I dont think its deep explained. I like to think hes just someone who doesnt feel like he has a purpose in life and feels misplaced and lonely…
FadingDarkly on
He is not specifically diagnosed, no. But… Dead-end job, dead best friends, and heavy alcohol use seems like a good enough explanation
rtlbst on
I always took depression as a complete explanation. But the pressures of being Jas’s god parent (after her parents died), guilt over not doing a sufficient job of caring for her, and the dead-end Joja gig are some additional factors.
DcDoctorJJ on
Looking for the old sprites, seems like he was a sportsman, but he is now alcoholic
BadMoonBeast on
there isn’t always a “why” to depression. some people have trauma obviously but mental illness can also just happen, like a lot of chronic illnesses. he talks about his feelings of self-hatred and inadequacy but that’s pretty much the depression itself talking. the alcoholism is likewise a symptom/coping mechanism. he never mentions a specific trauma incident or any sort of causatory thing like that. so you could headcanon anything that feels representative — which is a pretty good writing decision imo
Throwawaynotmebye on
If you’ve ever lived in a small town you’d know it can be isolating and feel dead end. It’s not uncommon for people to just kinda give up before they had a chance. Not to mention Jas isn’t his kid but she’s in his and Marnie’s care. It’s likely he lost family.
blue-coin on
Jim Lahey is a fuckin drunk and he always will be. I mean Alex. Alex is.
Bububabuu on
Does it need to have an explanation?
UpperChildhood2948 on
Afaik it’s not explained, just worked with. I’ve always thought he just has depression, as in the illness, and appears to start his character development with our arrival.
DrPloxo on
I always felt like, since he’s a joja employee, he’s stuck in a feeling exactly like you were before you moved to the valley. Except this is also his escape, a place that ultimately still has no home for him unless Marnie >!feels like finally moving in with lewis or !<finds a new hobby she wants to pursue (Maybe Jas needs to leave the valley for better ventures). With all his friends dead he can’t really get a good reason to leave toward a better future, and with his only experience being chicken breeding and Joja, it’s hard to get a leg up in the greater world, more than likely.
ninetozero on
We know canonically that: he was close friends with Jas’ parents, who died in an accident leaving her orphaned; he’s her godfather and got custody of her; he moved into Marnie’s because he wasn’t able to care for Jas on his own.
From there the rest is speculation, but the compounding of losing his best friends relatively young, having to raise their child while in no mental/emotional condition of doing so, having to move back from the big city into his aunt’s farm in the countryside, having to settle for a dead end job because there’s nothing else in a small town, all contributed to his vortex of depression and alcoholism, which is hard to come out once you’re sunk in deep.
cowboysaurus21 on
He lives with his aunt and we never hear about his parents or other family. So I assume he had a rough childhood.
pigtailrose2 on
I actually like the fact that his depression isn’t fully explained. It mimics real life in a very realistic way – a lot of people deal with depression with no “explainable” reason. Sometimes it’s explainable through outside sources or hard times, but for some people, it’s just a part of their physiology.
Ok_Instruction4410 on
At 10 hearts with Jas she’s says: >! ““Did you know Shane’s my godfather? He was a friend of my parents. …they died. *sniff*” !< so yea be definitely has a reason to be shut off and shut down and in survival mode imo.
sixsixsp on
I alway assumed since Marnie is Shane’s aunt and Jas’s aunt, that one of Jas’s parents were either a sibling or close cousin to Shane before dying a tragic death. He doesn’t deal with the grief well and masks it with alcohol instead. Maybe he was always kind of a partier and it was all he knew. Then not being able to be the role model to Jas that he wishes he was. He feels a lot of shame and regret and it’s drowning him.
I’m not really a fan of Shane either, I just can relate to several aspects of his story.
lemurkat on
Concerned Ape doesnt believe innover explaining backstory – the only character that goes into detail about their’s is Alex. Everyone else drops hints in dialogue but doesnt spell it out. This is excellent story telling and also allows the player to create their own ideas.
