common. They’re all top NHL players. They’re all NHL captains. They’re all recent Stanley cup winners. But the article doesn’t headline that. They want you to think of this “a gay man is here to back whatever the hell his fellow gays have done.” They want you to doubt the genuineness of Scott from the start.

Then go to the next sentence. The bias is again clear. The writer says that Hollander and Rozanov have marketed themselves as bitter rivals. They did this. It was their choice. It wasn’t their teams, who, you know, are in charge of most of the marketing when it comes to them in their official capacity. It wasn’t the NHL that modeled All stars weekend around their “rivalry” and just sort of told those two 19 year olds to show up to it. No, this was a lie that was personally marketed to you by Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. Lie the blame at their feet.

Then you get to the end of the sentence. Shane and Ilya are not in a committed relationship of eight years, no. They’re concealing a homosexual affair to rig games.

The language is purposefully evocative of scandal. It’s not a relationship, it’s an affair. It’s not private, it’s concealed. It is meant to set you against shane and Ilya. From the first paragraph, you should doubt every opinion the writer of that article is sharing with you.

Now jump down to the sentence where Hayden is called unremarkable:

To date, only one player in the League has decided to answer Hunter’s call to action: Hayden Pike, a mostly unremarkable left-wing for the Montreal Metros whose most noteworthy attribute appears to be his friendship with the scandal-plagued Shane Hollander, joined the strike within an hour of Hunter’s declaration.

Again, huge bias from the jump. “To date, only one player in the League has decided to answer Hunter’s call to action—”

Like Jesus Christ, what do you mean to date? This happened today. This happened five hours ago. You probably wrote that paragraph twenty minutes after Hayden joined the boycott. Some NHL players haven’t even woken up yet.

But the article doesn’t frame it like, “This is an unexpected and fast-developing situation. We are waiting to see how the League’s players respond to Hunter’s call to action.” No, it frames it as “oh my oh me, even now, we only have one person and he’s not even that good. Nothing remarkable about him, no. No, no, don’t think about how he’s alternate captain for the team that won back to back Stanley cups not that long ago. The only remarkable thing about him is that he’s friends with Shane Hollander. He’s only in this for his friend.”

Because the strike suddenly looks a lot better if you frame it as, “In a three-hour span this morning, the NHL lost three captains and one alternate captain from its three most recent Stanley Cup winning teams after it launched a hasty investigation into its two most decorated players.”

The words you pick matter. The impressions you leave the reader with matter. The writer of that article wants you to think it’s not a big deal if Hayden Pike strikes because he’s not even that good to begin with, and also he’s only doing this to help his scandal-plagued best friend.

Shane Hollander is not fucking scandal plagued. He’s got the cleanest reputation in the fucking league. This is one of the only scandals he’s ever been in. But they don’t want you thinking “fuck, hollander’s reputation is stellar, could he really do something like this?” No. They want all of those people who didn’t really watch hockey before this and who don’t already have an impression of Shane Hollander to walk away with the idea in their head that Shane Hollander is constantly finding himself in the middle of a scandal, so maybe there’s something to this one.

Shane’s ending in TLG is a humiliation ritual. It’s cruel. And it makes me so goddamn angry.

The books have a recurring problem, and that’s that they want to benefit from the struggles of marginalized individuals but then immediately trivialize those same struggles. Discrimination exists only to the extent of narrative convenience. They can’t come out because of homophobia in the League and the dangers of being a queer person in Russia. But instead of those problems being solved, they’re dropped. Suddenly, it’s not a big scandal to be gay anymore. Suddenly, we’re not even talking about Russia even though nothing has happened to fix Ilya’s immigration.

The book’s handling of race is a big example. Shane’s race only exists as a matter of aesthetics. He’s beautiful in a feminine way. He’s pretty. He’s the prettiest boy in the whole league, actually. They even call him pretty boy, he’s that pretty. He’s hairless and slight like a woman.

