KElizabeth

i love hollanov so much they're such cuties. i like that shane is the first to notice that ilya is struggling. he gives the push that troy may not be that bad which leads to ilya making a friend. he's the one that tells ilya to maybe get help and talk to someone even if its not him which leads to ilya gettong therapy. i like the scene in fabian's concert where he places a hand in ilya's back after noticing how tense ilya is. i love seeing ilya notice shane's oddly strict diet and trying to accommodate. ex: the double date with rybian where ilya already knows what on the menu shane will eat and when ilya finds a recipe for the two of them to make.

i dislike the lack of care that shane's relationship with food is given. the thought "oh shane has an eating disorder"/"this is disordered eating" went through me several times through the book but it isnt explored. i think it does such a disservice to shane's character. EDs come in different shapes and sizes. ND people often struggle with food so i thought this would be explored through shane but its not.

shane noting ilya beeing depressed but ilya not noting that shane's relationship is a destructive is a missed opportunity imo. esp with ilya thinking "oh all this dieting and we still basically tied" and barely mentioning it again. yes! your boyfriend/fiance is under a self imposed diet so strict he can't have a bite of a cookie! why are you not worried?

also, shane's relationship with food was a form of self harm. it made sense to me why shane would have negative thoughts of how ilya wasn't trying and letting himself "rot" in this shitty team bc their forms of unhealthy coping mechanisms are the opposite. shane needs to be in control of everything, his food, his training, his mindset. ilya needs to let go because of how much he can't control. so for shane it's 'I'm doing everything in power to stay in this game i love so much and i want to be with you but it's like you don't even care'. whereas ilya is like 'i have already given everything abd need this piece to myself'.

i hate the idea that in order to love someone you have to be willing to give up and let go of all your ambitious at the drop of a hat. shane has loved hockey his whole life! he gets to hesitate and so does ilya!

i love platonic love so seeing them have friends was awesome for me. svetlana, my angel, i love you. i wish ilya and her had a deeper friendship in the book. shane and jj are so sweet. i loved jj alot (he was completely out of pocket for how he reacted to shane and ilya's relationship being outed. he could've been hurt without treating shane like trash and questioning shane's integrity on the ice but he's syill my boy i love him). my fav platonic relationship is between hollanov and shane's parents. yuna, my queen,. her being close to ilya. when they have an argument and shane is freaking out and he immediately calls her :((((( i love them.

i felt this in hr but its still an issue in tlg. shane is mostly written as though he were a white man. shane is visibly not white. he has one scene with crowell where i wondered if we'd go in to it but its mostly swept under the rug. literally no one cares but me but why does shane never think about the japanese language? there is such an emphasis on language in their books. ilya's struggle to express himself in english and his envy of shane being bilingual is shown. why is it never mentioned whether shane can or can't speak japanese? how he feels about his skills or lack there of? ugh

my biggest issue with hr (and honestly game changers as a whole) is that homophobia is not given the legitimacy as a fear that it deserves. the characters will have very rightful anxiety surrounding coming out and being outed but then the narrative doesn't properly validate those fears. you cannot convince me that people would be more mad at the fact that shane is fucking his rival than that shane is fucking a man. i get maybe hayden bc he hates ilya but everyone else? no its homophobia and queerphobia.

idk maybe its bc im not in to sports but if two rivals were sleeping together i wouldn't care. honestly, if you had a het couple who were always pinned against eachother reveal that they were sleeping together ppl would mostly love that, they'd write fanfics abt it. ppl care when it comes to sexuality bc they're homophobic.

i do wish hollanov were verse not bc im woke but bc im a pervert but thats what fanfiction is for

somethings else i liked: trophy room scene, ilya trying to give up on therapy bc he felt a modicum of happiness (mood, i too think my depression + adhd go away when i have two good days in a row), ilya saying shane is a better hockey player than him, jj and shane speaking in french w/eachother, jealous shane, shane eating ilya's ass, ilya being a great captain, luca's crush on ilya, ilya teasing luca, luca in general, wyatt fav goalie, ilya being a great captain, the camp going well, jj thinking shane has feelings for ilya and not trying to set him up on dates bc thats his good friend and not bc he's an asshole who doesn't respect his best friend's relationship, shane proposing to ilya anf being so worried that ilya may say no that he doesn't buy his own ring, the play marriage with the pike kids, ilya being great with kids and dogs, ilya and coach weibe's heart to heart, troy and ilya's friendship, harris and ilya's friendship

This is Shane Fucking Hollander. His entire identity has been built around hockey for most of his life. He bleeds Voyagers' red, white, and blue. To make no attempt to reckon with how Shane is stripping away a chunk of his identity by leaving undermines everything his character has stood for so far.

