What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

Rumours About Rumours, or: The Kent Parson Meta That Nobody Asked For

As is well-documented by this point, I’m a hopeless fan of @omgcheckplease, to the point where a gay hockey comic has turned me into an actual fan of ice hockey, dear god, I’ve become invested in a sport that’s barely even fucking played in my country, what is this even?? Naturally, this means I follow a few CP-heavy blogs on tumblr, and recently I’ve noticed a few people expressing confusion about why so many people like Kent Parson, given the fact that, canonically, his big introduction involves him being goddamn awful to Jack.

Now: straight off the bat – and I’m saying this, obviously, as someone who finds Kent Parson a fascinating character – I want to acknowledge that fandom, as a general entity, is heavily biased towards white guys. It’s one of those raindrop-in-a-storm problems where, at an individual level, everyone is entitled to their own personal preferences (always bearing in mind that said preferences can be influenced, either consciously or unconsciously, by cultural bias), but where the cumulative, collective effect of those choices amplifies the effects of cultural bias. It would therefore be disingenuous to deny that, whatever my thoughts on or interest in Kent as a character, there’s still a collective issue with how much more attention he often receives than more canonically prominent – and non-assholish – POC characters like Ransom, Chowder, Nursey and Lardo.

(Sidenote: as part of various race-oriented meta about CP, I’ve seen it pointed out that, in fanworks, the POC characters are most often romantically paired with white characters rather than other POC, and that this is a worthy point of investigation and criticism. I agree on both counts, but also feel that, in this specific instance, it’s important to note that, in canon, all the POC characters are primarily – either romantically or platonically – paired with another white character, and that these pairings dominate their appearances in the strip. (Ransom and Holster, Chowder and Farmer (or Chowder and Bitty, platonically), Nursey and Dex, Lardo and Shitty.) So while that doesn’t excuse the comparative lack of creative licence taken in moving beyond those pairings, as is common fanwriting practice, it does explain their existence as a non-trivial narrative baseline. ANYWAY.)

As to why Kent himself is interesting - well. There are, I think, two main reasons for this:

1: He’s Jack’s most significant ex; and

2: He’s presented as an antagonist.

If only the latter point was true, then I’d be much less inclined to invest in him emotionally. What matters is the fact that, despite all the wonderful shipping opportunities afforded by CP, Kent is one of only three (thus far) canonically queer characters – and not only that, he has an existing, complicated backstory with Jack, which therefore connects him emotionally to both Jack and Bitty. Any canon-compliant take on Jack’s romantic history must therefore feature Kent, and with that particular speculative door cracked open, it’s natural to wonder about Kent’s version of events.

Which is where my personal interest in Kent comes in. Because Jack Zimmermann, despite being our noble hockey hero and the protagonist’s love interest, is, by his own admission, an unreliable narrator of his own emotions. And as Jack’s narration is the only insight we get into his and Kent’s relationships, it’s not unreasonable to wonder what we’re missing out on – to say nothing of the possibility that Jack, historically, might not have been great for Kent.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.

Jack “emotional range of a teaspoon” Zimmermann

From early in the comic, it’s clear that Jack isn’t great at expressing his emotions – which is why, for the whole first year of their friendship, he’s presented, not at Bitty’s love interest, but as his antagonist. In the fifth strip, Bitty says he’s “thinking of quitting” because Jack “chewed [him] out – in front of everyone. Again.” The others try to reassure Bitty that Jack “gets real bitchy” during pre-season, but will return to “regularly scheduled levels of bitchy after the first game”: even Jack’s closest friends recognise his habit of taking his stress out on other people. This is when we learn about Jack’s father, and the pressure Jack feels because of it: or, as Shitty puts it, “When a bro’s dad is Bad Bob, a bro’s gonna turn into a fucking hockey Nazi every once in a while.”