His race is there to make him exotic and beautiful. It’s there to lean into stereotypes around the feminization of Asian men in a way that just seems to wholeheartedly embrace the stereotypes instead of comment on them. But his race is never allowed to impact anything other than his beauty. He’s a racial minority who’s just never experienced racism despite occupying an aggressively racist space.

Ilya has a line where he says that Shane’s never seen the “dark side” of hockey the way he has. Systemic racism is not a factor or concern in this statement. If it’s there, his high-profile POC partner just hasn’t seen it, I guess.

But it’s probably not there, because at this point, discrimination is no longer convenient for the narrative to acknowledge. It’s not even that big of a scandal to be gay. The only reason why they can’t come out is because Shane’s so fucking selfish.

Now, we could absolutely interpret Ilya’s words as just him being wrong. Narrators can be unreliable. You can interpret your partner’s facial expressions incorrectly. But we know that interpretation is wrong, because the author herself has said so. Shane does not have any trauma from hockey. It has always been a safe, happy space for him. He just hasn’t seen the darker side of hockey the way his white partner has. It’s all been sunshine and rainbows for Shane, and the eating disorder and the attempt to conversion therapy himself was just for shits and giggles. Shane’s just fucking stupid.

In parts, the book has close brushes with acknowledging that racism exists. During his meeting with Crowell, Shane’s given veiled threats around “inclusivity” and has to wonder if it’s about the fact that he’s gay or Asian. Shane would have no reason to wonder that if he hadn’t at least encountered racism in some capacity. As a result, the book seems to acknowledge that people would want to exclude Shane based on his race would be othered based on race. But that acknowledgment is strictly limited to a backhanded comment in that one scene. The book refuses to acknowledge that Shane would be affected by institutional racism—or even experience it beyond the one scene we got of a single Big Bad Man implying that his race was a bad thing. After all, hockey has only ever been a good thing for Shane. He has no trauma for it whatsoever.

And I know. I know what everyone says. “This is just a romance book, it’s not that deep.” She admits she didn’t do any research into the Japanese Canadian experience before writing Shane and that his race isn’t meant to be a big factor. And to be clear, I do not think Shane’s depiction in the books is intentionally meant to be racist. But I do think it is still racist. You can be racist without meaning to be.

First—why does diversity matter in art?

Art is meant to connect with its audience. It’s an emotional exchange. It’s a mechanism that we use to convey beliefs, feelings, and meaning to each other. And people connect very strongly with art that they see their own experiences in. Characters tend to mean a lot to people when they see some reflection of themselves in them. Those are the characters that help them process their own emotions and feelings and thoughts. You understand yourself better because the art held up a mirror.

For a very long time, the vast majority of art has been aimed at conveying the straight white experience. Minority voices get choked out. Those stories don’t get published because there’s “no market for it.” But there is a market for it. There’s a lot of people who want to see themselves in art, and they are not straight, and they are not white. We’ve got a fuck ton of stories from the perspective of the straight white protagonist on a journey of self discovery, and comparatively few from any other type of person. And the stories that did get to be published were underpromoted, undersold, and swept under the rug. There are a fuck ton of people out there who have never gotten to see their own experiences portrayed in the art they consume.

Like. I personally didn’t even know the word for my own sexuality until I was in high school because I had never once seen it be portrayed in media, and no one was bringing it up during sex ed. And I only learned the word from goddamn fanfiction. I can count on two fingers the number of times I’ve actually seen it be portrayed in media since. Both characters mean the goddamn world to me.

In recent years, there’s been a push for more diversity in art. And that’s good. But we as artists need to understand that that’s not a box to check so we get bonus points and a pat on the back. Race is deeper than skin color. If you want to write a person of color, write a person of color. Do not just write a white character and say their skin is darker.

