Headcanon I’m working on now: Bitty is team captain in his senior year. He has nebulous “omg what to do when I graduate???” thoughts but his plans are mainly “move in with Jack in Rhode Island, get a job”
Then scouts for NHL feeder teams start showing up to his games. And practices. And taking him out for coffee. And asking him who his agent is. Because let’s get real, someone who can start playing a sport and end up at NCAA championship level five years later? Is a pretty special athlete.
When he gets the offers Bitty is originally like, but I don’t WANT to play pro hockey! I wanna be with my boyfriend!
The greatest part of this would be when Bitty and Jack have games against each other, because their competitiveness would get ranked up to a million, since the loser will basically get chirped non stop by friends, teammates, family and of course each other.
And maybe Jack and Bitty start making small harmless bets. It starts with winner picks what we eat for dinner and what we watch afterwards, but then they move to stuff like if Jack wins Bitty can’t use twitter for the whole weekend, or Jack will have to appear on his next vlog post etc.
(And of course there’s the private fun stuff they also bet on but will never tell anybody about winkwink)
So it’s always small silly stuff, but they take it super seriously. And then they start using the games to settle arguments like this:
“Y’all, we need to win. You don’t understand, we have to. If we don’t Jack is taking us to the most boring vacation in history. He wants to go to
Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania
to watch a reenactment of the battle and of the
Gettysburg
Address and if I have to go, you will see a grown man cry of boredom. I want to go to the beach. I deserve to go to the beach.”
“We agreed the winner will get to set the thermostat. Bitty always puts it too high and it’s annoying.”
“If we win Jack will finally admit he has been pronouncing
pecan
wrong! No you don’t understand, this is important, we have been arguing about this for years.”
“Bitty will stop breaking diet and I’m afraid if we don’t win this, his nutritionist will kill him.” (They don’t win this, because there is 0 chance you will get Bitty’s team to give up all the baked goods they have been getting since he joined the team.)
Also, it is absolutely impossible to get interviews afterwards with either of them, because turns out playing against each other is like the weirdest most intense form of foreplay ever.
Like they can’t see each other very often during game season, so by the end of their games they honestly couldn’t care less about anything other than making it to each others apartments, so they skedaddle
with 0 shame and sometimes just go straight to the car and shower at home.
George: Jack, you have interviews…
Jack: (speed walking away) No.
George: Jack!
Jack: (pretends not to hear her) Goodbye.
And well, George figures there’s some battles you can’t win and at least she’ll get an apology pie for this.
Jack lives alone, but Bitty has roommates. However they know better than to show their faces after a game, like we are talking complete pie ban for the whole team for a month here.
Also, if you think Jack Zimmermann is scary on the ice, you have never seen his face when you interrupt marathon sex after weeks of not seeing his boyfriend.
The more Jack drinks, the more his accent goes from Letang to Fleury…until he’s just steadily rambling in French and no one in the Haus can understand a word he’s saying.
Holster looks up from where he’s flicking through photos. “What’s up?”
“Bro.” Ransom elbows him, then nods his head to the ugly orange recliner where Jack has Bittle in his lap. He’s drunk, swaying a little, a crooked, green, sparkly party had perched sideways on his head, and he’s mumbling into Bitty’s neck.
Bitty’s just laughing and patting him and saying things like, “Okay sweetheart, whatever you say.”
And it’s not like they can pass this moment up, right? Because it’s Jack and not only will this be years of chirping material–which Holster thinks is only fair coughEstherScough–but also they could probably afford another two recliners with the fines they can charge when Jack’s sober.
So.
Holster fires up the camera and steps closer, only to sigh because Jack’s at the drunk stage where he’s not even speaking English anymore.
“Bittle…Je…” *hiccup* “Je t’aime. Il…il est…” *hiccup* He looks up and sees Holster there with the camera. Bitty’s still engrossed in his conversation with Chowder, but Jack doesn’t seem to care as he grabs Holster’s arm and drags him in closer. “Tu ne comprends pas! Tu…ne. Je l’aime. Je l’aime,” he lets out a noise suspiciously like a sob, and Holster turns to Ransom.
“Uh…”
Ransom shrugs.
“Il est mon futur mari. Il est trop beau.” He lets out a louder sob, releasing Holster’s arm so he can cling to Bitty. “Mon coeur bat pour lui.”
Bitty finally looks down, shakes his head with a grin, and pets Jack’s hair who goes quiet, smiling as he kisses Bitty’s neck over and over.
Holster, with wide eyes, turns back to Ransom. “Did you like…understand any of that?”
