mybelovedismine

the random Russian nouns as pet names, obviously

turning to Anya to arbitrate who won the race/loads the dishwasher correctly/scored a sexier goal etc

Ilya. Ilyusha. Ilyushenka. Ilyushenkechka.

and who won Rookie of the Year????

"I have never said this in my life"

threatening to tell Yuna

"pass me the remote?" — "come and get it" — [wrestling]

butt slapping. at every opportunity.

"we will have to shoot you like lame horse" when one of them gets so much as a papercut

idioms translated literally into the wrong language

"this is not hall of fame behaviour"

No one will ever convince me that there's not a connection between Shane coming out to his team, it not going well, and Shane volunteering to start an even more intensely restrictive diet than he was already on, that also punishes his relationship. Just like I will always view Shane's anxiety around Ilya coming out to the Centaurs/his friends as a trauma response based on how badly it went for him.

One of the most heartbreaking parts about Shane's performance diet to me, is how in both My Dinner with Hayden and TLG Shane and Ilya mention how they love to cook together, and it's like a fun couple thing for them. It's a point of connection, something they do together aside from hockey. And, unlike hockey, it's something they don't compete about.

Shane's performance diet robs them of this. There's a scene in TLG where Ilya has done a bunch of research to find a meal they can cook together that fits in Shane's diet. And Shane is delighted by this. But, notably, he puts no effort into finding other recipes they can do this with again. He tells Rose he likes the discipline of his diet, and I don't think he means just in regards to what and where he's eating, I think he also means in his relationship.

There's another major change we see in Shane between books. At the end of Heated Rivalry he's talking fairly optimisticly about both of them coming out to friends.

This is at the cottage. Very soon after they've decided they're in a real relationship. It's hard not to compare this with Shane's sheer panic in TLG when Ilya talks about coming out to Troy - not even about them, just about being bi - and also to the possibility of even meeting the rest of his team.

So, what's happened to Shane in the last three years that makes him go from joking around about coming out to his friends to rabidly controlling his relationship and protecting every small detail of it that he possibly can?

Shane’s comphet and compartmentalization of his sexuality and true self outside of a few frantic encounters with Ilya a few times a year is devastating. His refusal to tell anyone in his life - his teammates, his parents, friends he doesn’t have - what he truly wants because he can’t even admit it to himself.

Everything is hockey, everything is brand deals. No, he can’t have a glass of wine because he can’t do anything that’ll potentially impact his performanceon the ice. He can’t date because everything is about his career and when it’s the off season, he locks himself away at his cottage where he spends most of his time alone. Hayden is the closest thing he has to a friend, but if Shane can’t even admit to himself how he feels, how is he supposed to confide in Hayden?

He can have sex with Ilya behind closed doors without words exchanged, but the second it begins to resemble something real, when Ilya starts trying to figure out what Shane really wants, Shane panics and forces himself into a relationship with a woman, because what he has with Ilya doesn’t make sense or fit into any version of himself that he can foresee.

One of the best decisions Jacob Tierney made in the show was showing Shane be intimate with Rose and frame it as devastating and stomach churning. Shane’s performance of heterosexuality is painful. It actively holds him back from being his true self. The book glosses over it and mentions Shane has shitty sex with Rose a couple of times, and doesn’t go into any meaningful detail about how Shane, a gay man in love with another man, forcing himself to have sex with a woman to perform heterosexuality would be extremely difficult and unpleasant for him.

The scene in the show is unpleasant and heartbreaking. We see and feel how much Shane doesn’t want to be doing this, but he feels like he has to.

Shane’s break up with Rose is 10 tens more emotional and impactful in the show than it is in the book, because Shane’s clumsiness with women is not portrayed as a punchline. We see him processing in real time that he can’t just keep faking it. Shane thinks he is good at hiding and compartmentalizing, but it only took Rose two sexual encounters to figure him out. He’s forced to reckon with the fact that he can’t just keep ignoring who he really is and what he really wants.

The scene where we finally get a glimpse into just how painful everything is for Shane is another scene that’s not in the book - Shane’s conversation with Yuna outside.

“I tried. I tried really hard. I just can’t help it.”

Now that he’s finally starting to let go of the performance and separation he’s tried to maintain all of these years - Shane Hollander Hockey Player versus Shane Hollander The Person - he can admit that there’s nothing he can do to change who he is or how he feels, but that will never erase the pain of all those years of trying, of trying to be who his mother wanted him to be and who the MLH wanted him to be. He denied himself the ability to be fully human and fully himself for so long and he’ll never get that time back.

I've talked about this in tags but I need it to be a full post. There's something about Ilya wearing long sleeves here that kills me. I love that Shane is in a cozy hoodie, too, but it doesn't grab my attention as much because he's not dressed that differently from his usual wardrobe.

But Ilya? He's constantly showing off his body whenever he has the chance. This man is allergic to sleeves. He usually rips his shirt off at the first opportunity.

Ilya's usual wardrobe (or sometimes lack thereof lol) reflects the way he views his body as a commodity, like it's the only thing he has to offer, so he's constantly showing it off.

But then we have this beautiful montage showing the ways that Shane and Ilya have slotted into each other's lives in a pretty regular routine. It's a hot montage, but it's also creeping toward a feeling of domesticity, especially in this moment.

Wearing this shirt to a hookup shows that Ilya has reached a new level of comfort with Shane. He doesn't feel the same pressure to play the seduction game. Shane is going to kiss him the same way regardless of what he's wearing.

That plus the fact that Shane is taking control and pushing Ilya against the glass. Ilya's whole demeanor reflects the way he feels comfortable and taken care of in this moment and it does something particular to my heart.

I don't think Ilya is consciously thinking about why he dresses all comfy cozy for this hookup. He still has a while before he internalizes the truth that Shane wants him just as he is. But Ilya also tends to act based on feeling before he fully understands the subconscious behind those actions.