By itself, this information doesn’t exonerate Jack’s behaviour towards Bitty. The subsequent strip, however, is crucial to our understanding of – and the creation of sympathy for – Jack, telling us, the readers, about his history of anxiety, his overdose, his feelings of guilt, and why success at Samwell is so important to him. This piece of backstory serves to recontextualise Jack’s prior treatment of Bitty while adding an interpretative lens to everything we subsequently see. As such, when Bitty talks about “Reason #17 to hate Jack” two strips later, and Jack pushes him to get past his fears of checking, it’s easier to view his brusqueness in a kinder light than if we didn’t know his personal history. Without knowing that fear of failure is one of Jack’s most powerful demons, Jack telling Bitty emphatically that they’ll work “Until you stop being scared” could easily read as insensitive or angry, even with the more light-hearted line that follows.

From this point, the development of Jack and Bitty’s relationship is one where the reader knows more about Jack’s motivation than Bitty does. (Potentially, at least; we know that Bitty has Googled Jack’s dad, but not whether that search turned up information about Jack’s time in the Q.) This means that, when Bitty finds Jack sitting alone and anxious in the loading bay before his father’s visit, we have a deeper understanding of Jack’s pregame stress than Bitty does. As such, even when we sympathise with Bitty afterwards, when Jack, jealous and stressed, tells Bitty that his game-winning goal was “a lucky shot,” we still understand Jack’s feelings. Our awareness of him is layered: he’s just done something incredibly hurtful and dickish, but we know that he’s hurting, too.

In the sixteenth strip, Bitty still thinks that “Jack hates [his] guts,” and is upset by Jack glaring at him when Bitty is put on his line, yet the readers know that Jack is stressed by the implied criticism of being told that “you’re a better player when you’re with Bittle.” Their relationship changes on both sides when they start officially playing together: it’s the first time Bitty really speaks positively about Jack, and the first time we see Jack being impressed by Bitty as a player – a development which is immediately followed by a dash of mutual hurt/comfort to cement their sympathies. Bitty, for the first time, sees Jack belittled for his stint in rehab by a sportscaster post-game, while Jack sees Bitty concussed on the ice for attempting a risky play. Jack subsequently apologies for his actions: not only to Bitty personally, but to the team as a whole. And thus ends Bitty’s first year at Samwell: with Jack as a friend instead of antagonist.

Even so, this changed relationship doesn’t make Jack any better at expressing his feelings. At the start of Bitty’s sophomore year, Ransom notes that “Goal celebrations provide the rare opportunity for the stoic Canadian warrior to express his emotions,” with Holster adding, “Many believe this is his only way of emoting.”

Enter Kent Parson – or rather, our first oblique reference to him, when Jack is talking to Bitty about his NHL prospects: “They said with the way the teams are stacking up? With how Kent– uh, the Aces won the cup a couple of years ago…”

The fact that Jack stumbles over his name is telling: he doesn’t want to talk personally about Kent, though at this point, we don’t know why. The next strip marks Kent’s actual first appearance, chirping Jack for taking a selfie with Bitty: the fact that Jack is visibly shocked to see him is likewise a clue to their complex relationship.

Kent Parson: Rumours About Rumours

When Ransom and Holster give us Kent’s backstory, they emphasise the “rumours” about Jack and Kent’s relationship when they played together – a statement accompanied by the image of a younger Kent sitting on younger Jack’s lap at a party – complete with reference to “a trove of Zimmermann/Parson fanfiction”. At the same time, they’re also clearly unsure as to what Kent and Jack think of each other now, noting that “Jack doesn’t really talk about him much.” The flashback image accompanying this claim is significant: while younger Jack frowns anxiously over a newspaper article about the draft, a younger Kent is shown sitting beside him, a hand on Jack’s arm and a hopeful smile on his face – the attitude of someone trying to comfort a person they care about. Equally significant as a narrative hint is the fact that, in quoting the synopsis of a piece of Zimmermann/Parson fanfic, Holster tells us, “It’s not that Jack wasn’t into relationships, it’s just that Jack wasn’t a relationships kind of guy.” This is noteworthy, not only as foreshadowing, but because it shows us that, canonically, Jack was perceived by shippers to be emotionally distant – something that tracks accurately with his characterisation as someone who’s Bad At Feelings.