Ransom snorts. “Dude, no. But you know who Shitty invited to the group chat last week?”
Holster eyes him. “Oh shit. Bad Bob.”
Ransom nods. “Small enough to upload?”
Holster quickly edits the video, then clicks on Bob’s name, and starts up a private chat, typing: ‘Uh so how much chirping material do we have here, Mr Zimmermann? For science.’
Neither of them expect Bob to be awake, but the message comes in not five minutes later. ‘Tell Jack I expect invitations by the end of the Hockey season. This was a true gift. I’ll get you rink-side seats to any game you want, just say the word, boys.’
The pair look at each other, then Ransom scrambles for his own phone. “Fuck it. Google translate.” He types it in as best he can remember, and it pulls up, and the pair stare at each other.
“Bro,” Ransom whispers.
Holster just nods. “Bro.”
(dedicated to @nomorelonelydays for her tags. This is all your fault!)
Jack comes out of an outpatient knee surgery about 6-7 years into their marriage (maybe a decade after they get together) and like Bob, Alicia and Bitty are waiting in the family area. And like Bob and Alicia come and check on him after he’s been placed in a room to come of anesthesia but he isn’t awake yet so they go get food for all them while Bitty waits with him.
Jack comes around, blinking blearily and is like “Oh, hey.” with his heavy accent.
“Hi” Bitty says back grinning.
Jack tries to sit up.
“No no, sweetie, you need to stay put,” Bitty says gently pushing him back.
“Why?”
“Cause you just had knee surgery honey,” Bitty says.
At this point Bob and Alicia come back and Bob is so amused he starts filming. (apparently he also had some sort of corrective surgery at some point (he’s a pro- athlete after all) and he says some wacky shit but this was before people had recording devices in their pockets, but Alicia has Stories™)
“Hey there champ, how are you feeling?” Bob says patting his shoulder.
“Pretty good, especially since I have a cute nurse,” Jack stage whispers gesturing vaguely towards Bitty.
“That so? Do you want me to introduce you?” Bob says to him, laughter in his voice.
“Yeah, that’d be great,” Jack whispers louder this time, looking up at Bob seriously.
“Okay champ, this is Eric Bittle, your husband” Bob says grinning.
“Hey there Eri- Wait what?”
“Eric “Bitty” Bittle, your husband,” Alicia repeats.
“What?” Jack ruminates on this looking back at Bitty who is sitting on the foot of his bed facing him. “Woah”
“Really?” he asks.
“Really,” Bitty pipes up.
“Wow,” Jack ruminates on this some more. “When—How— How long have we been married?” Jack asks.
“Seven years, sweetheart, it’ll be eight in July,” Bitty says.
“Wow,” Jack says again. “You’re a looker though aren’t ya, eh?”
He gives a lopsided grin. Bitty gives a hearty laugh.
“But you’re the cutest guy I’ve ever seen.”
“Thanks, honey”Bitty smiles, blushing.
“Like, whoa, give me a spin,” Jack says, motioning with his hand with the cracker he’s been given, shaking a few crumbs everywhere.
“Jack!” Bitty blushes and laughs. “Let me go ask the nurse if you can have ice chips yet. Do you want some ice chips honey?” Bitty gets up to the door and turns to ask him.
“Woah, your glutes are perfect,” Jack answers. Alicia gives a high-pitched shout laugh and Bob guffaws.
“I’m gonna go get you ice chips sweetie, keep eating your crackers,” Bitty says, turning red and escaping out the door.
Jack turns to his dad. “I hit the jackpot.”
Bob smiles patting him on the shoulder again and says, “Yes you did son, yes you did.“
There’s a space of two inches on Bitty’s neck that is the most sensitive part of his body. Jack has catalogued the second most sensitive (earlobe) and third (the inside of his wrist), but pressing mouth to neck pulls Bitty’s bones right out of him, turns him all melted in Jack’s arms. Bitty is–surprisingly–quiet when they’re alone and together like this, his hands and body eager but his throat filled with little whimpers and sighs instead of what Jack expected, which was…words.
It makes him wonder why Bitty is so quiet in this when he’s never quiet in anything. What’s made him so silent in intimate moments like this, the few minutes they have in his room while pretending to wash up for dinner? Through the half-open window in Bitty’s room, Jack can smell the barbecue Coach has on the grill, and he thinks, Oh. That’s probably why.
“You feel good,” Jack tries, his hand on Bitty’s hip, fingers slipped just under his tank to find his sweat-damp skin. Georgia is hot, but Bitty’s skin is even hotter.
