Hi and welcome to K Let's Talk, the podcast where we breakdown
storytelling across books, television and film with a
special love for book to screen adaptations.
Here we talk about craft, character arcs, structure,
dialogue, visual language, and the creative choices that shape
how a story lands. If you like thoughtful,
conversational, deep dives into the stories you can't stop
thinking about, you're in the right place.
Let's talk. Hello everyone, and welcome back
to the podcast. I can't wait to dive into this
week's episode because I got this request from someone in my
DMS to talk about Shane Hollander's Heroes arc.
And this was brought up because Rachel Reed, the author herself,
has said that the grand story, the overarching story, is
actually Shane's story and his hero's journey.
As soon as she said that, I knew I wanted to cover this.
And then someone very kindly asked me if I would and twist my
arm. I'm happy to talk about it.
So that's what we're going to talk about in this week's
podcast episode. I've written down so many notes.
I can't wait to go through them all.
This is of course my opinion. I would love to hear everybody
else's. I think that this is such a
wonderful storytelling vehicle for her to use and for her to
explicitly state that she is trying to write it this way
makes me so excited. And it's very easy to see and
map out if you have that context when reading through Heated
Rivalry, The Long Game, and then anticipating Unrivaled, which is
going to be the third book for Shane and Ilya.
So of course, this will have spoilers for The Long Game if
you have not read that book yet and then speculation for.
So if you are looking to avoid any of those things, please make
sure that you skip this episode or come back to it when you have
read The Long Game. So without further ado, let's
talk about Shane Hollander's Hero's Arc.
So before we get into the nitty gritty, I want to just clarify
what exactly a hero's arc or Hero's journey is.
There's also another name for it called the Monomyth.
There's a lot of history surrounding that, but I think is
really worth digging into of storytelling or the construction
of stories is something that you are interested in.
It's essentially a complete template or like a broad
trajectory used to tell tales that involve a hero that goes on
an adventure, has a crisis, wins in a in a fight, comes out with
victory, and then returns home a changed and transformed hero.
A man named Joseph Campbell is credited for this.
The whole outline of the monomyth or the heroes journey
is also based on a practical guide to Joseph Campbell's The
Hero with 1000 Faces. So again, if you want to do your
own research, it's very interesting to read up on that.
There's a diagram as well to help explain what the adventure
for the hero in the story looks like, and the whole thing is
comprised of a few different pillars that outline the general
story. They can also be broken into
three acts. The first act is called the
Departure. Within the Departure or within
act one, there are a number of key bullet points listed for the
main character of the hero to go through to initiate the story.
The first being introducing the ordinary world, which is the
world that the hero currently exists within so that we can
identify what is going on with that character, how they live,
how they navigate the world, what their moral high ground is,
what their principles are, and really establish the baseline
that we're going to be starting off with in the story.
The second pillar is the call to adventure, which is when the
hero is presented with some sort of a problem or a challenge or a
call to adventure, a quest of some sort that often introduces
other characters that that the hero is going to be interacting
with, of course. But it also brings up the third
bullet point, which is a refusal of the call.
So the hero often will hesitate or initially refuse to accept
this journey because they have pre emptive fears that are
largely stemming from the very normal comfortable life that
they're used to living. And this adventure disrupts.
The fourth pillar is when the hero meets with some sort of a
mentor. So someone who's been on this
journey or is also going on this journey, it's identified as a
seasoned traveller that gives the hero training equipment
confidence. This can be metaphorical as
well. And then the 5th bullet point in
act one is crossing the first threshold.
So the hero fully committing to going on this journey taking
place in this heroic quest, and then the hero is able to enter
into this new world that they're exposed to that is often special
or dangerous. And again, those can be
metaphors as well. That then brings us into Act 2,
which is categorized as the initiation for the hero.
So the first bullet point of Act 2, and there are four bullet
points is tests allies and enemies.
And so the hero of the story learns all the new rules of this
new world that they're entering into through a series of
challenges, also coming across allies and enemies.
And again, that strengthens the story by introducing more
characters. And those characters often help
guide the hero through these challenges or difficulties so
that there are lessons learned during this initiation period.
