#they’re bad books we can say that oh my god we need to say that
I can express how much the ending of TLG has turned me off from every 'shane leaves Montreal for Ilyas team' fic out there. I don't care if its Boston or Ottawa. Me, a veteran of the trenches that is sports rpf is excluding the captain kink tag. Fucking hell it is such a bad book and the ending made me so mad that I am now against the OTP being teammates in any canon divergence ever. If past year me saw this she would wonder what the fuck happened.
I am the exact same way and it’s one of the reasons why this fandom is such a barren landscape to me. Like any fic that involves Shane leaving Montreal for Ilya’s team is a hard no for me because I hate the canon ending so much. Reminders of it just make me angry all over again.
I also don’t want them to be teammates at all. I don’t accept that they need to be on the same team to have a fulfilling and loving relationship, and I really don’t accept the idea that either of them should have to sacrifice hockey. I think they love playing with each other and being on the same team deprives them of that because they play the same goddamn position. I think they are both phenomenal players and captains and neither of them should have to take a career hit to be together. But so many fics have either both of them in Ottawa or both in Boston and so my fields are empty of harvest
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What truly pisses me off about TLG is tripgate. I just. why would you write it like that. And fine. Fine. You've written it like that, how are you not dealing with any of its consequences. It just feels like the most targeted, convenient plot point to make Shane want to leave Montreal of his own will. To turn that fanbase against him via accusations of cheating. It is so so stupid and I hate it so much. (It's also supposed to somehow??? minimize the loss? He's supposed to feel empowered walking away? I need. I need to give him a gun.)
Also. The irritating thing this fandom does is giving watsonian explanations to doylist conflicts. Like. When we're criticizing Ilya's actions, we're criticizing RR and her butchering of both Ilya as a character and as an MC in a romance novel. Ilya isn't real. He's a narrative device, he's a vehicle. The one driving us off this fuckass cliff is Reid. Gods.
Tripgate legitimately cannot be salvaged unless you write an entirely new story. It is just such a bad plot point that undercuts the point of even the most generous reading of tlg, and it creates so many problems that the narrative never had any intention of solving. Like it’s one of the worst goddamn plot points in a narrative fucking choked with bad writing decisions.
I very often see tripgate defended as being an important part of Shane’s heroic arc. And this interpretation just. Could not possibly be more wrong.
Shane’s “heroic arc” in tlg is picking Ilya over hockey. It is the question he is directly confronted with and the one he answers in the affirmative during his conversation with Crowell. And I’ve seen a lot of people construe the fact that Shane signs with Ottawa as him once again picking Ilya.
But that’s objectively not what’s happening. A character does not get the benefit of saying that he made a choice if the only reason why he makes that choice is because all other choices are taken from him. Shane does not get to look at his decision to move to Ottawa and say to Ilya “I left Montreal for you babe 😘” because he DOESNT. He leaves Montreal because he’s forced out by a hostile work environment and public vitriol. He leaves Montreal because he can’t stay. And this does in fact devastate his career to the point where he is afraid that no one will sign him. He doesn’t sign with Ottawa for Ilya and so we cannot reasonably claim that it’s the completion of his arc. He didn’t pick this willingly.
Which, as a note, is the same reason why I refuse to give Ilya any credit for the claim that he picked hockey over Shane. I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again, he presents the idea of moving to Canada to begin with for the sake of his own immigration. He explicitly states that America is bad for Russians and he wants to move to Canada. Shane wants to him to come to Montreal and Ilya says no because they can’t afford him. He picks Ottawa explicitly so his career won’t take a hit, and then we retconn it in later books to make Ottawa into some terrible team that Ilya only went to because it was convenient for Shane. Like. This idea that Ilya sacrifices hockey for Shane is laughable because when he was presented with the choice of “will you take a pay cut and sacrifice your captaincy for Shane” he just straight up says “no” and they do Ottawa instead. Like he legitimately picks hockey over Shane. These books drive me absolutely bonkers because I personally think that the entire narrative of “will you pick your love over X” is overtired but, to be clear, that’s a personal preference and not a legitimate criticism. Some books just aren’t for me and that’s fine.
