I mean…. i guess ultimately the books and the show are just different stories and should be viewed as such. Like Ilya does make a choice to move thats true for both the books and the show and in my mind has always been part of why things were as difficult as they were and obviously i dont blame people for having mental illness but adults do also have a responsibility to seek help so to me adding agency and choices where there were previously literally no choices…. Like Ilya had very specific grievances about his situation that he addressed that were objectively true and making his circumstances worse and i don’t think removing it makes the story inherently better or deeper I don’t think it’ll make it bad either but it fundamentally alters the story being told to me
Assuming this is a follow-up on this ask, tbh I’m not sure I entirely understand what you’re getting at here. I mean, yes, the show is separate canon to the books, but none of these changes fundamentally alter the story at its core. They just clean it up a bit. I’m not saying giving Ilya a friend on its own deepens the story; I’m saying small tweaks like that one can make a huge impact when handled well. I…don’t think I get what you’re trying to say wrt to Ilya’s “responsibility to seek help” though? Or the implications of his having “no choices” to do so (from people other than Shane ig?), when he did seek out professional help in the book. The execution of it was certainly flawed writing-wise, but that he willingly sought out therapy was a significant part of his arc in the book and we’ve currently no reason to expect that to change in show. That’s separate from accepting support from friends… Sorry, I feel like I’m missing something here, but I genuinely don’t see why having a bff he probably doesn’t call for awhile but could if he wanted to is an obstacle to this arc in any way if that’s what you meant. but I’ve already talked about that so. Yeah.
I’m sorry if this comes off as rude. I really don’t mean it to. But I just do not believe it’s necessary that he have literally no friends anywhere at all to feel lonely or to self-isolate in his pain. Nor do I think his choosing not to seek those friends out would make him less sympathetic to me or in any way alleviate the pain of his depression arc or his and Shane’s r/s struggles other than not implying it’s all Shane’s fault somehow. It’s their circumstances that suck. They’re just two flawed people doing their best. And I don’t think we need to overdramatise aspects like this to drum up angst.
As to other “specific grievances about his situation”…what else has changed that you’re anticipating? Unless they mention it in passing, we currently have no evidence Show!Ilya even had a car collection, but he still needs a new passport, he still has no wider community (even if he, like, FaceTimes with his old team or smth in the show, that would still be true?), his new team is still at best finishing a rebuild so he’s still got years of losing good hockey and missing competition w Shane to fuck him up as in TLG.
Hell, Ottawa doesn’t even need to be literally bottom of the barrel with no realistic hope for future growth and a seeming lack of ambition for better for Ilya to miss his already cup contending team, great hockey, and the devoted fans that came with it. And in fact them being at the end of a rebuild cycle with an actual prospect of renewed competition within a few years as this post proposes makes the Ottawa Plan a lot more believable as one either Ilya or Shane would have gone ahead with. But it would still be a gamble w his career for the sake of their future, still piss off fans and old teammates (tarnishing his legacy), still mean relearning a new team and agonising over his performance as captain, and absolutely still have him losing more games for years than he has in over half a decade. Not that I’m expecting them to go this way necessarily, but they could, and it wouldn’t reduce the angst factor at all.
My point was not that removing or dialling down on some of the more dramatic sources of misery inherently deepens the story. My point was that doing so loses us nothing and earns us (and the characters) some space to breathe, which is necessary if we want to explore their internal arcs with any level of nuance or, yes, depth. TLG as a narrative is so cluttered with plot contrivances and resentment fuel that it only lightly scratches at anything of substance and makes a mess of itself in the process. I’ve talked about this at great length in other posts, but to name a few:
Shane coming out in a timeskip to his team fsr just so Ilya can feel extra suffocated in the closet and resentful of Shane’s halfway out state without ever giving us an explanation as to how or why that even happened
Shane resenting the loss of competition with Ilya (i.e., the rivalry) to a delusional and thoughtlessly cruel degree despite proposing Ottawa bc apparently it didn’t occur to either of them that the Centaurs suck and have sucked for ages and Ilya’s only one person and somehow Shane can’t connect ‘Ilya is on a losing team’ with ‘Ilya is unhappy’ (tbc I think this is the fault of poor writing; and inconsistent with previous characterisation), when we could have had something like a post Sochi repeat w Ilya locking in thinking it will ‘fix’ him and their r/s by essentially reviving their private rivalry minus the public performance bits and Shane frustrated he won’t confide in him while fully well knowing why (not attached to this; literally just typing as ideas appear lol)
resolving what should have been a major turning point in their r/s (the block party fight) with an engine failure and a proposal instead of actually letting them talk it through
making Ottawa a gay utopia as part of the deflection from the real world homophobia the rivalry is scapegoating and then smacking the Voyagers over the heads with the Stupid and Evil sticks to get Shane to join the Centaurs rather than allow him to make an actual choice himself
Obviously I don’t expect this all to change and certainly not in the ways I’ve just spitballed off the top of my head. My point is just that even if they did change some of these things or drop or move or dial back on something like Ilya’s extreme and involuntary isolation, it wouldn’t change the core of the narrative which is just…navigating a grown up relationship while grappling with the added complications of long distance, their careers (and everything that comes with that, including Ilya’s legal status), family dynamics, and mental health struggles. There are a LOT of ways to do that with just the pieces they have so far, and bc I did not like the way RR went about it personally…I guess I’m just not primed to see it as an issue if they take a different approach.
Sorry this got so long. I just found I had more to say than I anticipated 🤷 Hopefully this little essay was of some interest, but thank you for the opportunity to rant a little 🙃