so i mentioned it in the tags of this post but i want to elaborate on this line in particular:
because rachel reid uses âbitchyâ or âbitchinessâ as a descriptor of shaneâs behaviour in the long game, both by shane himself and ilya. what i find bizarre about it â considering that it is a derogatory gendered term â is that it is always used to imply shane is being unreasonable. shane is tone policing himself, even though his response to this situation (ilya telling him that heâs now close with troy barrett, someone shane knows as outwardly homophobic) is logical, and predicated on ilyaâs repeated failure to communicate. ilya replies âi might be busy having sex with troyâ and then hangs up. despite his tone, despite what he says, he is only described as speaking âtightly,â rather than âbitchily.â
to be clear, ilya and shane are both men, but ilyaâs behaviour is never described this way, even when he also acts petty, unkind, or bitchy. as another example:
ilya pokes fun at shaneâs diet, even after shane tells him to stop. shane loses his patience and reacts to something ilya started, but shaneâs behaviour is what is described as bitchy, not ilyaâs. shane is reacting unreasonably.
in the same scene â shane describes himself as an absolute bitch. shane is acting unreasonably. and again:
why is shane described this way? or more specifically â why is shane the only one described this way in the book? ilya is jealous of shane interacting with a reporter in a professional setting and shoots a puck at them from behind glass, something shane describes as humiliating, but reid doesnât describe this action as bitchiness. ilya antagonises shane, but shane responding is what is considered bitchy.
like i said, we cannot extricate âbitchâ from its origin as a gendered pejorative, but we also cannot ignore that it is racialised â reid exclusively uses it to describe the gay asian character (who is also a bottom) responding to antagonism. does that make sense? why are you using this particular language to deride shaneâs actions in this way, and why is it always utilised in scenes where ilya is an instigator? not to get heteronormative about it, but this dynamic feels like a reflection of the happy husband / nagging bitch wife dynamic. it is that deep.
it is important to consider the language we use to tell a story. reidâs depiction of shane is not magically unaffected by her own, obvious biases around race and sexuality. the fetishisation of his race, his feminisation, her use of ableist language all informs how she chooses to have him react and, in turn, how she chooses to describe his reaction. this is not meaningful commentary about shaneâs understanding of gender or his own queerness or his struggle to find community in a toxically masculine environment. he is not calling himself a bitch as an interrogation of shaneâs role as a professional athlete intersecting with his sexuality, or even how shane personally views women, it is more indicative of how reid views women. she codifies that shane and ilya fulfil gendered stereotypes in their relationship. ilya is tall and masculine and shane small and hairless. ilya is intelligent and shane is not. ilya is right and shane is wrong. ilya is a cocky asshole and shane is a bitch.
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v important question but was the scene from snapping birch where the streets are revisiting the video of shane rescuing rose from the paparazzi inspired by that time tom holland rescued zendaya from a swarm of paps? im connecting the dotsđ
shane and jj rating the racist shit they hear on the ice. 6/10 okay that genuinely pissed me off. 1/10 yelling a slur takes no creativity no effort no pizzazz. booooo boring!!! 8/10 i broke a finger on your face for that one so i guess i have to give you points but also points off for being fucking evil. 4/10 okay i had to go to wikipedia for this one man, i actually didnt know that was a slur that existed??? damn
comeau says something really stupid and really White⢠at post-game drinks or whatever and jj makes direct eye contact with shane, then pulls out his phone and sends him this image (he edited it himself. he's been waiting for this moment)
and shane has to hold in laughter so hard that he actually has to excuse himself and leave the room for a minute. jj is SO proud of himself.
Something I think about with the Long Game ending is the sex scenes. I don't necessarily mind Ilya's first reaction to Shane struggling being sex. I feel like thats the very first way Shane and Ilya learned to communicate, and it's something that settles both Shane and Ilya. The problem is that there's nothing after. Sex is how they first learned to communicate, but by the end of HR they're starting to learn to communicate with their words, and that learning process is ostensibly one of the big points of conflict in TLG. To make their character arcs work, Shane and Ilya should be communicating verbally and figuring out a compromise that makes both of them at least mostly happy at least at the end of the book. This would be a way to show Ilya as the good partner that he's supposed to be. Instead, Ilya fucks Shane and there's no follow up conversation. This lack of communication makes it seem like Ilya does not care about Shane outside of him being some kind of sex doll and is a shitty way to finish the book and a terrible ending for both Ilya and Shane.