The legitimate criticism is that in practice both Shane and Ilya’s actions substantively answer that question with “NOT REALLY NO.” Ilya picks Ottawa over playing in Montreal with Shane and Shane only picks Ottawa because he loses all other options. Like oh my god that book undermines its own message at every possible turn. The books display an alarming lack of confidence in the fact that Shane and Ilya will pick each other when it comes down to it, and it’s shown in the fact that they repeatedly end their stories with them either not picking each other or only picking each other out of lack of other options. It simply does not accomplish its own message.
If you accept as a premise that Shane and Ilya are best on the same team which I don’t but let’s assume for the sake of the argument you should be able to get them there without putting a gun to their head. The entire point of a character’s arc and specifically a heroic character arc is to have your character become the kind of person who makes the right choice. They should be able to bring about their own ends. And tripgate completely robs them of that agency. Shane’s “happy ending” is just a bad thing that happens to him and that he never receives an ounce of justice or healing for. Ilya’s happy ending is to be a guy whose happiness comes at his partner’s cost and who frankly does not seem to recognize or care that his partner is hurt. It cheapens both of them. Like. This is one of the most bizarrely punitive and fundamentally miserable “happy endings” I have ever seen executed in fiction. Her editor should be taken out back and shot like what were they thinking letting an ending like that get to print
I think with books like these it’s very important to recognize when a literary analysis is watsonian and when it’s Doylistic. If you are analyzing a work within that work’s universe, then you are taking a watsonian approach. But Doylism demands you look at the real world influences underlying the writing choices. A watsonian analysis accepts the events and the rules of the universe and tries to find meaning within them. But a Doylistic perspective is meant to critique how the work was actually created.
And frankly, I don’t find watsonian analyses for the long game to be very helpful. There is no compelling in-universe explanation for how that book ends. If you look at it in-universe, the analysis is “Shane should hire a divorce attorney.” Like. Ilya shows a mind-boggling lack of compassion towards the man he’s supposed to love more than anything in the world throughout that entire book, but particularly in how it ends.
I go after Ilya so hard in the long game but that’s because I really like Ilya as a character and I’m upset at how much he was butchered by the end of it. The ending of the long game is a discredit to both of them.
In all the other books, Ilya is presented as a compassionate and empathetic character. That’s one of the reasons why I like him so much.
But the empathy displayed by the version of him we see in the long game is non-existent. Like. The most he does is look concerned after the game. He doesn’t even call Shane until the next day. When he does, it’s to complain about how the media backlash against Shane is actually insulting to him because it implies he needed Shane to trip for him to win. Shane points out that he only won because Shane tripped and Ilya’s like “Not now Shane.”
Every single thing he says with respect to the trip is some kind of backhanded and insulting joke. Don’t worry about the pay cut, your rich husband will provide. His captaincy? Prima fucking donna, you know you don’t get a leadership role. Get to the front of the line with the rest of the plebeians. He cracks jokes about how Shane doesn’t have any playoff games to get to at one point. The closest he gets to displaying anything close to sympathy is when Shane is worrying about whether anyone would sign him now and Ilya asks him if he needs Ilya to fuck his self esteem better in his trophy room.
And the trip is very much presented as a good thing that happened to Ilya. It is the day after it happens and Ilya’s like. Yeah, there’s a huge number of disgusting opinion pieces and angry tweets directed at disparaging the love of my life. It may be so bad that he quits the job that’s been his long-held dream to work until the day he retires. I’m so excited at the idea but I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high.
If I was going through something as personally devastating as my career dreams being lost, my reputation being trashed, and my name being dragged through the mud by the public at large, and my partner responded by getting excited and trying not to get his hopes up too high about how good this could be for him, I would be in prison.
When Shane signs with Ottawa and ends up with a new jersey, Ilya describes his joy as “overwhelming” and asks if he can fuck Shane in bed with it on. There is no recognition whatsoever about how this must be painful or bittersweet for Shane, who, again, has just been dragged through the mud so hard that he went from the most respected player in the League to being worried no team would sign him. The empathy is absolutely non-existent. That ending is an insult to both of their characters. Like it is so poorly written and inconsistent with their every preceding representation in the novels. And that is a Doylistic critique of the book. I’m not saying “Ilya is a bad person,” he’s not a person at all. I’m saying he is written poorly.