She did not write him struggling with his diet and being extremely nervous about food to explore his anxiety, perfectionism, fear of judgment, the pressure he feels as a wasian athlete, she did it because she wanted to make him a bad boyfriend, "annoying" and "self absorbed", too focused on his diet to notice his partner's depression, and for Ilya to make fun of him.

(She'll never admit she gave him an eating disorder because THAT would frame ILYA as the selfish, uncaring one for mocking him and never noticing it was something serious, she tells us over and over that Ilya is the most perceptive character in the GC universe, and yet he completely ignores Shane's anxiety, fear, control issues, and how race plays into all of it)

She did not write him as a Wasian athlete in the whitest, most racist sport to criticize and call out hockey culture, she did it to fetishize him.

Shane's ethnicity is only acknowledged when he's in bed with Ilya. A Wasian man in a white, racist sport? Doesn't matter. His Japanese heritage is only acknowledged when his his small-hairless-feminine body is being compared to Ilya's big-strong-masculine one.

Any struggle she gives Shane is not for Shane's character arc, it's for Ilya to react to, be either turned on or victimized by.

People don't have issues with Shane having flaws. We have issue with the REASONS RR says are behind his flaws.

A big part of the fandom is queer (a lot of us closeted and scared as shit to get outed, just like Shane), poc and neurodivergent. And she's telling us we're all selfish, stupid idiots.

But hey, that's just Canadian humor, right?

Also... "Shane is imaginary" is a shitty excuse coming from the woman that in interviews said criticism of Ilya (and only Ilya!) hurts her deeply and who ran to write the Vegas scene from his POV because people were EMPATHIZING WITH SHANE too much for her taste.

Her flippant, sarcastic response completely missed the point. And on her ig stories she KEEPS DEFLECTING and ignoring the elephant in the room.

I really feel like she's gaslighting us.

"Shane has always been my favorite" WHERE? WHEN? When you "joked" about him being a stupid, selfish idiot? About him having a small dick and other racist microaggressions? Or when you wrote him as a walking fetish? A stereotyped Asian bottom, hairless, feminine and submissive?

"I created him first, before Ilya" and yet in q&as she said that while writing Game Changer she thought about making it Scott x a Russian player who later became Ilya and even wrote a first draft about it (Ilya had a different name), and that she decided to write HR as that story, and only THEN Shane's character popped in her head.

Seriously, we're all being gaslit here. And why? Because we dare call out her racism, ableism and homophobia.

Also... in that video she said she calls her children "stupid idiot". One of them was assessed for autism and is neurodivergent. And she said that without batting an eye. 0 awareness.

Personally I think the inverse happened with her deciding to make him autistic, because she could have made him selfish/self-centered/stupid without doing that even if she does associate those traits with autism. I think she wrote HR, a lot of people interpreted him as autistic and she had an autistic son, and maybe, she decided to intentionally characterize Shane as autistic in tlg - and then her biases just bled into him.

That is what happened with his diet yeah, but what's worse is I know or at least I think (and I'm not going to go out of my way to find the quote so if I'm wrong correct me, or take it with a grain of salt) she said at some other point she also gave him the diet so that Ilya would have something to tease him about, which is sure something.

A few people have said to me now that she'll never admit she gave Shane an eating disorder because it would implicate Ilya, and while I agree that's why she would never give word of God it's an eating disorder, I really can't stress enough that I don't think she intentionally gave him an eating disorder and is just denying it. I think people on tumblr greatly overestimate how much the average person, especially the average person's Reid's age, knows about eating disorders and how seriously they take eating disorders. Orthorexia is not even an officially recognized eating disorder. Majority of people would not see anything wrong with how Shane eats or thinks of food. I don't think Reid is just refusing to admit it's an eating disorder even if she also never would anyway because of Ilya - I promise you that woman genuinely does not believe Shane has an eating disorder.

But anyway, the point your making is true. Basically zero choices Reid made with regard to Shane's characterization or conflicts had anything to do with Shane as a character. He was created as a vehicle to explore Ilya through.

Has she fr said she created Shane first? That is just blatantly not true? She has admitted that? We have textual proof of that? What the fuck is she talking about? That is a very disprovable lie?

I don't know, like I said, the reason people are defending her by trying to simplify this issue and act like it's just people being mad she gave a character flaws, or mad she doesn't like a character, or mad because they're too sensitive and don't get her humor - is because that's the only way she can be defended. The only way she can be defended is by insisting the issue is something it's not, because when you actually confront the issue at hand here, it's inexcusable.

And thing is, let's say that all of the people criticizing her right now really are being too sensitive. Let's say that we really are all in the wrong, and we're needlessly upset.

There's still no reason she has to mock her own fanbase for the crime of being too sensitive or not understanding her writing. That apology video was kind of the last straw for me, because it showed what she really thinks of her fans who are hurt by her depiction and treatment of Shane. She could have made a video explaining herself while being respectful and understanding to the fans who are upset with her even without conceding any wrongdoing or agreeing with them, and she didn't. She didn't even do that. She instead chose to post an extremely insensitive apology making a joke out of the entire situation.

Ahahaha no it's alright anon although they're gonna cook ME for this you know. Length warning blah blah

I get it. One of the reasons I'm so obsessed with HR right now is that the conflict in TLG is complex enough that I flip flop around on it all the time. They're both in fault in different but very realistic ways, and I like that there's no clear resolution. They're just two people in a difficult situation.

What undergirds Ilya's feelings towards Shane in TLG is his pedestalization of him, which is never really resolved (which I like, though I wish we had gotten something). On some level Ilya sincerely believes that Shane is perfect, right? He spends so much time in HR obsessing over this:

Ilya sees Shane as having this perfect life, perfect family, perfect career. He loves him for that, seeing Shane as this otherworldly savior who Ilya has somehow convinced to love him and pluck him out of the darkness of his shit life:

But he also resents it. The old resentment about Shane's perfect life festers in Ottawa until Ilya is deeply ungenerous towards Shane. Ilya is still doubting Shane even after the proposal and a direct promise of Shane that they were going to go public that summer:

(And tbc I like this, I think it's realistic. Being proposed to doesn't fix Ilya's depression, it doesn't fix them to get engaged.)

But yeah Ilya doesn't comfort Shane because he's not imagining Shane as a person who needs comfort. Shane is this literally and emotionally distant person who projects strength and stability at every turn. Ilya literally states that he doesn't imagine Shane as ever being hurt by hockey (which Ilya is wrong about, though my thoughts on this are too long to write here). That's a failure of Ilya's imagination.

This is a big reason perfect boyfriend daddy dom style Ilya just never works for me---book!Ilya, at least, is not a character emotionally capable of being the wise sexual comfort figure for Shane. He's not clocking that Shane needs comfort at all (meanwhile Shane clumsily clocks it for Ilya and offers it in the assplay scene---Ilya does catch up with the trophy scene. They're learning!)

Because so much of TLG is from Ilya's perspective people tend to take Ilya's side and imo miss just how much Ilya is distorting Shane through the lens of his depression and his old simmering resentments. I really love this fic where Ilya is dealing with depression and starts imagining Shane like a monster, his distorted image of his partner becoming realized in nightmares about Shane drowning him. That's pretty dark but I think it's apt for where Ilya is during TLG.

Now the thing is....Ilya has this warped perspective on Shane in part because Ilya's got brain bad but also because it's the image Shane projects. Just like Shane misses a lot of Ilya's suffering because Ilya hides it and projects strength. They both hide from each other. It's masculinity, and it's also surely a hang over of spending a full decade pretending they meant nothing to each other. Hard to go from that to "Can we talk about how my difficult relationship to fame and vulnerability, influenced by an upbringing on the rink, is informing my understanding of your emotional state? babe?"

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?

I'm not arguing, or at least haven't meant to argue, that Ilya isn't flawed. Obviously, I'm aware he's flawed because I just answered an ask yesterday listing his flaws and providing canon examples to support it.

What I am arguing is that Reid frames Ilya's flaws differently than she frames Shane's flaws. In any work of fiction, there are the facts of what the characters think, say, and do in relation to the rest of the story. Then there is how the writer frames what the characters think, say, and do in relation to the rest of the story. By "frames" I am referring to what wording, lineation, breaking (among other stylistic punctuation and structuring) the writer chooses to use, or chooses not to use, to invite the reader to view what the character thinks, says, and does in a specific way.

For example, take a character that drinks a lot. This on its own tells us nothing except that the character drinks a lot. But how is the writer framing that character's choice to drink a lot? Are they inviting the viewer to think negatively of it? Neutrally? Positively? What stylistic choices are they making in the prose to inspire one pov over another?

