Hiiii, I love your au so much!!! And now there is languages discourse on your dash about Shane forgetting English and that is such a rich topic I couldn’t stop thinking about it, sorry for nerding out in your inbox!
The thing about being bilingual (or nearly) I want to add is that speaking in different languages brings out different personalities. Someone already mentioned in another ask that being more comfortable opening up in English because in their culture people don’t really talk about their feelings. Tbh this is also 100% true for me, I have the vocabulary to speak about it in my language, but in English it is so much easier and sounds more believable?
However, this is a thing of associations and I think it would be the exact opposite for Shane. English is the language he associates with his media personality, hockey world and camera performance, everything he needs to be. Everything other people want him to be.
Russian he only speaks to Ilya. Russian is honest.
I think this would really shape his English speaking personality to be very different than the Russian one, and I think it would make making connection with his new neighbours so much harder.
it could even parallel early Ilya, whose limited English makes him sound even more like an asshole because he knows how to chirp but otherwise replies in very short answers and hides his language barrier behind his cockiness. His English isn’t great but of course he wouldn’t admit it, so he just dismisses questions/answers what he wants (understands) and it looks like he’s being a dick to people who don’t know better.
I think Shane after running away would come across exactly the same, when forced to speak English, the PR training, the mask would come through and his English would be quick, emotionless, straight to the point and done with it. And people would see him speak to Ilya in Russian and be more animate and eloquent and come maybe to the conclusion that he just doesn’t like them because obviously he can be chatty if he wants to! He just isn’t with them so…
Because this early, even if rusty, his English really is still good when he speaks it so they don’t really clock it as language barrier. They don’t know he hadn’t had any real conversation in English in ages and that his vocabulary is now pretty much 99% PR phrases and small talk.
They don’t know he really doesn’t mean to be that short with them, that’s just pretty much the only English he’s used to at this point. And I don’t think Shane clocks it either, because the personality shift is intuitive. He denies being dismissive to people when Ilya tries gently to bring it up.
I think, later, when he starts making conscious effort to become part of the community, if Ilya introduces him to someone and there is something he actually wants to talk to them about, it both shows his limited vocabulary (not that he wouldn’t know how to speak English. But he’d need some time to thing about the right word, maybe have to talk around a word he just can’t grasp at the moment even if it’s right there in the tip of his tongue…) and some of his personality peeks through. And I think it would be pretty obvious how frustrated he gets when that happens because the imperfection would piss him off so much and hopefully people around would see that he is not trying to be an asshole, he just struggles with the language and is ashamed of it a little (a lot) and maybe that would finally make his neighbours give him a chance.
But I think that for a bit, he would totally come across as Ilya in his rookie year, and he would alienate the local community.
I really don't get very many good opportunities to explore Shane + neighbor dynamics in this 'key scenes only' version of the story, but this is exactly what I think happens. Shane really doesn't connect with the community the way Ilya does and this causes Ilya so much worry, did they make the right move? was this the right choice? But then as these things tend to do, communication gets easier the more he practices, Shane slowly makes connections, it gets easier.
Shane has a language and personality barrier because he isolated himself so fully!