The most telling clue we’re given about Jack and Kent’s relationship, however, comes two panels later, from Shitty. As was demonstrated early in the comic, the fact that Shitty is Jack’s ride-or-die best friend doesn’t make him blind to Jack’s faults, while a key part of Shitty’s characterisation is his utter hatred of douchebags. As such, it’s doubly significant that Shitty is the one to warn Bitty, not that Kent is a bad guy, but that Jack is bad to Kent. Specifically, he says: “Jack can get pretty jealous, okay? Like, the last time Parson dropped by – yeah, it was after he’d won a fucking Stanley Cup, but it wasn’t like he had his Calder under his arm. Parson’s a modest bro. And the way Jack acted… brah. It freaked me out! It was kinda how Jack used to treat you.”    

In other words: Jack was antagonistically jealous of Kent’s success, even though Kent did nothing to lord it over him, in the same way Jack was once antagonistically jealous of Bitty’s success. In Bitty’s case, the mutual hurt was only resolved when they started to play together: their on-ice chemistry let them see the best in each other, and as Jack’s teammates have all observed, Jack – at this point in his life, anyway – only really expresses his feelings on the ice.

Which is when we learn that Kent has come to ask Jack to play for the Aces.

Which brings us to the argument Jack and Kent have, which ostensibly cements Kent’s status as an antagonist. But let’s, just for a moment, view this scene from the little we know of Kent’s perspective.

The last time Kent came to see Jack, Jack reacted with hostility, pushing him away despite the fact that nothing we’ve seen in the flashbacks to their relationship is indicative of bad behaviour on Kent’s part. Instead, they look happy together, with Kent offering comfort and optimism in response to Jack’s anxiety. We also know that Jack has difficulty expressing his emotions, especially negative ones, being more likely to lash out or withdraw than to try and address them productively. It’s also not a stretch to imagine that Kent, as a former teammate – someone who once played spectacularly with Jack, the same way Jack now plays with Bitty – knows, as Jack’s current teammates do, that Jack works through his feelings best on the ice.

In their argument, Kent says that he only came unannounced to Samwell because Jack “shut [him] out”, suggesting that Jack refused to talk to him – and not, given what Shitty said about Kent’s last visit, because of anything Kent himself did. And the first thing Kent sees, on walking into the party, is Jack smiling at a short, blonde hockey player who looks a bit like a younger version of Kent, one who plays on Jack’s line and makes him better the way Kent used to do. Kent, who could easily react with jealousy here, is polite to Bitty instead; goes out of his way to take selfies with everyone who wants them; takes Lardo humiliating him at flip-cup in good humour: behaves himself, in other words. A modest bro, just like Shitty – whose judgement we ought to trust at this point – said.

When Bitty comes upstairs, he doesn’t immediately overhear an argument between Jack and Kent, because at first, they’re not arguing. Kent is asking Jack if he’s thought about coming to play for the Aces, and while it’s hard to prove, the way Jack’s speech is broken up mid-word, followed by overt pauses, suggests that Kent kisses him, as does the fact that Jack says “I can’t do this” immediately afterwards. Kent begs Jack to “just fucking stop thinking and listen to me for once,” suggesting both that Kent knows Jack is prone to overthinking, and that Jack has refused to hear him out on the topic previously.

The point where the conversation turns hostile comes when Kent calls the Wellies “a shitty team”, followed immediately by an attempted contrast to their old style of playing together: “you and me –”

But Jack doesn’t let him finish. Instead, he tells Kent to get out. This is when Kent yells that he only came the way he did because Jack shut him out, adding that he’s “trying to help”. At this point, Kent is desperate, his plea very clearly an appeal to an emotion he himself feels deeply: “What do you want me to say? That I miss you? I miss you, OK?… I miss you.”

(When Kent walks into the Haus and sees Jack, he says, “Didja miss me?” Because Kent misses Jack. He wants Jack to miss him, too, and is desperately insecure about it.)

Jack replies with an absolute dismissal of Kent’s feelings: “You always say that.” Meaning, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. I don’t care.

And it’s then, and only then, that Kent becomes aggressive. What he says is calculated to wound, just as Jack telling Bitty his winning goal was “a lucky shot” was calculated to wound: and as such, I’d argue that the two scenes are paralleled in more ways than one. When Jack dismisses Bitty’s goal, he’s acting like an antagonist because he thinks Bitty has taken something from him – his father’s approval – that Jack feels ought to be his. Similarly, Kent is acting like an antagonist because he thinks Jack has taken something from him – their partnership – that Kent feels ought to be his, too.

