Getting Heated

Seeing that performance recognized on one of Canada’s biggest stages feels incredibly rewarding. Williams’ win is also historic in its own right. At just 25 years old, he became the youngest performer ever to win Best Lead Performer, Drama, at the Canadian Screen Awards, accomplishing the feat on his very first nomination.”

- Q+ Magazine

ooohh, i haven't thought about it a lot tbh but i have wondered.

and you know, i actually have been marinating in thoughts about shane and baths but. this is different—ANYWAY.

so, between the two of them, ilya is the one who tends to initiate sex when he's emotionally raw and vulnerable, not shane. so i believe that shane would be too overwhelmed for sex, sort of still replaying the whole time spent at his parents’ in his head, and it's hard to get out of that loop.

and i think while by the end, it went as good as it possibly could’ve, he’s still left with lingering anxiety and stress.

so ilya grabs him a ginger ale, tells him to sit and wait while he Does Stuff, and shane quirks an eyebrow at him but doesn't question it. ilya comes back about 15 minutes later, grabs shanes’s hands and walks backwards, leading them to the bathroom where he's filled the huge tub with water, poured some nice smelling bath salts into it, lit some candles and put on shane’s ridiculous techno mix (that one that “soothes” him) low in the background.

shane looks at the tub warily and admits he’s never actually used it before. ilya is like, what. hollander. is huge ass tub, why did u put it in if u don't use it??? and shane ducks his head, shrugs and says, well every nice bath I've seen has had a bathtub, so. and ilya is so stupidly charmed again and hit with such a wave of affection again, that he kisses his cheek.

and then says, well, im getting another one of your firsts, then.

shane shoves him, but he's smiling.

and they do end up in the bathtub, with shane between ilya’s legs, leaning against his chest, while ilya runs his hands softly over his chest and arms, pressing gentle kisses to his hair, his neck, his temples, and it's all kind of slow and languid and unknots shane’s brain enough that he finally finally relaxes against ilya, eyes fluttering closed.

unwinds enough that he stops thinking about his parents and focuses on ilya’s hands on him, and he’s only a guy, okay, and his boyfriend is wet and soaking and strong at his back and he’s touching him so reverently, and shane gets hard.

and ilya sets on getting him off, except the thought of blowing his load in the bathwater and then sitting in it makes shane so squirmy that they get out and stumble to the bed.

shane comes all over himself and when ilya rubs his come into his skin after, he raises an eyebrow and says, coming in water is gross but this is okay?

ooohhhhh okay. okay. there are a few things on my mind.

so, first of all, i think the longer they're together, the less they find certain things or tics or whatever the other has annoying, because i think they both try to understand each other and then work these things into their perceptions and then genuinely, don't mind, most of the time. like, i think they find things about each other annoying that they don't ~understand~ and once they do, they have like an aha moment, adapt and move on, even if it's silly little things.

for example, i think when they first move in together, it's a huge change, for both of them. i think ilya has an easier time adjusting to it. but shane’s enjoyed living alone, he loved having his own space that he doesn't need to share, he has his routines, he has his own order, there's nobody up in his business and messing anything up. so having someone to share this space with 24/7 is an enormous adjustment for him.

and it's not the having another person in his space, because it's ilya and he's been looking forward to having this. it's how they function in this space. picture this: ilya has a pair of scissors at home that he always carries to whatever room/spot he currently needs them at and then just leaves them somewhere, and then ends up going on a hunt for them the next time he needs to cut something because he forgot where he put them. shane, on the other hand, has a designated space for his scissors and always puts them back after use. and the first few times that shane can't find the scissors because they're not where they're supposed to be, he doesn't say anything because he doesn't want to be that guy and it's fine, he'll just look for them (ilya helps but is otherwise joking around like "come out come out wherever you are :D" while shane is quietly dismembering his anger and burying it deep). and that happens one too many times and it ends up in a fight because shane is just ANNOYED, ilya fucking stop misplacing the scissors all the time! and ilya gets defensive, rolls his eyes, is like, we found them, what's the big deal?

and because they're not masterful communicators, it takes them a whole to fucking put it into words, but once they do, it's fine. ilya actually sees the advantage of just, you know, the simple act of putting the scissors back to where he found them and it soothes shane who likes to have this order, and then it's no longer an issue. but they probably have quite a few of these things.

