Sometimes I see Interview with a Vampire clips and I really get tempted to watch the show. The actors are hot and likable. They seem really enthusiastic. The adaptational changes seem really interesting.
My problem is: having read the books until just past Tale of the Body Thief - I'm not sure I finished whichever book was after that...
I really really hate Lestat. And I'm pretty sure that, since the show has now moved on to adapting "The Vampire Lestat", Lestat is going to be a pretty big part of the show.
My favorite book in the series was Tale of the Body Thief because it basically involved Lestat being a fucking moron for a shit ton of chapters and getting relegated to sidekick for a guy I (and only I, admittedly) liked much better.
Sometimes a show can be really good, in terms of quality, and just not for you. Alas.
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Saw a headcanon recently about Ilya "always performing" and Shane "only performing on the ice" and I thought it was interesting how differently we all can interpret these characters. (And again, this might be more of a book vs. show thing.)
Because in my opinion, it's actually pretty much the reverse.
To me, with the exception of Russia, I think Ilya is incredibly genuine. He's boisterous, he's loud, he's macho, he's enthusiastic, and these are all his genuine traits. When he tells his team he loves them, he means it. When he goes home with a girl at the club, he means it. (Except maybe that one time in Rose - but it's notable that he doesn't seem to go home with that girl.)
This isn't to say that Ilya isn't concealing aspects of himself too, of course. I think he does a really good job, for example, of concealing his kindness and vulnerability behind that bravado. But I think the bravado is genuine. It's a slight of hand more than it's a masquerade.
I do know that later, in the books, Ilya's depression becomes a more palpable and obvious thing. And that complicates things a little, because there definitely is an element of "going through the motions" when it gets really bad. But I think he's got an inherent honesty with himself/the reader that gives everything a bit more genuineness.
Shane, on the other hand, I think is ALWAYS performing. Of course, there are the brands, we can see how uncomfortable he is in the filming, but it doesn't come across in the finished product. There's his scripted media-ease. Even though he clearly didn't enjoy being asked about Serena Williams and Tiger Woods, he never misses a beat.
We see it with the fans at the aquarium, when he tries to demur at a picture because he's holding a baby, but is unable to specifically say "I don't want to." We see it when he can't just tell his parents a straight out "no" to Wimbledon.
We see it in the very public nature of his relationship with Rose, and with the way his cottage, the closest thing he has to a refuge, has become a documentary. (And the way the director apparently had him do yoga outside, despite his actual practice, because it filmed better that way.)
I think this is also something that will be a factor in season 2. I know that in the book, we never really see Shane's coming out to his team, but there are a lot of little clues that imply that even before the Ilya-of-it-all, things aren't as easy as he pretends. (Shane's increased obsession with his ability, including diet, seem like a strong indication that HE perceives the acceptance by his team as conditional on his continuing to perform on the ice. And of course, the idea that suddenly his sexuality is an open secret - which indicates that someone didn't keep their mouth shut.)
I might be completely off base of course. Perhaps the coming out will go well after all, but I'm pretty skeptical of that.
Anyway, I think that might be one of the reasons TLG tends to feel so weighted toward Ilya. Because Shane is so used to performing that it effects the way he perceives events. We have to read between the lines to pick up on what Shane isn't admitting to himself. (It is also something that will be interesting to see in season 2, since with a more external, impersonal view, we're not going to be quite as influenced by the elements that make both Shane and Ilya unreliable narrators.)
One of my angstier/kinkier headcanons for shane (#myshane) is that most of the time he doesn't feel like his body is his. Not in a sense of dissociation or lack of physical control over his movements, but in a sense of ownership. His body is advertising space leased to brands. It's a piece of equipment that must be serviced and maintained in order for Shane to do his job. It's inventory owned by the Metros that can be sold or traded if it's not functioning at an optimal level. It's a symbol of representation for people who don't normally 'see themselves in hockey.'
It's all tangled with his ED and largely unwanted 'role model' status and Shane Hollander TM the product/brand as opposed to Shane the person. But with Ilya he feels grounded in his body. It's not a machine to be maintained, it's a way to give and recieve affection and pleasure. The times it doesn't feel like his body in bed it's because it feels like Ilya's body, like all of Shane is his to do whatever he wants with, and that's so much better. They get into free use in the same ass-backwards undernegotiated way they do all kink because if Shane is going to be an object he wants to be Ilya's cherished object.
I feel like you can even incorporate this idea into Shane's prior sexual experiences. The idea that he sees sex with his pre-Ilya girlfriend as almost more of an obligation than anything else. Something he has to do to prove his straightness/be a good partner. But in actuality, he doesn't really want to be there at all. Not until he meets Ilya.