And so Kent insults Jack, though his wording is curious (bolding mine): “You think you’re too fucked up to care about? That you’re not good enough? Everyone already knows what you are, but it’s people like me who still care. You’re scared everyone else is going to find out you’re worthless, right? Oh, don’t worry, just give it a few seasons, Jack. Trust me.”

Jack tells him to get out, to which Kent replies, “Fine. Shut me out again.”

The final blow comes as Kent is leaving : “Call me if you reconsider or whatever. But good luck with the Falconers… I’m sure that’ll make your dad proud.”

It’s not until the following year in the comic that we’re given a flashback that shows us Kent’s face as he says this. Kent, like Jack, is shaking – even more, is crying as he walks away, the image juxtaposed with present-day Jack telling a reporter that his history with Kent “is all in the past”. Which, for Jack, it is. But not for Kent.

And it’s here that the visual medium of comics becomes relevant to our perception of dialogue, because while particular words can be given an emphasis, all the verbal subtleties that differentiate tone and meaning are absent. When Kent finally rips into Jack, it’s telling that he doesn’t insult him directly: instead, he attacks Jack’s self-perception, and in such a way that, depending on spoken emphasis, he’s arguably saying one of two different things. In one version of Kent’s dialogue, he’s agreeing with Jack’s fears: offering a confirmation that he’s worthless, that (in Kent’s mind) nobody but Kent will ever care for him, and that, once he starts playing professionally, everyone else will see what a failure he is. And certainly, this is how Jack seems to take it.

But in the other version, Kent is angrily ridiculing Jack’s self-perception: You think you’re too fucked up to care about, but I still care, even though you don’t think I should. You’re scared that people will think you’re worthless, but everyone already knows what you are. (A desired player; one Kent came to recruit.) You don’t need to worry; you’re Jack Zimmermann. Just give it a few seasons. Trust me. And because of the context, this version is still hurtful to Jack: not only has Kent just verbalised his deepest insecurities, but he’s effectively mocked him for having them at all. But Kent has every reason to hate Jack’s insecurities at this moment, because Jack’s tendency towards emotional shutdown is why he keeps shoving Kent away, refusing to talk about a relationship that Kent, quite clearly, needs and wants – and, I would argue, deserves – to discuss with him.

Because when Jack later explains his relationship with Kent to Bitty, he doesn’t say anything about his treatment of Kent. Again, the structure of what he says is telling (my bolding): “We only hooked up a few times back in juniors… and with the draft changing everything… I don’t think he got over it… He got drafted. I didn’t. And it… stopped. Looking back, it really wasn’t anything more than physical. Hockey. And after taking my break, then Samwell… it takes a lot of growing up to realise someone wasn’t good for you… It kind of had an expiration date from the get go, you know? Push comes to shove… hockey came first. Something like that could’ve really messed with our careers.”

And this is where, for me, Jack Zimmermann becomes an emotionally unreliable narrator: his account of their relationship is not only clinical, but emotionally contrary to what we already know. The draft changed things, not because it was inevitable, because Jack was jealous that Kent was drafted. Shitty explicitly says as much to Bitty, but Jack doesn’t mention his jealousy here: instead, he says that the relationship was always going to end, and that – by implication – Jack chose hockey over Kent. Jack also says the relationship just “stopped,” which implies a mutual end to things, despite his simultaneous claim that Kent never got over it. Kent, however, has consistently expressed his frustration at Jack shutting him out; has likewise told Jack that he misses him on multiple occasions. So when Jack says the relationship was only physical – that it was nothing but sex and hockey, even though we’ve seen how close they were as friends in flashbacks – it doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest that he is severely downplaying the emotional aspect of their relationship.  

