beauty and art and horror

Race absolutely matters. Racism absolutely exists. But different racial groups are stereotyped in different ways, and those stereotypes can produce completely different social expectations.

For example, I’ve seen people criticize Rachel and Jacob for joking about Hudson being unintelligent because he’s a person of color. If Hudson were Black, I would understand that criticism more, because there is a long history of anti-Black stereotypes portraying Black people as unintelligent. But Hudson is Asian. Asian men are stereotyped in almost the opposite way. They’re often assumed to be intelligent, studious, and academically successful. The stereotype is still racist, but it’s a different stereotype. It doesn’t suddenly become an anti-Asian stereotype just because we’ve replaced “Asian” with the broader category of “POC.”

The same thing happens constantly in fanfiction with Shane.

A lot of writers portray Shane as being afraid to fight because he knows he’ll be judged more harshly than white players. I understand where that idea is coming from, but as a black person I’ve never found it particularly convincing.

If Shane were black, that analysis would make more sense to me. Black men are often stereotyped as aggressive, which means behavior that is considered acceptable from white athletes is often interpreted differently when black ones do it.

But asian men occupy a very different place in the racial imagination. They’re frequently stereotyped as passive, non-threatening, weak, nerdy, emasculated, etc. If racial stereotypes were influencing Shane’s approach to hockey, I could just as easily imagine the opposite dynamic: feeling pressure to prove he’s aggressive enough to belong. Maybe he’s fighting TOO much.

But that doesn’t make sense for Shane. He’s the league’s golden boy. He’s polite, media-friendly, and heavily inspired by Sidney Crosby. He’s a superstar. Fighting is often delegated to players lower on the depth chart whose role is specifically to provide physicality. Star players generally aren’t expected to be enforcers. Teams usually want their elite talent scoring goals, not sitting in the penalty box after dropping the gloves.

So Shane not fighting much doesn’t strike me as evidence of racial pressure. It strikes me as evidence that he’s Shane Hollander.

Crosby is a useful comparison here. For years, people mocked him for not being physical enough (and for talking to the refs too much). They questioned his toughness and masculinity. They called him “Crybaby Crosby” or “Cindy Crosby.” Fans edited photos of him in dresses or makeup. The criticism wasn’t really about hockey. The joke was that he wasn’t a “real man.”

And that’s a white player.

Imagine how much worse those conversations could become if the player in question were Asian.

That’s the kind of racial dynamic I could actually see affecting Shane, not him worrying about people thinking he’s too aggressive, but people questioning whether aggressive ENOUGH.

There’s a good chance that if Shane fought exactly like many white players, he probably still wouldn’t be viewed as tough enough. Meanwhile, if a Black player fought exactly like those same white players, he might be interpreted as more aggressive.

People often criticize Rachel for not doing much racial analysis in the books. But sometimes fandom fills that gap with racial analysis that feels disconnected from both hockey culture and the specific stereotypes that affect different racial groups.

Not every POC experience is interchangeable.

A stereotype that affects Black athletes is not automatically a stereotype that affects Asian athletes. A stereotype that affects Latino athletes is not automatically a stereotype that affects Indigenous athletes.

If we’re going to talk about race- and we should- we have to talk about the actual racial dynamics at play, not just substitute “person of color” for a more specific analysis.

Shane is busy with a shoot all day (something A La Peloton, tonally) and Ilya is allowed on set after he promised to be on his best behaviour. But whatever it is has a lot of focus being put on Shane's legs (squat lifts, spin bike, pick your poison) which are also in Teeny Tiny Shorts and Ilya is. Having A Time. Biting his cheek to keep from barking you know how it is.

When they're driving home, Ilya keeps reaching over to squeeze Shane's thighs, and as soon as they're parked Ilya just YANKS him through the front door like You Need To Ride Me NOW Hollander It Is URGENT.