You need to either excise tripgate entirely or you need to write an entirely new narrative dealing with and addressing its consequences and its aftermath. It is just such an ugly and poorly written ending as it stands. It completely undercuts what’s supposed to be the outright message of the book and it diminishes both of those characters.
Is Peter “if I could get pregnant I would be Shane Hollander’s surrogate, No Need For Medical Intervention” Landry the reason Shane finds out about omegaverse/mpreg in the Sochi Outing AU?
I feel like if we eventually get Shane’s cscs “I WOULD ABORT THAT THANG >:(” rant/leak, Peter would be the initiator of the incident (Ilya firmly asserts that It Is All That Whore Family’s Fault and his beef with the Landrys grows by the power of ten)
I don’t think Peter reads or is super aware of fanfic, and particularly omegaverse fanfic. I think Rose is only aware of it because people showed it to her during an interview and now she inflicts the knowledge on others. If Shane finds out about just how many people want him pregnant it’s going to be because rose finds out that there’s a fuckton of fic of Shane Hollander either impregnating or being impregnated by Her Own Brother Who She Knew In The Cradle and she immediately decided to inflict this knowledge on both of those poor men. Hey do you want to know a fun fact I learned today
I think this AU means that in the off season Shane and Ilya go golfing with Obama.
Ilya’s got one hand on Shane’s elbow the whole time so he doesn’t walk straight into the water hazard right after he makes eye contact with Obama, who has probably patriot act’d his sexts
I love how when there are discussions about the Sochi au there is always the addition of Obama. Obama was there and he knows and don't you forget that.
I imagine the outrage about the rebuild gets so big that Obama gets asked about it in press conferences. Gods people would actually be aware of hockey in the US. Actually crazy that it might not be the fourth biggest in north america in that au.
It’s because his presence in this fic torments me. I’m so sorry to RPF you Mr President but you’re needed
Shane and Ilya’s fucking situationship does more to elevate hockey in the global public eye than anything the NHL has ever done in its entire history. Like this is such a big scandal and then when Shane gets on his bullshit with the rebuild it all just gets stirred up again. Like they really took U.S. hockey from a relatively unpopular sport to a globally followed institution. These poor fucking men just want to play their sport and have life-affirming gay sex and for those two things to be unrelated but they’re simply too politically relevant for their own good.
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in pez, what kind of messaging app are Izuku et al using? Where like Izuku’s phone number is a secret but Shinsou (and Bakugou…?) can still contact him but also deliberately share their contact after messaging him(?)
Class 3-A uses a GroupMe style messaging app for their class group chat. One person makes the chat and adds everyone’s account, so each individual participant doesn’t necessarily have the phone number of the individual people in the groupchat, especially if you didn’t make the chat yourself. GroupMe allows you to send DMs to individuals in the chat through the app. Shinsou and Bakugou are dm-ing him in the app because they don’t have his actual phone number. Shinsou has never contacted Izuku directly. And Bakugou never got Izuku’s updated contact information after Izuku’s phone number was leaked in their second year. If Izuku has someone’s actual phone number, that’s a sign that he’s close to that person. If they’re starting a GroupMe style chat to talk to them, then he’s not even given them his phone number.
Would Crash Out Shane feel like he's better or worse off than obamaverse Shane?
Crashout Shane is outright suicidal and thinks he’s lost hockey (and Ilya) forever so I think they’d agree he’s worse off. He also has to deal with the world having concrete knowledge of what sex acts he’s performed over the years which is. Killing him. Sochi outing au Shane is going viral for Providing Valuable Services In Pursuit Of The Raiders’ Stanley Cup Run which is. Also killing him. It makes him feel so gross and kind of prostitute-y. But no one has any idea what he and Ilya do behind closed doors.
