I really have to remember that the book and show continuities are different, because whenever I come across one of those "Shane Hollander is an asshole who wouldn't even remember his teammates' NAMES" posts, I keep thinking of Joe the figure skater.
Joe is someone Shane trained with when they were kids. He's NOT a hockey player. He's actually in a profession that most of North America stereotypes as gay. And for all of his issues with his sexuality, for all of his self-consciousness and awkwardness, Shane still cares enough about the guy to want to show up for him.
In fact, he's even willing to ask a couple of friendly acquaintances, men that he has no reason to believe aren't straight hockey players themselves, if they'd come along.
Shane's a guy who, when asked about racism in his own life, immediately thinks about some other kid who had it worse than he did, and disliked Shane for it.
And I'd love to hear more of that conversation with David about the boy his mother apparently bullied. Not a great situation, admittedly, but the way fandom talks about Shane sometimes, you'd think he'd have forgotten the kid entirely.
From what we see of Shane's relationship with his team, it's mostly good. He's clearly well-liked and well-respected, even if there is a measure of aloofness or distance. The dynamic in the locker room seems pretty easy going and we know, at some point, that he'll apparently end up trusting them enough to come out to them.
I've mentioned this in a previous post, but while he does forget baby Amber Pike's name, it's a new name for a new baby. We do know that Shane likes Hayden enough to spend multiple montage scenes with his family. They go to the aquarium together. He takes care of the baby when Hayden's chasing after the other kids. And he's willing to spend time during his sole vacation a year catching up with him.
The show is funny because they've got such a limited time to tell a story, compared to a book, which can go for pages and pages and give you the internal monologue of every character. And I acknowledge that sometimes, for the purpose of storytelling, characters do change. There are traits and aspects that work better in one medium over another.
But I feel like, considering the narrow focus of the show, how rarely these characters really interact with anyone outside of the immediate circle required for the romantic plot beats, Jacob Tierney went out of his way to make sure that we see Shane as a person who, by and large, does care about people, he pays attention to them, remembers them, empathizes with them, and generally is portrayed as a kind, polite, straightforward, and awkward person.
So I have to remember that the folks with those "Shane is actually an asshole" takes are likely working off different source material than I am. (Though I tend to think we'd probably still disagree in the end...)
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