So, ok, Ilya decides they’ll try it. He doesn’t explain all of his reasoning to Shane. He doesn’t have to, really. Ilya knows Shane will give him anything he wants. And sure enough, when Ilya tells him what they’re going to do, he blushes and hauls Ilya in for a kiss, breathes out “fuck, Ilya,” in the space between their mouths, and that’s good enough for Ilya. 

He spends ages staring at those ancient stone torsos wondering how it would feel to run his hands over the carefully carved bumps and ridges. What it would feel like beneath his fingertips.

He doesn't know why he wants it so bad, but it's all he can think about whenever he's there. And he hates that it's all he can think about. He always shoves his hands deep in his pockets and hopes that no one nearby can read minds.

And then one crazy night he finds himself alone with a man he's supposed to hate and well...

It started when he was a kid and he was trying to help everyone get better at hockey including the opposing teams players, he would say something like “your stick grip is weak” or “you’re slow on your right” (idk i don’t know hockey very well ESPECIALLY little kid hockey) but he says it totally deadpan because little Shanebug doesn’t understand tone yet.

This makes the other teams so mad! They try and fight him constantly! Little bitty baby hockey fights and then Yuna sits him down in middle school after the first fight that he actually gets hurt (black eye and bloody lip) and asks him what he is saying to make everyone fight him?

“Nothing mean I swear mom!!! I’m trying to be nice and help correct their form”

And suddenly Yuna gets it and explains to Shane that not everyone but especially not the opposing team likes to have their flaws pointed out to them even if it’s coming from a good place and how that could be seen as chirping.

So he stops for a while, then his coach for world juniors tells him to try and piss off Rozanov enough that they can draw a penalty. So Shane does what he does best and points out a flaw at each face off. Jokes on him though because Ilya is actively changing those things and getting better every face off because he is taking it for what it is, advice.

Which pisses Shane off, he thinks his chirping tactic won’t work now that he is older. So he points out at his first scrimmage at practice in Montreal that the center who has been there for years (who he is probably replacing) is favoring his left side is staying too far left to compensate (again I don’t know hockey so I am trying to translate things I know about soccer lol)

And the center loses it on him! Immediately yelling about the lack of respect and how a rookie makes it to the MLH and thinks they are hot shit.

So Shane realizes his chirping DOES work just not on rozanov and becomes a menace he studies game tape specifically to find holes in his opponents game and pre prepares chirps and it fucking works because all these men are so far up their own asses that they just get mad instead of using the advice.

before anyone says anything: i hate this man. i think he's awful. the fact that shane is best friends with him is a personal insult to me. if a montreal public bus ran him over i would look the other way #withthepeople ✊

the problem imo is that rachel doesn't write him ironically. she genuinely has hayden telling ilya he doesn't deserve to live as a rebuttal to "what are you four, you can't eat mushrooms?" and seems to think this is harmless banter. like look at hayden. funny guy 🫵

BUT.

if you stop looking at him through the lens the books want you to and start looking at him through shane's, he makes a disturbing amount of sense

because hayden is safe. hayden is aggressively, boringly safe. hayden talks about his wag queen wife. hayden talks about his pink-frilly daughters. hayden got married at like 19. hayden is the human embodiment of heterosexual respectability. shane doesn't even have to do anything. just standing next to him makes him look straighter by association

and then after shane comes out? after he loses his team, his reputation, the media, basically his entire support system? of course he clings to the one guy who is at least vaguely kind to him

hayden isn't good. he's familiar. hayden isn't healthy. he's safe. hayden is the friend you keep because every alternative feels riskier

like hayden is stockholm syndrome. hayden is the prison you keep returning to because at least the bars keep the wolves out..

and i genuinely think that makes sense for where shane is emotionally

what i need, however, is the version of this story where shane has been married to ilya for five years and suddenly realizes there are people in the world who are kind without making him earn it. people who don't casually belittle him. people who don't make every interaction feel like surviving

bc i don't actually buy the idea that hayden was uniquely positioned to understand, esp considering hayden's family/personality! hayden "guessed," sure, but it was a joke, a stumble into the right answer. meanwhile jj spends years genuinely trying to understand what's going on with shane.

