If you love really Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue, let them go
When a happy couple announces their engagement, the people around them tend to be happy as well. It’s rare that they take to the internet in large numbers to document their despair.
Unless the couple in question is Canadian ice dancer Scott Moir and Jackie Mascarin.
It turns out that Moir is not marrying Tessa Virtue, his skating partner of more than 20 years, with whom he won five Olympic Medals, and with whom he shares the kind of intense chemistry on ice that few share behind closed doors.
He is instead marrying Mascarin, his first skating partner from childhood, and an unknown to millions of Canadians who were pulling hard for the union of Tessa and Scott.
Moir announced his engagement to Mascarin this month, in a speech during his and Virtue’s induction ceremony into Canada’s Hall of Fame. And in doing so he seems to have shattered the fantasies of an entire nation and enraged the skating duo’s super fans.
Canada is taking a cold shower this week. Our very own Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga are not as hoped, far from the shallows, deep in love. They are just friends who are really good at their jobs.
They tried to tell us this many times. We didn’t listen. For example, last year, when Virtue and Moir appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres show, the host asked them almost immediately if they were an item. Virtue’s response:
“We are not. We always say that that’s a big compliment because what we portray on the ice is really important to us. We love getting into character and we love telling a story and a lot of the emotions we portray are universal themes that resonate with everyone. So the fact that people feel invested in our partnership is truly remarkable.”
It’s also remarkably creepy. In my research for this column, I have seen things I did not want to see and I have read things I did not want to read, things I will never forget. A child of the 2000s, I am very familiar with internet fan fiction, so believe me when I tell you that the fan fiction genre featuring Tessa and Scott is uniquely obscene, and sophisticated.
Its stories don’t read, as many fan fiction stories do, like they were written by high schoolers, but by adults intimately familiar with the characters and politics of professional ice dancing.
In fact, I now suspect that at least 20 per cent of the audience at any given ice dancing show (and maybe some of the coaching staff ) have at some point authored a steamy story about Tessa and Scott.
Popular scenarios include: Tessa and Scott in the locker-room. Tessa and Scott on a coach bus. Tessa and Scott on their wedding night.
News that the latter scenario will not play out any time soon is obviously not sitting well with fans of the ice-dancing duo. But it’s made their superfans livid.
These fans are angry not only that Moir isn’t marrying Virtue, but also that he announced his engagement at the duo’s induction into the Hall of Fame. By doing this, they believe, he cheapened Virtue’s moment in the spotlight.
What’s more, they feel so slighted by Moir’s perceived slight of Virtue, they’ve begun personally attacking Mascarin online, sharing what appear to be private photos of her and making unkind remarks about her appearance (I discovered an anonymous Instagram account that appears to exist solely for this purpose).
Having seen and read all of this it’s hard to believe that Scott and Tessa adore Canada at this particular moment, as much as Canada adores them.
I don’t think it’s possible to take a restraining order out against an entire nation, but if it were, they’d certainly have grounds.
A word of advice then, to Canadians who love Tessa and Scott: let them go.
Find a different home grown, winter sports duo to become creepily obsessed with. I vote for Don Cherry and Ron MacLean. They may lack the grace and chemistry of Virtue and Moir. But the fan fiction opportunities are endless.