Really, by the end of the book, they should have talked about the Boxing day fight, Ilya retconning his move to Ottawa, Shane refusing to mention the homophobia from the metros organization, the Russia problem, and the impacts that being outed have had on them.
I think that doing this, along with making the move to Ottawa less of a humiliation for Shane (give him the A and/or co-captaincy, market worthy pay, and making Ilya not make fun of Shane for being new to the team) could have made the ending more in-character, happier, and still have the outcome Reid seemed to want for the characters.
Question. How is Ryan Price with the Voyageurs in the Sochi AU bc rgt b4 Sochi he's with the Bears?
I mean, im pretty sure that Ryan won the cup with Ilya.
They traded for him.
He canonically gets traded pretty much every year, including the year after he won the Cup with Ilya. I think he goes to Tampa or something in canon after the Raiders, but I donât remember if that was the year right after his Cup win or if he went to a different team first. In the Sochi AU, he finishes out the 2013-2014 season with the Raiders and still gets traded for the 2014-2015 seasonâbut he goes to Montreal instead.
The Metros went after him because he was fuck-off big and didnât turn on Ilya upon his return from Sochi. They wanted an enforcer to protect Shane on the ice. The last season had been disastrous, and Shane ends up getting multiple relatively minor injuries on the ice during the last half of the season. It had become clear at that point that the only guys from his line willing to even try to protect or support him on the ice were J.J. and Hayden. The city was a fucking powder keg about the issueâespecially because someone tried to straight up kill Shane during the Olympic semi-finals, and there were concerns around another attack happening on the ice. Shane getting into fights during a game was turning into a new reason for metros fans to try to set the visiting teamâs fucking bus on fire because If The Players Will Not Protect Their Man Then They Will Protect Him Themselves. The Metros wanted to show that they were taking the issue seriously by getting an enforcer to deter attacks on Shane and handle any that arose. And Ryan was the perfect candidate.
Again, heâd just played with Ilya for a season, so they didnât think Shane being gay would be a problem for him. The Raiders management was willing to trade himâin part because post-Sochi the Raiders had taken the strong stance of An Attack On Our Boy Is An Attack On All Of Us and any attempts to go after Ilya on the ice had almost invariably turned into a team-wide brawl. They didnât feel they needed an enforcer to keep Ilya safe, and they wanted to clear some cap spaceâthey had a few contracts up for renewal and theyâd just won a Cup, so their playersâ contract value had just gone up. The Metros traded draft picks and got Ryan in return.
Ironically, Shane didnât even want Ryan for the dream team rebuild. Ryan had spent his entire career being used primarily to get into flashy fights and rile up the audience. He was a glorified boxer on skates, and Shane wanted a serious defenseman. Ryan had never been that and Shane didnât know that he wanted to be that. The Metros management let him be a very loud voice on how to rebuild their roster, but they overrode him on Ryan Price. He needed an enforcer.