The bullet point after that is called the approach to the
Inmost cave, which is one of my favorites.
It's when the hero is dealing with the central crisis of the
story. So often times this will be a
larger dramatic moment that the hero is facing, and they have to
retreat inwards and find their own strength within themselves.
They can't be relying so much on allies.
They have to then use what they've learned over the course
of time to get themselves out of this crisis.
The next bullet point is called the Ordeal, which is when the
hero faces the greatest fear that they have or has a death
and rebirth earth type experience.
The way that they were navigating the world is no
longer logical for them. They can no longer continue on
in the ways that they had previously been.
There is a death of sorts of the old self and a rebirth into this
new fully actualized version of the hero.
And they can only do that by facing what was their greatest
fear that we were establishing early on in the story.
The 4th bullet point in Act 2 is called reward, or when the hero
is seizing the sword. So the hero then survives this
ordeal and gains a reward. That can be an object, that can
be knowledge, that can be power, that can be a relationship, that
can be a number of things. But seizing the sword is coming
into their own power, grasping at the greatness that has always
existed within them. But they had to go through these
trials and tribulations in order to find and achieve that.
Then brings us into Act 3, which is called The Return.
This act has only three bullet points within it.
First one is called the Road Back.
So the hero is attempting now, after seizing their reward, to
return to the world they came from, their ordinary world, and
oftentimes they have remaining dangers or unresolved conflicts
following them back to that ordinary world.
That leads them to the next bullet point, which is the
resurrection. This is the final, highest
stakes battle that the hero is going to face.
And through this battle, the hero is often described as being
purified and transformed fully. So this is when they reach their
pinnacle self, the highest version of themselves, and then
the final bullet point in the return is called Return with the
elixir. So the hero finally returns home
using the reward that they have gained in order to improve the
ordinary world that they started off in that they are returning
home to. So a full circle moment where
they return to where we met them fully transformed and changed by
this hero's journey, hero's arc that they have gone on.
Hopefully after I've read through all of those bullet
points, you can identify and start thinking of some moments
in the storytelling that we've already seen and can align with
these big moments within this hero's journey, this hero's arc.
I've mapped out what I feel are moments that align with these
bullet points and each act within this hero's journey, this
monomyth. And so I'm going to go through
all of them in order. And again, I'd love to hear
everybody's two cents and if there's other moments that you
think fit into specific moments or bullet points here.
Because I think it's a really great exercise if you're someone
who's writing a story yourself, to be able to see all the
different ways in which you can accomplish these things without
it being too on the nose. We're not fighting Dragons in
this story. This is very much a personal
hero's journey for this character, so much so that I
think a lot of people didn't recognize that that's what was
happening in this story until Rachel herself pointed it out.
To me. Shanes Heroes journey is largely
internal and his quest isn't actually about hockey, it's more
so about his identity outside of hockey.
The relationship he has with control and his journey is
actually him finding vulnerability and being able to
be in partnership with someone who he loves.
Ilia serves as this emotional heart of the overarching story,
but he's also the overarching emotional heart of Shane's story
too. It's not because Ilya leads
Shane into this hero's journey that his transformation happens,
so to speak. It's more so because he's the
reason Shane can no longer stay in this ordinary world he exists
in. Ilya presents something that
makes him dream bigger and look outside of the norm and this box
that he's put himself inside. So the first bullet point of Act
One is the ordinary world, and that's where we meet Shane when
he is a very young kid. He's only 181718.
He's very disciplined, hyper controlled, emotionally guarded
and very young. The key difference being that
for him, his ordinary world is the NHL.
We're in the show. It's the MLH which is not
ordinary at all. It's very singular.
Because of that, he's become a person defined by his precision,
his routine, the very carefully constructed image that he and
Euna, his mother, have made for him.
And as a person of color who must be extraordinary and
flawless and undeniable, he's also carrying this expectation
to be an example for young kids who look like him.
So he's coming into this quote UN quote ordinary world with a
very specific story intact. So that's what also I feel makes
this story in particular so fascinating is because Shane and
Ilya are both very specific characters with very specific
traits and backgrounds and a storyline that is incredibly
unique to only them. Buried beneath the weight of
everything else that Shane is dealing with is his closeted
identity that he's not allowed himself to explore or even
entertain. And so by suppressing his
desires, it's quietly costing him, and he does not realize how
much it's costing him until he meets Ilya.
