They did in fact, all get sexier

Bruce: ...Clark, that... doesn't change anything. I would know.

_

Seriously speaking, how do you feel about that specific aspect of Clark's characterization?

I think he and Bruce have more in common than he realizes, yeah. Both of them had to reckon with a child they didn’t know about. And for both of them, that child wasn’t a baby — Kon and Damian were both older! Already well on their way to being full adults.

But where they diverge is how they step up. I think it was easier for Bruce in many ways, in that he already had raised kids, already had that infrastructure in place both physically and mentally. And while learning so late about Damian was a betrayal by Talia in many ways, they coparent well from a distance — Damian isn’t caught between them often. They are civil. They both want what’s best for him.

Kon is a slightly different story. He was older, his other dad is Lex Luthor and that relationship is absolutely antagonistic. It’s not a betrayal simply because Clark at no point trusted Lex at all. And despite having the ability to do so…he does not react well, in most canon instances, to Kon’s initial appearance. He panics, he rejects him, and he cannot move past the fact that it happened at all. (Again, depends on the canon). Sometimes he recovers, sometimes it takes a while.

But yeah your point about Bruce above is absolutely spot on — it doesn’t matter how it happened, Clark. It just matters that it did. There’s now a kid depending on you. Like it or not. They’re blameless, too — they had no say in the matter either!

like the way he asked "what is nur-ate-iv?" makes me think man TRULY was not catching all of the words getting tossed at him so fast the second his eyes were even a LITTLE open. like he wasn't asking "what story did you come up with?" he's asking "what word are you even saying to me right now?" man got like 0.2 seconds to be like "oh i'm awake now?" before he was getting PELTED with english because shane had a forty step plan that couldn't wait like. three more hours.

in my heart, shane sleeps like a ROCK and is also non-functional if his sleep schedule is disrupted

but i can’t stop thinking about shane, from the outside, looking at that story and feeling something sharper underneath the sympathy. that she never left his father. that ilya almost certainly got beaten by her husband and she couldn’t stop it. that her dying, and worse, ilya finding her like that, carved something into him so deep it never fully healed. that it didn’t just hurt him once, but rewired the way he thinks about his future, like he’s destined to live out her life or die the way she did, like doom is hereditary. when shane knows it isn’t. when shane knows other futures are possible and ilya is not cursed to repeat anything.

and i think part of that anger is personal. shane grew up with yuna, who would have gone to war for him over literally anything, who was loud and relentless and unembarrassed about protecting her kid. so looking at ilya’s childhood through that lens, through a mother who would have burned the world down to keep her son safe, how could he not feel something twist in his chest about a woman who couldn’t?

"Nice to meet you, Katie."

inspired on this!🐤

the media adores pictures of baby-faced Rookie Shane awkwardly holding an actual baby / his mini me when greeting his family after games

Chase adores Shane and seems to love hockey early on but really he's just feeding off the atmosphere, he has no clue what's going on

By the time Yuna and David strap him into skates, Chase is quickly discovering he has no actual interest in understanding what's happening on ice or taking part in it

Shane struggles even more so to relate to his supposed brother but also somewhat relieved that he doesn't have to worry about this kid coming up behind him in 15 years to be a better, more perfect hockey player and son, which is a feeling that Shane is very uncomfortable sitting with for long

by age 9, Chase is well and truly over hockey, resenting how much it seems to occupy Yuna and esp Shane

there are failed attempts at brother bonding sleepovers in Montreal when Shane isn't traveling but Chase never lasts the weekend without calling David

Chase likes basketball, it's what his friends play, it's more accessible, he and his friends can pick up and play just about anywhere, anytime

but he doesn't want to play it like Shane plays hockey and chafes at Yuna's attempts to foster his interests in it along those lines bc that's how Yuna shows her love

