Swallow Pride

which could mean nothing

[samwell-snark]

tag guide

#so the drama -> documentation of the fandom drama/reasons so many people left and are fed up with the author

subtag #she did WHAT -> for the really dire stuff

#deleted tweets -> resources of canon, lore and content hard to come by these days

#the parse of it all -> discussion about kent parson's impact on the narrative

#schroedingers bisexual -> fact check between canon and fanon which tends to overtake canon

#which could mean nothing -> general snark/circlejerk

#johnson's facebook posts -> blog meta

[samwell-snark]

This is not anything but coming back after ten years of refusing to label the character to confirm that he is in fact not bisexual is really funny to me. Go girl give us nothing, etc.

[bittysbetterbootybureau]

so, i made a thing!!!

I’ve decided to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time: combine the comic, blog posts, extras, and tweets from Check, Please! into one document, because I’m crazy.

I read the main comic the night of The Sophomore Year Kiss™ and went back to read the extras shortly after. Going back and reading the extras was a daunting task back in 2016, and it’s much harder today - there’s so much stuff! Not to mention that Bitty’s Twitter was private by the time I started reading the comic, so I didn’t see most of the tweets until Chirpbook was published. Plus, I struggle to find all the blog posts on the official site, and I am a blog post truther! Sophomore Year doesn’t hit the same without the commentary! Nothing emotionally destroys me like: “The secret to drawing a younger Jack is making him smile, the end. Hahaha, now we’re all sad.” Lastly, some of my friends love the comic and find both Tumblr and the official site hard to navigate, so I wanted to make this a resource for them so they don’t miss out on all those delightful ask-a-wellies and sketch jams.

What I always wanted was to have that true multi-platform experience (comics, blogs, tweets, and extras) in order. With that, I present this slideshow.

The extras on these slides are ONLY things that (as far as I know) aren't available anywhere other than Tumblr/the website. Please buy the comic and also Chirpbook and Madison and the Huddles. They’re worth every penny!!!!!! (seriously please please please please this comic is so good you want to give Ngozi all of your money please please please you want to so bad subscribe to the patreon while you're at it)

Also, if you want to help with this project, think anything should be edited, or have ideas on how to make it more effective/better/fun, please let me know! I just love this comic so much!!! I have only done through the end of Year 2 right now.

im insane

OMG Check, Please! but it’s everything* i love being insane *only up until Year 3 is currently done

[samwell-snark]

Did You Know?

In 2013, Ngozi Ukazi invented the name Kent to create the character of Kent Parson in her hit web comic OMG, Check Please!

The name would go on to become immensely popular, being adapted by Rachel Reid for the character of Dallas Kent, DC Comics for Clark Kent aka Superman and the ceremonial county Kent in South East England, a place that is famously full of damaged people who are actively bad.

[samwell-snark]

There is a phenomenon in this community which has long fascinated me, and it is the ways in which the people who are still fans of the comic and the author to this day express their enthusiasm.

Especially now with Heated Rivalry becoming so immensely popular, it seems as though more people come back to their old blogs to join the refrain of "this comic was the blueprint" and that HR somehow owes its success to this comic in particular.

There seems to persist a notion that the comic and by extension the author has somehow not been given their due, without acknowledging just how massive the comic was in its heyday and that it has been over half a decade since the comic wrapped up. I have trouble following that logic.

Game Changer, the first book in the HR series, was first published in 2016 as fanfiction at the same time as the comic, and Heated Rivalry the book came out in 2019 when the popularity of the comic had already massively dropped off and took six years to be adapted to television. At what point exactly was the comic supposed to have influenced the popularity of this series?

What I find much more likely to be happening is that the growth of the fanfic-to-publication industry has contributed to an increased interest in novels which play into popular fanfiction tropes (see also: Alchemised; The Love Hypothesis). Hockey fiction has always been popular in fanfiction circles, but it seems to me that the average fan of the comic is largely unaware of that.

