🤞🕯️BOS V MTL🕯️🤞

He will go hiking with his gals. He will try Stephanie's recipe for vegan low-carb sugar free brownies. He will discuss the benefits of the new Subaru vs the steady one that came out 5 years ago. He will happily compliment their Patagonia coats.

If there is a bar where this man is sitting down and having more than one beer it is a lesbian sport bar where they are all sipping the most boring tasting craft beer while snacking on unsalted pistachos and sunflower seeds, and watching whatever game is on.

This man would thrive there. He will be invited to marathon training with a group of them. He will be invited to their favorite yoga studios. He will trade with them gym recommendations.

Shane would have felt this EVERY DAY OF HIS LIFE, from his earliest memory. And once it became apparent to the white hockey boys how exceptional he was, how he made them look like amateurs...his treatment would have become exponentially worse.

RR chose not to explore that for the reasons already stated. Shane fitting into stereotypes mattered to her more than addressing the racism that would be a constant factor in his life.

But I guarantee that he thought about his race. Every day. Every time he was called a racist slur. Every time someone pulled their eyes up at the edges. Every time some kid asked why he has a Western name.

He could NEVER be oblivious to it, because he sees it in the mirror, it's used against him on the ice, and when allegations of throwing games came up, HE was the one accused. NO ONE accused Ilya. He bore those allegations alone. And Ilya never defended him. Because the racism of the allegations didn`t occur to him.

and the thing is, I don't think it's that the people who do this don't understand. ask any white person who is the only white person in the room if they have noticed race. or just watch them twitch. the folks who are refusing to engage with this topic (the majority of what I see in HR tumblr fandom) just don't want to understand or think about it.

as you have both explained so well, the reality for Shane is that even if he lies to himself and tries not to think about race, that is perversely because he has to think about it in every single interaction, and that because he is minoritized and subject to racism. there is just no getting around it.

the racist takes are awful of course, but tbh for me, the committed refusal to talking about race in the fandom is almost as upsetting. because there's not even anything to react to. it feels so invalidating, but also is harder to address.

like...how are you out here talking about hollanov top/bottom and dom/sub dynamics and not talking about race

how are you out here talking about shane's social anxiety and not talking about race

how are you out here talking about shane's fear of coming out and not talking about race

how are you out here talking about ilya's experiences as an immigrant and not talking about race

Most of them get at least a chuckle out of Ilya, some get a full laugh. Shane goes last and he just silently texts Ilya something then puts his phone down. Ilya checks his phone and starts laughing so hard he almost passes out, with Shane smiling smugly at the others who all went all out in their efforts to make their captain laugh

The video ends with a screenshot of what Shane sent Ilya and it’s a picture of Anya wearing sunglasses

I still need yall to understand that:

1) He is lightskinned

2) In fandom spaces, fans will associate pale East Asian people to whiteness. Also he is still part white

when women don’t work out, and he’s forced to find shane a boyfriend, it’s still with this idea in his head that shane’s boyfriend will just be an extension of shane like jackie is for him. jackie and shane’s man will be friends. so that hayden doesn’t lose his Shane Time (tm). he’s trying to find shane a man who can be his Wife and jackie’s friend, thus completing their perfect heteronormative group of four. without disrupting existing dynamics.

he can’t fathom shane getting with a Man. a Bro, a Jock, a Man who is a guy who is plainly a guy, ya know. that’s why ilya messes with his head so much. ilya, in hayden’s mind (and in reality, but pike is going to get bitter in his own head), ilya rozanov is better than him in everything. and the crux of it is that ilya gets to have shane. ilya gets to infringe on what hayden thought only he had the special privilege of getting. in hayden’s mind, shane is a prize and ilya won. but also back to the point, ilya is very clearly a man and in a gay relationship with shane. a gay relationship that hayden can’t comfortably assign hetero roles to (he doesn’t—can’t—imagine shane ‘being the girl’ and rozanov messes with both this idea and the fantasy. if shane would just dump him and get with a yoga guy, or a personal trainer, or any number of more ‘acceptable’ gay men, then hayden can have his happy little life and his happy little wife and his happy little second wife(shane) who also has his own happy little wife.

alexei was there when irina woke them in the wee small hours with a too bright smile and wouldn't take them to school because they were going on an adventure. he held ilya's hand in the back seat of the car as they sped towards places he can't now, as an adult, pin point on a map. when their parents argued about it two days later, he put the walkman headphones over ilya's ears and pressed play on the tape of abba gold or . . . maybe was it elton john?

they got along when they were single digit small, two boots a pair as their baba masha would say. where alexei went, ilya was the little golden shadow toddling after him. alexei taught him to tape his hockey stick and how to take a check. he showed him how to throw a punch. he ate the tomatoes off ilya's plate even when he insisted he really would eat them all this time.

of course, alexei also knew that pinching the sensitive skin on the backs of ilya's arms would make him cry, and that that was an easy way to swing the lighthouse torch of their father's attention onto ilya long enough for him to escape their mausoleum of a house. it would take too long for him to learn to resent him for it and learn the same underhanded tricks.

they find their way back to one another. it's years down the line: alexei finally clean, eventually divorced, ilya retired after a double knee surgery when he's 3 years past the age his mother ever was.

there are times when ilya feels like spectre in his own body. on those days looking in the mirror is treacherous, he's not sure he'll recognise himself in the reflection, and every tether to who he is and who he used to be frays a little further. on those days, he needs to know that someone else remembers too.

"where did we go?" he asks alexei when the not knowing eventually gets too much. "all those times in the car?"

the line between ottawa and moscow is still tinny. still difficult.

"anywhere that wasn't moscow. she threatened to take you across the border to latvia at least three times."

ilya frowns. that wasn't right. "to take both of us."