So, I've been reading along with a reheat with my IRL friend who is also obsessed, trying to understand the choices Jacob Tierney made in his incredible adaptation, and to see if there are any patterns, and it's really interesting, because there are some very systematic adjustments he made to the tone of the story.
Here's what I've noticed:
There is a lot more actual rivalry in the book, and a lot more negative emotion in general. Both Shane and Ilya have inner voices rife with internalised homophobia, and Jacob did not bring that to his show. The rivalry never feels heated, and their sex scenes feel very pure -- two boys who want each other making each other feel good. They hide it because their world would not understand, but they don't seem at all ashamed of it.
He makes almost all the dialogue shorter, more conversational and more effiicient. It feels like it's exactly what you remember from the book, but it seldom is. It's enough to feel faithful, but it's much sharper, and in some cases, very different in tone. For example:
He cuts almost all of Ilya's dirty talk. Ilya is always saying things like "look at you" or "you love it Hollander" or similar while Shane is sucking his dick or something, and JT's Ilya does not say anything like that. His Ilya is gentler and kinder, and most of what he says is checking in with Shane, or expressing stunned disbelief at being desired so voraciously by Shane, and Connor's performance shows that Ilya is entirely disarmed by Shane. He has nothing to say -- he's too lost sensation and emotion.
The one scene where Ilya is a bit less careful with Shane is in Vegas after Ilya wins MVP, but even that, he changes to make it more emotional. Look at this:
Instead of Shane saying "You. Fuck me. Please." JT has Shane say what Ilya really, truly wants to hear -- not that he needs Ilya to fuck him, but that he NEEDS ILYA. "I need you" and "Fuck me" are very different things to say to that character, and in a scene where Ilya is trying to distance himself from Shane because he's starting to realise that his feelings might not be as easy breezy as he'd like, and he's going back to Russia soon is such a bigger gut punch.
I love how that scene ends with Ilya dissociating with an unlit cigarette in his mouth -- a nice callback to the way his lighter only sparks in the first scene in Ep 1 when Shane arrives to introduce himself -- while Shane mourns the fact that they didn't kiss.
I love that he moved "Please fuck me" to the scene when Ilya knows Shane loves him, knows he needs him and wants him, for real, and forever, and that it's in that context that Shane asks to be fucked.
That whole scene at the cottage after they tell each other they love each other is entirely rewritten. The sex they have is really gentle and intimate and all about eye contact and emotional nakedness, but in the book Ilya's being more dominating and sceney.
In the show, it's Ilya who asks Shane how they let this happen, and Shane who says they were both very stupid and irresponsible, and it's Ilya who asks Shane if it's real -- who can't believe Shane loves him. More importantly, though, I feel like Jacob's adaptation threads that emotion through every scene in the show.
Ilya does say "She would have loved you", but he doesn't say "Like I love you." I think it's so moving the way love is linked to their mothers in the show -- Shane saying to Ilya "I love you so much" which is echoed by Yuna, when she says to Shane "Oh, I love you too. So much" and this line which tells you that Ilya, whose treatment of Shane from the start has been so tender and so loving, also learned that from his mother. I love the loving, gentle role of the women in HR.
All of Jacob Tierney's women are full characters with their own motivations and lives and all of them are so kind and important in the journey. A lot of people cry misogyny just because it's a story about men, but it's a story about men that is very much in the interests of anti-patriarchy, and they way JT improved on how Rachel Reid wrote the women deserves its own whole post.
Anyway. Loving my Heated Rivalry book club.
