Occasional Tumblr Enjoyer

Don't get me wrong, I love ilya being a part of the hollander family and receiving familial love, but whyyy is it happening to the detriment of shane? And if rr intended to show these familial bonds through bickering and ribbing, she should not have spent the entire book essentially saying that ilya is her perfect sad white boy and shane is the devil incarnate that is only there to atone for not personally curing ilya of his depression and not reaching the state of 60s housewive sooner. Like this, the 'ribbing' becomes a genuine expression of dislike and it just seems like yuna now dislikes her son for being the person she raised him to be and for having valid fears. And the subliminal message is that maybe would be more likeable and loveable if he was just more like ilya.

When I was growing up I was really close with my dad. We had a lot of the same interests. We spent a lot of time together. Once, my little sister was angry at him and kind of threw in his face that I was his favorite.

He told me later that that was one of his hardest moments as a parent. He felt like he failed if my sister thought even for a second that he somehow loved her less.

The “favorite son” scene always makes me think of that. Yes, it’s a joke. It’s just not a very funny joke.

That entire scene is just so mean spirited. It literally opens with Yuna asking “what’s Shane’s problem?” not “is there something wrong” it’s “what’s his problem”

Shane is miserable and visibly spiraling, because Ryan Price just walked in on Shane and Ilya kissing. Once again, he’s just been outed and he’s scared.

Ilya’s response is, of course, to look back at Shane, who has is face buried in his hands and looks “miserable” and say “looks normal to me.”

Yuna and Ilya then spend the rest of the conversation talking about how Ryan’s great and it’s not a big deal and maybe they should come out to even more people. It ends with Yuna telling Shane that Ilya is her favorite son because he’s helping her with dinner instead of sitting on his butt and moping.

Shane is just. The world’s most outed man. He only gets to come out to his team and they turn on him. Every other time, he is outed, and every time it upsets him, the rest of the characters rush to agree that it’s not a big deal. The fact that he wants to be closeted is always, always the problem.

There’s just something so disdainful about how the long game is written. Shane is the butt of every single joke. The narrative reinforces again and again that Shane is the problem and Ilya is better, Ilya is the one everyone likes, Ilya is the one you should like.

Someone else made this comparison in a comment on one of my posts—Shane really gets the “90s sitcom wife” treatment. I couldn’t agree more. Like. Every joke is at Shane’s expense, but the laugh track plays. You are supposed to agree with them. You are supposed to laugh.

Not even Shane’s own mother will be on his side during this. And yeah, sure, she’s joking, but does it really feel like a joke?

One of the many Rachel Reid controversies around the writing of these books is that she posted a list of character traits that were the core guidelines of writing Shane and Ilya. Most of shane’s traits were just defined as like, the absence of whatever Ilya’s trait was. “Ilya is cool, Shane is not. Ilya carries grief and trauma, Shane does not. Ilya is very intelligent, Shane is not,” etc.

Shane got a few actual traits though. One was that he was obsessed with hockey, whereas Ilya was not. He was described as being very private and cautious about letting people in, whereas Ilya seeks intimacy from everyone. And Ilya is extremely perceptive, whereas Shane barely notices his own feelings.

And I think it’s really interesting that Shane is punished for every single one of his core character traits. He is a private person, and that is his failing. He should be out and loud as his boyfriend wants. He is not very perceptive, and that is again his failing—he should be reading the mind of his very sad boyfriend, who is lying to him about what’s wrong. And he is, of course, punished for loving hockey and his career by having it all stripped from him.

Shane is never given any grace. Every single trait that the author gave him is something he is vilified and punished for. He is wrong to want to have his life is private, even though all of his fears around it being public come true. He is wrong to not be as perceptive as his boyfriend, even though it’s through no fault of his own.

she cannot let ilya be misunderstood, and by virtue of this his actions always have sincere, unselfish motivations. this also harms ilya’s existing character!! during this fight, he thinks: “Ilya didn’t want to fight. He was exhausted, and miserable, and his boyfriend was breaking his fucking heart.” there is almost no reflection on ilya’s part about his actions aside from ‘he was sure he’d never hurt shane.’ zero internal interrogation. ilya is not curious about what shane might be feeling in the moment. ilya also does not really consider what might have informed this escalated reaction from himself

meanwhile, shane’s reaction to this fight is:

“Obviously he had fucked something up. He hadn’t been paying attention to Ilya, or to what Ilya had given up for him, and he now realized that Ilya had given up a whole fucking lot for Shane. For them. Of course he resented Shane. Ilya had left his home country, his family—even if only a brother he hated remained—his team, his friends in Boston, his entire fucking life, really. He’d changed everything.”

but then everyone else is wrong and shane is right. everything he predicted comes to pass. he is outed by his best friend. he is hatecrimed and ostracised by his championship team. his fiance fails to defend his integrity to the press. he goes to another team for less money and is stripped of a letter. like. it’s just so unbelievably bizarre. i understand that reid wrote this as the ‘comeuppance’ and punishment for shane quote unquote ignoring all of ilya’s more important problems, but then why prove him right? why not make him so passively ignorant that the ensuing horror is a total surprise?

reid has spoken about getting upset when people dislike ilya and his actions, so then why write an entire book where the explicit conclusion is that ilya was wrong, and then try to frame it as shane’s fears — while ultimately correct — simply weren’t worth the hassle? and why, at the end of that, is shane still the only one to apologise?

First reblog post that actually saves a life.

This is a life-saving post.

the more you know

yeah don’t think that this can’t happen to you or someone you know if they’re young. my cousin’s wife is 33 and she had a stroke last year

F- Face: is their face fallen on one side?

A- Arms: can they raise both their arms up and hold them there?

S- Speech: is their speech slurred? Can they speak a full sentence?

T- Time: if all the signs show a stroke, call 999.

this book is out now!!! it's a short read, less than 200 pages, and it's SO good. i literally had to pause halfway through just to send the author a message about how much i liked it. definitely leans more utopian than scientific, but that makes sense given the format, and i think it has a lot of good things to say.