and then they have like, things on a more personal level, maybe, where, for example, shane is hustling with all his ad campaigns and deals and sponsorships and whatnot and it takes up a lot of his time and he's diligent about it. so he's absolutely not having it when ilya tries to coax him into cancelling or pushing it back or getting in later, and ilya gets annoyed because they have so little time together, why isn't shane willing to cut back on this? and this is also an adjustment period, for both of them, too, because again, shane is coming off living alone and being independent and doing his thing esp in the summer months since it's not like he was spending the time with anyone else, really.

for shane, it's ilya’s absolutely undying aversion to doctors. at one point, ilya just drops an “i don't believe in doctors” and that sentence grinds shane’s whole brain to a squeaking stop and he's just standing there, staring at him, going like “....... you don't.......believe......in doctors??” and ilya nods and shrugs, and shane, caught somewhere between utter bewilderment and actual annoyance, says, “theyre not fucking unicorns. you can't not believe in doctors” which of course leads to ilya shrugging again and repeating it. and that's an argument they keep having (that they mostly steer clear of) but the days inevitably come when ilya gets a cold/flu/whatever and needs a medical exam and he'll be using all of his weight to refuse to go to a doctor. they finally crack that cycle when shane, after trying again and slumping after ilya refused to budge, says something like, why are you being like this about physicians? you know, galina is also a doctor, she helps you get better and you go see her regularly. do you not believe in her too? and ilya is stunned actually because he’s never looked at it like that. but that gets him thinking and eventually, he lets shane take him to see a doctor. it gets better from there but it's a process.

and then my personal hc is that shane struggles with ilyas depression. not in a resentful way or anything. but he has never experienced the crippling effects depression can have even on the smallest things and so sometimes he'll catch himself rolling his eyes internally when ilya has done this or that that was actually a super quick and easy thing to do. he always berates himself immediately after and he feels horrible for thinking that. it usually happens, when he's feeling raw himself, after he's had a bad day and stuff, but yeah, sometimes he first, knee jerk reaction or thought is annoyance. but he does work on it and he knows that ilya is not doing this on purpose and that it's hard and he does everything he can to understand and help where and how he can.

and when she asks this ilya hears the Kill Bill sirens bc apparently his mother in law to be wants his bf to be with his ex instead??

another good example of this is the Vegas scene. In the books, Shane is more pissed off than hurt and the scene in the bathroom is a lot more lighthearted (which Reid has said was the tone she was going for in that scene). While part of the tone being different in the show can be explained as the show being more serious than the books overall, it also allows the audience to empathize with Shane and adds depth to his character. I also don’t think Ilya is totally unlikeable for his behavior in this episode either! We still have the context of him having to go back to Russia and the pressure he’s under, but we also get to see Shane have complicated feelings.

I know a lot of people are worried about how season 2 will be handled because of the book’s very obvious Ilya bias, but based on the first season I feel pretty optimistic. One of my biggest critiques about the long game was that Shane’s emotions felt very flat to the point that his POV chapters barely even felt like we were inside his head, and was especially the case when Ilya did anything that could hypothetically hurt him. There are many examples of this throughout the book, but the one that sticks out to me the most is always Ilyas dismissive reaction after Shane is threatened by the commissioner, which I also discuss in my Troy post. In their big fight scene, there’s also a part where Ilya backs him up against a wall aggressively, but it’s fine because Shane apparently wasn't threatened by him (I rolled my eyes so hard at this btw. You make me read all that bullshit about how much bigger Ilya is but Shane doesn’t feel any sort of negative emotion about Ilyas behavior??) In fact, Shane doesn’t really feel anything after the fight except for guilty, even though Ilya acknowledges that what he was asking of Shane was kind of crazy out of the blue. Shane’s emotions after the scene could have reasonably been more complicated in the way ilya’s were, but they weren’t because Shane was supposed to be in the wrong (another recurring theme in this series is the idea that wanting to stay closeted is bad, but that’s a whole other post).

and the truth is that the team was playing against someone ilya and/or shane ESPECIALLY hates, which means shane was dropping the most vicious, lethal reads known to man and making ilya crack tf up to the point that they were attracting attention and the coach was just afraid of someone reading lips and getting them all in trouble

and signficantly, the three person buffer between them just keeps shane from SAYING his comments

For instance in Shane's first meeting with Commissioner Crowell in TLG it's not only directly detailed that Crowell is weaponizing Shane's tokenization in the league against him but also that Shane himself is fully aware of how he's being targeted.

