#i had to fucking google the name of the game that's how osmosis this is.

[pluviatrix]

everything i have learned about this fucking character both through osmosis and under duress has made me feel without any hyperbole completely unhinged. every new piece of information i stumble across through NO fault of my own has me gagging and sobbing and choking and shitting what do you MEAN. WHAT DO YOU MEAN!!!! the fact that I can't run baldur's gate is a mercy to everyone following me right now. thank your lucky stars that you have been spared.

[multsicorn]

stanley cup coming out thoughts

[possibly up for revision!  who knows.  if not, we can ~agree to disagree.]

But I can���t seem to accept or believe that Bitty has an obligation to come out to his parents before he comes out to the world, or that Jack has an obligation to tell his team, his agent, etc., that he’s going to come out now before he does.

It would be nice, it would be probably helpful, it might possibly avert negative reactions of all sorts... these things are absolutely true, and I’m up for diving into them fictionally!

Whether it’s Suzanne being hurt that Bitty’s been hiding this from her, and guilting Bitty about it, making the issue into ‘didn’t you know you could trust me, am I a bad mother.’ - Which I think is in-universe the most likely thing to happen, though it’ll be glossed over super quickly if present at all on screen.

Or whether it’s George going ‘I was mad last night, but now I’ve moved on to being disappointed, you do realize that by doing this without talking to anyone you’ve made the fallout on everyone many times harder.’  And Jack feeling like this is unfair, but the rest of the locker room having mixed feelings.

But the point is that - one of my favorite things to think about in relation to omgcp has always been, just because you might need something from somebody, doesn’t mean they have to give it to you.  (er, this is mostly in relation to jack/parse, but the principle applies everywhere.)  Bitty and Jack coming out like this might hurt some people and frustrate others, people they care about, even, but it’s still.. their lives.  Their choice.

~

re: this being objectively a terrible time and place to come out.

For Bitty, that’s almost entirely about his parents not knowing yet, right, but he’s been wanting them to know, and hasn’t been able to tell them.  Coming out like this is so much more doable, probably, than doing it directly to them in any way... and it shouldn’t lastingly affect the type or degree of supportiveness (or lack thereof) they give him.

For Jack: either he comes out sometime or he comes out never.  (I would bet strongly that before he fell for Bitty, he wasn’t planning on coming out till after it wouldn’t be too big a deal.  Which means, maybe, ever).  But if he’s in love, in this committed relationship, then either he’s in the closet and he’s looking over his shoulder all the time to see whether he might be poking a toe out by accident, or... he comes out, and has to get shit from other teams, referees, media, whatever part of ~the whole world~ he sees... but at least he’s not terrified of being accidentally (or maliciously!) outed, anymore.

So!  If he were to come out, what better time than when he’s proved all the doubters wrong?  If he can win the Stanley Cup, he proves that he really belongs, there’s no doubt, etc.  And he already has an A as the rookie, and he got the game winning goal, and the Conn Smythe!, and the Cup, like... if there’s one moment when he’s on top of the hockey world, it’s here and now, there and then.  What better time to say, ‘oh, and also, I love my boyfriend, so if you have a problem with that, f you.’

(I DID NOTICE by the way and I’ve been predicting that this would happen since forever - that Jack came out to the world by saying, or, actually, by demonstrating, that he has a boyfriend, not by ID-ing himself out loud as either bi or gay.  I suspect that he’s never going to label himself onscreen in the comic, and this reluctance is interesting to me.... /sorry, tangent over.)

So, it would seem to me like a GREAT time for Jack to come out, save the factor of not giving his team or agent any fucking warning, which he should’ve done, but I bet he was probably too full of complicated fears, and I get that, and, further, it’d be just as true at any other time... I’m not sure how ‘planning’ would be s’posed to help, anyway.  The league, the media, hockey fandom, etc., is gonna have just as much homophobia in it no matter what he and/or his team do!

