#op.meta

tl;dr—skip are really interesting but only as a framing device for privilege & hollanov

like many people i rolled my eyes at heated rivalry, in my case bc of the books & where i know they originated, but was won over. what won me over was episode 3 of all things, tho

for the first 2 episodes of the show we watch shane and ilya struggle to communicate emotionally despite wanting to & substitute their deficiencies with sex. typical trope of erotic fiction. i enjoyed it, but what intrigued me (high quality & acting aside) was that shane is half-asian in one of the whitest hypermasculine contact sports in the world and subtextually autistic, and ilya is a russian esl immigrant with some obvious ptsd based neurodivergence. piled on to them both being queer closeted globally ranked child athletes entering a multi-million dollar sports industry, that's a fucking saw trap

racist exotification and caricatures in these genres are common, especially of russians/slavs & asians, and so is a decorative approach to mental health challenges/disorders. i was admittedly wary of the show's thematic follow through & skeptical it was even aware of the microcosm it held in its palm, except for shane's autism (a hudson williams interview abt shane convinced me to give it a chance). mostly bc ik the vibes of its source material & doubted such a thing would take any interest in a racial narrative, much less an intersectional one

but then episode 3 happened. and oh this was really really fucking interesting

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

Tangentially related, I am kind of getting tired of the seeming compulsion people have to analyze why Ilya doms. It’s getting to the point where I feel like ppl are trying to make an excuse for him? I think there are probably are psychological roots for him, but also, lots of people just like domming!

the compulsive pathologizing of domming is a big contributor to the dehumanization of doms as a whole, so i wouldn't say it's tangentially related (it is The Thing In Motion)

as a dom who is very very similar to ilya in the show. guys. ilya doms bc that's just how he is. we see him act like that all the time unless he's under stress/distress. his trauma, fundamentally, is disassociating from himself and his desires in order to appease authority despite being someone who always asserts/takes what he wants. he doesn't dom to take back control or for any compulsive reason. domming is freedom for him, it's not something he thinks about at all. that's just What He Does when he's turned on. the healing part is that he's allowed to be himself freely and with perfect reciprocity (in shane)

part of the fixation with pathologizing him is likely that shane is such a basket case of a sub. but the same fundamental principle applies to shane, too. shane subs bc it's who he is, and ilya gives him the freedom to do so

shane's stakes are big, obviously. they're certainly more than an average urban north american person, and he would have some potential cultural baggage being half-japanese. but his fear in ep 6 was that he lied to his parents for a decade + his boyfriend is his professional arch rival. homophobic rejection was secondary, though relevant. his physical safety didn't even cross his mind

whereas ilya. well. the stakes of ilya being queer are his fucking life.

queerness & queer activism is criminalized as terrorism in russia. i'm no expert, so i won't project what the consequences realistically would be. but i know that real russian nhl players are on record abstaining from pride celebrations out of fear of retaliatory action. regardless of whether ilya would actually end up dead, that's what he would be terrified of deep down. i've heard this from most russian queer people i've seen/met, who aren't friggin national icons. even worse, his father & brother are both police he thinks hate him. even if he's legally untouchable, somehow, he probably half-expects one of them to try and murder him for being a fag

his bad communication & flightiness are more than just a dysfunctional closet case. he experiences commitment (and his love, therefore) to shane as a literal threat to his life. all of his behavior makes complete sense when put into that focus

what scott hunter did for him was more than show it's possible for an mlh/nhl player to come out, like it did for shane. it showed ilya that you can kiss a man on national tv and not get arrested or shot. and you can do that as an mlh/nhl hockey captain in the same conference, literally one state over. you can see the terror on his face when he processes what scott is about to do, and then the shock as it all shatters. they kiss and nothing happens. they're safe. ilya's safe. the room is just spinning

it just. hits so fucking hard. other queer people, the community we create, making him feel like it's possible to choose shane. like it's not dangerous to love the guy he's fallen for. like the danger he's lived beneath the thumb of his entire life won't hurt him

and the first thing he does with absolutely no hesitation when the danger is gone is say yes i want to be with you. i'm coming to the cottage. i'm choosing to be queer

then At The Cottage shane planning a future with him. telling him with angry tears in his eyes not to dare marry svetlana even just for a passport. waking him up in the middle of the night with a real long-term option. ilya realizing he doesn't have to prioritize practicality. that he could marry a man--that he could marry shane. that shane will make it happen. no fucking shit ilya was so overcome with emotion he had to confess his love literally into shane's skin right there. whispering it in fucking russian

"does it kill you?" and ilya sobbing into his chest, "not anymore."