the queerest team in the league

☀️week 5: july 19-25☀️

🟩 brat summer 🟩

i got this feeling on a shane summer day when you were gone!!

charli xcx, green, shane being a brat. go wild!

Shane gets the condo because of his shame and internalized homophobia, AND ALSO to protect the hookups with Ilya. He can't have Ilya seen at his home, he's getting nervous about hotel meetups, but he also CANNOT stop their hookups — he can never ever let that go. So this change not only diminishes the extreme fear and shame he’s feeling, but it totally undermines Shane's insatiable horniness and absolute inability to deny sex with Ilya, despite the shame (as does the 2-year gap, but that’s a whole other thing). 

Adding that gap and cutting the condo takes away Shane's fundamental characteristic of loving sex with Ilya so much that it overpowers his deep deep fear of being gay. So in the show, this positions him as wanting a real relationship much earlier in the timeline than he does in the book. Leading to the virginal-sub of all time characterization in fanon, which just isn't #myShane.

But ALSO! Cutting the condo also changes Ilya. It undermines Ilya's yearning and loneliness in the HR years. Ilya's loneliness gets a little lost in the show, with Svetlana as a real friend, not just an occasional hookup. In the book, it's so obvious in how much Ilya romanticizes Shane's life. He sees Shane's happy family from afar and tells himself he doesn't need or deserve that, while he secretly longs for it so hard. So, Shane keeping him emotionally AND physically at arms length only enhances Ilya's self-denial and makes the tuna melt scene so much more vulnerable in the book. And despite Ilya’s bone-deep yearning, even when Shane is finally wanting to be something more, Ilya is STILL reluctant to go to the cottage because he thinks it will be an indication to Shane that he wants to commit. And that makes the Skip kiss even more impactful, because it's the push Ilya needed to let himself *have this.* (And even then, they both go to the cottage expecting that this will be the end, a last hurrah kind of thing.)

Without this clear indicator of where Shane has been withholding and where Ilya has been silently wanting more, the show presents Shane as wanting a relationship since before Sochi, and Ilya as a withholding asshole who can’t make up his mind and keeps Shane hanging on. 

And it kind of muddies the waters, when the book perfectly sets up the conflict in TLG: Shane's internalized homophobia & shame & insistence on secrecy (to his own comfort level) -vs- Ilya's resistance to emotional vulnerability and honesty with Shane despite his deep desire to be seen and loved loudly, because Shane has been hiding him away since 2013.

One of my favorite moments in HR is when Ilya reveals he's been longing to be with Shane in his real bed for YEARS, and it’ll always be a moment I wish we got to see. What I wouldn’t give to see Hudson’s beautiful face reacting to that reveal!

In the books, Shane's need for control comes out by forcing the distance between them, because if he doesn't have real feelings for Ilya then everything is fine and he doesn't have to admit anything to himself. Physical distance = emotional distance. The sex condo gives him that space and distance so that he can feel in control and like it isn't really that big of a deal that he's sleeping with Ilya. He'll wait for hours in the condo for Ilya to show up and tell himself that he's about to leave and end everything; and even though we know (and he knows) he's not going to do that, he wouldn't be able to play that fantasy in his own home because it's not a place he can really leave.

And I think with the show, because they had to get rid of the sex condo and that pressure valve that Shane gave himself, they decided to bring the food control in early.

In TLG, Shane can no longer hide behind distance because he has accepted that he's in love with Ilya. No emotional distance and no sex condo distance. BUT he has brand new stressors because he has a relationship he deeply cares for that he's terrified will become known. So he has to clamp down on all of his own emotions to make sure they're not visible at any time. And this manifests with his increased control over his food. Control his food, control his emotions. Control the way he is perceived by everyone.

To me, bringing in the food control early to try and replace the sex condo doesn't work the same. Especially since they bring it in before he and Ilya ever properly hook up, it makes it seem more like just a facet of Shane's personality than a reaction to the relationship stress/internalized homophobia he's under. And it gets confused because there are several plot-relevant food scenes (the tuna melts and sharing the fritters/fries with Rose) that make his macrobiotic diet seem inconsistent.

It also makes me worry about how they're going to have to make Shane even more strict in season 2 so that they can show that there is pressure building inside Shane he's unwilling to admit to that is requiring him to exert more control over himself. I get that the discussion around Shane's food and whether he has an ED should be nuanced, but to me, TLG walks the line with it where it is happening and isn't super healthy but it also isn't a real concern. He isn't enjoying his food but he's still eating enough to maintain his professional athlete body. And I worry that bringing it in too soon in the show means it is going to go places that are more concerning in season 2.

atzig - cliff