#this team is so funny. and so bad at hockey. and i love them | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thesuperiorrobin · 9 months

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𝐚 𝐠𝐨𝐚𝐥 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞~

Pairing: HockeyPlayer!Damian Wayne x Reader

Word count: 1.9k

Warning: mentions of blood, slight cursing, might not be accurate to real ice hockey so I apologize in advance.Damian being a demon on the ice, I wrote Damian OOC, mostly likely, he’s just in love

Damian looks flawless in ice, I’m just going to put that out there. I know he would.

He gets a bit carried away, ramming people up against the walls. That’s what he’s known for when he’s on the ice so the other team tries to stay far away from him, but also try to take the puck from him. Never really works out.

Always get penalized for it too and put in penalty for 2-5 minutes. Is pissed off at that for no reason.

The MAIN reason why his team wins. (Most of the time)

Really loyal to his team. If the opposite side ‘accidentally’ hurts his teammates he’s the first one to skate over to them. Might throw the first punch but it depends 🤷‍♀️ (100% will throw the punch no matter what :))

He gets hurt a lot. Whether it’s him digging with other or simply ramming into thing to hard , theres bound to be blood, a lots of it sometimes. But he always comes back with bandages around the wounds or maybe stitches.

If he does get hurt he puts out a little signal that only you know telling you he’s okay.

His signal in telling you that he’s going to make a goalie and dedicate it to you is literally stopping right in front of you and placing his gloved fist on the clear barricade, giving you a grin.

Buys you the tickets to go to his game. You never miss one. That’s because he says your his lucky charm during the games. That’s why his team wins all the time.

First row right next to his team where he can keep an eye one you and hold small conversations before it’s his time to go back on the ice

Likes to show off.

A lot. Only does it to impress you

Gives you the puck he made a goalie and won with (is that allowed?)

The crowds get louder and louder as the seconds count down. You're anxious and you don't know why. Damian’s team and the opposing team are tied with points. You’ve noticed Damian’s actions get more violent as time goes on. The more violent he got the more penalties he got which is a time out on the benches. Which means the other team gets a chance at scoring a point without Damian roughly ramming them against the wall. You��re cheering him on as he glides against the ice, but soon find yourself taking a break from the yelling.

Your eyes follow his figure as he glides against the ice, hockey stick in hand as he moves the puck back and forth against the base of the stick. There’s another figure coming for him, one from the opposing team. You cringe, knowing what’s about to happen to the poor person.

Lucky it wasn’t another penalty, but you would hear the crowd gasp witnessing the sight for what seemed like the nth time in less than twenty minutes. But, every time he did get a penalty and put in the penalty box, or as you call it the time out box, you can’t help but laugh. Knowing that Damian was put out for being rough much like how a small toddler would be put in the corner for not listening at all. It was always such a funny sight. Damian rams into the person hard, knocking him down.

“OH!” Dick says from behind you “that’s gotta hurt!” You know he wasn’t talking to you but you hum and nod. Dick and the others know first hand how rough he can be, having been practicing with him last time it didn’t end will with. “I think he gave him a concussion” Tim was also behind you sitting next to Dick, while Jason was no where to be seen.

‘Probably went to go shove his face with food’

Despite being on the other team you feel bad for them and the bruises they’ll be getting the following day. Not to mention the sore body’s they’ll have to work through. You’ve been sitting in the same spot for more than an hour with each game period being at least twenty minutes long, with fifteen minute breaks. Maybe they were shorter but you really couldn’t tell.

Damian misses his shot by a few inches away from the goalie, not being able to stop in time he slams himself up against the wall, the people behind it cover their mouths out of shock and you slap your forehead, shaking your head as you watch him brush it off and continue to play. However, his coach calls him out to replace him with another teammate. He compiles but has a sour look on his face, once he reaches the dry ground he throws his stick. Clearly angry and frustrated all you could do is watch for a while as he takes off his helmet, hair slightly damp from the sweat—giving him helmet hair, all messy and pointing in different directions. It makes you laugh a little. But your sudden mood changes quickly as he sits down head in his hands—running over his sweaty black locks. You don’t think twice as you tap on the screen that keeps his and your row apart.

Damian has good hearing with a small sound so it wasn’t hard to hear you tapping away. He turns to your directions, giving you a small nod. You frown and tilt your head down a little and he rolls his eyes knowing what you're implying and gives you a forced smile. You give him a thumbs up as he scoffs, he watches carefully as you pull out your phone and type away. His eyes never leave you until you place your phone, screen side up against the clear glass divider. Green eyes squinting as he reads away:

‘don’t worry. You got the next goal. I know it!’

That sentence alone makes his heart swell. Damian takes off his right gloves and pats his chest—right where his heart would be two times. A way of saying he appreciate the small gesture.

