#/ i need a hc / chara study tag rip.

[wclsh-a]

CHARACTER STUDY META.

so, this is mostly a post for my followers who aren’t familiar with twd / shane walsh, and are wondering what kind of character he is. please note that i’m writing this based on how i personally view shane, so some of this might not be actual canon, although i try my best to stick to canon as closely as possible. however, even if you are familiar with shane as a character, i’m hoping this post will give a bit of an idea of how i write shane. anyway... putting this under a read more bc it got kinda long

alright, let me talk about my portrayal of shane walsh for a moment. shane is a guy who starts out being neither entirely good nor entirely bad. i feel like when it comes to shane, a lot of people see him as either or, but what i love about the walking dead is that most of the characters aren’t just all ‘good’ or all ‘bad’. the so-called “good guys” of the series actually do bad things at times, and the “bad guys” of the series actually do good things at times, or at the very least comes off as good at some point or another.

and with shane, he kind of goes through a change throughout the first two seasons. he starts off more on the scale of a “good guy sometimes doing bad things,”  but as the series goes on, things gets more and more blurred for him to the point where he ends up more as a “bad guy sometimes doing good things.” i’m not going to go into too much details about what brings about this change, but tl;dr; after believing his best friend, rick, was dead, shane fell in love with and entered a relationship with rick’s wife, lori, and after rick turned out to be alive, lori left shane for rick, while rick basically took over the leadership of the group that shane had been leading and kept safe up until then, and so shane started to blame rick for putting their group in danger and people in their group getting hurt and killed from rick’s decisions (or at least shane sees it as rick’s decision making being the fault,) and shane also struggled to accept and come to terms with how lori was suddenly treating him like he had only been hurtful to her and carl and acted like she never even cared about him to begin with and told him to stay away from them, etc.

.... anyway.... that whole thing’s a mess so i’m not gonna go into that any more in this post.

from before the outbreak, all the way up to when rick came to the atlanta camp, and even a little after rick showed up, shane was shown as someone who cared about people and their safety. some might disagree here, and bring up scenes like where shane refuses to go after and help the people in their group who got stuck in the city as shane not really caring. but when you look at it, the people in the group that was still in camp with shane, was people who either a) was old b) didn’t know how to use a gun / how to fight c) got frightened / terrified / panicked at the sight of walkers and / or d) were just kids. to take any of them into the city where they knew walkers were in large herds in an attempt to save the others? to shane, that seemed more like sentencing them all to death. shane also knew that those in their group who was in trouble in the city was more equipped to handle themselves and had a better chance at figuring out a way to save themselves, and also since shane and the others weren’t able to stay in contact with them over the radio due to poor reception, shane had no guarantee that they would even stay where they were by the time shane and the others could’ve reached them if they did try to go after them. all in all, shane had plenty of reasons to not try to help them, and no reason aside from it ‘being the right thing to do’ to try to help them. 

it’s not that he didn’t care or didn’t wish he could help. to him, it just wasn’t worth the risk.

some examples that he did care about others than himself, is how he selflessly put his life at risk to try to help his best friend, rick, who was in a coma at the hospital during the outbreak, and, when he realized there was nothing he could do, he still put a bed against the door to the room rick was in, in a desperate last hope of a miracle that rick could somehow survive. another example, is how shane looked after carol and sophia, even more so after noticing how carol’s husband abused his wife. he always made sure to check up on them, and when carol apologized on behalf of her husband for something her husband did, shane assured her she had nothing to apologize for. and when he finally caught ed in the actual act of trying to abuse his wife, shane intervened and brutally beat him up, warning him to never lay a hand on anyone again. another example is how he looked after jim when he had a sunstroke, making sure he stayed in the shadow, and got enough water and was able to cool down, and when jim got bit, how shane was one of the people who expressed that he didn’t want to kill him and that it didn’t feel right leaving him behind even though jim had asked for it himself. 

one thing i’ve noticed is that shane constantly talks about his disapproval when it comes to taking risks that puts the group’s safety at jeopardy, and i mean, if he truly didn’t care, he wouldn’t constantly worry about putting the group’s safety at risk.

that being said...

he also has a lot of flaws and issues. 

shane has a mindset where he thinks he’s always right, and struggles to understand other people’s opinions if they’re at odds with his own, even after hearing them out. this goes back to even before the outbreak, but it wasn’t as noticeable back then as post outbreak, as he was more willing to “agree to disagree” in order to maintain the peace, because back then, disagreements rarely meant the difference between life and death, so he could live with swallowing his own pride more easily because it rarely came at much of a cost, whereas decisions after the outbreak often did...

this mentality, especially on top of his strong desire to keep the group safe, can quickly bring out a lot more negative sides to shane when people start disagreeing with him. best case scenario, he’ll think you’re just a naive idiot who he doesn’t much care for or care to listen to (this is usually the case if he thinks you don’t have much influence / power over the rest of the group, like with dale.) worst case scenario, he’ll look at you as a great danger to the group, one that needs to be dealt with to keep the rest of the group safe (this is usually the case if you are in a leadership position, like with rick.) either way, people disagreeing with him can quickly lead to shane becoming frustrated, hotheaded, etc, especially after rick takes over leadership of the group and he starts to feel everyone shift towards supporting rick and no longer listening to anything shane has to say.

also, while shane wants to keep the group safe, he is not always a person you can rely on if you ever get yourself in a pinch. in fact, chances are he’s not going to be willing to risk himself or others to come back for you, unless there’s a really goddamn good chance of success or at the very least a really low risk for others getting hurt / killed. and even then, he’ll be hesitant about it.

he has also proven to be willing to sacrifice a good, decent person to save himself and someone in his own group, as proven when a man not in their group, named otis, accidentally shot rick’s son, carl, and carl ended up needing medical supplies to survive. so when shane and otis went out to get said supplies, and got crowded by a herd as they tried to leave, otis rescued shane, however shane ended up shooting otis in the leg to draw the herd to otis, giving himself an opening to save himself and get the supplies back to carl. he didn’t take any pleasure in doing it, and struggled with it afterwards, but he justified it to himself by the fact that sacrificing otis had ensured that shane had managed to get back with the supplies and thus saving the kid.

shane also has a whole bunch of other issues that are connected to his dynamics with rick and with lori, which includes an obsession with lori, jealousy of rick and lori’s relationship, a growing hatred / resentment towards rick ( partially because of said jealousy, but also partially because he genuinely thinks that while rick has good intentions, he is a danger to the group, especially since the group seems to blindly put their faith in rick and has stopped listening to shane at all.) but that’s a whole different story and this post is already getting too long, rip