nothing to see here

They should have been given time to sit on Shane's couch while Rose plays Twenty Questions trying to get to the bottom of who Shane is fucking.

Shane should have told Rose about the Tampa hotel room and Rose should have hit him with a pillow and said, "NO. The fuck boy does NOT have a heart of gold, Shane Hollander."

Shane should have had the opportunity to text Rose, "I'm making a bad choice," and then two hours later, "Fuck I am DONE I am NEVER doing this again" because Ilya got up to shower too quickly and Shane hurt his own feelings about it.

There should be a series of texts in Rose and Shane's history that just say, "Relapsed," all of them sent at three in the morning accompanied by a selfie of Shane in Ilya's fuckass navy blue sheets. Rose's habitual response is Not a relapse if you never stopped 😐

They should have met up after Shane was up all night getting just absolutely railed into the mattress and Rose should have reached across the table to lift up Shane's hangover sunglasses and said, "That dick better be unbelievable," and Shane should have miserably said, "It is."

Like I get the appeal, in that Ilya has had a shitty family life and people want to see him loved by a parent again. Because sure, he should be, and it's awesome that Shane's parents love Ilya so much. It seems to be a throwaway line in the book, a joke, just something in passing. Not a Big Deal.

But...Shane is a character who suffers from so much pressure, both internal and external, to be Perfect - the perfect son, the perfect player and captain, the perfect Asian role model for kids, etc. He apologized to his mom because he tried so hard to be those things and even after accepting he was gay he still thought that it made him imperfect and unacceptable to her. He finally accepted who he was and has brought home a partner who adores him and who he's proud to love, but a little part of him still can't stop seeing it as a failure on some level. There's still that fear of being a disappointment.

Then he's neurodivergent on top of all that, and while he's not diagnosed or aware of his autism, you can bet he knows he's not like all the other guys. Everyone calls him a hockey robot, and not sociable, even though we see him make friends and joke around and generally be a very good captain (a lot of hockey teams choose/vote on their captain, and they're not going to keep him in that position if he's not good at it, no matter how good an individual player he is).

The Hollanders have a deceptively complicated dynamic, partly because of the momager thing, partly because of the secrets Shane has been keeping, and they're close but not yet past those secrets. There's more to untangle, and it's great that Ilya is going to be brought into the family, but bringing the rivalry there, too, it just rubs me the wrong way.

hes in the conversation for best player in the world you don't get there without giving a fuck and caring. like yes I'm sure a large part of what appeals (and appealed when he was young) to him about hockey was the social power and also the ability to leave russia and get away from his family but all of that requires care and passion.

prev tags! yeah i think non-athlete folks misapprehending ilya as 'only a jock when it suits the narrative', is the source of so much characterization and plot strife. in so much as it also is for people willfully, repeatedly misapprehending shane as well as 'not a jock/always masking at hockey culture rather than being IN hockey culture'.

& that's because those misinterpretations deny: a core truth driving the central narrative conflict of HR (literally the plot is that they can't come out or risk losing everything they've worked for. why would they not come out or why wouldn't ilya just retire if he didn't care? he must care bc that's not presented as a possible plot solution.) AND also the somewhat rigid character motivations for them both. (that hollanov have always and will always care about winning and performing well specifically in the majors).

what this show doesn't nec. convey (and if someone doesn't exist in the world of sports they maybe cannot imagine) is what it takes day in and day out to get to this level of athleticism and then remain in it. the dedication. the drive to succeed. the way it consumes you. the stubborn fucking clinging to the personal bests amid the strings of losses, and small wins along the boards and longing craving fighting clawing crying for the big wins.

but, the HR plot does hinge its tension On This Point. bc it shows us their dedicated joy and then it asks us to consider, what if!! their love was so great, it challenged the single greatest motivation and driving force in both of their lives: their careers in hockey.

utterly compelling!!!!!!!

i know some other HR folks new to hockey also don't know abt the quest for the cup, but the national hockey league cup is considered across organized sports as THE hardest trophy in sports to win. periodt. no one who is fighting for the cup that hard, year in and year out ""doesn't care about hockey."" and there is also fundamentally. literally, like op said, no way to become an olympic level athlete at something if you don't care about it. leaving off the nationalistic honor game selection of it all, the rigor and the sacrifice demanded to sculpt your body, to SACRIFICE YOUR BODY and its longevity, its bones, its muscles, its cartilage, in practice and function and persistence and in service of the sport, is only maintainable by someone striving to succeed at it every day for hours.