Can y'all imagine my intrigue reading this scene, thinking how full circle TLG was coming and enthusiastically expecting further in the book how the institutional racism will finally be addressed and confronted as a part of Hollanov's and more specifically Shane's conflict with the league...only for Rachel to pretty much go '"who said that?" and it never be mentioned again?

meanwhile, when shane is the one going through it—he's anxious about being outed and doesnt want to come out due to the league's homophobia, he's personally threatened by the commissioner, he struggles with disordered eating, if not an outright eating disorder (outright saying he diets for a sense of control, feeling guilty about tasting lemonade on his boyfriend's lips, his low point is eating one singular snicker's bar)—ilya fails to reciprocate empathy. shane tells ilya about the commissioner threatening him and ilya basically goes great now my bitch bf will never want to come out 🙄 (compare this with how he reacts when his reformed bigot white bestie troy was threatened by the commissioner: ilya is automatically protective of him.) shane starts an unhealthily restrictive diet due to his fears of aging (read: being pushed) out of the sport, and ilya looks down on him for it and mocks his diet to his face. shane, who is a hypervisible athlete of color in an extremely white sport, looks uncomfortable in a room full of white people talking about the league's issues, and ilya deduces that this is because shane doesnt know "the dark side of hockey" the way he does. this is a ridiculous assumption that should reveal a worrying lack of empathy for his partner of color, especially since throughout the series there is a pattern of other hockey players targeting shane with homophobic language, which ilya has been present for. except rachel herself states shane has no trauma from the sport and shane's own pov asserts that hockey has never made him sad.

do you guys get where im going with this? the elephant in the room is race. rachel narratively blames shane, hyperscrutinizes his flaws and justifies or provides excuses for ilya's, because she has implicit racist biases and subconsciously sees empathy as a one-way obligation in their relationship. ilya lacks empathy for shane because she lacks empathy for shane and thinks ilya is right. she monopolizes empathy for ilya because he is white and because she doesnt see characters of color as fully people and capable of having their own interiority or struggles to explore. if you've read tough guy or role model, you can see this same exact thing play out in ryan price and fabian salah's relationship or with troy barrett and his ex adrian dela cruz.

and remember how i said that there's a pattern of other hockey players being homophobic to shane? this is never brought up in shane's pov, not even hinted at. we only see these instances through the pov of white characters and are only given explorations of how they feel, not shane. shane is completely absent except as a prop to make her sadboy white characters feel tormented and angry, and rachel never connects his "self-absorbed" anxieties about wanting to stay closeted to the disproportionate homophobia he already faces, because rachel is uninterested in giving shane grace.

so when rachel says ilya's biggest flaw is his fear of being hurt (note how the language centers his hurt, not how his actions cause hurt), while shane's is his supposed selfishness (is shane not also afraid of being hurt? isnt that where his food issues and unwillingness to come out come from)? when she said shane is too focused on his "ridiculous" diet and not on "actually important things" like his depressed boyfriend? when she said in a reddit AMA that she only gave shane food issues to give ilya something to poke fun at? when that one interviewer asked her about the criticisms of how she wrote her asian character and she pivoted to talking about ilya's childhood trauma? her fetishistic descriptions of shane and fabian, to the point you can tell she wanted to call them exotic and her editor probably told her to tone it down? the way she contrasts adrian's appearance and supposed shortcomings with harris? her insistence that her books are challenging hockey culture while completely dismissing how hostile and dehumanizing it can be to people of color? and last but not least, THE DICK SIZE RANKING?

Mostly because I did believe Scott was a decade older and his book was about the pressure and the heartbreak of having to guide his sexuality and the anxiety and even trauma that Ep3 showed... But there was none of it.

This is to say, I wondered if HR changed some of my "critics" of the show format. Which was how the cuts from episodes don't make sense? I think.

