#sixteenth of September

[389]

The Sixteenth Of September, 1956 René Magritte

#René Magritte #rene magritte #art #nature #landscape #tree #trees #moon #phase #the sixteenth of september #1950s #1956 #u

[voidmuseum]

The Sixteenth of September

René Magritte

1956 Antwerp, Belgium

Oil on canvas

I dunno what about this one gets to me, but it's always been one of my favorites. Maybe it's the dreamlike quality of the moon in the tree. Or maybe it's the quiet simplicity. Magritte really fascinates me.

#sixteenth of september #Magritte #art #voidmuseum

[david-watts]

noticing just how. empty and unmotivated and avoidant I am. and realising I used to live like this constantly until I started having manic episodes and later improvements to my mental health because I graduated from two and a half metres square to myself to twelve

#like! ever since the sixteenth september 2017 to the twentieth january 2019 I lived like this. how did I keep failing to off myself #all this to say. I don't want to touch anything in here I don't want to get rid of any of the rubbish because it's been here since before #I can't do my washing and I can't bring myself to open a bottle of drink or brush my teeth #and it's not even like a I can't do it myself situation if anyone did it for me I'd probably have a breakdown #which feels exactly like what my m*ther did in years past and I hate that. I really hate that fact

[elixir]

Sixteenth of September

René Magritte - 1956

#art #painting #nature #landscape #contemporary art #oil on canvas #rene magritte

[sergeifyodorov]

would you actually be willing to give like a pretty long rundown of those main guys from the 2015 draft class?? because i would be Very interested

Of course! I wrote this in a Google doc so I could get it all down. It's a LOT btw -- this is the abridged version, leaving out what are probably important details, and it's still [checks] 11k words long. Sorry about that.

Anyone who tells you that the draft is a science is an idiot not worth their twenty-dollar stadium beer. The draft has analytical elements, sure, but it is a crapshoot through and through. If you dare to take a look back on draft histories from the past ten years -- the past twenty, the past thirty -- only rarely is the first pick, the “best in show,” actually the best of his class. I mean, no wonder, right? How well can you determine how good a man is going to be at hockey when you have only seen him as a teenager? Accuracy and prophecy are not kin.

Every ten years, though, you come across someone whose trajectory is easy to map. A prospect who is so head and shoulders above everyone else -- in numbers, in the eye test -- that you cannot help but say that they are going to be The Next One. God save the poor boy you put that name on.

In this case, it is 2014, and they are speaking those words again. On the dingy ice of an OHL arena, a red-haired Toronto boy with scared fawn’s eyes paces around the circles, faster than anyone else in the building. There are articles written about him already, calling his experience the torture test and labelling him Jesus, the saviour, the new great. It will get worse for him from here.

A Generational Prospect

It is 2004, and all eyes are on Sidney Crosby. He has eclipsed QMJHL scoring records. He performs highlight-reel antics. It is known that he will make the NHL as a teenager, and that whichever team has him will have an asset they should not ever think to relinquish.

Now, in 2023, all expectations of him are blown away. He is fifteenth on the all-time scoring list, having played most of his life in the dead-puck era, and will be inside the top ten by the time he retires. He has never been below a point per game, having gotten to a hundred points as an eighteen-year-old rookie and only slowed down to ninety at thirty-five. He has won three Cups; two Harts; two each Art Ross and Rocket Richard.

Something similar can be said for his contemporary, one Alex Ovechkin, sixteenth in all-time scoring, second ever in goals. While neither were always the most singular, dominant player of the past eighteen years (has it really been that long?) their longevity and consistent high-level play have cemented them into that tier of all-time greats. 

Such players only emerge once (or, for them, twice) in a generation; a “generational talent.” Gordie Howe was the first, before drafting happened at all, then Gretzky, joined as a part of the WHA merger, then Lemieux, then, debatably, Jagr through the early half of the dead-puck era, then Crosby and Ovechkin. Jagr was drafted fifth overall partly due to political constraints (it was 1990, and Czechia was behind the Iron Curtain), but all of the other drafted ones went first. While development curves for everyone else are hard to map, it is easy to tell, for them, how good they are as youths. We all call Gretzky the “Great One,” but he actually got that nickname before he was a teenager, because of how much better than the rest of his peers he was.

This is how we go up to the 2015 draft. Let’s say that it is September 2014, a full hockey season before the draft, so we can set the scene. Go back to the dingy Erie rink, watch the red-haired boy speed around the ice.

This is Connor McDavid. He was born in January just outside Toronto; if you are unfamiliar with the term “GTA,” I will pause now to tell you that it means Greater Toronto Area, and that it is the nexus of all hockey in the world. He is a Leafs fan, as so many of the GTA hockey-playing hopefuls are. 

Connor is an unusual child, even by young hockey prospect standards. Entry to any of the CHL major junior leagues -- the OHL, the WHL, the QMJHL -- starts at sixteen, but select few can apply early, and if they are academically, physically, and emotionally deemed adept they can be accepted for exceptional status and join at fifteen. This happens once every two or three years nowadays; Tavares and Ekblad were the only ones to predate McDavid. As well as being deemed exceptional by the board of the CHL, he is exceptional among peers, too: intelligent and analytical, black-and-white, painfully shy. He works hard in school, desperate to avoid coming off as a “dumb jock.” Media interviewers ask for him, but they have to change the settings on their microphones in order to pick up his voice, it is so soft. 

He has already won trophies; scholastic achievement, sportsmanlike behaviour, CHL rookie of the year. He will score at least one point in all but one of the first eighteen games of the 2014-15 OHL season, before breaking his hand in a fight (getting himself a Gordie Howe hatty, being that he already has a goal and an assist). He will score a hundred points in thirty-eight games, and a hundred and twenty points in the forty-seven games he will play.

Understandably, his name is penned in at number one on the draft board. Even such deficits as breaking a hand and being out for six weeks don’t tank his stock, it is so obvious how well on track he is to outpace all but the best.

He is sweet and shy, a captain of Erie based mostly on skill, and tight-laced into the destiny of future franchise saviour.

At least he has a friend, though, right?

Dylan

The 2014-15 Erie Otters are a good team. A great one, even -- third in league standings by season’s end, and you don’t get that far if your single generational superstar is sidelined half the year with a hand injury.

This is where Dylan comes in. Like Connor, he’s a GTA boy, and a young Leafs fan. Unlike Connor, he’s part of a serious hockey family -- the middle child of three. His older brother Ryan has already been drafted, in the first round, no less. He’s a real student of the game, too, a stats obsessive and a calm, steadfast personality. 

Remember how we said the draft is a crapshoot? That’s very true. Prospects may have precise rankings when all is said and done, but in the meantime I find it best thinking of them as instead arranging into tiers -- there’s the generational talent in this year, but disregarding him we have a first overall-level, then a small handful of top prospects. Not saviours in their entirety, but certain to make a team very happy. Dylan projects as the latter group -- he’ll be somewhere between three and five. In 2014-15, he’s the OHL scoring leader, and takes the Erie Otters’ single-season record.

He and Connor are also best friends. Connor’s quiet, anxious even, but Dylan has a coolheaded sort of confidence that brings out the best in him. Rarely are they pictured without each other; rarely are they spoken to without mentioning the other. There’s a sweet little video out there of the Otters going to New York state and going on this little ziplining/outdoor climbing gym, and Connor and Dylan are about as glued to each other’s sides as you can be while obeying the harness safety rules. In hockey terms, while a little young for it, they’re married. Much like Crosby and Malkin are, although over a much shorter term, and publically the two Otters are much closer.

Dylan is the one I feel as if I can talk the least about. He is mostly defined by what he is not: not Connor, to start, and before the actual draft takes place that is the most of it. 

Of course, that’s the most of what any of it is, isn’t it? These are teenagers, separated into imprecise tiers and mostly defined by which tier they slot into. The three boys below Connor, no matter how good they are, are defined by being not Connor.

Jack Eichel most of all.

Jack, to start, is American, unlike any of the other three. He’s a late birthday -- born in November of 1996 instead of  the first eight and a half months of 1997 -- so he’s, in theory, had another year to adapt. (Brief footnote: the September 15 cutoff is what determines draft eligibility, either the year you turn eighteen or the year you turn nineteen. If you were born in, say, June of 2000, you would be eligible for the draft in 2018. If you had the audacity to be born in October of 2000 instead, you’d have to wait until 2019.) His development pipeline is also unlike the others, having come up into the NCAA, college hockey, and playing at the US National Development team before committing to Boston University. He won the Hobey Baker award as a freshman, and led the NCAA in scoring as a rookie.

He was marketed, coming into the draft, as the American Connor -- the new face of American hockey, a homegrown star, a fellow generational talent, although that was a feeble marketing strategy to dull the disappointment of going second to greatness. He was proud and polite, quiet but not scared, a young man uncomfortably aware of his own myth and rather irritated at the fact he had a myth in the first place. Taken in and treated well, he would probably have a well-suited disposition to a high-stress, playoff-bound team.

It’s unfortunate that that wouldn’t realize until eight years after he was drafted.

The Draft Itself, or, What Caused All These Problems In The First Place

The draft lottery rolls around. The lottery and the draft take place on different days -- the lottery several weeks before, so that for a long time the boys have an idea of to whom they will go. The first four teams to pick are, in order:

Edmonton. Edmonton had been very bad, for a very long time, and had three shiny prizes already to show for it: Taylor Hall, drafted first overall in 2010; Nail Yakupov, drafted first overall in 2012; and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, drafted first overall in 2013. I’m sure you already know this, but Edmonton was Gretzky’s team, while Gretzky won all his cups, and they now stand to get themselves another generational talent in Connor McDavid.

Buffalo. The Sabres have a few decent pieces: Ryan O’Reilly, Sam Reinhart. They haven’t made the playoffs in a few years, and have plummeted to the bottom of the standings, finishing thirtieth out of thirty.

Arizona. Arizona has never gotten off the ground, not once. They are a dust mote of a franchise, held in place by Gary Bettman’s fragile ego and the skimmings of Original Six markets. Their survival, as doomed as we know it is, is banking on a distant hope of good prospect luck and better PDO.

Toronto. While Arizona is the smallest of small markets, Toronto is… well, it’s Toronto. Remember earlier, how I said that the GTA is the nexus of hockey? Toronto is called the Centre of the Universe, and for good goddamn reason. The Leafs are one of the most storied franchises in the NHL, and simultaneously one of the winningest (the second-most Stanley Cups, after Montreal) and the losingest (their most recent Cup was almost sixty years ago.) Their fanbase dwarfs all but the most hardcore of French Canadian separatist contingents. There’s a common phrase now, when any hockey news is mentioned -- but how does this affect the Leafs? It’s well-done satire.

And with four teams, we have four boys. So I come upon the last one now: Mitch Marner. Mitch, like Dylan and Connor, is a GTA boy, a born and raised Leafs fan on an OHL team. He plays for the London Knights -- a diminutive forward (he weighs in at 160 pounds soaking wet at eighteen, and eight years later barely cracks 180) with fantastic playmaking skills, the creativity and gall to do things other players have never even thought of. He’s a sweet one, too, bubbly and energetic and cuddly and kind.