and within this intentful #queerjoy story there isn't a whole lot of deep critique/showcase of the grinding machine of organized sports, but these two athletes are making that choice every day: to wake up and sacrifice their body for the sport that has consumed over twenty years of their life. shane says, we all get our bell rung somedays. they treat ilya's bruised ribs casually, etc.

this is different from being someone that goes to the gym and likes to be fit or has casually played sports (ie. connor storrie's experience), bc going to the gym is a health goal. it's not a career as an athlete where injury cost is expended for win gain. it's not a competition with other folks doing the same physical skills as you in an adaptive, deeply insular environment. one which begets itself and athletes rely on to compete.

and unless again. you go PRO in something like crossfit, you are not yearning to WIN. if you wanna get KISS with it: the mentality of a champion is that they wanna win. ilya wants to fucking win. he says so in the text. the drive to do so is inherent to him and cannot be removed from his character scaffolding. and it seems strange to have that long locker room speech + crying winning the cup + wanting to win every year and then turn around and say oh he doesn't care about hockey/winning....like..what.

**obligatory haven't read TLG disclaimer, but the idea that someone who is used to going to the playoffs EVERY YEAR with a well rounded supportive team, is gonna go to a sucky losing team that is a generation out from making the finals, and somehow not suffer any catastrophic mental anguish and get fucking sick of it and say, no this isn't something i can do actually…… is so foolhardy. whispers this is just one of the reasons why ottawa as a plan falls apart.

additionally,, a lot of good posts about this, but, part of shane's attraction to ilya is literally that he is one of the best and most competitive players in the world. he's found the single person who can keep up with him all the way. who pushes him to be better. who gives him something to rail and shove and work hard against. and the same goes w ilya for shane. lol. as ever sport is sex and sex is sport.

i think a lot of ilya's characterization is analyzed with shane in mind (fair enough this is romance and they are the main couple lol) so by comparison I think people look at shane's unrelenting dedication (the constant awareness of his body, his time, even to some extent his sponsorships) and compare it to Ilya and go, "oh he doesn't care." that's just not true. his caring just looks a different way.

to focus on ilya for a second: yes ilya uses hockey as a way to try to please his father but also, you have to remember that hockey hasn't necessarily made his life and his relationship with his family easy. hockey and his career allow his family (especially his brother) power and knowledge about his income enough to emotionally manipulate and financially take advantage of him. and we know for a fact that alexei resents ilya for his career, his talent, his money etc. and as with every abusive parent, nothing including going first overall in a draft standing beside another generational talent is going to please his father. at the end of the day the only relief hockey gives Ilya is the ability to not be in russia anymore. so no the only thing Ilya gets out of hockey isn't just that.

and to get to the point of just how much dedication and sacrifice athletes have to make, this isn't easy. "we all get our bell rung eventually" shane says. he is talking about brain damage. he is talking about a traumatic brain injury. and they are both accepting that ehn it's gonna happen eventually right?

hockey is a very, very, very unforgiving sport. it's full contact. it's brutal. and the stanley cup is incredibly hard to win. you need to get 16 wins in about 2 months. four wins in each round with four rounds total against four different teams. each round can potentially last up to 7 games. that's a possible 28 games played in two months. each game has 60 minutes so that's (16 games) 960 to 1680 (28 games) minutes of game play possible, not to mention overtime periods.

they call the run to the cup a war of attrition. lots of teams go into their playoff rounds with the thought of "hit them hard every chance you get by the time it's game 7 they'll be too beat up." now imagine that four times over.

it's difficult.

my point is, you don't do that without caring. you don't put your body through that and you don't successfully manage to do that without caring.

first of all "so ilya doesn't have to be a super loser there" made me laugh so thank you for that.

second, the rivalry with toronto isn't as bad as with boston but I would say it comes in second so it's definitely still really intense. like boston is still #1 but toronto is close I think.

(also boston and toronto are rivals too but that's not relevant)

It wasn't always like this and the reason it's not like this for Shane is the closet. When you are in the closet you really do feel like you're lying to everyone. I really struggle to share my interests because for a long time I just never ever spoke about myself. I wasn't even sure why at some points but I just knew that there were parts of me I could never share and so I never shared anything. When you are closeted you have to, by necessity, be a very private person. It can look like Shane who never shares anything about himself, or can look like Ilya where theres what looks like over sharing where he's really actually saying nothing about himself.

