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HUDSON + JACOB

In the end, everyone is happy when Ilya and Shane ultimately go as Batman and a genderbent Catwoman. Ilya gets to look sexy in leather, Shane gets to brood all night, and even though Wyatt is subjected to Hollanov shenanigans, at least it's comic book accurate...

In Chapter 31, homophobia in hockey pretty much becomes a joke. Here Ilya and Troy are talking about Troy’s coming out experience. Troy says it’s been “the best of week of my life” and he feels like “like, a million pounds lighter”. This still seems somewhat OK because carrying a secret like that can be a huge burden. Troy describes being publicly out simply as “Amazing.” And that’s essentially the entire answer. There’s no qualification like amazing but scary, amazing despite the abuse, or I’m glad I did it but there have been consequences. The online response is described as overwhelmingly positive and supportive. Troy says “If I knew how good it felt to be out, I may have done it sooner”. (Dude, you’re making coming out as queer in a highly homophobic sport sound like going on Space Mountain). Ilya literally thinks that “coming out as bisexual wouldn’t be such a big deal. Not in a bad way, anyway”. Apparently the bigger deal is that he’s dating Shane. So it turns out the NHL isn’t that homophobic. They’re just rivalry-phobic. So why the fuck are all the queer players in the league so friggin scared then? Why were you? Do only Russian queer athletes have reasons to be scared? (Oh yeah, you’re still Russian too!) And why was Troy’s fear so profound that he ended up befriending a rapist to survive? It turns out that for years, he acted as a bigot and spewed nasty shit for being afraid of something that’s no big deal?

People can headcanon that there might be negative aspects to coming out for Troy. Then it makes no sense that none of that gets mentioned here. Troy is actively encouraging Ilya to come out here. Why wouldn’t you paint an accurate picture when your best friend is on the precipice of making one of the biggest decisions of his life, one that he potentially can’t walk back from?

This whole portion of the book risks being stigmatizing toward real closeted queer athletes, because the implication starts drifting from “the closet is a rational survival response to homophobia” toward “if only you knew how wonderful coming out was, you would have done it sooner.” Even for the HR show, queer hockey players have pushed back against this fantasy. Zach Sullivan said the “psychological and mental trauma” of being closeted in an overtly homophobic sport had been “totally disregarded”. Stephen Finkel also said it makes coming out look “way easier said than done.” If the narrative in HR was already problematic, TLG is way worse. Then lets look at some of the praise for HR. Outsports says queer athletes watching the show are revisiting “secrecy, fear, and isolation” and experiencing “a moment of validation,” with the show helping them understand that their struggles came from “a culture that long demanded silence, rather than any personal failings.” Real-life queer athletes would probably identify more with Shane in TLG as a mirror of their experiences and fears. Except instead of providing a moment of validation, his fear IS somehow portrayed as a personal failing with the underlying message that he is selfish in TLG.

My dude… You are part of the reason people can’t come out. You actively spewed homophobic rhetoric on the ice for years, so that you wouldn’t have to experience it yourself. You were afraid of how you would be treated, and you made other people afraid too. You contributed to the reason players are afraid to come out. Players are scared to come out because they will know they will have to endure behavior that you perpetuated and normalized!

In Chapter 31, homophobia in hockey pretty much becomes a joke. Here Ilya and Troy are talking about Troy’s coming out experience. Troy says it’s been “the best of week of my life” and he feels like “like, a million pounds lighter”. This still seems somewhat OK because carrying a secret like that can be a huge burden. Troy describes being publicly out simply as “Amazing.” And that’s essentially the entire answer. There’s no qualification like amazing but scary, amazing despite the abuse, or I’m glad I did it but there have been consequences. The online response is described as overwhelmingly positive and supportive. Troy says “If I knew how good it felt to be out, I may have done it sooner”. (Dude, you’re making coming out as queer in a highly homophobic sport sound like going on Space Mountain). Ilya literally thinks that “coming out as bisexual wouldn’t be such a big deal. Not in a bad way, anyway”. Apparently the bigger deal is that he’s dating Shane. So it turns out the NHL isn’t that homophobic. They’re just rivalry-phobic. So why the fuck are all the queer players in the league so friggin scared then? Why were you? Do only Russian queer athletes have reasons to be scared? (Oh yeah, you’re still Russian too!) And why was Troy’s fear so profound that he ended up befriending a rapist to survive? It turns out that for years, he acted as a bigot and spewed nasty shit for being afraid of something that’s no big deal?

People can headcanon that there might be negative aspects to coming out for Troy. Then it makes no sense that none of that gets mentioned here. Troy is actively encouraging Ilya to come out here. Why wouldn’t you paint an accurate picture when your best friend is on the precipice of making one of the biggest decisions of his life, one that he potentially can’t walk back from?

This whole portion of the book risks being stigmatizing toward real closeted queer athletes, because the implication starts drifting from “the closet is a rational survival response to homophobia” toward “if only you knew how wonderful coming out was, you would have done it sooner.” Even for the HR show, queer hockey players have pushed back against this fantasy. Zach Sullivan said the “psychological and mental trauma” of being closeted in an overtly homophobic sport had been “totally disregarded”. Stephen Finkel also said it makes coming out look “way easier said than done.” If the narrative in HR was already problematic, TLG is way worse. Then lets look at some of the praise for HR. Outsports says queer athletes watching the show are revisiting “secrecy, fear, and isolation” and experiencing “a moment of validation,” with the show helping them understand that their struggles came from “a culture that long demanded silence, rather than any personal failings.” Real-life queer athletes would probably identify more with Shane in TLG as a mirror of their experiences and fears. Except instead of providing a moment of validation, his fear IS somehow portrayed as a personal failing with the underlying message that he is selfish in TLG.

