so i guess this is a heated rivalry blog now

Svetlana legitimately put herself at extreme risk to save Ilya. She knew that Ilya’s chances of making it out of the country after he’d just been plastered across every television screen and propaganda poster were nil. Someone would recognize him. She knew that Ilya knew his chances were utter shit. She just also knew that he’d never listen to her if she told him to ask his Canadian boy to get him out. Those odds weren’t good either, but they were the best ones Ilya had. But they also put Shane at risk, which Ilya would never do. He was never the type to put the people he loved in the line of fire. He got distance from her the second that he realized what happened.

Svetlana goes to Shane because she thinks it’s the only way to save Ilya. She can’t get Ilya out herself. But Shane won’t be able to get to Ilya without her. They both are needed to save Ilya. And that means they both need to pay the price.

The thing is, no one in the intelligence community actually thinks that Shane Hollander made it out of the Olympic Village and to Ilya on his own. Someone gave him new clothes. Someone told him how to get out without being picked up by the cameras. But no one can figure out who.

Svetlana would be a major suspect. She’s known to be close friends with Ilya. She did in fact abuse her dad’s access to get Shane out of the building unseen. There is a witch hunt for any co-conspirators in Russia, and she is in danger the longer she’s there.

But I don’t think it’d be a simple as just getting back on a plane and returning to Boston.

They’d be on a hairpin trigger for any signs of guilt. They would not want another person to just slip through their fingers. And her dad would be in hot water already over just how badly the Olympics blew up in their faces. He’s the minister of sport, and he has personal ties to Ilya Rozanov. I don’t see them taking it kindly if she goes and meanders back to Boston, where Ilya motherfucking Rozanov is.

I think Svetlana’s staying and playing the dutiful daughter for a bit. She’s spitting at Ilya’s name and trying to act disgusted and betrayed by him. She’s playing 4D chess to try and allay the suspicion already on her. She’s trying to find a way out that doesn’t have her “killing herself” before she makes it to the airport. Shane Hollander took Svetlana’s instructions and escalated straight into ruining potentially multiple global sporting events for Russia—the Olympics, possibly the 2018 FIFA World if they do lose the right to host that event after this, and any future Olympics that they end up banned from. Billions if not trillions of roubles have been lost because of Shane and Ilya’s fucking situationship. And if they can’t get the guy who escalated it, they’re going to be happy to take it out on the woman who told him to escalate in the first place. She’s in extreme danger and she knows it.

I think she’d need to defect entirely. And I’m playing with the idea that she knows that and she’s very very subtly trying to sway things at home to get her family to defect with her. I’m still teasing this out, but I like the idea of a Svetlana who doesn’t believe in leaving people behind. She’s in danger and she’s still trying to save other people.

Ilya is terrified for her.

Ilya has been terrified for Svetlana since he realized that she was the one who sent Shane after him. He immediately clocked just how bad this was for her. And he’s in a bad fucking position, because any of his attempts to help her, especially while they’re still in Russia, may be the thing that ultimately kills her.

She’s not with him and Shane, ensconced in the reluctant and not so tender embrace of the Canadian delegation. She’s in the belly of the beast. And if it gets back to the wrong person that Ilya’s worried about or trying to contact her specifically, then Russia’s going to decide that they’ve found their woman. They learned their lesson from Shane Hollander’s Pulitzer-prize winning dedication to Saving His Man. They’re going to kill her before Ilya or anyone else gets close. Shane tells Ilya who sent him one time, while they’re at the graveyard, and then Ilya makes him swear to never say her name out loud or acknowledge that she exists ever again, but especially while they’re in Russia. Like. He needs Shane to live like he has never seen that woman before. That’s the best way they can keep her safe.

I think Ilya gives her name over to U.S. intelligence agents once they are like, physically in the White House. He’s more assured that they won’t get picked up on a bug there. He thinks she’ll defect. He thinks they’ll get her out if she’s willing to defect. Ilya himself cannot do anything to acknowledge her existence without putting her in more danger. He needs someone else to do that. Like. He needs government spy games type shit.

The government would think it’s at least possible that she’s got valuable information as the daughter of a major politician. And if they could get her dad too? Fuck, he’d be a score. But I think we’re looking at like. An actual deep cover spy games mission centered around getting Svetlana out of Russia. It’s not going to be as simple as her just getting on a plane.

But Ilya’s scared every day for Svetlana. I think he lies awake at night worrying about her.

I think Shane’s got some enormously fucked up feelings around Svetlana in this one.

I think any jealousy he’d have directed towards her would make him feel extremely guilty. Like. Fundamentally, he also wants Svetlana to make it out alive.