The closet makes you unknowable to yourself and everyone around you.

I think that when Shane is outed and on the Centaurs, I think he does make a lot of friends. He's a talented, funny guy, who is comfortable in his role as a hockey player. The difference is that he will be more likely to make bids for connection with his teammates both because he's married to an outgoing partner, but also because he no longer has to hide a giant part of himself.

the struggle of loving fiercely, and rooting your personhood in, a sport whose culture violently rejects you; shanes perception of the self & the body as a tool useless unless controlled & optimized for hockey; ilya finding a way out of his family into a sphere that is no less discriminating; and yet the wanting, & the fantasy of being known wanting....bunch of fuses that dont end up lit. do you really want your story to culminate in the stereotypical 'choose me over your career bc you cant live without me' romance?

Badly written or illogical plays : Don't care at all. Even for a legit hockey fan it's hard to imagine and write realistic and interesting plays. Narrative value >> sport accuracy for this kind of thing imo.

Improbable / impossible fighting / inacurate penalties : Care a little more since sometimes people write about players like straight up trying to murder each other on the ice and yeah that shit isn't happening. Buuuut refs can be so inconsistent and calls can be really weird and off so writers have a lot of leeway here imo. Whatever works for the plot is typically ok.

Absurd goal / points numbers / bad stats in general : Slightly annoying since these are so easy to look up. Just google NHL player stats and steal Crosby/Ovechkin's numbers from whatever point in their careers Shane/Ilya are supposed to be in. That said it's not really a big deal.

Schedule wonkiness : I read a fic where they were apparently playing a playoff game in March. No. Again, easy to look up and very distracting!

Impossible / absurd contracts or misunderstanding RFA/UFA : Ok so hockey contracts are complicated. I still don't get a lot of stuff. But it's kinda annoying when it's an important plot point for players moving between teams and the author doesn't know about entry level contracts or restricted agency for players.

Handshake lines : ONLY FOR THE PLAYOFFS GUYS. Ultimately minor, but pretty annoying when they're playing in October and there's a handshake line.

Incorrect playoff brackets : Ok so with wild cards and seeding and whatever, it's complicated, so first and second rounds I don't care. Write whatever. But the finals??? I can't read another Shane v Ilya for the cup fic guys. Montreal and Ottawa will never play each other for the Stanley cup. Montreal and Boston will never play each other for the Stanley cup. Oh also: no combination of Montreal, Boston, and New York will ever play each other for the Stanley cup. The finals are always between an Eastern Conference team and a Western Conference team!! Is it irrational how much this pisses me off? Probably yes. AND YET.

Getting race issues egregiously wrong : I wrote a long post on this but unless HR is a very alternate universe Shane is not the first Asian player by a longshot. This one actually feels quite offensive to me---it's like fic authors want to be more correct by adding in discussion of Shane's race but don't bother to do any research and the result is worse than just not mentioning it at all.

takes a very deep breath okay well. it's a lot. i'm gonna try to be concise, since i know i won't be brief. or maybe this will need to be multiple posts i don't know. but we'll get going and see what happens. maybe i will expand on some individual topics separately. but for now this is what i think most of the biggest issues + concerns + takeaways are.

the first thing i have a really hard time with is how shane is handled in general. i'm sure everyone's tired of hearing that but like... y'all it's so bad. he suffers so much undue humiliation in this book and i can think of no other way to describe it. he is the best player in the league. he's one of the best players in the world. tell me why everyone is constantly mocking and deriding him? and i'm not even being sensitive he is genuinely the butt of every single joke in the whole entire book. like what the fuck is this.

he's also so uncharacteristically CRUEL at several points it's honestly mind boggling. "your mom hasn't been texting you all week" "sorry i don't want to smoke pot" et cetera like who the fuck is this? it is ooc and it's just to manufacture misery for ilya. really weird.

