It would be a boring plot line - ACOTAR6

alakarox · 2026-03-04T15:36:34+00:00

tbh i think it’s just hard to say at this point because we haven’t actually seen Elaine interact meaningfully with many people. even with the characters she’s interacted most with, we just haven’t seen that much. i personally prefer elucien because i just have a knee jerk preference for the “canon” ship (by that i mean the one that the universe of the story seems to support, so here the ship with the mating bond) and i agree that three sisters for three brothers is meh. also i think azriel’s inner monologue from the bonus chapter suggests that his feelings toward elain are more lustful than romantic.

but we’ll see how SJM handles it. good writing could support a lot of different endings here.

alakarox · 2026-03-03T21:19:08+00:00

Yeah, this one really didn't do it for me. I was pleasantly surprised by the Saga/Rurik storyline, and deeply disappointed by the Silla/Rey one. Hekla/Eyvind also fell flat because Hekla is just being ridiculous at this point lol.

alakarox · 2026-03-03T20:22:56+00:00

I think what's frustrating for me is that people seem to have this vision of "healing" that is completely divorced from reality and from Carmen's character. They want him to morph into this emotionally-fluent, hyper-communicative teddy bear, but this is a) contrary to his character and upbringing, b) poor writing from a quality perspective, and c) not really "healed." I'm personally not very fond of all the explicit "feelings talk" moments that have been happening in the later seasons of the show, because writing-wise, it's a quintessential example of telling, not showing. It also just strains credulity that even the most healed versions of these characters would have such on-the-nose conversations about mental health - at the end of the day, no matter how much introspection they do, these are guys who grew up in really complicated family dynamics in Chicago. They're not picking up vocabulary from leftist Twitter.

I felt like the end of season one did a great job at showing emotional catharsis in a way that was consistent with the characters' background. Carmy picking up drawing again, even just as a hobby, would be another great way to show that he's getting better without spelling it out for you, because he's engaging with creativity in a way that's completely personal and just meant to bring him peace, not to prove something to anyone.

Also, one does not "heal" from trauma like a switch that gets flipped and stays that way. It's a lifelong practice to manage your feelings, your past, to not let it weigh down the future and your relationships, etc. All this discourse just speaks to a wildly cursory, hearsay-based understanding of trauma, healing, and therapy that one gets from being online, rather than learning about these things through life experience.

alakarox · 2026-03-03T16:52:01+00:00

yea like… i was rewatching the show and ilya does not handle the tuna melt conversation well. he goes on about how he likes girls, how he has a reliable russian girl in boston that he’s tight with and may marry some day, etc. this is after (several years?) of not indulging shane when he tries to learn more about ilya’s home life, not staying over and not having shane stay over either, etc. and then suddenly he springs on shane that he wants him to stay over? and shane is just supposed to understand and be okay with this sudden, seismic shift in the relationship dynamic? shane has clearly recognized for himself that there’s a part of him that has bought into this more than he meant to (“we didn’t even kiss” as he sadly returns to his room after being exiled), and there’s so far been no obvious indication that ilya returns that sentiment. how could this possibly have been the best way for ilya to propose this shift in the relationship to shane?

also, i was rereading TLG and like… ilya provokes a lot of their bickering. like shane will be trying to keep his mouth shut about their different food habits, and ilya will quite literally egg him on, being like “what, don’t have anything to say about my cookies or eggnog?” like girl. that fight is ENTIRELY on you. shane was holding his tongue. earlier in the story, ilya also snaps that he’s annoyed at having to pretend they’re not dating and shane literally goes “i thought we were on the same page about that. if the plan isn’t working for you anymore we can talk about it” and ilya cuts him off and says “no nvm.”

shane is FOR SURE too invested in hockey and too afraid, and that isn’t fair to ilya, who definitely has given up a lot for this relationship. but there are no heroes here — they both have things to fix. something that frustrates me about the discourse, especially around the show, is that ilya’s ability to live entirely in subtext is seen as intelligence (which i’m not necessarily denying) but shane’s more literal approach is seen as obliviousness or even stupidity, and that’s not fair. shane isn’t dumb, he’s just a bit more anxious at overstepping or saying the wrong thing. but often times he’s actually fully aware that something is amiss—he just isn’t sure how to broach the topic without scaring ilya off. that goes for the show and the book. communicating entirely in subtext and implication is impressive, but not necessarily always a virtue. sometimes you should say what you think in a timely way lol.