Then, Ryan turned out to 1) want to actually just be taken seriously as a player and didnât want to be getting into fights every game and 2) be as gay as the day is long. It worked out. He mostly gets to be there as nuclear deterrent now, and he doesnât have to go out and actively seek fights the way he did on his old teams. He does get into some fightsâusually when someone goes after Shane or HĂŠlène on the iceâbut his fighting average is way down. And the Metros have no intention to trade him once the season ends. Montreal loves its new strong gay son and would set fire to the downtown if the Metros got rid of him. So Ryanâs done being traded every season. He has a home in Montreal as long as he wants it
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really love that every time they cut to frank he was doing some bullshit. hits peter with an armored car and tells him to stop whining. lives in an abandoned ship with 20 booby traps like a maniac and thinks that's normal. brought a gun to a hulk and telepath fight and genuinely thought that would be enough. sees hundreds of people get frozen by jean's psychic powers and sets up a sniper gun on a roof because he's not gonna let that stop him. i have to respect the hustle
the best piece of writing advice I got was from my creative nonfiction professor when I turned in Kill Yourself (a transgender metaphor, one of my favorites) which amounted to saying I'm not committing hard enough. The piece was somewhat gory and kinda painful but I wanted it to be visceral and he was literally the only one to see that. Every other person and professor would have said to make minor changes here and there but he was the one seeing I was holding back for the sake of the assignment. So, he told me to stop being scared and just write exactly what I wanted to say, to commit as hard as possible to the idea instead of testing the waters to see if im even allowed to. So I did, and he was right. The original lacked the conviction required to make the idea work, and the revision brought it to the level that truly let it shine
I won an award for this piece and I genuinely dont think I would have if I didn't get told to go harder. He was one of the only people in my life who truly just got it. A fantastic writer and story teller and part of it is that he's incredibly authentic, sometimes to his detriment.
Don't be afraid of your writing. It hurts putting your everything on display for everyone to see, but its only then when true beautiful writing can be created
I saw brand new day for the second time today and I thought about what you said about no one using Peterâs name before Jean breaks into his apartment and YEAH YOUâRE RIGHT. His AI does call him Peter a couple of times but thatâs it and I donât think that really counts but other than that NO ONE CALLS HIM HIS NAME before Jean! I am losing my mind someone hug this poor man
THANK YOU for confirming for me. Oh Peter Parker youâre really going through it
When adversity hits their relationship in The Long Game, Ilya checks out and is just: "pat on the back, bro, you'll be good".
I think this is why fans say we infantalise Shane talking about how he's treated in tlg. They see Ilya give no weight to Shane's adverse moments (that phonecall when Shane needs to share the homophobic way he was threatened by Crowell and Ilya is just seething internally at Shane the whole time), and how little earnest empathy he gives after tripgate. I think they and Ilya see Shane worry about what Crowell and others think of him as Shane's internalised homophobia externally injuring Ilya. So they don't give it weight either.
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One of the most infuriating narratives for me is the idea that the problem montreal had was with Shane dating his rival and not homophobia. I know this is supported by the narrative. i know Shane comes out to them, it goes okayish, but him being with Ilya is the thing that sends it crashing down. I can understand all of that and think it creates a narrative which is totally inconsistent with the experiences of queer people at best, and at worst creates a veil of comfort so it can sing the song of homophobia without really dealing with the issue.
This storyline is so often framed as âthe REAL reason they canât come out is because of the rivalry. We already solved homophobia!â and it just makes me want to scream You Donât Get It! Homophobia is not a binary yes/no switch and doesnât get instantly solved upon coming out.
People are generally aware that pointing at a gay man and screaming a slur is socially frowned upon but they do become uncomfortable in little ways and search for excuses to justify that discomfort. Sometimes coming out can go well but the minute that you start actually doing gay things (like getting into a relationship) it meets a very different reaction. Sometimes people are comfortable with someone being gay in theory but not in practice and they go searching for reasons to justify their homophobia.
Anyways, so no I donât believe in any world that the teamâs reaction was only about Ilya and had nothing to do with homophobia. In fact, i think no matter who Shane dated there would have been hostility to the highest level manageable while remaining socially acceptable. Ilya being his rival gave them an out whether we want to acknowledge it or not. It opened the door to be hostile and point towards reasons other than homophobia as justification. Framing it as being about their rivalry because homophobia apparently just disappears after coming out just completely ignores the complexity of the issue and treats coming out as a singular conflict to be overcome in a narrative.
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okay thinking about the curse interacting with Ilya in the centre bell saves shane AU and all i can think is. the curse probably does think it can convince ilya to keep shane possessed. I think you said this curse has been historically been used by the husbands themselves. So if it has memory of that then it probably thinks this is what husbands want it is good it is making the husband happy :) and ilya is trying to kill it with his mind.
