I don’t have a lot of art for my Check Please fanfic, which is surprising, given that I have so many stories in the fandom. In most fandoms, I will do one long story or a long series of stories, all within the same universe. Check, Please! has inspired me so many times, in big was and in small, that it is by far my biggest category on AO3.
This art is for my newest Check Please fic, as of this writing, a project I did for Fandom Loves Puerto Rico. The prompt was hilarious and detailed enough that I was able to churn out about 5000 words in a few hours, once the preliminary discussion was over about what the prompt would entail. What a joy to write!
Just Guys Baking Pies
Josh Urben is just a guy from Ohio who wants to play hockey in the NHL. It’s an honor to stay with Jack Zimmermann during his rookie year. He never believed all that gossip anyway. And he has the nicest roommate, who is such an amazing cook. They’re such good friends! If only they’d stop trying to get Josh on social media…
My longer series is one I started in March of 2016, while I was in the middle of writing my Merlin fic. It’s a much more complex, serious set of stories about coming out, going public, parenting and finding ways to happiness, even when the situation is terrible and overwhelming. Mind the tags on AO3!
Actually, I Do Make the Rules
Mama Bittle’s Rule Number One
Rule number one is that Mama Loves You. Maybe Dicky has forgotten that? Suzanne Bittle decides it’s time to remind him. Of that, and that nothing on the internet is ever private.
Halo Violations and Defensive Holding: Coach’s Rules
“My son is gay, and he’s the most caring, kind, gentle soul I’ve ever known, and I’d much rather sit in hell with him forever than spend a moment in a heaven that included someone as hateful as you.”
“I’ve got kids dying here, killing themselves, getting beaten to death, not even for being gay, but because someone said they might be gay.”
“We don’t treat people like that. We don’t let our friends treat people like that. We don’t let people get treated that way.”
Equal Protection: School Rules
“It doesn’t matter here on this campus if you believe that homosexuality is a sin, or if you think it is the best thing since the invention of the spray tan. The fact of the matter is that gay and lesbian and bisexual people exist. … And everyone, every single student has a right to come to this school and learn without harassment, no matter how different they are from the good ‘ol strappin’ southern white boys we glorify so readily here.”
“I have spent twenty years keeping quiet about the things I’ve seen. I will not be quiet about it for another day. I call myself a decent man. I hear people every day talking about how important manners are in the South. How we are good and moral and superior because of that morality. And I want to believe it. I want to see it. And I think it’s time we stop paying lip service to the idea that we are decent people and start actually acting like decent people.”
“The difference between life and death isn’t who they are. It’s who you are. You can be a hero, or a villain here. There are no innocent bystanders.”
Rule Number Two
“You’re telling me that Jack Zimmermann scores a hat trick every time that boy shows up at a game?”
“I like watching him score,” Bitty said. “I guess he scores a little more when I’m there?”
Jack coughed. Bitty blushed. “Goals. He scores goals when I’m there.”
In which the media is TRYING, okay? And our heroes take control.
Broken Rules
Sometimes life changes really quickly. Sometimes everything happens at once. Sometimes the worst things and the best things are intertwined. Sometimes there are things that can’t be fixed, can’t be solved, only survived.
Or: This is what happens when I blithely decide, “Oh, well, at least they wouldn’t end up in THAT situation,” and then my brain explains to me exactly how they COULD.
Healing Rules
Directly following Broken Rules, our heroes come to grips with a new reality.
There are more short pieces in the fandom, but these are the main stories. They contain many gay, lesbian, and bi characters, as well as several trans and nonbinary characters and a main OC in the later stories who is aro/ace. There are also a number of PoC characters both canon and OC.