Shane and Jas have dialogue showing he lost his friends (Jas’s parents) young, he also used to be a gridball star and suffered an injury – this likely stopped him from playing further. With losing his connection to a sport he loved, friends he loved, and having to suddenly raise someone elses kid, it’s no wonder things started to feel a bit “heavy”.
I HC that he sent Jas to Marnie early on cos she had a more stable situation (he was a student recovering from an injury, after all) and then later went to live with her when life started to get worse for him. So he comes to Marnie at a time when stuff is already pretty bad. He gets the job, and Marnie tries to help him, but he slowly starts to rely more on alcohol to help get through the days. That, combined with his constant feeling of letting everyone he loves down, does nothing to help his downward spiral.
OpenTechie on
There can be many reasons, such as having as Jas’ godparent needed to step up to be there for her in a time when he did not want to be a parent, his friends being dead, or being stuck working for Joja, but also, it can be as simple as depression and addiction can just happen. It does not always seek the person who went through much, it is a cruelness that may strike without discrimination or reason.
WhollyHolyHoley on
Life, man…
Life.
TedWurst on
Hes alive man what more reason do you need 😭
A_R_I_A_ on
No one explained why I’m so depressed either :l
ReadingContent1970 on
You don’t always need a reason to be depressed it can just happen
N64_blitz_champion on
I was battling depression my first play through. My name is Shane and those Shane heart events hit like a truck.
wangchangbackup on
His circumstances certainly don’t help but there is not a “reason” clinically depressed people are depressed. They just have clinical depression. Nothing has to happen for them to feel bad, their brains just don’t work that way.
WhereasParticular867 on
If you think depression really needs a cause, congratulations, you probably haven’t experienced it.
Pandapeep on
There doesn’t need to be a reason.
JinTheBlue on
Depression is an illness, not an injury. It just happened to some people. Yeah sometimes there’s a cause but I think you can take the fact there’s an upper limit in how much better he can get as a sign he is likely just depressed.
Ok-Macaroon2289 on
There isn’t always an external explanation for depression.
MaximusGrassimus on
Depression isn’t always driven or caused by some initial trauma. I was diagnosed as clinically depressed a few years ago, not long after I left trade school, found a stable job and was otherwise happy and healthy.
At some point, I just stopped feeling any desire to hang out with my friends or family, go bowling, or even play video games. I was reduced to spending entire days in my room, doomscrolling, sleeping or eating junk food. I spiraled deeper into a vicious cycle of doing nothing all day and then feeling guilty for doing nothing, over and over again.
I’m doing my much better now that I’m engaging in therapy, but every now and then I’ll just get slammed with feelings of hopelessness, anger and anxiety out of nowhere. Human brains are just weird like that, I guess.
Shane is probably dealing with some form of imposter syndrome. He feels as if everything he does, fails, and that nothing around him has any meaning.
HauntinglyEthereal on
i think him not having a ‘solid reason’ (as society expects) is actually a good move. it shows that depression can affect anyone. you don’t need a tragic backstory or heavy trauma to suffer from depression, addiction, etc. it can hit literal anyone. you could have a perfect childhood and still suffer from mental health issues. sometimes it’s hereditary. sometimes your brain chemicals just decide to get funky. shit just happens, you know?
i think it’s also important to look at his relationship with jas. shane was likely struggling with addiction and mental health issues before adopting jas and becoming her godfather. the loss, compounded with a dramatic shift in his role as a literal human, was a huge and sudden change. he went from a guy living with his aunt and working a dead-end job, to a dad of a young girl who lost both of her parents back to back in some sort of accident. the guilt of not being able to raise her on his own, of having to rely on marnie, could have caused him to spiral. he likely beat himself up for not being a good enough godfather, for having a dead-end job, for having to basically put the responsibility of jas onto marnie. in some ways, he probably feels like he failed jas’s parents. after all, they picked him to be her godfather… but he really isn’t doing that, is he?
it really could be either or. the depression and addiction probably started out as not really having a reason, but then quickly spiraled and worsened by the loss of jas’s parents.
thingythingie on
I vaguely recall him mentioning his parents, and it gave me the impression they weren’t the best people. Don’t twist my words and say I’m implying abuse, we obviously don’t know that, nor anything about his parents as people at all. But upbringing is often a factor, and can be a setup for someone’s framework of value which usually collapses onto the person in the long run.