Here is how the draft goes:

The Oilers take the stage first, for the fourth time in six years. The ceremony is unnecessary. Connor McDavid is the name everyone knows they will say. Connor walks up to the stage, looking vaguely nauseous, and dons the jersey and the hat. (His facial expression in the interviews afterward is thoroughly dissected over the next eight years. Some say it’s simple stage fright; others say it’s personal distaste for the Oilers -- remember, Toronto boy, Toronto heart. I choose to believe it’s the first one. Not all of us are John Tavares.)

After a first-round prospect is chosen, they bring him down for an interview, then shuffle him off to some arena underbelly for photos upon photos. Connor performs his niceties, but before he is taken back, he asks to stay. He wants to watch Dylan get drafted.

The Buffalo Sabres come second, and pick Jack Eichel. Eichel is asked, throughout, how he feels about Connor, being behind Connor, coming second to Connor. The narrative being pushed is called McEichel -- the Canadian wunderkind versus the American one -- and he wants no part in it. He’s impressed by Connor’s play, in their few brief meetings he thinks of him as nice enough, he wants to carve out his own path.

This refusal to play along may have been the start of the discontent, in hindsight. The media clearly wasn’t going to get anything out of soft-voiced scared-eyed perfect Canadian boy Connor, but Jack, sharper edges and colder heart, might be good for a soundbite or two about this new league-made rivalry. Jack, though, ever aware, puts himself solidly into Generic Hockey Interview voice and backs off.

The Coyotes come third. Here is where a choice occurs, the first genuine decision. Connor McDavid had been slotted into first pick since the day he got accepted for exceptional status. Eichel had taken a few years more, but his place in second after Connor was well known for months on end. Dylan and Mitch, however, were up in the air. Do you pick the big one with more points, or the small one with star power?

The Coyotes follow the conventional hockey wisdom, and take the big boy. Connor waits to watch his friend take the jersey, then hugs him in the wings.

Finally, the Leafs.

Let’s actually take a step back to talk about the Leafs rebuild, for a second, because it, like everything the Leafs have ever done, is a testament to failure. Also, somewhat, because it is relevant. Also, moreso, because I can’t shut up about hockey and you’ve asked me to talk as long as I like. If you’re still reading, I want you to know that a) I am ever thankful for your time and b) we’re, like, just getting started here.

The Leafs’ last contending era was before the 04-05 lockout season, which means it predates the salary cap. They struggled in the midsection, for a long time, then finally fell enough to gain the fifth overall pick in 2008, with which they selected a big tough young defenceman named Luke Schenn, the first official piece of the Leafs’ rebuild, strange as it may be. Luke, while competent enough, was obviously not the sort of franchise-changing star the Leafs needed, and they struggled in the midsection again, before gaining, once more, the fifth overall pick, with which they selected Schenn’s partner, one Morgan Rielly. The two would be perfect partners, but we won’t know this for eleven years. Luke was traded twelve hours after Rielly’s draft.

Rielly is still in the AHL the next year, 2013, when the Leafs make the playoffs. This is the infamous 4-1 series: the Leafs go down 3-1 in the series, claw their way back up to game seven. They gain a 4-1 lead, going into the third period, and then blow it completely and lose the game, and the series, in overtime. They do not make the playoffs in 2013-14, and before the 2014-15 season begins they change management. The man they install as President decides to tank, and tank hard, selling as much of the Leafs as he can in the hopes of landing that elusive first pick.

They end up with fourth overall, and Mike Babcock, the Leafs’ head coach, does not want Mitch Marner, instead asking the then-management for the bigger defenceman, a boy named Hanifin who will go fifth to the Hurricanes. The Leafs take Marner anyway. Watch him as his name is called. He, like the first three, sits in a nest of other prospects and their families -- Mitch actually sits right behind Jack Eichel -- but unlike them, when his name is called the other prospects lean over to offer him congratulations, as well as his parents and brother. Mat Barzal, from across the aisle, offers a bro-hug as Mitch goes by.

The rest of the draft goes as usual. The 2015 draft, beyond narratively, is one of the deepest drafts in recent memory; players you may recognize include Timo Meier, Mikko Rantanen, Travis Konecny, Sebastian Aho (the Carolina one!), Roope Hintz, Kirill Kaprizov, Troy Terry… the list goes on. These players have their own stories, but few really tie in to this one. (So far.)

Summer passes; we move on. Training camp rolls around.

Connor McDavid, as expected, makes the team. He moves in with Taylor Hall, a fellow first overall. Jack Eichel also makes the team.

Dylan and Mitch do not. Dylan’s reasons are unknown to me, but Mitch is sent down because, again, Babcock does not want him. He’s naturally undersized and does not have a frame that builds muscle; Babcock is not under the impression that young men in Mitch’s image make good hockey players. Both Mitch and Dylan are returned to the OHL.

The stage is set now; each boy has a team. Eight years on, only half of them are on those teams. But we can’t worry about that yet! We have to make it to the NHL first!

World Juniors and the Memorial Cup

Once Connor makes the Oilers, Dylan Strome is named captain of the Erie Otters. Very cool, to only get what you deserve after the golden boy is gone.

Jack and Connor are off playing with the big boys. They’ll get their own section later -- we have to work our way up, not up and down and up and down. I’ve got to be somewhat cohesive, you know? So, we’ll stay, for now, in the world of junior hockey.

The Otters and the London Knights, Mitch’s team, are in the wonderful circumstance of not only both being very good at the same time, but also being in the same division as one another. This means they see each other quite often (no plane travel in the OHL. Bus only.) and have thus formed… a bit of a rivalry. It is becoming difficult to dance around: Dylan Strome, despite the politeness they’ve shown each other at the draft, hates Mitch Marner.

And why wouldn’t you? He’s the one Dylan fought with all last season for the OHL scoring title; he’s fast on his feet and can shoot from impossible angles; he makes plays you’ve never even considered, much less considered possible. He dangles through the Otters and scores the easiest impossible goal you’ve ever seen and laughs as light as air about the whole thing. And he’s tiny. Unfortunately for the rest of us, Marner drew a lot of comparisons to Patrick Kane in his junior days -- thankfully without the character in common, but as a hockey player. An undersized (almost comically so) London winger with otherworldly ability to manifest scoring chances out of nothing. The exact sort of irritating worm that not one of us wants on the other team.

So, of course, they get put on the same team.

The 2016 World Juniors are summoned. Connor McDavid, then dealing with a broken collarbone and a great deal of pressure, is not on Team Canada’s roster. Dylan Strome and Mitch Marner both are. Suddenly and thankfully, the media’s focus shifts from one, false rivalry in McEichel to a very very real one.

I don’t want to dismiss what happens next as a mere symptom of the fact that hockey players are engineered to get along with their teammates, even if they don’t like each other. Admittedly, it does start that way -- Mitch is a winger and Dylan a centre, and both skilled, so the coach puts them on the same line. Simple enough. And then they spark up a friendship.

Dylan’s reasons for hating Mitch were not personal, just hockey-related. Dylan hated Mitch because he was good and he knew it, the simple way a teenager hates their direct competitor. On the same team, though, the competition aspect is removed, and the barrier for hatred is gone. This is the Dylan/Mitch enemies to lovers arc, if you want to put it that way.

Mitch, for the record, I doubt ever hated Dylan. He doesn’t have that in him, never had. He saw a rival, sure, and as soon as that rival wore a matching jersey I assume he taped the word friend over whatever defined their relationship before. Mitch is probably one of the most gregarious, friendly, charming hockey players out there. Beyond his cute little face and on-ice highlights, even. He’s loud, sure, but when he talks he knows how to include you. He finds out what you like and talks about it, he singles you out if you’re shy and builds up your confidence. He’s just plain nice.

Dylan, like the rest of us, was charmed. Within weeks he went from calling Mitch annoying to telling us all about how he loves cuddling (!?) with him. They became fast friends and great linemates.

Dylan’s not the only one Mitch Marner befriends at Worlds, though. Somewhere between matches, Mitch takes an elevator at the complex they’re staying at, and ends up sharing it with a boy from the American team, a tall square-jawed Mexican centre with a Justin Bieber obsession. This is Auston Matthews, one of the projected top picks of the 2016 draft -- born just two days after the cutoff that would have made him eligible to go in 2015. He played with Jack Eichel at the USNTDP, before taking his age-eighteen year to go play pro in Switzerland. He holds the NTDP scoring record as a seventeen-year-old, and will continue to hold it until Jack Hughes breaks onto the scene. The two boys in the elevator do not yet know it, but they are about to share the mantle of franchise saviour, for the franchise most desperately in need of saving.

Either way. The Canadians place sixth at World Juniors, the Americans do better, the Finns win the whole thing. (In the long run, Laine turns out not to be better than Matthews after all.) Mitch and Dylan go back to their OHL teams.

Erie and London tie in points that year, but London wins the OHL title and goes to Alberta for the Memorial Cup, the CHL trophy. Mitch Marner takes home the scoring title, the Stafford Smythe (CHL equivalent of the Conn Smythe), and the Memorial Cup itself. He is one of the most decorated winners in OHL history, touted as being clutch, creating magic, and racking up points. He has close friends in Dylan Strome and fellow Knight Matthew Tkachuk, who will be selected sixth overall in the 2016 draft, the second American after Auston Matthews himself. And when NHL training camp rolls around in the fall, even Babcock cannot deny he is ready, no matter how slight he may still be.

Connor Complex

There’s nothing that fuels story like a good rivalry, and the NHL was obsessed with marketing this rivalry. The Canadian versus the American. The perfect child of a long line of red-blooded southern Ontario tradition versus the Boston boy with a chip on his shoulder. Jack and Connor, Connor and Jack. They hyped Jack up the time leading up to the draft, trying to hint that he was almost as good -- no, just as good -- as McDavid himself.

He was not, and everyone knew.

The 2014-15 Sabres, then the worst team in the NHL and having done an elite job at tanking (they are one of the worst teams in the analytics era, besides the 2022-23 Anaheim Ducks -- I wonder what prize might be waiting at that number one spot? Surely not someone named Connor.) wanted McDavid. The Pegulas, the owners of the Sabres, tried to hide their disappointment in him as pride. They had an all-American star, they said, someone who had grown up not too far from Buffalo himself, and in the same country, no less. He would be the sort of man to lead them into a new golden age, away from the misery of the tank years.

And yet the narrative persisted. McEichel, they whispered. Look at how good Connor McDavid is, and look at how much Eichel is not him. McDavid, they say, McDavid McDavid McDavid. No article could be written about Jack without mentioning how he came second to Connor.

The Sabres tried to quell the whispers. Look at our boy, they say. They signed Eichel to an eight-year, ten million dollar contract, and in the beginning of the 2018-19 season they named him captain. Isn’t our boy great.

The team does not improve. The Sabres hadn’t made the playoffs for three years when they drafted Eichel; they still haven’t made the playoffs today. I wasn’t around to look, but the team was bad. Eichel did his best, but he was young and inexperienced and did not -- never did -- have captain’s blood in him; Ryan O’Reilly lost his love for the game.

The whispers of character issues start to come out. Jack Eichel is a “locker room cancer;” he’s selfish, stuck-up, quick-tempered. He’s caught in a cage where the only key is to be Connor, something which he never wanted to achieve in the first place, and never could have even if he did want it. The whole narrative was completely fabricated. He liked Connor well enough when they met.