Chase just wants to goof off w his friends and have fun

He also likes Roblox and Minecraft, Steven Universe and Teen Titans Go, bike riding and his pet guinea pig

he likes so many things and feels like his brother isn't aware of or cares about any of them bc they aren't hockey (even tho Chase thinks his guinea pig and his brother have a lot in common)

Chase is boisterous and loud; he thumbs his nose at the media that cooed at his pudge ball self in Shane's arms, making a spectacle of his boredom and dissatisfaction at Montreal home games

2 key splits in the timestream, however:

Shane doesn't officially date Rose because shortly post-Tuna meltdown, Shane comes to terms with being gay more so on his own, having suffered a crisis over Chase being the more perfect "do-over" kid when Chase demonstrates a sincere crush on a girl in his class and come out the other side resigned to the fact that Shane can fulfill the star hockey athlete expectations as his parents' son while Chase (mind you, an 8 year old at this point) can eventually fulfill the heteronormative bring-home-a-nice-girl-and-give-their-parents-grandkids expectations. Rose still clocks Shane bc for all they hang out and the media is speculating, he is obviously not making a move, and Rose let's him know that's okay, offers to hook em up with Miles, etc. etc. Shane and Ilya are already in relationship limbo pre All Stars but All Stars is where Shane tries to hit the brakes on merely falling back into old patterns.

I don't remember if you said this or it was a reblog, but the idea of Ruby seeing him in anaphylactic shock...

He tries to bury what happened, he refuses to talk about it with Ilya, even when he can't stop thinking about it, can't stop himself from avoiding Hayden's home like its the plague. In spite of it all, he can't stop seeing Ruby's face, the horror and fear in her expression when she found him on his knees in the kitchen.

The thing is, he's trying to convince himself that it wasn't that big a deal. That they didn't mean to do that to him. They didn't know. He overreacted a little. But here's the thing. Ruby, the little girl he adores, one of the only people who immediately accepted him and Ilya. A little girl who didn't understand what was happening to him. If she looked that scared for him... was it really as bad as it looked? Is he really exaggerating?

When he breaks, because the story comes out, because Ilya pushes enough, bc he comes back for practice after watching someone eat a peanut butter protein bag in the locker room when it has been explicitly forbidden...

Whatever the reason, when he breaks, he tries his best to keep calm, to explain to Ilya just what's going through his head.

He takes a breath, and suddenly finds himself saying,

"I scared Ruby"

And the floodgates open.

GOD i see this and raise you: is bothered by scaring ruby because like. he KNOWS these kiddos. he is uncle shane to these kiddos. but he internalizes it as HE did something scary. HE was scary to ruby. HE made her look like that.

and how fucked! up! that situation was doesn't hit him until CAMP, when they have a kid with a peanut allergy and have to explain to another kid that they can't have the pb&j they brought at lunch because X is really allergic, and peanuts could hurt her, so we have to all be safe to make sure camp stays safe for everyone.

and now shane is faced with. it's that fucking simple. and having to think about like. jesus. what if it was this kid. what if someone fucked with this kid and made that happen and made this child feel like they weren't safe here. that is NOT okay. that is NOT understandable. that is FUCKED UP.

but this realization is also REALLY fucking with his attempts to "anyway moving on-" an entire season of being on edge and not knowing if his own fucking team might or might not on purpose make things not safe for *him.* because it's different. it is different. and his reaction scared ruby, but that's HIS fault. it is. it has to be his fault because then he can control it if it's his fault.

Second of all!!! In one of your fics you have like an almost throw away line where Hayden mentions he’s had to stop the other Voyageurs/Metros players from fucking with Shane’s food and like. Now my mind is rife with the ✨possibilities✨ of that scenario. Like. One of them adds peanuts or something to something Shane thinks is safe as a prank and Hayden doesn’t catch it and suddenly Shane is in anaphylaxis and everyone is freaking the fuck out. The next time Ilya plays Montreal that one player gets laid the FUCK out for some reason.

combo-ing with @pitrosa just because both of y'all were getting to the same DELICIOUS possibility of a wild amount of angst.

