#omgcheckplease stuff

(it’s about the Failing At Life and Coming Back stuff. i mean. right now. it’s been multiple things.)

anyway i know i will one day when i fall for a new fandom.... but in the meantime.,,, lol @ me going ‘he is thinking this and this and this’. no, you don’t know, mults. that is /you/.

1. I don’t care about ‘deep,’ I guess, maybe? But the story with Jack and Parse - if not the characters - feels so complex to me. They were best friends. And lovers. And teammates, co-leaders, linemates, and to some degree rivals.

And then Jack almost died. Kent saved him, probably, when he called the OD in. Jack might’ve been trying to die, might’ve just not been trying very hard not to... Kent will probably never know.

It was supposed to be - the Draft - the culmination of both their lives so far. In the event, Kent wins the prize that might’ve been supposed to be Jack’s. He’s sent all the way across the country. (They were gonna be separated like that, regardless. It was a part of what they were working for). Jack won’t - can’t - whichever, talk to him anymore...

Jack failed out of life with that OD. All his plans were derailed. But he figures things out, what he wants: comes back around to that same old goal, in a different way.

Meanwhile, Kent’s lighting it up on the ice. He’s beyond amazing. He misses Jack: he wants them to play together again. Wants, I feel, to make things right.

Jack still can’t talk to him.

... note how I didn’t say anything about either of them as individual people in all that. Oh, I could, I have tons of characterization in my head and some of it’s even canon-supported, too ;), but, also, I don’t need to? It’s secondary in this particular case.

Because it’s the story, the setup, above, that’s so irresistible to me. There’s so much stuff going on there! That setup is pretty much all there is... I won’t argue with that. But it has layers of hurt, connection, ambition,... I don’t know how to explain myself, god. If it doesn’t speak to your id, it doesn’t.

But all the things you’ve lost! Things you might not’ve lost!... there’s just So Much there to play with, to me.

2. So I’ve been stuck on it, despite virtually no new canon or the hint of any, since I fell in love with this story (this particular story, only, I don’t care a bit about the rest of the canon), almost two years ago now. Multiple flirtations with other fandoms in this time still have not managed to displace it!

Like someone looked into my head and wrote the premise but not the story for the #career-ending injury fic of my heart. Maybe that explains it best.

3. Also Jack Zimmermann did too used to have hints of complexity! He’s an awkward weirdo loner and anxious too and I’m *blasts Rick Astley really loud.*

4. More to the point... (I do hope it’s okay that I’m spilling my feelings out like this, like it doesn’t come out as the wrong sort of passive-aggressive or whatever? I’m not tryna fight and am one thousand percent happy to disagree. I’m just .. talking).

5. re: Ngozi changing her mind re: the story she’s telling. Well, yeah? I think it’s happened multiple times already, expanding/continuing on things that weren’t originally going to be continued directly. And re: Parse, specifically... surely many of us saw this coming a mile away?

She doesn’t like conflict with or among her fans. I get it! I wouldn’t either!!! Although I don’t even and will never have fans, so I shouldn’t talk... but, yes, of course, she’s close enough to her audience (and fandom) that it does affect her.

And I for one don’t see what would be gained if she were to talk about this as it’s happening. If you want to avoid conflict in and/or with your fandom... talking about the choices you make to avoid it would, surely, only feed said conflict further? Nobody needs all the second guessing that, to be fair, this point itself is entirely part of.

I’d love the ~original story~ (of the small part of the story I even care about!) as much as anyone, ... or maybe not. There’s always fanfic. It gives me so many more choices, there’s always at least a few that are better for my personal tastes than whatever canon would turn out to give.

[first of all I’d like to acknowledge that the caption above - ‘oh god oh god how do you friend’ - can be read equally well as ‘Jack has no idea how to friend, end of’ or ‘Jack has no idea how to just friend, when a hot guy is touching him, what,’ but the discussion below is entirely about the former meaning.]

Posting sparked by this discussion at @garden-of-succulents​, though I’ve had all these ideas and wanting to write them for over a year.

Ngozi said that Kent was Jack's first best friend at, what.  15?  16?  And I started writing a whole story, based just on that.

I don't find it unbelievable.  I don't find it sad.  I found it, when I heard it - (though this may be a hyperbole) - one of the most hashtag relateable things that I'd heard in quite a while.

For Kent to be able to admit that what he wants from Jack is - sure, ‘closure’ - specifically, to know what he did wrong back then.  What he should’ve done better.  etc.  Cause his best friend slash kinda boyfriend almost died, maybe almost killed himself, and then 100% stopped talking to him.  Wouldn’t anyone think, what did I do???

And for Jack to say  - we were both dumb kids, with the partying.  But the overdose, and the fact that I couldn’t deal with talking with you afterwards?  That’s not on you, that’s all about me, my issues.  Sorry how it hurt you - but - my almost dying wasn’t your fault; nothing afterwards means that it was.

Which I was not specifically tagged in but I’m doing it aaaaanyway.

The rules are as follows: Go to page 7 of your WIP, go to the seventh line, share seven sentences, and tag 7 more writer-bloggers to continue the challenge.

tagging: @camilliar @tomatowrites @blithelybonny @coyotesuspect @spaceorphan18 @jazzypizzaz and anyone else who sees this if you wanna play the game!

I have so many WIPs but this is from the latest one I added words to.  nsfw jackparse under the cut