EXCEPT, there’s this thing about hockey culture.  (I gather from reading and osmosis - I don’t know that much about hockey!)  You’re not supposed to “draw attention to yourself.”  ... Here, I just googled “hockey” “draw attention to yourself,” and look at this quote from The Hockey News.  2015:

As for why no NHL players have come out yet, [Patrick] Burke [founder of You Can Play] believes it’s more a hockey culture issue – the team is always more important than the individual and you never want to draw attention to yourself – than anything to do with fear of acceptance. “There are a lot of people who know ‘out’ retired players,” he said. “Those players just don’t want to do a newspaper article on it. I mean, we’ve had players criticized for high-fiving too exuberantly.”

*screams quietly*

FIRST OF ALL, (unless there’s more than one such incident), those players who were criticized for high-fiving ~wrong~ were P. K. Subban and Carey Price.  (Their personal celly was banned by their team, the Habs, it was crazy!)  It is... not a coincidence, surely, that these are two of the biggest PoC stars in hockey, which is numerically an overwhelmingly white sport.  So... when it says ‘don’t stick out, fit in,’ it really means it, so much more so, if you’re not white.

Or if you’re marginalized along some other axis.  (You already ~don’t fit in!~)  Which, of course, everyone now knows Jack is...

To me it seems ridiculous, outrageous, that coming out would be bad cause it’s ‘taking attention away’ from the rest of your team.  No one would want all that sort of attention; it’s not their fault they would get it...!  But I’m not immersed in ~hockey culture.~

Where people would absolutely say ‘just like a -’ (well, I don’t want to write the rest of that sentence, but you know), ‘gotta be the center of attention all the time, can’t let ordinary people alone,’ and then some really gross sex metaphors., (and okay, i am making myself feel sick now, but, that is the world!)

And so you’ve got... I don’t even know WHAT sort of situation, where of course George and Marty and Thirdy and them are frustrated cause Jack gave them no cues as to what to say or do in this scenario, there’s no coordination, what interviews do we grant, we all wanted to be off elsewhere enjoying our summers, etc....

But also the press is being REALLY GROSS about Jack’s “selfishness” in making the Falcs’ first-ever Stanley Cup win “all about him” by kissing his boyfriend, cause like, it’s not like EVERY OTHER PLAYER who had one kissed their girlfriends or wives the exact same way.

And JACK, himself, also had a whole arc through the first couple years of the comic, of focusing on his own play to the exclusion of his team’s, epitomized in ‘it was a lucky shot’ and culminating in ‘learning to be a team player.’  ... BUT, that was with the Wellies, not the Falcs.  With the Falcs, we’ve seen him again beating himself up over his play in the playoffs, as if it wasn’t a team effort!  ... maybe he ‘knows’ better, in some sense, but focusing on things being all about you, a referendum on your inadequacies, even when you should know they’re not, is, in both my experience and my reading, a common issue with anxiety.

(I would bet he takes his anxiety out on other people on the Falcs, the same way he did with Bitty when they first met.  That he’s not that great of a team player, off the ice, even though it’s not about this thing, and that there’s some doubts in the room as to whether he’s earned his A.)

And then, THE COMIC, weirdly, though it includes quite a few of the Falcs as named and repeatedly-shown characters, also seems to be treating the Cup as a one-person victory.  Jack gets the GWG, and the Conn Smythe, and is the only one we actively see working on and worrying about the games, though we see the others just ~around!?  So.... it both adds bits of evidence to ‘boy has a self-centered approach,’ and, seems to justify this because a Jack-centered narrative of the playoffs is ~correct.

(And, I mean, clearly I’m being Jack-centered, when the narrative wants me to be Bitty-centered instead!  All sorts of biases and layers going on here.)

I am not sure how to sum all this up.  Just - that Jack has totally, demonstrably, been guilty of selfishness vis-a-vis his teams before, and there are bits of reasons to think that he probably hasn’t stopped!, and also that I don’t think, personally, that coming out at that time, in that way, is fair to label as ‘selfish,’ (though it’s a shitty situation for George and the team!) and also, that I bet Don Cherry et. al. are talking about how ‘selfish’ Jack and Bitty are right now in a sickeningly homophobic way.  But that doesn’t invalidate any of the earlier clauses in that sentence... it just complicates things.  Can you call your teammate out on his self-centered-ness, (like, throughout the playoffs), when that’s blasting from every hockey TV thing?  Would you still want to?  I sure as hell wouldn’t.

... and what are narratives, #we just don’t know.