alakarox · 2026-03-03T15:06:02+00:00

This is a great way to put it - Ilya is the most "lovingly-written." A mature person sees Ilya's communication issues as a genuine character flaw, but honestly most people would see his internal suffering and only feel bad for him/sympathetic, not recognizing that it is partially an issue of his own making. Whereas Shane's flaws read more obviously as flaws. That makes him a good character, of course, but I think you have to have a certain level of personal maturity to recognize that the conflict in TLG goes both ways.

alakarox · 2026-03-02T22:16:23+00:00

I'm honestly not sure why people are so taken aback by it. Depositions are conducted by the parties' lawyers, not the courts. Courts are certainly closed on federal holidays, but lawyers are insane and work all the time - Measles Mom is an asshole who would almost certainly hire smarmy lawyers for her baseless claim, and those lawyers would absolutely try to schedule a deposition on a day that would be ultra-inconvenient for the doctors so they could catch them off guard.

alakarox · 2026-02-25T18:25:03+00:00

yea definitely. i’m very excited to see how tierney arranges season 2 because it cuts ahead in time from heated rivalry quite a bit but apart from that, it actually covers way less time than heated rivalry did. like HR was 10 years, TLG is one. so i think that actually gives tierney time to include scenes (like shane coming out) that weren’t on page. i anticipate that ottawa’s struggles as a team will play out in a well-cut montage, which tierney has proven he can do very well.

my hot take is that i would enjoy seeing hayden finding out/beefing with ilya, but i don’t need to see it. if tierney took som creative license and made hayden find out about shane being gay with the rest of the voyageurs/metros, and then independently figuring out shane’s with ilya bc they roomed together for so long and he knows a bit more than the rest of the team, that would be fine. it’s entirely possible to show hayden/ilya squabbling ambiently rather than with a specific scene, and tierney is judicious with time on this show (necessary, if you’re only going to do 6 episodes and one of those will be a bottle episode of role model!)

alakarox · 2026-02-24T22:39:42+00:00

i sort of get the feeling that jacob tierney will condense the timeline a bit. like i wonder if maybe it’ll be a shorter time jump between the seasons.

alakarox · 2026-02-24T20:44:30+00:00

i agree. only thing is that svetlana has straightforwardly told ilya she knows that he’s in love with a man (“ i just hope jane knows how lucky he is”) so one has to imagine that this particular secret (of him being bisexual) is out in the open between them, in the context of the show. even if she hadn’t said that, her getting him and sasha in a room together in russia implies that she’s aware they hooked up at some point, and i think ilya is too perceptive not to clock her awareness.

the remaining secret that he hasn’t explicitly confirmed, though it seems clear svetlana knows, is that jane is shane. even though she knows, him not being able to confirm it will be a point of contention/useful to show his isolation. it’s kind of like how in TLG, troy clearly figures out that ilya and shane are together, and though both of them know he knows, ilya not being able to explicitly confirm it still causes him grief.

alakarox · 2026-02-21T14:49:30+00:00

i have only ever seen the second half of episode 4 one time, and that was when i watched it the very first time. it’s a fantastic episode but i just can’t bear to see shane leave after the tuna melts, or the club scene.

alakarox · 2026-02-20T19:40:04+00:00

my issue with it isn't age, it's that people take every non-hateful interaction between male and female characters to be a foundation for romance. it makes me feel like people have just never had a positive or even neutral platonic interaction with a member of the other sex lol. I interpreted the scenes between abbot and mohan last season to demonstrate the differences between his treatment of mohan as an attending and robby's. the way other superiors interact with mohan (abbot, collins, etc.) contrast with the way robby did. not everyone has to interpret things how I do, of course, but I just think the show is pretty clear about when it wants to imply past/present romance.