I do imagine he has feelings about it, though, and feelings about Connor now. He didn’t know him, not enough to have an opinion on the boy, but the name followed him around long enough for him to think about it. Imagine it. You’re good in your field, great, even. You’re doing well enough to earn yourself a superstar contract, you’re an All-Star, and yet the only way you will get any recognition at all is when they say that you are worse than one of the greatest players ever to play the game. They lock you into a connection that you have never wanted, barring you from forging your own path. You exist permanently in that orange-and-blue shadow. I don’t blame Jack for being angry. I would be too.

Babcock

Auston Matthews was incredible from the jump. He was big, he was strong, his wrister is the stuff of legend. He won the Calder in his and Mitch’s rookie year, by a not insignificant margin, well ahead of Laine. He was a coach’s dream doll, unusual enough to be marketed and good enough to be useful. Unavoidably masculine even at nineteen.

Mitch less so. Mitch is still small, remember, and struggles to gain weight. I know I talk about his size a lot, but it’s genuinely important. Hockey and its fan culture has long been a group that prioritized size and raw power above all things. Mitch possessed neither of those things, and when he struggled with gaining muscle it was seen as an unwillingness to try. If you know anything about the ability of our bodies to gain or lose weight, you know that it is simply a genetic roll of the dice, a scale that puts a little bit of us into the “gains muscle mass easily” category and decides when to stop. Most hockey players actually aren’t very far up the muscle-gaining spectrum, especially when compared to American football or baseball players -- mass is strength, yes, but it’s also more to move around on ice -- but Mitch is especially low on the scale. Because of this, he is seen as unmanly, a dangerous thing to be.

The Leafs media market is a nightmare, and always has been. Because this is the Centre of the Universe, there are more eyes on the Leafs than on any other team. More eyes mean more writers, means you have to say weirder and wilder things to beg for clicks. Outrage is a good marketing tactic. Getting mad about one of the prize prospects seemingly not wanting to bulk up for the good of the team is a very easy thing to do.

What’s more, Mitch, after his entry-level contract had expired, had had a very difficult and long-drawn out contract negotiation, asking for a lot of money -- essentially the maximum that the Leafs could afford at the time. Because of the salary cap constraint, this was seen as kind of selfish. The angry clicks move. Mitch is sensitive, they say. Soft, selfish, weak.

It’s easy enough to dismiss out of hand when your uncle from Belleville does it, because what does he know. It’s different when it’s the head coach of the Leafs. Mike Babcock, is, at the time of hiring, the highest-paid coach in the NHL. He was signed before the 2015-16 season, and at that point had an eight-year contract, which would have carried him up until this year.

Mike Babcock sucked. Structurally, his teams were fine -- the Leafs made the playoffs in 2016-17, and haven’t missed it since, but he was awful, horribly mean to the boys under him, and especially, especially Mitch. 

We should skip ahead a little bit. It’s the beginning of the 2019-20 season. The Leafs have made the playoffs three times already, and lost in the first round each time -- but this, too, is not yet a phrase that strikes worry into our hearts. They’re young, and they have plenty of time left. 

Respected veteran Jason Spezza came home to the Leafs, having spent his career -- a player who might squeak the Hall of Fame, but is more likely just below its level -- in first Ottawa, where he was the captain of the Senators briefly and one of its most well-loved players, and then Dallas. Like the boys I talk about here, Jason Spezza is a former OHL player, a GTA boy, a Leafs fan. The Leafs’ season opener is against Ottawa, the team where Jason Spezza left most of his mark. There used to be a promotion with the Senators -- a local branch of some pizza chain would offer a free slice if the Sens scored more than five goals in a game. Spezza (and his linemates, Heatley and Alfredsson) were so good, they named his line the Pizza line. Mike Babcock makes Jason Spezza a healthy scratch on that day.

This is seen as disrespectful, but no more than a coach living up to his hardass reputation. You do what the coach tells you, don’t you? Lest you become a whiner, or worse, a locker room cancer. Scratching an extremely well-respected veteran on the opener against his former team is just something some guys do. A message, if you will. Stay the course, Babcock just wants his players to respect him.

And then news of the list leaks.

It happened when Mitch was a rookie, but they kept it hidden for three years. The Leafs went on a father-and-sons trip, one they do every season. They’re on a road trip, with only their fathers, isolated from their home.

(A brief aside to talk about Mitch’s dad; his name is Paul Marner, and he is the most stereotypical hardass hockey dad on the planet. A nitpicker, an armchair coach, a bully. I do not imagine Mitch felt particularly comforted by his and Babcock’s combined presence on this trip.)

Babcock approached Mitch and asked him to organize all of his teammates in a list. He wanted Mitch to arrange them in order of hardest workers to laziest; he thought Mitch was one of the lazy ones, and wanted to drive this point home by making him categorize his teammates like this. Mitch, as a rookie hockey player does in the presence of the Maple Leaf hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles, obliged. He was under the impression it would be a private affair, just an assignment from Babcock to teach him some sort of lesson. Whether it be out of fear or honesty, he placed himself last on the list. 

Babcock told the others.

Specifically, two Leafs vets that Mitch had placed low on the list -- Nazem Kadri and Tyler Bozak. Imagine this: you are a decent centre on a bubble team, but nonetheless an established NHL veteran of about a decade, and your coach shows you a list a rookie made. He tells you that the rookie arranged everyone by work ethic, grinders to lazy shits. You are firmly on the “lazy shit” end.

How much does the coach have to suck, or how much does the rookie have to be loved, for Kadri and Bozak to react like they did? The rumour says they called for Babcock’s head on the spot. Mitch was in tears. I wouldn’t want to stay in Toronto if that happened to me. No wonder he and Auston signed for so much -- Babcock was barely halfway through his contract when they did. If I’d thought that I would have to deal with him for that long, I wouldn’t accept anything less than as much as they could possibly pay me.

In the end, in the beginning of December, 2019, Mitch got hurt and the Leafs went on a road trip. They were already losing by the time they’d left, and they kept losing. Normally, a team on a road trip doesn’t take the hurt players with them, but they took Mitch. The Leafs lost six in a row and finally fired Babcock, letting Sheldon Keefe take his place. Mitch’s presence was a comfort.

Go West

The Leafs make the playoffs first, and take Mitch with them. The Sabres are fighting a silent war with their star centre, but they are no closer to success. 

Connor McDavid is named captain at nineteen, the youngest in the history of the NHL. He scrapes the team to a playoff spot, then to a second round loss. He wins the Art Ross and the Hart.

The year before his entry-level contract expires, when he is first eligible, he signs what is then the most expensive per-year contract in NHL history -- eight years, a hundred million dollars. He is looking forward to spending the rest of his prime as an Oiler. He wins the Art Ross the next year, comes very close the year after. The Oilers do not make the playoffs again until after Covid hits.

He gets hurt a lot, too -- he breaks his collarbone as a rookie, missing half the season, and at the very end of the 2018-19 year, crashes into the net irons and shatters his knee. There are rumours of the man who broke Connor’s collarbone doing it on purpose; Connor claims that he overheard the man bragging about it, and I am inclined to believe him. This guy gets traded to the Oilers not too long after that.

In the meantime, Dylan is struggling. The Coyotes stick him in Tucson, a team he is obviously too good for. His entry-level contract slides another season. He wiffles between Tucson and Arizona, not being considered good enough to stay up but being too good to stay down. In the end, on the last year of his entry-level contract, he is traded from the Coyotes to the Chicago Blackhawks, a similarly bad team with a few remnants of its Cup-winning days. Dylan, a feeble icon of Chicagoan hope for one last dance with the aging core, centres Patrick Kane.

In his first half-season with the Blackhawks, he scores 51 points in 58 games. There are hopeful flashes of what he can be, the touted prospect he once was. 

Things wrap up on New Years like this: Connor is beyond a hundred-point pace; Dylan, although in no less danger, is at least out of the dust at the bottom of the barrel; Jack is caught in a cold war; the team loves Mitch. 

John Tavares has a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Playoff Series

March of 2020 rolls around, and with it the coronavirus pandemic. The league is shut down before the season ends, and the playoffs re-formed in July, inside a bubble -- no one in, no one out until they are eliminated. The Sabres stay with their families, having once again missed the playoffs. The Leafs are set to play the Columbus Blue Jackets, and the Oilers are set to play the Blackhawks.

This, to date, is Dylan’s only playoff appearance, and he is set to face Connor.

Dylan wins.

The qualifying round -- functioning as the first round of the bubble playoffs -- is a best of five, not of seven, and the Blackhawks defeat the Oilers 3-1. They then proceed to lose in five games (this one is a best of seven) to Vegas, but Dylan’s job is done.

The Leafs lose in the first round again. The Leafs have made the playoffs since Auston and Mitch’s debut, every single year, but they lose each time; in six, to the Capitals, then in seven every year after that. Or, in this case, in five.

Covid had not stopped by the end of the 2020 season ( :/ ) and the NHL was rearranged for what would be ostensibly the 2020-2021 season, but ended up being played mostly in 2021. Because of border laws, the Canadian teams are sequestered into their own, North division. Dylan Strome signs a two-year contract extension with Chicago right before the season starts -- one that will carry him until the end of the 2021-2022 season. 

If you’ve seen All or Nothing on Amazon Prime, it is this season that is covered. The Leafs tear through what is seen as a weaker North division, taking a comfortable first place spot. Connor McDavid cracks a hundred points in fifty-six games. Both Leafs and Oilers lose in the first round.

The Leafs do it perhaps most remarkably. They have drawn the Canadiens, a rather insubstantial team who are in their spot mostly because they have one of the best goaltenders in recent memory at their back.

I watched this game, live, before I was a serious Leafs fan. I can only imagine what it would be like if you were already invested at that point; I would not wish to live that horror on anyone. I tried to watch All or Nothing, later, but I stop here. 

Corey Perry and John Tavares are both on the ice, in the race for the puck. Tavares catches an edge, as you sometimes do, and falls, and Perry’s knee is in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time, and it catches Tavares in the side of the head. He falls to the ice, his limbs splaying unnaturally. He won’t move. 

Medics come over, to try and raise him to his feet. He fights against them, blood streaming from a cut in his forehead, unable to tell if they are trying to hurt him or not. There is no one in the crowd, the stadium empty for the pandemic. The camera cuts to Kyle Dubas in the rafters, who has a phone in his hand and swiftly vanishes back into the halls of the arena. He is calling Tavares’ wife. We do not know what is going to happen. Everyone looks shaken -- the Habs have just watched a man nearly die, the Leafs have just lost their captain, perhaps forever. They lose, although the game feels like an afterthought. I do not want to watch hockey anymore.

They win the next three straight, though, even without him. Then they lose, twice, in overtime.

The Leafs, as they have done for the past four years up to this point, go to game seven.

Partway through the game, Mitch Marner panics in his defensive zone and puts the puck over the glass. This is a penalty, it is a penalty every time, and he knows that. He sits in the box, looking defeated already. He curls in on himself, and the camera flashes to the penalty box. He’s crying. He knows the game is lost.