When Jack and Bitty tell their teammates they’re dating, Jack admits to Shitty that “I don’t think I realised I wanted to be with Bittle until the last minute. Right at graduation… I don’t think about this stuff too much to be honest. Or I didn’t. Bittle says I’ve gotten better with my feelings.” Meaning that, for the better part of two years, Jack thought that his feelings for Bitty were platonic, even though he was acting in an ultimately romantic way, or at least in unconscious pursuit of a romantic end. Which means we have a strong canonical basis for asserting that, once upon a time, Jack treated Kent the same way – in a caring, enamoured fashion – while under the impression that their relationship, and his own actions, were strictly platonic. The only difference? Kent and Jack were actually sleeping together, and after Jack overdosed and nearly died, he cut Kent out, the relationship a secret from anyone Kent could’ve talked to.

In canon, we don’t know how Kent reacted to Jack’s overdose. In fanfic, however, it’s an incredibly powerful speculative point. Was Kent the one who found Jack when it happened? Was he allowed to see him in the hospital, or to visit in rehab? We know Jack’s parents eventually knew about Kent, but did Kent know they knew? Did Kent, a teenager whose secret boyfriend nearly died just days before he was forced to make the biggest career choice of his life and move, alone, to another state, ever get any help to deal with his feelings?

When Jack says in one breath that his relationship with Kent “wasn’t anything more than physical” and then, in the next, that Kent “wasn’t good for [me]”, he’s contradicting himself. Either there was an emotional relationship that went sour or was negative in some way, or they had uncomplicated casual sex – and from Kent’s perspective, there was clearly an emotional component. At the very least, and regardless of whether Kent actually behaved badly when they were together – a statement for which we have no tangible evidence – it’s clear that Kent has been hurt by Jack, having invested emotionally in someone who doesn’t want him. That Kent still wants Jack back after almost five years, and yet has barely interacted with him in that time, is telling: Kent’s attachment is unhealthy only because it’s unrequited, not because he’s been relentlessly and constantly pursuing an uninterested party.

When Jack tells Bitty that his relationship with Kent had an expiration date because of their careers, it makes Bitty insecure: he worries that Jack is going to eventually leave him, because, in Jack’s own words, hockey comes first. Similarly, in discussing why things ended with Kent, Jack emphasises the impossibility of the relationship, the inherent impermanence of it, which fits with the fact that, when Kent propositions him at Epikegster, Jack says “I can’t do this” – can’t, not I don’t want to. Suggesting that, if Jack ever gave Kent a reason for ending things after the draft, it was the same one he gave Bitty: we can’t do this anymore because of our careers. In which case, it makes perfect sense that Kent has spent five years pining for Jack: because Jack “I Don’t Understand, Recognise Or Articulate My Own Feelings” Zimmermann never actually told Kent that he didn’t want to be together – only that they couldn’t.

So Kent has waited. He’s made a name for himself, keeping his distance from Jack but always making it clear that he misses him, returning even after Jack acted like a jealous ass about Kent’s success. And when he comes, he has a plan: they can be together again. Jack can be on his team again, they can date again, and why the fuck won’t Jack talk to him –

And then Jack throws him out, and Kent, who is fucking heartbroken, finally lashes out at him.

For all that Kent says some truly awful things to Jack, they ultimately fall into the same class of antagonism that originally characterised Jack’s treatment of Bitty – except that, in Kent’s case, we have to piece his sympathising motives together from context cues instead of being given a neat synopsis. Jack’s relationship with Bitty – the way he learns to identify and express his feelings, to prioritise his boyfriend’s life – is predicated on an arc of emotional healing, one where Bitty makes Jack a better person. Kent at Epikegster is the result of Jack’s attempt at relationships before he learned to do this.

For Bitty, Jack Zimmermann is a romantic hero; for Kent, he’s a messed-up origin story.

And that is why I’m interested in Kent Parson.

  1. purple-is-great reblogged this from fozmeadows
  2. friedeggpajamas reblogged this from fozmeadows
  3. dottie-wan-kenobi reblogged this from fozmeadows
  4. safe-in-the-steep-cliffs reblogged this from fozmeadows
  5. byron-knight reblogged this from fozmeadows
  6. azaurita reblogged this from fozmeadows
  7. chocolatechipchowder reblogged this from fozmeadows
  8. kentbarson reblogged this from fozmeadows
  9. lollo12589 reblogged this from fozmeadows
  10. epicchameleon reblogged this from fozmeadows
  11. fozmeadows posted this