#it was the kegsters wasn't it

[aristocrating]

"why even have kent show up at all?" because he's a plot device. regardless of what was or wasn't planned for the future of his character (possibly as a foil to jack, still being in the closet once jack is out, but I don't think a love triangle was in the cards), his presence at the kegster, at minimum, plants the seed in the reader's (and bitty's) mind that jack might not be straight. and the emotional impact of bitty finding out that way after only just acknowledging to himself he might have fallen for a "straight" boy is devastating. it sheds new light on the will they/won't they because now we know: they might.

(lol, I initially typed 'love triangle in the carbs' which would make for an entirely different storyline)

Oh yeah good point about him foreshadowing Jack's queerness! I agree with the foil take about Jack's outness vs Kent's closetedness especially with the take someone from the other day sent about speculation that Whiskey's storyline originally might've been Kent's.

[omgsamwellsports]

you can't major in "fffffuck the lax bros" and I don't care who told you it was an option

[ariesisms]

in my head bitty is actually somewhat close with ollie and wicky it just wasn't relevant to the plot of check please. those are bitty's emotional support quiet friends! the three of them study together often and bitty lets them make out in his room during kegsters and he knows theyre dating but he also respects them and their choice to do the whole glass closet thing, and in turn the two of them keep his secret super safe when they're the first to find out about him and jack junior year. their friendship is muted and comfortable and familiar. bitty invites himself on their dates sometimes and has a wonderful time third wheeling and the two of them love getting the team gossip from him bc theyre not as close w the upperclassmen as he is (this was by choice) and bitty likes tagging along with them when they go to non-hockey parties with their secret non-hockey playing friends. they communicate mostly in knowing looks and exagerated head tilting. they have a groupchat thats just the three of them and its honestly like entirely wicky sending obscure memes and bitty saying "i dont get it" and ollie saying "ignore him" and then radio silence for a week and then the cycle repeats. bitty is the only one invited to their wedding and when he asked if he could bring a plus one they said "...we'll allow it."

[hmslusitania]

someone put a bunch of check please on my dash this morning so naturally i began thinking about a 911/buddie check please AU and i couldn't stop thinking about it all day. so...thoughts?

cause i think it could be immaculate.

Look, okay, so it wouldn't be a direct Zimbits parallel, it couldn't be, it would be a lot closer to Nurseydex, but the way I think it would go is you've got Bobby as their Coach, you've got Chimney as captain of the team, and then they get this freshman defender, Buck, who cannot skate. The boy is bambi on ice, he falls down ALL THE TIME, like??? Why? Why is he like this how the hell did he make the team?

(funny fact, multiple actual gifs of bambi on ice came up when I was searching for this)

Like, it's bad. So Chim assigns Eddie to like, teach the boy to skate. Anyway, turns out that the reason Buck is so hopeless is because he learned to skate and always skated previously with figure skates because his sister was a figure skater and half the time he falls down it's because he's trying to put his weight forward on his toes but there's no skate there and there's definitely no toe pick

it's like the inverse of the montage from the Cutting Edge

And like, eventually! Buck gets better at skating! And he turns out to be a damn good d-man and he and Eddie make a spectacular duo on and off the ice, but they don't get together yet because like. men's hockey and toxic masculinity

if you chant "intricate rituals" three times in the mirror you get a haunting of sports men slapping each other's asses as an excuse to feel something

ANYWAY eventually, they are gifted a room in the Hockey Haus. But they have to share it. And they're in the attic right and sometimes after a kegster, it's just way more coordination than Buck ever has to get up onto the top bunk and so of course he's gonna curl up with Eddie in the bottom bunk and of course because they live in each other's pockets on and off the ice they have to share rooms on away games

their team manager, Karen, makes them a bedazzled "matched set, do not separate" label for their team jackets one away trip while she's definitely not mooning over the women's rugby captain Hen, shut up, Chim

But anyway, they make it to the frozen four Chim's senior year, and then they actually win the damn thing and maybe one of Buck or Eddie was in the sin bin for fighting immediately prior to the end and had lost their bucket and anyway during the celly for the fact they won the damn thing, whichever wasn't already missing their headwear knocks the other's off and maybe there's like, a gratuitous amount of snogging at centre ice idk

Anyway, that's how I would write it

[zimms]

nursey drunkenly tells a cute sorority girl at a kegster that he speaks italian, so he spends a semester speaking a mixture of spanish, latin and pasta names in a very heavy and fake italiann accent whenever she wants him to talk dirty to her in italian. in fairness, when they break up, she still thinks that he's italian, so apparently the plan wasn't so awful after all

[tater-mashkov]

One of Nursey's faves is the one with Kermit in the car singing "shawty I don't mind"

Any time Shitty is in the vicinity of the LAX bros he starts reciting "what the fuck is up Kyle"

At Kegsters at least one member of SMH will say "Zack stop... you're gonna get in trouble"

Holster just... /loses/ if any time anyone says "I smell like beef"

Once when Nursey was goofing around on a keyboard, Dex smashed his hand on it, yelling "SAIL".... Nursey wasn't even playing sail....

What do y'all think each member of SMH’s fave vine is

[cuntytrickster]

I don’t even know what this is

Trigger warnings: self-doubt, mental illness, anxiety, depression. 