I understand they wanted to make the first 3 episodes end in sad notes so that the last two had a bigger emotions support... But like, how did Shane and Ilya went from the Vegas scene - where Shane is clearly heartbroken and crying on the elevator, and Ilya is cleaning his tear as Shane gets up from bed and dissociates afterwards too... A montage of them having sex over the next years? The same happens with Scott. Scott and Kip broke up before Sochi, fev 2014. And Kip, his dad and BFF are there for his victory in 2017?! Are they together? Did Kip wanted to be there for his ex of 3 years?

Even ep 1 suffers from this. I was really confused. Because they begin texting Jan 2011 but hook up in 2013? The show makes it seem they didn't do it in 2011 because of the Snow that delayed the game... Okay what about the other half a dozen games afterwards? It is never explained. Some people seem to think they were having meeting but not having sex?

Its just, I really don't vibe with GC book. I didn't get the Kip hype either, and I have a lot of problems with the way Elena wants to put pressure on a two months relationship like Kip and Scott have been together for years. And the book has the exact same plotline. The hockey culture plays little party as we barely see it been show negatively.

And I did find that for a show that sold Shane and Ilya romance as "they are the only ones who understand what its like to be on the top"... They never actually speak about it? Or connect over it? Does the book show this?

I just let out a very long sigh in preparation of responding to this lmao because like. There are multiple things going on here, all of them stupid and avoidable.

The cuts in the show mimic the book. Reid does not like conflict. She doesn't know how to introduce conflict. She doesn't know how to build conflict. She doesn't know how to resolve conflict. A lot of the time, what she ends up doing, is introducing a conflict only to solve it instantly, usually in a way that is enormously convenient. But in hr, her strategy was more often to just. Not solve it. Lmao. She would create conflict between Ilya and Shane, have them separate for however much time, and then reunite and act like nothing happened. In theory this is a dynamic she could have purposely given them and written it as part of the conflict but the way she writes it is truly like she just didn't want to deal with resolving the conflict. Because like, she doesn't even have their internal monologues address the fact that they always pretend shit didn't happen.

So that's one thing. But then Tierney made it his whole deal to stay "faithful" to the books and so he is just doing what Reid is doing a lot of the time only it works even less in a show because a show really highlights its absurdity in a way the book can't really. We don't have their inner monologues, and so we are analyzing the characters' actions in a way that isn't necessary in a book, as in, we are trying to interpret what is possibly going on internally while watching a show in a way we don't have to in a book, and this causes us to pay a lot more attention to the fact that the last time they talked it ended poorly and now they're acting like that didn't happen. We're left trying to figure out what piece we missed to get a peek into what going on in their heads when the truth is that there's nothing going on lmao. Tierney just skipped over resolving conflict the same way Reid did.

But with Tierney it's also worse because he condensed a show that needed seven or eight episodes into six episodes and then threw one of those episodes away on skip and so we end up with a story that is at parts too condensed and at other parts missing shit it should have had.

It is funny to me that Tierney's whole thing is staying faithful to the books, as though that's his process, when in reality it seems clear to me that staying faithful to the books is actually his crutch. Tierney knows how to write a scene and up the stakes but one thing he is very bad at is narrative continuity, and he relies on the books for that but the problem with that is Reid is also not very good at narrative continuity. Tierney is able to come up with the entire funeral scene in which Ilya fights with Alexei and the Russian monologue, both of which were well written, contextualizing Ilya's character for us, adding stakes and drama - but he's rarely able to go from a fallout between Shane and Ilya to the next reunion in a way that feels like a natural continuation.

I can only think of two examples. After Ilya ghosts Shane for those six months, Shane actually mentions that Ilya hadn't texted him in six months in the Vegas hotel. The other example is having Shane apologize for fleeing the tuna melt scene, which wasn't in the books. Both are so simple, just a single line in each scene, but they provided that narrative continuity and gave us insight into Shane's thinking. I don't know why Tierney couldn't do more of this throughout the show, or why, if he could have and simply chose not to, he didn't want to. Maybe I can buy neither of them mentioning Vegas penthouse, since addressing Vegas penthouse might hit a little too close to home, might risk revealing too much - but there are still many things that could have been done to make that transition feel more natural, and I think it's insane we don't get either of them acknowledging the fucking club like I can't believe I'm supposed to believe neither of them are ever like hey remember that time we bumped into each other at the club and it felt like a saw trap lmao like wtf. I stand by my take that since Shane apologized for fleeing tuna melt, Ilya should have apologized for the club. He should have apologized for that right after. Then both of those events would be addressed, and both characters would have taken the vulnerability step of apologizing for something, thus admitting to each other that they care enough about each other to feel bad about hurting each other.