after the plane crash, jj clocks that something is wrong almost immediately. he sees a guy who's miserable, fixated on ilya rozanov, and carrying around feelings he doesn't know what to do with. he's sympathetic. he's concerned! he starts trying to set shane up with other men because he's working with the information he has and trying to help.

then there's the charity. jj is right there helping run the thing, using his cup day for it, watching shane and ilya spend increasingly ridiculous amounts of time together. from jj's perspective the problem is pretty obvious even if he doesn't have every detail. if anything, he's paying closer attention than hayden is.

which is why i always kind of wince when shane brings up "well hayden guessed." bc a) so did jj by that logic, and b) bc i don't think he realizes jj doesn't care abt the solving a mystery bit of it/failing to solve it. jj is upset because he thought they were best friends.

and honestly, i think he had reason to think he'd be someone shane could trust. jj has spent his entire career navigating a sport where standing out can make you a target as a black man in a predominately white sport. he's learned how to read rooms, smooth things over, and survive by understanding people. not in the same way shane does, obviously, but enough that i can see why it hurts to realize your friend spent years carrying something alone and never once considered coming to you.

and no, shane didn't owe him that trust. nobody owes anybody a coming out. but i do think jj is justified in being hurt by what that realization says about their friendship.

and then even after all of it, jj keeps showing up. he goes to shane's house. he rebuilds the friendship. he shows up to the wedding. he stays.

fist bumps at the boards when one of them scores

Ilya getting to yell at the ref on Shane's behalf when he takes a cheap hit

Shane giving the hardest check of his career to the d-man that gave Ilya a minor concussion in the last game against them. The guy practically backflips but he's fine and the gif of Shane's snarling face goes viral

When Ilya loses a blade on the power play one time Shane's the closet one who can tow him to the bench (this goes VERY viral)

SICK PRETTY SHOTS on said power play, showing the world how fucking stupid everyone was to allow them to get on the same team

Locker Room / Bench

Guys tape everything—wrists, fingers, knees, ankles—and Ilya having strong opinions about how Shane tapes his wrists wrong and physically taking his hand and redoing it. It takes forever. You have to hold the wrist, keep tension on the tape. Shane spending the entire time staring at his face like he's having a religious experience.

The thing where your teammate finishes taping your stick because you're still messing with your skates. Deeply domestic. Completely normal hockey behavior. Ilya doing it for Shane without asking because he knows exactly how Shane likes his blade wrapped from years of studying him as an opponent. Shane does not Trust anyone else to even touch his stick

Ilya starts stealing Shane's sticks during morning skate and refusing to give them back until Shane physically wrestles them out of his hands.

Sharing a water bottle on the bench. Deeply unsanitary. Completely normal. Something you only really do with guys you're comfortable around. Ilya grabbing Shane's by mistake the first week and Shane not even mentioning it.

The thing where after a bad loss nobody talks. The room is silent except for tape ripping and gear getting packed away. Ilya sitting down next to Shane, shoulders touching, and saying absolutely nothing. Somehow that's the most anyone has said all night.

Sharing an iPad on the bench, shoulder-to-shoulder, drawing routes on the screen with gloved fingers. One of them grabbing the other's arm to point something out and not letting go because they're both still watching the clip.

The full-body lean that happens after a brutal shift. Just putting your entire weight onto the guy next to you because you're too tired to hold yourself up. Ilya doing it once without thinking and Shane automatically widening his stance to take the weight.

Ilya grabbing Shane's elbow during a TV timeout and physically moving him six inches to the left so he can see the whiteboard. Shane just lets himself be repositioned.

Guys smacking each other on the ass after a good play is so normalized in hockey it's practically invisible. The first time Ilya does it to Shane they both feel like they're getting away with something.

The way players grab the backs of each other's necks to get their attention. The way they grab cages to be heard over crowd noise. Ilya catching Shane by the visor and pulling him closer until they're practically nose-to-nose to say something, and Shane immediately going still.

