I’ve seen ppl, on twitter (which, that’s my fault, shouldn’t go there) talk about the whole Ilya moving to Ottawa and not being happy there. and there’s the whole blaming Shane for not noticing Ilya’s depression and that another topic. and then it’s the blaming Shane for Ilya being in Ottawa, aka ppl forgetting that Ilya brought up moving to Canada. and yes, they chose Ottawa after the plan Shane first came up with. If Shane wasn’t in the picture, Ilya probably could’ve gone to another team, maybe a better one. but then Ilya’s an adult and can make his own decisions. and there’s also the blaming Shane for staying in Montreal, which, yeah.
but the most shocking one is that there are people blaming Shane for saying to Ilya don’t marry Svetlana when he brings it up as a suggestion for an American citizenship. and that one blows my mind, because it doesn’t matter which angle I look at it from, apart from maybe Ilya really didn’t want to leave Boston, for it to make sense. and seeing as Ilya brought up leaving Boston first, I can’t even see that one. which means, that people are blaming Shane for not wanting the man he loves marry a woman, who he has a history with, for an American citizenship. Not the Canadian one that Ilya started the whole conversation about, an American one. And that because he didn’t want Ilya to marry Svetlana, and came up with this other plan of Ilya moving to Ottawa and the charity, Shane is to blame for Ilya now being depressed and lonely and living in a city where “he doesn’t know anyone”. of course he knows people there, he has his team and he has Shane’s parents. do we see Shane have friends in Montreal outside his team? not as far as I can remember, so they’re pretty much on equal ground when it comes to that.
and yes, Ilya seems to be a more social person, who craves social interactions and all that, whereas Shane is more introverted and doesn’t need that as much. the main difference is that Shane spends time with his friends on the team outside of team activities, whereas Ilya seems to keep to himself in Ottawa, but that’s not on Shane. Ilya is more isolated than Shane and that’s due to his depression. and you can’t blame his depression on Shane.
but since this comes from Twitter, there are probably not a ton of reasoning behind it. it seems like a lot of ppl there just want to blame Shane for everything. and a lot of that comes from the framing of the long game, how it’s written and narrated. that comes from outside the universe, and if you take everything in the book as a fact, that the words in the page is the definite truth and there’s no real nuance to it. then I can see how people can blame Shane for everything, but barely. and since that’s a plot and narrative issue, there’s no argument around it