Bitty makes another soft noise at that, and when Jack pulls back just enough to look at him, his eyes are glazed, his mouth pink and slack. Jack kisses him. How can he not.
Suzanne Bittle’s voice carries sweetly up the stairs, calling them boys and asking them down for dinner. Bitty goes still in Jack’s arms. Jack can tell by the way Bitty’s chest heaves that his heart is fluttering behind his ribcage.
These stolen moments aren’t enough, and Jack wants nothing more than to explore the summer stretch of Bitty’s body where he can take his time and learn and appreciate. He doesn’t want to be rushed. Doesn’t want to stop.
“Come with me to Providence,” he says, mouth falling into those two inches of his neck. Bitty clutches at him. Jack exhales.
"When?“
“When I leave. Let me get your ticket. Come with me.”
“Jack…"
"Come with me."
Bitty’s fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck feels like he’s had them there for a long time, the movement so easy and practiced. Bitty shakes out a breath. "Yes. Okay. I will.”
Dex was not raised in a barn. He has manners. He has respect. He has a general sense of right and wrong. He says ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘excuse me.’ He gives up his seat on the bus for elderly people. He holds the door open for people behind him. He doesn’t steal or cheat, and he tries not to lie. And he knows it’s not okay to read someone’s work unless they want you to. He wasn’t one of the kids who always tried to read his classmates’ personal essays in class. He never pushes his friends to share the things they’re working on. Heck, he grew up living in the same room as his older brother, who definitely kept a journal under his mattress, and never even considered touching it.
So he knows Nursey’s poetry is off limits. It’s tempting, sure, to peek at the words Nursey spends hours and hours pouring over, scribbling down and scratching out and erasing and rewriting until his fingers cramp up. He doesn’t look, though. If Nursey wants to share his poetry with Dex he will. Dex doesn’t have the right to go snooping for it.
Yes this is perfect – I really love imaging how Chowder’s first few weeks went with the Sharks. Like, right now the Sharks are a very good team (and have been for a while) but let’s say that the reason they are recruiting directly from college is because they have been really struggling at the goalie position and coming so close to the Cup but then always falling short before the finals has had a toll on morale and to the players, it seems that bringing in such a n00b goalie is a sign that management is looking to shake it up. Or giving up on this team and planning to do a rebuild, get some younger players and try with a different group of guys.
So, essentially, when Chowder bursts into the Sharks locker room full of happiness and enthusiasm and without even the faintest attempt at being cool at all, this does not exactly help matters. This kid is young in every sense of the word (like, yes, he has his braces off by this point, but he is not ashamed to say he wore them up until 2 years ago and dear god he actually won’t stop talking) and bringing in young, untested guys means a rebuild year and people are not that happy.
Chowder does not seem to notice.
He just keeps babbling on about how excited he is to be here and how much he looks up to all these guys and “omg it has been so swawesome to watch you guys like i have grown up watching you and-!!!” (okay, we get it, you’re young, ugh).
So the first few days of practice, they don’t scrimmage, just do some conditioning stuff, practice a few passes. And Chowder is fine. He’s not a bad player and his conditioning seems good but still… a team isn’t going to get far without a really good goalie and this one… well, they just aren’t sure he has what it takes. No one says it aloud but there are shared glances and sighs and the vibe for the first few days is not exactly what it should be.
Then, then finally on Friday of that first week, they scrimmage. Full 5 on 5 with Chowder in one goal, second string goalie in the other (privately people have been saying he should be moved to the first string because at least he seems to take the game seriously and not act like a fan) and, sure, people notice that Chowder goes a bit quiet the minutes leading up to the game but they figure he is probably nervous and his mask covers most of his face so they can’t see him all that well and-
Well, and then they play and Chowder is the goalie.
And Chowder is… well, it’s not that the boys are going easy on him at the beginning but it wouldn’t exactly be good form to demolish your goalie’s self-esteem during your first scrimmage when it’s his rookie year so they aren’t whipping pucks at his head at a full 100%. They are being polite about it.
Until none of their polite shots go in. Not one.
And at this point, the other team has scored twice and, look, the boys playing against Chowder are not trying to lose against their teammates so they start trying harder. And then harder. And, nope, those shots are not being polite anymore. Not even a little bit.
They don’t tell the team right away. Not because they’re trying to hide anything, but because they figure it’s so obvious that they don’t need to.
Their friendship transitions so surprisingly easily into something more that it probably looks impossible from the outside. Strange, to say the least. Miraculous, maybe, but only if one really hadn’t been paying attention.