They only knew each other for a few minutes but they were a very intense few minutes. They were both desperate to save the same person. They were both willing to risk everything to do it. There is a kind of understanding and bond that would come with that. Shane thinks of Svetlana first and foremost as the person who saved Ilya, because she is. He never would have found him were it not for her. He never would have gotten close.

Overwhelmingly, Shane is worried about Svetlana’s safety, grateful to her for what she did, and wants her to be okay. But his emotions get messy after that.

Shane really wants Ilya to love him the way he must love Svetlana, who is probably, almost definitely, surely Ilya’s real girlfriend, he’s pretty sure, they didn’t have a lot of time to swap backstories. Like. He wants Ilya to love him back. But he feels like such a selfish asshole over it, because the person that Ilya actually loves is still stuck in Russia and may not get out. And she doesn’t actually tell him to go the romance angle. That part just sort of. Happened. And then Shane doubled down after there was a photo of Ilya cradling his face in front of God and everyone and begging him to save himself.

But for reasons that I’m still Chewing On, I think Shane becomes very convinced that he should have at least tried to spin that balcony kiss as a fucked up hazing ritual they both got forced into because they were rookies and that’s what happens to rookies in hockey. You have to do fucked up, humiliating things like makeout with your rival even though you’re both straight and hate each other.

He feels like an asshole who forced the romance angle and trapped Ilya in a relationship he doesn’t want when there’s someone who he actually loves actively in mortal danger. He feels like Svetlana trusted him to save Ilya and he had to go and pick the way that stole her fucking boyfriend. He’s absolutely sick over it.

He feels like an idiot for not thinking of the hazing angle and pitching it in the room at the Olympic village, before anyone else saw them. Maybe Russia wouldn’t have even bothered to go after Ilya if they sold that story well enough.

Shane’s overwhelmingly worried about Svetlana. He’s guilty over what he feels like he did to her. And he’s got this part of him that’s jealous of her that he can’t get rid of, and that part makes him feel like such a fucking asshole. She’s still paying the price of saving Ilya, and he’s sitting in Canada thinking “I wish I was her.”

He just. He really wishes that Ilya would actually want to pick him. Even if they end up happy enough together, he doesn’t want Ilya to love him because he’s got no other choice in the matter so he just acclimated to Shane but there’s someone else out there he’d much rather be with. He never wanted to trap Ilya.

He guesses he wishes he were the kind of person that Ilya would fall in love with even if he didn’t have to. Someone Ilya would pick, any universe, any situation.

Shane’s going to be a lot safer than Ilya in this situation.

Like, Shane should not run if he’s outed in Sochi. He’s actually going to be in a lot more danger if he runs. Russia cannot go after a visiting Olympian—especially one of Shane’s stature—without causing an international incident. I wouldn’t exactly be extending my stay in Russia (I personally would not be leaving the sight of my country’s officials) but Shane’s going to be relatively safe if he gets outed in Sochi as long as he stays in the Olympic village. If Shane’s the only one who’s outed, I’d say he’d be fine to stay and finish competing, as long as he 1) does not leave the Olympic village and 2) does not comment on the situation while he’s in Russian borders. He’s there to play hockey and say “no comment” and that is fucking it. He is not making any goddamn statements on his sexuality while in Russian territory or this all becomes a lot more complicated, for reasons I’ll explain below.

If he leaves and tries to flee Russia himself, he may get murdered in a hate crime by a random Russian homophobe. He should not run. There is no benefit in running for him. His country can protect him if he stays with their group. They cannot protect him if he absconds into a fuck-off big country filled with people who hate him.

In the absolute worst case scenario, Russia could try to subject Shane to a period of incarceration followed by deportation. I personally see this as incredibly unlikely. But it is technically an option.

To be clear, openly gay athletes attended the 2014 Olympics as part of the official U.S. delegation. It is not illegal to be gay in Russia. It is illegal to promote LGBTQ+ rights in Russia. If Shane’s only been outed, then he hasn’t actually broken Russian law. He didn’t promote shit because he didn’t do anything. This is also why Shane can’t make statements about the situation while he’s in Russia. If anything he says could be construed as promoting LGBTQ+ rights, then he has actually broken Russian law, and Russia’s response becomes much more unpredictable. His mouth needs to be goddamn shut until he crosses that fucking border. Shane Hollander is not coming to terms with his own sexuality and making passionate declarations about the rights of gay men in Sochi fucking Russia. He is shutting the fuck up until he’s out of Russian airspace.

That all being said, Russia isn’t exactly known to be adverse to holding kangaroo court. The United States actually advises its citizens not to travel there in part because of the likelihood of wrongful prosecution. And Shane just got outed as a gay man who’s fucking Putin’s favorite hockey player. So maybe Russia’s feeling vindictive and tries to construe some random bullshit words he says as promoting gay rights in violation of their law. In 2014, the absolute maximum penalty a foreign national can face for promoting LGBTQ+ rights within Russia’s borders is 15 days incarceration followed by deportation.

