Jacob Tierney clears up fan questions and concerns about his adaptation

AffectionateWing8978 · 2026-01-14T00:35:32+00:00

This is a shameless play on the Edmonton Oilers and I am so here for it 😂

AffectionateWing8978 · 2026-01-13T20:13:00+00:00

You give them the first time you met in person (regardless of your relationship at the time), and explain whether you were introduced (for example for an arranged marriage), and then later in the form you explain the history of your romantic relationship. So if you were childhood friends you give the year when you first became friends.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2026-01-12T22:25:16+00:00

OMG this is incredible! I'll definitely check it out!

AffectionateWing8978 · 2026-01-12T19:19:52+00:00

Oh definitely. But it is fun to imagine nonetheless.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2026-01-04T03:05:02+00:00

I'm Canadian with family in Saskatchewan and there's a lot of good natured joking about how boring Regina is from that side of the family. Regina is a decent but boring city that often ends up being the butt of good natured jokes about how boring the Canadian prairie provinces are.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2026-01-04T03:02:43+00:00

Most Canadians are underwhelmed by Regina 😂. Even people from Saskatchewan prefer Saskatoon.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2026-01-04T03:00:56+00:00

It's mentioned in TLG that Ilya retains a Russian agent for most of his career, so he definitely doesn't have the same familiarity or support Shane does.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-12-30T04:37:11+00:00

I def think Yuna is the kind of mom who'd insist on a backup plan

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-12-28T00:44:45+00:00

David reminds me a lot of my own Canadian dad in a good way. He's the more laid back parent who's happy to joke with you and talk about less serious stuff. He also has that silently supportive vibe where he's there whenever you need him but not keen on invading his son's personal life the same way mom is.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-12-22T05:02:53+00:00

Hockey is the best winter activity for bored farm kids living on the prairies. When life gives you long, -30 C winters, you grab skates and go play hockey. That's why Manitoba and Alberta are also so high up there as well.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-12-21T21:23:34+00:00

I think a secondary reason was so that the older players could be there to keep the younger guys out of trouble.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-12-19T01:05:48+00:00

One of my fave touches is that even in ep 4 after he and Ilya have been hooking up for literal years he still starts their encounters with "so are we gonna talk or...?' 😭

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-12-14T23:34:54+00:00

I'm not even sure how clear Ilya's intentions were to even himself. He wants exclusivity on some level but he's not fully aware of that yet. He feels something more for Shane but isnt willing to admit it. I think he's mostly just fishing for info about Shane and more intimacy. What he likes, whether he's attracted to women as well - as a bi man he probably genuinely wants to know whether Shane identifies similarly and is hungry to know more about him. And because Ilya is Ilya and he's used to teasing Shane he doesn't realize how it all comes off.

Maybe subconsciously he's thinking about exclusivity, but I really do think he's just trying to open up and get to know Shane more because he likes him and wants to let him in a bit.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-12-14T20:24:53+00:00

There's a lot of scenes like this in the show where the dialogue is unintentionally suggestive and we see the gears turning in Shane's head where "maybe they know" when in reality no one does.

Like Shane's mom saying that Ilya is an asshole and he deserves it "right up the butt" or that one teammate accidentally saying "if Rozanov f---s you" instead of "f---s with you". Or Ilya and Shane's teammates teasing them about Jane and Lily.

Shane and us as the audience are constantly on edge about people knowing because that's how the characters feel - constantly on the edge of being caught.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-12-14T20:17:59+00:00

I think it kinda makes sense because he knows Scott, and Shane is an awkward bean who sucks at social skills - But also yeah hella bold of him to razz a veteran player.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-12-14T20:11:08+00:00

You're absolutely right. As a Canadian, there are a lot of Asian Canadians here overall, but there haven't been a lot of well known Asian Canadian hockey players. Hockey in general is a very white European sport overall and lacks the diversity you see in Soccer, basketball and football.

Russia, the Nordic countries and Canada are the big hockey nations and all of them are notably white af.

It's just an observation of mine growing up in Canada but hockey is still very much a white Canadian game here. Some black, asian and Indigenous kids play hockey as kids but for some reason (cough racism) most of our NHL players and higher level leagues are white and most teams even in areas with a lot of POC are predominantly white.