Getting your jersey number called for a penalty and having to go to the box and your linemate skating you over, just a hand between the shoulder blades guiding you to the box door, and Shane doing this for Ilya once and Ilya looking back at him through the glass from the penalty box and Shane just tapping his own chest twice like I've got it, go sit down (I realize they're both centers but maybe occasionally Ilya plays wing, like mentioned about All-Stars in that bed convo w Sveta)

The two of them coming back to the bench after a shift and immediately starting to explain what they saw at the exact same time. "The weak-side D keeps cheating—" "I know, if we swing lower—" Neither of them stops talking. Somehow they're still having the same conversation.

Every winger they've ever played with eventually develops the same thousand-yard stare while Shane and Ilya spend an entire TV timeout discussing a faceoff they already won three minutes ago.

On The Ice

The thing about Shane being able to look completely bored while doing something physically absurd. Ilya being one of the only people who's ever been able to tell the difference between Shane coasting and Shane being fully locked in because he's spent years reading him from the other bench.

Now he reads him from the same bench. At some point Ilya realizes he can tell whether Shane is nervous by whether his right leg is bouncing. Shane is Hockey Jesus and therefore never nervous about himself, obviously. But teammates doing stupid shit? Suddenly the leg is going.

Shane automatically skates over to grab the extra guy after every scrum because nobody gets to cross-check Ilya except him.

The first month they accidentally keep ending up in the same support lane in the neutral zone. Both of them trying to do the responsible center thing on the breakout, swinging to provide an outlet, reading the same play developing and arriving in the same spot. One goes low to support the defenseman. The other is already there. It takes a month of bumping into each other before they stop thinking the exact same thought at the exact same time.

pThe breakout where Ilya is supposed to be the outlet but gets tied up on the wall. He manages to free one arm and taps his stick twice on the ice. Don't go middle. Go wide. Shane reads it instantly.

At some point they've developed an entire private language of stick taps that nobody else understands.

When the power play isn't working, they have entire conversations between whistles that are maybe thirty percent words and seventy percent stick taps, glove grabs, shoulder shoves, and pointing at patches of ice.

The Ovi-Backstrom thing, neither of them is permanently Ovi and neither of them is permanently Backstrom. Some shifts Shane is the shooter. Some shifts Ilya is. Some shifts they're both trying to set the other guy up. Figuring out who's who isn't really a system so much as a running conversation.

Shane pinching at the blue line, which coaches have spent his entire life trying to discourage. Ilya rotating back to cover before Shane has fully committed to the pinch. Making the decision for him before he's made it himself.

The first time they line up together for a defensive-zone draw and Ilya casually puts a hand on Shane's back and shifts him six inches to the right. It's not even a weird thing. Players reposition each other all the time. Shane still short-circuits because nobody has ever moved him before. He's always been the one directing traffic.

Shane taking a defensive-zone draw because it's on his strong side. Ilya automatically drifting to the wing. No discussion, no ego, just both of them recognizing what gives them the best chance to win possession.

Which is maybe the strangest thing about them. They've both spent their entire lives being THE centerman. The guy the play runs through. The guy who takes the draw. The guy who decides. And now they keep finding themselves yielding little pieces of territory to each other without even thinking about it.

They both tap their sticks on the ice in the exact same rhythm before a faceoff. Someone points it out. They deny it with suspicious speed. (They are the Exact Same People It's Creepy).

Both of them mutter constantly during games. To themselves. To the puck. To nobody. For years they did it from opposite benches. Now they're muttering at each other halfway through shifts, sometimes English, sometimes Russian, and their wingers genuinely cannot tell whether they're communicating or just happening simultaneously.

