#op.meta

[bonejar]

ilya being a dom is so important to me. like wow a queer domtop character who is allowed to be loving and flamboyant and emotional/vulnerable and it's not used to reverse engineer his sexual preferences into subbing and/or pathologize him. next you'll tell me the sub character has agency and competence and a rich inner world and is just as loving and vulnerable as the dom both outside & inside sex. wait what. what are you talking ab

[bonejar]

i could be succinct for once in my life & condense this, but my skull is filled with soup rn. first word vomit of this blog ig

tl;dr—skip are really interesting but only as a framing device for privilege & hollanov

like many people i rolled my eyes at heated rivalry, in my case bc of the books & where i know they originated, but was won over. what won me over was episode 3 of all things, tho

for the first 2 episodes of the show we watch shane and ilya struggle to communicate emotionally despite wanting to & substitute their deficiencies with sex. typical trope of erotic fiction. i enjoyed it, but what intrigued me (high quality & acting aside) was that shane is half-asian in one of the whitest hypermasculine contact sports in the world and subtextually autistic, and ilya is a russian esl immigrant with some obvious ptsd based neurodivergence. piled on to them both being queer closeted globally ranked child athletes entering a multi-million dollar sports industry, that's a fucking saw trap

racist exotification and caricatures in these genres are common, especially of russians/slavs & asians, and so is a decorative approach to mental health challenges/disorders. i was admittedly wary of the show's thematic follow through & skeptical it was even aware of the microcosm it held in its palm, except for shane's autism (a hudson williams interview abt shane convinced me to give it a chance). mostly bc ik the vibes of its source material & doubted such a thing would take any interest in a racial narrative, much less an intersectional one

but then episode 3 happened. and oh this was really really fucking interesting

not the contained queer popcorn romance, which is fine, and certainly not scott/kip as a ship (sorry to kip but his actor shares a striking resemblance to #my dad and enduring that was actual psychological torture). what hooked me by the lip was the themes of privilege it introduced

scott and kip communicate basically perfectly, and expeditiously. their circumstances drive them apart, but never each other. there's no mess. they have a romcom style meet cute and altogether bow-wrapped little u-haul romance. even in their difficult moments they support each other and acknowledge the other's needs or try to do so. it's the all american cherry pie wholesome wattpad/hallmark fantasy of closeted gay romances, well made and produced and good enough to stand on its own

but it's episode 3. not a vignette standalone. this is part of shane and ilya's story

on the surface it seems like skip is expanding the depictions of what closeted athletes can look like, while assuring the viewer that the writers know how to write healthy communication with compelling drama. that's probably its intention. but it's not what makes it interesting

scott and kip are both white, usamerican, (mostly) neurotypical men. one of whom is an established, respected hockey player (man in the crease notwithstanding) and closeted but self-determined gay man. the other is a normal out gay guy in his 20s/30s with a loving support system, pillared (crucially) by his dad. they both have a great deal of security around and within them, in spite of scott being so closeted

meanwhile shane is mixed race, a model minority asian/japanese icon in his very racist hypermasculine conformist national sport, undiagnosed autistic, and a closeted gay man (Very Confused flavor). he has obvious signs of undiagnosed ocd & given all of this, probably cptsd. he's sexually submissive to the point of deviance. he sits like his limbs are filled with lead and his japanese parent is his manager

ilya is an eccentric & brash russian/slavic esl immigrant living alone in the us on a visa in a foreign league which punishes players for having a personality more interesting than strawberry milk and white knuckles the cold war profile of russians like a woobie. at home he's a russian national athlete with an abusive family in the police/military and a closeted bisexual man (Will Be Jailed/Disowned flavor). he has textbook flags of undiagnosed cptsd/ptsd. he's sexually dominant to the point of deviance and he's financially responsible for his terrible remaining parent who's dying of dementia on the other side of the world (+ his crackhead older brother)

all-american cherry pie scott and kip are a framing device to demonstrate how healthy communication itself can become a privilege. bc of their national, political, and personal circumstances, shane and ilya literally can't communicate the way scott and kip do. their relationship is messy and confusing and sexually deviant. it's difficult to explain, categorize, and defies most norms. its fabric itself is queer in a way skip's isn't

this is why scott and kip are the perfect couple to break the coming out barrier. they're about as ideal & commercially shippable as it gets for a gay couple in a cultishly racist/etc industry like hockey. this is also why so many cishet viewers are so fond of them. it's a recreation of their in-universe narrative purpose—skip are there to win normie audiences over, so you don't stick your nose up at hollanov & the queer dysfunction they depict

they have the potential to be more compelling than a lifetime movie if these themes become foretextual. i want to see them use their privilege in allyship to shane & ilya. this is why they're in the story

that's the core thesis of this entire damn thing, anyway. i can only hope jacob tierney goes balls to the walls with it (and..........is Aware Of It)

