solarsunshine

Shane’s ending in TLG is a humiliation ritual. It’s cruel. And it makes me so goddamn angry.

The books have a recurring problem, and that’s that they want to benefit from the struggles of marginalized individuals but then immediately trivialize those same struggles. Discrimination exists only to the extent of narrative convenience. They can’t come out because of homophobia in the League and the dangers of being a queer person in Russia. But instead of those problems being solved, they’re dropped. Suddenly, it’s not a big scandal to be gay anymore. Suddenly, we’re not even talking about Russia even though nothing has happened to fix Ilya’s immigration.

The book’s handling of race is a big example. Shane’s race only exists as a matter of aesthetics. He’s beautiful in a feminine way. He’s pretty. He’s the prettiest boy in the whole league, actually. They even call him pretty boy, he’s that pretty. He’s hairless and slight like a woman.

His race is there to make him exotic and beautiful. It’s there to lean into stereotypes around the feminization of Asian men in a way that just seems to wholeheartedly embrace the stereotypes instead of comment on them. But his race is never allowed to impact anything other than his beauty. He’s a racial minority who’s just never experienced racism despite occupying an aggressively racist space.

Ilya has a line where he says that Shane’s never seen the “dark side” of hockey the way he has. Systemic racism is not a factor or concern in this statement. If it’s there, his high-profile POC partner just hasn’t seen it, I guess.

But it’s probably not there, because at this point, discrimination is no longer convenient for the narrative to acknowledge. It’s not even that big of a scandal to be gay. The only reason why they can’t come out is because Shane’s so fucking selfish.

Now, we could absolutely interpret Ilya’s words as just him being wrong. Narrators can be unreliable. You can interpret your partner’s facial expressions incorrectly. But we know that interpretation is wrong, because the author herself has said so. Shane does not have any trauma from hockey. It has always been a safe, happy space for him. He just hasn’t seen the darker side of hockey the way his white partner has. It’s all been sunshine and rainbows for Shane, and the eating disorder and the attempt to conversion therapy himself was just for shits and giggles. Shane’s just fucking stupid.

In parts, the book has close brushes with acknowledging that racism exists. During his meeting with Crowell, Shane’s given veiled threats around “inclusivity” and has to wonder if it’s about the fact that he’s gay or Asian. Shane would have no reason to wonder that if he hadn’t at least encountered racism in some capacity. As a result, the book seems to acknowledge that people would want to exclude Shane based on his race would be othered based on race. But that acknowledgment is strictly limited to a backhanded comment in that one scene. The book refuses to acknowledge that Shane would be affected by institutional racism—or even experience it beyond the one scene we got of a single Big Bad Man implying that his race was a bad thing. After all, hockey has only ever been a good thing for Shane. He has no trauma for it whatsoever.

And I know. I know what everyone says. “This is just a romance book, it’s not that deep.” She admits she didn’t do any research into the Japanese Canadian experience before writing Shane and that his race isn’t meant to be a big factor. And to be clear, I do not think Shane’s depiction in the books is intentionally meant to be racist. But I do think it is still racist. You can be racist without meaning to be.

First—why does diversity matter in art?

Art is meant to connect with its audience. It’s an emotional exchange. It’s a mechanism that we use to convey beliefs, feelings, and meaning to each other. And people connect very strongly with art that they see their own experiences in. Characters tend to mean a lot to people when they see some reflection of themselves in them. Those are the characters that help them process their own emotions and feelings and thoughts. You understand yourself better because the art held up a mirror.

For a very long time, the vast majority of art has been aimed at conveying the straight white experience. Minority voices get choked out. Those stories don’t get published because there’s “no market for it.” But there is a market for it. There’s a lot of people who want to see themselves in art, and they are not straight, and they are not white. We’ve got a fuck ton of stories from the perspective of the straight white protagonist on a journey of self discovery, and comparatively few from any other type of person. And the stories that did get to be published were underpromoted, undersold, and swept under the rug. There are a fuck ton of people out there who have never gotten to see their own experiences portrayed in the art they consume.

Like. I personally didn’t even know the word for my own sexuality until I was in high school because I had never once seen it be portrayed in media, and no one was bringing it up during sex ed. And I only learned the word from goddamn fanfiction. I can count on two fingers the number of times I’ve actually seen it be portrayed in media since. Both characters mean the goddamn world to me.