With some of these other examples you give, it is more of Tierney being bad with narrative continuity. The jump from the end of ep. 3 with Scott and Kip apart to the Skip kiss is something that, you know, as an audience, we have the means to invent something to fill in the blank. We can say oh they must have gotten back together at some point, for example, whatever. That seems to be what we were meant to take away from it, as I believe Francois was asked about this and he said something like to him it doesn't look like they were still broken up by that time or whatever but like, that's so insane to leave out lmao. Like when you think about it, it is so insane to dedicate a whole episode to them getting together and then breaking up, and this being like, a huge deal, the entier point of their story, only to leave the part where they get back together off screen. Like, if this show wasn't adapting books that would be an insane thing to choose not to include in the show.

But this is Tierney just not knowing how to create narrative continuity again. I mean, I think the fact that the skip episode is the skip episode, as in, an entire episode for skip lumped right in the middle of the Hollanov show, is kind of already like, a strong indication that Tierney struggles with narrative continuity. There are many ways Tierney could have incorporated Skip's story in the background of Hollanov's and spread it throughout those five episodes but that's a lot harder to do than to just shoehorn in a single episode dedicated to skip right in the middle so.

As for the two-year delay in them fucking, this wasn't all on Tierney. I've been told a couple of times that part of this was because of some tv censorship rule or law in Canada that prohibits the depiction of any characters under the age of 22 from having on-screen penetrative sex unless their actors look definitively older than 22 or something and because of that Tierney couldn't just have them fuck when they were nineteen like they should have. But he still didn't go about working around this rule in a way that works very well. I think it's clear we're meant to conclude they're not fucking during those two years, but I think a lot of people headcanon or speculate otherwise because it's just pretty stupid to ask us to buy that. Like, nobody really buys that Shane would reject Ilya that many times or put off anal for that long, especially when the last time they hooked up he was apparently ready to agree to it in just two weeks. It doesn't make any fucking sense and there are about 10 million different ways that Tierney could have found a way to work around the censorship law without hindering the story or characterizations of either Ilya or Shane.

I haven't read GC, so I can't comment on the book, but I hated Elena feeling like she had a right to pressure or criticize Scott too, and I hate that Tierney kept that in. I feel kind of betrayed by him keeping that in and then not even framing it any differently. I am so sick of this bullshit romanticization of "sunshine" that makes closeted queer people out to be paranoid cowards who are just needlessly scared to come out for some mysterious reason. It is so disappointing coming from Tierney. I just want to tell him he should know better. He should fucking know better.

As for the hr book and whether or not it does a better job of showing how Shane and Ilya are at the top: No. Lmao. Hockey is about as relevant in the book as the show. We get about as much context for their situation in the book as we do the show. Actually, the show probably does it better, but neither does enough to contextualize their situation for us at all.

(reread this ask and I'm literally just rambling from here sorry)

i read it first a!d then i just finished tlg. i don't really expect anything from rr. i think she has ideas and concepts and executes them really poorly (why do we know little to nothing abt shane's japanese heritage? does he speak japanese? does he wish he spoke japanese? are there things he subconsciously thinks in japanese like spanish is my first language but now i mostly speak english, still when i think of food, home, sayings, its in spanish. and part of the reason i always think abt that is bc there is such an emphasis on ilya's russian and his struggle with expressing himself in a different language than his native tongue. its why him finding a therapist who speaks russian is so important. i don't think shane needs to speak japanese at all but for him to nearly never bring up his race is odd idk. like even him thinking about the fact that he doesn't think about it? or he doesn't worry about mom experiencing discrimination and racism? i don't often think abt myself experiencing those things im lucky to be in a decently diverse area but i always have my family on my mind and unfortunately racism does not go away regardless of tax bracket or citizenship status. so for shane to NEVER experience it is crazy)