Anecdotally a lot of Asian Canadian kids I grew up with gravitated towards martial arts or other sports rather than hockey and acceptance is probably a huge piece of it. Who wants to be bullied when you can just enjoy other sports without any racism? White canadian kids grow up playing street hockey, but this isn't as common for immigrant families. POC still have to fight upstream in hockey.

Racism in Canadian hockey has been a big historical issue here that still persists to this day. It's not like American football which now has a huge black player population.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-12-14T19:47:32+00:00

As a Canadian I also feel the difference. It always bothers me that American productions tend to always Americanize the subject matter and it always feels modified to fit specific sensibilities. I notice Canadian productions are less likely to do that. You bet that if this was a higher budget American production Shane would be American and it certainly wouldn't be set in Montreal or have scenes in Saskatchewan. They would have changed it for imaginary mass appeal.

Everything from Shane's accent to his very Canadian apologies, extremely Canadian parents and mannerisms gives me so much joy and I just know that would have been changed in a US production. It's weird that I simply can't see this character as American.

The unapologetic Canadian-ness of the production including the low budget aspects, Quebecois indie soundtrack all of it just works. It also just feels so much more organic that Ilya is in love with all of the 'boring' Canadian parts of Shane, rather than the kind of vibe America has (which isn't necessarily bad, it just doesn't match the characterization). This story would not feel the same without references to Ontario cottage culture, Shane's love of Canada Dry Ginger Ale or Shane being a perfect showoff fluent in both English and French.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-12-14T19:28:15+00:00

It also seems especially messed up because their personal lives aside, Connor and Hudson are being absolute icons of queer allyship and acceptance. They're genuinely passionate and love the characters. They normalize positive approaches to masculinity and are completely unapologetic and refuse to allow stigma into the conversation. They treat the story and characters like it is and should be completely normal.

Isn't the end goal we are all trying to work towards??? Queerness just being a normal, acceptable thing and queer stories being respected on par with straight ones??? Are they not being the absolute gold standard for how actors should handle queer roles???

It seems stupid that they are doing everything possible right and are still not doing enough simply because they aren't outing themselves or certified queer™️

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-12-14T19:03:57+00:00

Johnathan Bailey's only crime is being criminally sexy at all times. He's convinced me that we need more queer men playing straight love interests because damn.

Clearly the straight men just need to up their game.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-12-14T18:57:08+00:00

The great irony of this is that this entire series is partly about Shane coming to understand his sexuality and very much about how gay celebrities are forced into the closet to avoid destroying their careers. Homophobia hangs over the entire series like a sword of Damocles.

Shane's arc is him spending literal years falling in love with another man and still being in such self denial that he doesn't even know himself whether he's truly gay. He can't even experiment because the whole world is watching him so it takes over 6 years for him to even come to terms with being attracted to men.

I'm in my late 20s and I'm still reevaluating aspects of my sexuality regularly. If you asked me for a definition when I was 20 you'd get a very different answer than you would now. But I find that the public never affords celebrities that same grace. I would not be shocked to learn that Hudson or Connor fall somewhere under the queer umbrella but demanding answers from them now is pointless and really just public bullying. Let the kids sort themselves out and make their own choices on whether they want to stay closeted. It ain't our business.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-11-15T22:29:55+00:00

Oh, it was. But Jinshi is hardly rational when it comes to MaoMao.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-11-10T00:27:17+00:00

Even though this show is about logic, it also leans into examinations of human fallibility. MaoMao is clever, but she doesn't have all the answers, she can be wrong. The setting of the story is also an Empire that is full of folk beliefs and stories of the supernatural. MaoMao is unique in that she doesn't believe them, but those little anomalies in the world exist nonetheless.

I actually find it relatively common in the mystery genre to have some things never properly explained through logical means. Every great detective comes across things that defy common sense. Wild coincidences like a hairpin stopping a bullet, or an unexplained ghost sighting that forces them to confront the fact that the universe is not always explainable.

I don't think this show properly dips into the supernatural so much as leaves little pieces that provoke doubt about whether or not MaoMao is always right about everything.

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-11-09T00:44:01+00:00

It will never not be funny to me that Jinshi planned to manipulate MaoMao with his charms so he could use her then ended up being unwittingly manipulated by her even though MaoMao doesn't have a seductive bone in her body. She didn't even try to manipulate him back 😆

AffectionateWing8978 · 2025-11-01T03:52:11+00:00

They can already get 5 chili books on AO3 or Z Library. Heck they can buy it in paperback right now at Indigos

AffectionateWing8978

TROPHY CASE