#potatomann

[slapshotsandscones]

Tater, Shitty, Jack, and Bitty have a group chat that consists entirely of Tater and Shitty sending the worst Jack Zimmerman rpf fanfics they can find back and forth, while Jack abd Bitty watch in horror. Shitty found a 150k, E rated, royalty/arranged marriage au Potatomann fic, which him and Tater both refer to as the group chat magnum opus.

[tater-mashkov]

Thinking about Potatomann celebrating Hanukkah in Montreal with the Zimmermanns don’t mind me

[birlcholtz]

If you’re still doing rarepairs, Jack/Tater is an absolute guilty pleasure of mine, and I’d love to see what you could come up with for them because your rarepairs are always just *hearteyes*

well FIRST of all here is a link to the last potatomann request i did in case you haven’t seen that yet! (my potatomann tag is,, unfortunately,, small)

jack 100% zimmermann learns russian as a surprise. there’s def at least 1 other russian guy on the falcs i mean this is the nhl we’re talking about??? so he practices w that guy on the dl and then surprises tater with it and tater almost LOSES HIS MIND

(he then immediately calls his mother whose english is quite minimal and whose french is nonexistent like MOM THE GUY I TOLD YOU ABOUT CAN TALK TO YOU NOW but in russian. jack absolutely charms her by being an absolute dork)

tater thinks jack’s neon yellow running shoes are like. amusingly ugly. so he buys himself a pair. they go jogging together in the morning with their matching ugly shoes and the potatomann shippers are both delighted and horrified

between the two of them they are the MOST popular people at family skate, kids gravitate to jack bc he talks to them like they’re actual people and tater is a tour de force of sociability and extroversion that takes all the adults by storm

they both dress like falcs gear is their uniform and the rest of the team hates it

you know how cats just kind of like,, sprawl on top of each other for no fucking reason? that. all the time

they both get into fights occasionally on the ice and they’re generally immune to most chirps about each of them as a person, but if someone chirps jack within tater’s earshot or vice versa they had better Watch The Fuck Out

however, also once jack dropped gloves because someone insulted tater’s mother. tater didn’t even drop gloves jack was just like SHE IS A LOVELY WOMAN GET HER NAME OUT OF YOUR FILTHY MOUTH

[canyouhearthelight]

PotatoMann

Okay, I bow to this ask, seriously. Not only do I read this comic and still had no clue what “PotatoMann” was, it took forever to make this even vaguely HAW related! Awesome ask!

“But Sam!” I argued with mock ferocity. “Bitsy and Jack were canon in that series! Not Alexi and Jack!”

“I don’t care!” he shouted back, giggling. We could be as long as we wanted since the Miys had soundproofed his quarters. “PotatoMann! PotatoMann for-EVER!”

Arguing over comics with Sam never got old.

[garden-of-succulents]

Fake RPF thoughts

(Thoughts kicked off by @emmagrant01‘s in-universe Jack/Tater fic)

So the last time we checked in on the in-universe RPF for Check Please, Potatomann shippers were warring with Jarse shippers and Jeric shippers are those weirdos in the corner nobody really believes.

Then Jack kisses Bitty on the ice. In a STUNNING UPSET, the Jeric shippers’ tin hats have been transformed into crowns of glory. What next?

Well. The Jeric narrative is, admittedly, a bit tinhatty. 

What’s their canon?  

Well. Eric’s first video about Jack probably mentions how Jack tried to lecture him about his diet. Next, Bitty talks about how hard hockey is, and "Jack chewed me out in front of everyone--again” and then spends time talking about how he only just learned about Bad Bob. Then he gets an assist in his first game and everyone hugs him and it’s wonderful; then he has to wake up at 4am for checking practice with Jack. A little before Christmas, he finally comes out to Shitty.

So a rough amalgamation of the five most popular Jeric fics is:

It was love at first sight. Jack looked at Eric, and Eric looked at Jack, and they just... knew. Jack’s instinctive urge to protect and nurture Eric was overwhelming from the very beginning. He was so delighted to see a hockey player who was so unashamedly gay. Lingering looks and fleeting touches quickly grew heated--but Jack knew, from the beginning, that they had to keep it a secret. Even from their teammates, even from Eric’s vlog.

So Eric has been covering for him ever since. He’s been lying for the sake of their love. Jack chewed him out in front of everyone to cover for the fact that he’d been chewing on Eric just before practice. When Eric says “Jack hates my guts”? He actually means, “Jack loves me, but I have to hide the truth.” When he says, “I should be happy about [being put on first line with Jack], but all i can think about is Jack’s stupid face glaring at me,” he means, “I love Jack so much, but it’s going to be so stressful to hide my affection for him.” They have only grown happier and more secure in their love over time.

