Dear Shane,
Major League Hockey is proud to invite you to join the first ever U16 International Prospects Camp (U16-IPC). U16-IPC unites outstanding young athletes from all over the world to do what they do best: play excellent hockey, forge lifelong bonds, and have a lot of fun!
In July of 2006, Shane Hollander gets the chance to show once and for all he has what it takes to become a pro hockey player. Ten days that could make or break everything he's ever worked for.
At his side, thirty teens with something to prove.
Within him, extremely inconvenient feelings.
The summer of a lifetime.
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With that last ask that mentioned grigori not being violent and you saying he loved ilya, I have to admit I've similarly been mulling over the idea that grigori genuinely was very afraid that if he did not control ilya he would just straight up die. I am not saying he was a good man, but I find the idea that his attitude toward ilya was in no small part a reaction to noticing inherited mental illness or some vague "softness" in him and attempting to keep it from "festering." some idea that if ilya was disciplined and successful and never allowed to be complacent, he might never fall into what killed his mother more plausible or at least more interesting for the nuance. Flawed thinking obviously, but I do find it more realistic than the idea that he was a pure monster who hated ilya entirely, as much as i'm not convinced (or at least would prefer) that his relationship with alexei is so straightforward either. Abuse was still happening, but that isn't mutually exclusive.
i mean i think that's totally it and like... often in situations like that the corrective abuse is intended to be love. like i fully believe that grigori loved ilya and thought he was doing the right thing and he was trying to protect his son from his flaws and his (feminine) weakness. "i don't like doing this to you either but i'm doing this because i love you." punishment is intended as a form of love, or it's not punishment, it's vengeance. veeeeery hard to shake. but that's the thing about abuse isn't it. if someone was just 100% awful and violent to you all the time, it wouldn't be that difficult to emotionally handle or conceive of. like if someone spent fully 100% of the time punching you, you'd just leave. it's the love that makes abuse so insidious.
Ilya would love those redbull challenges like the crazy ones skiing down 50ft slope dirt biking off a cliff etc n he would participate in atleast one bc they get famous athletes on there sometimes
i think ilya fully believes he could excel at any adrenaline sport without trying and then they get him on a motorcross bike and he eats shit so bad and like falls in a pond
do you think as Ilya gets older he ever gains compassion for his younger self and how he handled things? Or is he in forever contempt over those versions of himself? or does he just introspect in that manner
hm this is interesting because what ilya seems to actually dislike about himself and his past behavior is the amount of casual sex heās had, NOT because heās opposed to casual sex but because he was doing it to seek intimacy, which he thinks is shameful. thereās some cringy stuff in tlg iām not gonna bother looking up right now thatās really actually there so that the reader can understand the ātamed the wild wolfā fantasy like wow he has leashed the lion and now he only wants shane. like metatextually itās there for the romance market to hammer home how great monogamy is and true love etc.
but it actually comes across to me like ilya seems to view his past self as kind of desperate and pathetic for getting laid all the time, which is funny because nobody else on the planet experienced him that way. everyone else was like damn heās such a standoffish aloof asshole. and yet ilya is like āi canāt believe i yearned for connection like some kind of disgusting sickly euthanizable dogā and everyone is like āā¦wait you mean when you were doing lines off stripper titties and paying people in the club $15,000 cash to call their boss right there and then and tell them they quit? THAT was you yearning?ā
anyways do i think he finds compassion for his younger selfā¦ well if i could bully him into EMDR and some kind of addiction or trauma support group then yes i do think so. without me present, i do not know.