It is incredibly unlikely that Russia attempts to incarcerate Shane Hollander under this statute. It is even less likely that he would serve any time in Russian prison over it. The chances of Shane Hollander going to jail in Russia under their anti-LGBTQ+ legislation are negligible.

You have to contextualize this within the circumstances. Shane Hollander is not some random athlete who got caught breaking the law in Russian territory on a personal visit. He is Shane fucking Hollander, Canadian National Treasure, and this is the goddamn Olympics.

I’ve talked about this in other posts, but let’s make something clear for the sake of this post: International law is not law in the way we traditionally think of it. It doesn’t work like the criminal code of your state or US federal law or anything like that. It is not a legitimately binding code where authorities will show up to incarcerate you if you break it.

It is playground politics on a global scale. To simplify it greatly, it’s about following playground rules so you get to sit at the cool kid’s table at lunch.

To create legitimately binding, codified law, it has to flow from some kind of central authority. In America, Congress is vested with law-making authority over America. America is not listening to some goddamn Europeans tell us what to do. I have read speeches from actual U.S. senators that can be summed up as “America is not listening to some goddamn Europeans tell us what to do.”

When you hear about international law, the Hague, international criminal courts—those are all systems that countries have decided to voluntarily participate in for the sake of diplomatic relations. They cannot be forced. Those institutions have authority because countries consent to their authority. Everyone’s just all playing nice with each other so international trade deals run smoother and no one raises tariffs on each other and so that their citizens can enter your country without applying for a visa first and vice versa. It is an extremely elaborate web of peer pressure and it plays out on an international scale.

The Olympics is a massive fucking part of that.

Countries want to be in the Olympics. That is something that I cannot put in strong enough terms. If we are talking about international diplomatic relations, the Olympics is about as big as it fucking gets. Countries will bend over backwards to protect their place in that fucking show. It is huge for promoting a sense of national pride. It is huge for stimulating the economy. And it is huge for the international pissing contest that is global diplomacy. Countries use the event to either affirm alliances or establish dominance over their enemies.

For example, have you ever watched Miracle (2004)?

For those who haven’t, Miracle is about the 1980 Olympics, and specifically the US v. Soviets men’s hockey competition. Imagine: It is the middle of the goddamn Cold War. The Soviets were the heavily favored team to win. They won Olympics hockey almost every year. They’d just cleaned America’s clock in an exhibition match that happened in advance of the game.

The 1980 Olympics happens. America somehow beats the Soviets.

It united the goddamn nation. Like. We might as well have just won the Cold War. It was a symbolic victory over the USSR, even if it was just a sports match. America rode that high of national pride for a long time.

When it’s the Olympics, the entire world is watching. Them being outed would be so far beyond being about just Shane and Ilya. Every single world leader participating in those Games would have an emergency briefing on their outing within the hour. Even if those are not their athletes, they may have to issue a formal statement or response regarding how Russia handles this. They may have the prime minister of Canada calling them in an hour saying I need you to agree to levy fuck-off tariffs against Russia if they do not give me back my special hockey boy right the FUCK now.

Because that’s the rub. This is not just any athlete. This is Shane fucking Hollander.

Hockey is in an integral part of the Canadian national identity. This is a country that cares profoundly about their hockey boys. It is a load-bearing part of the national zeitgeist. And if we say that Shane Hollander is the Sidney Crosby analogue, then almost every single person in that country knows his name.

I didn’t really grasp just how big of a deal Shane Hollander was likely to be the first time I watched the show. So much of the show focuses on their private interactions, where they’re just Shane and Ilya together. We don’t see them as celebrities nearly as much. We know they’re famous, we know that they’re in press conferences, we know that they get recognized by fans sometimes and that Shane at least got pap’d with Rose Landry. But when I first watched it, I figured that Shane and Ilya were just like. Athlete famous. Or like “drummer in a band” famous. Like you know them if you really follow the sport but other than that they’re pretty low profile. And I was coming from the perspective of someone who grew up in the American south, where hockey’s just not a big deal.

It is a big deal in Canada.

If Shane Hollander is their world’s Sidney Crosby, then he is a national fucking hero. He has been in national news since he was 12 years old. That country has watched him grow up. It has cheered for him. It has hung their hope and their national pride to the idea of Shane Hollander, and it has been doing it for a fucking decade.

The prime minister of Canada is going to crawl up Putin’s ass to get Shane Hollander back home without so much as a single hair out of place.

It is internationally embarrassing if he can’t. It’d be sending a message to the Canadian public and the world at large that Russia is stronger than Canada and can do whatever the fuck it wants to Canadian citizens without fear of retribution. That is simply not an option.