[bonejar]

allow me the grace of projection here but ilya & alexei really dig a fucking finger into my big brother bruise. he's an asshole. he's your idol. he moved out 4 years ago and you're alone at the top of the stairs scanning the plastered-over hole in the wall he left when your eyes didn't meet the muddy grain. he dug your worst habits out of you. he did his math homework at the kitchen table next to yours and showed you the controls on his xbox. he made you feel stupid for agreeing with your mother. there's polaroid photos of you in a swaddle in his arms in your parents' room. he comes back at 3 am sniffing in the dark shuffling past your door past the room that used to be his past your step-mother's wedding photo past the plaster to the bathroom that you haven't shared in 6 years and then out again. he's the example you shouldn't live up to. you'd do anything for his respect. he brags about you to his friends. he won't stop fucking arguing with everything you say. he's the only person you can talk to at christmas. you wonder if your dad is going to call you out of school to tell you he od'd. he's never apologized to you. you want him to eat healthier. there's two people left in the world who remember your mother and you're one. he bullies you like you're a boy and laughs at you like you're a girl. she said he used to change your diapers because he did a better job than her. he's a father now. your parents' remains are a bracket of ribs curled beneath your flesh, he's the empty shape between each rung you hate that he made you cut out

[bonejar]

i'm saving these thoughts for later bc i need to rewatch the show more & i'm still in the process of actually analyzing canon bc this thing is a damn brick of subtext (the fucking lighting is its own character). also there's just a lot to unpack in the underlying sentiment of it all. but i wouldn't describe ilya as mean/an asshole in a serious way (the point is that he's kind to a fault). what's odd to me is the sentiment that his ~assholery is incompatible with his tenderness. they literally said, "you're such an asshole" / "i think maybe you like it" and then had the most romantic marathon sex on tv to date

[bonejar]

this is an old draft now, n i don't mean any of this derisively, but a while ago i saw someone term what shane was doing in tampa "emotional domming" and that betrayed such a cardinal miscomprehension of hollanov's emotional intimacy and why ilya feels safe with shane, singularly, that i got benignly angry at it

ilya isn't a child. he doesn't require shane's guidance to his own emotions. he's deliberately portrayed with precocious self-comprehension and as stunningly observant. the choice to reserve his feelings is wakeful

i think it flattens the character to suggest otherwise and is textually null. connor storrie himself said he acted ilya to reserve his emotions as restoration of personal authority. it's not avoidance or hesitation. it's defiance & self-preservation

in the scenes we have to reference of ilya & others + his monologue, when he attempts to connect emotionally his feelings are used to control him by others in service of an outcome. occasionally he's manipulated (alexei, namely), but in most exchanges he is aware and resigned to enduring it as inexorable. reserving his emotions retains his self-authority under the machinations of the outcome

sveta establishes how he reacts to "emotional domming" aka parenting in friendship. she lovingly, firmly probes & steers him in service of an outcome she's intuited for both of them, as an omniscient big sister would. ilya remains reserved

sveta is the closest he has to emotional harbor, and she cannot extract him. if there is any extraction, ilya will harbor his own emotions. he has the acumen for power rhythms & hypervigilance to assure it. the nature of the outcome is irrelevant. the nucleus of his trauma is subservience to authority not his own, and resignation to it in perpetuity, which necessitates introrse reclamation of power/action. he withdraws from the power dynamic itself

what he discovers in shane is a person absent of outcomes. shane has no extractions. there is no orchestration. there is no omniscience or prescience, no projection. shane asks for ilya's feelings because he wants to understand. literally nothing else. radically, he simply listens to him

it's partnership, not coaxing. this is the linchpin of ilya's trust. shane is the only character who never enacts a power dynamic onto him, ever. there's no authority. he interfaces with ilya as an equal. he wants to listen. and ilya, confronted with this for the first time in his life, slowly cracks himself open to be heard

[bonejar]

since i'm on the subject Also. idk maybe i am just a domtop and exhibit too many similarities to ilya as a whole to relate or be compelled by this personally but the emotional arc of ilya Letting Go Of His Need To Control bc it's Bad For Him, through becoming more sexually submissive (or him being surreptitiously sexually submissive at all) is so confusing. one part bc i never saw anything to imply ilya has Control Issues but more so. that's literally shane. you're talking about shane. that's like, the nucleus of the character. closeted & confused high intensity poc male athlete control freak with autism and likely ocd who copes with highly masked perfectionism & fetishizes self-harm as self-discipline needs subbing (+ bottoming) like he needs to breathe, and falls in love with the man who shows him this about himself

[bonejar]

really good takes about Dom/top Ilya!

