I hope you know you're practically doing me a public service by digging more into the theriault-shane relationship because it's something that I think is criminally unexplored.
As someone who did sports for like 10 years, a coach really does become of the people you rely on the most. And I was semi serious about it and the coach was like the third most trusted adult for me, so I can't even imagine what it would be like for shane , who's been very dedicated to hockey for a very long time. Like even though he's an adult when he starts with montreal he still probably look up to his coach a lot and does probably emulate his attitude. Really excited to see where you go with this.
Have a great day!
Unfortunately the baseball fic will only have a little Theriault and Shane stuff but YES. This relationship is such a huge missing pillar for me with Shane character exploration.
Theriault is basically Shane’s third parent. And from age 18 he’s definitely spending more hours a day with Theriault than he is with either Yuna or David, so Theriault is more influential on Shane’s transition to adulthood, which for a person like Shane occurs more in the 20s than in the late teens.
And that relationship is so intimate. Shane entrusts his deepest professional hopes and dreams into Theriault’s hands, and Theriault does the same to Shane. Shane is trusting Theriault to push him exactly the right amount, physically and mentally, to be the best version of himself he can be without injury.
(This is personal to me because I have a weird third parent relationship with my PhD mentor, and I in turn mentor students. It’s a complex relationship!)
I really want to write a Theriault POV at some point. Just really dig into this relationship and explore how it impacted both of them. But I think I need to keep cooking on it for a while