If Russia even suggests that it’s considering pulling shit against Shane Hollander, the prime minister is making phone calls. He is calling in favors. He is threatening tariffs and international sanctions. He is getting on a plane if he has to. Shane Hollander is the people’s princess and he is coming fucking home. The prime minister will personally be at the airport to receive him, with a fleet of the goddamn press. Look at the might of Canada, bringing babygirl home to its tender, maple-scented embrace.

Gay marriage has been legal in Canada for nearly a decade at this point. Canada is pushing itself in the international landscape as an LGBTQ+ safe space. The fact that he was outed as gay wouldn’t necessarily be a deterrent to Canada applying political pressure. And you cannot be the host of the fucking Olympics and imprison a country’s most beloved athlete for being a member of a minority group without opening a massive can of fuck around and find out.

Honestly I’d be fascinated by the global response. I can’t think of a single time in history where a country’s tried to fuck around and find out like that. Like. They may legitimately get banned from the Olympics if they try that shit.

Under the Olympic Charter, you can get banned from competing in future games as a sanction for human rights violations. This has historically only been used as a sanction for actions against a country’s own citizens as far as I’m aware, and it’s very rarely invoked. Like. South Africa was banned due to apartheid for a while but also we let did fully let the Nazis host the Olympics right before WWII. So. Hit or miss.

I just can’t personally think of a single time in history a country tried to imprison another country’s Olympian over something as contentious as wanting to violate specifically his human rights. Like. Olympians have been arrested during the Games before but that’s because they like. Tried to buy cocaine. And even then the police let them go to be disciplined by the Olympic committee for their country. Countries just do not like touching other country’s athletes during the Olympics. That’s so diplomatically explosive that I can’t begin to imagine the global backlash that would come from going after Shane Hollander for being gay and sucking off Putin’s favorite hockey player. But I do see the Olympics committee reacting strongly, because something like this would be a direct attack on the principles of comity underpinning the games. Countries are going to be way less willing to keep participating in the Games if they know their athletes can be unjustly imprisoned in the host country without consequence to the host country. There would likely be multiple countries reacting very strongly to any kind of formal sanction against Shane Hollander, not because they give a shit about him, but because they want to set the precedent that you do not fucking touch another country’s Olympians. Ultimately, I do think the Olympic committee would straight up ban Russia just because the Games may fall apart if they don’t.

Notably, Russia did actually receive a ban from the Olympics after the 2014 Games. This had nothing to do with human rights violations. They got caught doping their own athletes during the 2014 Games, which also violates the Olympic Charter. I’m assuming that this did not happen in the game changers universe because, critically, they doped their ice hockey team. Ilya would have been caught up in it, and there’s no evidence of that happening in canon.

So, presumably, Russia is in a position where the only thing that could endanger its future participation in the Games is if they do something as batshit fucking crazy as trying to arrest and incarcerate Canada’s Favorite Hockey Boy. That is simply not fucking happening. They’d be too worried about a potential Olympic ban and the firestorm of global backlash that would rain down on them for jailing a goddamn visiting Olympian. Like, it doesn’t matter whose dick he sucked, sometimes it’s just not worth it.

So, if Shane gets outed in Sochi, he is fine. Like. He’s not fine, he’s just been outed, but he’s not in any real danger from the Russian government.

Ilya’s situation is different.

Ilya needs to get his ass over the goddamn border.

Ilya does not need to worry so much about legal repercussions. He does not need to worry about incarceration. He can’t actually be incarcerated for this. The anti-LGBTQ+ promotion law that’s in place in 2014 does not actually permit incarceration for Russian citizens, just foreign nationals. If we’re just looking at official state sanctions, the most he’s getting is a fine. So if he’s arrested, it’s because he was framed for something. Which like. Not impossible for Russia to do. And it would be very difficult to get him out of incarceration if he was arrested on false charges.

But if we’re just looking at the consequences of him being outed, Ilya is not going to the gulag for this.

He is going to “kill himself.”

He is going to be found dead, having fallen from somewhere tragically high, or overdosed on drugs no one knew he was addicted to, or having shot himself twice in the head with his non-dominant hand. This was, of course, due to his own overwhelming shame from the embarrassment he’s subjected himself and his nation to, and was absolutely not a state-sanctioned hit, no, really. Really. They promise. They are crying too!!!

Again, contextualize the situation. It is 2014. It actually used to be better for gay people in Russia before 2013. The Russian government started to pass increasingly strict laws against queer people that started in 2013 (and have gotten fuck off bad in the last few years, but those won’t be a problem for the 2014 Olympics). So the Russia government has just kickstarted a national campaign against LGBTQ+ rights, and they find out that their hockey godling who is in all of their nationalist propaganda has been trading blow jobs with Canada’s own Prince of Hockey.

