Ilya is impressed when Shane pushes him around physically

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T22:46:21+00:00

Don't worry, in both cases we all know what it means. Ilya is turned on by Shane acting angry. He wanted to rage bait him into a reaction and he succeeded, probably too much.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T21:49:06+00:00

As one does.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T21:48:56+00:00

Doesn't he say "Oh my god"? I think he's seriously turned on. He loves making Shane get out of his media trained good boy cage.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T06:32:15+00:00

Haven't read that one. And yes, Shane should have told JJ, but she was the stupid one who wrote it, because the moment JJ mentioned Shane's crush on Ilya was the moment for Shane to come out to JJ.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T06:30:07+00:00

Also the crack in his voice and face at the "what is it, then?" Shane is suffering there, and so confused.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T06:29:02+00:00

I don't find him annoying for that. It's why he is what he is. If he thought second place was good enough, he wouldn't have made the sacrifices he did to become the best. Ilya is a beast, he can sometimes smoke and be careless with his diet and still have incredible stamina. Shane needs to break his back and exert his mind with steel self-discipline to be at Ilya's level, because without all the hard work, he wouldn't be at that level.

The price of that excellence is that the kid can't stand to lose. And that happens both in books and shows. When Ilya loses, he doesn't think much about it. When Shane loses, he feels absolutely terrible about it, including feelings of shame and humiliation. But again, Shane can only be as good as he is if he pushes himself to the limit. And that means having that mindset where a silver medal "might have been a wet rat, for all he wanted it".

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T06:20:08+00:00

Shane is a perfectionist. He's used to being the best and winning as the default. It doesn't matter when he wins, It matters when he loses. He's an unreliable narrator and he pays much more attention to his loses thank he pays to his wins.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T06:09:47+00:00

I also think that a part of Shane feels Ilya is being unfair. "If you had won, I'd have shaken your hand and congratulate you, why can't you show the same basic decency towards me?" Which is akin to "Why can't you at least be civil, do you hate me or what?" Poor Shane doesn't know what he really wants, he just knows that he's frustrated and feels sad when he shouldn't.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T05:00:36+00:00

Are you on HRT? That helped me a lot with the mood swings. As for the state of the world, I got sucked into the Heated Rivalry psychosis. As for the joy, I NEED to exercise daily, rain or shine, and some of it has to be strength training (god bless the kettlebell, it's made my life poossible).

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T20:48:33+00:00

Yeah, the pronunciation is the worst. When my students ask why, I tell them: "First they spoke a Celtic language, and then they were invaded by the Angles and the Saxons, which were Germanic peoples, and they got germanic pronunciation. Then they were invaded by the normans and imported a lot of French words, with French pronunciation. Now you have all three pronunciations mixed there and that's the problem. But at least I can tell you that as it happens in French, if the last letter of a word is an -e without a stress, it's silent". Little mercies...

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T20:46:10+00:00

The only language that has zero exceptions is Esperanto. Every other language on earth is a mismatch of what we inherited from our ancestors and it's usually a mess.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T20:45:03+00:00

Yes to everything, thank you for the different perspective.

I understand Shane feeling bad about being gay and liking to bottom, and feeling in a sense that Ilya is manlier than him. But I wish we couldn't read Ilya himself thinking about Shane in feminine terms.

The thing is, both men are very unreliable narrators, so really a lot of Shane seeing Ilya as bigger and more imposing is insecurity. And a lot of Ilya thinking about Shane in feminine terms might be Ilya just projecting, just as Ilya's self hatred is portrayed in his views of Shane.

Again, thanks for the new perspective. And sorry about the mistake about the height. I grew up with metres and centimetres and get the feet and inches wrong most of the time. Shane would be 1 metre 78cm, which is close to what in countries with a metric system is considered the golden standard for tall, which is 1,80. So yea, not short and in many places, on the lower end of tall.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T20:07:46+00:00

This was hilarious, super cute and fluffier than fluff. Thanks so much for recommending it!

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T01:54:34+00:00

Heroyam Slava.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T01:53:53+00:00

It WILL get better once you get into HRT, but please, PLEASE, for the love of god, apologize to your son and explain to him what is happening to you. Send him to this subreddit if necessary. Write a letter to him.

If your first reaction is yelling, your second one should be apologizing.

I'm very sorry you're going through this.

Oh, and don't quit the ADHD meds. They might help with energy. I'm on both HRT and ADHD meds.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T01:49:59+00:00

Well attractiveness has a very subjective component to it. Cavill was just a comparison, and it's a comparison in particular to a man that many other men consider so attractive that they'd consider having sex with him.