i love troy sm. not as much as shane or ilya but i am unfortunately weak for an okay redemption story. i haven't read tough guy so i don't know how bad troy is and honestly reid doesn't go in to it. he's just sorta fixed with little to no work. (by this i mean he doesn't examine his biases or rarely has a moment where he thinks something wrong and has to redirect his thoughts towards something more positive). Still, troy starts the book at rock bottom and hes so miserable that i like him. he loses a lot and i think he and shane are similar in the way they live through hockey. in tlg, one of the conflicts that i wish was explored more was how shane gives so much of himself to hockey to point of almost self harm. his relationship to food was not great. (i don't know if its an eating disorder but listen im abt related to him so hard and i don't want to unpack) him restricting his diet to the point that he cannot eat one cookie is insane. the way i viewed it was a moment of control thing where he wants to believe that even though he cannot control the homophic hockey culture he's in, he can out work it by being the best. and his worry and resentment of ilya eating freely (read:poorly) and engaging in "vices" makes sense. firstly, shane LOVES hockey and he's good at it and he's willing to make "necessary sacrifices" to remain that way and he feels ilya isnt. i thought shane was also going through this thought of "if I'm good enough, if I'm irreplaceable for long enough they will accept me despite whatever homophobic racist thing they think". was disappointed to not see that explored at all.

i viewed both of them as using their crutches (for shane the very strict diet and for ilya smoking, eating poorly, and drinking) as forms of self harm. i thought that reid would address shane's need for control and how he expresses it through restrictive eating but she doesn't. at least with ilya we see that he's in a bad place but so is shane! it is horrific to be closeted in area where you don't feel safe. he handles it differently from ilya. i didn't think he was being overly selfish, i thought he was stressing and spiraling in a different way and resented ilya a little 'for not trying'. but narratively, ilya is given grace where shane isn't

though in reality, reid doesn't want to explore strong conflict or the themes she wrote. when shane speaks to and is threatened by crowell, we get a small glimpse of shane facing some discrimination but its only a hint. i don't hate ilya for being worried about being stuck in the closet but i hate that shane's fears are never dealt with! he loses so much! i don't think im as frustrated as others bc i am naivelely holding hope that in unrivaled shane's issues will be more front and center.

i like harris but in a sort of neutral positive way where i don't have strong opinions about him. he's sweet i guess.

Yeah I've spoken at length about the issues with Reid white-washing Shane. She has since said that she thinks Shane would know some Japanese, now that people have criticized her so much for not paying any attention to her race, but I don't trust her to understand or care about the heart of the criticism here, which is not simply that Shane never spoke Japanese in the books, but that she just didn't put any thought into his race at all and didn't make Shane aware of his race and have it affect his characterization or story at all.

I don't know that I would say Troy never reflects on his biases or has any moments in which he needs to redirect his thoughts. A number of times he wonders how he hadn't noticed what Kent was up to, and at one point he second guesses his choice to do the social media accounts and if it's actually the right thing or if it actually helps and he has to set himself straight. It's not much but I wouldn't say it's not there.

If you mean he never reflects on like, being queerphobic before, I would argue that's because textually, the way it's written, he doesn't really need to. He was never actually queerphobic, based on how it was written. It was only ever something he pretended to be. He doesn't have to unpack any internalized queerphobia. In real-life it's fair to argue that it's unlikely someone who was being queerphobic so overtly never actually believed in any of it, and it might be fair to criticize Reid for not having the guts to make Troy actually buy into some of it, but at the end of the day, she didn't. Troy technically was never queerphobic in the sense that he never actually believed in it.

I also wouldn't say he loses a lot. Not the way, for example, Shane does. Troy loses his team and his dad but this is not framed as narrative punishment. This is part of what makes Troy's story weak. It is difficult for his redemption arc to really mean anything if it never meant sacrificing something he wanted to keep and benefitted from having. His old team and his dad are not framed this way.

But, I think I get sort of the sentiment of the points you're making here, which is that Troy was redeemed too easily by the narrative, and he did go through some miserable shit.