That's when we reach this call to adventure state.
And Ilya Rosenov is both the call to adventure, but also he
represents the destabilization of Shane's very carefully
constructed world. And he makes this version of
Shane that we meet at the beginning of the story
essentially unsustainable. So Ilya, to me, is the inciting
force here. And he disrupts Shane's very
carefully constructed world not just because of Shane's
attraction to him, but because Ilya represents something that
Shane cannot neatly categorize or suppress within himself.
And so his call, it isn't a moment in particular, it's not
the water bottle and you know, that sort of moment.
I would just say it's more Ilya himself.
And their rivalry serves as the framework that Shane disguises
his unnerving feelings behind. But love sits really close to
hatred, and so he battles with his feelings internally for
years. And what makes this compelling
is that his call to adventure, it isn't something Shane
initially wants. It's actually something he
spends years actively resisting and trying to deny himself,
which fits so neatly into the refusal to the call.
So after Ilia and Shane cross paths and it creates this
initial call to adventure, Shanes journey continues with
his refusal to the call. And so in the story, it's spread
out over years of Shane resisting Ilias approaches, and
Shane goes to great lengths to keep their relationship secret
and compartmentalize it in his own mind and control as much of
the situation and the narrative around them as possible.
And all of that stems from his fear of being gay, of wanting
Ilya, of disappointing his parents, of losing his career,
his fear of being loved. He's afraid of that.
And Ilya again embodies what Shane wants but believes he
can't have. Ilya has this openness.
He has this supposed emotional freedom, and he lives this life
that is seemingly not dictated by fear.
And so through their relationship, it's very intense
and secret and cyclical. It just keeps pulling Shane back
in, even when he's trying to find distance or maintain it.
That leads into the meeting with the mentor side of the heroes
journey. And in the traditional sense, I
would say that Shane meets a mentor in the TV series.
And Scott Hunter, they've put him in that sort of mentor role.
He's much more prominent in the show than he is in the book.
And his appearances are strategically placed at certain
moments in his hero's journey of resisting the call or refusing
the call. And he serves as kind of a
steady encouragement for Shane. But in most ways, you can argue
that the mentor is Ilya because he is a mirror held up to Shane,
showing him what he lacks and what he's afraid of become.
Ilya doesn't guide Shane in a clean, wise mentor like way that
we often see depicted. He pushes him, though, sometimes
very messily, towards being honest.
He's always pushing him towards honesty.
And he challenges Shane's boundaries and calls out his
avoidance and refuses to let their relationship say
superficial, even though the two of them are forced into hiding
it within their bubble. Ilya is the one that makes Shane
feel brave and he presses the issue and he does that
unconsciously at times, but also consciously too.
And all of that leads to the moment we are we cross the first
threshold, which is when in the hero's journey, the hero fully
commits to join the dangerous special world being offered to
him, this journey being presented.
And in the storyline, I see this as when he and Ilya decide to
become a couple and they're in a committed relationship.
And that's by the end of Heated Rivalry and into the beginning
of the long game. But it starts with it being
accepted at the end of Heated Rivalry.
What makes that interesting is that by the end of the first
book, they are technically coming up with a plan for how
they will be together. But it is still 1 where Shane is
deeply rooted in his preexisting fears from that ordinary world
that we established at the top of the story.
So you can still see how even though he's made this decision,
he's theoretically keeping 1 foot in that old world.
He has not yet gone through any of those trials and tribulations
that he needs to in order to level up and evolve into the
true hero that he is destined to become.
And that's where we meet him in the long game.
So as we continue this crossing of the first threshold, we meet
Shane and Ilya in the long game, and they are in a committed
relationship, but it's still secret and they've come up with
their plan. They've set things in motion.
They have taken the steps across that threshold together and
decided that they will be together and they'll figure out
what that looks like against all odds.
But unfortunately, that moment of bliss and that honeymoon
phase is very short lived because they still don't know
how to communicate with one another.