So on my neverending campaign to get a certain friend of mine to watch Heated Rivalry, I've been explaining the Marvel AU (sort of) connection.
There's a method to this, as her favorite character is Pietro Maximoff. She also likes Bucky Barnes.
Of course, the catch is, Shane doesn't really have an MCU equivalent since, as far as I recall, Reid invented him after the whole foray into MCU-alternate universe happened.
One could, I suppose, argue that he's a younger Steve Rogers, which is likely most accurate since, IIRC again, Shane was basically created as a variant of Scott Hunter.
(I could suggest Cyclops. But that's more me making fun of my very predictable love of uptight submissives.)
But I've settled on my favorite interpretation: Shane is Vision. For two reasons:
It's funny to imagine that in a universe where Wanda doesn't exist, Pietro just fucks the robot instead, and
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Yuna getting the Perfect Mom treatment is almost harder to look at than her getting framed as a tyrannical controlling momager. For me, at least—I think this is a probably a job for the myshane myilya myyuna mydavid framing because obviously fandom is for fun, we're all peers enjoying a story and sharing that enjoyment with the world for free etc etc etc. Fandom is for the joy of it, and if you want to see Yuna navigate every twist and turn of a story with perfect grace and care, go for it.
But glossing over her flaws makes me sad. She's so well drawn and well acted and I love her so much. She is a good mom! She cares so much and she tries so hard and without a doubt, Shane is her priority. She wants him happy and healthy and winning at their favourite sport. She's also putting a lot of stress on Shane. He's captaining her favourite team and she's so invested in that, and in all aspects of his career. His excellence is her vindication. His rival is her enemy. She's trained herself to take on a really practical and dispassionate perspective of Shane-the-marketable-athlete so that she can manage him effectively, and that bleeds into situations that absolutely call for a mother instead of a manager. There are no boundaries between work time and family time—family lunch with her and David will include brand communcation and strategy. She's hardheaded and used to being the spokesperson of her family, which only underlines when she can't switch off career mode and focus on the personal side of things—it's sufficient for today to just meet her son's boyfriend; Shane really shouldn't have to defend his two weeks off a year against going to Wimbledon for a sponsor.
They're such human flaws to have, especially in that it's obvious why they developed and why she would struggle to see them as a problem in herself—that detached perspective is an asset she brings to her work! Of course she's personally invested in her son's career, she raised him and fought so hard for him to have the chance and now he's one of the best there ever was! She's taken mom/manager of her son, a world class hockey player, on as part of her identity, for good and bad. That's why it's hard for Shane to push back against, and why David more or less gives things the united front treatment in front of Shane but quietly pushes back when they're alone. Parents do that all the time—decide it's better to back your partner up even when they're wrong rather than get into the weeds.
David is characterized as being such a caring, level presence in his family—Shane and Yuna charging ahead with a goal-oriented conversation that'd maybe a bit snarky or ego bruising, and David chiming in to diffuse things or focus back on matters at hand. I love that. He's the family's ballast, but he can also default to a bystander role while someone else sets the tone. Another strength that depending on the circumstances can become a flaw. Awesome.
I know a lot of people have really warm feelings about the Hollander parents developing a familial relationship with Ilya when his own relatives have been so awful to him—I love it too! It's a really beautiful way to show that Ilya isn't just choosing Shane as a love object, he's choosing him for a whole rich shared life. That's an especially potent idea when the necessary secrecy around their time together makes so many other aspects of a shared life impracticable. I think it could be huge for Ilya as a person as well—the perspective of here is a father who loves his son more than his son's accolades, who I have never once heard raise his voice. And he loves me now too. And having an older woman behave maternally towards him in a way he lost from Irina and seems to have never gotten from Polina... honestly, Yuna as the good counterpart to Polina makes a lot of sense to me, though I know the usual parallel is with Irina. Someone who is positioned as family to Ilya not by being blood related but through their mutual ties to a third person—Ilya's father for Polina, Shane for Yuna. Someone who puts the effort in and really cares this time. I think Yuna's biases and incisive views on hockey probably delight Ilya and having a Mom Figure who is biased in his favour would be really special to him. It's enough that she tries and she cares and she wants welcome Shane's partner into the family. She doesn't need turn into a therapist for him. She isn't that for anyone else in her life, and she doesn't need to be in order to be loving.