As for Shane, it wasn't meant to be an eating disorder. Reid has said this multiple times. However, in real life, it absolutely would be. The way you're interpreting Shane is fair, and I think is how a lot of people who are empathetic to Shane view him. The problem is that the reason none of that was explored with Shane, his eating, his need to perfect, his effort to make himself irreplaceable to compensate for his race and sexuality - none of that was something Reid intentionally put in there. Reid gave Shane the diet she did to make him whiney and selfish and to give Ilya something to tease him about. It wasn't meant to say anything more about him. His dedication to his career was meant to depict how selfish and self-absorbed he is. We weren't meant to find anything about it empathetic. It's only because we care about Shane's character a lot more than Reid ever has that we can extrapolate more from these decisions Reid made than she intended to put in there.

I think it's fair to interpret Shane's diet as a form of self-harm, or Ilya's drinking and smoking as a form of self-harm (for reason I won't get into in this post, and in an effort to not be a bitch, I'll just say that I don't agree with viewing Ilya's eating as a form of self-harm personally), but Reid, again, undoubtedly didn't intend for Shane's diet to be viewed as a form of self-harm, nor does she see it that way herself.

Shane wasn't being selfish at all, and Shane wasn't allowed to be in a bad place. Throughout the entire book Shane has every reason to be as stressed and struggling as Ilya is even if he doesn't want to solve it the same way Ilya does but Reid made Shane "happy as can be" and acted like Shane had nothing to be upset for the entire book. Even in the end, when he loses everything, she doesn't allow Shane to grieve this. She doesn't allow him to be depressed about this. She intended for Shane to be the antagonist in this story, to be the one fucking up, to be the one wronging Ilya, and she didn't spare any empathy or care for his side of the story at all.

It's true Reid doesn't like conflict, even beside her disdain for Shane that made it so she didn't even really understand his conflict. She barely introduces conflict before she sweeps it away, usually in far to conveniently a manner. She wants to allude to serious issues in her writing but doesn't want to actually confront those issues, and often, it appears as though she doesn't really think there's anything that needs confronting, because she doesn't take those same serious issues very seriously.

And yeah, her treatment of queerphobia is a prime example of this. I mean, racism isn't even something she remotely attempts to address. She barely barely alludes to it even once when Shane is seeing the Commissioner, but otherwise, it is not even a acknowledged as something that exists. But with queerphobia, she does treat it as a paranoid delusion of queer people's that never actually impacts them outside of their own fear. I have bitched about how she treats the rivalry as a bigger obstacle to Shane and Ilya then them both being men a thousand times. It is one of the best examples of how she trivializes queerphobia, and it is literally the premise of the book.

like,,,,, id hate to be a prude but i found it so unsexy and unfun and uncomfortable. AND I KNOW. i know that was point, i just feel like there's a weird double standard on Shane because why is he getting tossed around and treated that way and very clearly upset by it but it's FINE but when he leaves after freaking out with the tuna melts he gets grief forever?..??.....??????

okay i am aware it's not the same situation right it's objectively not but. as a mixed woman i was just personally uncomfortable with watching a poc character be put in such a vulnerable position and rather than be taken genuinely seriously have it played as a sad moment of yearning and pining about the white man's headspace and trauma and family and whatever else

like. intent sometimes does not matter as much as we'd like it to and i fear that had that happened irl to any friend of mine, i would've ripped that man's head off myself (AND I KNOW. I KNOWWWW THEY'RE NOT REAL just engage with me at face value ok)

meanwhile tuna melts happen and ilya rozanov is The Victim Of All Time and. again i understand the stakes are different and im not saying ilya was a terrible person for what happened in vegas im just saying im TIRED of the romanticization and minimization of POC (specifically east asian) victimhood while it's directly in juxtaposition with white validation

but.

he does throw out what HE thinks is a statement about them maybe being more than hookups and would shane want to do that. but he couches it in SO much protective language so he can "haha got you" if shane reacts badly that shane doesn't. actually. catch what he meant.

so what ilya was saying was, "hey, what if we tried out being just a little bit more than casual? i like being with you, and last night was really fun. maybe we see if we can have that more often?" with an overture of like. maybe friends with benefits. because he's not ready to admit to himself or shane that he wants to be dating-dating, but he and svetlana are best friends who fuck. he and shane could also be friends who fuck. and it's definitely FRIENDSHIP he feels for shane. just friendship. and if it's friendship that's maybe dating a little bit, well...do you wanna?