ThreeDotsTogether on
I assumed that he had a bad family/childhood and failed to pursue his dreams in Zuzu. And maybe that’s why he lives with Marnie and has a job at Joja
31 Comments
I dont think its deep explained. I like to think hes just someone who doesnt feel like he has a purpose in life and feels misplaced and lonely…
He is not specifically diagnosed, no. But… Dead-end job, dead best friends, and heavy alcohol use seems like a good enough explanation
I always took depression as a complete explanation. But the pressures of being Jas’s god parent (after her parents died), guilt over not doing a sufficient job of caring for her, and the dead-end Joja gig are some additional factors.
Looking for the old sprites, seems like he was a sportsman, but he is now alcoholic
there isn’t always a “why” to depression. some people have trauma obviously but mental illness can also just happen, like a lot of chronic illnesses. he talks about his feelings of self-hatred and inadequacy but that’s pretty much the depression itself talking. the alcoholism is likewise a symptom/coping mechanism. he never mentions a specific trauma incident or any sort of causatory thing like that. so you could headcanon anything that feels representative — which is a pretty good writing decision imo
If you’ve ever lived in a small town you’d know it can be isolating and feel dead end. It’s not uncommon for people to just kinda give up before they had a chance. Not to mention Jas isn’t his kid but she’s in his and Marnie’s care. It’s likely he lost family.
Jim Lahey is a fuckin drunk and he always will be. I mean Alex. Alex is.
Does it need to have an explanation?
Afaik it’s not explained, just worked with. I’ve always thought he just has depression, as in the illness, and appears to start his character development with our arrival.
I always felt like, since he’s a joja employee, he’s stuck in a feeling exactly like you were before you moved to the valley. Except this is also his escape, a place that ultimately still has no home for him unless Marnie >!feels like finally moving in with lewis or !<finds a new hobby she wants to pursue (Maybe Jas needs to leave the valley for better ventures). With all his friends dead he can’t really get a good reason to leave toward a better future, and with his only experience being chicken breeding and Joja, it’s hard to get a leg up in the greater world, more than likely.
We know canonically that: he was close friends with Jas’ parents, who died in an accident leaving her orphaned; he’s her godfather and got custody of her; he moved into Marnie’s because he wasn’t able to care for Jas on his own.
From there the rest is speculation, but the compounding of losing his best friends relatively young, having to raise their child while in no mental/emotional condition of doing so, having to move back from the big city into his aunt’s farm in the countryside, having to settle for a dead end job because there’s nothing else in a small town, all contributed to his vortex of depression and alcoholism, which is hard to come out once you’re sunk in deep.
He lives with his aunt and we never hear about his parents or other family. So I assume he had a rough childhood.
I actually like the fact that his depression isn’t fully explained. It mimics real life in a very realistic way – a lot of people deal with depression with no “explainable” reason. Sometimes it’s explainable through outside sources or hard times, but for some people, it’s just a part of their physiology.
At 10 hearts with Jas she’s says: >! ““Did you know Shane’s my godfather? He was a friend of my parents. …they died. *sniff*” !< so yea be definitely has a reason to be shut off and shut down and in survival mode imo.
I alway assumed since Marnie is Shane’s aunt and Jas’s aunt, that one of Jas’s parents were either a sibling or close cousin to Shane before dying a tragic death. He doesn’t deal with the grief well and masks it with alcohol instead. Maybe he was always kind of a partier and it was all he knew. Then not being able to be the role model to Jas that he wishes he was. He feels a lot of shame and regret and it’s drowning him.
I’m not really a fan of Shane either, I just can relate to several aspects of his story.
Concerned Ape doesnt believe innover explaining backstory – the only character that goes into detail about their’s is Alex. Everyone else drops hints in dialogue but doesnt spell it out. This is excellent story telling and also allows the player to create their own ideas.