Crashout Shane has two things on Sochi outing au Shane: 1) he feels like he can still protect Ilya from the threat of Russian assassination by keeping their relationship secret and 2) he has never had to experience the fear called “did Obama patriot act my sexts”
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Rose's misscarriage story makes me think of how Halsey didnt know she was pregnant at 20 and also had one.
And her managers saw her in bed bleeding and were like "this concert is kind of a big deal..." and she then went on stage to perform
When I wrote Rose’s miscarriage story I had never heard of Halsey’s story until someone else sent me a video of her sharing it in an ask. Sometimes art imitates life in the most awful ways
Sochi Outing AU I cannot imagine anything Shane would hate more than his city deciding that Ilya is his good luck charm. Unfortunately he just pulled THEEEE greatest move ever seen on ice, broke the playoffs sex ban so loudly and blatabtly Maryland is considering repealing article 3-322 about a decade early, and proceeded to sweep the next round.
Its not gay if its for Shane Hollander and its not breaking the ban if its Ilya Rozanov. Shane. Shane did Ilya have his way with you today yet. Shane are you listening we cant afford to lose this game. Guys hes not responding ILYA GET THAT MOUTH IN HERE PRONTO.
Ilya kinda wishes everyone went back to thinking hes a common whore and Shane REALLY wishes everyone went back to thinking hes a nun. Also yes he did get his back blown out this morning but thats none of your business.
It is TORTURE.
The jokes are brutal and unrelenting. You know that line in canon where Hayden’s like “you always play better after seeing Lily?” Yeah, uh. They always play noticeably better after they’ve been together. And the public. Notices.
Shane’s ready to drown himself. Ilya thinks it’s the funniest thing in the world in private but the second someone brings it up in person someone has to end the interview immediately for the safety of the reporter. He is the only one allowed to joke about how he and his boyfriend have such life-affirming sex that their dick appointments have a discernible impact on their playoffs chances.
In private though Ilya cannot resist the temptation to clown on Shane for it. The second the Raiders are knocked out of the playoffs Ilya is like “I am just concubine now” and Shane is like “STOP”
Shane’s just trying to go to bed at a reasonable hour because he’s got another game tomorrow and Ilya is like *heavy sigh* “time to go perform my Duties” and Shane is like “do you ever want to touch me again.” But Ilya knows the threat is empty because 1) he is confident in the fact that he is IRRESISTIBLE to that man and 2) he knows Shane secretly believes it himself and would never do anything to endanger his chances at the Stanley Cup. He makes one (1) joke about Shane invoking husbandly privileges and Shane gets the closest he has ever been to murder-suicide.
Legitimately it is such a torment nexus of a situation. The jokes are inescapable for the rest of their career. Whenever one of the Sochi crew is in the playoffs, the rest of Hollanov + the Ally Squad is in attendance supporting them. If one of Hollanov is competing in a playoffs round but the other isn’t, then you have to keep the other in public view at all moments or the internet will become convinced that they just fucked in a storage closet to give the other a boost for the next period. Shane makes the mistake of going to the bathroom one (1) time when the Raiders make the conference finals and suddenly the entire internet thinks he was sucking dick so his man could win the game. It does not help that the Raiders then rally and win the game. But! Shane! Had! Nothing! To! Do! With! That! If there was a nearby body of water Shane would walk into it. Every time one of them wins the Stanley Cup there’s a slew of jokes about whether the other should get his name carved on it too in recognition of his “meaningful contributions.”
The only good thing to come out of this is the fact that they are almost completely inoculated from game rigging allegations. Quite literally the entire world including the Obamas believes that this is foreplay to them. They are devastatingly correct. The playoffs is always the catalyst to the greatest sex of either of their lives. But they want that information to be PRIVATE.
