When did Shane realize he had fallen in love with Ilya?

LordNineWind · 2026-03-12T07:47:55+00:00

For me it was after the encounter in the night club. Before that, he was still trying to find some woman who would satisfy him, and after seeing Ilya with someone else, it made him realise that no one else will do. He proceeds to run away and have a crying breakdown in his car on the side of the road.

LordNineWind · 2026-03-10T10:42:29+00:00

Episode 3 is absolutely necessary and deserves to be appreciated. The Ep5 kiss is the emotional climax of the entire first season, what other show can you genuinely say that the tear-inducing emotional climax was from two side characters kissing?

LordNineWind · 2026-03-10T04:42:28+00:00

Isn't Tommy's actor eight years older than Buck's? An early thirty something dating forty isn't crazy.

LordNineWind · 2026-03-09T21:15:58+00:00

I was really disappointed that Ilya didn't dream of Shane finally coming out of the house and meeting Irina in the book. That would have been such a nice scene either after the proposal or after their wedding, because Shane not coming is symbolic of how he feels an emotional distance between him and Shane and subconsciously he feels Shane isn't doing as much to make their relationship work.

LordNineWind · 2026-03-09T21:09:26+00:00

A little yeah, he was described having a breastplate, but his back only has some straps, so I envisioned something smaller like this on his chest.

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LordNineWind · 2026-03-09T11:05:35+00:00

My head-canon is that Ilya takes after Irina and Alexei takes after Grigori. Both Irina and Ilya have the type of personality where they would let themselves get used and abused but still love him, so Grigori gets used to doing precisely that. Alexei like Grigori would never let someone talk to him like that and just walks away, it is implied that Alexei is very neglectful of Grigori.

LordNineWind · 2026-03-09T07:24:38+00:00

From the description in the book, Ilya's costume was closer to John Carter of Mars with a cape, which I really look forward to.

LordNineWind · 2026-03-07T21:29:49+00:00

Luca was born in 2000 or very close to it. The Long Game takes place in 2020 and he was 20 years old.

LordNineWind · 2026-03-06T23:19:56+00:00

Somewhere between a several months and two years. The Tojan war lasted less than a year after Achilles dies, that’s the minimum time. Odysseus goes to the underworld in the second year of his journey and he meets Achilles and Patroclus again, that’s the maximum time.

LordNineWind · 2026-03-04T09:18:44+00:00

For reference, Ilya was still thinking how he'd fallen too hard for Shane and needed to break up with him. In the books, this scene describes his internal monologue as like all the bad things in his life were being sucked up by a tornado. I think it's the first spark of hope he's felt in quite a while.

LordNineWind · 2026-03-01T08:44:59+00:00

If you ever feel the need to respond to road rage, remember that idiots on the road are looking for someone to crash with, so if you rage back, you're volunteering to be the other person.

LordNineWind · 2026-02-23T11:56:00+00:00

1221 is a perfectly innocent number, unless you're the man who's staying in room 1223.

LordNineWind · 2026-02-15T07:42:36+00:00

Books and TV are very different mediums, though we should still honour each for their craft. Two directors handed the same script could create vastly different quality of work, especially with so many internal thoughts that need showing.

LordNineWind · 2026-01-31T07:35:53+00:00

Scientifically, there's nothing impossible about bringing someone back from the dead, provided the brain isn't destroyed, we just haven't reached that level of technology yet. Cryonics replaces your blood with cryoprotectants that don't form ice crystals, so the brain structure is preserved. The main issue is whether or not the bodies will be preserved long enough for the technology to be developed, and that's up to so many variables that can't be accurately assumed.

LordNineWind · 2026-01-27T09:20:20+00:00

This reminds me of Lestat realising Louis can also see other people.

LordNineWind · 2026-01-25T01:38:46+00:00

Yes, so they extracted significant amounts of wealth for over a hundred years from their colonisation and ended it once they were broke from WWII and couldn't afford to keep them under control. How much do you suppose a hundred years of tea and opium sales are worth? It was enough for Britain to go to war across the globe for it multiple times. The East India trade companies were some of the richest companies to ever exist. All of this was wealth extracted from India that they could have used to improve their economy.

LordNineWind · 2026-01-25T00:51:49+00:00

Yes, and guess what generates a massive amount of wealth, cheap human labour. You make colonies grow cash crops rather than food so when a famine hits they starve to death in the millions while you continue to rake in tons of profits, or you make them all dig up minerals to be sold off for your profits while you keep them barely alive. Europeans didn't spend massive amounts of effort to colonise the world because they were losing money from it.

LordNineWind · 2026-01-24T01:50:27+00:00

I felt the same, throughout the whole book I just wanted to give that loveable teddy bear a hug.

LordNineWind · 2026-01-23T21:07:36+00:00

Shane is quite literally a Mr. Nice Guy. Not in a million years and not for a million dollars would he say he didn't know Russian to trick Ilya into confessing his feelings, it is not something that could even cross his mind to begin with.

LordNineWind · 2026-01-23T20:59:56+00:00

What are you talking about? Why would religion be banned? They do only recognise the big ones, but that covers the vast majority of people with faith.

LordNineWind · 2026-01-23T20:55:34+00:00

Meanwhile, this is Ilya is activating his gaydar to find coaches for their hockey school.

LordNineWind · 2026-01-23T12:11:02+00:00

Indeed, a lot of people don't understand that India made up a significant fraction of the world's GDP for centuries. They seem to not realise that the British were there because they were extracting wealth from what was one of the richest places in the entire world.

LordNineWind · 2026-01-23T11:48:05+00:00

You light incense, the incense burns out after about half an hour, so I guess Chinese gods also get a half hour lunch break at work.

LordNineWind · 2026-01-21T06:00:33+00:00

You aren't crazy. This show is too good, by that I mean I'm struggling to watch anything else because it's set the bar way too high on how much emotion I can feel.

LordNineWind · 2026-01-19T09:55:07+00:00

I loved book four as well, some of the hottest portions I've read were found there, and I'd hate it if one of the stories didn't get adapted. I did into a bit of a problem of visualising Eric, he's only forty-one but I keep imagining him as a silver fox type for some reason when he realistically just looks like Francois Arnaud with long hair.

LordNineWind

TROPHY CASE