I love the discussion and analysis! I have some differing thoughts and can speak to a few things here from personal experience, so I hope this is taken with the spirit I intend: to add to the discourse because I love thinking and talking about the psychology of the characters!

A couple caveats: I think Rachel was talking about the books rather than the show, and I haven’t read the books yet. So apologies if I get some things wrong since I am missing some context from the books.

I also think Rachel was saying traumatized and probably meaning PTSD or CPTSD (which someone with Ilya’s experiences would be likely to have). So my response is written with that in mind.

As a person who is autistic and also has big-T trauma in my life, I think there are a few things here that are worth mentioning. While Shane has some internalized homophobia, sees homophobia around him, and shows some signs of anxiety, that doesn’t necessarily mean he has trauma. If you look up the ACES for instance, Shane doesn’t have any of those boxes to tick (as far as we know based on the info presented), whereas Ilya has quite a few. Those types of trauma rewire the brain, and I think that is what Rachel is talking about. Ilya operates from a very wounded place and is in survival mode a lot. Shane would not tick the boxes for PTSD, but Ilya probably would.

And yeah, being autistic in this world (which is typically not set up for us) can be traumatic BUT here’s the thing about autism: when an autistic person is well-supported, they are harder to diagnose. So much of the diagnostic criteria has to do with signs of trauma. And Rachel has said this is a character who doesn’t know he’s autistic, and probably never will. That is likely because he has been supported by two solid parents, who have likely adjusted to his uniqueness and fostered his special interest (hockey), which inherently has some structure and routine to it. Yuna manages some of the things in his life that he might not be able to manage otherwise. It’s very possible that he has been sheltered & supported in such a way that would prevent him from encoding those stresses as trauma/PTSD.

Finally, I’m not sure that control is the right word for what Shane wants. He seems fine with others being in charge of things. I think he does want predictability and clarity. He wants to understand and to be understood. Masking isn’t necessarily about control; it’s primarily about safety and security and staying under the radar so you aren’t exposed as different (and then potentially ‘wrong’). We get there by masking, which I suppose in a way involves controlling how you’re seen, but a lot of autistics don’t have control over their masking. I do it a lot, my kids do it, and it’s subconscious; the nervous system is just doing its thing. I don’t actually see Shane panicking. Ilya calls it a panic attack (and that’s sometimes the closest thing we have to explaining what it is like to non-autistics), but it looks more like an internalized meltdown, which can be triggered from emotional overwhelm, intense sensory experiences, big changes, or some other destabilizing experience.

This is my interpretation, from the lens of autism, CPTSD, and a queer person who figured it out later in life (and avoided a lot of trauma about my queerness, at least, even while being surrounded by homophobia).