The Leafs are eliminated again, and there is a target on his back now, not only for the puck going over the glass but for the tears. He’s soft, they say. As they have said since he was picked, because he doesn’t look like a hockey player should, because he doesn’t act like a hockey player should, because he doesn’t play hockey like a hockey player should. He makes too much and he disappears when it matters.

Thoughts on the Leafs’ playoff successes suddenly switch from the core is young, even if this is frustrating to they need to win before it’s too late. Already, in recent years, they have suffered historic game-seven chokes and drastic failures to launch. Whether they do it against teams like the President’s Trophy-winning Capitals or the barely-alive wild-card Canadiens is irrelevant. They cannot win a round, at all. The Leafs are already the team with the greatest Cup drought, and they are now gaining a long playoff round victory drought too. It should be time, at least, for them to look like they are a contender. 

This is how the Leafs find themself stuck; a particularly frustrating timeloop, even though hockey itself is nothing but. Sports are cyclical by nature. A team is bad, then okay, then good, then declining, then bad again, and this repeats anew. Some teams try to get themselves out of this cycle by being good forever; I can assure you that this only really happens to the New York Yankees, who employ a cadre of evil wizards to keep everything on that hell team going well for them. Most other teams who try end up stuck like the Canucks are, right now: bad enough to miss the playoffs, but not good enough to get key picks for a rebuild. I can see next season play out, clear as day: they struggle out of the gate, one of their stars gets hurt right when it seems like they’re at the very, very start of gathering momentum, they’re bottom-10 by January and the team says everyone but Pettersson are on the table, they trade picks and low-grade players, they get blazing hot post-deadline and finish twenty-first.

There is, unfortunately, also a perception that pure talent is not what makes players playoff performers -- instead, some so-called “clutch gene” that exists, or not. The reality is somewhere in between. Clutch exists. There are always players who can score when no one else can even dream of it, but a greater problem is luck. President’s Trophy winners are not often Cup winners (even if higher seeds are most likely to win), because the regular season is a much, much bigger sample size and the playoffs can change the course of all of it by a goalie having a hot streak at the right time. The 2018-19 Tampa Bay Lightning, third-best team in NHL history, got swept in the first round by Sergei Bobrovsky going crazy. The 2022-23 Bruins lost in seven in the first round in much the same manner.

And no matter what, the Leafs are always on the wrong end of the luck. Bounces hit the post. The refs take back goals for reasons they would have ignored at any other time of year. John Tavares slips, and his head makes contact with a knee.

Mitch ends up the whipping boy. He is the Leafs’ most valuable player, and this is a team with Auston Matthews on it, but I’m serious. He was the Leafs’ leading playoff scorer in 2023, he’s one of the best penalty-killers in the league, he’s adored by everyone who’s ever once talked to him. He only ever wanted to be a Leaf, and now that he is here he is the sacrificial lamb for the anger at a curse that is not his fault.

I do blame the media. I will always blame the media, those who turn on him at a moment’s notice because they know picking on the skinny pretty unmanly one will get more clicks than anything else. I beg of you -- know that, of anything that it could be, it is not Mitch’s fault.

Jack Eichel has a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Neck Injury

It is 2021, and the Sabres aren’t going to make the playoffs. Jack Eichel has been captain for coming up on three years, and has been a Sabre for coming up on six, none of which have even slightly improved the team. He is widely disliked within the fanbase, and, rumouredly, within the locker room and organization. 

Jack is frustrated, dragging a mediocre team along through a slog of the past six years, and he has never been the kindest man on the planet. He is about to get worse. The Sabres are on a losing streak when they head to Long Island, and Jack is hit the wrong way and slips a disk in his neck. The Sabres insist he’ll only be out a week and a half. 

It is a great sin in hockey, to go against team. Anything that can be seen as selfish is demonized; shooting from a difficult angle when your teammate is wide open, not playing when you can muscle through the pain. Not trusting your coach or management is about as bad as you can get. If you’re a team guy, willing to sacrifice health and limb for the boys, you are held as saint, no matter how hurt you become in the end. This is a philosophy that has been drilled into these men since they were kids, as soon as they put their first skates on. You can stand any pain for the length of a hockey shift; you can play through anything for two minutes. It is a dangerous, dangerous school of thought, one of the most destructive parts of hockey culture. But it is, nonetheless, law.

Eichel is about to commit a sin so great they’ll kick him out of Heaven. I do think that, of the four of them, he is the only one with any semblance of genre awareness: when he was first scouted as a prospect and they were comparing him to McDavid, I think that he would be the only one to ignore the media’s spin on that as thoroughly as he did. He knows what he is, and he knows himself. Of course it comes off as bitchy and selfish, though -- that kind of pressure can’t be kind to anyone.

Before the week and a half is up, he visits a specialist doctor about his neck. This is where it all starts to go wrong.

The Sabres take issue with that for two reasons: one, that they hoped he’d be able to come back after the end of it. Keep in mind that he has herniated a disk in his neck, an injury typically so severe it’s impressive he’s walking -- slipping a cervical disk often causes nerve pain that radiates down through the entire spinal cord below that point, which is the whole body from how high up his is. Two, that the doctor he consults is an independent surgeon, one unaffiliated with the Sabres themselves. 

The thing about belonging to a hockey team is that you are, because of the way your employment is linked to your physical health, essentially their property. They make your medical decisions for you, they feed you, they tell you how to move. Going to someone else is a breach of contract, and the already-tense connection between Jack and the Sabres gets more tense. The Sabres keep losing. They lose eighteen games in a row.

Jack’s doctor recommended a surgery that no NHL player has ever had; cervical disk replacement. The Sabres did not want this -- the surgery carries risks, yes, but they also wanted to control the way that Jack’s injury was handled, and going through with this surgery was Jack’s wish, not theirs. The Sabres do their own evaluation, and ask for a different, more common surgery: spinal fusion. This surgery carries less immediate risk, but the bones in Eichel’s neck will also be fused, and he doesn’t want that. Because the team has final control over a player’s health, not the player, they decline his disk replacement. Having reached a stalemate, they rule him out for the rest of the season, trying to win a war of attrition.

September 2021 rolls around, and the Sabres, along with thirty-one other teams, take training camp. At the beginning of training camp, players do a physical exam. Jack, because his herniated disk has not improved, because he needs a surgery that has been denied from him, because he is stubbornly and bravely willing to wait out the Sabres, fails his physical. As a result, the Sabres, fed up with him, strip the captain’s C from his chest.

Jack makes one final request to the team: either let him get the surgery or trade him. In the end, they trade him to the Vegas Golden Knights, a team that did not exist when he was drafted. The Golden Knights approve him for the disk replacement surgery the day they acquire him.

The surgery is a success; his rehab goes better than anyone expects, and he starts tearing it up when he comes back. I would argue that, if the Golden Knights win the Cup this year, he should get the Conn Smythe -- he has been an invaluable member of the team, even without a letter on his chest.

It is less important for him to win his million awards than it is for him to come in and out of this surgery in the first place, still able to play. He fought with the team that was supposed to have upheld him as their star for months over his right to do what he wanted with his own health; in the end, the only way to go was for him to change that team. He was the first to have this surgery, but after him there have already been hockey players who have undergone it -- much like Tommy John, the baseball player who got his ulnar ligament reconstructed and the surgery to do so named after him. He fought for the chance to control his own body and won.

And for that, he was demonized.

The Sabres missed the playoffs every year they had him; they missed the playoffs every year after he left. Because he was the captain and he had the audacity to go against the organization’s wishes, he was hated. In Buffalo, he is still hated. If you ask, they’ll tell you he was a locker room cancer, that he was undevoted to winning. If you look at him in Vegas, neither of those things are true.

Jack Eichel is a rare man -- he does have that “clutch” gene, or rather doesn’t have the choke instinct. He has always been unbothered by the spiral around him. He operates well in the mire, and when the pressure rises it doesn’t affect him (or maybe, even better, he feeds on it.) He has the right kind of mentality -- that fuck-you, I’m here and you can’t change that, you tried to control me and I wouldn’t bend mentality. He has only made the playoffs once, this year. Like Dylan, actually, his only appearance has involved defeating Connor McDavid. Go back and watch his highlights from the Vegas-Edmonton series if you can: he has a couple of pretty goals and more than a couple great defensive takeaways, but he doesn’t lose his cool, not once. He has earned his right to be here, and he knows it more than anyone else. I’m rooting for the Stars, but I hope he wins some day.

153

How do you talk about the Edmonton Oilers? I mean, without either excusing or demonizing them, although I admit I have Hater Instinct and trend towards the latter. They have the best player in the world; that grown-up incarnation of the wide-eyed boy on the Erie rink. They have the best playoff performer in the world; Leon Draisaitl, who I have not avoided mentioning until now on purpose, but whom I cannot continue without bringing up. They have been terribly cap-managed since the day McDavid was drafted, and are an unstable roster with blazing-hot offense and very little defence or goaltending at all.

For a brief moment, let’s not talk about the Oilers. Let’s only talk about Connor himself.

McDavid has 850 points in 569 career games. Not even Sid had that many points through that few games. If he stays healthy, Connor’s well on track to become the second player ever to hit two thousand for his career -- after a certain other Oiler, who need not be mentioned. He has won just about every award you can win, with the exception of the Selke… and the Cup.

If it’s possible, he has proven himself better than all of the hype at the draft saying he would become a great. To watch him, you can see the way he has changed his team, how even though they have all learned from him that he is still the best.

There is something that many Oilers do. When next your team plays them, pay attention to it: they cut into the offensive zone with possession on the outside, using tight little crossovers to gain speed, after which they’ll usually try to rush the net (if there are no defenders in the way). This is a move that McDavid has patented; he’ll use it, just as many of the others will, but he’ll probably be the one that scores. The depth all skate like him, really, fast and in wide arcs, trying to generate a rush chance. 

Connor as a player is a tour de force, the best power-player in the world by a mile, no slouch at even strength, speedy enough to score even shorthanded. The boy’s got wheels. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which NHLers are fast and which are slow, but Connor’s just that tick above everyone else that you can see it without eye training at all.

Connor as a person is a bit less showy. He’s quiet by nature, shy and soft-voiced. Because he was hyped so much (franchise saviour, McJesus, Next One) he has been media trained into sterility, giving the same level answers as everyone else, hardly daring to express any opinion at all. His eyes are big, rounded, and one of them is lazy from a time when his brother tried to take it out as a child, and that combined with his heavy brow and stiff expression -- he’s never been a good smiler, smirks with one corner of his mouth and that’s mostly it -- give him a resting expression of something like concern, or maybe despair. When he laughs, he doesn’t really “laugh,” just kind of coughs, a one or two-syllable affair. He avoids eye contact with the camera, and often the reporters as well. There is no seething emotion under the surface, not like with Eichel, nor does he speak analytically like Dylan does. He moves through his life as if he is someone who does not want it to turn out quite like this.

I do not know if he wants to be in Edmonton. There are jokes about how he is desperate to leave, but I definitely don’t believe those; there’s a difference between not wanting to stay and wanting to go. I don’t think he hates it. He has been given a responsibility, the captain’s C -- and because, unlike Jack Eichel, he is a good Canadian boy who has been given a destiny, he accepts it. He loves his teammates, especially Draisaitl, whom he seems to derive all his confidence from.

