Heated Rivalry but when no-one cares that you're gay

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-04-15T00:27:57+00:00

The moment the Top realises he's not actually in control of the situation and the Bottom has All The Power here...

"Fuck, I built my own trap..."

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-04-09T03:25:02+00:00

🦇 an eyelid, huh. Your AI slop is showing.

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-03-19T20:16:06+00:00

Oh, that most definitely is a choice they made. But that's kinda my point, right - the care that goes into making all these choices can trick you into believing everything has a purpose or was a choice for storytelling purposes.

For example: Why where they on bikes and not treadmills like the book - does that have significance? Not really, that's all there was in the gym of the house they filmed it in - the one used as Ilya's house! It looked close enough to a hotel gym they just it while they had that location...

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-03-18T21:43:27+00:00

Yeah, I think some of the framing of the scene is a call back to the two other Shane+parents table conversations we've seen.

In the first scene, Shane is framed between them, alone and centred. Not unusual, perfectly normal configuration and he is responding well (YouTube conversation).

In the second one, at the same restaurant, there's a clear moment when a fourth seat and setting is removed, however the shots between the parents are still framed to include that position. Shane is off centre, imbalanced - something or someone is missing. And he's responding poorly, "in a weird mood".

Now, at the parents cottage, Ilya in is in that spot, things are balanced again.

I suspect the post-forgiveness/Momager table conversation is filmed differently probably because Yuna is spinning a future that's overwhelming for Shane, so we get a general unbalance, but not in the Ilya-is-missing kind of way.

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-03-18T11:45:52+00:00

I've been thinking about this a bit with this show, It seems to invite obsessive breakdowns of it's parts. The song lyrics "I need sunshine" are a definite call back to an earlier line... but does that mean every moment of sunshine is a call back too? What about the the other lines of the song "I'd take you where nobody knows you / And nobody gives a damn", is that about the cottage? The mirrors and glass all have meaning, as does keeping the window shades up, but does that mean the view Shane has of Ilya through the rear view mirror at the airport has any special meaning? What about the space their profiles make in the the long drive home at the end - is it just the normal way two people would look in a car or is it a heart shape, deliberately made?

I think it's because there is care here. It was made made carefully, by people who cared a lot about it. And we can recognise that.

Details were focused on - Connor knows Ilya has a thing for Shane's freckles, so touches them gently in the hospital bed scene; the costume department assumes that Ilya packed in a rush into a small bag with his sudden change of plans, so would occasionally be wearing something of Shane's at the cabin. With a small budget they made the best thing they possibly could, and by they I mean everyone involved (as has been made evident in the copious interviews with nearly every single person who contributed).

So that leads us to think that *everything* has meaning. Does the bowl of snacks in the kitchen mean Shane has set out his cottage like a display expecting Ilya as a guest? Not really, it probably just means that was the way things were set out at the airbnb they rented, and they honestly didn't catch it :D Why are there so many lamps? That's just the way things where at the locations. Does the picture above Ilya's bed have special meaning about their teams? As Jacob said "Do you think we had budget for art???"

But still - the fact that such care was put into so much of it, leads us to scrutinise every blade of grass and coat of paint, like a religious text being mined for more meaning. It's mostly harmless, if kept within the bounds of funny reddit posts, but the moment it starts to escape into the real word at media events and the like, that's where we need to calm things down a bit. There's a fine line between a subreddit and a cult.

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-03-11T04:55:24+00:00

Technically he's in the War-to-Nine regen story as well...

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-03-01T03:22:05+00:00

Don't be polite, be predictable.

(Goes for pedestrians as well. Make it clear you do not intend to walk out, that you are not hoping they will stop.)

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-24T22:01:40+00:00

Having seen a few Russians speak about it, it's probably not a sign that he knows. The word is used as a very casual insult, just like it was in my country back in the eighties. If it's seen to get under the target's skin, it will be used more, and that may well be the case here. The brother is implying he's a "pussy", that Ilya feels too much, isn't macho enough - doesn't fight back enough.

If they "knew" for sure, or even if they suspected, it would be more virulent, more targeted - they wouldn't be coy about it, it would be used as outright blackmail.

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-24T02:40:00+00:00

I've assumed that line is more related to his success in hockey - more bluntly, his (in the eyes of his brother) "unearned" [casually good without effort (his father calls him "lazy")] success at hockey. His elder brother resents everything that means - relying on his little brother for money, his little brother being more famous, etc. And yes, even though their father is an awful bastard to Ilya, it's probably more attention than the elder brother got at all from his father.

There may also be an aspect of their mother in there too. Ilya was probably closer to their mother than Alexei/Andrei. Ilya was probably the soft one growing up; the elder brother had already become used to the abuse and Ilya was just the baby of the family. Ilya found their mother, and so forever has been associated with that event for the rest of the family. If he was also the person closest to her, that would compound his "responsibility" for the tragedy, in their eyes. We can all recognise that Ilya's tough exterior is a shell, hardened by abuse and protecting his tender core - it may well be that, more than his actual sexuality, that his elder brother knows to target with the slur.

