path to greatness

The people looking for exactly that kind of story about said character will very easily find your story and be super happy about it.

Those people who don't care to read that kind of interpretation about the character can easily avoid it, and you don't annoy them by them having to click out of your story or scroll past your story.

Those tags are usually "bashing Character X" or "anti Character X" or "Character X critical" or "dark Character X". (Though, the last one doesn't necessarily mean bashing.)

What does that mean for the Heated Rivalry fandom?

You write a story where Crowell or Kent is an absolute piece of shit? No bashing tag needed because the book series already makes them pieces of shit.

You write a story about Troy or Fabian or Kip or Scott (those are the examples I have seen) behaving horribly? You tag it fucking bashing of these characters because they're all main characters portrayed as the protagonist/hero in one part of the book.

You write a story about Hayden or J.J. where they're not reconciling with Shane or are actively trying to sabotage Shane's relationship? You tag it bashing. Because that's not the role they have in the books concerning Shane, even though they both have their moments of being not very good friends. You write a story about Shane falling out with his parents or them not supporting their son's relationship? You tag it bashing!

Guys it's not true. It's a running joke. They're using it to reassure Ilya that they like him a lot (which is why Shane loves it) but it's not like. Real. Shane is their favorite. They spend a lot of time with Ilya and they truly enjoy his company and love him but Shane is their baby. He's the favorite. That's the joke. If it was true they wouldn't say it, they're saying because everyone there knows it's a joke.

Like, I'm sorry, but if Hollanov has a bad break-up the Hollanders are OUT. They'll be nice if they run into each other in the supermarket, or something, but there is not going to be further contact. Ilya is not going to come over for puzzles anymore. Unless Shane and him have kids when they break up, which would be a whole different animal, Ilya would lose Hollander rights and become a family friend they don't have contact with. Because his role in the family is to be Shane's partner, and as much as they love him, they're always going to choose Shane.

Yes, it's lovely that they get along with Ilya and genuinely care about him, but if at any point Shane and Ilya broke up, Ilya would not have David and Yuna in his life any longer.

Like Ilya can’t come out because…..? Shane doesn’t want him to? That’s pretty much it? If you applied any logic, you’d think, oh, he’s worried about having his passport revoked and it impacting his ability to work, or losing his job, but nope, never contemplated. like in the text, the only reason it seems Ilya can’t come out is he and Shane are worried people will put it together that they’re a couple. which really only has consequences for Shane, and means Ilya is essentially in the closet just to protect Shane, which fine, makes sense as a motivation, but leads into the even more baffling premise of TLG: why did Shane come out to his team?

This happens between books and we don’t really get any insight into why Shane decided to come out to his team, but it’s really hard to reconcile with who he is as a person. Again, it implies that the issue is the rivalry, not homophobia. Shane is already dealing with being one of the only Asian players, and neurodivergent to boot—it’s hard to accept that he would willingly other himself further by coming out unless it was to also reveal his relationship. The strain on Shane is actually worse if he comes out but continues to hide his relationship?? Because he loses the plausible deniability of assumed straightness. And it’s not like he came out to soft launch his relationship, which would’ve also made some sense, because in TLG the plan is still to wait until retirement initially. Further, it doesn’t make sense for Shane to come out to his team rather than Ilya, because Shane is far more likely to experience professional consequences than Ilya—Ilya’s bad boy reputation protects him in a way that Shane’s model minority status does not.

It’s further strange that TLG asks us to believe the team is like mostly okay with Shane being gay, though I think this is a big opening for the tv show to explore. It’s implied they were awkward at first and they’re maybe distant now, but you can assume (as I think most fans do, in order to make it make sense) that Shane maybe isn’t the most reliable narrator about how bad it is, and finding out it’s Ilya is what causes that underlying tension to bubble over.