#code switching

Zoey switching between English and Korean fluently throughout conversation

Zoey forgetting a word in one language and just replacing with the other's translation.

Hear me out. Lemme rant.

Shane is a man of color, a gay man, and a talented man. This means that in his youth, he was a child of color in a majority white country who also may not have known he was gay or actively resisted thinking about what his body’s reactions to certain stimuli meant—and on top of those things, he’s in the Gifted/Talented Child nexus, in a majority white sport that doesn’t have the kindest history toward anything outside the Heterosexual Manly Man archetype.

Shane never stood a chance.

His clean-cut, camera-ready, squeaky clean public persona isn’t just for the endorsements. He’s an outwardly, obviously different cog in an otherwise uniform machine. He walks into a room and everyone knows one of these things is not like the others and WHY. His racial and ethnic difference means that he has to work twice as hard for half as much; conversely, he only has to fuck up an eighth as hard for three times the backlash.

Any conscious racial minority can tell you what that means. You keep your head down. You smile and nod. You grind and you work harder than everyone else to prove that you deserve to be here. You straighten your hair, or you cut it to fit what’s “in” with the majority crowd. You code-switch and keep your tone soft, volume low. You watch the shows and listen to the music they like—not because you enjoy it, but because the majority culture expects you to know about these things. They’re the default and you’re expected to know this stuff. Anything to fit the mould and make sure you’re safe; safe to the majority and safe from them.

Masculinity and sexuality add to the nexus of assimilation for Shane. He has to check himself and his mannerisms, what he says, how he looks, for anything that might be perceived as feminine or gay. He spends years offering a tight smile as his teammates talk about picking up women or their hookups after a great game. He does his skincare routine in secret after away games and acts like he doesn’t know what the fuck toner is, because apparently caring for his body’s largest and most protective organ is feminine behavior. On the rare occasion he joins the Metros at bars, he drinks when he doesn’t want to because he can only refuse so many times before “Hollander must be on his period” starts up.

So much of Shane’s public behavior is meant to put his straight, white male colleagues at ease around him. It’s been an unfortunate necessity to build his career thus far, but it’s also fucking exhausting. He’s tired.

That’s why, after he comes out to Ilya and Rose and his parents, he starts changing things. Small things at first, but they grow over time as he realizes how much of himself he’s shoved down over the years.

He stops hiding his skincare kit in hotels. It’s rare for him to share a room with anyone as captain, but if he does? He’s in the room by 9, oil cleansing by 9:15, deciding between a sheet mask and a wash-off mask by 9:20, and gently patting in his moisturizer by 10. Retainer in, reading glasses and jammies on, travel humidifier running on the nightstand—because it’s good for your pores. You can look 50 when you’re 30 if you want, Hayden, but I choose moisture.

He hires a stylist after breaking up with Rose and starts experimenting with clothes. It occurs to him one night that everything he owns is comes in neutral, muted tones. He tries bright, bold colors. Ruby red, royal blue, emerald green, obnoxious highlighter yellow. He tries different cuts and silhouettes, and pointedly ignores stares from Comeau when he strolls into an early practice in black jeans that look painted on instead of sweats.

For the first time ever, Shane buys accessories other than sunglasses and his fitness-tracking watch (and the Rolexes—no, Mom, I haven’t forgotten). He treats himself to things that catch his eye without regard for what the guys will think. Nobody notices when he starts wearing a gold bracelet. Nobody knows that the diamond choker he’s wearing in the latest Versace shoot is his, kept in a special box on his dresser for special occasions with Ilya. No one has a clue that he got his ears pierced at the end of one season so they’d heal before the next one started.

But the crowning achievement? The pièce de rèsistance? Shane grows his hair out.

At first, he tells his parents that he just hasn’t found time for a cut. Busy schedule, Dad, no time. It’s a lie, and one that he almost fesses up to when he gets past the awkward shaggy phase and his mom won’t stop looking at him anxiously. He tells them a half truth instead; that he’s just trying something new. He’s almost 30 and tired of looking the same. Plus, Mom, you saw the reactions on Instagram. People love it!

The truth, the full truth that Shane has only ever admitted aloud to Ilya, is that he’s done. So fucking done. Years of bending and stretching and contorting himself into the perfect player, teammate, captain, man, and he’s completely over it. He’s proven that he’s the best (second best, if you ask Ilya). He’s shown time and time again that he’s not just that one Asian guy or a blip on people’s screens. He’s a force to be reckoned with and regardless of how he looks, be it the manly man presentation everyone expects or an undefined look of his choosing, his skills are never in question.

Bruce and Dick calling things by their UK names because of Alfred, saying telly or calling rainboots wellies, naturally dipping into the accent on certain words.

Tim who is such a chameleon already, picking up some Narrows drawl when he's super relaxed, from hanging out with Steph and Duke. Also Tim who adopts midwestern mannerisms from Kon (called the Batfam yall once and got stared at so hard).

Steph when she goes undercover at a gala or the iceberg lounge and falls back on Tim's Bristol accent without even realizing. Cass who has the same measured tone as Bruce but smiles the same way Tim does, and once she warms up to the rest of them, snorts when she laughs just like Steph.

Damian who is an amalgamation of all of them, who met Jason in the league and swears JUST like him, very rarely but when he does its all Crime Alley, dropping consonants and all passion. Damian who when he gets excited is all about contractions, just like Steph and Duke. Damian who when he's annoyed can't help but adopt Tim's mannerisms and drawl. When he's haughty he's Alfred, when he's sick he's Dick, when he's hurt he's Cass, and when he's half asleep and curling up on the couch he responds just like Bruce.

She very explicitly code-switches between one accent when at home, that to our ears sounds very working-class, and that we haven't heard anyone else use, and another in public, that Wicander et al use, that sounds upper-class to us.

This would suggest that she's from a working-class background, and hiding those origins in her public position as Photarch of the Candescent Creed and matriarch of House Halovar.

*However*, in episode 3 it seemed pretty clear that she was the heir of the noble house Halovar, who brought it back from being destroyed by the sundering.