By this point, there has very likely been a very recent press conference that involved Ilya Rozanov shaking Putin’s hand. Putin has endorsed Ilya as one of the greatest this country has to offer. Ilya Rozanov was named the captain of their Olympic team over all of those KHL players who are all major and active participants of Russian state propaganda. And then right after he was picked, Putin turned around and warned the entire goddamn world “do not have your athletes in my country promoting the queer agenda.” There is a fuck ton of preexisting global attention on queer rights in Russia because of the Olympics.

So. In sum: They are at the launch of a national campaign against the very thing Ilya turned out to be. They just endorsed Ilya Rozanov as their national ideal that everyone should aspire in almost the same breath that they told the entire fucking world that Russia did not want that fag shit happening within its borders. And then he lost to goddamn Latvia.

And then he was outed for having gay sex with an equally famous hockey player from a competing country.

This is internationally humiliating for them. They do not want to just let this go with a fucking monetary fine.

And they are smart enough to know that if Ilya Rozanov gets over the border, he is not coming back.

He is getting on a plane to America and filing asylum paperwork the second he crosses the border. He’s moving to Canada and getting hitched to a pretty freckled Canadian in a ceremony officiated by the fucking prime minister. He is never going to be seen on Russian soil again.

There is a time limit to solving the problem of Ilya Rozanov. It is counting down. Russia will have to decide very quickly if there are too many eyes on them right now to retaliate against him or if they need to send a message to their citizens that you do not get to globally humiliate them the way Ilya Rozanov just did.

The options you have to resolve this are going to depend on how exactly Ilya and Shane are outed.

Like. What happened? Did someone put the pieces together and sell the story to the press? Was his incredibly literal sexting thread with Shane Hollander leaked? Did someone get a photo of them kissing on the Vegas balcony when they were rookies and they’ve been sitting on it since 2011? Some other third thing? Were Shane and Ilya outed simultaneously or was it staggered? All of that is going to affect their options to get Ilya out of this fucking country.

Like. If it’s a situation like in snapping birch, where Shane is outed first and it’s unclear for the first few hours whether Ilya’s going down with the ship, maybe you risk having him make a break for the goddamn border. Maybe he just tries to clear Russian airspace before they figure out that he’s Shane Hollander’s bisexual love machine. I’m not saying that’s the safest option, but it’s one I can see them at least considering.

If they are outed simultaneously, Shane and Ilya are now 1) handcuffed to each other, 2) performing gay hockey Romeo & Juliet on the international stage and 3) having some very awkward meetings with world leaders.

Again, Shane Hollander is much safer than Ilya Rozanov is right now. His country still likes him, mostly. He is still Canada’s special hockey boy who they love so so much, and Ilya is on the hit list for the fucking kremlin.

Ilya is not going home. He is not facing his family. They will fucking shoot him and then say he shot himself. #theyarecryingtoo!!!

If he is smart about it, Ilya is now attached at the hip to Shane Hollander, who has the type of bulletproofness that comes with being in a parasocial relationship with your entire goddamn country. That gives him his best odds.

If I’m Shane? Ilya is staying within five feet of me at all moments. We are going to the bathroom together. He is sleeping in my bed with me directly on top of him because it’ll be harder to kill him in his sleep if you have to physically move me to do it. Shane and Ilya would need to jump straight from “uncertain situationship stage where one of you took the other’s virginity and didn’t call after and the other kept texting for several months despite getting no response and now you both feel existential angst over it” to “disgustingly codependent couple that is never ever physically apart.”

They are not staying in the Olympic Village. They are not competing in the rest of the Games. They are sleeping in the Canadian embassy and getting on the first flight they physically can get out of that fucking country. And I am not talking commercial. I mean a world government needs to send a plane to go get them.

Like, if Shane wants to give Ilya his best odds, he is refusing to leave the country unless it’s holding Ilya Rozanov’s hand. He is throwing every single ounce of national goodwill at his disposal at the Canadian government to try and force them to get his situationship out with him.

Legitimately, they need Ilya out of that country so fast that it leaves a fucking smoke trail. They need to get him out before he “dies in a tragic accident” or “kills himself.” They need to get him out before he gets framed for a crime they can actually incarcerate him for.

In this situation, the win conditions are if they can get Ilya out of the country safely when he’s trapped like a rat in the Olympic village in a country where everyone knows his face because the state purposefully promoted him to them as the national ideal. He cannot just go to fucking ground and try to stealth his way across the border. You need the eyes of other governments watching him closely so it’s harder for him to “kill himself.” You need a safe, secure method out of the country—i.e. a diplomatic flight—so he can’t “fall down the stairs” at the airport. Which means you need to 1) convince world leaders to let Ilya Rozanov on one of their planes and 2) ideally get them to pressure Russia to not stop him on the way to the airport.