So in literature thereâs this technique where you just have a character go on a rant and just say the meaning of the work. I donât know if thereâs a specific word for the technique. But if youâve ever read Native Son, thereâs this 10+ page monologue by the protagonistâs defense attorney where the attorney just argues the meaning of the book directly to the audience. Ayn Rand uses the same technique during this agonizing monologue in Atlas Shrugged that went on for like. Fucking fifty pages or something. It was torturous. I had to skim it just to get through.
I donât actually like this technique. I think itâs too heavy handed and that if you tell your story well, the audience should be able to figure out your storyâs meaning without you fucking arguing it to them outright.
That being said, the bell centre saves Shane AU isnât my Serious Well Written storyline. Itâs where I have fun Chewing. And itâs during the scenes where I make Ilya talk to the curse that I get the closest I will ever get to just having a character outright say the point of the story.
The curse genuinely believes it can convince Ilya to just. Let it keep Shane. Itâs so much better this way. Everyoneâs happier. Ilyaâs happier.
Shane will forget he was a person eventually. Heâll give up fighting. Itâs so easy to keep him down now. A few more months, and Ilya wonât have to worry about him trying to break out anymore. And if thereâs any way that Ilya wants it to be Shane better, just tell it :) It Would Do Anything To Make Ilya Happy :) :) :)
Ilya always tries to spend these conversations talking directly to Shane. He tells him not to listen to it. He begs him to hang on, theyâre calling the curse breakers now, theyâll have him out so, so soon. He tells him heâs sorry it took him so long. He tells him that the curse is wrong and that Ilya loves him, the real him.
And thatâs the closest the curse ever gets to outright disagreeing with Ilya.
No. No, No, No. It Kept All The Parts of Shane That Ilya Loves. It Got Rid Of The Mess.
Shaneâs Going To Ruin Everything If You Let Him Out. Heâs So Inconvenient. He Doesnât Want To Play For Ottawa. He Cares Too Much About His Career. Heâs Still Mad About How Everyone Treated Him After He Tripped. Heâs Not Going To Just Be Happy To Be Married To IlyaâNot The Way It Is :) :) Shaneâs So Angry And Messy And Heâll Let It Wreck Everything.
Thereâs this pervasive need in this fandom to pretend Shaneâs ending is happy because itâs more convenient to pretend that it is. Letting him be angry and hurt and unhappy as anyone would be after suffering what he suffers is inconvenient, so it is excised. But you have to hollow out his character to do that. You have to strip him of interiority and self interest. And thatâs exactly what the curse does. Thatâs the point of the stepford wife curse au.
In the Sochi AU, you talked about there being pressure for them to get married under the new Hollanov bill once it gets passed. Do they use the bill being in progress as a way to buy themselves time to avoid being pressured to marry immediately? Gay marriage was already legal in Canada, so they could theoretically get married right away. (There could be arguments like in snapping birch about the timing not being ideal, what with the trauma and all, of course. Or even just being new to being open about their relationship.)
If they were openly waiting for the bill in the US, I can see that potentially being seen as manipulative, like they're holding their marriage hostage to push through the bill. And given that Shane really used his position to get Ilya out, I'm wondering about the risk of the perception of them shifting from Romeo and Juliet to something more deliberately crafted. Would that be a serious concern, or would it be mostly drowned out by them being so clearly in love?
Oh theyâre dodging the marriage question every single time itâs thrown at them, which is often. They are not committing to any kind of âweâll get married when gay marriage is legal in X jurisdictionâ because people will try to fucking hold them to it.
A popular theory is that theyâll get married if the democrats manage to codify gay marriage into law, but Shane and Ilya have not said that. Theyâre not giving any kind of timeline. Theyâre sidestepping with a âYou know, we never thought weâd even have the option of getting married, and weâre so incredibly grateful for the fact that itâs something that can be in our future now. At the moment, weâre living in different cities and adjusting to being a couple in public, and we plan to spend some time getting our legs under us before we take that step. And I think I speak for both of us when I say that we feel incredibly lucky that weâve been afforded this chance to sit down and talk practically about marriage and what it looks like for us because for the longest time, we believed that weâd never get to have that.â
Theyâre dodging the question. Theyâve got a list of tastefully planned responses that are aimed at redirecting into how theyâre #blessed to even have the option to get married, which a lot of people still donât have. Support gay marriage rights. Theyâre pointing at the fact that they live in other cities, that theyâre still adjusting to being out and in the public eye as a couple, that theyâre both drowning in work obligations and they just donât have the time to get married right now. But they are absolutely not committing to a timeline.
