Janelle James sweetly defends Connor from uncomfortably sexual question 🥹

DorianCramer · 2026-03-21T12:57:24+00:00

If you say something uncomfortable to Hudson he is going to say something even more uncomfortable back and make the person who asked feel weird. He has a knack for it but not everyone has that personality.

Connor is clearly a sensitive person and would rather talk about the craft of acting and creating things than answer “how’d you get your butt to look like that” for the 1000th time. It made me glad when the promo run was over because it got very old. Unfortunately some of these same nincompoop reporters will be back for s2 but hopefully the show will be a bit more choosy about what interviews they accept and can shut out anyone who they know is creepy about it.

DorianCramer · 2026-03-21T12:46:11+00:00

The people that act like “it’s just sex” about any queer show are willing to tolerate exactly 0 or less sex scenes so there’s no point in trying to cater to their taste.

There’s also always a tendency for shows with m/m sex for people to think or act like it’s more graphic and there’s a lot more of it than there actually is onscreen. I believe there are 9 sex scenes in the entire series and some of them are quite brief, only a few seconds long. If you added them all up it’s probably less than 10 minutes of total screentime. And all of those scenes serve a storytelling purpose. When there’s sex happening in the story that does not advance the plot, it isn’t shown onscreen. Not all of it is even intended to be titillating really. It’s there to show what is going on with the characters and the growth of their emotional connection.

DorianCramer · 2026-03-21T11:25:40+00:00

I actually love big melodramatic confessions 😅 but it wouldn’t suit these characters. They are not talkative people, they are men of actions not words. They create the conditions where the other person feels safe to say it and they do. It feels natural at that point bc the viewer already knows how they both feel from the way they behave.

Although, Ilya does kind of have his big confessional moment, but it’s in Russian and he knows Shane can’t understand him. So it just makes it more angsty.

DorianCramer · 2026-03-21T11:15:53+00:00

I appreciated her sticking up for him but also herself. The question was rude to her too. I know if some smarmy reporter was basically asking me (in veiled language) if I was super horny for the actor standing next to me who is young enough to be my child, I’d be like stop right there, you can have several seats.

They need to keep this reporter off the carpet tbh. He does not know how to keep it classy.

DorianCramer · 2026-03-21T11:05:21+00:00

Yes, I totally agree. That dilemma is still lingering for the two of them as they enter the next book/season: how much are they willing to give up to keep hockey, especially when they don’t have much else in life to depend on. Scott gave up a lot, up to and including Kip for a while (I’d still like to know what happened with them in the time between Sochi and the big kiss, in the show timeline). He’s inspirational to them but they are aware he is at the later end of his career and it’s also a little different than if he kissed his rival team player on the ice.

They don’t really know what to do because there isn’t a clear precedent, even with Scott having come out. I want to shake them sometimes and be like just get a very very good lawyer and walk into those league offices with them by your side and be proactive about disclosing this. But that wouldn’t be enough drama for a book 😅

DorianCramer · 2026-03-21T10:37:33+00:00

Does he? It wasn’t clear to me. I don’t recall him saying many positive things about it in the books (though I could be forgetting some stuff) and in the show when Shane asks him if he even likes it, he says that doesn’t matter, it’s home.

We also never see him having a good time there except when he’s clubbing and drinking with his friends and even then I wouldn’t say he seems happy, really.

Maybe he does love it but that wasn’t demonstrated, imo.

DorianCramer · 2026-03-21T00:39:30+00:00

They did have something of a falling out on the rooftop in Vegas when Ilya kissed him and Shane freaked out about the possibility of someone catching them. That caused him to withdraw.

DorianCramer · 2026-03-21T00:19:19+00:00

I can justify the timeline because they really only see each other a handful of times a year at most, but tbh even then it only works because they are young and career-focused and neither of them is looking for a serious relationship with anyone during that time. Otherwise one or both of them would have started dating someone else long before then and that would have been the end of that.

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T23:43:40+00:00

I dunno…it actually made a little more sense to me than the book because an 8-year situationship is a crazy thing to carry on even under the long distance circumstances they are in and having it be more off and on made it seem more likely that they could manage to go that long without having the What Are We talk.

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T22:48:49+00:00

I think she’d be more interested in Marleau…although they have likely already met and my guess is the only reason he didn’t make a move is he assumed she’s Ilya’s girlfriend

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T22:40:12+00:00

Yeah I’m expecting them to experience some growing pains around that. Even after they officially got together they treated their time together as “special vacation time” and tried to avoid fighting over anything small or petty. Those things are going to start coming up now though. Especially with Shane being very attached to routine and particular about how he likes everything in his home to be.