I want to be clear—Russia can’t just close its borders to Ilya Rozanov specifically. At least not easily. He has a passport. It’s not a simple as just taking away the passport.

A recognized principe of international human rights law is freedom of movement. Countries cannot just revoke their citizen’s passports willy nilly—especially if they’re revoking his passport because he’s gay and they want to stop him from leaving the country. They have to have some kind of cognizable ground to put a travel ban on him—like if he had a warrant out for his arrest, owed debts to the government, was a national security threat, etc—or it violates the playground rules that the world governments agreed to abide by. Russia will no longer get to sit at the cool kids’ table if it just goes up to Ilya and says “hey man you can’t leave the country anymore”

It is 2014. Russia is still, for the most part, trying to maintain diplomatic relations. It just convinced the world to let it host the Olympics. And because of that, the entire fucking world has its focus on what they do in response to this. They cannot just fly off the fucking handle and refuse to let Ilya Rozanov leave the country. That would violate their own laws and international principles of law, and the entire world would see them do it. They would be looking for a legal way to keep him in the country, which means Shane and Ilya need a way to get him safely out of the country before Russia has the time to come up with an excuse to keep him there or just, you know, fucking shoot him.

And that. Is not a lot of time. Like every second that he stays in Russia post-outing decreases his odds of leaving the country alive.

If you really want to play out the logical consequences of this kind of fic, you are now writing RPF about former President Barack Obama.

Shane is Canadian, but Ilya is playing for an American team. And, critically, a lot of the spotlight around queer rights and the 2014 Olympics was focused on America.

If we’re talking about 2014, we are pre-Obergefell. Gay marriage is not legal across the United States. But Obama made it a key issue during his time in office. He’s declared that he wouldn’t defend the Defense of Marriage Act. He’s gotten rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He’s publicly endorsed queer rights and he’s directed American agencies to promote queer rights worldwide through diplomatic measures.

Obama was under pressure to boycott the 2014 Olympics because of Russia’s recent anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. He chose not to, but he did send openly queer athletes as part of the official U.S. delegation as an implicit condemnation of Russia’s actions. The spotlight was on America because of this.

So America was participating in the Olympics even after human rights’ activists petitioned for a boycott because of Russia’s anti-queer legislation. It was subtweeting Russia’s stance on gay rights on a global scale. And then a major athlete for an American team who lives in America on an American visa gets outed for making passionate gay love to the Hockey Prince of America’s closest ally.

America’s going to be expected to say something about that shit.

Now, they may say “we don’t actually have any citizens involved in this, we support queer rights but we will not be directly intervening out of respect for international comity.” Or they may say “AMERICA STANDS BY ITS GAY HOCKEY PLAYERS EVEN IF THEY ARENT BORN HERE. LAND OF THE IMMIGRANT RED WHITE AND BLUE MOTHERFUCKERS” *eagle screech* *gunfire*

It. Responses could really vary here. And I think how involved America is willing to be will depend on how much political capital Shane and Ilya can offer them.

Again, at this point in history, the president’s office is on a tear in favor of queer rights for once. It is a major platform actually. It’s a topic that Obama historically has pushed boundaries for.

Who are they trying to bring home? Is it gay hockey Romeo & Juliet?

Or is it just some Slavic fuckboy?

This situation is going to be a lot worse for Shane and Ilya if they are outed because their texts leak. Because their texts do not look good for them. Their texts look like Ilya spent two years saying “please please PLEASE let me fuck you” *unsolicited dick pic* “you want these nine inches so bad cmon baby” *thirsty tongue emoji* *eggplant emoji* *prayer hands emoji* and then ghosted the day after Shane Hollander finally texted that he could come fuck him. Like. Their texts are low key embarrassing for both of them. Ilya comes off looking like some dickhead who just wanted to get his dick wet and Shane looks like a jilted girl who couldn’t figure out she was just a notch in the bedpost after several months of being left on read.

That is not the kind of thing diplomats burn bridges over. Like. American democrats are fighting for their life trying to get people to accept the idea that gay people can get married. They are not about to throw down the gauntlet with a world power in defense of what looks like a chapter torn out of the fuckboy playbook.

But maybe they apply some political pressure if Shane and Ilya at least look like they at least have the potential to be gay Romeo & Juliet.

Yes, the rivalry makes them a divisive couple. But it makes them a divisive couple for specifically some American hockey fans. This is bigger than the NHL. This is bigger than their individual cities. This is a tale you’re selling to the world, most of whom found out that Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov existed 0.5 seconds ago when they got outed and suddenly became headline news in every paper on the planet.

They are both very attractive men. They are talented. And they have a tale of star-crossed love that has the potential to be very sympathetic if it’s told right. And maybe that’s enough to make them valuable as a very compelling story about the need for equal rights, including marriage equality, which the White House is actively campaigning for.