A lot of people are trying to commit to a timeline for them. Theyâre convinced that the hollanov engagement will be announced when gay marriage is legalized in the U.S., when one of them wins the Stanley Cup, when they go to the next Olympics, when one of their contracts expires and the other can move to their team. But itâs all internet speculation.
Hollanov is just. An enormously divisive couple. You either love them with your whole heart or you think they crawled out of the pits of hell to lead mankind into perdition. Public opinion exists on extremes.
A lot of the world loves them unreasonably. Shane and Ilya reinvented love on their television screens and it was so real. Shane sprinted from the safety of his own delegation to find Ilya. He fell off the face of the planet, no one knew if he was alive, and when he reappears heâs holding Ilya Rozanovâs hand and he wonât let go of it. His own delegation is trying to force him into a car but Shane wonât go because heâs staying with him, heâs staying with him, heâs staying with him. Ilya begs Shane to go with them and tells him that he only came back so Shane would be safe so please please please just get in the fucking car. Shane Hollander ran to save Ilya Rozanov and Ilya Rozanov came back to save Shane Hollander and the love was just so visceral and painful and real to people.
People are obsessed with their love story. They are obsessed with their love story. The Hollanov wedding might as well be a royal one.
Thatâs not the kind of the relationship you can just walk away from.
When they get back from Sochi, thereâs pressure for them to get married out the fucking gate. If you love each other so much, then what are you waiting for? Shane and Ilya decide to buy themselves time before they get legally married because maybe the attention on their relationship will eventually die down. Maybe then theyâll have options that arenât a gunpoint wedding.
Real relationships can still fail. People can fall out of love. Sometimes the relationship just doesnât work out. Maybe one day they can just say they decided they were better off as friends.
They absolutely do not have that option coming out of Sochi.
Their fucking situationship affected global commerce. There is a world power that wants them fucking dead because of this. And that world power may be a little bit more careful about how they try to make that happen if they think the global outcry around how they murdered Hollanov may get them fucked up the ass with tariffs if an assassination gets traced back to them. And like. Shane just threatened his own fucking government with âif you donât save my boyfriend from Russian detention I will make sure I die on foreign soil in a way that has the voters blaming youâ AND SOMEHOW WON THE GAME OF POLITICAL CHICKEN.
There are so many powerful people pissed at them right now that they need the safety of being the worldâs most publicly beloved gay couple. They cannot just fucking hit the world with the olâ âBetter Off As Friends <3â
But maybe one day they could. Maybe one day Putin will die of a homophobia induced heart attack and a lot of politicians will leave office and a different gay couple will capture the hearts and minds of man and the pressure on them will be less, somehow. Probably not, but maybe.
Secretly, Shane and Ilya both want time because a part of them is hoping that the other will come to love them for real. But they also want time because they donât know what happens in five, ten, fifteen years. Maybe if they do end up hating each other they can somehow get out of this before itâs a marriage. Theyâre buying time.
I donât see them ever risking the perception that theyâre holding their wedding hostage for the gay marriage bill 1) for the reason that you pointed out, it comes off as manipulative and 2) people will hold them to their promise and demand that they get married when that shit passes, but theyâre generally not immune from speculation that their ârelationshipâ was deliberately crafted. There will always be some very loud voices accusing them of fabricating this whole thing. It ranges from âShane Hollanderâs REALLY on that sportsmanship award campaign, he did this to save Rozanov and got in too deepâ to tinfoil hat style conspiracies about how Obama sent them there and planned the whole thing as an attack on Russia. Funnily enough, âhookup that got really out of handâ is not a popular theory. People either think that Hollanov invented love or theyâre deceitful schemers who arenât even gay.
