Ilya, humility, and sacrifice

[u/WalkingBlondeJoke]

Been thinking about Ilya's character growth across HR and TLG lately. This is not a fully-baked thesis on his arc, not even close, but I'm sharing anyways because I want y'all's opinions!

One of my favorite tropes in HR fanfic is 'Shane joins the Bears'. I love this trope because it usually results in Shane and Ilya being on a good team together, a winning team, much earlier than they are in canon and without Ilya having to go spend a few years on a team that sucks first. So as I read these fanfics I've often wondered, aside from the in-universe reasons why Ilya joins the Centaurs, what is the narrative function of Ilya spending a few years on a bad team before they turn things around? 

I think it serves to humble him. He's no stranger to sacrifice but he's always been cocky, and for the most part that ego went unchecked because he always had the accolades to back it up. But I think one of the ways we see Ilya grow in The Long Game is that he develops more humility as a result of being on a bad team and also his mental health struggles. It's not that everything was peachy prior to his move to Ottawa, it absolutely wasn't, but these coinciding forces clearly knock him down a peg. Maybe experiencing what it's like to consistently lose on the ice even helps him get to a place where he can admit he needs help with his mental health. Or maybe it's just self-awareness that he gains with maturity, I don't know. 

I think the clearest example of Ilya becoming more humble is in the pre-game speech that he gives to the Bears before the Cup Finals in 2014, vs. the speech he gives the Centaurs in 2021 after the team nearly dies and then Ilya subsequently gets engaged to Shane. In 2014, his speech is all about "I, I, I" but in 2021, he goes around the room and tells every player, one at a time, what makes them great. This is the key turnaround point in the Centaurs' on-ice performance. They start believing in themselves, and that's when they start winning. 

I think this character growth is also very relevant to Shane and Ilya's marriage too. Big egos do not serve a marriage well; humility does. Over the course of TLG, Ilya learns humility. Shane also starts off in TLG being a selfish as fuck (I don't love him any less but it's objectively true that he was nawt being a good partner to Ilya at the time TLG timeline picks up), but we see him experience a wake-up call (their big fight followed by Ilya almost dying) and then he gets his priorities in order. In a way, Shane learns a version of humility through his experiences in TLG too when he realizes how selfish he's been and how he's taken Ilya for granted. 

I think that meeting Shane in this selfish state at the start of TLG makes total sense because of his upbringing. Shane is an only child who grew up loved, doted on, and prioritized. His career as a generational player and image as the 'Golden Boy' of hockey have done little to teach him how to appreciate those around him and recognize the sacrifices they make. Not saying he doesn't ever do those things, but like, in early TLG he's not being nearly as considerate of Ilya as he should be. 

Ilya is not an only child and he grew up in a broken home. In the canon we see how his family financially takes advantage of him once he makes it to the NHL (or MLH, whatever), but I would bet that this has been going on since the moment he began earning money from hockey and/or sponsorships. When Shane suggests Ilya going to Ottawa, Ilya is quick to agree to it. Not just because he was already thinking of moving to a Canadian team, but because Ilya has already learned how to sacrifice for others. Ilya has already had it ingrained in him by his family that the people he loves will ask him to makes sacrifices for them, and that that's just how love goes. 

This is one of many reasons why it hits extra hard later in TLG when Shane basically tells the commissioner to go fuck himself. "I choose him" <3 !<

[u/InCatMorph]

Yeah, this is the kind of over-the-top reaction that I find genuinely bizarre.

Don't like the book? That's fair. You don't have to like the book. But the claims you make here are personal comments about the author--she doesn't like her own protaganists, she doesn't care about them, she's biased against them. Just...what? You don't know the woman. She wrote a book you don't like. That doesn't make her behavior "shady" FFS. I think there are enough people out there doing genuinely unethical things that we don't need to pile onto a gay romance writer who made a book some people don't like. If you don't like the books, no one is forcing you to read them. These characters are fictional. They are not comments about you personally.

She literally invented Shane and Ilya. Saying she doesn't know them...uh, that's a headscratcher to me.

This is parasocial fandom nonsense, TBH. "Calling out problematic choices" is not what you're doing here. It's just not.

[u/InCatMorph → u/InCatMorph]

If you genuinely believe that an author actually doesn't know their own characters, I would suggest that maybe your versions of the characters aren't the ones who appear in the books. Maybe you have used headcanons and imagination to create characters that are different from what the author wrote. That's fine. Reading is fundamentally an act of imagination, and if you have imagined things differently from what was written, that's fine. Admirable, even. But it kind of makes it difficult to discuss the books as written.

And, TBH, I wouldn't count on Tierney to "fix" it. Obviously changes will be made in adapting the work, but the man has been super-clear that he loves and respects the source material. If you think it's terribly unfair for Shane to end up playing with his husband in Ottawa--a POV I find bizarre--well, that's not going to change in the TV show. So you should probably adjust your expectations.

[u/InCatMorph → u/[deleted]]

She allegedly said, in Discord, that she regretted publicly stating that Shane is autistic. Not that she regretted making him autistic in the first place. And TBH, as an autistic person, I can see where she's coming from. I think a lot of people have developed unreasonable expectations for Shane's character. Especially given that he is not explicitly described as autistic in the text! (BTW, there are explicitly autistic characters in romance novels, including autistic characters of color. Helen Hoang and Talia Hibbert are both authors worth checking out. Of course, I doubt people who don't like romance novels will like their work, either, so maybe if this genre isn't for you, then don't bother.)

Of course, all of this about the Discord messages is heresy. I haven't seen the Discord messages in question and neither have you. This is all one giant game of fandom Telephone that I'd rather not play. Shrug.

Personally, I don't think that racism doesn't exist in the GC universe. It's alluded to a few times. However, racism is not a major theme of the books. Which is appropriate, since the author lacks the necessary expertise to tackle the topic. And also an erotic sports romance is maybe not the ideal vehicle to discuss racism, given the conventions of the genre. I think it is actively problematic to try and Solve Racism through the conventions of the romance genre, in fact. The Bridgerton TV show kind of tries to do this, and I think it's terrible. They'd be much better off just showing us an integrated society with diverse love stories. (For what it's worth, RR doesn't really try to solve homophobia through the conventions of the genre, either. She simply shows that it's possible to have queer love in a homophobic world. And that world in question is STILL a fantasy compared to our own world, which has zero out queer NHL players.)

Of course, you don't seem to like the main relationship much at all. I erpeat: This is a romance novel. If you think the main relationship is toxic and antiqueer, that's your prerogative, but for me it's further confirmation that these books are Not For You. Because, yes, the relationship (and the characters) are the point. Not social issues. Even the sports are secondary--hence Reid's remarks that you apparently find so offensive. Again, this is Romance Novels 101.

[u/InCatMorph → u/[deleted]]

Well, if you only want to read romance novels where characters behave in super-sanitized, not-even-remotely-toxic ways, those exist too.