I will also say that I don’t believe he’s stupid. Naive, perhaps; not stupid. There is no way out for him, even if he was sure he wanted to leave; he’s the best player in the world, far too expensive for any contender to afford in either trade or cap space, and if he asks for a trade he won’t let himself go to a team that isn’t already a contender. He will remain an Oiler at least until his contract is up, and I imagine that his staying afterwards depends on Draisaitl.

People talk about him leaving a lot, largely because of the team that has been assembled around him. The Oilers are not a well-created team, and I will say that plainly now and spend as little time technically deconstructing it as possible.

Beyond McDavid and Draisaitl, they have:

A rookie starting goaltender, whose success as we know it is based on a single-season sample size and a complete playoff collapse.

A five million dollar backup goaltender, who earned his contract by being carried by the Leafs, despite being utterly horrendous for a long enough stretch leading up to his free agency that anyone who looked beyond the win-loss numbers wouldn’t have signed him.

One genuine shutdown defender.

One young up-and-coming defender; by far one of the most promising Oiler (or otherwise) defensive prospects, beyond the usual suspects.

One netfront grinder who is great at playing wing to high-power setters, but cannot drive his own line.

One decent 2C.

Sarah Nurse’s cousin. Sarah’s better.

A supporting cast of bad defencemen and middling-at-best forwards.

Many charming characters, of course: Zach Hyman, the grinder, is a beloved ex-Leaf, and I’m personally a fan of Nugent-Hopkins, the 2C, but the vast majority of this is not the sort of thing a contending team is built upon. McDavid has missed the playoffs almost as often as he’s made them. The playoffs are a crapshoot, but in order to try your luck you have to at least be able to enter the lottery, and it takes a stunning amount of effort to be able to do that.

So, McDavid lingers, in this kind of limbo. It mirrors the Leafs, almost. (And yes. Because McDavid is an Ontario boy, and the Leafs are the Centre of the Universe, we have to mention them both in conversation. Not all stories revolve around the Leafs, but this one does.) One true contender, and one generational talent, both what we picture to be well overdue for their Cup run, but neither having yet done so. 

The thing about the stories of the class of 2015 is that they intertwine, that they mimic and mirror each other. These boys have not simply gotten drafted in the same handful of picks in the same year and gone on their merry ways -- they layer, they parallel, they weave around each other. Connor is the captain of a team that cannot win, Jack is a captain, Mitch cannot win. Jack fought for the right to control his body and was demonized for it; Mitch negotiated for a contract that he determined to be a fair price for Babcock, and was demonized for it. Whatever pure saviour they figure Connor to be, Jack is the twisted inverse of that, falling from grace.

Connor has one of the best seasons in NHL history, one of only seventeen player-seasons with over a hundred and fifty points (Nine of those seasons belong to Gretzky. Another four belong to Lemieux.) He loses, in six games in the second round, to the Vegas Golden Knights. At the time that he’s eliminated, he leads the playoffs in points. Leon Draisaitl is tied for second place. Counting from the date Mitch Marner played his first game in the NHL, the Oilers and Leafs have almost exactly the same number of playoff game wins, with the Oilers having one more.

There’s No Place Like Strome

Before we can look to the future, there is one person I have been neglecting. Dylan, poor Dylan. I think it would be only half an unfair assessment to call him a draft bust. He’s talented, for sure, but not nearly the same calibre that the draftees around him are. Hardly a Marner, an Eichel, or even a Rantanen or a Meier. 

His career has existed quietly in the shadows, so far from Connor McDavid that it only feels fair to mention them in the same conversation in this context. It has been eight years since they were best friends, Connor so close to Dylan he waited in the stadium in order to watch him get drafted. They didn’t look each other in the eye in the handshake line when Dylan won their series. Connor didn’t go to his wedding.

That being said: so far, he has found himself a knack for landing in the shadow of greatness. When he was an Erie Otter, it was Connor -- Dylan held the scoring title in their draft year, while Connor was out nursing his hand, but Connor was the chosen son and Dylan was the Coyotes’ consolation prize. When he was traded to the Blackhawks, he found himself centring Kane and Debrincat, but of course both of them were the offseason and trade deadline’s prizes, and not him.

And then he signed in Washington.

So now, we go back to Ovechkin. Alex Ovechkin is one of the greatest players of all time; his Capitals are on the decline now, but they contended for a long time while he was playing and may still contend as long as Ovi still skates. For a long time, the team relied on Ovechkin’s goalscoring, assisted mostly by his faithful centre, Nicklas Backstrom. They, too, are married; they have played a thousand games as teammates, been through a decade of heartbreak together before the Cup was theirs. During the 2021-2022 season, Backstrom took time off -- he needed hip surgery, something likely to end his career. Ovi was alone.

There is a fundamental difference, of course, between the expectations of wingers and centres. A winger, like Ovi, scores, or assists, at his own leisure, but it is the centre’s job to drive his line. Ovechkin is generational -- he will sink forty goals no matter what -- but he still needs someone to move him out of the defensive zone, someone to make his assist.

Enter Dylan -- a young centre, not especially fast on his feet but intelligent, and clearly experienced in the realm of managing high-calibre wingers (see: Debrincat, and the ghost of Patrick Kane.) He joins the Capitals on a one-year contract, desperate to prove himself. Chicago didn’t want him, and Arizona didn’t either. It takes barely until November before he is, once again, the necessary shadow of greatness. 

Ovechkin, the team’s captain and centrepoint, clearly likes what he sees, and the management does, as well. The Capitals offer Strome a five-year extension.

Maybe it’s because he’s less of a superstar then the other three members of his draft class, but Dylan has a life outside of hockey -- a wife and young daughter. After being thrown away by other teams, and with his new family, I can only imagine that it was… peaceful, if anything, to be offered this contract.

Chicago, after rapidly getting rid of him, Debrincat, and then Kane, would go on to tank spectacularly, and win themselves the first overall pick. They will use it to draft another generational talent. His name is also Connor.

The Blue Wedding

So, here we stand, at the end of it all. Dylan finally has a home, a mother hen of a Russian bear that it has become his job to assist in record-breaking, and soon to be two daughters. Jack has a team that loves him, freedom from pain, and an ongoing potential Cup run. Connor has a sterile mansion, a best friend, and an unsteady team. Mitch’s life is up in the air.

Right as I’m writing this, the general manager of the Leafs has been unceremoniously kicked out. His tenure will end the day before Mitch’s no-move contract kicks in, but it is not known if Mitch’s time as a Leaf will survive that long. He is well on track to become one of the greatest Leafs of all time, and his tenure might be cut short in the prime of his career. 

But let’s wrap up with this: Mitch will get married this summer. Because he’s Mitch, the darling of the league, everyone’s best friend, I imagine the wedding party to be extensive/ Packed to the brim of current and former Leafs, as well as people who have never been Leafs. I wonder if Dylan Strome will be there -- or even Connor McDavid, although McDavid never even attended Dylan’s wedding.

The stories, as they do, go on.

#asks #mitch marner #jack eichel #connor mcdavid #dylan strome #hope this helps and/or gives you brain poisoning #narrativeposting

[lily-blue]

Stupid but mine

☆ characters: hermes’ son!haechan & apollo’s daughter!you ☆ genre: percy jackson au, humour ☆ warnings: physical fight, mention of blood and injury ☆ request: FWS24. form this prompt list ☆ summary: Haechan is always ready to defend your honour, even if it means he needs to fight one of Ares’ annoying sons ☆ words: 1,6k ☆ dedicated to: @dat-town​​ ♥

You had known Haechan since you had been ten; he had been the first person who had pissed you off when your mother had sent you to Camp Half-Blood to spare the rest of your family from possible monster attacks. You might not have been as smart as Athene’s children nor could you have read emotions as easily as the kids in the Aphrodite cabin, but from your first day at the demigod training facility on Long Island, it had been painfully obvious to you that it had never been about your safety. And that had turned you into an angry and rude teenager, who hadn’t known when to shut up or retreat. You would never regret punching the boy in the face for his comment on your emo eyeliner.

You had never regretted becoming his best friend, either, though the latter had taken a lot of time, convincing and a life or death situation that had turned the entire camp into a bloody battlefield two weeks before your sixteenth birthday. Gosh, the smug look on his face when you had ugly cried next to his not-so-unconscious body in the infirmary had burnt into your brain. You were pretty sure that, up to this day, he hadn’t forgotten about it, either.

Offering one of the strawberry cupcakes on your tray to the gods, you almost fell head first into the altar when a large body crashed against yours; you hated how you didn’t even have to turn towards the culprit to know who found joy in messing with you. When you had applied for the vacant camp instructor positions at the end of your last summer at Camp Half-Blood - which had already been three years ago - you hadn’t thought much about whom you would have needed to work together with in the future, and you cursed yourself for overlooking the possibility of numerous summers in Yuta’s company at least three times a week. The demigod was a pain in the ass, a man on a mission to raise your blood pressure for no goddamn reason. For Zeus’ sake. He was so annoying. Wasn’t it time for him to grow up?

‘Hey, asshole!’ Your best friend’s angry voice came from somewhere behind you, and you closed your eyes for a second to ground yourself. You knew… you just knew that all hell was about to break loose. Because as much as you appreciated him for always having your back, Lee Haechan hadn’t grown up yet, either, despite working as an instructor in a camp full of young kids and teenagers.

‘And here comes the self-proclaimed hero,’ Yuta mused, mockery thick in his voice, which only fueled Haechan’s frustration. Sliding your gaze from one to the other, you wondered whether you should have turned a blind eye on the upcoming disaster for once or stick around in case someone got hurt. You wished you could have walked away without feeling guilty. It would have made your life that much easier. ‘What do you want, Lee?’

‘Hm, dunno. An apology for a starter doesn’t sound so bad,’ Haechan retorted immediately after he inserted himself between the two of you. You could see people starting to pay more attention to your group. Though, there were many campers who took one pitiful look at the guys and decided they weren’t interested.

Their disinterest spoke volumes. These two had already caused more commotions this year than the previous one and September was still five weeks away. You let out a resigned sigh.

‘You know the two of you aren’t actually together?’ Yuta scoffed, the smirk in the corner of his mouth mocking as he was clearly trying to push Haechan’s buttons. ‘The Aphrodite girls were messing with your wine.’

The memories from last Sunday washed over you in way too vivid waves; the kiss you had shared with Haechan was something you had tried to ignore ever since you had woken up the next morning. You pressed your lips into a firm line to swallow back a careless comeback. You were afraid it might have caused more harm than good if you had admitted that you had enjoyed the soft touch of your best friend’s lips against your own.

‘I said apologise to her for pushing her into the altar on purpose,’ Haechan stood his ground, his appearance surprisingly level-headed, although for someone like you, who had known him over a decade, it was obvious that he was fuming inside. Unfortunately, Yuta had spent as many summers in Camp Half-Blood as the two of you if not more (you had never bothered to ask), so he saw right through Hermes’ son.

‘You’re not my boss. If anything, you should be the one following my orders,’ Yuta retorted, chuckling with a wide smile to rile the other demigod up.

You took it as a sign to stand between the two, blocking the older’s line of sight as much as you could with your petite body. Why did Haechan have to grow so tall? When you had been eleven, you had been almost a head taller than him.

