this is an old draft now, n i don't mean any of this derisively, but a while ago i saw someone term what shane was doing in tampa "emotional domming" and that betrayed such a cardinal miscomprehension of hollanov's emotional intimacy and why ilya feels safe with shane, singularly, that i got benignly angry at it
ilya isn't a child. he doesn't require shane's guidance to his own emotions. he's deliberately portrayed with precocious self-comprehension and as stunningly observant. the choice to reserve his feelings is wakeful
i think it flattens the character to suggest otherwise and is textually null. connor storrie himself said he acted ilya to reserve his emotions as restoration of personal authority. it's not avoidance or hesitation. it's defiance & self-preservation
in the scenes we have to reference of ilya & others + his monologue, when he attempts to connect emotionally his feelings are used to control him by others in service of an outcome. occasionally he's manipulated (alexei, namely), but in most exchanges he is aware and resigned to enduring it as inexorable. reserving his emotions retains his self-authority under the machinations of the outcome
sveta establishes how he reacts to "emotional domming" aka parenting in friendship. she lovingly, firmly probes & steers him in service of an outcome she's intuited for both of them, as an omniscient big sister would. ilya remains reserved
sveta is the closest he has to emotional harbor, and she cannot extract him. if there is any extraction, ilya will harbor his own emotions. he has the acumen for power rhythms & hypervigilance to assure it. the nature of the outcome is irrelevant. the nucleus of his trauma is subservience to authority not his own, and resignation to it in perpetuity, which necessitates introrse reclamation of power/action. he withdraws from the power dynamic itself
what he discovers in shane is a person absent of outcomes. shane has no extractions. there is no orchestration. there is no omniscience or prescience, no projection. shane asks for ilya's feelings because he wants to understand. literally nothing else. radically, he simply listens to him
it's partnership, not coaxing. this is the linchpin of ilya's trust. shane is the only character who never enacts a power dynamic onto him, ever. there's no authority. he interfaces with ilya as an equal. he wants to listen. and ilya, confronted with this for the first time in his life, slowly cracks himself open to be heard
