the thing that kills me about shane is that his fears are constantly treated as arbitrary, particularly in the long game.
shane hollander, who calculates, who spends his entire life analyzing pattern and picking up trends to be able to anticipate game play and Be The Best. shane who is matter-of-fact, who does not hyperbolize, who means it when he says this is is Worst Fucking Nightmare Ilya
shane hollander who listens when ilya says, maybe it's time to Wake Up then, because in that instance, shane knew that his whole world and the way he lives in it is going to change, but that it will be Good on the other side. ilya's right, he just needs to wake up
but in the long game, there is no luxury of that. shane hollander does not hyperbolize, he panics and freezes because he knows exactly what will happen. he is yuna hollander's son, he is not making up these fears they are based in the trends and patterns he has noticed.
he knows his entire world, the one he's had to keep separate from ilya for fear of losing both of the most important things to him, is going to crash down and he's going to lose the thing he worked for for his entire life
and that Knowing follows everything he does, every choice he makes in the long game because it consumes him, he cannot see things the way ilya does because he knows. he does not hope for better, he knows the better will be having ilya in the sunlight
but he doesn't have a path there, an equation where he gets to have ilya in the sunlight because he knows it will meaning losing the rest of the world he spent his entire life building, and for all his knowing, he can't picture how to exist in that reality.
every single fear shane has came resolutely true, everything he worried would happen, did. it wasn't irrational, it wasn't arbitrary, it was undeniably true just like he knew it would be.
and yet it's still treated as less, still treated as nothing. both in the actual narrative and somehow by the shane himself, everyone around him, as well as, by certain external sources and pieces of this fandom.
you can argue that it's because ilya and how much he wants that life with him, overwhelms that fear and that knowing because despite it, he wants that life with ilya he wants to step into the sunshine with him and i agree - except even that choice is taken from him.
they're pushed into the light, and all of his fears come true, and he didn't get to act on a single choice he wanted to make.
that's also a pattern with his character, where when he does overcome his fears(knowing) and wants to make a choice, he doesn't get to. shane only gets to choose to come out to One person in the entirety of his life and it's, again, treated as arbitrary.
and then every other opportunity, every other choice, is taken from him. and it's always the choices about the most important things in his life, the control to make them is completely stripped away, the confidence and happiness you get from making a hard choice and acting on it, is something he never, ever gets
and it's all written off as, "well we were going to do it anyway."
blakekathryn
gamechangershow
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
vaporwave
izzy806