‘Like hell I would,’ your best friend spat, putting his hand on your shoulder before he slowly, gently pushed you behind his back. ‘Don’t make me kick your ass in front of all these kids. Because that’s what’s gonna happen if you don’t apologise,’ Haechan claimed as he walked up to Yuta and poked his chest once, twice, three times.

‘My ass? Really? I will make you eat your words before you have the chance to pull your sword out of its sheath, baby boy,’ Yuta taunted and for the nth time since you had become a camp instructor, you wondered why you hadn’t quitted the moment you had realised Yuta and Haechan had also gotten the same position. Could you have been a masochist at heart?

Or an idiot, maybe. You should have dressed in a clown costume for Justin’s infamous party this Halloween.

‘It’s so on,’ Haechan exclaimed and the two were out the Dining Pavilion before you could have taken your first bite from your strawberry cupcake or said as much as:

‘That’s a very stupid idea.’

Not because you didn’t believe in your best friend - Haechan was surprisingly good with swords -, but because how else would you have described a deliberate one-on-one duel with one of Ares’ most ruthless sons. Haechan must have lost his mind to not see how idiotic of an idea it was. You swore he was the reason you were losing so much hair these days because of the constant stress he was putting you through.

Abandoning your lunch, you did grab two pieces of cupcakes before you ran after the idiots, which meant you made it in time to hear Haechan brag about his speed and those muscles he had indeed put on in the past years. Hell, he was so confident, for a second you believed he would defy all odds and teach Yuta a lesson.

Instead, he found himself on the ground in less than forty seconds; your heart skipped a beat and you forgot to breathe when the sword fell out of his hand. He looked so miserable. 

‘Yuta, that’s enough,’ you stood between the point of his sword and Haechan’s ass, flinching at the stinging feeling of the blade scratching your cheek. The cut was small enough to not faze your audience, but deep enough to draw blood, which was seriously annoying as you knew it would leave a scar. Your skin was too sensitive not to; you still had acne scars on your chin from months ago that hadn’t gone away.

Your staring contest with Yuta ended with the boy’s arm falling back by his side and a quiet apology that sounded more like a mockery than an actual display of worry and regret. It was fine with you, though. You hadn’t needed his apology to begin with.

You didn’t wait for the crowd to disperse; in spite of how common these disputes were in the camp, there were always a couple of spectators who lingered. You would have been careless to waste even just a couple of seconds on them when Haechan’s heavy breathing got more and more uneven. You had to act fast.

So you turned around and crouched down next to his body. The soothing balm you had made of herbs that grew in the forest surrounding the camp was in your hand in a blink of an eye. Being the daughter of the Greek god of healing (and poetry, music, knowledge and a dozen of random things people would have bragged about on their CVs these days) sure had its perks. After all, your talent with medicine might have been inherited. 

‘Next th… next time he will think th… twice before he’s rh… rude to you,’ your stupid best friend forced through his teeth, his smile pained but genuine, which made you feel conflicted and bothered. Hadn’t he realised yet that he had more than probably fractured his ribs? You didn’t have to take off his uniform to know the bruises on his chest were nasty. Yuta had made sure to make confetti out of his ugly, orange tee.

‘Sure he will,’ you mocked, sarcasm dripping from your retort, so that Haechan could feel your disapproval even if he missed your eye roll.

And no, you did NOT blush like a schoolgirl just because he had said that. Just because defending your honour was clearly more important to him than his own well-being. It wasn’t romantic. No, it was idiotic. He was an idiot.

But god, he was your idiot. And you loved him more than you let him in on.

the end.

#haechan #lee donghyuck #haechan x you #donghyuck x you #haechan x reader #donghyuck x reader #ssbyme #nct dream scenarios #nct dream x you #nct dream x reader #nct scenarios #percy jackson au #humour #greek gods au

[gotham-ruaidh]

Little Bit Better Than I Used To Be

Catch up: Chapter 1 (Starry Eyes) || Chapter 2 (Save Our Souls) || Chapter 3 (Dancing On Glass)|| Chapter 4 (Merry-Go-Round)|| Backstage (1) || Backstage (2) || Chapter 5 (Danger)|| Backstage (3) || Chapter 6A (Love Walked In) || Chapter 6B (Without You) || Backstage (4) || Chapter 7 (Stick To Your Guns) || Chapter 8 (Time For Change) || Backstage (5) || Chapter 9 (Take Me To The Top) || Backstage (6) || Chapter 10 (Home Sweet Home) || Backstage (7) || Chapter 11a (Nightrain) || Chapter 11b (Nothing Else Matters) || Chapter 12a (Handle With Care) || Chapter 12b (I’m So Tired of Being Lonely) || Chapter 13a (Angel) || Chapter 13b (She’s My Addiction) || Chapter 13c (Patience) || Chapter 14a (Where Do We Go Now?) || Chapter 14b (Where Do We Go Now?) || Chapter 14c (Where Do We Go Now?) || Chapter 15a (Dreams) || Chapter 15b (I Sing A Song of Love) || Chapter 15c (You Can Do This If You Try) || Chapter 16 (Let That Feeling Grab You Deep Inside ||| Also posted at AO3

Chapter 17A: Never Tear Us Apart

New York City ||| September 1988

I was standing You were there Two worlds collided And they could never tear us apart…