[maeve-of-winter]

Do you know what I don't understand, I always see posts saying it's only Parse fans that have a problem with the comic and that's pretty right, but it shouldn't be. The only people who should be happy are Bitty fans because everyone else has been done dirty. Now I stopped engaging with the comic canon after the nonsense of the press conference so these things may have been introduced after that but where's the other gay characters? Where's the poc development? Where's the mental health stuff?

Yeah, I don’t quite understand that logic, either. It’s not as if Nursey, Chowder, Lardo, or Ransom had any individual story arcs, and Thirdy and George always existed for Jack’s story and really had no characterization of their own.

And what about Whiskey fans? His story is being a stereotypical portrayal of a lying and cheating bisexual, an archetype harmfully frequent in fiction that’s led to a lot of negative perception and invalidation IRL. And he’s Latinx as well, which ties into the stereotype of the horny Latinx/Latin lover character.

When you add in his ending that we saw in the Amazon preview, which is apologizing to Good Monogamous White Gay Bitty and admitting he could never be as wonderful or courageous as Bitty, it just leaves a really sour taste in my mouth.

[purble-gaymer]

are you portraying that character how you think they would act, or are you portraying them such that you can make a nuclear family structure out of them

[demilypyro]

Duuude don't question my version of events I'm such a reliable narrator. I'm literally the protagonist and the main character. You can literally read some of my internal thoughts, that clearly means you have complete access to an objective view of my thoughts and feelings and a correct impression of my characterization and the events unfolding around me. I'm not omitting any information from the audience. Nevermind that timeskip just now

[daisywords]

the plot chickens (becomes scared of its own premise)

[leescoresbies]

jack zimmermann is shroedinger’s bisexual in that we’re never actually going to see him address his sexuality in any meaningful way but his creator gets accolades for writing a bisexual character anyway

[leescoresbies]

he is also shroedinger’s crazy person but that’s another conversation

[softbrah]

he is also schroedinger’s addict who may or may not be in the process of relapsing throughout the course of the comic, but that’s another ANOTHER conversation

[xbox-nun]

Me as an art critic: this piece really explores the… Misogyny of the artist 🤔

[samwell-snark]

thinking of how intensely racist ngozi was for calling larissa duan "lard(o)" again good god. curious on whether she ever acknowledged or said something about this??

Not to my knowledge. But I agree, it's an extremely inconsiderate name for an Asian woman.

I'll look into it, seeing if there's anything she's said about this, but my guess based on gut feeling is: probably not.

[ngoziu]

Ours is a Ratchet Powerplay: A Blackhawks Story

This one’s for aerialbots. Thanks, m’dear, for reading my comic about a weird college hockey team. It’s like the opposite of every webcomic ever. Sports??? Two for you, aerialbots.

[samwell-snark]

Deleted Extra from 23/6/2013.

Details:

Jack is shown drinking beer.

Bitty is shown to be a Blackhawks fan, a detail that was later dropped, presumably due to controversies surrounding Patrick Kane.

[clementine-kesh]

the big three questions of media analysis: what the author wanted to say, what they actually said, and what they didn’t know they were saying

[clementine-kesh]

for the last one i don’t just mean oh the author inadvertently wrote in gay subtext or whatever i’m talking about media as a cultural artifact which can reveal a ton about societal norms, biases, ideals, etc. it’s all about positionality and an unexamined positionality is often the most revealing of all

[lightnersdream-archive]

depiction isn't endorsement but not all depictions have the same merit

[lightnersdream-archive]

the more sensitive a subject is the harsher the criticism will be if you fuck it up. that's how this works

[spiribia]

a lot of stories treat romance like it makes the relationship between two characters self explanatory and to be honest it doesn’t

[enonem]

story: they're in love :)

me: why?

story: what do you mean? they're in love :)

me: what do they bring to each other's lives? what do they admire about one another? what draws them to each other?

story: love :) :)

me: ok... so what is that going to look like now?

story: like love :) :) :)

me: are their personalities going to clash at all? are they going to have arguments? learn to compromise for each other? will they need to adapt to sharing their life with another person? is it going to be smooth perfect harmony from day one? are they going to be always together? see each other sometimes as their occupations allow? how does this relationship affect their lifes.

story: they're in love :) :) :)