RR needs to stick to only writing white characters because the way she handles her characters of other races is shockingly offensive. and that's that on that.

everybody's wearing really bad outfits the whole time. floral print teal tanktop and gray athletic shorts and black toms. jesus christ

moving to ottawa and joining a terrible hockey team destroys ilya's mental health and yet the book continues to try to convince us it was not a mistake. again: what the fuck is this?

the conflict within the plot of this novel is weak and the characters suffer unjustly at the hands of it. we needed there to be conflict because a book is supposed to have conflict but we picked the worst possible conflict ever and then did a really bad job handling it. 0/10

hayden pike needs jail time. he needs to be shot. he is a villain. shane accepts and forgives so much bullshit. how stupid does hayden have to be in order to do something so fucking careless? and then they forgive him and within a page it's over. when personally i think they should've beaten him to death with hammers. he quite literally put their LIVES at risk. jesus christ. and he is never able to actually stick up for shane in a way that matters. he immediately folds. it's despicable.

shane is clearly suffering from an eating disorder. this is not up for debate. i don't care what RR says. he's got an ED. and yet, like everything else in this book that has potential to be meaty/interesting, this eating disorder magically fixes itself. after he gets outed and eats a snickers bar. then in a later timeskip chapter we're told he has beer and chocolate cake because he "decided he was still a good athlete even if he ate burgers" the fuck? cus that's totally how lifelong eating disorders work and are "cured". sure rachel

we spend paragraphs upon paragraphs early in the book with shane where he thinks about how much he loves his team, loves montreal, loves winning games, loves winning cups, plans to retire in montreal et cetera. THEN literally and i am not even kidding we get ONE throwaway line about him deciding to leave. he simply up and decided he didn't want to be in montreal anymore. we get no character moment. no exploration. no on page discussion, even. it is one throwaway line in a TIMESKIP chapter. the BIGGEST career move of his life, one that could quite honestly prematurely end his career, one that no doubt caused him such agony and such distress. and we get one line. he spends no time on it. we spend no time with him while he spends time on it. absolutely batshit insane

ilya's depression is built up throughout the entire book and also again dealt with in a few throwaway lines. he tells shane that he gets sad sometimes "like his mother" and shane's like okay we'll get you on drugs. and then in another throwaway timeskip it's mentioned he takes meds. and that's all she wrote. that's literally it.

ilya's therapist fucking sucks. absolutely fucking sucks. her practices are shockingly bad and irresponsible.

ilya clearly subconsciously blames shane for his problems and blatantly resents the fact he moved to ottawa. he never addresses any of these thoughts or concerns directly with shane. mind you shane never asked him or forced him to do this but ilya's therapist is like "how many things do you do because shane wants you to" bitch NO THINGS!!! THAT IS NOT WHO THEY ARE. sorry i'll stop yelling i know we're trying to have a civilized conversation

i fucking hate "that's why you're my favorite son" i fucking hate it sorry it's terrible. i wrote about this before so i won't spend more time on it but just know i fucking hate it.

it's also mentioned in a throwaway line that shane came out to his team at some point and some of them "don't like it". but we never see this scene, and we never find out what kind of conflict exists in the dressing room beyond JJ being an absolutely terrible person.

everybody is always making fun of shane and i don't like it. despite the fact he is clearly visibly struggling. the way the other characters interact with him is bizarre. he's referred to as "miserable" and "annoying" by his friends and loved ones. there's teasing and then there's like okay well is shane just a nuisance to you? is shane just a nagging bitch wife to you? is shane just here to prop up the scenery? what is he doing here? can we get him out?

the "would you choose me" bullshit is stupid. shane is not the bad guy for caring about his career. conversely neither is ilya the bad guy for wanting to feel valued. but that is not how that conversation should have happened. but shane was not the villain. i will stand by this.

shane mentions in his internal narration that he doesn't like it that ilya is playing on a bad team. ilya mentions in his internal narration that he doesn't like playing on a bad team. this begs the question: why the FUCK did he move to a bad team? nobody likes this. nobody is having fun with this. nobody wants to be here.

the way RR handles kink + their sex life pisses me off and is quite honestly at some points contradictory. what do you mean shane doesn't like to be called a good boy? and once again we cannot ever actually fully commit to a kink or a sex act without first including a disclaimer. "shane wasn't actually into [blank] but he likes it when they [blank]" well i have news for you man, that means you're into that. sorry. i know. we'll give you some time to grieve you sick fucking pervert. you're going to burn in hell for being into that, btw. just so you know.