Some people never get over the fact that Shane gets upset and shoves Ilya away in the Vegas video. They insist that that doesnât look like a real relationship. Others just are extremely homophobic assholes who canât believe that two buff men could ever be sincerely attracted to each other. Others are just internet trolls or conspiracy theorists. But this is too divisive of a relationship to evade all scrutiny. Like. Ilya has personal beef with Ted Cruz. They are extremely public figures and as a result criticism and speculation abounds.
One of the biggest points people cited in favor of the idea that this entire thing was deliberately crafted is how little they engage in PDA. They wonât kiss on demand (because thatâs fucking weird and more than a little bit humiliating). Theyâre almost never seen going out on dates (theyâre both considered high risk assassination targets). They act professional with each other during games (theyâre at WORK and COMPETITORS). Theyâre both big strong burly hockey playing men and could they REALLY be attracted to each other? (That oneâs just homophobia)
They for the most part just ignore any argument of âthey wonât make out upon request so is the relationship REALLY real?â because their only option is to just start making out when people ask them to and thatâs just straight up demeaning.
But the argument of âthis relationship is clearly crafted because they donât even like touching each otherâ unfortunately explodes when they get papped in Ilyaâs backyard.
They thought they were alone. Ilyaâs backyard was fucking fenced. It was in the short gap between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs. There were no practices or team meetings because the coaches wanted the team to rest for the first round, so Ilya was free to spend all day with Shane. Ilya had just launched his campaign to Woo His Own Boyfriend and he thought it was going fantastic. Shane agreed to sleep in his bed during the playoffs and theyâd already started and Ilya was waking up every single morning to an armful of Shane Hollander. Heâd taken Shane on a real date to a nice restaurant and it had gone great.
They were getting to be a real couple for the first time. They werenât just fucking and awkwardly avoiding each other in their separate bedrooms because no one could slink back to a hotel. They were talking and relaxing together and just existing comfortably near each other. And Ilya in particular was so excited because his biggest hope for this time was to make Shane feel comfortable while he was living with him and it was actually happening.
They were just kicking a soccer ball around in the backyard and joking around and flirting and ended up kissing on the grass. It got heated and they went inside. It was a private moment that no one was meant to see. It was the exact kind of casual intimacy that Ilya was hoping to build with Shane during this time.
They were just kind of awkward with each other after Sochi. Everything felt so loaded with all of the pressures on their relationship. I think they had a period where they stopped having sex entirely and then ended up deciding that they liked having sex with each other and couldnât exactly go out and get it from anyone else so they may as well go back to being fuck buddies at least but they were just stumbling. They both wanted more and didnât know how to ask for it and they couldnât get any distance from the other to figure out their own emotions.
Then Ilya decided he would just start taking more and see if Shane gave it and Shane just. Did. There was no more of Ilya having to sit in his room staring at the wall after they got each other off wondering what Shane would do if he knocked on the door of his room and asked to spend more time together. Because now Shane was staying with him and sleeping with him and Ilya could do random shit like ask him what he thought of the problems with Tampaâs defense just to hear the grade a bitch out about it or make Shane watch a funny video he saw online or to just sit and play with Shaneâs hair while he watched over Shaneâs shoulder as Shane scrolled on Zillow and gave him a running commentary about the houses he found there.
Like. Ilya was drunk on it. He just pretended the boundaries didnât exist and then suddenly they didnât. He was taking and Shane was giving and suddenly Ilya knew the greed they wrote about in the bible.
He wanted to tease and joke with and kiss Shane Hollander, and so he did. And Shane let him. He teased and joked and kissed back. Shane was smiling and laughing and happy and Ilya was on goddamn cloud nine from it because maybe it could just stay like this. Maybe Shane would wake up one morning and just be⌠happy that he was with Ilya. And then itâd be real.
