whoever first pointed out that ilya americanises his accent around other people but not around shane i owe you my fucking life
also the idea of like when its just the two of them ilya can like just slip back into the more comfortable rudimentary accent he had at the start of their relationship :’) and that in itself being nostalgic for shane :’)
this would also be linguistically accurate!
i speak english the most in day to day life and also think in english sometimes. my accent in english is americanized, pretty indistinguishable from a native (excluding sets of certain phonemes like /rl/) .
but if i’m really tired or spending time just around my wife (with whom i speak english), i sometimes switch to what i call ‘lazy english’.
what this usually consists of is i allow myself to speak english with the russian /r/ phoneme that is more natural for me, i drop articles, replace continuous and future tense with simple present, use the ‘….,yes?’ construct, avoid contractions (bc the verb ‘to be’ is dropped/implied in russian, so contractions aren’t always natural)
for example, when i’m in ‘lazy english’ mode, this is how my speech varies:
‘i’m making the bed’ = ‘i make bed’.
‘you’ll help me later, right?’ = ‘you help me later, yes?’ (for this one, in russian, the same phrasal construct ends with the word ‘yes’ instead of the word ‘right’)
‘can you give me a tissue?’ = can you give me tissue?’
‘where’s the pen? do you have it?’ = ‘where is pen? you have?’
if you pay attention, you’ll notice that a lot of these patterns also occur in ilya’s speech, especially earlier on. that’s why i’m particularly impressed with the writing of his dialogue — it doesn’t come across as stereotyping/caricatural because the way he speaks english is consistent with russian linguistic/grammatical rules. this is often how russian-speaking people speak english when it is their second language and they’re still learning.
i like to imagine ilya reverting to ‘lazy english’ or speaking in a similar manner to me around shane. it is linguistically consistent and a sign of comfort/deep familiarity with the person.
The next layer of linguistic accuracy would be for Shane to start occasionally modulating down into a similar “lazy english” that’s reflective of Ilya’s style. I forget the technical term for this, but it’s a legit thing in linguistics – if there’s someone you love/admire/respect and you spend a lot of time with them, you unconsciously start picking up and mirroring a couple aspects of their idiolect (like a dialect but rather than being spoken by a group, it is a single person’s unique linguistic fingerprint), whether that’s gestures, vocabulary, or speech patterns.
So when Ilya says something like, “Where is pen? You have?” then over time Shane’s response might naturally shift towards, “Yes, I have.”
ok i’m rewatching e5 and it’s really getting to me how painful shane’s closet is. like he has to be closeted i understand the logistics and his position. i get it. but he uses it against himself all the time. it’s so painful for him. having sex with women is humiliating & difficult but he thinks it’s necessary. keeping distance between himself and his loved ones is isolating but he thinks it’s necessary. having his emotional and sexual needs only barely satisfied for ten whole years is agony but he thinks it’s necessary. everything he does is calculated, everything he does is a fight to not be Too Obvious. being closeted is hard enough, but shane is torturing himself inside his. he punishes himself for being gay all the time. it’s almost like self harm. maybe if he’s a little harder on himself, maybe if he pushes until it hurts, maybe if he tries and tries and tries and just never accepts failure and just works really hard on it then it’ll be fine. he takes that approach to hockey and it works. maybe if it hurts for long enough, badly enough, then he will become a better man by enduring it. maybe it has to hurt for there to be a positive result. maybe the punishment is necessary. and the only person who can punish shane for this is shane himself. so he does. but every time he goes back to ilya it’s a failure, every time he can’t get hard with a woman it’s a failure, every time he thinks about maybe letting himself be what he knows he is it’s a failure. do you ever want to just cry
“this is ilya, i will never listen to your voicemail” and shane takes that to heart!!
he thinks ilya doesn’t ever listen to his messages, so maybe he starts leaving one here and there. maybe they’re nothing really, just a note to say he tried to call. sometimes leaving off with “oh, this is shane. by the way” he calls when he knows ilya won’t be able to pick up; “hey, uh. i know you won’t get this, but i was thinking about you. i miss you. i know you’re just in ottawa but… sometimes it feels a lot further. i love you.” and sometimes he’ll be watching a game and god. he wants to talk to ilya about that play, so he’ll leave message about it. shane never really tells ilya that this is something he does.
ilya knows, of course. watches his voicemail fill up little by little. always makes sure there’s space for new ones. has ones that he listens to so often that knows them by heart. memorizes the way shane laughs because he thinks no one will hear it, the sound of his breath on the other line between words. he listens to every one of them.
the thing that’s been rotating in my head like a horrible little rotisserie thorn is that yuna says: i think we thought maybe you were gay.
we thought maybe you were gay.
we thought maybe you were gay as you grew up and became a professional athlete. rookie of the year. as you navigated this famously homophobic career path. as you tried to put together a public persona, as we guided you through sponsorships and brand deals. we thought maybe you were gay as we watched you, our shy and anxious and awkward son, as you grew into an isolated adult. few friends, no real romances. your mom still buys your shirts. you have always lived alone.
we thought maybe you were gay, but we didn’t say anything.
i think - your mother, i - for a while now, we’ve thought maybe for a while now - we thought - we thought it, we didn’t say it, never out loud - because that would mean we had to address it and that would mean we might be right. we kept our eyes down and our mouths shut and we know you so, so well, but we didn’t ask and we didn’t say anything, not even when scott hunter did all that right out there in front of god and the cup and everyone, and we let it slide off us and into history, past tense, and didn’t look too closely at your reaction because we thought maybe you –
i’m sorry that i made you feel like you couldn’t tell me.
because i did that. and i knew i was doing it while i was doing it. and i know that you know, now, that i knew i was doing that. i looked away so things could be easier for you because it’s there’s nothing to tell there’s no need for a statement. no need for a plan.
and all this time, all your adult life, since your rookie season, the summer before, you’ve been in love - lovers - no, look at the way you look at him, you’ve been in love - and you’ve kept it secret while we made him your rival. pitted you against him. played up conflict and animosity against him. we sat together at tables with an empty chair where he should have been, where he is now, and hated him if we thought of him at all, and now you sit here and tell us you want to keep that secret another ten years, another fifteen because we made you think that this - this weight, this pressure, this fear we can see in the line of your shoulders and the way you breathe - that this is somehow easier.
you would have kept that secret another ten years, another fifteen. you aren’t telling us now because you’re ready, or because you want to. you’re telling us because you were caught.
found out what, exactly? as if maybe your father was still going to keep that secret for you. as if he didn’t tell me, not the whole of it. not everything he saw. as if you could have pretended you hadn’t seen him, and he would have pretended he hadn’t seen you. another ten years. another fifteen.
