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It's a game between the two of them. This is their version of that game where everyone has to yell sex louder than the last person until one chickens out.

Shane has hopped onto Ilya's back like a backpack and has Buried his nose behind Ilya's jaw, waiting for someone to finally suggest that maybe there's a line to physical affection at the rink, but then Ilya casually mentions how he was afraid to even have photos of Shane on his phone 🥺 and now the team feels too sad to say anything for at least 24 hours.

Race absolutely matters. Racism absolutely exists. But different racial groups are stereotyped in different ways, and those stereotypes can produce completely different social expectations.

For example, I’ve seen people criticize Rachel and Jacob for joking about Hudson being unintelligent because he’s a person of color. If Hudson were Black, I would understand that criticism more, because there is a long history of anti-Black stereotypes portraying Black people as unintelligent. But Hudson is Asian. Asian men are stereotyped in almost the opposite way. They’re often assumed to be intelligent, studious, and academically successful. The stereotype is still racist, but it’s a different stereotype. It doesn’t suddenly become an anti-Asian stereotype just because we’ve replaced “Asian” with the broader category of “POC.”

The same thing happens constantly in fanfiction with Shane.

A lot of writers portray Shane as being afraid to fight because he knows he’ll be judged more harshly than white players. I understand where that idea is coming from, but as a black person I’ve never found it particularly convincing.

If Shane were black, that analysis would make more sense to me. Black men are often stereotyped as aggressive, which means behavior that is considered acceptable from white athletes is often interpreted differently when black ones do it.

But asian men occupy a very different place in the racial imagination. They’re frequently stereotyped as passive, non-threatening, weak, nerdy, emasculated, etc. If racial stereotypes were influencing Shane’s approach to hockey, I could just as easily imagine the opposite dynamic: feeling pressure to prove he’s aggressive enough to belong. Maybe he’s fighting TOO much.

But that doesn’t make sense for Shane. He’s the league’s golden boy. He’s polite, media-friendly, and heavily inspired by Sidney Crosby. He’s a superstar. Fighting is often delegated to players lower on the depth chart whose role is specifically to provide physicality. Star players generally aren’t expected to be enforcers. Teams usually want their elite talent scoring goals, not sitting in the penalty box after dropping the gloves.

So Shane not fighting much doesn’t strike me as evidence of racial pressure. It strikes me as evidence that he’s Shane Hollander.

Crosby is a useful comparison here. For years, people mocked him for not being physical enough (and for talking to the refs too much). They questioned his toughness and masculinity. They called him “Crybaby Crosby” or “Cindy Crosby.” Fans edited photos of him in dresses or makeup. The criticism wasn’t really about hockey. The joke was that he wasn’t a “real man.”

And that’s a white player.

Imagine how much worse those conversations could become if the player in question were Asian.

That’s the kind of racial dynamic I could actually see affecting Shane, not him worrying about people thinking he’s too aggressive, but people questioning whether he’s aggressive ENOUGH.

There’s a good chance that if Shane fought exactly like many white players, he probably still wouldn’t be viewed as tough enough. Meanwhile, if a Black player fought exactly like those same white players, he might be interpreted as more aggressive.

People often criticize Rachel for not doing much racial analysis in the books. But sometimes fandom fills that gap with racial analysis that feels disconnected from both hockey culture and the specific stereotypes that affect different racial groups.

Not every POC experience is interchangeable.

A stereotype that affects Black athletes is not automatically a stereotype that affects Asian athletes. A stereotype that affects Latino athletes is not automatically a stereotype that affects Indigenous athletes.

If we’re going to talk about race- and we should- we have to talk about the actual racial dynamics at play, not just substitute “person of color” for a more specific analysis.

“do you wanna hold him?”

ilya’s moving forward before he can process the words and everyone’s holding their breath as he gathers the newborn into his arms, pausing to take his gloves off first. it’s a few tense seconds before the baby babbles and shifts slightly before tucking his head into the crook of his arm and swiftly falling to sleep.

ilya looks up to see his whole team stifling grins, “i think we’ve found the new babysitter” and he bites back a chirp because he doesn’t want to wake the baby he’s holding so delicately to his chest.

he’s stuck on the sidelines for the whole practice while he rocks the baby through the slams against walls, waving its little arm towards its dad when it eventually wakes up.

Stratt: I don’t have the time or emotional capacity to be sad or stressed about this.

Stratt: GRACE!

Grace: On it!

I'm assuming that Grace's voice sounds pretty monotone to an Eridian. So... do we think they kinda always interpret everything he says as Very Serious (unless they know him well, I guess, but I think even Rocky's first instinctive reaction for the first few years would still be "oh shit, I need to lock in")? No wonder they are willing to make anything for him in the epilogue, the whole savior-of-the-stars thing aside.