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realistically how do you think Shane would tackle his disordered eating habits or do you think he never really does and sort of exists like those almond moms who never really do anything about it ( i know his disordered eating is different from almond momsā Iām just making a comparison of inaction )
i mean the thing is like yes shane has an eating disorder but itās orthorexia NOT anorexia (which i often see ppl giving him but thatās incorrect). he is very intentionally meeting all caloric and nutritional needs to an exacting exacting degree. that makes it a little more complicated in this scenario because he will never be medically motivated into treatment, like unlike anorexia or bulimia this doesnāt put him at physical risk so heās never going to like have a doctors appointment where they confront him about this. in fact the opposite he is in an industry and culture where this is super rewarded. what a doctor is going to tell him to eat less healthy? the detriment is to his mental health only.
once he retires maybe he would ease up but actually i think he would clamp down because heās losing control of his life and also aging, and aging and dying is terrifying to shane to a degree that it isnāt to most people. like yeah i know mr gloomy sunday rozanov isnāt the prime example of desire to live but there is a middle ground between them that most people are at. ilyaās volunteering as tribute but meanwhile shane is out here on some āIF i ever dieā¦ā shit.
idk i have trouble imagining him really confronting this one because itās tied into everything else. itās tied into performance and winning and concepts of worth and value and he would have to like. excavate the whole thing. the only way i see it happening is if his anxiety gets so bad he has to confront that for non-ED reason, like if heās put on LTIR or if he got to have the nervous breakdown he deserves over being fanmail outed and then the metros taking him out back and shooting him old yeller style. but without an unrelated mental health crisis, i donāt see this one ever getting wrangled.
I feel like the age gap couple cannot last. Not because of the age gap but bc they had like negative chemistry, something I did not know was possible prior to their book. unsure how the mind behind hollanov could createā¦that.
ehhh you know i think itās terrible and also i think people are maybe expecting too much from reid in that these are like. something she wrote for fun at night after her day job and her family life and i donāt even think she was trying to like create an insanely erotic work i think she just was sort of playing around, and romance novel publishers pay so little for books like 5-7k a pop that they will publish almost anything especially from an established author because itās low risk. basically i think a lot of this is sort of like if everyone started critiquing my notes app drafts i write on the bus for fun. theyāre not good. but they arenāt really intended to be viewed by a huge audience and definitely not a huge audience removed from the original context in which they were created. so yeah itās bad but i also donāt think itās fair to consider it all a reflection of like, reidās creative capacity and artistic intelligence or something. these were her farmers market watercolors she was selling for $5 and then sothebyās swept in and now vulture is writing pieces about her derivative understanding of color. like by all means i think itās fair to call out racist and sexist and transphobic and homophobic aspects but i see people getting on her about the quality of the work and it just always feels like being annoyed that a soccer team bake sale isnāt providing michelin star level baked goods. sometimes the rice crispies are bomb sometimes the cookies are undersalted thatās how it goes.
the way shaneās brand deals and ad campaigns made him much more recognizable to non-hockey fans, jeopardizing his ability to have much of a sex life apart from ilya, while also ensuring that ilya was taunted by images of him year-roundā¦the way shane spent the my moon my man montage getting more famous and more awarded and more celebrated and, simultaneously, more and more ilyaās
you know yuna was over the fucking MOON about rose landry. first of all the branding opportunities! second of all she was starting to worry her son might beāyou know
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I feel like people are always doing some form of "we compared the westborough baptist church with sufism and what we found is that islam is much more progressive than christianity." like i think it depends. it depends though. like it depends.
Fun fact, i live near the stadium. But my uncle? Oh my uncle used to live rgt in front of it, like super fans would camp out in his building garage bc it was in the same direction as the players entrance.
He couldnt even move the car during game day, and sometimes even during non game days bc people wouls try to see the players b4 and after practice.
Shane would have been dealing with this shit since he was 18/19.
Sidney Crosby once talked how he always wore a cap during game days and his parents wouldnt say his name in public bc otherwise he'd be harassed by parents of the other team. At 12.
Shane and Ilya have the kind of skill that would have been making waves since before they were teens.
Oh this is really interesting insight.
The dedication of sports fans continues to blow my mind. I have seen that Sidney Crosby faced a lot of harassment growing up which is. Bonkers to me. Like heās 12 and grown adults are coming from him.
Shane and Ilyaās childhoods and the role fame played n them is one of those other details that I wished was a little bit more fleshed out in canon. We got a little flash of it in the show that not everything was sunshine and rainbows when Shane mentioned to Rose that heād faced kidnapping threats beforeāwhich could have all happened when he was an adult, but I personally headcanon that some where when he was younger and started making waves.