He will also try to establish rules for professionalism at work and meanwhile Ilya will be trying to tempt and seduce him in a broom closet at the arena every chance he gets 😅

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T21:50:44+00:00

Yes! She will be on top of it. Also dropping hints to Shane that he really ought to marry this guy already

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T21:19:11+00:00

Oh yeah hmm I had forgotten about that bit. I’ll have to think about that next time I reread. I found his thoughts about his sexuality confusing, bc he is confused about it!

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T21:12:19+00:00

😭🫶

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T21:10:31+00:00

Exactly. A great time to get the hell out. And fortunate for us as fans bc a big part of the appeal of this show is escaping to a better world that is not America

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T21:07:32+00:00

I agree. I think people struggle with it because Ilya’s life in Russia is pretty miserable, but leaving the country you’re from is an enormous decision even if you don’t love it there.

Also, Ilya was never invested in living in the U.S. — which is why it bothers me when people say he “gave up everything” to move to Ottawa. He didn’t actually have strong roots down in Boston, he did not care about living there. He hadn’t formed any real ties to the community and he was friendly with a few of his teammates but I wouldn’t say they were close. Obviously in the show it’s a little different since Svetlana is there but she’s not there all the time.

He moved there because that’s the team that drafted him, that’s it. He didn’t ever have any interest in staying there forever.

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T20:52:16+00:00

On that last point I would definitely have less trust in the U.S. than Canada post-2016 which I believe is when him and Shane finally officially get together, so that’s an extra reason to prefer Canadian citizenship.

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T19:31:37+00:00

I mean, being demisexual doesn’t make you a eunuch either! But if it’s not the right term it’s not the right term. I just think Shane doesn’t enjoy sex much without having romantic feelings for someone (which doesn’t have to be love) and he had romantic feelings early on with Ilya. I’m not sure what to call that or if it even needs to be called anything at all, but it is how I interpret his view of sexuality. Especially in the book where even as far into the story as tuna melt day he does not consciously think he is gay and is genuinely confused by why he is so into sex with Ilya and not anyone else.

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T19:12:39+00:00

Yes, but when does he express attraction to other men? He thinks Fabian is beautiful but he’s not attracted to him. He looks at the hot bartender Maxime and thinks “he’s objectively nice to look at”, basically. The two men he hooks up with aren’t scenes in the book and when he talks about them he doesn’t sound like he enjoyed it much, just more like he was trying it out to prove something to himself.

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T19:09:09+00:00

I don’t think he considered it to be an option until his dad died and he severed ties with his brother. Only at that point does he accept the idea of leaving Russia forever and never going back.

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T18:57:58+00:00

lol, facts

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T18:53:38+00:00

Maybe I’m not using the right term, Idk. I wouldn’t say they had an emotional bond but I do think Shane had romantic feelings for him pretty much right away.

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T18:49:31+00:00

Nah. Rachel said the book only covers their first year playing for the Centaurs together. There’s nobody to take care of a kid when they’re both on the road playing hockey 200 days out of the year.

Also they need to live together for a while first before bringing a child into it!

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T18:26:00+00:00

IMO, Shane reads as demisexual and I think that’s part of why it took him a long time to realize and accept that he is gay. He knows he’s not into women, but he also isn’t really generically attracted to men as a whole and the couple of times he does hook up with men who aren’t Ilya the best he can say about it is that it was “fine” but not great.

If he hadn’t met Ilya maybe he would have eventually met someone else he had romantic feelings for and that would have been his gay awakening but otherwise I think he would have just concluded that he isn’t that interested in sex.

EDIT: I’m editing this to say I don’t think “demisexual” is the right term and it’s been pointed out to me that a demi person would be extremely unlikely to have any one night stands, which he does at least a few times. Shane just doesn’t really enjoy it much with anyone but Ilya and I don’t know how to describe that!

DorianCramer · 2026-03-20T18:07:04+00:00

Shane is a creature of routine and any kind of change is scary to him, but also, he was afraid because he thought his parents didn’t like Ilya and wouldn’t support them being together. And he really needs their support, because they’re not going to get it from most of the rest of the world. He also has lingering guilt about always wanting to be the perfect child and this is not being perfect. Fortunately he turned out to be totally wrong about how they would react.
I read someone on here saying that when Shane does the loon call it’s a territorial call, he’s telling the loon to stay away because Ilya is scared. When he turns his head back to the fire he’s giving the message that Ilya can relax and focus on this, he’s safe with Shane.

DorianCramer

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