#so they're invested in presenting them and their relationship in the worst light possible and as whats ruining everything

[astralleywright]

given how much people argued during c2 and accused certain characters/ships of being abusive, i would say that most bell's hells hate is 100% projection by c2 fans. or maybe not projection, something else? something that quantifies as like, transferring hate of one series to another. like i can guarantee the second c4 starts up and sam's new character does something crummy that people will be like "MY PERFECT PRECIOUS LAUDNA WOULD NEVER DO THIS!" when like currently they're calling her irredeemable and selfish.

yeah i know what you mean! some combination of hindsight bias and nostalgia? i know there was a lot of complaints about c2 by vm fans when it first came out at least. people want the old thing that they're familiar with and quite likely started with, not this new thing that's slightly different and is taking resources that could be devoted to their old thing.

but yeah i was just thinking yesterday about caleb not telling the rest of the nein that he killed his parents for like, 80 episodes after he told veth and beau, and how if we knew someone in the hells was keeping a comparatively big secret at this point people would be losing their goddamn minds lol. bards lament was episode 85. i too am worried about my little guys falling apart and failing, but i don't think its nearly as inevitable as some people make it out to be.

[birlwrites]

Okay!! Question number 3!!! What do the other marauders think of regulus in ttdl? Remus and Peter. And what does regulus think of them? Do they also dislike him because of what they heard from sirius?

OK HERE WE GOOOOO

so: anyone who's ever heard sirius rant about regulus more than once knows that sirius is simultaneously super invested in regulus's life and also absolutely determined to make clear that it's out of anger, like in a 'he did the most ANNOYING thing today' way instead of a 'i miss him so i talk about him to other people since i can't talk to him' way

remus is... let's call it aware that sirius is a biased narrator. he thinks that sirius absolutely still cares about regulus and it's fairly likely that regulus cares about sirius. he also thinks that maybe things would be better if the two of them sat down and had one honest heart-to-heart. and he thinks that the likelihood of this happening is nil.

peter is 100% on sirius's side here but less militant about it than james is. he's offended on sirius's behalf that regulus didn't reach out after the disownment, even once they were at hogwarts under one roof again. but remus has managed to persuade peter that sirius is probably presenting regulus in the worst light possible and also? hasn't been a close confidante of reg's in a long time? so peter's on the side of 'well maybe regulus had his reasons but he's still been shitty to sirius'

as for what regulus thinks of them, i don't think he spares much thought for peter afhslghfjksjgkf - like yeah that's one of sirius's friends but he's not one of sirius's best friends. in regulus's head, james is sirius's best friend, and remus is sirius's other best friend - as in, not james, but still very much a best-friend-type relationship

like regulus very much ranks sirius's friends according to how close sirius is with them, and then that's how much regulus cares about them (in a bad way afhlsgjshfj). i don't think he finds remus *annoying* in the same way that he finds james annoying, but he's close with sirius (this New sirius) so he obviously can't be that great

the other thing is that remus is the quidditch commentator! that'll come up in the ttdl chapter i'll post tomorrow, as a matter of fact, which renders this excellent timing

remus's commentary style is biased, but not to the same degree as lee jordan's - remus likes poking fun at his friends just as much as he likes doing it to the other teams, so although he is very much on gryffindor's side, i'll go ahead and call his commentary style. humorous. there are ad hominem attacks, naturally, and he makes some truly shitty puns on players' names, but he's overall a little less 'THIS IS LIFE OR DEATH' than lee jordan is, u know? so he's more chill

regulus is just kind of resigned to being the target of a bunch of these ad hominem attacks - it would be a stretch to say he's offended, because he doesn't really. care enough to have actual feelings about it? like, here's an excerpt from ch 29:

*

"Buckner makes an early shot on goal, blocked by Nott," Lupin's voice says. "Professor, I just thought of a pun."

"If you absolutely must," McGonagall's voice says in the background.

"Her name is Nott because she does not let the other team score. And... I seem to be receiving a thumbs-up from Fleming, I guess she appreciated that one. Vanity in possession, the Slytherin Chasers are wasting no time moving the Quaffle back to the other side of the pitch—you know who does seem to be wasting time? The Seekers. They are twiddling their thumbs up there. Not sure if that's a long-term strategy or if they're waiting for opportunities—anyone who's seen Slytherin play anytime in the last few years is fully aware that Regulus Black does not like sitting still on the pitch, much to the detriment of the opposing team when he decides that he'd rather be a Bludger than a Seeker. We all know he lies about saying he saw the Snitch."

This seems to Regulus to be unfairly targeted. It's not as if McKinnon doesn't do the exact same thing.

"Mr. Lupin, I've asked you in the past to refrain from the ad hominem commentary," McGonagall's voice says. "If you can't restrain yourself—"

"You'll get a first-year who knows nothing about quidditch to commentate, I know," Lupin says.

*

like sure, regulus is like 'well that's unfair mckinnon does it too' but he's definitely not surprised that remus is bringing up the (100% true) fact that regulus interferes with the opposing team under the guise of claiming to have seen the snitch, and he's also not particularly hurt by it. naturally any pro-gryffindor commentator is going to be biased against the slytherins

i guess to sum it up, i'd say:

remus about regulus: probably the most sympathetic to regulus out of all of the marauders, although he's far from impressed with regulus's communication skills and doesn't like knowing that sirius is struggling as a result (although sirius doesn't show *that* much interest in communicating with regulus either, it's at least more - remus has heard about sirius trying to initiate conversation and being rebuffed. you know, like in chapter four, 8 million years ago)

peter about regulus: not all that sympathetic - aware that they're very much only getting sirius's side of the story, but sirius's side of the story is very compelling and, like remus, peter has heard the tales of Regulus Being Impossible To Talk To For Five Fucking Seconds

regulus about remus: sirius's other best friend, who doesn't seem to be a complete and total asshole but nonetheless is very much Sirius's Best Friend and therefore he sucks even if regulus doesn't have an exact, fully fleshed-out diagram of how - but regulus doesn't have the same urge to spite remus that he does to spite james, and remus is overall a less emotionally charged person to him

regulus about peter: oh yeah, the other one. close friends with sirius, but not a Best Friend, and therefore, whatever - unless they interact, in which case regulus does not like him, but in general regulus doesn't devote any time or energy to thinking about peter