In light of The Kiss, and the admittedly unsubtle nature of Bitty’s Y3 Tweets, this... starts to look less unplausible. (See also: how LGBT people hide in narratives/”queering the text”)

On the other hand.

You’ve now got a lot of really committed Potatomann shippers whose ships have just been totally Jossed. What happens now?! What are they supposed to do with their gifsets and headcanons and amazing chemistry?! WITH THAT HUG IN GAME FIVE?!?!?!?!?

Well. Threesomes solve everything. And someone comes to the rescue with an amazing invention.

For a while now, Jeric shippers have been puzzled and worried over the existence of, “Never fall for a straight boy.” Does this mean their timeline is all messed up, and it took Jack and Eric an actual year and a half to fall in love? (There are some fics along those lines--thoughtful, gritty, plotty things where they actually did hate each other at first and only slowly come to appreciate each other--but the idea doesn’t catch on.)

Well. Stay with me here.

What we see in the comic is: When Jack was out running with Georgia Martin in the fall of Eric’s sophomore year, she was trying to convince him to come and meet her team. This is as Jack and Eric are just planning out their final project. “Never fall for a straight boy” came at that project’s conclusion. Jack, we know, is a slow and methodical worker, so there are probably a few weeks between these two things. 

Jack spent enough time with the Falcs to get a sense of their “team feel” to factor it into his deliberations, and Parse said “good luck with the Falcs”, which means that Jack’s meeting with them was not a complete secret. It’s likely that Jack’s meeting with the Falcs wasn’t a complete secret--maybe he dropped by one of their practices and was photographed there, or something similar.

This event has been used by the sharper-eyed Potatomann shippers to estimate the moment Jack and Tater first met, even though they didn’t have, say, a nice video of their first meeting. Jack checked the team out, then signed with them a few months later. Tater felt that first frisson of attraction at that meeting, and then learned, to mixed apprehension and delight, that Jack would be signing with them after all. He then had months to stew between the signing and training camp, when he saw Jack again.

What if, a shipper asks. A shipper who ships Potatomann but has just gotten into Jeric post-Kiss, who wants to reconcile the two grieving halves of fandom and salvage their ship. What if Jack, in a committed relationship of over a year with Eric, met Tater and felt that same frisson. What if Eric was with him. What if Jack and Eric were both attracted to Tater, who did not seem to reciprocate the attention.

What if “never fall for a straight boy” was about Alexei Mashkov.

(The shipname is “Pietatomann” if you were wondering)

This opens SO MANY doors, you can’t believe it. A small coterie of friends on the same groupchat decide to all write fic along the same theme, and release them in a progression. Jack-and-Eric heatedly discussing their mutual attraction to Tater! Tater mourning the fact that the two hottest people he knows are already dating each other! THREESOMES! Angst over the Stanley Cup.

In this light, they revisit Tater’s visit to Samwell and go NUTS. Has Jack, having consummated his love with Alexei, brought him back to Samwell to include Eric in the triad? Is Eric jealous? Does Eric make them all breakfast in bed? How is he going to lie about having two boyfriends now, if one is already enough to fill his kitchen with roses?

(If Tater ever instagrams his convalescence, you know it’ll just convince people this triad is canon.)

What if, fandom asks, you can have your pie, and eat it too?

[emmagrant01]

Fic: gotta get away from here

About a year ago, there was a challenge to write in-universe hockey RPF for Check Please. I dashed this out in about a day, then posted it under another name un-betaed. I pulled it down a couple of months later with the intention of fixing it up and reposting it. It took a little longer than expected, but here it is!

So, please note that this is written as if by a person who exists in the Check Please universe. In other words, this is intended to be hockey rpf written by a fictional Providence Falconers fan, and written well before the Stanley Cup kiss, so it’s all extrapolated characterizations, based on what I think fans in that universe would actually know about Jack. So it’s pretty meta, as fics go?

Title: Gotta get away from here Author: Emma Grant Fandom: Providence Falconers RPF (Check Please universe) Pairing: Jack Zimmermann/Alexei Mashkov, Jack/omc, Jack/ofc Rating: E Length: 5800 words Summary: The man in front of him is taller than Jack, and probably twenty pounds lighter too. “I am Alexei,” he says, “but guys call me Tater, okay?” Tater’s grin is infectious and his eyes are bright, and the hand that squeezes Jack’s shoulder is big and warm. Jack recognizes the feeling that sweeps through him at that touch, and. Shit. It’s only been two minutes, and Jack is so, so fucked.

On AO3

[mypantsflewoff]

FUCKIN HEARTEYES EVERYWHERE, BOYS.

[potatomann-is-real]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Don’t talk to me.

I don’t know what I’m feeling right now, just let me be.