I have feelings about Hayden Pike and how people portray him and how I feel like it reflects specifically on Shane and more specifically his autism.
Long story short, why does everyone is Ilyas life (see Sveta, Cliff, the Centaurs etc) get to be ""unrealistically"" supportive and fleshed out but Shane's friends either don't or are not talked about? Why isn't the autistic character allowed to have close friends that care about him on his own merit. Yes he gets accepted and loved by the Centaurs, but that's after Ilya. Yes in a lot of fanon he gets accepted and loved by Ilyas friends, but they're Ilyas friends first!
The one friend he is explicitly shown as having, a very common fanon I see is him being a bad friend, or not liking Shane that much, or them drifting apart when Shane moves or whatever. And the other person shown as being friendly is JJ but he very rarely gets developed into a character at all, is rarely even mentioned.
We see Hayden and Shane being friends! They're at each others house! They spend weekends together! They call in the office season! They are dinner together enough that Jackie knows Shane's very specific diet!
Let Shane have friends that care about him and that he cares about. He is allowed and able to have people in his life beyond his Mother and his boyfriend. They are even allowed to be close.
Idk man, it just pisses me off. But this maybe because I'm sick of the autistic character being the outsider even in a group of friends. Let them be loved platonically. It doesn't take a soulmate or a mother to love an autistic person.
Also I think Hayden has great fic potential. He can absolutely get into shenanigans with Shane. They're silly dude jocks together.