Shane is still very committed to the plan because it feeds into
his need for control. And again, that's an archetype
of his that is deeply rooted in his world, his ordinary world,
that he starts out and his fear of being discovered has not gone
away. Whereas Ilya is not entirely on
the same page about that and finds it much harder to deal
with the realities of their relationship given his isolation
and depression. So Shane may have taken all of
the steps to map out their future, establish the rules, set
them up to be together one day, but in reality, the
relationship, it's more than just the choice to be in one.
It still requires sacrifice. And Shane is still faced with a
number of internal battles that he must identify within himself,
then face and then resolve, which perfectly leads to the
next phase, which is tests allies and enemies.
So within Shane and Ilya's relationship, we as readers can
start to detect patterns and cracks and one of those is the
distance between the two of them due to their careers and how
that has started to manifest into more challenges between
them and therefore arguments between them.
And as Ilya's depression grows and he starts to identify that
he is depressed, he ends up shutting Shane out.
And Shane transversely does not push Ilya to share his emotions.
And so more misunderstandings start to rear their ugly head.
Shane's expectations of himself, his career, and his own
internalized fears. They make Ilya feel unimportant
and angry and isolated. And ultimately that makes him
slightly resentful because they cannot love each other in the
way that he wants to love Shane because of Shane's internal
roadblocks. And so Shane's attempt to keep
his emotions together and be strong for Ilya actually leads
him to largely blind himself to what Ilya has actually
sacrificed for him and for their relationship already.
And so their fight is the pinnacle of this.
That's when they are able to identify that the enemy is
largely the League, yes, but it's also themselves if they're
not able to find a way to converse with one another in a
healthy way. This it means that Shane starts
to approach the innermost cave. So again, in the aftermath of
their fight, we see him retreat, and that growing impossibility
of sustaining both his public life and his private truth
brought on by this fight after Christmas and ultimately the
plain scare scene are what forced Shane to enter into his
innermost cave and confront himself directly.
And the irony here is that all throughout the story, Shane's
growth doesn't happen in isolation.
It happens because Ilya makes his old life unbearable.
It it makes the status quo unbearable.
Without Ilya, Shane could have remained comfortably stuck there
forever because he would have been too nervous to step outside
the lines. But.
Being with Ilia means that he is afraid of staying the same.
It starts to feel like a loss to him to stay in that place and
live in that fear. And so Ilias love and making
Ilia feel loved become more important to shame than what was
previously his comfort, which is control and safety and privacy
and keeping that part of himself hidden.
He goes into this innermost world and realizes that he's
willing to sacrifice his own comfort and control in order to
be with the man he loves. And it takes him being
threatened with the concept that he wouldn't be able to mourn
Ilya should something have happened to him on that
airplane. And he would have spent the rest
of his life slowly dying in grief alone for him to realize
what's actually important to him now.
And the things that he was placing so high on a pedestal
and making important are actually not as important as
that fact. That's when we reach the ordeal,
and this represents and emotional breaking point of the
hero on their journey. And all of Shane's come when his
love for Ilya demand that he finally be honest, both with
himself and other people around him.
And at a certain point, Ilya is not just part of the journey for
Shane, but can actually be categorized as one of those
tests. Because loving Ilya requires
Shane to confront everything he's built his identity around,
which again, is his need for control, his desperate desire
for privacy, for perfection, his very polished reputation.
Ilia's very existence directly effects each of those pillars of
Shane's personality. And so once he and Ilia are
together and they fall in love, Shane's personality shifts and
it is able to transform into a version that Shane feels is
actually more in alignment with his true self.
And he would have never been able to discover that if not for
Ilia and not this repressed, rigid, sad, lost person that we
find him as at the beginning of the story, and that he'd grown
comfortable being. And so the one priority of
Shane's at this point, when Ilya is at his lowest, is to not only
be a partner worthy of someone like Ilya, but also making Ilya
feel like he's worthy of Shane, moving mountains for him.