Veering into a little more personal speculation bc the show didn't give us much of an 'after' for this to play out in—I don't think that Ilya sees the Hollanders as a flawless, but I do think he spends a lot of the early years of his and Shane's career/rivalry envious of how 'perfect' everything is for Shane. He's well-spoken in English and French, he's treated as smart and reliable, and his parents show up to support him at all these events, and he likes that they're there. But Shane isn't perfect. His family isn't perfect. Ilya has a front row seat for both. Crucially, and the part that he might read as perfect—they do love each other. Shane talks about his parents casually, easily, and with a lot of liking, and that's a point of friction until they can reach an understanding of how different Ilya's family dynamic back in Russia is. Ilya sees at the spaghetti dinner that they're all operating from a baseline of genuine care, and he relaxes into that so happily.
He's on his best behaviour, but he isn't blind. He knows Shane is tightly wound and terrified of failure and exposure and letting people down. And he's absolutely heard the expectations of excellence in Yuna's words. She loves Shane so much, and she's already expecting him to be a role model and public spokesperson on LGBTQ+ issues thirty minutes after saying she's sorry she made him feel like he couldn't tell just her, his mom. For Shane, who Ilya knows is dedicated to rising to meet expectations—"Will you disappoint them?" "No."—that's brutal.
So I don't think Ilya would castigate Shane for not appreciating his parents enough actually. I think by his middle twenties he definitely understands that there's room in loving, caring relationships for people to mess up and step on each other's feelings. I don't think he'd pull the 'at least you have a mother' card. Because this definitely isn't his first look in at someone else's family dynamic ever. Maybe he said all that at some point when he was like thirteen and a child and hurting so badly, but I don't see Ilya, who reads people so well, who does have at least one longtime close friend with an interesting family situation (even if we get scraps of Svetlana's family/their shared childhood), deciding that the Hollander parents are perfect and Shane is an ingrate.
Shane is safe with his parents. He likes them. He reverts a little to childhood snark and sure, he takes his bad mood out on them a little in one scene when he's in a complete emotional tailspin and can't talk about it with anybody. Crucially, they were pushing him, and he pulled back on that bad mood as soon as he caught himself, and was willing to let them see a true reaction in the first place. David opens up the floor to talk about anything that might be bothering Shane in a way that says this has probably happened before—something bubbling under for Shane that makes it hard for him to put a smile on. Shane says no, but he forces that smile for them anyway. He steps away. David pushes back on Yuna's approach now they're alone. She acknowledges that she was doing too much. Nobody succeeded here. They all love each other anyway.
They all love each other and try. That's enough! None of them needs to be perfect! It's better actually if they aren't!
I was thinking about that interview of Tierney's where he talks about his experiences as a child actor, particularly being sexualized as a teenager.
I remember seeing a comment a while back about how the show's emphasis on Shane's early career, and particularly Yuna's enhanced role in it, essentially gives him something of a child star type background too.
And it made me realize how complicated a relationship Shane would have had with sexuality before Ilya came into the picture.
This is not an anti-Yuna post, by the way. I do not for a moment think she put him in any of those really sexual ads until he was well into adulthood.
But the point I think with the discussion is that, like women in general, young people in the public eye end up viewed and treated like sexual objects through no fault of their own. When I was growing up, there was a lot of focus on the Olsen Twins: who were kids, playing kids, in very family-oriented movies and tv shows, no hint of sexuality, and adult men were having countdowns to their eighteenth birthday. We could also look at the creepy way people have behaved toward the Stranger Things boys.
Shane's nowhere near that famous, of course. But both he and Ilya are clearly well-known enough to be paired as rivals long before they ever met. And Yuna's extra focus on Shane's visibility - intended to protect him, would have put more eyes on him even as a kid.
I think what this amounts to is that, at least before Ilya and his flint of desire, sexuality would be this complicated and mostly negative element in Shane's life. It's an external imposition, by creepy adults when you happen to exist in their line of sight. As he gets older, and his attractiveness becomes more marketable, it's a performance. And of course, on a personal level, it's an obligation. It's what you do with your girlfriend, even if you have to basically dissociate through the entire thing.
And I think that's a factor in why Shane ends up drawn, so fast and so hard, to Ilya. With Ilya, there's the "flint of desire". With Ilya, sex is simple and easy in a way that everything else isn't. With Ilya, he can let him take charge, follow direction, and not have to worry about performance or obligation. He can just feel what HE feels. And it's private and personal, something only between the two of them.
With Ilya, because it's Ilya, something that has always been complicated, murky, and uncomfortable becomes a matter of simple passion and pleasure and that would have been addictive even before emotions became involved.*
(* Though honestly, I'm not sure I could pinpoint exactly when emotions became involved, and I'm pretty sure they couldn't either.)
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Its so important to remember that when Shane says "Ilya noooo, Ilya ewww, what the fuck Ilya" that this is him giggling and kicking his feet. The man is not a killjoy he just loves being chased.