but what SHANE got out of this is, "it was fun to stay over, and the morning sex was really great. do you want to start staying over with each other when we can so we can do it again?" and the First Name Fiasco didn't happen, and shane's had a little time to settle into this new level in a way that's made it pretty comfortable, and he LOVES clear plans. how nice. :) we can make this agreement now and not have to discuss it each time in the future. :) now he'll know exactly what to expect each time. :) his very casual fuckbuddy will just stay over, and he'll stay over at his place, and now they've made this plan very clear. :)

(jesus christ, shane)

and emboldened by shane being so amiable in his agreement, ilya hits him with a, "see you in the rink, shane," as he's leaving, and shane *surprise blink* as he processes, but before he can freak out, ilya finds his expression so cute that he HAS to tease him, so hits him with a, "sorry you're about to lose, but at least you had a good night before, yes?" and oh you MOTHERFUCKER >:). okay. first name is just part of the teasing. alright. "in your fucking dreams, ilya." and what shane means is "you wanna play mind games, i'll play mind games, pal" but what ilya got was "yeah, i'm moving with you here and first names are good now."

so moving forward, ilya bit by bit settles into them dating (and yes, with time, it is accurate to call it that). and HE thinks shane is operating under the same, "let's see if we can be something more together" exploration, so he assumes that shane going along with it. and from shane's pov, ilya is suddenly texting a lot and using his first name, and it's really nice, but kind of confusing, but also he had that upsetting call about his dad?? so maybe stuff is just hard at home and he just needs a friend?? and he doesn't know if they're friends, per se, but maybe shane is just a safe place to have other secrets live, too?? what's "hey, i'm having a hard time with my family and just need someone to send dumb memes back and forth with" between two ultra-secret fuckbuddies, after all?

and rose does enter the picture at some point, but things with ilya are good, and he does like rose and part of him wonders if he should try out dating her, but even if he and ilya aren't A Thing...it's really nice with him right now. and shane knows that dating someone else would mean giving it up because he wouldn't feel right fucking around and cheating. so he and rose do end up becoming friends (and because they text regularly, shane even sends ilya a text that night of, "I think I'm friends with a celebrity now?? do I get cool points for that??" and gets a "no, you get cool points for nothing ever. you are too uncool. you are uncool black hole where cool points go to die." "okay, fuck you. i was going to ask if you wanted anyone's autograph, but just for that, fuck you, asshole. 🖕" "what if i want yours?" "why do you want mine?" "you are my favorite celebrity. ❤️" "i thought i was boring." "yes, you are famous for how boring you are. is really quite impressive." *devolution into sexting and then video calling for sex*), but that's it.

until rose increasingly sees shane smiling at his phone when they're hanging out and manages to teasingly coax it out of him by dropping hints and comments and finally just going, "you don't have to tell me, but if it's because she's actually a he, that's okay, shane." so shane has his realization of yes he's gay, and also yes, he's in love with ilya. and obviously he and ilya have never really had a conversation about it (jesus christ, shane), but maybe?? he would be interested?? they get along really well and shane likes being with him, and they know by now that they're really good sharing space and being together. and you know what? fuck it. he's going to be brave and do it. he's going to ask ilya if he wants to try dating each other.

he walks in, knows immediately that shane is nervous about something, and then shane hits him with a, "i wanna have a talk about something i've been thinking about," and ilya internally is just feeling a little sick because is this a breakup?? why??? what did he do??? things have felt SO good between them???? but externally he's just "okay"

and then shane proceeds in this talk about how things have felt different (ilya: ??? did he miss something??? things have felt so good??) and he thinks ilya has felt that way, too, ("shane, i haven't-") no, no, let him finish, please. he knows this started out as just casual, but it doesn't feel casual anymore. (...???? uh...yeah???) and would ilya maybe want to be something more? if they could? (..i-is this?? about to be a proposal???? "well, yes...") really?? would you maybe even want to-want to be...exclusive? ("you think i haven't been exclusive with you?") well, you have a reputation, and it's not that shane judges you for that but- ("i'm your boyfriend, and you think i would cheat on you??") ...

...