 - “Never Tear Us Apart”, INXS (1988) [click here to listen]

~~~~~

The taxi glided to a stop in front of the Plaza Hotel. A bellman opened the door before the passenger finished paying the driver. With a quick thanks the passenger exited the taxi, squinting in the early afternoon sunshine, nodding a hello at the bellman and his top hat.

Quietly the man entered the hotel and crossed the lobby.

“Hello,” he greeted the woman standing behind the Guest Services desk. “I’m here to see Colum Laird.”

“Certainly. Your name, sir?”

The man pulled a business card from the breast pocket of his blazer.

Raymond Germain, MD

Private Counseling

New York City

“One moment, please.” The woman dialed a string of digits, speaking softly into the phone.

Raymond waited, glancing around the lobby. A cluster of photographers sat, bored, around a side table. Several young men and women with spiky hair and leather jackets stood in another corner, some clutching record albums and permanent markers. Two women in low cut dresses primped in front of their hand mirrors.

“Dr. Germain? Mr. Laird is ready to see you. Please follow my colleague.”

A man, dressed in a smart suit, appeared seemingly out of the wall. “Right this way, sir.”

Raymond followed him across the lobby, through a set of double doors marked STAFF ONLY, and into an elevator bank.

“The band has booked the entire northwest corner of the sixteenth floor,” the man explained. “It’s configured in such a way to provide total privacy. This elevator is the only way to get up there.”

“I see.” Raymond shifted on his feet, sliding his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “How long have they been staying here?”

The elevator arrived, and the man gestured for Raymond to enter. “Three nights so far. From what I understand, they’ve played two sellouts at Madison Square Garden. With the final show tonight.”

The man pressed 16, and the doors slid shut.

“How have they been as guests?”

The man smiled. “It’s hotel policy to not comment on any guest who stays here. But what I will tell you, is that it’s much more sedate than the last time they stayed with us, in ’86. The entire fifteenth floor had to be re-carpeted.”

The doors opened onto a hallway. A short, middle-aged man with shoulder-length graying hair stood in the elevator lobby. A dozen doors trailed away in the corridor behind him.

“Dr. Germain.” He extended a hand in greeting. “Welcome.”

“Mr. Laird. Colum. Call me Raymond, please. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

The elevator doors slid shut, leaving Colum and Raymond in the hallway.

“Well, Raymond – thank you for coming. I know getting up here is a bit unorthodox – but it’s the only way to ensure total privacy. Things have been a bit of a zoo this summer.”

Raymond smiled kindly. “I truly can’t imagine.”

Colum sighed, wiping his eyes. “Fortunately it’s been a bit of a quiet morning. The band and the crew are pretty exhausted.”

A crash from behind the closest door. Followed by a man’s voice, and a woman’s high-pitched giggle.

Colum smiled tightly. “Pay no attention to Angus. His only vice is women - he’s had a menage-a-trois going all tour.”

“I see,” Raymond remarked quietly. Not quite seeing at all.

Colum coughed. “Anyway, let me take you down the hall. They’re waiting.”

Dougal MacKenzie had not provided many specifics about Jamie and Claire Fraser. The broad strokes, of course – that both had been patients at The Ridge last year; that his addictions were alcohol and cocaine and women and hers were pills; that they had been married less than two months. That she was a surgeon.

Oh, and that he was the singer, guitarist, and chief songwriter of just about the biggest rock band in the world.

Raymond hadn’t a clue about Jamie’s music. But Dougal had said it wouldn’t matter. And in more than ten years of knowing each other, Dougal had proved to have impeccable instincts.

Colum knocked on the final door in the hallway. Muffled voices – and then a beautiful woman opened the door.

“You must be Dr. Germain.” She extended a warm hand in greeting. “Pleasure to meet you. I’m Claire Fraser.”

Raymond took her hand between both of his. “Raymond. And the pleasure is all mine, Dr. Fraser.”

She smiled kindly, surprised. “Claire, please.” She tilted her head, just a bit. “Have we met before?”

Raymond returned her smile. “I don’t think so. I’m sure I would remember.”

Colum quietly stepped away and padded down the hallway.

Claire gestured behind her. “Please do come in.”

to be continued…

#outlander #outlander fanfic #little bit better than i used to be #jamie and claire

[hollowed-theory-hall]

what's the timeline regarding when tom opened the chamber of secrets vs when he killed his father? it's around the same time right? do we hav exact sequence in canon? do you. have ideas about it?

Okay, so let's go through the timeline of Tom Riddle's life at Hogwarts:

(I love talking about Tom Riddle, can you tell?)

So, Tommy was born on December 31st, 1926.

This means he'd celebrate his 11th birthday on December 31st, 1937, so he'd start his first year at Hogwarts on September 1st, 1938.

And Tom says this:

I thought someone must realize that Hagrid couldn’t possibly be the Heir of Slytherin. It had taken me five whole years to find out everything I could about the Chamber of Secrets and discover the secret entrance . . .

(CoS, 288)

So, he would be in his 5th year when he first opened the Chamber of Secrets. From the math above, his 5th year started in September 1942 and ended in June 1943.

We know Myrtle died on June 13th, 1943, so right at the end of Tom's 5th year at school (fitting the "five whole years" statement). When Tom shows Harry the memory of Myrtle's death it's on the diary page for June 13th:

The pages of the diary began to blow as though caught in a high wind, stopping halfway through the month of June. Mouth hanging open, Harry saw that the little square for June thirteenth seemed to have turned into a minuscule television screen

(CoS, 225)

Tom then asks Dippet to stay at Hogwarts, which Dipept declines. I also assume June 1943 is when Tom turns the diary into a Horcrux.

Now, we know that the summer Tom is sixteen (he turned sixteen in December 1942), the summer between his 5th and 6th year (July-Agust of 1943), is when he killed his father and stole the Gaunt ring:

Finally, after painstaking research through old books of Wizarding families, he discovered the existence of Slytherin’s surviving line. In the summer of his sixteenth year, he left the orphanage to which he returned annually and set off to find his Gaunt relatives. And now, Harry, if you will stand . . .”

(HBP, 363)

We see that by 6th year (1943-1944), Tom already has the Gaunt ring:

Half a dozen boys were sitting around Slughorn, all on harder or lower seats than his, and all in their mid-teens. Harry recognized Voldemort at once. His was the most handsome face and he looked the most relaxed of all the boys. His right hand lay negligently upon the arm of his chair; with a jolt, Harry saw that he was wearing Marvolo’s goldand-black ring; he had already killed his father.

(HBP, 369)

This means by the time he had his talk with Sughorn he had two Horcruxes: the diary and the ring. In the scene with Slughorn Harry mentions Tom isn't the oldest student and he's referred to by Slughorn as a prefect, not a head boy, so it's not his 7th year.

I have a whole series about Tom Riddle and I talked more about this timeline situation there. But this is an overview of his Hogwarts timeline.

#harry potter #hp #hp thoughts #hp meta #harry potter meta #voldemort #lord voldemort #tom riddle #tom marvolo riddle #voldemort analysis #hollowedtheory

[leclerc-s]

honest series timeline

(white events indicate an official date, blue events indicate no official date, red indicates which events have corresponding parts)

1989

july first: daniel ricciardo's birth december thirteenth: daphne jones' birth

1994

september first: carlos sainz's birth

1996

february seventh: pierre gasly's birth

1997

march second: penelope trevino's birth september thirtieth: max verstappen's birth october sixteenth: charles leclerc's birth december eleventh: rowan todd's birth

1998

june sixteenth: natalia ruiz's birth

1999

may eleventh: mae jones' birth march twenty-second: mick schumacher's birth november thirteenth: lando norris' birth

2000

october fourteenth: arthur leclerc's birth november twenty-first: freya vettel's birth december thirty-first: logan sargeant's birth

2001

april sixth: oscar piastri's birth july tenth: dulce perez's birth september seventh: bailey winter's birth

2002

january twentieth: isabella perez's birth february twentieth: zoya torres' birth trevino family moves to madrid, spain first meeting between penelope and carlos

2003

first meeting between natalia and charles

2004

2005

freya's adoption

2006

october twenty-fourth: daphne's debut album release

2007

2008

november eleventh: fearless release

2009

september thirteenth: daphne gets interrupted by kanye west at the vma's

2010

twenty-fifth: speak now release

2011

july tenth: daniel ricciardo's debut grand prix

2012

october twenty-second: red release

2013

2014

june twenty-seventh: mae's debut in girl meets world october twenty-seventh: nineteen eighty-nine release

2015

march fifteenth: max verstappen and carlos sainz's debut grand prix april fifteenth: eyes wide open release mae and max begin dating first meeting between daniel and daphne

2016

february twelfth: kanye west releases famous february fifteenth: daphne seemingly shades kanye west at an award show july sixteenth: kim kardashian releases video footage of kanye's phone call with daphne, daphne issues a statement defending herself after the leaked call september twenty-eight: daphne and daniel begin secretly dating october fourteenth: evolution release october twenty-third: daphne performs after the us grand prix mae and max break-up

2017

daphne disappears for a year august twenty-third: daphne announces reputation october first: pierre gasly's debut grand prix november tenth: reputation release

2018

march twenty-first charles leclerc's debut grand prix november ninth: singular act i release natalia and charles' friends with benefits relationship begins

2019

pierre and rowan's situationship begins march sixteenth: lando norris' debut grand prix june thirtieth: scooter braun purchases daphne's masters july first: lover release july nineteenth: singular act ii release september thirtieth: seven release (see seven for further info) november twelfth: zoya's debut on high school musical: the musical: the series

2020

january thirty-first: miss americana release march twenty: the entire phone call between daphne and kanye get leaked july twenty-fourth: folklore release december eleventh: evermore release daniel and joshua reunite mae and max

2021

lando and bailey's fake relationship begins april ninth: fearless (daphne's version) release march twenty-eighth: mick schumacher's debut grand prix may twenty-first: sour release september: filming for daisy jones and the six begins november twelfth: red (daphne's version) release mae and max begin dating again

2022

march: filming for daisy jones and the six wraps natalia becomes pregnant july fifteenth: emails i can't send release september twenty-eighth: daphne and daniel get married october twenty-first: midnights release pierre and rowan accidentally get married in vegas september twenty-eighth: daniel and daphne get married november twentieth: sebastian vettel's final race

2023

january seventeenth: baby leclerc is born rumors of daphne and fernando dating begin (see the daphlonso scandal for further info) lando accidentally leaks daphne and daniel's secret relationship during a livestream (see the daphlonso scandal for further info) march fifth: logan sargeant and oscar piastri's debut grand prix march seventeenth: daphne's eras tour kicks off and emails i can't send fwd release mae and max get secretly married the first meeting between logan and zoya july seventh: speak now (daphne's version) release july eleventh: daniel replaces nyck de vries at alphatauri august twenty-third: mae and max's familial wedding party september eighth: guts release october twenty-seventh: nineteen eighty-nine (daphne's version) release november 11th: daphne's famous line change, "karma is the guy on the track" (see karma is the guy on the track for further info) november fifteenth: mae and max's vegas wedding party (see what happens in vegas never stays in vegas for further info)

2024

january 25th: charles leclerc extends his contract with ferrari for a disclosed amount of time (see divorcegate for further info) january 26th: lando norris extends his contract with mclaren for a disclosed amount of time (see divorcegate for further info) february 1st: lewis hamilton announces his departure from mercedes, and announces his multi-year contract with ferrari. (see divorcegate for further info) february 4th: the 66th annual grammys, daphne announces her new album, the tortured poets department ( see let him be a trophy husband! for further info) march 2nd: the 75th formula one season begins. april 19th: the tortured poets department release

… more events to be added

#leclerc-s #the honest series #f1 instagram au #formula one #formula 1 fic #f1 fic #formula 1 series #charles leclerc #charles leclerc x female oc #max verstappen #max verstappen x female oc #daniel ricciardo #daniel ricciardo x female oc #lando norris #lando norris x female oc #oscar piastri #oscar piastri x female oc #carlos sainz #carlos sainz x female oc #pierre gasly #pierre gasly x female oc #logan sargeant #logan sargeant x female oc #mick schumacher #mick schumacher x female oc

[brokenjere]

details (a seventeen going under story)(j.f)(ch.2)

details (a seventeen going under story)(j.f) (ch.2)

a/n: hey all! thanks for your patience with waiting for chapter two! hopefully you all enjoy it and let me know what you think or if you wanna be tagged in the next part!! I'll be working on updating my masterlist so hopefully that will be fully up to date shortly. love you all!!!

My birthday was in September. Only a few weeks after we got back from Cousins. Susannah was still as healthy as she had been all summer, so she threw the biggest party I’d ever seen her throw. It was bigger than either of the boys’ sixteenth birthday. Bigger than my sixteenth birthday. She rented an entire ballroom and hired a catering service and a DJ. It was everything that I hated but she was so happy planning it, it almost felt like her dying wish. 

Jeremiah sat at the end of my bed as I riffled through my clothes trying to pick out an outfit. He wasn’t much help because he said everything I picked out looked good The third outfit that I held up was a blue dress that hit just above my knees. When he said, “you’d look beautiful in that” again, I huffed it at him. He laughed as he caught the hanger. 

“What’s with the attitude?” He asked. 

I stood in front of him with my hands on my hips and tilted my head to the side, “you’re supposed to help me pick an outfit and you’re not helping me by telling me everything looks good.” Jeremiah smiled at me like he always did with crooked lips and soft eyes. 

“But you do look good in everything,” he said. “But maybe I’ll get a better idea if you put it on.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me and I rolled my eyes. 

“Not a chance.” He gawked at me and grabbed my wrist, pulling me in between his legs. I let him and my arms naturally fell over his shoulders. 

“Not even a small, minuscule one?” 

“You know what minuscule means?” I teased him. He faked a laugh and his hands squeezed the back of my thighs. He was perfect and I kissed him making him fall back onto my bed with me on top. 

I wore the blue dress to my party with a gold necklace that had the letter J hanging right right below my clavicle. Jeremiah draped it around my neck when he met me outside of the venue. His fingertips grazed my skin as he clasped it around my neck. His hands rested on my bare shoulders and he kissed my cheek and said, “forever, you’re mine.” I believed him and when we took photos together in the photo booth, he kissed my neck and I threw my head back laughing. He tucked both copies into his back pocket and when we got home later that night, he secured it into the frame of my mirror and we fell asleep tangled up together in the sheets. 