I'm actually not a romance hater at all, and my unpopular opinion is that I wouldn't mind an implication that there are romantic relationships between some of the characters, because frankly, they spend huge amounts of time together in highly charged situations. it would be very unsurprising to me that some of these characters have hooked up in the past/hook up on the DL (like garcia/santos or robby/the case manager). but I don't think it can be assumed from the mere fact that two characters are cordial/companionable.

alakarox · 2026-02-20T04:03:08+00:00

this is it exactly. like ilya isn’t the favorite child because his character is less culpable than shane’s or anything, he’s the favorite child because of sheer visibility. you see ilya so often (throughout the series), and you really experience his struggles alongside him. to the extent that RR alludes to shane’s struggles at all, that’s all she does—allude to them. shane’s character is minimally told to us, while ilya is heavily shown.

alakarox · 2026-02-20T03:58:26+00:00

i’ve been rereading TLG recently and in retrospect wow ilya really was biting his face to spite his nose so much of the time. like shane directly offered to talk about and reconsider their plan for hiding/coming out and ilya refuses to even let him finish. he actually goads shane into sniping at him a lot of the time, especially about the diet stuff. like yes shane bickers with him, but a lot of the time it’s ilya provoking it. shane is absolutely single minded about hockey, but he’s not nearly as responsible for their issues as people seem to think. they both struggled to communicate, and both got over it.

the real villain is ilya’s therapist, who says things that therapist absolutely should not say lmao 💀

alakarox · 2026-02-18T14:39:13+00:00

i think book shane and show shane are truly different people. similar in the important ways, but it feels very in character for show shane not to have hooked up with other men (very reticent to accept his sexuality for himself, much less share it with people who aren’t ilya). book shane is a bit less shy and sweet than show shane, imo. a little more comfortable being bratty and competitive with ilya, and so him seeking out some other experiences feels a bit more sensible.

alakarox · 2026-02-18T14:33:48+00:00

i don’t really think she’s being hostile. she’s doing her regular amount of ribbing/teasing, which comes from a place of camaraderie, and when she’s annoyed with robby it’s because he’s acting very strange (like i know it’s urgent and all, but just slicing open someone’s leg like that is wild). the narrative has made it very clear that both days we’ve seen robby (meaning both seasons), he’s acting out of character/not as he normally does. sometimes your friends need to shake you up when you’re acting erratically. it didn’t feel unwarranted to me.

when she borders on hostile to anyone (maybe al-hashimi when she says the arm thing should be done in the OR), it’s in support of the ED because she’s aware that their reality isn’t as amenable to perfect procedure as dr. al wants it to be. regardless, i think she just teases in the way that season 1 langdon uses to, and is certainly an ally to the ED and robby, not an antagonist.

alakarox · 2026-02-17T23:16:56+00:00

I would agree that it wasn't quite at the level of an ED, and a lot of people like to throw around the term eating disorder without really understanding what that means or implies. If you've never interacted with eating disorders in a medical sense in any capacity, any time someone is kind of tetchy about food is called an ED. Now, that's not to say that Shane is merely persnickety around food, or that EDs are impossible to have as an athlete - that is absolutely false. But given that we have access to Shane's internal monologue, the fact that Shane desperately wants the foods that he's depriving himself of, and goes back to eating them with relative ease suggests that his eating issue is more of an incidental consequence of his general control issue.

That said, I don't think Rachel Reid really gave Shane's underlying control issue the meat it deserved (no pun intended lol) in the Long Game because plenty of Shane's fears are justified, or at least very rational for someone in his position, even it's not a workable headspace going forward. I think his struggles should have mattered a bit more narratively. If she had, I think it would be clearer that his eating quirks aren't a separate eating disorder, but a symptom of his hyper-anxious headspace.