In recent years, there’s been a push for more diversity in art. And that’s good. But we as artists need to understand that that’s not a box to check so we get bonus points and a pat on the back. Race is deeper than skin color. If you want to write a person of color, write a person of color. Do not just write a white character and say their skin is darker.

Shane Hollander isn’t written as Wasian. He just isn’t, and we know he isn’t, because the author fucking said she didn’t even try. He’s written as a white man who happens to have a different color skin. His experiences with racism are nonexistent. He never saw the dark side of hockey. Hockey has always been a positive thing for him.

Hockey always being a positive thing for you is—frankly, I think it’s toxic enough in Canadian junior hockey that it’s a pipe dream for any demographic, but if there’s anyone out there managing it, it’s straight white guys. But a queer mixed race autistic guy? The entire goddamn space is hostile to his very existence.

Shane Hollander’s depiction in the books is not real diversity because he’s not written with the actual demographic in mind. His race is irrelevant. It is not going to hold up a mirror on the Japanese-Canadian experience because those experiences were not considered at all in his creation. His race is only there to benefit his overly feminized beauty. Sure, you can have an Asian character, but his skin color will only matter when he’s bent over or on his goddamn knees.

That’s not diversity. That’s a fetish.

The author chose to base her plot on real societal pains. There are real gay men in Russia who are being disappeared and murdered by the state. There are real people of color in Canadian youth hockey who are being discriminated against. There are real queer people in Canadian youth hockey who are being discriminated against because of heated rivalry.

I read an article recently about how the popularity of heated rivalry caused increased incidents of homophobia in junior hockey circles. So many people are looking at them and saying “gay” that it’s causing a surge in homophobic behavior to compensate. Increased use of slurs or homophobic language, decreased ice time for players suspected of being gay. And to be clear, I’m not blaming heated rivalry for this. Bigots will always respond to queer positivity with retaliation. Heated Rivalry is not responsible for the homophobia that followed in its wake—if anything, it makes it more important than ever to tell queer stories and celebrate queer love.

But heated rivalry put a spotlight on the issue. It made the conflict of the first book/season homophobia in hockey culture forcing players to remain in the closet. It stirred up all of this international attention and inadvertently incited retaliation against queer players.

And then, in the same breath, it said that it wasn’t a problem at all, actually. This doesn’t happen. It’s not a big deal. Again and again, the books take the struggles of real marginalized people, benefit from them, and then turn around and say “it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal.”

Shane’s ending is a fucking humiliation ritual. It is needlessly disrespectful. There was absolutely no reason to make it canon that he had to take a pay cut. There was absolutely no reason to not at least make him an alternative captain to acknowledge and respect everything he’s achieved in the sport. It served no narrative purpose. It was just to fucking punish him.

There are two A positions available in NHL hockey. But teams do not need to fill both of them, just one. It would have been the simplest thing in the goddamn world to have an A open for him on the Centaurs, and to give him that when he joined. You don’t even need to take a fucking A from a character to give one to Shane.

Shane’s happily ever after is to strip him of his status, his friends, and his reputation. It is to cut his goddamn pay and take his position and everything he’s worked to achieve in his career. He loses everything except Ilya. But it’s all fine, because Ilya’s got a team and friends for him to have instead. And it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal.

And the final scene reinforces that. It suggests that losing his captaincy is something that hurts Shane. But fucking Ilya, the goddamn empath himself, laughs at him for it. Bood, his new teammate who hasn’t accomplished a third of what he has, laughs at him too and acts like it’s just about an ego trip. Fucking prima donna Shane Hollander. We’re not even going to dignify him with sympathy because he’s not even worth that.

Can you fucking imagine that. Can you fucking imagine having just been through the humiliation of being forced out and spat on by the team you built and your pain is the butt of the goddamn joke? It is such a needlessly, mindlessly cruel scene and I cannot think about it without getting intolerably fucking angry.

The books borrow from the trauma of marginalized individuals, and then in the same breath they minimize that trauma. They say it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal. And the ending of the book is the biggest goddamn showing of that. Shane experiences traumas that are all unfortunately central to minority experiences—he is underpaid, under-appreciated, denied leadership roles he is objectively more qualified for, and completely rejected and outcast by the people he loved. And it is played off as a fucking joke by his own husband and new teammates.