Tangentially related, I am kind of getting tired of the seeming compulsion people have to analyze why Ilya doms. It’s getting to the point where I feel like ppl are trying to make an excuse for him? I think there are probably are psychological roots for him, but also, lots of people just like domming!

the compulsive pathologizing of domming is a big contributor to the dehumanization of doms as a whole, so i wouldn't say it's tangentially related (it is The Thing In Motion)

as a dom who is very very similar to ilya in the show. guys. ilya doms bc that's just how he is. we see him act like that all the time unless he's under stress/distress. his trauma, fundamentally, is disassociating from himself and his desires in order to appease authority despite being someone who always asserts/takes what he wants. he doesn't dom to take back control or for any compulsive reason. domming is freedom for him, it's not something he thinks about at all. that's just What He Does when he's turned on. the healing part is that he's allowed to be himself freely and with perfect reciprocity (in shane)

part of the fixation with pathologizing him is likely that shane is such a basket case of a sub. but the same fundamental principle applies to shane, too. shane subs bc it's who he is, and ilya gives him the freedom to do so

their sex is liberation for both of them. that's why they fall in love doing it and that's why it's the core queer narrative

[bonejar]

i'm not russian or from a similarly dangerous place for queer ppl, so these thoughts come from my impression of eastern european/russian people i've known, russian athletes i'm familiar with, + some russian fans' thoughts that've crossed my dash (namely @dropthedemiurge + this post) and could be off base. but i am not seeing enough dialogue abt ilya that frames him in the full stakes of his queerness

shane's stakes are big, obviously. they're certainly more than an average urban north american person, and he would have some potential cultural baggage being half-japanese. but his fear in ep 6 was that he lied to his parents for a decade + his boyfriend is his professional arch rival. homophobic rejection was secondary, though relevant. his physical safety didn't even cross his mind

whereas ilya. well. the stakes of ilya being queer are his fucking life.

queerness & queer activism is criminalized as terrorism in russia. i'm no expert, so i won't project what the consequences realistically would be. but i know that real russian nhl players are on record abstaining from pride celebrations out of fear of retaliatory action. regardless of whether ilya would actually end up dead, that's what he would be terrified of deep down. i've heard this from most russian queer people i've seen/met, who aren't friggin national icons. even worse, his father & brother are both police he thinks hate him. even if he's legally untouchable, somehow, he probably half-expects one of them to try and murder him for being a fag

his bad communication & flightiness are more than just a dysfunctional closet case. he experiences commitment (and his love, therefore) to shane as a literal threat to his life. all of his behavior makes complete sense when put into that focus

what scott hunter did for him was more than show it's possible for an mlh/nhl player to come out, like it did for shane. it showed ilya that you can kiss a man on national tv and not get arrested or shot. and you can do that as an mlh/nhl hockey captain in the same conference, literally one state over. you can see the terror on his face when he processes what scott is about to do, and then the shock as it all shatters. they kiss and nothing happens. they're safe. ilya's safe. the room is just spinning

it just. hits so fucking hard. other queer people, the community we create, making him feel like it's possible to choose shane. like it's not dangerous to love the guy he's fallen for. like the danger he's lived beneath the thumb of his entire life won't hurt him

and the first thing he does with absolutely no hesitation when the danger is gone is say yes i want to be with you. i'm coming to the cottage. i'm choosing to be queer

then At The Cottage shane planning a future with him. telling him with angry tears in his eyes not to dare marry svetlana even just for a passport. waking him up in the middle of the night with a real long-term option. ilya realizing he doesn't have to prioritize practicality. that he could marry a man--that he could marry shane. that shane will make it happen. no fucking shit ilya was so overcome with emotion he had to confess his love literally into shane's skin right there. whispering it in fucking russian

"does it kill you?" and ilya sobbing into his chest, "not anymore."

not anymore. Not. Anymore. i'm going to fucking waterboard myself