And so when the two of them get engaged, this is yet another
step in the direction they both wish to move in, which is
building a life together and having it be out in the open at
some point in the near future. So it's both the reward in the
story, yes, but it's also, in my mind, an ordeal because now they
must navigate what being engaged looks like and not being able to
tell anyone. And then they start to slowly
tell some people, and that is when they are outed.
And this to me, is the ultimate ordeal because their
relationship is exposed without their consent or in a way that
they chose for themselves. And so they have all of these
additional pressures from each of their teams, the reactions
from their teammates. And we see the very contrasting
way in which Ilya is received by his own team, despite this
deeper dilemma within Shane, which ultimately again, is what
the ordeal looks like here. Because by that point, the real
question is whether Shane is willing to lose the life he
understands within his team in Montreal in order to live a
truthful one with Ilya. And he really struggles with
that for a while in the book. That's when we reach the reward
or seizing the sword moment of the story.
And to me, Shane and Ilya's decision to confront the
commissioner, announce their relationship, share their
engagement, hold their wedding in their backyard, and
ultimately Shane's departure from Montreal, they're all part
of that reward. To me, Shane is seizing the
sword within his own life and within his relationship with
Ilya every time they go through each of those story beats.
And so I think it's important to almost separate those two things
because yes, Ilya is Shane's whole world, but Shane as a
person and as a character is his own man.
And so he needed to learn to make decisions about his own
life for himself 1st and for no one else.
And so in this heroes journey and in this phase of the heroes
journey, he's become someone who puts his own needs and desires
first, whereas previously it was last in every facet of his life.
So by the end of the long game, we're finally starting to see
what it looks like when Shane is self assured and confident.
And yes, he's terrified, but he's willing to be brave now and
that bravery allows him to choose his own destiny.
That doesn't happen if Shane hadn't done the work and
confronted his fears and dealt with a lot of his own hang ups
and biases so that he's able to operate from a place of self
assuredness and more of like an internal peace that he's never
had before. And it's something we've never
seen in Shane before now. And so when he and Ilya step out
onto the ice together at the end of the book, it's a new version
of Shane who is about to be tested in new ways.
But he's a almost fully actualized person by this point
because of of the journey he's gone on so far.
But going into this next phase of their story together, he's
never not been a captain. He's never not been on a cup
contending team or any other team besides Montreal since his
rookie year for that matter. And he's never been in a locker
room with Ilya. He's never travelled on the road
with him. He's never prepared for a game
with him. He's never spent every moment of
every day with him. What does that look like?
What does that do to the stakes of their relationship?
Again, it is going to rearrange those trials and tribulations
that he has to go through in order to come out of this hero's
journey fully actualized at the end of this three book
overarching storyline. So that's where we're leaving
Shane at the end of the long game.
And when we think about Unrivaled and what we can deduce
from it so far, there are again three bullet points that have to
be covered in this third book, the first being the Road Back.
So while there of course will be obstacles for Shane to face in
Unrivalled, including this supposed big bad in the form of
a hockey podcast, Shane's biggest obstacle isn't always
going to be something external. It's often himself, and so he
has this fear of losing control, of risking everything he's
built. That's always the true test for
him in his story, and protecting him and Ilya from the outside
forces is part of that, certainly.
But he maintains much of his fear that stems from this
internal restraint well into the long game, and I suspect that
will still be there in Unrivalled as well.
In the portion of his journey that takes place in the road
back. Shane will now have to figure
out what his new while living a life that he long thought was
entirely and completely impossible.
Because he's now married, playing in the MLH, publicly
out, sharing a locker room and teammates with Ilya.
And Ilya is his captain. And he's in a new city, learning
a new system and still dealing with the repercussions and hurt
of needing to leave his old team in Montreal.
And so this again will come with its own set of challenges.
And all of this is without even considering the possibility of
something that Ilya might be grappling with in Unrivaled,
that becomes a challenge for Shane by proxy.
The next pillar is the resurrection, which is the final
battle where our hero is finally fully transformed.
And so again, I imagine this is going to be a moment when Shane
defends himself and Ilya from the protagonist of the book,
which I suspect is going to be the podcast, yes, but also fans,
society, the league. Often this resurrection is done
in a very grand and triumphant gesture in order to prove that
he's no longer the the character we meet at the beginning of his
hero's journey, and he's no longer afraid to put himself
directly in the line of fire in order to do what he feels is
right and what is best for himself.