Shane and Jas have dialogue showing he lost his friends (Jas’s parents) young, he also used to be a gridball star and suffered an injury – this likely stopped him from playing further. With losing his connection to a sport he loved, friends he loved, and having to suddenly raise someone elses kid, it’s no wonder things started to feel a bit “heavy”.
I HC that he sent Jas to Marnie early on cos she had a more stable situation (he was a student recovering from an injury, after all) and then later went to live with her when life started to get worse for him. So he comes to Marnie at a time when stuff is already pretty bad. He gets the job, and Marnie tries to help him, but he slowly starts to rely more on alcohol to help get through the days. That, combined with his constant feeling of letting everyone he loves down, does nothing to help his downward spiral.
There can be many reasons, such as having as Jas’ godparent needed to step up to be there for her in a time when he did not want to be a parent, his friends being dead, or being stuck working for Joja, but also, it can be as simple as depression and addiction can just happen. It does not always seek the person who went through much, it is a cruelness that may strike without discrimination or reason.
Life, man…
Life.
Hes alive man what more reason do you need 😭
No one explained why I’m so depressed either :l
You don’t always need a reason to be depressed it can just happen
I was battling depression my first play through. My name is Shane and those Shane heart events hit like a truck.
His circumstances certainly don’t help but there is not a “reason” clinically depressed people are depressed. They just have clinical depression. Nothing has to happen for them to feel bad, their brains just don’t work that way.
If you think depression really needs a cause, congratulations, you probably haven’t experienced it.
There doesn’t need to be a reason.
Depression is an illness, not an injury. It just happened to some people. Yeah sometimes there’s a cause but I think you can take the fact there’s an upper limit in how much better he can get as a sign he is likely just depressed.
There isn’t always an external explanation for depression.
Depression isn’t always driven or caused by some initial trauma. I was diagnosed as clinically depressed a few years ago, not long after I left trade school, found a stable job and was otherwise happy and healthy.
At some point, I just stopped feeling any desire to hang out with my friends or family, go bowling, or even play video games. I was reduced to spending entire days in my room, doomscrolling, sleeping or eating junk food. I spiraled deeper into a vicious cycle of doing nothing all day and then feeling guilty for doing nothing, over and over again.
I’m doing my much better now that I’m engaging in therapy, but every now and then I’ll just get slammed with feelings of hopelessness, anger and anxiety out of nowhere. Human brains are just weird like that, I guess.
Shane is probably dealing with some form of imposter syndrome. He feels as if everything he does, fails, and that nothing around him has any meaning.
i think him not having a ‘solid reason’ (as society expects) is actually a good move. it shows that depression can affect anyone. you don’t need a tragic backstory or heavy trauma to suffer from depression, addiction, etc. it can hit literal anyone. you could have a perfect childhood and still suffer from mental health issues. sometimes it’s hereditary. sometimes your brain chemicals just decide to get funky. shit just happens, you know?
i think it’s also important to look at his relationship with jas. shane was likely struggling with addiction and mental health issues before adopting jas and becoming her godfather. the loss, compounded with a dramatic shift in his role as a literal human, was a huge and sudden change. he went from a guy living with his aunt and working a dead-end job, to a dad of a young girl who lost both of her parents back to back in some sort of accident. the guilt of not being able to raise her on his own, of having to rely on marnie, could have caused him to spiral. he likely beat himself up for not being a good enough godfather, for having a dead-end job, for having to basically put the responsibility of jas onto marnie. in some ways, he probably feels like he failed jas’s parents. after all, they picked him to be her godfather… but he really isn’t doing that, is he?
it really could be either or. the depression and addiction probably started out as not really having a reason, but then quickly spiraled and worsened by the loss of jas’s parents.
I vaguely recall him mentioning his parents, and it gave me the impression they weren’t the best people. Don’t twist my words and say I’m implying abuse, we obviously don’t know that, nor anything about his parents as people at all. But upbringing is often a factor, and can be a setup for someone’s framework of value which usually collapses onto the person in the long run.
I assumed that he had a bad family/childhood and failed to pursue his dreams in Zuzu. And maybe that’s why he lives with Marnie and has a job at Joja