Once they figure their shit out they’re flying constantly to visit each other during the season whenever one has enough of a break in their games/practices to make it feasible. Hollanov is rebuilding the rainforest in recompense for how much private flying they do (they can’t fly commercial due to security risks). Every single time they get papped visiting each other it kicks up an inevitable surge of the “oh my god we’re winning the next game” jokes on Raiders/Metros Twitter. The raiders and the metros fans have never been more united because everyone thinks that the fact that their captains are regularly having life-affirming freak sex with each other is the reason why the raiders and the metros are regularly battling it out for the #1 and #2 spot in the division. You know in a way their captains started this relationship for THEM.
theres this fic by gevaisa, they do a bit of troy barrett critical fics BUT they have this fic called 'Atonement and Salvation' and its an outsider POV of the metros GM absolutely GUTTING the team and coaching staff to keep shane 'hockey jesus' hollander on the team
Hello again! I just wanted to let you know I came across somebody sharing screenshots of your posts on threads, so if you get an uptick in followers or asks, that might be why!
Whenever the non-goalie goal gets brought up in sochi outing au I have to cackle because *everyone* knows what is about to go down in that house. Everyone. People who do not give a shit about hockey know what is about to go down in that house. I'm choosing to put aside the privacy nightmares to focus on the funny parts. Oh god the memes that would come out of that event. Literally everyone can see Ilya shaking and vibrating with the barely restrained urge to put shane through the bed. Or a table. Or a wall. Or a- he's not feeling picky. He looks like he downed fifteen energy drinks on top of six shots of espresso. Shane and Ilya do not make eye contact even once during the interviews because they know their resolve would break like a straw. Others can still tell no body language readers required
Ilya is shaking like a chihuahua that just snorted its own body weight in crack. Shane is trying so fucking hard to preserve his composure and He Is Failing. They are both actively grappling with the fact that the entire world knows that they are about to take each other in manful fashion and it is not enough to get them to reel themselves in. The Boston Raiders have been high fiving each other with shit eating grins since the match ended even though they lost. One of them tells a reporter that they still feel like Cap won something and it Does Not Help. A lip reader caught Hélène looking Shane up and down in judgment before saying “whore behavior” and tomorrow Shane’s gonna have to talk to his mom about it. Hayden Pike looks like he wants to kill himself. No one thinks the playoffs sex ban has been followed for a single day of this tournament and they know it is not surviving the night. They still have to meet Will & Kate.
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Love love love everything about the Sochi Outing AU Montreal rebuild!
Have you thought about coaching at all? I might have missed the post if you have already mentioned it. Obviously Theriault has to go.
In my own post-TLG Montreal woos Shane back head canon I have the Metros recruit the in-universe version of Vicky Sunohara as the new head coach. She is so amazing as both a player and a coach! Her style would be a total culture shift for the team and how players responded to the idea of working with a female coach would also be a useful litmus test of whether they are a good fit for the rebuild.
See I really love the idea of having a highly qualified female coach for the metros dream team rebuild. Like I’d be so down to use this for the rebuild.
So I have been thinking about how to handle the coaching because I think it’s critical for curing team culture. So far what insofar as the progression is:
Theriault: homophobic from the outset, almost immediately ousted by Metros ownership. He’s calling Shane a slur and J.J. is texting team ownership under the table. Not his boy, not on his fucking watch. Ownership is. Askance. Is ANYONE thinking about what Obama would say.
Unnamed Assistant Coach: takes over as head coach in Theriault’s wake, not too much better. Not outright calling Shane any slurs but subtly encouraging the hostile behavior from his teammates. He’s gotta go too.
The summer before the 2014-2015 season, the metros are looking for a new head coach to try and fix the culture problems. In my mind, Yuna got at least one Olympic gold medal in hockey before her injury. She ends up putting forward the name of a player she knew when she was on Team Canada, who went on to have an amazing career modeled off of Vicky Sunohara’s. She’s qualified as fuck and she does become an amazing litmus test for whether a player will work with the rebuild. And it’s one of the things that puts the idea in Shane’s mind to ask for Hélène Laurent. They’re already making history with the first female coach in the NHL and ownership went for it. (In real life there has been a female coach in the NHL she just doesn’t start until 2024 so this would beat real life by. A decade.) He knows who he wants for this rebuild and this may very well be the last season he gets so maybe he just pushes for what he wants and sees if he gets a break through.
The To Be Named Female Coach also had a secret crush on The Truck. She’s not even gay it’s just the effect of The Truck. She intends to die with this secret.