shane is pretty explicitly dealing with a lot of internalized homophobia that manifests itself as actual homophobia directed towards other gay characters in his internal monologue. i have nothing else to say about this at the moment i'm just putting that out there

the writing is bad. there's no prose worth mentioning. some of it's corny as fuck. it feels like we just sat down and put some thoughts in a word doc and then said "yep that's good" and sent it to print. like it simply cannot be taken seriously. what is this now honey i had to avert my eyes on account of the embarrassment

as i said in my comments on the first book, most of shane's narrative exists to punish him. can't make heads or tails of why. "was shane a terrible friend" no, bitch. the fuck. what are we doing. he hates himself. we never find out why. we never get to see him Stop hating himself. the way he feels about himself is evident in the way he feels about others and the choices he makes. his lack of self esteem and immense control issues are quite literally running his whole entire life. and everyone in his life constantly reinforces his beliefs about himself. he's annoying, he's miserable, he's too controlling, he's not a good captain, he's not even his own parents' favorite son. like what are we doing? and why are we doing it?

and every time RR speaks on this book i just get madder. that post where she was like "i know it must seem like i was very hard on poor shane in the second book" poor shane? i'm not sure i care for your tone.

the plane crash shit is stupid.

the plot is lazy. the conflict is bad. the characters are not themselves. which is weird, because they should be. this is where they come from. this is the world they exist in. but who are they?

you can say/think whatever you want but it is clear to me from this book that RR is not interested in shane as a character, even a little bit. everything that happens to him happens off page. everything that matters to him is taken away or permanently altered and he just has to deal with it. he does whatever the narrative needs him to do at that moment even if he wouldn't do it because somebody has to do it. it's lazy. it's not fair. it's honestly so bizarre i can't wrap my head around it.

you cannot make me believe shane is behaving in character in this book. he is short tempered, yes. he gets irritated, yes. he is rigid and uptight, yes. all of those things. he is not cruel or unkind. and he is always different with ilya, a softer version of himself in some ways. i want to help, how is your father, do you like russia, are you okay, i was thinking about you, tell him i'm okay or he'll worry, et cetera. he is always so brave. he is always trying so hard to make those emotional bids for connection. he is always trying. and he loves ilya so much. he wants to help however he can. and he genuinely does. the flippant, dismissive, MEAN way he addresses ilya and their issues in this book is ridiculous. it's ridiculous.

i've seen the argument made that "some adults prioritize their relationships" and "people grow and change" well shane and ilya would not throw away their careers so they could fuck more often. sorry. they would not give up literally everything they have ever lived for or worked to achieve in order to have a dog and a white picket fence together. they only get to play hockey at their level until the age of 35ish. shane's 30 in this book. you're telling me they wouldn't hang on for a couple more years, a couple more stanley cups, and retire together at the age of 40? they have the rest of their fucking lives to do this shit. they would not. would NOT do it at this point in their careers. they basically commit career suicide. they would not do that. they wouldn't. sorry. and the priority for them has never been the relationship. and it shouldn't be. it doesn't have to be. that doesn't mean they don't love each other. it just means their system of prioritization is compatible, and they would be able to come up with something that works. they are quite literally neutered by the forceful imposition of heteronormativity in this book.

i don't think the conversation had with the head of the NHL or whatever he's supposed to be would go down like that. bare minimum they would've had legal representation present.

i absolutely fucking despise this scene with literally every single cell of my being this actually turned my stomach when i read it. what's going on here. why is this a humiliation ritual. he's the best hockey player in the world. what's happening.

i'll be quite honest and for real with you i have to expand on this: the introduction of heteronormativity to their storyline literally kills their dreams. i've talked about this before and i'll link the rest of my meta below but she absolutely destroys these characters by changing them to fit the "dream". everyone wants a house in the suburbs, right? everyone wants two kids and a dog, right? once she "cures" them of their unsavory need to compete + win, then they just become something else. and i don't like what they become. shane would have to be dragged off the ice and shot in the parking lot behind the arena like a lame horse before he would willingly retire.

it's mentioned dozens of times over how much no longer winning fucks with ilya's brain and his self esteem. to the point where he develops passive suicidal ideation. this is bad. all bad. all the choices made for the characters were bad. it makes no sense.

the plane crash shit is stupid. said this already but i'm just reminding you. it's stupid.

the way shane proposes is stupid. sorry we've been dealing with emotional turmoil for the last few months but you just almost died so i think we should set up a couple of lawn chairs in the backyard and get married. hello?

this isn't even everything but like. isn't this enough? baffling. some other meta i've already made about this topic:

ottawa plotline crit 1 2 3 4

RR + shane’s book characterization 1 2 3 4 5 6