And then the day passed and Ilya fell asleep to the feeling of Shane Hollander gently scratching his scalp as he dragged his fingers through Ilyaâs curls and woke up to the sight of Shane Hollanderâs freckles in the golden light of the morn after and also to three missed calls from Shaneâs mom because some fuckass reporter papped them in the backyard with a long-range camera and now photos of them making out were on the front page of tabloids in countries neither of them had ever been to and also everyone had correctly guessed that they went inside after to fuck each other senseless. And they had to talk to. Shaneâs mom. about that.
Body language experts had been insisting for months that those two men were more attracted to each other than any other two people had ever been in human history and suddenly the world had photographic proof that in their free time they liked to cram their tongues down each others throatâs. Which like. Shane feels like all of his current life problems are because the world already knew that so he doesnât know why they have to act like this is news.
It dredges up the olâ âthis was just a con theyâre not even intimate with each otherâ conspiracy theory because THAT SURE SEEMED INTIMATE. How do we feel about this theory NOW.
Itâs also just. Food to starving animals.
The world fell in love with Hollanov in front of the car. It was the honest, sincere, raw emotion of that moment that captured so much attention. And they havenât really gotten to see that kind of naked emotion out of Hollanov since they escaped Russia.
Theyâre guarded and reserved in interviews. Theyâre not bringing the same energy to a press scrum that they brought to fuckin. Moments of life and death.
Some people have been following them for every beat since Sochi. Theyâve watched every game. Theyâve poured over every interview. But most of the audience stopped watching during the gratitude tour and are only now tuning back in. Ilya making the playoffs has reignited interest in Hollanov. People want to see how baby Jessica is doing now that sheâs out of the well.
And then they get papped in the backyard, and suddenly people see the sincere emotion they fell in love with. Shane and Ilya are captured in a private moment. They are smiling and happy and kissing and incredibly fucking hot together. They still have the love that the world fell in love with, but now, they get to be happy together. And they get to fuck each other like itâs their job.
Thereâs a painful irony in the moment. Because the moment is real. For five minutes, Shane and Ilya just got to be two people who loved each other who were just silly and sincere and attracted to each other. The world loves the moment because it is so real.
And it is the worldâs love that makes it so difficult for Shane and Ilya to have more real moments. They donât get to be two people who smile and kiss in Ilyaâs backyard anymore. They donât get to have the same easy and thoughtless moments of flirting and laughing and kissing anymore. Because theyâve been reminded that they need to be vigilant about people seeing them. Theyâve been reminded of the cost of their rescue.
Itâs the external pressures on their relationship that makes it so hard for them to make this real. Those five minutes of joking and laughing and flirting and kissing turned into an international affair. Hollanov is back and more in love than everâwhen are they going to finally tie that knot? Itâs endless commentary about how hot they are together and fuck, who do you think fucked who when they got into the house. Hollanderâs probably the one taking it, right? Itâs Ilya getting asked in an interview thatâs supposed to be about the playoffs about whether he thought it was appropriate to be carrying on like that with another man in public and what if a child saw them (Ilya would probably ask the child why heâs hanging out of a fucking helicopter with a long range camera pointed at Ilyaâs extremely fenced and very private yard).
And the biggest external pressure is this inescapable question of When is the wedding? People have been asking them if theyâll be hearing wedding bells soon since the day the plane touched down from Russia. And a lot of people really expect Ilya to propose to Shane when he wins the Stanley Cup. The speculation around the idea is strong enough that the NHL Board of Governors has secretly told the broadcast camera operators to get the camera the fuck off of Roger Crowell as quickly as possible if Ilya Rozanov wins the Cup because if he gets down on one knee they donât think Crowell would be able to hide his disgust and that would probably make Obama less willing to go golfing with some of them.
And at the time this speculation is happening, Ilya is trying to convince himself that one day Shane Hollander could want to marry him for real. Shane could fall in love with him and be happy with him and want to spend the rest of his life with him without a gun to his head.
But the gun is there, and itâs pressing closer. The global pressure for them to get married has been making them seriously worried that the other will only go to the altar because theyâve been forced. And they donât want that. Theyâre trying to take as much pressure off the idea of marriage as possible. And that means theyâre not giving any timeline.