The line change where Shane is jumping over the boards and Ilya is coming off and for one second they have to occupy the exact same piece of ice. A hand on an elbow. A shove at the hip, crawling over each other. Alternatively, one of them trying to get on the bench where the other is already sitting, and like missing a little, so now Shane's dragging Ilya over the railing by the back of his jersey like a feral alley cat

Shane bodychecking Ilya into the boards during practice and then immediately grabbing his jersey to make sure he's still upright.

Ilya scores goals that look psychic because he knows where Shane is going before Shane does. The back-door tap-in where Shane hasn't even looked at him yet and Ilya is already there, stick on the ice, because he read Shane's shoulder angle and knew the pass was coming. Shane doesn't even have to find him. Ilya is just always in the right place because he's been studying Shane longer than Shane has been studying himself.

Goals / Celebrations

The goal celebration where Shane grabs Ilya's face in both hands and shakes it around viciously.

The chest bump that turns into Ilya holding him there for half a second longer than necessary because they're both laughing too hard.

When one of them gets named first star, the other immediately interrupts the interview by spraying him with a water bottle

Shane grabbing the back of Ilya's helmet and shaking it the way you'd ruffle someone's hair if the helmet wasn't there.

After wins Ilya getting Shane in a headlock and dragging him halfway across the ice.

Video / Meetings

The video session where the coaches are breaking down Ilya's one-timer and Shane keeps quietly finishing the explanation because he's spent years trying to defend against it. Ilya turning around to stare at him. Everyone else in the room already grinning, Shane having absolutely no idea what is funny.

Shane flicking the back of Ilya's helmet every time he says something stupid during film review.

Both of them are notorious video guys, which means they keep accidentally finding themselves alone in the video room after practice. At some point they stop pretending it's an accident.

AHH i’m having so much fun with this :) i did not think ppl would care abt hockey in HR this much but here we are. just a quick shameless plug first since ppl DO seem to b interested: if y'all want an actual deep dive into hockey culture/masculinity/hollanov, fic series boys will be boys is literally built around this, shane-centric but full timeline.

OK ANYWAY, thoughts (many), going roughly timeline style for clarity:

hockey culture baseline

first thing that matters: ilya & shane are NOT outsiders to hockey culture, they're formed by it. elite pipelines (ohl/cska juniors etc) where rookie treatment runs from annoying traditions → genuinely fucked-up hazing that mostly gets cleaned up by nhl level. the stuff people think of as “hockey hazing horror stories”...that’s mostly juniors. by pro level it gets image-managed, so it becomes

expensive rookie dinners

gear carrying / errands

dumb initiation rituals

chirping & embarrassment-as-bonding

same hierarchy, just sanitized. so both of them start with this baseline assumption of “yeah this is just what happens. it’s brotherhood.” & that matters bc it means neither of them is judging it from the outside when they're inside it

early career

ilya is never really the hazing guy, even when he participates in it imo. he's not cruel, he reads rooms/people in a way that's almost predatory but like warm abt it. he clocks what a rookie can take before they even know it themselves, just a great people person.

so in boston-era ilya, the dynamic around rookies is more like

he’s adjacent to the culture, not driving it imo. prob hands a beer to the kid if something goes too far/doesn't bring it up again. esp in his first ~2 yrs before being captain. once he’s captain, that shifts things further. if ilya’s not doing heavy bullshit, no one is. he’s well-liked, funny, good speech guy, very big brother energy in a normal hockey way, taking rooks out to clubs, messing around with them, but not breaking them

shane is in same environment, but he internalizes it differently, i think he sees rookies as systems tied to performance...i also do think his juniors experience w ohl was worse than ilya's by nature of being japanese canadian, mayb even some autistic traits that make it hard for him to connect w the other guys (all issues that r WAY bigger in juniors/won't matter once he's the franchise rebuilder/center of the metros, they will love shane the rook from day 1). so my early metros captain shane is not cruel, just absent socially mostly, only enough to keep up w expectations. unless it affects winning, he doesn’t register it

so rookies experience him like terrifyingly intense, emotionally unreadable, not personal which somehow makes it worse lol, “he’s not mad at you, he’s mad at the mistake" (but it feels the same). he runs a tight ship: efficient, blunt, zero wasted emotional energy. he’ll absolutely tear apart a shift and not look up lmao

as his relationship w ilya deepens, i think the closet pressure, montreal dynasty expectations, paranoia about image gets to him more, EVEN BEFORE cottage/tampa. so he gets even more rigid. anything that reads soft or exposed gets cut immediately. so it’s not that rookies are being treated poorly by him, but their captain is a locked door

ottawa ilya/last years of metros shane

to me, here's where the contrast gets a bit sharper.