Now as I stare at the photo, instead of my heart swelling with fond memories, it fills with dread. I grab it and shove it in the bag I packed for Brown. I throw it over my shoulder and head downstairs where my parents are pretending that they weren’t waiting for me to come down. I hear the shuffle of my dad grabbing his crossword puzzle book from his lap in a hurry as I round the corner. “I’m going to go see Conrad at school, okay?” I tell them. 

My mom blinks at me. “Oh.” 

“Oh?” 

“I just didn’t know you and Conrad were still talking. Considering.” She shrugs loosely and gives

me a sad smile. Considering. 

“Conrad and I are still friends, Mom.”

“She didn’t mean anything by it, sweetheart. How long are you planning on staying?” My dad

asks. I turn my head to look at him and he looks so eager. So hopeful. 

“The weekend. I should be home by Monday.” He nods and my mom blows me a kiss. They yell at me to be careful as I leave out the front door. 

Brown’s campus is even more beautiful than the way Conrad describes it on the phone. It’s a little overwhelming, if I’m being honest. I stand in front of my car watching all the students pass by me with purpose and hesitate to ask one of them for directions. That’s when I see him. Walking toward me in a striped, collared shirt with a grin plastered on his face. “There she is,” he calls. He runs toward me, closing the gap between us. His arms wrap around my waist and he spins me around a few times which makes me laugh. When I land back on my feet he says, “I feel like it’s been far too long since I’ve seen you.” 

“It’s only been a few weeks,” I remind him. 

“Feels like forever.” Conrad looks down at me and smiles. His hands grip my biceps and he pulls me in for another hug. I feel my body relax against his chest, something that my body has refused to do for the last few weeks. I try to remember the last time I saw him. I remember what he was wearing, the way his hair looked, the look on his face as I ran out of the house in tears. “I’ll show you to my dorm and then we can go get lunch,” he says and releases me. 

The walk to his dorm is short but the campus is beautiful. I feel his eyes on me the entire time we’re walking. His arm brushes against mine and his eyes stare down at me willing for mine to meet them. I don’t. 

His door has a blank whiteboard on it and I almost think that’s more fitting than him writing his name on it. His roommate is gone so when the door closes, we’re alone and suddenly it all feels too quiet. “How did your last chemistry test go?” I ask as I stand awkwardly in the doorway. Conrad carried my bag the entire way and it’s now lying at the foot of his bed, his hand still lingering on the straps. 

He chuckles and says, “it went well, thanks for helping me study.” 

“Anytime.” He smiles at me and waves me toward him. I take the few short steps across the room and he hugs me one more time, this time as tight as his arms will allow. 

taglist: @things-that-make-sa-happy@marajillana@calpurnia2002@revemixer@harrysswhore @liltimmyst @chickunn-nuggett @rottenstyx @queenofthehellfireclub @lilbazzi @drikawinchester @gillybear17 @shamelessbluebirdsong

#tsitp #conrad fisher imagine #jeremiah fisher #tsitp imagine #conrad fisher x reader #jeremiah fisher fan fic #the summer i turned pretty #belly conklin #conrad fisher #jenny han

[lgbtqcreators]

Introducing our sixteenth event: raise your flag!

LGBTQCREATORS invites you to participate in their sixteenth event, creating something that represents either your gender or sexual orientation in a celebration of all things lgbtq+!

this event will run from the 1st of september until the 30th of september.

to participate:

—reblog this post. —follow our blog. — caption your post with ‘@lgbtqcreators event 16 — raise your flag’ and tag #userlgbtq —must be apart of our discord ♡

#* #*lucie #*event #16event #usernorah #usersmia #userisaiah #userautie #userpickles #userrsun #useraish #useraashna #alielook #usermaguire

[officiallordvetinari]

Another Wikipedia featured article poll, but it's hand-curated this time. Links and summaries below the cut.

A History of British Fishes is a natural history book by William Yarrell, serialised in nineteen parts from 1835, and then published bound in two volumes in 1836. It is a handbook or field guide systematically describing every type of fish found in the British Isles, with an article for each species.

The Battle of Lake Trasimene was fought when a Carthaginian force under Hannibal ambushed a Roman army commanded by Gaius Flaminius on 21 June 217 BC, during the Second Punic War. The battle took place on the north shore of Lake Trasimene, to the south of Cortona, and resulted in a heavy defeat for the Romans.

Steller's sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) is an extinct sirenian described by Georg Wilhelm Steller in 1741. At that time, it was found only around the Commander Islands in the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia; its range extended across the North Pacific during the Pleistocene epoch, and likely contracted to such an extreme degree due to the glacial cycle.

The Baker Street robbery was the burglary of safety deposit boxes at the Baker Street branch of Lloyds Bank in London, on the night of 11 September 1971. A gang tunnelled 40 feet (12 m) from a rented shop two doors away to come up through the floor of the vault.

On the morning of 6 December 1917, the French cargo ship SS Mont-Blanc collided with the Norwegian vessel SS Imo in the waters of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The Mont-Blanc, laden with high explosives, caught fire and exploded, devastating the Richmond district of Halifax.

The nature fakers controversy was an early 20th-century American literary debate highlighting the conflict between science and sentiment in popular nature writing. The debate involved important American literary, environmental and political figures.

The Spaghetti House siege took place between 28 September and 3 October 1975. An attempted robbery of the Spaghetti House restaurant in Knightsbridge, London, went wrong and the police were quickly on the scene.

Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in late 1922. The first issue, dated March 1923, appeared on newsstands February 18.

In July 2017, the municipalities of Mahwah, Upper Saddle River, and Montvale in Bergen County, New Jersey, in the United States, opposed extension of an eruv within their borders. An eruv is a land area surrounded by a boundary of religious significance, often marked by small plastic pipes (called lechis) attached to utility poles.

The Makassar kingdom of Gowa emerged around 1300 CE as one of many agrarian chiefdoms in the Indonesian peninsula of South Sulawesi. From the sixteenth century onward, Gowa and its coastal ally Talloq became the first powers to dominate most of the peninsula, following wide-ranging administrative and military reforms, including the creation of the first bureaucracy in South Sulawesi.

#Wikipedia polls

[dwellordream]

Cats, the Black Death, and a Pope

“...Despite the popular perception of plague being a normal part of life throughout the Middle Ages, the era was actually marked by a centuries-long period where the disease was not seen at all.  After the major epidemic of (probably) bubonic plague in the sixth century there do not seem to have been any such plague epidemics until the visitation of the Black Death in the late 1340s.  As a result, few Europeans had any natural immunity.  The plague revisited Europe periodically from the 1340s onward – usually at generational intervals – and then the 1660s saw another major outbreak.  But increased levels of immunity meant that these re-visitations were not as devastating as the “Great Dying” of the 1340s. Obviously, no-one had any clear idea of what caused the disease and the Church certainly did attribute it to the wrath of God, the way natural disasters were then and often still are to this day.  This did not mean there was no attempt at natural explanations for the disease by churchmen and scholars, who accepted that while it may be a manifestation of divine displeasure, it was still a natural phenomenon.  In the absence of any understanding of germ theory, they fell back on the ancient Greek idea of “miasmas” or “bad air” as the cause.  While this was wrong, it resulted in the practices of quarantining victims and disposing of dead bodies quickly (even burning them en masse, despite religious taboos about cremation), which went some way toward containing the disease.  But, as with any such epidemic in the pre-modern world, there was little else anyone could do other than let the disease run its course.

…The group most often scapegoated were western Europe’s Jews, given that they were a separate, non-Christian community that was easily identified. Pogroms against Jews broke out mainly in the Rhineland, which had seen large scale murders of Jews in earlier manifestations of mass hysteria, such as the beginning of the First Crusade in the 1090s.  So hundreds of Jews were massacred or burned alive in Strasbourg in 1349, but there were similar pogroms elsewhere in Europe, including Toulon in France and Barcelona in Spain.   Of course, the meme above is keen to blame the Church for these massacres, but actually the Church spoke out strongly against them and instructed local authorities to suppress them.  Pope Clement VI issued two papal bulls – the first on July 6, 1348 and another on 26 September 1348 – condemning the pogroms and forbidding the persecution of Jews.  Modern Jewish accounts often claim that Jews were targeted because they had better hygiene than their Christian neighbours and so suffered much lower mortality in the epidemic, though this seems to be based largely on modern misconceptions about medieval hygiene.  

Contrary to popular belief, all medieval people washed their hands before meals, washed and bathed regularly if not daily and washed dead bodies before burial, so these practices were not unique to medieval Jews.  Clement VI’s first bull also counters any claims that Jews could have been responsible for the plague by noting that Jews were dying as rapidly as everyone else, which indicates that the Jews did not have some kind of lower mortality rate anyway. So the meme’s claim that certain people were targeted as scapegoats is correct, but the implication that this was due to encouragement by “the Church” is not. The group that is missing in the accounts of victims of these revenge attacks, however, is “witches”.

Again, contrary to popular belief, the idea that alleged witches were regularly victimised by the Church in the medieval period is largely incorrect.  The heyday of the Witch Craze came much later, with its peak in the sixteenth century.  The position of the Church for most of the Middle Ages was that “witches” did not exist and even that it was sinful to claim they did. This changed in the last two centuries of the Middle Ages, but this change seems to have been, at least in part, a reaction to the Black Death and only came much later in the fourteenth century.  Fear of supposed witches does not manifest itself in any substantial way until long after the plague of the 1340s and there is no official Church acceptance of the existence of witches until 1484. So while there is plenty of evidence for pogroms against Jews in the wake of the plague and clear evidence of revenge against other marginal groups, there is no evidence at all that I know of that “witches” were blamed.  Which brings us to the claim about massacres of cats.

...did Gregory IX declare all cats evil or order their destruction?  Actually, no.  The “1232” reference seems to be to Gregory’s papal bull Vox in Rama, issued in that year, which addressed an alleged outbreak of devil worship in Germany.  This bull gives a description of the ceremonies of this group of “Luciferians”, which includes many standard tropes found in lurid medieval ideas about heretical practices. This involved visions of a giant toad, initiates kissing an emaciated pale man and finally a statue of a black cat coming to life and speaking with the initiates.  Nowhere does the bull associate this diabolical cat with cats generally, condemn all cats or call for their slaughter.  Yet the claim that this bull somehow did cause massacres of cats continues to be made, usually with no reference to any supporting evidence at all.  

…not only do we have repeated references to cats being kept as pets – especially by nuns, showing that unmarried “cat ladies” have a long history – but, as the illuminations above show, cats were actually prized because they were good at controlling rodents.  Medieval bestiaries talk about how useful cats are for catching mice and rats.  Isidore of Seville thought the Latin name for the cat – cattus – came from the verb “to catch (mice)”.  Most households kept cats both as mousers or simply as pets and etiquette books on how formal meals and feats should be conducted talk about how “dogs and cats” should be driven out of the hall before food was served.  The thirteenth century Ancrene Wisse – a guide for female hermits – advises “[you] shall not possess any beast, my dear sisters, except only a cat”.  Far from being “virtually eliminated”, medieval people rather liked cats.

…So where did this idea of a medieval cat massacre come from?  Like many myths that are projected back onto “the Middle Ages” (witch burning, an aversion to bathing), it seems loosely based on some much later incidents of killing animals as a reaction to other outbreaks of epidemics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  And the targets of these examples seem to have been dogs more than cats, though they could include both.  One thing that was notable about the Black Death and later European manifestations of the plague is that it seems to have affected many animals and livestock as well as humans. This means it killed rats in large numbers (possibly causing their fleas to seek human hosts), but we also have descriptions of dogs, cats and cattle dying.  

As a result, the main mentions of cats and dogs in accounts has them as victims of the epidemic, not as its cause. Despite this, we do have some evidence that dogs and, sometimes, cats were killed in reaction to later outbreaks.  In Edinburgh in 1499 a city ordinance required stray dogs, cats and pigs be killed in reaction to an outbreak of disease, and this law was repeated in 1505 and 1585.  We find a similar reaction in Seville in 1581 and in London in 1563 and again in 1665, where the victims were again mainly stray dogs rather than cats.  The reason seems to have been the medical belief that stray animals spread the plague.”

- Tim O’Neill, History for Atheists 

#history #medieval #religion #christian #cats #tim o'neill

[ddejavvu]

Dear User,

You are formally invited to ddejavvu's 10K dinner party. Attendence will run from the sixth of September to the sixteenth of September, skipping the twelfth for the blog's regular celebration of Multiverse Monday.

You are expected to bring at least one date. The list of guests allowed at our dinner party has expanded for this celebration, including characters from harry potter, the golden trio era and the marauders era, criminal minds, marvel, stranger things, twilight, the outsiders, top gun (both eras), gilmore girls, and star wars.

You will be served:

Hors d'oeuvre - 9/6

Soup - 9/7

Appetizer - 9/8

Salad - 9/9

Fish - 9/10

Entrée - 9/11

Palate cleanser - 9/13

Second entrée - 9/14

Dessert - 9/15

Coffee - 9/16

Expanded menus, providing your selection of each piece of the meal, will be posted and linked on their corresponding days. For example, the soup selection will be posted on the seventh of September.

If too many people order a dish, for example a salad, yours may come out later than you ordered it. The kitchen staff is, unfortunately, one person with a separate full-time job, so you may need to be patient for the parts of your meal. If your dish comes late, you will be issued a formal apology by the chef.

I hope that you enjoy your dining experience, all ten thousand of you deserve to have a wonderful meal.

Sincerely, your chef,

~ Mei (ddejavvu)

#ddejavvu's 10K dinner party !! #james potter #james potter x reader #sirius black #sirius black x reader #remus lupin #remus lupin x reader #regulus black #regulus black x reader #poly!marauders #poly!marauders x reader #spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner x reader #derek morgan #derek morgan x reader #emily prentiss #emily prentiss x reader #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #peter parker #peter parker x reader #matt murdock #matt murdock x reader