#almost two years of crack headcanoning that johns parents were hippies finally paid off when this au happened lol

[delurkr]

Ok well eventually I'll cobble together a big old post to ramble about at least Kenneth (writing be hard), but for now it's about time I spilled a bit more about all of them now that @108garys and I have started posting the Canadian Clarke lore.

Rupinder and Neel are John's parents, and their kid here is John's older brother William (4-year age gap). Kenneth is Kenneth Bates, a nephew of miner Billy Bates from The Inpatient.

In the second half of the 1960s Rupinder and Neel were students at University of California, Berkeley, where they met and became partners. They also met Kenneth in California, who was progressing from dropout to radical living in San Francisco before he moved to Canada in 1969. I like to say Rupinder and Neel were indoctrinated by him into hippiedom, but the truth is more like they started out caring about some of the same ideals, and on that basis they spent their college years and beyond getting invested in that culture with him while maintaining regular jobs and generally being active members of American society. During that time they (and Kenneth) were raising enough money to take the plunge on this one big back-to-the-land experiment, the success or failure of which would determine how they would live the rest of their lives. Followers of this au know already: their enterprise on Blackwood Mountain failed (they all smartly bailed before winter came), so they rejoined society, leaving Canada and permanently moving back to the United States. They married when they were expecting John in the late 1970s and generally built a "straight" life for their family in California, although they definitely never let go of their progressive ideals.

The move to Blackwood was Kenneth's pet project, and he was originally going to be a participant. He built the plan with Rupinder and Neel while he was in California and continued working towards it when he moved to Canada later (to dodge the draft, the one thing he has in common with Dennis which is how they ended up meeting while there). His enthusiasm to start a tiny commune in the wilderness on Blackwood was equal parts a rejection of capitalism and a need to learn about his uncle's strange demise that happened back when Kenneth was a youngster in the early 1950s. Snow doesn't scare him so he was confident about his capability to live off the land in the Canadian Rockies, but learning of his married uncle's side chick Loretta in Canada put a damper on his curiosity to know more about Billy's life, so when the time came for the Blackwood plan to take effect he decided to send Dennis in his place and left the country as a volunteer with a Canadian organization working for world peace.

Dennis lost touch with Kenneth at that point and with Rupinder and Neel when they all left Blackwood, but later down the line he and Kenneth eventually reconnected. Dennis's and Kenneth's lives in Canada in the first half of the 1970s are content for multiple other posts, but the main thing right now is that their friendship is the most important connection Dennis had out of this group of friends.

Here's the Canadian Clarke timeline, and a tag for @ctrvpani because they were interested in learning more 🙂

OCs for that one AU

that @108garys and I created, part of which involves Dennis having his mid-1970s mountain man phase on Blackwood Mountain.

He meets these folks in Canada: Rupinder, Neel, and their two-year-old, who do the Blackwood thing with Dennis in 1975; and Kenneth, who unlike Dennis has no concept of property ownership and has no shame about that (spot the physical evidence if you can zoom in enough).

They're all related to canon characters from the specific games I tagged, so anyone is welcome to guess their relatives 😁