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.