To be clear—America and Canada are not threatening war over this, but they also don’t need to. All they need to do is 1) let Ilya get on their plane with Shane instead of telling him to get his own ride and 2) pressure the Russian government behind the scenes to let him get on the plane. Maybe the White House + the Canadian government would be willing to apply pressure on Russia and package it with promises of a prisoner exchange or trade deal or something if Russia just doesn’t stop Ilya from leaving? I dunno. This part is the most uncertain. I’m not privy to backdoor inter-continental governmental negotiations. Shane and Ilya would have to be really, really worth it for that kind of effort, but they’re high profile enough to have the potential. Otherwise, you just have to have Ilya make a break for the border and pray he gets across before someone shoots him.

If world powers do successfully intervene on their behalf, Shane and Ilya do not just get to shake hands when the plane lands and go their separate ways.

The fuckboy dynasty is over. Their best odds in this situation if they convince the fucking president that they are in a serious relationship—or at least convince him that they can convince the world that they’re in a serious relationship. You can’t just have the fucking president making serious political moves for you and then disembark the fucking ride. Like. You can, the president isn’t going to make you keep fucking each other at like, gunpoint, but it would not be good for their careers or getting any kind of continued aid from the government when it comes to keeping Ilya safe from his very very angry home country.

If they want to minimize the real-world consequences from their outing, they are in a committed relationship now whether they like it or not. They are at the White House on Thanksgiving standing next to the fucking turkey in matching Burberry coats and clapping politely. They are each other’s dates to Christmas dinner with the Canadian prime minister. The upside is that it actually may insulate them somewhat from official NHL retaliation against their relationship, but only because fucking Obama is coming to their games now.

They’d be placed on a collision course with marriage once it becomes legal across the U.S. after it’s codified into federal law by the Hollanov law that democrats named after them. They could probably drag out the dating phase for several presidential terms and then claim they grew apart if they didn’t want to get married? I’d be very careful about how they announce any breakups. But like. In the initial aftermath, they are not telling the world that the gears of goddamn nations just moved so they could be fuck buddies. They need as much public goodwill as they can get or someone will get mad enough to shoot them. No, they are in the kind of gay love that changes history, whether it’s true or not.

So you’re right that association football generally polls as Russia’s most popular sport, with ice hockey in second place. That doesn’t mean that football has a monopoly on cultural impact in sports. That’d be like saying that football is the only culturally impactful sport in America. Football is America’s most popular sport, but we still almost burned NYC to the ground when the New York Knicks won the NBA championships. Citizens of a country tend to care about more than one sport.

You also have to consider the fact that popularity of a sport is regional.

I’m from the American south, where football is overwhelmingly the most popular team sport. But if you go up to Michigan or Minnesota, hockey is going to rule the day. Russia is a massive country. Interest in a particular sport is going to vary based off of where you are.

Ilya grows up in Moscow, which has one of the largest hockey scenes on the planet. It has 3 KHL teams. They are able to sustain three professional teams with the size of their hockey market. Most professional leagues in America can sustain one team per state, if that, with a few rare exceptions in massive markets like NYC. Hockey absolutely beats out football in popularity in the region that Ilya grows up in. He most likely had a very similar relationship with fame and popularity in Russia and particularly in Moscow as Shane has with Canada.

And there is something happening in 2014 that would increase the popularity of ice hockey in the eyes of the public. It’s the Olympics.

There’s not really an if about whether your average Russian cares about the Olympics. It’s the Olympics. It’s one of the biggest mass sporting events in the world, if not the biggest. It’s always been used as a platform for nationalism for any country that has athletes competing. People who aren’t even sports fans get invested in the Olympics. In America, there was a huge spike of interest in curling and ice hockey coming out of the most recent Olympics. No one gave a shit about curling in America before the Olympics. There’s no if about it—countries with athletes in the Olympics care about the Olympics.

Mediascope actually did a survey of Russia citizens’ interest in sports right after the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. And notably, at that time, ice hockey was overwhelmingly the most popular sport in Russia. At that time, 50.9% of adults in the country indicated that they were hockey fans. Figure skating trailed well behind at 39.2%. Football had fallen to third place at 33.8%. And statisticians criticized the results of this survey as being skewed by its proximity to the Olympics. Ice hockey had just benefitted from the massive surge of interest that always comes with the Winter Olympics. Football, meanwhile, was suffering from a dip in interest because Russia always takes a break in the season due to inclement weather during the winter months. No one’s watching football during the winter Olympics because no one can watch football during the winter Olympics. It’s an outdoors sport, and Russia is frozen. Hockey is overwhelmingly the most popular sport in Russia during the Winter Olympics.

And a later survey reaffirmed the statisticians’ criticism. Football once again started polling higher in popularity than ice hockey. But during the Sochi Olympics, this wouldn’t be a factor. No one is playing football, and everyone is watching the Olympics. Hockey is riding a massive spike of popularity.