We know that Shane and Ilya were big deals by 2009. Theyāre described as two of the most talked about prospects in the world. But canon just kind of ends there. We donāt really know what form that attention took or when exactly it started or what their relationship with fame is. But if we take their real-life counterpartsā as inspiration, then their fame has fascinating implications for the pressures on their relationship.
Sidney Crosby has been in the news for his hockey ability since he was seven years old. When he was 13, they tried to sue to get him into a league that was above his age level because he was that good.
When he was in minor hockeyānot even junior leagues, minorāhe did this interview with CBC where he talked about how other players would try to injure him, how he was being verbally abused by the parents of the other team, and about how heād have to try to keep people from recognizing him between tournament games so the abuse would stop. He moved to fucking Minnesota for a time to get away from the abuse.
Like. Sidney Crosby is a Canadian national hero. Heās a question on their nationalization test. He has the Order of Canada. The man is a legend. Canada loves their hockey boy so much. And he plays for goddamn Pittsburgh.
What happens if Canadaās most special hockey boy gets drafted to its most hockey city, home of its most dedicated hockey fanbase? What happens if that guy revitalizes his team and brings the Stanley Cup home to Canada for the first time in nearly two decades?
Legitimately, can Shane Hollander even go to the grocery store? How many stalkers has he had? When was the last time heās touched his own wallet in Montreal city limits? Has the Prime Minister name dropped him in a press conference?
How many little kids have told him they want to grow up and be just like him?
Then consider Ilya. What about his public image in Russia?
Hockey is a very big part of the Russian identity, and I do not mean from a cultural standpoint. I mean from a state propaganda standpoint.
Hockey is regularly used by the Russian government to promulgate a nationalist ideology. Athletes are figures you rally around. The Russian government personally promotes athletes as ideals to its citizens to inspire national pride. Look at how much better, faster, stronger we are. The KHL is so entrenched in Russian propaganda that multiple countries are trying to stop their own citizens from joining that League.
The fact that Ilya plays in America instead of the KHL would not insulate him from his role in state propaganda. Sending its hockey players to play abroad is part of Russiaās global playbook. They go out and they beat Western athletes on their own playing field and then Russia pushes their achievements to their own citizens. Look at how much better, faster, stronger we are.
Ilya is based off of Alexander Ovechkin. Ovechkin has fucking Putinās cellphone number. He was part of Putinās last presidential campaign. Putin personally sent that guy a gift at his wedding. When Ovechkin broke the record for all-time career NHL goals, Russia immediately incorporated it into a state propaganda push. If you are a big enough Russian hockey player, you are part of the Russian national identity. It does not matter if you donāt play in Russia.
Ilya isnāt just some Russian hockey player good enough to go pro. He is the best hockey player to come out of their country, possibly ever. He is neck-and-neck with some Canadian fuck for the title of greatest hockey player in the world. He is one of the greatest hockey players of all time.
And heās a guy who was raised by a controlling, abusive family that was heavily involved in the government.
His dad worked for the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Thatās Russiaās federal law enforcement agency. It reports directly to the president. And all of his dadās goddamn medals suggest that he was no small fish. Ilya and his dad have scenes where they are mingling with members of Putinās cabinet.
There is absolutely no way that Ilya has not been heavily featured in Russian state propaganda. He was the best of the best. His family was already involved in high-level government activities. He is best friends with the daughter of Russiaās Minister of Sport. And he did not have control of his own image. His family was too controlling for that.
This is bigger than him just being a Russian hockey player. Because he isnāt just some Russian hockey player. He is the Russian hockey player. He is the guy that Russia has been pushing to its own citizens as the guy they should all aspire to fucking be, and they have been doing it since he was goddamn 17.
So what does Russia do if Putinās favorite hockey player defects from the goddamn nation so he can be with his gay lover, the Prince of Canada?