[lexpistachio]

What exactly did she retcon about Kent? Not snarky, just really curious, because he's my favorite and I want to know what changed about him. Was it her feelings about him where she said that he was one of her favorites and she had to change it by saying "they're all my favorite"? Or was it a characteristic of him? I want more Kent. He's he only thing keeping me invested at this point because he has motivations and stuff. And I want him to be happy if happy endings are the endgame of this comic.

Just to be clear, retcon refers to reframing past events to serve a current plot need. For an old-timer like me, but maybe it’s just me?–the Kent/Jack relationship was retconned.

I started following the comics a few chapters in, lost interest in it, and came right back before when Kent was first introduced.

I want you to imagine reading right there with me.

So I liked this new character Kent but we knew so little about him. We knew then he’d figure in Jack’s life–and this was before Parse 1 2 3–because he was right there during Jack’s awkward teen years, Jack backtracks talking about Kent while Bittle was having his moment. Updates were scarcer than the number of movies Robert De Niro made in 2013, we pick up bits and pieces of what we could in between long time gaps, try to make sense of them (to be honest, speculating about Kent’s motivations and backstory was the most fun this comic ever was, but also the worst because haters). There were little bits of information that were set in stone:

kent was jack’s first best friend

kent was the only one who called jack “zimms”

jack called kent “kenny” fondly: You know when it’s the last summer of your childhood and you’re just hanging with your bro and you’re smoothing out his cowlick and you fondly call him Kenny while trying not to think about how mercilessly cruel fate is lol you know bros being bros

there were pre-angst shenanigans

the 34 days before the draft were “perfect” and Jack smiled a lot then

when Bitty first asked about Kent, Jack said “parse and i owe each other a lot of apologies”

To a Parse fan like me who’d been reading along, these weren’t just bullet points. I held onto them like a lifeline. These were the only ‘canonical’ material we had on Kent except one night of douchebaggery, but even that reeked of yearning and lashing out out of spite out of being rejected; notably what we knew of Kent and Jack before they had a falling out were largely painted in a positive light. I think you’d have been blind then to ignore how it was heavily implied that that relationship was emotional in nature. Arguably romantic, but definitely emotional. To quote a more expounded meta on this:

it’s been established that jack and kent were best friends when they were teenagers. jack is characterized as kind of awkward and private. he grew up with celebrity parents and was a hockey prodigy growing up around a lot of attention and pressure. i think it’s important to acknowledge that while jack was probably going through a lot around this time, parse was able to befriend him and support him as a best friend. as best friends they probably trusted each other with a lot of secrets, but after whatever happened to break that trust with each other, those secrets turned into ammunition. in parse3, parse happened used his on jack to express his anger and bitterness. jack probably has ammunition on parse as well, but wasn’t in a position to use it. based on the reading, i think the most realistic theory is that jack and kent are involved in a conflict where both parties are at fault.

Looking back on it now, I’m trying to read all of the above and ask myself if that was a lot of extrapolation to have made. Because right now, I still can’t look past the belief that that’s a perfectly reasonable assumption to make. 

Now, after the Year 3 Comic 7 update, if you take Jack at his words, they (1) only hooked up a few times, (2) it’s Kent who never got over it (3)that relationship with Kent wasn’t anything more than “physical hockey.” Should we take him for his word? Maybe, maybe not, but I think that’s a moot question, because the comics hinged Kent’s relevance based on how heavily he affects Jack. And after that update, Kent’s relevance is nothing. The comics would present Jack now as a matured, well-adjusted adult with a lot of perspective (without any trace of his other issues existing at all) and that’s who he’s supposed to be when he says those words, and according to him, it was a meaningless relationship and Kent was just a guy he used to do sometimes.

Did we over-interpret? Maybe Jack only smiled a lot because he was getting some? But how about the things he knew he should apologize about to Parse? What about freezing out his best friend and shutting him out for years and refusing to talk to him even though he apparently knew Parse had feelings for him?

Maybe N changed her mind midway. Maybe the canon was intentionally misleading. In any case, the tvtropes page for retcon includes this:

As the number of twists and misdirections in a story becomes higher, it becomes more difficult to tell whether an event actually is a retcon (which implies that the writers changed their minds), or a misdirection (which implies that the writers intended the “retconned” version all along, and had been deliberately misleading the audience before). In some cases, it is impossible to tell, short of reading the author’s mind (even then, it might not helped, as it’s entirely possible for an author to be on the fence about what they’re planning to do)

But at the end of the day, it was still Jack buddyfucking his bestfriend while calling him a petname, and then snubbing him afterwards.

But to answer your question here are some of the information that have their ORIGINAL source material deleted by Ngozi:

this post which the wiki cites as material for the following

Kent is 5'10" and about 175 pounds

He arrived at the Epikegster in a rented Porsche 918 Spyder, which the lacrosse bros took pictures with.

He was Jack’s first best friend. 

He is the only one who calls Jack “Zimms”

most of the above info were reposted here except the Porsche bit.

The sources for the following information were deleted by Ngozi too:

Kent’s middle name starts with V

that Kent has a cat

that Kent was born in NY 

on July 4, 1990

that tweet where she says Kent was Jack’s first best friend.