“ilya is SMART shane is NOT” boring take. very dumb. “they are both soooooooooo stupid in their own special ways and the joy of episode six is witnessing two idiots work it out against all odds” real and so true we all know what we saw
I appreciate how honest Heated Rivalry is about how sex is not this thing thing that is perfectly divided from the rest of our lives, even in situations that everyone acts like it is, and when most people would even think it’s inappropriate or unrealistic for it to overlap.
Ilya is friends with Svetlana but they casually have sex sometimes. When Shane is freaking out about his dad catching them he self-soothes by crouching and nuzzling Ilya’s dick. After Ilya cries in the Tampa hotel, and Shane comforts him, it’s implied they follow that with their typical passionate and filthy sex. When Ilya is in Russia for his dad’s funeral, and probably experiencing all of the grief and regret and resentment and pain that comes with that and with seeing his family, he initiates phone sex with Shane.
Some of these examples are more extreme than others but they all depict sex overlapping with the nonsexual, and what most believe should remain nonsexual. Friendship shouldn’t be sexual. Panic shouldn’t be sexual. Despair shouldn’t be sexual. Grief shouldn’t be sexual.
But in real life, sex is not neatly divided from all other human experiences. It especially isn’t for queer people, who not only tend to be more open-minded about sex and sexuality, obviously, but also by virtue of being queer now have sex and sexuality interwoven into all other areas of their life, including their fears, their pain, their trauma, their grief, their regret, etc.
Obviously, some of this is probably just because it’s a romance or because Reid wanted to write smut. But in the tv show, it’s depicted so naturally and at times it’s so raw and it feels so real to me. I think some people probably find it unrealistic or worse, think it in some way taints these other scenes that in a different show wouldn’t have been given a trace of anything sexual, but I think it’s so smart and I’m grateful for it. It’s reflective of real life, especially queer real life.
I really don’t think anyone but a gay man in complete control of the show would have allowed Shane to self-soothe that way. He gets it.
“These are people learning about each other and their relationship by fucking. That’s how they’re understanding each other. It’s how they play out their dynamics. It’s the only time, especially in the first two episodes, that they’re not lying to each other, that they’re not doing boisterous dumb boy stuff and being like, “Fuck you, fuck you.” This is when they get vulnerable with each other. This is when they get real.”