I haven't written fan fiction since I was twelve, forgive me.

----

Tango sat in the shared bathroom on the second floor, curled against the door, the fingers of his left hand clenched like a vice around his ankle, his right scratched at the hair at his nape, clawing, animal-like, impatient, greedy fingers. He was a so stupid, so fucking stupid. This is why he was a joke and fucking idiot joke, no one liked him because he couldn't shut the fuck up. Why whiskey didn't want to hangout yesterday, he only embarrassed his friends if only he could just shut up maybe people wouldn't see him maybe he couldn't ruin their day with is incessant babbling if only he could just be fucking nor-

He heard someone banging on the door, sending vibrations down his spine, He looked up and heard the knock again accompanied with the sound of nursey say “uhh bro? sorry but I kinda need the bathroom”. Tony smoothed down the back of his hair and opened the door to reveal Nursey half carrying what looked to be a very drunk Bitty, Bits for his part stumbled in, meandering towards to toilet to vomit his brains out and tango made a quick escape.

Tango promised himself he would shut up from now on and just be “chill” like Nurse or stoic like whiskey or kind like bitty or actually funny ransom and holster, not the fucking joke he was now. he made it ten minutes. Ten minutes before he stupidly interrupted holsters rant about 30 rock to clarify things he could almost see holster rolling his eyes and joking about it to ransom later, “yeah and then he fucking asked who Pete was” as if i was talking to HIM”. He couldn't even last ten minutes without being a fucking disappointment, the only reason he was here anyway is because he played hockey. No one here would be his friend if they didn't have to. If they didnt have to see him every day they wouldn't even know his name or worse he would be on ransom’s list of mood killers kegster blacklist. They'd know him as the annoying kid they hated in lit or math or fucking programming and theyd pray not to have to sit next to him. They would all be so much happier if wasn't there to ruin things. 

Tango gripped at his sides as he walked back to his dorm, fuck it was cold, but he stopped on his way. The pond looked different at night, prettier and yet eerie, Tony drifted closer with curious eyes and wondering feet and stopped just and the water's edge where steady waves sloshed at a slope of grass. He forgot about the cold for a moment and toed out of his adidas, keeping his socks on and stepped into the lake. The water was blindingly cold and painful he was shocked it wasn't frozen, the waves jumped at his bare ankles searing cold, but the pain was somehow....  comforting? he waded deeper the bottom of his jeans clung to him in the water and he stopped his feet ached from the cold and the rock bottom of the pond. his mind was empty, clear of questions and pain. think hot tears streamed down his face, from the cold? or whatever. he started at a voice.

I'm so tired someone else finish this, please

[aristocrating]

Check Please Hot Take! There's not enough information on-page to determine whether Kent still loves/is obsessed with Jack or just wants to manipulate him into getting what he wants for his own gain (winning). Relatedly, the fact that Kent steamrolls Jack and doesn't listen to him, and moves straight to trying to make out with him, supports Jack's assertion to Bitty that their relationship was "just physical."

Yeah I agree that Kent is undercooked and underwritten as all hell, so I get why the situation could be read as ambiguous. (For me, what puts it more in one direction than the other is the fact that the narrative frames Kent as very emotionally invested in the situation. In LVA @ PVD there is that big establishing shot of Kent stumbling over his words when he gets asked about Jack, before he catches himself, and then also the flashback shot to him crying at Epikegster interpolated with Jack saying "it's all in the past" to the interviewer.)

But ultimately, the framing to me makes such a strong case for reading Kent as emotionally hung up of some kind. I think it's also interesting to read him as trying to manipulate Jack into joining the Aces because he cares about winning so much, because then that still means he's kind of obsessed with Jack, even if it's not romantically. Idk I think every reading of Kent, even to the most bad faith ones claiming he's a villain or a bad person or whatever, imply to me that he just can't get over Jack. Why would he show up and corner Jack at Epikegster at all if he wasn't? Doesn't really matter to me whether it's romantically, platonically, sexually, professionally. It's still good drama and I think it gives insight into how he ticks.

The second part of your ask is interesting because you bring up how he goes straight to making out with Jack, which to me is very much evidence that Kent is obsessed with Jack, even if it's just physical. So it's entirely possible (even if I personally think Jack is a very unreliable character, given how he tends to deal with his emotions) that to Jack the whole thing was just physical but Kent still got hung up. Even if just about the hockey they played. I think Kent's entire existence is kind of the evidence that something more significant happened between him and Jack, though. What's the point of introducing a new counterplayer into the narrative and drop all these hints about that "did they, didn't they" if the plan was for it to just dissipate into nothingness. If Jack is right and nothing happened, why even have Kent show up at all?

They were a pretty big deal, after all.

So yes, I agree there's a lot we don't know and we'll never know for certain what exactly his deal was ultimately supposed to be, but at the same time there are a lot of things we can triangulate, like that he definitely showed up at the Kegster for a reason, and that he definitely was supposed to serve some bigger purpose in the narrative. And that's why people are so obsessed with him, right? The mystery of it all. It's fun to speculate!

But yeah, who can say, truly. I don't know if I can give this a rating because I'm too biased in my own opinion of what I think of Kent, but I give it many many ghosts haunting the narrative.

👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