With Reid, the problem is not that she didn't give Ilya flaws, or that he is not visibly flawed in the text. The problem is the way she frames Ilya's flaws in comparison to how she frames Shane's. With Ilya, she often does not choose to invite the reader to view his flaws in any way. She doesn't draw attention to them (which in my opinion would suggest that she didn't intend for them to be flaws). Other times, she invites the reader to view them very empathetically. On a couple of occasions, she frames his flaws as a noble struggle that should be admired. I can think of only one instance in which she is framing a flaw of Ilya's in a truly negative light, and that is when he gets jealous about Shane talking to another man and hits a puck against the glass to startle them.

Ilya's unwillingness to communicate is something that Reid consistently frames as a noble struggle, in my opinion. It comes off to me as though we are supposed to feel sorry for Ilya for having to put up with a boyfriend who can't read his mind, and as though we should admire him for refusing to burden his boyfriend with his thoughts and feelings. She, in my opinion, frames him like a victim or martyr for having endured in silence for three years. When he snaps during their fight, and pushes Shane, in my opinion, she frames this as empathetic and justified - what else could we expect from him, after everything he's put up with for so long?

She never does the same with Shane. Shane is not only framed as always being in the wrong, and consistently, throughout the book, at every opportunity, but we are only ever invited to empathize with him for having fucked up. Our response is not meant to be, oh, this is understandable given his circumstances. Our response is meant to be, oh, poor Shane, not realizing how bad he fucked up. That must feel so terrible.

I recognize that she had Galina point out to Ilya that he didn't communicate, and has said herself that Ilya doesn't communicate, but it just does not get the same treatment as Shane. To be honest, I don't think most of Reid's framing is intentional. If I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt, it's possible that she meant for Ilya's greatest flaw to be a lack of communication and for that to be framed in the same way she frames Shane's "selfishness" or "self-absorption." It's possible her own bias just bled through, and she really believes that she treated them both the same.

But even if that's true, it doesn't really change the result.

And look, I'm not claiming this interpretation of mine is definitively true. I'm getting pretty sick of people jumping in my inbox to tell me that my interpretations are biased as if all fucking interpretations of any text ever aren't also biased. As if the people who unequivocally support Reid and think these books are the height of literature aren't also fucking biased. Textual analysis is subjective. It is not math. I'm not claiming I'm "right." But these are my interpretations. I have my reasons for interpreting them that way beyond not liking Reid.

People seem to think that I view the text this way because I dislike Reid, but this is fucking why I dislike Reid. My dislike for Reid is not what is inspiring these interpretations. These interpretations are what inspired me to dislike Reid. The interpretations came first.

And lastly, my argument that Ilya's flaws are never framed the same way as Shane's has been all but proven by Reid herself. Reid has outright said that tlg is about Shane having to learn to work through his selfishness. She is literally admitting that the plot of this book is Shane is fucking up and has to be made to realize that and make it up to Ilya. She has never talked about Ilya's flaws in this way. Yes, she acknowledged that Ilya isn't communicating, but she does not talk about him being unwilling to communicate in the same way she talks about Shane not realizing everything Ilya has ~sacrificed~ for him. She even said Shane has the hero's journey, I'm guessing because in her mind, Shane is the one who had to grow and change and textually "redeem" himself for what he did to Ilya. She hasn't said and couldn't ever say the same about Ilya because that is not what happens in tlg.

Even if you don't agree with me about how Shane's flaws are framed in comparison to Ilya's, you cannot fucking deny that Reid talks about their flaws very differently, talks about Shane's way more often than Ilya's, and designed the plot of tlg around Shane fucking up. Not around both of them fucking up, around Shane fucking up. Oh, and she said herself that Ilya's greatest flaw is that he's "too scared of getting hurt." Do you see, right here even, the framing? The difference between "Selfish" and "too scared of getting hurt." How one plainly states the attribute, and the other invites you to empathize with Ilya's reasoning for his behavior? She did not say his greatest flaw is "He doesn't communicate" but she could have. You would think she would have if tlg was supposedly just as much about Ilya not communicating as Shane being selfish, right? So why didn't she?

It also goes without saying that bioessentialism inherently can’t be trans inclusive no matter how hard you try. “All men including trans men—” probably not. “This is only a woman’s issue—” is it really? “Afabs only—” why? “All trans men are like—” what? what are they like? finish the sentence i dare you.

