something 2 be said about how Ilya is so motherless and desperately wants his mom/a mom, and how sveta fills that role. at the sochi gala, sveta’s dad and ilya’s dad watch them and remark, “always telling him what to do!” “since they were children!” as sveta literally leads him around by the hand. in that scene, she saves him from a more painful social situation and takes him to a special surprise! sasha! with a complete lack of jealousy, which can read as fujo, enlightened, or just mom-like: “why don’t you talk to your childhood friend, sweetie? you still think he’s cute, right?” with endless hockey knowledge, she has uniquely accurate insight and advice for ilya’s career (who’s winning the next cup, how good he’d do on shane’s wing) in a way that parallels… yuna, shane’s momager. even more than yuna, sveta can see deeply into her boy’s emotions and relationships, even when he’s not talking to her about them (sasha says hi… I just hope jane knows how lucky he is.) she does some basic relationship management for him: remember to pack the gifts for your niece! and ilya kind of… well, graduates from sveta to shane as his partner. narratively, sveta is his maternal figure, she’s just so young and hot and presumably good at body shots that you perceive her and ilya as equals. but no… she’s telling ilya what to do, down to which cute boy to sleep with, and ilya lets her. since they were children.
further work in this field might explore dynamics of ilya mommy kink, the implied loss of sveta’s own mother, and how ilya and sveta shared a motherless adolescence.
there is also great space for expansion in yuna/sveta yuri, toxic and otherwise. (the dominant assumption has been that sveta would perceive shane as her main competition to be jealous of, but if by the time ilya and shane are a thing, sveta hasn’t even slept with ilya in a while, would not yuna more accurately replace sveta in ilya’s life ?)