And for Ilya, this, I think, is also going to trickle down to
mean that he will defend anyone within the community that he is
now a part of. Because in the long game,
specifically when he and Ilya start going on double dates with
Ryan Price and his boyfriend Fabian, Shane expresses that
he's never fully explored what it means to be gay, what that
means to him, and how he fits into that community.
He isn't sure how he's going to fit into that community or if he
fits into it. And I suspect that that will be
part of his journey and unrivalled as well, because it
would culminate quite nicely here.
That also leads us into the final phase of the hero's
journey, which is the return with the elixir.
And again, that's when the hero returns home, changed and in
possession of his reward, ready to return to his normal life and
the world he came from, but move forward in a way where he can
integrate both his new identity and all of the new lessons that
he's learned. If Shane's initial difficulty
was himself, then the resolution here would be his ability to
love himself and accept himself fully, and so a large part of
that is the gift of Ilya's love and their relationship.
But I also suspect that this is when we will see the fruits of
Ilya's labor as well, because they've built a community
together, not only within their foundation, the arena
Foundation, but for players within the league who also
identify as queer. And so that brings them both a
true level of fulfillment that I think rivals that of their
hockey careers and all of their accomplishments that thus far.
And to me, I would assume that that sense of purpose would free
both of them of so much pain and trauma from their formative
years. And it would give them hope for
change and also a renewed sense of purpose as they move closer
to retirement. And I also suspect that the two
of them wanting to have children would also provide them with
that sense of purpose as well. So the two of them are building
a life outside of the sport that has defined them since their
childhoods. They're, they're going to need
to find a new world to walk into.
And that is exactly what the end of this hero's journey calls
for. And for so long with Shane
especially, he could not tell where he began and hockey ended.
It was so intrinsically part of himself and to find him so
deeply and that aspect of his life really ruled all of his
decision making. It had such rigid constructs and
biases that became part of his personality and now Shane has a
life outside of hockey that he has chosen, which in and of
itself is the reward. So that's how I am guessing the
heroes journey for Shane is going to end.
But again, Rachel Reed is going to include so many moments and
nuance that I could never predict.
But I do feel like when you lay it out in this way, it is very
clear that Shane is on this beautiful hero's journey and the
story is very much about him, even though, again, his battles
are not external in the same way that I think Ilya's character
can make them. You know, he has his brother and
his father. Shane's is very close to the
chest. He's he's fighting with things
in his head. And because we're reading a book
and we can live inside of his head, it helps make that
clearer. I think it's a great example of
how you can write a character in this way and give him this
heroic journey without it being the traditional one.
And the internal battles we all fight are just as valid and and
worth exploring as the external ones.
So please let me know if you've thought about Shane's hero's
journey, his monomyth, if you've ever looked into this style of
storytelling structure before. There are so many stories and
movies and shows that if you look for it, you can find this
within. It's been around for a very long
time. It is here to stay.
And I think it's fun to deconstruct a story and look at
it so closely and see how there are so many different ways that
you can take this framework and use it to tell a really
interesting and compelling story about a person transforming and
leveling up and growing. So I hope you enjoyed my gabbing
about Shane's hero's arc and explanation as to what that is.
Please let me know if there are any moments that you think fit
neatly into one of these categories in Act one, Act 2, or
Act three, and then the subcategories within each of
them. I think that it's fun to take
scenes and kind of plug them in now that we know that they're
all part of that hero's journey that Shane's on and that will be
culminating in Unrivalled, which I'm really excited to see how
she wraps it up given what I think those last three story
beats that she's going to be covering are.
As always, if you've made it all the way to the end, thank you
so, so much for listening. I deeply appreciate it.
And again, keep sending me your thoughts and questions in the
DMS. I get so much inspiration talking to people about this
show and the writing and storytelling and how wonderful
it's been executed for our screens.
And it leads to great, insightful, thoughtful questions
like this that we get to discuss on the podcast.
So keep them coming. I absolutely love them.
Thank you again and I will talk to you guys in our next chat.