Shane Hollander isn’t written as Wasian. He just isn’t, and we know he isn’t, because the author fucking said she didn’t even try. He’s written as a white man who happens to have a different color skin. His experiences with racism are nonexistent. He never saw the dark side of hockey. Hockey has always been a positive thing for him.

Hockey always being a positive thing for you is—frankly, I think it’s toxic enough in Canadian junior hockey that it’s a pipe dream for any demographic, but if there’s anyone out there managing it, it’s straight white guys. But a queer mixed race autistic guy? The entire goddamn space is hostile to his very existence.

Shane Hollander’s depiction in the books is not real diversity because he’s not written with the actual demographic in mind. His race is irrelevant. It is not going to hold up a mirror on the Japanese-Canadian experience because those experiences were not considered at all in his creation. His race is only there to benefit his overly feminized beauty. Sure, you can have an Asian character, but his skin color will only matter when he’s bent over or on his goddamn knees.

That’s not diversity. That’s a fetish.

The author chose to base her plot on real societal pains. There are real gay men in Russia who are being disappeared and murdered by the state. There are real people of color in Canadian youth hockey who are being discriminated against. There are real queer people in Canadian youth hockey who are being discriminated against because of heated rivalry.

I read an article recently about how the popularity of heated rivalry caused increased incidents of homophobia in junior hockey circles. So many people are looking at them and saying “gay” that it’s causing a surge in homophobic behavior to compensate. Increased use of slurs or homophobic language, decreased ice time for players suspected of being gay. And to be clear, I’m not blaming heated rivalry for this. Bigots will always respond to queer positivity with retaliation. Heated Rivalry is not responsible for the homophobia that followed in its wake—if anything, it makes it more important than ever to tell queer stories and celebrate queer love.

But heated rivalry put a spotlight on the issue. It made the conflict of the first book/season homophobia in hockey culture forcing players to remain in the closet. It stirred up all of this international attention and inadvertently incited retaliation against queer players.

And then, in the same breath, it said that it wasn’t a problem at all, actually. This doesn’t happen. It’s not a big deal. Again and again, the books take the struggles of real marginalized people, benefit from them, and then turn around and say “it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal.”

Shane’s ending is a fucking humiliation ritual. It is needlessly disrespectful. There was absolutely no reason to make it canon that he had to take a pay cut. There was absolutely no reason to not at least make him an alternative captain to acknowledge and respect everything he’s achieved in the sport. It served no narrative purpose. It was just to fucking punish him.

There are two A positions available in NHL hockey. But teams do not need to fill both of them, just one. It would have been the simplest thing in the goddamn world to have an A open for him on the Centaurs, and to give him that when he joined. You don’t even need to take a fucking A from a character to give one to Shane.

Shane’s happily ever after is to strip him of his status, his friends, and his reputation. It is to cut his goddamn pay and take his position and everything he’s worked to achieve in his career. He loses everything except Ilya. But it’s all fine, because Ilya’s got a team and friends for him to have instead. And it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal.

And the final scene reinforces that. It suggests that losing his captaincy is something that hurts Shane. But fucking Ilya, the goddamn empath himself, laughs at him for it. Bood, his new teammate who hasn’t accomplished a third of what he has, laughs at him too and acts like it’s just about an ego trip. Fucking prima donna Shane Hollander. We’re not even going to dignify him with sympathy because he’s not even worth that.

Can you fucking imagine that. Can you fucking imagine having just been through the humiliation of being forced out and spat on by the team you built and your pain is the butt of the goddamn joke? It is such a needlessly, mindlessly cruel scene and I cannot think about it without getting intolerably fucking angry.

The books borrow from the trauma of marginalized individuals, and then in the same breath they minimize that trauma. They say it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal. And the ending of the book is the biggest goddamn showing of that. Shane experiences traumas that are all unfortunately central to minority experiences—he is underpaid, under-appreciated, denied leadership roles he is objectively more qualified for, and completely rejected and outcast by the people he loved. And it is played off as a fucking joke by his own husband and new teammates.