One of my issues with TLG is that we are receiving extremely contradictory messages with Shane and Ilya's emotional arcs.
Ilya's arc in that story is all about the fact that focusing on his relationship with Shane didn't bring him the happy ending he deserved - he has a boyfriend but no support system outside of Shane's parents and maybe a couple friends, and he needs to have a community, to expand his circle of true friendships (and the narrative ties his inability to do that with the closet/secretive nature of their relationship). The importance of mourning a professional setback is also a major part of Ilya's narrative: we see how deeply the Centaurs' losing streak is affecting his mental health and making him feel aimless and powerless. We also see that the team's losses are not happening due to lack of talent, but lack of chemistry on the ice (which brings us back to, once again, the importance of community building). To sum it up, Ilya needs to stop seeing Shane as his sole source of happiness, and he can only do that by being vulnerable with other people, and he can only be truly vulnerable by coming out of the closet.
And then we have Shane, who, at the surface, seems to be having it all: he is on a winning team that he's out to, he has his parents and a small but tight knit circle of friends. Shane, unlike Ilya, seems to have a good community around him. He is, however, extremely afraid that coming out to the world (and, most importantly, revealing his relationship with Ilya) will result in the loss of both his professional success and his current support system. And Shane's fears are portrayed as really silly at first - Shane's team and his friends already know about his queerness, so why is he moping and freaking out instead of helping his mom with dinner? Why is he so reluctant to tell his good friend JJ, who is an enthusiastic ally and is constantly trying to set him up with men, about his relationship with a man? It doesn't look like Shane will lose anything by coming out. So at this point the book is showing us that Shane's reluctance to live and love openly comes from a selfish, myopic desire to stay in his comfort zone.
And yeah...that seems like a coherent narrative, right? Ilya's rightful need to come out clashes with Shane's selfish need to hide, they have their big blow up fight, Shane regrets his shortcomings and apologises, Ilya apologises for not communicating, the weird almost plane crash happens, Shane gets scared, proposes and promises Ilya they will come out to everyone that summer. And they live happily ever after!
Yeah, the problem is that, instead of tying the narrative at this perfectly acceptable point, the book decides to surprise us with Shane and Ilya getting accidentally outed in a video. And the accidental outing results in every single one of Shane's silly little fears coming true. His supposedly cool team ostracizes him and, led by his very good friend JJ, straight up accuses him of cheating on games. His reputation gets completely trashed in the press. His public humiliation is so severe that he ends up deciding to leave his team and the city he lived in for his entire professional life. To sum it up, Shane basically loses a great portion of the community he had before he got outed. He now only has Ilya, his parents and a couple of friends.
And the thing is, this could have been a great plot beat if the book's point was to show us that queer people's need to stay in the closet doesn't always come from shame or selfishness, but from a valid fear of structural homophobia. The narrative could have shown us Ilya engaging in self reflection about how he underestimated Shane's feelings. The book could also have shown us that Shane, who is not only gay but also a man of color, faces harsher professional setbacks than white characters like Ilya and Scott, because hockey culture is not only queerphobic but also deeply racist. And last but not least, we could have actually seen, in detail, how Ilya and the Centaurs will provide Shane with the loving, accepting community he truly needs after his original teams' violent backlash.
We don't get any of that, though! Instead of following through on this logical conclusion, the book rushes through Shane's feelings and magically cures him from any hurt he might be feeling after this incredibly traumatic event. He reconciles with JJ but that happens off page. Ilya has next to no reaction to his boyfriend's public humiliation ritual; his first response is to make it about himself ("this is insulting to me!"). Then all of the emotional support we get is a sex scene and some really unfunny jokes. We never see Shane forming any kind of bond with any of the Ottawa Centaurs, so the reader has no idea if he's going to actually have friends on that team or if they are going to merely tolerate him for Ilya's sake. At the end of the book, Shane is almost at the same place Ilya was at the beginning: humbled and reeling after a major life change, mourning a professional loss, deprived of his original community. Unlike Ilya, though, we are told by the narrative that this is supposed to be a happy ending. Shane doesn't need to be the best in his line of work and he doesn't need to have his own separate circle of friends because now he has his husband's team and his husband's friends. He doesn't need to make his original salary because his husband is already rich. He can just borrow Ilya's social circle and Ilya's team and Ilya's life because it's wrong to focus on things that aren't his very sad boyfriend.
I'm sorry, but that's a very weird way to resolve this complex plotline for the 1 (one) hockey player of color on your roster of leads. But who cares, right? Ilya got a dog, so we will dedicate several pages to that.