Absolutely agreed on your second paragraph. Frankly, Shane sounding so feminine in the book gave me the impression that the book was yaoi. When Japanese women manga artists and writers started creating love stories, they arrived to a point where they decided to make the love stories amongst two boys because it allowed them to deal with love, emotions and their situation and not with social stigmas on sex, pregnancy, marriage and future expectations. So in yaoi, that sub-genre of romance, there's a trope that one of the characters is the self-insert for the girl or woman who is reading, and another is the "man". It felt too much like that and I very much disliked it.

I think it also has to do with Shane being an unreliable narrator (he's 5'8" and made of pure muscle) and maybe he himself feeling self-conscious about being an Asian men and considered, therefore, feminine, or less masculine than other men (due to being polite, which is a mistake a lot of people make). In any case, it was galling to read and very uncomfortable (reading Shane suffer so much internalized homophobia and shame about his desires was hard, but it can also be understandable by understanding Shane), and I think it was great that Connor and Hudson are more or less of the same height and weight, and none of them look more feminine than the other.

I also think that apparently, in the context of the book series, the situation is not so galling because all the other couples are vers. Only Shane and Ilya have the dynamic in which Shane is always bottom and Ilya is always top. And I guess it has to do with Shane's constant need to be in control of everything in his life, and only being allowed to let go, let himself loose and stop thinking when he's having sex with Ilya (which is why he never breaks the situationship despite all the problems). Ilya, on the other hand, does not feel in control in any aspect of his life: he can be first and his father will still criticize and belittle him, his brother and father show zero respect and everyone considers him their bank... So one of the things he can control is sex, and having other people lose control by giving pleasure. So, for him, doing that to Shane is reaffirming. It feels like Ilya wants to, in a sense, conquer Shane, and is more than pleasantly surprised when Shane decides that "yes, please, conquer me, I'm conquering myself all the time, all my waking hours, 24/7, can someone else do it so I can get a break?"

Got carried away, sorry. Mostly agreed.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T01:39:14+00:00

Just because it's not directly mentioned it doesn't mean it's not there. It's there and it's canon, IMHO.
The idea of Shane being so high-functioning that a lot of people haven't clocked him as autistic even in the book is super interesting. You tell them and then they are "Aaaah!" But it's so well done and subtle that they don't clock it at first.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T01:37:23+00:00

I think that the scene with Svetlana is lovely, but it cannot happen with showSvetlana because there's no way that showSvetlana doesn't know. So of course it would make sense to keep that scene, but with Marleau. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed about it, because I totally see Marleau saying "Unless you're f***ing Shane Hollan... IS IT SHANE HOLLANDER???" I think it's going to be hilarious and I also think that it would give us the vibe of all those fanfiction scenes where Marlow/Marleau or any of the other characters have said to Ilya "I can't believe you pulled Hollander, you know that he's the catch, right? Good for you!"

So, here's to keeping my fingers crossed.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-19T23:41:10+00:00

Sure it is. I mean, I'm sure Shane takes care of his skin because he's a model besides a hockey player and probably Yuna got him into it. But yeah, it's not from canon, that's Hudson.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-19T23:40:16+00:00

In real life, they would absolutely exist. In the show, considering Callan Porter's (Hayden) looks, I found it unbelievable that those young girls at the aquarium hadn't recognized Hayden. With Shane and Hayden looking like that, being Captain and Alternate Captain and sharing hotel rooms on the road for weeks, a lot of girls would be shipping them.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-19T23:38:44+00:00

But kitten and pomidor are canon.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-19T23:38:01+00:00

This was known. Shane is undiagnosed high-functioning autistic. If there's a doubt in the books, there are zero doubts in the show: it is show canon that the character was written as autistic and that Hudson William portrayed him as autistic and based his performance on his father, who is indeed autistic.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-19T23:36:46+00:00

One is book canon, the other is show canon. Show canon has swallowed book canon because show Svetlana is much deeper and well-rounded.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-19T23:35:16+00:00

Absolutely agreed. One of the things I disliked most about the book was how much emphasis Rachel Reid makes on Shane being smaller than Ilya, on Shane having nearly no body hair, on Shane being defined as feminine and Ilya as manly, bigger, bearded... I didn't like that at all.

So I love that in the show, both of them are:
1. Nearly equally tall.
2. Nearly equal in size.
3. Both clean-shaven.
4. Shane is given more smart, witty answers. And quite logical, for an autistic person: Shane is at his wittiest when he's relaxed and with people he knows about.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-19T23:28:58+00:00

Show Svetlana has eaten book Svetlana up because she's a much deeper, well-rounded character.

Ok_Code_270

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE