#basic reading comprehension

How do you even survive to adulthood being this dumb?

It was all about how obvious it is that Ilya is her favorite, and accusing her of favoritism towards him, among other things, and...I am confused! Does she not have a perfect right to have a favorite character in the story SHE WROTE? I mean, I have had a favorite character in every story I have ever written, and it was probably why I wrote them at all? There is literally nothing wrong with that? As a reader, you are perfectly within your rights to have a different favorite character! Yay! Go wild!

And, apparently people are especially upset by her saying that Shane doesn't carry trauma, because of course a queer, autistic Asian hockey boy has experienced trauma, but what she says is not that he has never experienced anything traumatic, but that it is not a central driving motivator for his character in her story; it is not driving his responses to the situation he is navigating in these books. He is not CARRYING it.

Shane comes from an essentially supportive and loving home, and yes! all families have their specific fucked-up-ness, but he is grounded in his life and met with love by the people in it to the best of their ability! Ilya, meanwhile, is carrying the deep wound of losing his mother the way he did, and is separated from and unloved by his family, unable to go home or speak his mother-tongue in his life, and is actively grieving and protecting himself ALL THE TIME. He carries his trauma everywhere he goes, and he carries it into his relationship with Shane.

I dunno if y'all get this, but in order for a story to get somewhere, it has to make choices and not try to get EVERYWHERE. This story is not a story about the racism faced by POC in the hockey world. It is not a story about Wasian family dynamics (and thank god, because Rachel Reid is not the person who should be fucking writing that story!). It is not about autism, and it's not even primarily about homophobia in sport! It is about the love story of these two guys, and how they find a way to navigate their worlds, inner and outer, so that their private and public lives can be in alignment. Again, you may feel like other, less primary parts of the story speak to you, personally, more deeply than that one, but fellas, that's what fanfic is for. Go wild, and god bless!

And Reid doesn't say here that Shane is NOT intelligent, she says that Ilya is VERY intelligent and perceptive and Shane is not. Shane has a very focused and specific brain. He is canonically the player with the highest hockey IQ out there! Y'all, there are different kinds of intelligence in the world, and all of them deserve respect and acknowledgement. This is a BRIEF NOTE! She did not go into detail about it, but she certainly did not write Shane as dumb, either. She wrote him as a guy who is not incredibly articulate, and takes a while to catch up sometimes when the subject is not hockey, and especially when the subject is emotions. He doesn't tend to get things until they are plainly and explicitly stated, but he feels deeply and understands deeply, and is more than a match and an equal to his VERY intelligent partner.

Have any of y'all ever met and spoken extensively with a professional athlete? I have. This is fucking REAL yo, and it is pretty common! And it doesn't mean they are dumb AT ALL. It means that their intelligence is differently expressed and focused, and frankly, that is fascinating! I actually think this note is incredibly insightful about the kind of athlete Shane is.

Rachel Reid created two characters that personally? I love. They are very whole and she brings them very fully to life. I think she treated both of them with seriousness, respect and generosity. I am amazed at how successful The Long Game is at making both of them sympathetic, well-intentioned towards each other, deeply loving towards each other, and also just fucking making complicated, understandable human mistakes that are very much grounded in their characters. That's why the story is compelling.

Someone shared the announcement on FB.  It clearly says they’re Marvel’s first foray into “adult animation” - and a commenter says “I like Howard the Duck, but I don’t think he’d be suited for a live action series.  A cartoon maybe.”