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100 days of enemy recs: 22. Kent Parson
What is this? Only 22 days in and we have another one I've actually *written*?? Weird!
So, Check Please! - was a huge fandom a couple years ago but one of those that died down fast. I got into it during a long canon hiatus and then never picked up the last season or so of canon, but I still go back and read favorite fic. The fandom was a mess but a lot of the fic is amazing. It's a webcomic about hockey, and growing up, and being queer, and playing hockey while growing up queer. One of my (other) bulletproof kinks is stories about people in the public eye dealing with manage their public self and private self, and Check Please! fic was very, very good for that (in a way that I mostly otherwise only get in RPF, but pro sports RPF is just asking to have your heart torn out.)
Kent Parson is honestly a minor character, but he showed up right before the hiatus in a way that implied there might be a lot more, plus he was really fucked up but in a way that might be fixable, which is like catnip to slash fans.
Kent Parson can be summed up as such:
People who utterly despise Kent Parson: Kent Parson's ex-boyfriend's new boyfriend Bitty. Kent Parson.
People who have extremely complicated feelings about Kent Parson: Kent Parson's ex-boyfriend Jack. All of Jack's friends who know their real backstory. Any fans of hockey teams that play against Kent Parson.
People who think the sun shines out of Kent Parson's ass: Kent Parson's ex-boyfriend's parents. Kent Parson. Everyone else who has ever heard of or met Kent Parson (in theory).
So he's a very good source to get my "dealing with celebrity" and my "complicate enemy relationships" at once.
(also I wrote two fics about him, and I just discovered a third one in my WIPs file that honestly reading it five years later is a complete story even if 2016 me wanted to be overambitious with it? So I just now snuck that into the series with a backdate.)
Recs! One of the top fics for him was pulled just recently to be pro-published and I am sad I did not know it time to dl it, but there are luckily lots more, here's three I like.
So, Check Please! - was a huge fandom a couple years ago but one of those that died down fast. I got into it during a long canon hiatus and then never picked up the last season or so of canon, but I still go back and read favorite fic. The fandom was a mess but a lot of the fic is amazing. It's a webcomic about hockey, and growing up, and being queer, and playing hockey while growing up queer. One of my (other) bulletproof kinks is stories about people in the public eye dealing with manage their public self and private self, and Check Please! fic was very, very good for that (in a way that I mostly otherwise only get in RPF, but pro sports RPF is just asking to have your heart torn out.)
Kent Parson is honestly a minor character, but he showed up right before the hiatus in a way that implied there might be a lot more, plus he was really fucked up but in a way that might be fixable, which is like catnip to slash fans.
Kent Parson can be summed up as such:
People who utterly despise Kent Parson: Kent Parson's ex-boyfriend's new boyfriend Bitty. Kent Parson.
People who have extremely complicated feelings about Kent Parson: Kent Parson's ex-boyfriend Jack. All of Jack's friends who know their real backstory. Any fans of hockey teams that play against Kent Parson.
People who think the sun shines out of Kent Parson's ass: Kent Parson's ex-boyfriend's parents. Kent Parson. Everyone else who has ever heard of or met Kent Parson (in theory).
So he's a very good source to get my "dealing with celebrity" and my "complicate enemy relationships" at once.
(also I wrote two fics about him, and I just discovered a third one in my WIPs file that honestly reading it five years later is a complete story even if 2016 me wanted to be overambitious with it? So I just now snuck that into the series with a backdate.)
Recs! One of the top fics for him was pulled just recently to be pro-published and I am sad I did not know it time to dl it, but there are luckily lots more, here's three I like.