My dude… You are part of the reason people can’t come out. You actively spewed homophobic rhetoric on the ice for years, so that you wouldn’t have to experience it yourself. You were afraid of how you would be treated, and you made other people afraid too. You contributed to the reason players are afraid to come out. Players are scared to come out because they will know they will have to endure behavior that you perpetuated and normalized!

Like he knows his team thinks he tripped on purpose. The whole world thinks he tripped on purpose. Wouldn’t he be desperate to prove everyone wrong? How can he do that when he is on Ilya’s team? Now everyone is going to think this is proof. He tripped on purpose so his boyfriend and the team he planned to join could win.

And he’s never going to be able to prove otherwise. He can play the best hockey of his life, and that’s just further proof he tripped for Ilya, and is only playing well now for Ilya. As far as the world is concerned, he was a 3x Stanley cup winner… and then as soon as he’s in a relationship with Ilya (as far as the world knows), he loses to one of the worst teams in the league that happens to be captained by his boyfriend and is directly responsible for the loss (again, as far as the world can tell). And then he only goes back to playing well once he’s playing under Ilya.

He’s the most competitive person on earth and especially competitive with Ilya, and now that’s gone. He will never beat Ilya again (unless he goes to a new team). He can’t even say he’s equal to Ilya because Ilya is his captain now. He’s basically admitted defeat.

Shane being outed, Shane being ostracized from his team, Shane being dragged through the mud and pushed out of his team for trip gate, his professional reputation and career taking a huge hit, losing the respect of his colleagues bosses and many of his peers, being accused of cheating by one of his closest friends, none of it is explored at all with appropriate depth. Why? Because it wasn’t about Shane. All of these events were simply to make it so that Shane couldn’t possibly want to stay in Montreal. It was to force him to Ottawa so Ilya could get his Happily Ever After of Shane and him playing on the same team. None of it is ever explored. The fallout of it is literally condensed to three fucking paragraphs. That’s it. No of course Shane is perfectly ok after all of this happened. He just said Fuck It and is now Chill. Yeah he’s so Chill. And guys he’s so Happy!! He’s playing with his husband on the same team and he doesn’t even think about all that terrible shit that happened to him because it doesn’t matter cause now he’s on the same team as his man so therefore He Is Happy.

I was ✨productive✨ yesterday

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Ilya gets chlamydia and it's hilarious.

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the rookies in the NHL choose psychological warfare to beat the Hollander-Rozanov duo, by flirting with Shane in front of Ilya.

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Ilya was so in love he tried to find Shane in everyone he hooked up with. The world found out about his 'Asian fetish'...

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Hayden knows about Ilya. He also knows about Lily. The conclusion? Shane is cheating on Lily with Ilya fucking Rozanov.

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But guys that shouldn't ever touch other's fanfic

If I want to write 10 fics about Shane Hollander Homotron 3000 eating pussy you better sit your ass down and not say anything to me I will treat my blorbo as I see fit and sometimes I see fit to treat him as chewed gum, manure, or the motherfucking king of Canada.

Sometimes someone will write him a sadistic circus performer and sometimes a woobly hockey player who couldn't stand up to anyone outside the ice and I fear that's what everyone should fucking do write what you want

And we don't need to stick a disclaimer on top of every fic like "I don't actually think canon makes Shane Hollander the type of guy who would break into Ilya's house and destroy his shit"

(Spoilers for the fic if you zoom in on the interior shots!)

I am a sucker for presumed dead fics, but I am also soooooo picky about them. When I read It's All Canadian Vodka's Fault by @fripiewrites I fell in love immediately. It's the perfect balance of angst, a realistic scenario, and comfort at the end. And, bonus, it has a bunch of multi-media elements! As soon as I finished I knew I wanted to bind the fic. It's a short enough fic that I wasn't sure I could make a hardcover work, but I did! The only thing I had to do different was use string for a bookmark instead of a ribbon.

For the interior, I spent a lot of time creating different looks for all those multi-media elements, and I learned a lot of stuff about InDesign I'd never done before, so that was super neat. Some parts were really tricky, like the Tweets, to keep them formatted right and not breaking weird between pages. But I got it done! (I about murdered my printer when printing it out, though. It kept fucking up. Printers are the devil.)

I also found a neat font that had a sort of jersey-ish feel to it for that title page. For the scene dividers I used some bottle symbols from a symbol font. For the page numbers, I used some sort of blob shaped symbols around the numbers, with different ones on the left vs. right pages.

For the endpapers, I chose this matte black that has a raised chevron pattern because it made me think of tire treads a bit, and then I used my Cricut to cut out vodka bottles with the Canadian maple leaf. Then I glued this nice blue with a subtle icy pattern to the back to create a solid endpaper. The front and back papers each have different vodka spills around them to add a little extra visual interest.

Then for the covers I picked a shiny black that reminded me of a high end vehicle interior, and a slightly burnt orange vinyl with a nice metallic shine to it. On the front cover, I wanted to go with a somewhat classic style of a border that had the title and some simple elements within, and I thought it would be fun to make that border a hockey rink, and I'm really happy with how it came out! It's not too in your face, but you CAN tell what it is.

Figuring out how to do the car was the biggest challenge, how to turn it into a Cricut friendly design, what size to make it, etc. I like how it came out, but I think I might go add a heart to the license plate at some point. It's not quite big enough to put any letters/numbers there, but I think a little heart would work great and fill that space in nicely.

On the back cover I wanted to keep it simple (to save myself weeding time... >.>) so I pulled out one of the main news headlines from the story, and some of Shane's texts. With the texts, I put them on the left side since they're ones Ilya is reading, and I put a blank space in between the second and third to leave that space where Ilya's response would've gone but didn't.