Suddenly itās not as simple as just choosing to be together. Because there are two very powerful countries invested in each of them. And they do not want the two of them together.
Rose and Shane are having totally typical, normal life experiences
If you get them to drink where other people can see them instead of playing never have I ever and confessing shit they should be telling a priest theyāll rank their childhood stalkers by creativity as if these were life experiences shared by the whole table
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like the betrayalās always going to be worse if they cared about you and it didnāt matter. someone discards you because they didnāt give a shit, then you can be angry about that, you can feel vindicated in that, you can get over it. but if they can look you in the eyes and say āI love you. I would make the same choice again.ā You will never sleep peacefully again, is all.
āI thought they cared about me, but they were lying this whole time.ā <- tired. boring. removes all the nuance of this relationship to make it easier to move on from.
āI thought they cared about me, and I was right, and every minute they were there for me, every time they said they were proud, every laugh we shared leaning against each other bruised and breathless, all of it was real. and they still left me behind. They could put their love aside. I couldnāt.ā <- insane. will never leave you alone. reminds you that even the worst people are still people and can still care about even the ones they hurt the most and that undoes neither the harm nor the love.
I was thinking about Snapping Birch (as one does) and how Fucking Terrifying and Awful the situation was for Shane even before the leak. And I guess I was also thinking about the HR-TLG canon timejump and how we know that Shane coming out to his team was Not Great but afawk itās not like they are Actively Trying to Fucking Kill Him in Live TV
And basically I was wondering if this is just a āfor the purposes of this fic the Montreal Metros Suck Even More Than Canonā situation or if you think thereās any in-universe alteration/reason as to why they are So Fucking Awful that Hayden Pike and Ilya Rozanov have to call a fucking truce to make sure Shane doesnāt fucking die.
(As always, LOVE all you write)
Snapping birch is very much a āfor purposes of this fic the Montreal Metros suck even more than canonā fic.
One of my many beefs with heated rivalry is the way it frames being in the closet. Being in the closet is almost always the source of conflict, and happily ever after comes when you are Out Of The Closet and can Live Your Truth. Being Out Of The Closet is the best possible ending for a queer person, even if they have to be literally outed to do it. But the narrativeās framing puts all of the impetus and responsibility in the person in the closet rather than acknowledging why theyāre in the closet.
Being in the closet sucks. But some people are in the closet because they are in an unsafe environment. And Being Brave šš³ļøāš and Living Your Truth āØš³ļøāšš does not magically fix that unsafe environment. It just means a queer person is now in danger.
The Game Changers universe pretty much refuses to acknowledge this, to the point where homophobia exists on a sliding scale of narrative convenience. Being gay is a scandal until it isnāt. Russia is a threat until it isnāt. Letās get you out of the closet like youāre a baby bird weāre booting out of the nest. Fly, baby bird, fly.
And then, you know, when everything you were afraid of happens, you were still stupid and selfish for wanting to be in the closet.
I wanted to explore just how dangerous it could hypothetically be to be gay in the nhl if you were under the thumb of a truly bad actor. And it turns out the answer is āpretty bad.ā
Like. What we need to understand is that the NHL is structured for abuse. There is no watchdog. There was not even a mechanism to report coaching abuse until 2019. The control that teams have over their players is extreme, and the options players have are limited.
NHL teams have absolute final authority over what medical treatment their players receive. They control their playersā images. They control whether their players can play sports in their free time. They made an investment in playersā bodies and they took control over that investment.
Thereās an arbitration clause in the standard player contract. Do you want to know who is meant to be the sole and binding arbitrator of disputes between a player and their team?
The NHL Commissioner.
How do you think that is going to go for a queer player being retaliated against?
The system is built for abuse, and thatās what I wanted to talk about in snapping birch. And so it is not meant to be fully canon compliant. I decided to make the Metros suck way worse than they did in canon, because I wanted to explore what about this environment keeps people in the closet. What about this system makes it so dangerous for queer people?
Maybe you could be embraced like Scott Hunter. But that depends on who youāre surrounded by. What happens if the people who have extreme power over you decide to abuse it?
