Bless Your Heart, Kent Parson

[melannen]

I maded a thing! It is 8,000 words of gay fictional hockey boys in Georgia, because sometimes you just gotta write what you gotta write.

Bless Your Heart, Kent Parson (8076 words) by melannen

Fandom: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Eric Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Past Kent Parson/Jack Zimmermann - Relationship
Characters: Eric "Dicky" Bittle, Jack Zimmermann, Coach Bittle, Suzanne Bittle, Kent "Parse" Parson
Additional Tags: Fourth of July, Meet the Family, Closeted Character, Coming Out, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Transphobia, the period is USA 2015
Summary: Kenny's name had been coming up a lot. Partly because these days, it was hard to talk about the NHL without talking about Kent Parson. Partly because before Samwell, Jack's experience of an American Independence Day had always included a birthday party for Kenny. Partly because - well, because being in Madison with Bitty was. Well. Strange and uncomfortable, in a lot of ways, this week of all weeks, that maybe had Jack worrying at those old frayed ends more than usual.


...I am already getting in a discussion in comments about whether I violated canon. It's so weird to write in a fandom where people still give a crap about canonicity, I am not used to it anymore.



In other news, I have made a huge Mistake. So my sister's cats are here, right? So the older one - she's fifteen and has been having health issues - spent the first couple nights here sitting in the living room, yowling horribly until somebody went out to tell her it was okay. In my sister's one-bedroom apartment, she had line-of-sight on the bedroom from her preferred sleeping spot, so we thought maybe she was waking up and getting upset because there was nobody around.

So I thought to myself, hey, she really likes getting brushed, so I'll take her onto my bed at bedtime and brush her, and maybe she'll learn it's a safe friendly place and not get all lonely out in the living room. BAD IDEA.

Days until she had realized bedtime = brushings and she was waiting for me: 3
Days until she decided I was staying up too late and tried to get me there sooner: 5
Days until I couldn't go into my room at all anymore without a cat hopping up ready for brushings: 7

I can't go in my own bedroom anymore without someone trying to tell me it's bedtime and I should brush her. I am CAPTIVE in my OWN HOME.

At least she doesn't sit alone in the living room and yowl anymore. Now she comes in my room and yowls into my face until I wake up enough to pet her.

Comments

[erinptah]

It's a hard life out there for a Darcy.

[melannen]

NOT SO MUCH REALLY. I mean. She is sprightly and happy and purry all day! WHY ALL THE NOCTURNAL YORWLING CAT.

[staranise]

That cat situation sounds frankly delightful.

And the fic I know IS frankly delightful. I've been frolicking in CP fandom for a while now as des-zimbits, and it's delightful to have you there. (Though yes, people will care INTENSELY about canonicity, and OH the wailing and gnashing of teeth whenever a popular (or even moderately circulated) fanon is jossed.

[melannen]

You say that, but you wouldn't say that at 3 AM when she is determined to not shut up and go away until you have demonstrated to her satisfaction that you are 100% awake and alert. &rt;:|

I think I had filed Check Please as somewhere between RPF (We make our own canon!) and comics fandom (we reject the council's decisions at will because what even is canon okay) and fanworks fandom (canon is ~fluid~). Partly because other than the fanfic I'm mostly been following it via you DW people.

But. Seriously. That fandom builds such fanon cloud castles on the most minimal and questionable canon that is not a fandom where I would be ready to freak out about jossing!

[staranise]

It's so full of young people for whom this is their first fandom, though. Like, at least half my followers are under 18, and 75% are under 22.

[melannen]

That makes sense - most of my exposure has been through my same old bunch of bofqs. Ah, for the halcyon days before canon had betrayed us all one too many times!

[petra]

My feeling about people who care deeply about canonicity in fanfiction is, in the most Southern of senses, "Bless their hearts."

Mind you, when I fall in love with a TV show it becomes my constant soundtrack for a while until I get the character voices just right, and then I have very strong feelings about it when authors write X saying something X would never say without showing changes from canon to account for it. But I don't call them out in the comments; that's what telling your friends privately is for.

[melannen]

AO3 does not make it easy to contact authors privately so I understand the temptation say things in comments! And I'd rather there than in, say, bookmark notes or something, tbh.

I was almost going to put in an author's note about how I was not 100% meticulous about canon but then I was like, nah, nobody worries about that anymore, it would look silly. Apparently my instincts were right after all!

Maybe I will add the one line that brings it in line with canon later but if I did it now it would just make the original commenters look bad so I'll wait,

(oh jeez it's also been a long time since I've written for a pairing where you can get 250 kudo in 2 days...)

[verity]

that fic was worthy of kudos from BOTH my hockey ao3 & my main AO3 account :)

[melannen]

I am honored!