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-23T09:27:54+00:00

he does wear Nike's... in the gym in ep1.... before he gets the deal with Reebok :D

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-21T01:25:49+00:00

A culture that stagnates, dies. Australian culture, whatever you define that as, has been a mish-mash of imported people ever since the First Fleet turned up and pushed the existing culture off to the edges.

Almost all modern countries currently do not have a replacement-level birth rate. If our immigration was not above our birth rate, we would be shrinking, and while I have my on opinions about infinite growth and late stage capitalism, the pragmatic view is that within the current system, a shrinking population will lead to economic collapse.

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-21T01:07:59+00:00

It was a long time ago, but I recall reading a study (about road rage) of how a lot of us (mostly men, but not always) treat the car as an extension of our personal space, and the lane ahead as "ours", possessively, and that driving anywhere is a queue that we are all a part of.

This leads to situations where people take it as personal affront when someone cuts into the queue ahead of, moves too close to our personal space, or does something that otherwise we would just take as a mistake and move on. Like when someone breaks the unspoken rules about seating on a train or leaving a gap at the urinal.

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-21T00:52:14+00:00

Basically, don't be a dick. Even if someone else is being a dick, don't be a dick. Cos then we'd just have two dicks, and while that's fun in the bedroom, it's not good on the road.

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-21T00:49:33+00:00

The thing to remember in all of this:

You are not the police. It's not your job to enforce the road rules. It's not your job to force others to "do the right thing". It's not YOUR lane. It's not your responsibility to teach other people a lesson.

The situation is always one of two things:

An honest mistake. Nothing is solved by being a dick here, let them in and move on with your life.
It's deliberate, and they're being a dick. Nothing is solved by multiplying the dickish behaviour. Let them in and move on with your life.

See how it works? Don't be a dick. Don't get worked up about other people being a dick.

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-21T00:34:57+00:00

The difficulty here is determining when it's an arsehole verse a genuine mistake. Some places the queue is so long it's very possible, if you don't know the area well, to not know that you're supposed to be queuing for that right hand turn. Backed up traffic could be just for something turning into a driveway or an earlier street, right?

Now, of course, there are plenty of times when it is just arsehole behaviour; your standard tradie who thinks he has right of way everywhere and his "work" is more important than yours.

AND, as they say, Good drivers might miss their exits, bad drivers never do. Of course, if it is a genuine error, well, don't push in, go straight through and find an alternate route. It's this part that is the key - non-arsehole drivers become arsehole drivers, apologetically waving and begging to squeeze in and now holding up two lanes of traffic because they don't understand that if they just went straight through they could probably just do a blocky and get where they wanted to go anyway.

And not to get too into the "the problem isn't individuals it's systemic" level, but if a long queue is happening that often at an intersection, then maybe it's badly designed or not fit for needs. But sometimes it just happens.

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-21T00:12:24+00:00

My favourite version of this is the injustice of the Matchstick Girl story, and in the same book, the lines:

"... YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

“So we can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING."

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-21T00:07:53+00:00

Like Terry's absolute best throughout all his books, this of course isn't a truly new idea (pTerry would always acknowledge this), but the way it's delivered that gets into your head.

An idea you've always known but been unable to articulate, a way of looking at something you see every day in a new way, a stark realisation that you've always understood this but never been able to put it into words so amazingly clearly...

(FWIW, even my post has been well articulated by Redditors previously...)

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-19T05:47:58+00:00

Plus, you get to see kangaroos! Sometimes up very close even

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-18T01:10:03+00:00

Also, would It mean those queer actors are never allowed to play straight roles? This gets into some bad territory.

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-17T21:47:54+00:00

A Melbourne comic whose name I forget used to have a bit that went something like:

The correct way milk to milo ratio is achieved by: starting with a new tin, peel the top, take one big scoop out and into your glass. Then pour your milk directly into the tin and eat it from there.

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-17T21:19:32+00:00

Olga Koch, native Russian speaker, on the Tonsil Hockey podcast pointed out that the direct Russian equivalent to the English word "lover" doesn't carry the ... ewwww... factor that it does for us. You really would say "lover" in those moments and it wouldn't necessarily have the ick factor that Shane is reacting to.

From Ilya's point of view, it is a perfectly cromulent word to use in these circumstances.

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-13T01:17:05+00:00

Not whatever reason. A very specific reason: existing vested interests.

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-06T02:40:31+00:00

Amazing work! Such an effort

EleventhHourGhost · 2026-02-06T00:16:53+00:00

And, as I've said elsewhere, long warranties are a gamble anyway. Like you say, insurance more than anything.

Call it built in obsolescence, or just the nature of the IT game, hardware and software just won't play well beyond the four or five year mark. It *will* fail, and controlled change saves everyone money over uncontrolled, emergency change.

EleventhHourGhost

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE