TV!Ilya is significantly MORE driven by intimacy than book!Ilya is, and that’s sort of a side-effect of the show’s rewrite of Svetlana and Sasha.
In the books, Ilya has hookups and Svetlana is his most regular hookup outside of Shane and is clearly a friend… But Ilya and Svetlana don’t have the deep backstory of childhood, and the FIRST TIME Svetlana is brought up in the book is during Landrygate.
Book!Ilya still feels a deeper connection to Svetlana than any of this other hookups, both because of the hockey and the Russia of it all, but it’s nowhere near as intimate a relationship as in the show.
Meanwhile, in the book, Sasha doesn’t EXIST. He’s not a character, he is a throwaway line about how Ilya used to hook up with his coach’s son.
Show!Sasha is a REALLY interesting adaptation in this context, because while Svetlana is more prominent in the show than the book, her rewrite is a pretty logical extension of what their relationship already was on the page. Sasha’s rewrite completely recontextualises him, because SEEING him and Ilya interact it is quite clear that they were more than just fuckbuddies, and that at some point along the way Sasha, Ilya, and Svetlana were ALL friends.
The upshot being that all three of Ilya’s notable partners in the show are people he has a deep intimate connection with, and that REALLY recontextualises the Hollanov rivalry in some ways too. “Sports rivalry is super intimate” is like… the thesis statement of Heated Rivalry, but this direct comparison to Svetlana and Sasha, Ilya’s childhood friends/fuckbuddies, puts a MUCH sharper point on it.


