like the idea of someone fucking with shane's food at a party at jackie and hayden's place not because they know shane is allergic but because they're shitty and i 100% buy some bigoted asshole seeing it as a way shane is just trying to be special and other. so they knowingly do something like stir in some peanut butter or mix in some coconut oil. literally just something they see easily available in this one minute window in the kitchen they have when they're just being an asshole.

and even beyond just the nightmare of now shane has a reaction and this is one more thing that the team didn't know about previously and can spin into "so you didn't trust us?" IGNORING WHAT JUST FUCKING HAPPENED HERE, the fact that like. now shane isn't safe eating at events. or even fucking. being at events, tbh. like GOD the isolation of your team is cold to you now and you don't know which one of them fucked with you and you don't know that one or more of them won't do it again to hurt you. and it's not like any of them are going to fess up and own it because bigots are cowards and ALSO (even though shane wouldn't do it, i don't think) this is now like. pressing charges level.

and it's ONE MORE FUCKING THING that shane was afraid of!! and then it happened to him!!! what a fucking HEINOUS contribution to his anxiety getting worse while also feeling so isolated because even if hayden and jackie are equally PISSED and still invite you over when it's just y'all and you KNOW the food is safe. what the fuck are you even supposed to do here?

and stuff with jj is SO complicated with the ilya of it all, but jj is shane's friend and i don't think?? was bad about him coming out?? (just being with ilya and not telling jj about that??) (if i remember correctly??) so we also have jj now angry on shane's behalf. and yeah, maybe he might be hurt that shane didn't tell him, but your friend having to go to the hospital has a way of kind of lining priorities up.

but like. you can only hide anaphylaxis so fucking much.

so the worst of it happens out of sight with jackie helping shane into one of the guest rooms on the first floor while hayden goes to grab his jacket for him.

and also the double whammy FURY in the aftermath of now someone has hurt hayden's best friend in his home AND scared the hell out of his children because they had to watch uncle shane get so sick and are now upset because he had to leave the house in an ambulance with mommy. and the distribution of labor in that choice was jackie also being pissed and knowing, "either i'm going in this ambulance, or i'm catching a fucking charge today." and hayden being left to try and work out what the fuck just went down here because he's equally furious but at least has some level of knowing all of the guys here, but now he's trying to get updates on shane, calm the kids down and promise them uncle shane is okay and yeah they can maybe visit him later if he feels up to it, and also work out who the fuck decided they wanted to die today.

GOD 100% I think hayden and jackie would be like YEP THAT'S DONE with hosting, but now??? soooo??? where is hosting going to happen?? ain't going to be shane's house.

and now showing up at someone's house when they host is a fucking STATEMENT, especially if it's someone who is especially notably Not Cool with shane.

and the way shane would still be taking the blame for this!! both from the shitty ones on the team and also feeling like it's his fault!! because the team is literally splintering around him and what the FUCK is he supposed to do about it!!

YOU STOP THAT

like NO of course he doesn't want this kid's career nuked because he was stupid and ended up being a patsy for fucking with shane-

-but also. he did do it.

like yeah the kid hero worshipped him in a way that was a little overwhelming but also?? kind of a relief?? when it felt like so much of the team was icing him out?? and yet when it came down to shane or the rest of the team, the rookie sided with the rest of the team to fuck with him. and he didn't KNOW it was serious, but he also didn't know it WASN'T.

and shane being so fucking angry that he knows he's supposed to forgive the kid here, but why does he ALWAYS have to be the one forgiving? why does he just have to take it on the chin and keep going and keep his head up and don't snap and don't not smile when you're supposed to and don't ever let that mask slip, young man, because it won't take much for those cheers to turn to jeers-

bruce finding out that jason is still a crybaby 🥹 jason act tough but if you push him a bit more in a personal arguments he'd start spilling fat tears down his cheeks and now you have an armful of sad boy in your arms. bruce forgot this fact every single time they fight.