Dex now does homework with Nursey’s hand resting on the back of his neck, palm warm against the skin there and fingertips absently scratching up against the grain of Dex’s short hair and then softly back down.
Dex carries an extra beanie with him on cold days, and pulls it down over Nursey’s ears for him as they walk to class, despite Nursey’s token protests.
He forgets to eat breakfast on busy days, always has, but now finds black coffee and overpriced Annie’s banana nut muffins on his open textbook when he stops at his dorm room between his morning classes.
He smiles a little quicker, a little easier.
He still argues just as much as he ever did.
It’s… effortless. It’s good.
And okay, so maybe Dex has been waiting for the other shoe to drop this whole time–that’s just how his life tends to work–but he didn’t really expect said shoe to manifest in a stunned group silence at team breakfast in the wake of Nursey pressing a quick kiss to his temple as he sits down to join them.
It feels like the entire cafeteria freezes, even if it’s really just the chaos that is the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team during a mealtime suddenly stopping short in collective wonder.
Writing and reading fanfic is a masterclass in characterisation.
Consider: in order to successfully write two different “versions” of the same character – let alone ten, or fifty, or a hundred – you have to make an informed judgement about their core personality traits, distinguishing between the results of nature and nurture, and decide how best to replicate those conditions in a new narrative context. The character you produce has to be recognisably congruent with the canonical version, yet distinct enough to fit within a different – perhaps wildly so – story. And you physically can’t accomplish this if the character in question is poorly understood, or viewed as a stereotype, or one-dimensional. Yes, you can still produce the fic, but chances are, if your interest in or knowledge of the character(s) is that shallow, you’re not going to bother in the first place.
Because ficwriters care about nuance, and they especially care about continuity – not just literal continuity, in the sense of corroborating established facts, but the far more important (and yet more frequently neglected) emotional continuity. Too often in film and TV canons in particular, emotional continuity is mistakenly viewed as a synonym for static characterisation, and therefore held anathema: if the character(s) don’t change, then where’s the story? But emotional continuity isn’t anti-change; it’s pro-context. It means showing how the character gets from Point A to Point B as an actual journey, not just dumping them in a new location and yelling Because Reasons! while moving on to the next development. Emotional continuity requires a close reading, not just of the letter of the canon, but its spirit – the beats between the dialogue; the implications never overtly stated, but which must logically occur off-screen. As such, emotional continuity is often the first casualty of canonical forward momentum: when each new TV season demands the creation of a new challenge for the protagonists, regardless of where and how we left them last, then dealing with the consequences of what’s already happened is automatically put on the backburner.
Fanfic does not do this.
Fanfic embraces the gaps in the narrative, the gracenotes in characterisation that the original story glosses, forgets or simply doesn’t find time for. That’s not all it does, of course, but in the context of learning how to write characters, it’s vital, because it teaches ficwriters – and fic readers – the difference between rich and cardboard characters. A rich character is one whose original incarnation is detailed enough that, in order to put them in fanfic, the writer has to consider which elements of their personality are integral to their existence, which clash irreparably with the new setting, and which can be modified to fit, to say nothing of how this adapted version works with other similarly adapted characters. A cardboard character, by contrast, boasts so few original or distinct attributes that the ficwriter has to invent them almost out of whole cloth. Note, please, that attributes are not necessarily synonymous with details in this context: we might know a character’s favourite song and their number of siblings, but if this information gives us no actual insight into them as a person, then it’s only window-dressing. By the same token, we might know very few concrete facts about a character, but still have an incredibly well-developed sense of their personhood on the basis of their actions.
The fact that ficwriters en masse – or even the same ficwriter in different AUs – can produce multiple contradictory yet still fundamentally believable incarnations of the same person is a testament to their understanding of characterisation, emotional continuity and narrative.
So I was reading this rumination on fanfic and I was thinking about something @involuntaryorange once talked to me about, about fanfic being its own genre, and something about this way of thinking really rocked my world? Because for a long time I have thought like a lawyer, and I have defined fanfiction as “fiction using characters that originated elsewhere,” or something like that. And now I feel like…fanfiction has nothing to do with using other people’s characters, it’s just a character-driven *genre* that is so character-driven that it can be more effective to use other people’s characters because then we can really get the impact of the storyteller’s message but I feel like it could also be not using other people’s characters, just a more character-driven story. Like, I feel like my original stuff–the novellas I have up on AO3, the draft I just finished–are probably really fanfiction, even though they’re original, because they’re hitting fanfic beats. And my frustration with getting original stuff published has been, all along, that I’m calling it a genre it really isn’t.