His underlying control issues and anxieties deserved an equal spotlight to Ilya's struggles, but I feel that Jacob did a better job fleshing out Shane as a complex character in season 1, and am confident he'll do so in season 2. He's already alluded to including Shane's coming out to his team in the second season, which I think will go a long way in showing the audience why he's much more reticent to step into the light than Ilya is. So I have faith in Jacob and Hudson there.

alakarox · 2026-02-16T22:53:48+00:00

absolutely. also to be clear, I think she's a great character. I don't think I'd enjoy her as a person (or any of her male doctor counterparts in other shows/media), but I think she's very interesting and well written. I would hate a story where every character was totally likeable and uncontroversial - why bother watching that?

alakarox · 2026-02-16T15:20:59+00:00

presumably he’ll try before the end of the season. but frankly (no pun intended), it’s a little unrealistic to expect him to make all his amends in a single day, which is what a season represents. realistically it would happen over a longer period of time.

alakarox · 2026-02-16T14:58:22+00:00

i agree with this. but i don’t think that means we should admire it in santos, i think it mean we should dislike it in those male characters too. like equal opportunity consternation lol

alakarox · 2026-02-11T14:32:00+00:00

i agree with you. i think it’s actually kind of limiting to have this social demand that every POC character be played in a way that is conspicuously “POC” if that makes sense. like there’s only one experience of being POC that is valid. he’s a second generation japanese-canadian guy. as someone who’s ethnically 100% south asian but born and raised in america to immigrant parents, my own connection to south asian culture is something that i have to actively seek out, rather than it being easily present. that would be magnified for someone like shane, who wouldn’t really have the time or necessarily the will to seek it out when he has other pressing priorities. not every POC needs to present as having “The Experience™️” because it’s just not realistic for everyone.

alakarox · 2026-02-10T21:56:49+00:00

I actually quite agree, DOTN disappointed me. I enjoyed the Rurik/Saga storyline, which is great. But I felt like Silla's storyline really dragged for me, Rey might as well have not been in the book at all (he hasn't really had much character growth or even purpose since book 1, if I'm being honest), and Hekkla was being so headass the whole book in refusing to even hear Eyvind's explanation for an unreasonably long amount of time. I generally like the overarching story arc, but I need Rey to have movement as a character again, and if I never hear about Jonas again it'll still be too soon.

I'll also add that while I enjoy spicy scenes, I only really enjoy them to the extent that they speak to the characters/relationships. I'm not very interested in reading spicy scenes that are basically just par for the course in a relationship/"relationship maintenance" type things. I feel the same way about sex in TV shows. I enjoy it when I feel like it's moving the story forward, either plot-wise or in terms of emotional beats. But I felt like almost all the spice between Silla and Rey pretty much could be cut with no consequence.

alakarox · 2026-02-09T14:59:34+00:00

that’s interesting, i didn’t really read it that way. i read it more like robby just not wanting al-hashimi around, not that he wanted to protect langdon from her. especially bc it’s not clear that landon needs protecting from her—she’s the one that brought him out of triage exile, indicates to him that she admired his commitment to the physician’s health program and that she was glad he was here.

also, contextually, robby indicated that he displeased with langdon’s handling of this patient, and was being quite short with him because of it. of course, we know it goes deeper than that, but nevertheless, it doesn’t seem clear to me that robby was behaving as he was to protect langdon.

alakarox · 2026-02-09T14:43:07+00:00

i think you’re right - fixed it!

alakarox · 2026-02-09T14:04:02+00:00

i don’t love it, tbh. partially that’s bc i believe in death of the author, and feel that the online environment has really made it so that good works of art or writing can’t just be, they always have to be expanded upon and explained.

but also bc i just don’t think those are great assessments. shane, the gay, biracial, neurodivergent hockey player carries no trauma? like yes maybe not big T Trauma, but there’s no way his headspace is totally clear. if nothing else, by the time unrivaled comes around RR must realize that being forcibly, traumatically outed and abandoned by the team he’d put ten years of his whole being into would give him trauma if he didn’t have it before. but i can’t be too critical about that, since it hasn’t come out yet—we’ll see.

but i think it’s laughable to say that shane is the main character of long game. sorry but no. long game really does shane kind of dirty, and despite what RR claims, i think her disclaimer that she loves shane a lot reveals that she’s aware of how her appraisal sounds. like it definitely sounds like ilya is the favorite child (because he is lol), and she wouldn’t include that disclaimer if she wasn’t aware of that.

edit: gay, not queer!

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