KElizabeth

Oh, so the entire Game Changers series is set in a fictional hockey setting where several things are different from Real Life, and that's why you should accept how it is. Okay.

However, one sentence from a post that @teddywesworl made me really understand why I could never do that. Jas says in a March 25 post that "The obvious problem is of course that when you bring real world events into your fictionalized NHL, you are now open to continued comparisons that you may never have intended, in particular for a very old club with deep roots in a marginalized culture to which you, the author, do not belong."

So this is going to be a long rant, gays, girls, and squirrels. Continue when you have time.

There are so many amazing insights in @urmomisabeefjerky's post, but this segment in particular really addresses a huge bugbear for me about how some people treat Shane's captaincy and 'losing the room' in Montreal (emphasis mine):

I'm sorry, but I am going to disagree with you here. Shane is portrayed in the book and the show as "not really thinking about stuff like that" and I think that is a very common reaction to being racialised when all you want to do is play your game.

I live in the Czech Republic, which, wonderful as it is in so many ways, is in the running for the whitest country on earth. My close friend is Saudi, and his name is Mohammed. He could not find a place to live for months because no one would rent a flat to him. Because he's Saudi, and his name is Mohammed and so many Czechs have a serious case of ignorant white fright. He is regularly subjected to intense racism, but every time anyone points it out to him, he says: I don't think about things like that. He denies it happens to both himself and when others tell him it's happening. And, he's a nice person, so he tries to explain it away and see the best in people. So, to recap, he is literally an Arab man in the whitest country on earth, and he regularly refuses to accept that anything untoward has happened, or to pay any attention to the darker side of this country.

I think this is a common experience of the people who are not terminally online discussing racism, and is very realistic for an autistic, high-performance athlete character who is single-mindedly focused on being the best hockey player in the world. Shane spends A LOT of time narrowing his focus down to Hockey, maximizing his performance, and Ilya. This other shit canonically does not occupy his mind that much. Now, maybe this is a trauma response, but if it were, SHANE WOULD NOT KNOW IT. That's how trauma responses work. And, Ilya would not know it either. They are, at this point, a couple of sweet 20-something hockey boys who are not enmeshed in social justice discourse, and if Rachel had written them as if they were, it would not have been better.

These are comments on a work of literature, and I am saying that what Rachel Reid wrote is not indicative of her not recognising that Shane has suffered at the hands of hockey culture, or that he is blind to homophobia, but that he is characterized as wanting to ignore it. And, I think Shane meets a girl he actually likes and tries it on because he's still figuring himself out. "Conversion therapying himself" vastly overstates it, and shows no respect for the fact that some people have a journey to understanding the exact nature of their queerness. He doesn't enjoy it, so he stops. Very reasonable really. Sad, but a thing that happens!

I would never argue that white people are more tuned in to racism, but I have seen people around me respond to the specific racism that affects them in ways that are very like Shane's. And, very often when we grow up in an environment and when it is all we know, we are blinder to its flaws. As an immigrant who does cultural and DEI work for a living, I have seen that many, many times, and from many different perspectives. I am not saying it's the only possible response, nor am I saying that a person's public response is the only feeling they have, I am merely saying that it is a thing that Ilya, speaking from his perspective and without being inside Shane's brain, could believably have observed or think is true. These words are ILYA's. This is a book where we are inside the brains of two hockey boys. The book would not be made better if it were broadcasting a public service announcement about Autistic Gay Asian Hockey boys and their plights.

I also never argued that Shane has fewer feelings or is a hockey robot, and I don't at all think that! Shane Hollander is positively bursting with feelings, obviously! But, one thing I do fucking know is high-performance athletes, having actually worked with them, and I think Shane is a very good portrayal of what they are like and how focused they are, whatever their racial background, and of that, I do have actual, direct experience.

she cannot let ilya be misunderstood, and by virtue of this his actions always have sincere, unselfish motivations. this also harms ilya’s existing character!! during this fight, he thinks: “Ilya didn’t want to fight. He was exhausted, and miserable, and his boyfriend was breaking his fucking heart.” there is almost no reflection on ilya’s part about his actions aside from ‘he was sure he’d never hurt shane.’ zero internal interrogation. ilya is not curious about what shane might be feeling in the moment. ilya also does not really consider what might have informed this escalated reaction from himself

meanwhile, shane’s reaction to this fight is:

“Obviously he had fucked something up. He hadn’t been paying attention to Ilya, or to what Ilya had given up for him, and he now realized that Ilya had given up a whole fucking lot for Shane. For them. Of course he resented Shane. Ilya had left his home country, his family—even if only a brother he hated remained—his team, his friends in Boston, his entire fucking life, really. He’d changed everything.”

She literally went “debate me! Debate me!” Over and over like the grifter she is and when she couldn’t get what she wanted and when “no” wasn’t enough she resorted to retaliatory sex-pestery, posting an image of somebody’s body with intention to shame and embarrass and spawn more waspish tittering from her internet followers.

(1) A person (A) commits an offence if—

(a) A intentionally shares a photograph or film which shows, or appears to show, another person (B) in an intimate state, (b) B does not consent to the sharing of the photograph or film, and (c) A does not reasonably believe that B consents.

(2) A person (A) commits an offence if—

it upsets you when people misinterpret his actions because you love him so much you know why he's doing these things even though people may get it wrong? shane, on the other hand.... he's selfish. he's just stupid. he doesn't understand the dark side of hockey. he's oblivious. agrees with the popular hc that he's autistic and then walks it back bc that resulted in people having empathy for shane (and also makes clear that it is ilya's responsibility to communicate more effectively to accommodate his partner, which we just can't have. ilya can't change his behavior to accommodate shane. it always has to be the other way around).

"Not everything is about you, Hollander." He didn't look at Shane at all when he said it. His voice hadn't been angry. He just sounded...tired. And sad. Shane studied his profile. His own anger left him, and he found himself caring about Ilya Rozanov, which was an odd sensation.

Characters misreading each other is a very common romance trope, like in Pride and Prejudice. Usually that's something that is eventually resolved as the characters come to know each other better, but Reid cannot stand for Ilya to be thought badly of by the audience even for a scene--even when the characters barely know each other at all. Instead, Shane has to have a perfect perception of Ilya's mental state (even though that directly contradicts her description of Shane's qualities) and immediately puts his own feelings aside to center Ilya's. See, Ilya isn't being a jerk, reader, Shane is concerned about him so you should be too!

It happens in the Sochi scene as well.

Rozanov was being an asshole, which was nothing new, but he didn’t seem to mean it. In fact, Shane would bet that Rozanov would actually really like him to stay. He looked like he could use a hug.

i'm no hockey fan, but my reading here as someone who casually follows professional basketball is that the text, filtered through ilya's confusion, actually does provide an explanation for why the centaurs are underperforming: all the pieces are there, they just haven't clicked yet. the team is having chemistry issues, which is pretty important for a team sport! wyatt has to block an insane number of shots per game, which is only necessary because the cens' defense is letting an awfully high amount of shots through (and defense isn't merely a matter of talent and size, it's also about constantly putting in effort and applying pressure and being in the right place at the right time, which requires seemless coordination between teammates). and lastly, ilya is "still scoring plenty of goals," but "he couldn't be a whole team."

this is where the reader connects the centaurs' poor teamwork with where ilya's character arc is currently at. he's lonely, he's not communicating his mental health struggles with his boyfriend, he's cut off his friends in boston whom he's afraid of coming out to because he thinks they might reject him, and he's not as close to his new teammates as he wants to be.

thematically, it makes sense to interpret this excerpt as implying that part of the blame for the centaurs' chemistry issues rests on ilya's shoulders as their star center and captain. ilya is good enough as an individual player to force goals through on his own, so if you check his points total you get the impression he's carrying the team. but when it comes to the parts of the game that need more communication and coordination with his teammates, the less flashy details that transform a collection of talent into a well-oiled machine, such as defensive positioning and playmaking, the team is struggling. ilya is struggling, as their leader and star player.

this doesn't make ilya a bad hockey player by any means, but the description TLG gave here reminds me of plenty of other offensive machines (not naming names) in team sports whose heroball (or, in this case, heropuck?) tendencies can end up hurting rather than benefiting their teams. and ilya isn't noted for having a high hockey IQ either, so this interpretation and his inability to understand why the cens are losing don't contradict his established competence or intelligence. he's a great hockey player and a good captain and like any other athlete he has his flaws. it's just unfortunate for him that in TLG those flaws are exacerbated by his depression.

and to cement the subtext that ilya's leadership earlier in the book had failed to reapond to the moment (if months of losing and arguably being one of the worst teams in the league can be called a singular "moment"), the centaurs' post-emergency landing winning streak starts with ilya giving a locker room pep talk that his own narration admits is rare.

we don't see the game itself, but ilya's newfound openness revitalizing his team's confidence is narratively significant. it's the beginning of their upward swing. he's finally starting to communicate with them and the implication is that this change is reflected in their chemistry on ice too

so where was i going with this? oh right. it's that the "ilya chose shane over hockey" narrative is just patently false. ilya's self-perception that signing with ottawa instead of staying with boston (which he was never going to do in the first place, why did TLG just completely forget this?) and winning cups (which is never a guarantee in a sport, hello???) was a sacrifice he made for shane is incorrect. sacrifice implies he signed with ottawa expecting to lose a lot, and he didn't. sacrifice implies that losing a lot was part of the plan, that it was a trade-off he willingly made, and it wasn't. it just happened because that's how sports are! a team underperforming relative to its talent and roster construction because of chemistry issues—which they later overcome with the power of friendship!—is not making a sacrifice, it's a skill issue.

where it gets confusing to me is that the text shows us that ilya's self-perception is incorrect, it tells us through galina that he shouldn't have to choose between hockey and his boyfriend. but when it comes to shane, the book hammers in over and over again that he does need to choose between hockey and ilya. it tells us that he needs to make career sacrifices for ilya (taking a pay cut, losing the C and his position on the first line) that ilya already refused to make for him (we know this because at the end of HR he straightforwardly rejected that option, and at the end of TLG the idea of giving up anything to make shane's move to the centaurs smoother and less of an optics nightmare doesn't even cross his mind. he doesn't even go hey maybe my extremely overqualified and underpaid husband should at least have the A, and the fact that nobody else does either is so crazy!).

me, an elder fandom veteran, suddenly having anne rice flashbacks:

no.

NO.

starting to rock back and fourth.

you do not understand.

you were born into an age of peace. i was there Gandalf. i was there three thousand years ago. i remember the cease and desists. i remember authors hunting fanfic writers for sport. i remember when every fic opened with a disclaimer because we genuinely thought it might protect us.

we do not charge money for the copyrighted gay wizard stories.

do not tempt fate youngling.

step away from the paywall.

that is how you summon the ancient evils.

The absolutely pervasive mentality that unwanted criticism or critique shouldn't be given and should be ignored is why fans of color don't stay in fan spaces.

And I am not going to mince words here:

A lot of you are racist. A lot of your fan works are racist.

That might have been difficult to hear. And if it was, you should probably reflect on why that was.

"Fandom etiquette" has created a space where fans of color either bite our tongues and eventually leave or say something, get dogged on, and then eventually leave.