- Greener Grasses (11374 words) by dieofthatroar
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: (Past) Kent "Parse" Parson/Jack Zimmermann, Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Kent "Parse" Parson & Jeff "Swoops" Troy
Characters: Kent "Parse" Parson, Eric "Bitty" Bittle, Jack Zimmermann, Alicia Zimmermann, Bob Zimmermann, Jeff "Swoops" Troy, Las Vegas Aces (Ensemble)
Additional Tags: Suicidal Thoughts, Anxiety Disorder, Substance Abuse, Depression, Coming Out, Homophobia, canonical toxic masculinity, Canon Compliant, post 3-26
Jack comes out. Kent - doesn't. It's complicated. There's pie. - (hold on) when you get love (21779 words) by AugustaByron
Chapters: 3/3
Fandom: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Larissa "Lardo" Duan/Shitty Knight/Kent Parson, Larissa "Lardo" Duan/Shitty Knight, Larissa "Lardo" Duan/Kent Parson, Kent Parson/Jack Zimmermann (past), Shitty Knight/Kent Parson
Characters: Larissa "Lardo" Duan, Shitty Knight, Kent "Parse" Parson, Jack Zimmermann, Las Vegas Aces - Character
Additional Tags: Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Friends to Lovers, Polyamory
How do you deal when you find out you're soulmates with your ex's best friend? And his other best friend? Who are dating each other? It's complicated. There's beer. - Can't Learn to Leave (42838 words) by SummerFrost
Fandom: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Eric Bittle/Kent "Parse" Parson, Kent "Parse" Parson & Original Male Character(s), (Past) Eric Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Minor or Background Relationship(s), (Background) Jack Zimmermann/Alexei "Tater" Mashkov
Characters: Kent "Parse" Parson, Eric Bittle, Jack Zimmermann, Alexei "Tater" Mashkov, Samwell Men's Hockey Team, Original Characters, Las Vegas Aces (Ensemble)
Additional Tags: Homophobia, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Mental Health Issues, Borderline Personality Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Slow Burn, Sort Of, Pining, Heavy Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, WITH A HAPPY ENDING I PROMISE, Coming Out, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, hockey violence, Mild Blood, Painplay, Light Sadism, Dom/sub, Marking, Aftercare, Rebound Sex, Complicated Relationships, Compulsory Heterosexuality (kind of), Begging, Safewords, Sexual Slurs as Kink, Communication, Panic Attacks, Drinking to Cope, Vomiting, Real Hockey Teams but No Real Players, Verbal Humiliation
Also complicated: when your ex's new boyfriend - who is apparently now also his ex - gets hired as social media manager by your team's PR to help you stay in the closet. And he's hot. (But there's pie.)
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And I have never wanted to read Parse/Bitty, but now I'm all curious at how well that might work out. Okay, on to the read later list it goes.
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For that one in particular, you have to be willing to take a less sympathetic view of Jack? Which I am willing to do in Parse POV because Jack was at least as awful to Parse as the reverse.
But I read a lot of Parse/Bitty and Jack/Parse/Bitty in general because I wanted Parse but also didn't want Bitty written out! And Parse/Bitty also does the thing I really love with the two people who have a lot of sex about a third person, just in a much, much less healthy way than the last version of that dynamic I rec'd.
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&kent; I think you're right, Kent's a great way to get out feelings of "want to write a fixable hockey dude dealing with the NHL whilst being queer and having an Angsty Backstory but also, if you write about real NHL players, you deal with the fact that these are real NHL players". I also get some of those feelings out in the Superstition 'verse but, alas, that has no enemies-to-lovers for you, it's just childhood bffs-to-married-to-lovers.
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I never really figured out what connection Superstition had with real hockey, but yeah when I poked at it, it always seemed like it was laying on the bromance real hard, and while I have nothing against bromance it's not something that lures me into a new fandom.
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Superstition is like "what if a few years away from current, there was a Connor McDavid-type who had a really great bro", but we've probably now caught up with a few years from current. It has real hockey players as side characters, but it was focused more on the OCs. But it does deal somewhat with Oh No These Are Real Hockey Players, when the author found out about stuff in Mario Lemiuex's history and dealt with how the characters would react to finding out.
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Connor McDavid is Sidney Crosby if Sidney Crosby got drafted to a terrible team that then did not get better and let him get anywhere in the playoffs. If you've read Sid/Geno, you know the part where the Pens suddenly get good and go on a cup run two years in a row? Connor McDavid is if that didn't happen.
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OKAY SO, let me tell you about Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel! Which, come to think of it, could fit into enemies to lovers, if you squint. But! Some years ago, Connor McDavid was coming up on his draft year, and had a lot of deserved hype coming into it, so some teams tanked to try to get him. Jack Eichel went second in that draft and went to Buffalo, a terrible team that had tanked the most to get McDavid and then didn't get McDavid. There was some it-seems-to-me to have been manufactured rivalry between McDavid and Eichel over who would go first and who would go second in the draft, but anyway, McDavid went to Edmonton (which did the thing it always does and squandered the career of a promising rookie) and Eichel went to Buffalo (where... it seems like he might get a trade from there at some point? IDK I don't follow these things). But these are basically two very very good hockey players whose careers are going nowhere because their teams suck, and there was some great fun with their dynamic in their draft and rookie years.
Also, like... both of them could have signed to other teams after their rookie contracts ran out. But no one does that, because this is hockey and the NHL and all that. The fact that they're both squandering their careers didn't have to happen. Also, I am morally opposed to sports drafts, so there's also that.
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I still remember when I was a child and first learned about sports drafts and trades and was like "...you mean they can bid on *people*? Or trade them like Halloween candy? And then they have to go there and work for them even if they don't want to be? They don't get to pick?" and ever since then I have not quite understood how people can be a fan of a "team" of people, at least half of whom would rather be anywhere else but have no choice.
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oh man, did you hear about the time the supreme court decided that baseball wasn't interstate commerce and so it's not subject to antitrust rules? I wrote in a fic once that pro sports are only not illegal because judges are sports fan and I fucking stand by that.
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