And this is why many people who discover fic stop reading other stuff. Once you find the genre you prefer, you tend to read a lot in that genre. Some people love mysteries, some people love high-fantasy. Saying you love “fic” really means you love this character-driven genre.
So when I hear people be dismissive of fic I used to think, Are they just not reading the good fic? Maybe I need to put the good fic in front of them? But I think it turns out that fanfiction is a genre that is so entirely character-focused that it actually feels weird and different, because most of our fiction is not that character-focused.
It turns out, when I think about it, I am simply a character-based consumer of pop culture. I will read and watch almost anything but the stuff that’s going to stick with me is because I fall for a particular character. This is why once a show falters and disagrees with my view of the character, I can’t just, like, push past it, because the show *was* the character for me.
Right now my big thing is the Juno Steel stories, and I know that they’re doing all this genre stuff and they have mysteries and there’s sci-fi and meanwhile I’m just like, “Okay, whatever, I don’t care about that, JUNO STEEL IS THE BEST AND I WANT TO JUST ROLL AROUND IN HIS SARCASTIC, HILARIOUS, EMOTIONALLY PINING HEAD.” That is the fanfiction-genre fan in me coming out. Someone looking for sci-fi might not care about that, but I’m the type of consumer (and I think most fic-people are) who will spend a week focusing on what one throwaway line might reveal about a character’s state of mind. That’s why so many fics *focus* on those one throwaway lines. That’s what we’re thinking about.
And this is what makes coffee shop AUs so amazing. Like, you take some characters and you stick them in a coffee shop. That’s it. And yet I love every single one of them. Because the focus is entirely on the characters. There is no plot. The plot is they get coffee every day and fall in love. That’s the entire plot. And that’s the perfect fanfic plot. Fanfic plots are almost always like that. Almost always references to other things that clue you in to where the story is going. Think of “friends to lovers” or “enemies to lovers” or “fake relationship,” and you’re like, “Yes. I love those. Give me those,” and you know it’s going to be the same plot, but that’s okay, you’re not reading for the plot. It’s like that Tumblr post that goes around that’s like, “Me starting a fake relationship fic: Ooooh, do you think they’ll fall in love for real????” But you’re not reading for the suspense. Fic frees you up from having to spend effort thinking about the plot. Fic gives your brain space to focus entirely on the characters. And, especially in an age of plot-twist-heavy pop culture, that almost feels like a luxury. “Come in. Spend a little time in this character’s head. SPEND HOURS OF YOUR LIFE READING SO MANY STORIES ABOUT THIS CHARACTER’S HEAD. Until you know them like a friend. Until you know them so well that you miss them when you’re not hanging out with them.”
When that is your story, when the characters become like your friends, it makes sense that you’re freed from plot. It’s like how many people don’t really have a “plot” to hanging out with their friends. There’s this huge obsession with plot, but lives don’t have plots. Lives just happen. We try to shape them into plots later, but that’s just this organizational fiction we’re imposing. Plot doesn’t have to be the raison d’etre of all story-telling, and fic reminds us of that.
Idk, this was a lot of random rambling but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.
“fanfiction has nothing to do with using other people’s characters, it’s just a character-driven *genre* that is so character-driven that it can be more effective to use other people’s characters”
yes!!!! I feel like I knew this on some level but I’ve never explicitly thought about it that way. this feels right, yep. Mainstream fiction often seems very dry to me and I think this is why – it tends to skip right over stuff that would be a huge plot arc in a fanfic, if not an entire fanfic in itself. And I’m like, “hey, wait, go back to that. Why are you skipping that? Where’s the story?” But now I think maybe people who don’t like fanfiction are going like, “why is there an entire fanfic about something that could have happened offscreen? Is anything interesting ever going to happen here? Where’s the story?”
i’ve often thought about how interesting it would be to write a novel about a group of characters in a particular genre, like high fantasy— and then instead of a sequel, the next book takes those characters into steampunk or space opera or goth western, and plays out another genre’s plot. over the course of three or four books you could see what worlds cause which characters to bloom or wither or be twisted into evil or to rise to glory, which circumstances suit which character best. it would be the literary equivalent of monet’s series works, to make a new painting of the same subject in different lights.
He hadn’t wanted things to turn out this way. They shouldn’t have. An expert at dodging, yet how ironic that he hadn’t avoided getting into this mess. There were bitter moments, angry moments. Whole hours and days when he’d have to disappear: to lick his wounds like a dog or he would do something else he’d regret.
Like the right thing wrong thing and break his best friend’s heart.
just moving along like everyone else 