Your perspectives matter. Your representation matters. You are not bothersome for demanding equal treatment in fandom. It is not your responsibility to make fandom more welcoming and inclusive to you. It is not your sole responsibility to create all of the Black-centered content. You are not "ruining" anyone's fun for demanding better for yourself, and anyone who says otherwise can go fuck themselves. Any fandom worth being a part of should have no room for racism in it.

Black people in fandom, you are wanted. You are needed. You are loved and appreciated. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

very interesting that you brought up hudson's use of vocabulary. there's a tiktok of an esl speaker talking about how she had to write down and look up some words hudson used in his shut up evan podcast.

anyway, i think the bullying of hudson is an elaborate conscious/unconscious thing people do to cover up what connor is missing. connor is the favourite so anything he does or doesn't do is good while hudson is the opposite.

i always remember one of the earliest interviews jacob, hudson, and connor had (hudson is wearing the grey sweater. same one Jacob calls him a sumo wrestler. something that hockey fans call nick suzuki btw). in the interview jacob makes this comparison where hudson is difficult to work with because apparently he asks too many questions or wants to do things differently vs connor who does what he's told. fast forward to jan/feb and jacob was telling us how hudson changed the scene right after david walks in on them in episode 5. and he's saying it to prop himself up as a collaborative director. it always strikes me as odd that aside from the russian accent jacob has never told us anything remotely interesting about connor as an actor that would give us an insight to his process.

connor famously says he doesn't read. reading is how you learn vocabulary, how you learn to refine critical thinking and arguments and it's also how you learn charm. these are things hudson is good at. but because connor himself has said several times he doesn't read, to cover up his failings the fans make hudson the punching bag. you cannot compare how connor talks about movies (the way he spoke about david lynch was so embarrassing. the way he could offer nothing meaningful here about sex on screen is abysmal compared to hudson. i need more people to read this interview. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/pre-fame-hudson-williams-connor-storrie-interview-heated-rivalry

meanwhile elsewhere everyone loves an actor who reads and watches movies. jenna ortega is beloved for being so young and being a cinephile. tom holland is mocked mercilessly for his clear film illiteracy. robert patinson was getting praise recently for saying he hates it when actors aren't cinephiles. kirsten dunst is beloved for being a member of the academy who watches most if not all of the nominated movies for oscars

winona ryder famously spoke about younger actors not loving movies https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/winona-ryder-gen-z-co-stars-not-interested-movies-1235041983/

hudson marks all the boxes for things to love about young actors. and yet...

What. What the fuck do you mean Tierney called him a sumo wrestler and said he was difficult to work with?! A sumo wrestler? What the fuck. I can barely process the rest of this ask because Oh my God what the fuck. He said that? Why? How would that even be relevant? How would it make any sense at all even a little bit in any way? You almost have to fucking be saying it on purpose it's so blatantly microaggressive? And they say the same shit to Nick Suzuki? WHY? HE PLAYS FUCKING HOCKEY??? And difficult to work with? Which is like, the most quintessential complaint for a director to have about a marginalized actor ever?

God this is reminding me of a post I saw once by a poc who was basically telling people like, racists aren't clever and that they don't need to be trying to make racists in fics clever because in real life they would just be calling Shane rice boy or something and literally ever since reading it I've been thinking about how true it is and how part of the reason racism is difficult to write is quite literally because it is just so goddamn stupid that it feels too stupid to be real.

But anyway, back to the point - I do think a lot of people are compensating for Connor and I think it's like...again just an example of how many people aren't fans of Connor, they're fans of white people being superior (based on what their own personal ideas of what makes someone superior - in this case, being well-read, or eloquent, or a cinephile) to poc and need to believe Connor demonstrates that. Because if they were actually a fan of Connor, they wouldn't feel the need to compensate for him. They wouldn't feel the need to act like he's something he's not, and they wouldn't need to tear Hudson down at the same time.

It's interesting that you point out Jenna Ortega (poc) is praised for being a cinephile, but Tom Holland (white) is criticized for not being one because that would suggest that this isn't a matter of people just not being willing to acknowledge that a poc could be a cinephile and praise them for it, or that a white person couldn't be and criticize them for it, it is specifically because they perceive Connor and Hudson to be in competition with each other that they can't accept that Hudson is the eloquent well-read cinephile between the two of them. I've said it before, but they really don't even need Connor to be great. They don't need him to be especially successful or remarkable. They quite literally just need him to be better than Hudson. Literally all that matters to them is that a white person is superior.