There is one thing that distinguishes the 2014 Olympics from the 2018 Olympics. The 2014 Olympics are actually in Russia.

Countries massively benefit from getting to be the host country to the Olympics. The economy has just been boosted. It is easier than ever to go and actually watch the Olympics because they don’t have to travel internationally. Participation in winter sports and in particular hockey is at an all time high.

I wouldn’t agree with the assessment that Russia is more likely to care about figure skating. Figure skating again tends to poll as less popular than hockey. You also have to consider the gendered component to sports. While figure skating does still have a huge audience in Russia, most of that audience is focused on women’s figure skating. Men’s figure skating is comparatively much less popular, and if the state is looking for an athlete to promote as the masculine ideal, they are not looking for a figure skater. They’re looking for a hockey player.

And that’s the next thing you have to consider. Ice hockey is absolutely a massive part of state propaganda and the national identity in Russia. And it has been for a very long time.

Alexandra Vladmirova out of the University of Oxford did a comprehensive overview of the role that sports and in particular ice hockey plays in Russian state propaganda that’s really interesting if you want to look into it more, but the short of it is that ice hockey has always been a critical component of Russian state propaganda. It goes well back into the Cold War. They used to call the Russian national team The Red Machine because it was such a big part of the Soviets’ propaganda push. And the role that hockey plays in state propaganda did not end with the USSR.

Russian hockey players play such a big part of Russian state propaganda that Finland, Sweden, Czechia, Latvia, and France all enforce national team bans on their own citizens who participate in the KHL. And officials specifically said that this was because of how Russia consistently uses its hockey players in state propaganda.

Russian hockey players who play abroad in the NHL aren’t spared from their role in the Russian propaganda machine, with the most notable example being Alexander Ovechkin, the real-life inspiration for Ilya Rozanov. Like. I don’t keep saying that Ilya is Putin’s favorite hockey player because I randomly think Putin would be a big Rozanov fan. I’m saying it because Alexander Ovechkin, the real-life counterpart to Ilya Rozanov, is Putin’s favorite hockey player.

Putin is a huge hockey fan. He is such a huge hockey fan that he founded the Night Hockey League and then played in it in televised exhibition matches. Putin himself became a hockey player and then used it for state propaganda. And Putin fucking loves the real life Ilya Rozanov.

Alexander Ovechkin has Putin’s phone number. There is a fuckton of photos of Putin passionately embracing Ovechkin because he loves that guy so much. Putin personally sent Ovechkin a gift when he was married. And when Ovechkin broke the record for all time goals in the NHL, Putin immediately launched a state propaganda campaign around the accomplishment. And that’s not the only time that Ovechkin has been used for Russian state propaganda. That man was a major participant in Putin’s reelection campaign.

And Ilya frankly would be more likely to be involved in state propaganda. Not to insult Ovechkin, but Ilya is much more conventionally attractive, which means he is much more useful in propaganda. Ilya scores more goals in his rookie season than Ovechkin scored in real life, so he sees more success at a younger age. And his family’s control over him means he’s already on the government’s radar.

His father was a member of the Russian federal police service, and the number of medals he has indicates he was a very high level member of it. He is in the same social circle as a member of Putin’s cabinet, aka the minister of sport, aka Svetlana’s father, who is openly commenting on how great it would be if Ilya married his daughter. Ilya is trapped in an abusive, controlling family. He is the son of a prominent governmental figure and the potential future son in law of a member of Putin’s cabinet. He was just named the captain of Russia’s Olympic team over every single KHL player who actually plays in Russia. He does not just get to say “I’m sorry, Mr. Putin, I don’t want to support the government by letting you use me for state propaganda.” He will be fucking shot if he does that.

Lastly, you have to consider how invested Putin was in the 2014 Olympics specifically.

Vladmirova’s article has a much more comprehensive play-by-play of just how invested Russia was in the Sochi Olympics, but the short of it that Putin fucking fought to get to host the 2014 Olympics. He was personally invested in the bid to host. They had just lost out the bid to host the 2012 Olympics to the U.K., which pissed him off. And the competition for 2014 Olympics was tight. South Korea wanted it in PyeongChang so badly that they got a letter of support from North fucking Korea about how much South Korea getting to host the Olympics would make them want to kill each other less. But Russia got it in 2014, and South Korea ended up getting it in 2018.

Russia invested so much in the Sochi Olympics that it was the most expensive Olympics to date. The official figures that Russia released put the expense at 324 billion roubles. But critics of the Kremlin said that that figure was doctored and the real expense was closer to 1.5 trillion roubles. So if Shane and Ilya get outed in Sochi and cause an international incident, they are ruining a potentially trillion rouble investment for Russia.