ilya is on a losing team, rebuilding years ALL OVER AGAIN after doing it for boston, mentally not great at first w the depression/shane of it all/isolation. but as we see in tlg, chemistry on losing teams is survival, so that actually forces connection w vets and older players, and i do think that eventually trickles down to rooks.

he learns rookies' names before they've done anything notable, notices when someone's off without making it weird, etc. less big brother than he was in boston, not quite team dad yet either. rookies don't just respect him, but they orbit him :) climb him like a fucking tree. and he absolutely pretends he's above it while loving every second. helps that by this point ottawa's finally getting good too w the rebuilding coming to a close, playoff runs, real momentum, happy rookies instead of rebuilding misery!!

for shane, i think this era is psychologically brutal in a totally different way. he's watching ilya losing games, losing status, getting clowned by fans/media, becoming the punchline. add in the pressure of their now-exclusive relationship & shane's existing paranoia and i honestly think these become his most shut-off years. he's maintaining a machine here w all his energy. he wins a third cup in 2020, so obviously the room still respects him, but the intensity that's always been there is getting worse. rooks don't even know the guy

ottawa together

once shane gets to ottawa...oh boy. he's not the 1c/the face of the franchise. there r rookies who grew up idolizing him and he barely even notices bc he's too busy having an identity crisis...he's dealing with 11 years of metros identity collapse, the "hollander ran to his husband because he couldn't hack it" narrative, loss of control, humiliation, all of it. so instead of opening up, he goes further inward #tome.

first-year ottawa shane is honestly just...gone. buried in tape, systems, structure. not even hard on the rookies bc he's not their captain. and everyone def feels it, rooks included, esp the ones who worshipped him growing up. shell of a guy what r we looking at. meanwhile ilya's holding court & half the team is hanging off him, so everyone's kind of looking at him like ??? this is your husband???

and ilya knows something is Wrong. bc from the outside shane got everything he was supposed to want w his marriage & living together etc. but in shane's head it's just this isn't my jersey this isn't my team i didn't choose this i didn't choose i didn't choose i didn't-

the diff is that ilya already did most of his emotional processing in ottawa (TLG) all of that changed him. for shane it's delayed, this first yr is shane's TLG, but hopefully w more support than ilya had. turning 30 (so some mental growing up automatically), finally admitting to ilya that he's miserable in ways he feels guilty about because everyone expected him to be happy.

& once he gets through that, i think they almost converge. ilya stays the warmer guy. he'll explain something through a story, a joke, a conversation. shane becomes the guy you go to when you want the truth. weird locker room situation? weird interview? don't know if something crossed a line? ask shane. he'll give you the answer in four sentences, clap you on the shoulder, and go back to tape. :)

and weirdly, that becomes its own kind of safety. eventually i think shane becomes something like safe authority. still terrifying on the ice, demanding, uncompromising...but he's no longer protecting an image or managing insecurity through control. he doesn't need rookies to not embarrass him anymore

later-centaurs hollanov to me is just:

picking rookies up after bad nights

quietly handling hospital/chaos situations

giving blunt advice with zero judgment

showing up in small ways instead of performative ones

lowkey team dads, basically :') and we all cheered!!!!

tldr

ilya processes outward → becomes an emotionally present captain early. those are HIS rooks

shane processes inward → becomes a distant captain first, then slowly grows into someone steadier, kinder, & weirdly one of the safest guys in the room