You take your phone off the glass and erase the previous sentence replacing it with a new one—placing it back on the glass: ‘Have a plan for when you get back on the ice? He quickly reads and nods his head. At least he has a plan, you thought and place your phone back in your pocket. Hands shaking for the cold and lack of warmth you had for them considering the fact that you had forgotten your mittens at home. You focus your attention back on the game. The opposite team ahead by one point— but Damian’s team can do good without him for a while.

He’s out for about half of the game until his coach decides to replace him with another one of his teammates. He taps on the glass to get your attention and once he has it, he Winks at you before making his way back on the ice.

“So are they losing or what?” A familiar voice says beside you and you turn your head, Jason takes his seat next to you with two cups in his hand. “Where the hell have you been?”

“The line for hot chocolate got long” he hands you one “I got you one too, know you stressing over the Demon playing Disney on ice right now” the warm drink warms up your hands a little.

“Thanks. That’s nice of you Jason” You ignore the comment and he hums before he takes a sip of his one drink, eyes scanning the ice before he yells out with the audience. Someone from the Damian team made a shot and they’re tied with the other team.

You go back to cheering him on, the warm drink soothing your throat from all the yelling earlier. It’s later forgotten as you place the half empty cup on the ground right beside your foot— watching the minutes pass by quickly like seconds.

Your heart skips a beat, and not in a good way when the other team shoots their shot but thankfully they fail. With time becoming shorter and shorter it was only a matter of time before Damian took matters into his own hands and his teammates are quick to learn to stay out of it when the time was cutting short and they were off by a point or two, or in this case tied, They had faith in him and so did you.

The seat is now cold from your absence, you’re up on your feet cheering and screaming right along with his brothers who seem to be cheering louder than you. Your eyes glued to Damian as you try to keep up with his figure. He has the puck, sliding it back and forth against the curve of his stick once more.

You don’t have time to think—especially when his helmet makes a horrible sound right up against the clear barrier as one of the players from the opposite team slams into him harshly. Right in front of you as you flinch back. Cheering can be heard from the opposite side of the ice rink which is where the other team supporters were.

Your side falls silent, few gasps and murmurs could be heard. Damian’s back up on his feet, his gloved fist pressed up against the clear barrier. His eyes locked on yours with a glint of mischief and something else. One of those grins grace his lips, one that makes you smile as he waved at you before he leaves.

He’s much faster this time and it makes you think if he was slacking off all this time—or maybe it was the adrenaline that runs high in his veins with these last few minutes. He was going to make a goal, dedicating it to you. Your body feels warm and your heart skips.

“ Ohh~ I know that look” Jason teases from beside you, Dick and Tim are leaning down giving you cheeky grins.

You roll your eyes trying to hide the smile that tries to form itself on your lips “I don’t know what you mean.” You play stupid as you glance back at the game.

fifty seconds left of the last game, everyone seemed to be cheering and calling out those who were on the ice. Damian pays no mind to his teammates as they let him do what he needs to do. You cheer for him, calling out his name. Despite there being hundreds of others yelling out at the same time his mind blocks them out, every single one of them but you. they get louder the minute he gets ahold of the puck swiftly, quickly making his way to the goalie.

His main priority was to get the puck around the goaltender and into the net. He was doing this all for you and you knew that. Those fifty seconds go by quickly, as if you’ve blinked and when you open your eyes ten seconds we’re now left. Everyone counted down, even you. It felt like time went slower once it hit that five second mark, you’ve quiet yourself down and the only thing you can hear is the sound of your heartbeat in your ears. You watch Damian has he left up his stick and takes a hit.

Pointing and loud gasp could be seen and heard, half of the ice rink goes quiet—as if the loudness would mess up his plan. Right as the Puck glides under the goaltender and into the net the timer makes a sound—indicating that the game is now over and Damian scores a point, officially breaking the tie. Relief washes over you, hands thrown in the air as a yell of excitement leaves you as Damian’s brothers cheer alongside you. The other side slouches, defeated as your side basically rubs it in their fasts by how loud they were being, but you didn’t care.

A win is a win.

You can see Damian, as he is pulled into a group hug by the rest of his team, some patting his pack and some patting his helmet and shoving it gently as a gesture. The part you don’t notice is him escaping from the group and skating to the Net where he had thrown the puck before he picked it up, waving it in the air like some sort of trophy—however, in this context, it was. He shows it off with pride, making his way towards you.

With a loud yelp you’re picked up by the others, Jason, Dick, and Tim, as they lift you up until you're basically above the spectating glass. Your lover stands below on the other side with his arm stretched out high, he waits. With the help of the others, they hold on to you as you lean done and over the glass.

Your own arm stretches down as you grasp the puck in your hand. His gloves are now off and so is his helmet, his hair pointing in all directions much like earlier when he was away on a penalty, his warm hand grasping yours with the puck still in your hand

“I did that just for you, habibti!” Eyes glistening, you Can’t really tell if it’s from his sweat or his love for you.

“I know!” You laugh “I love you!”

“And I too, love you!” The crowd fills itself with loud cheers and small ‘awes’, watching the sight of the son that belonged to billionaire Bruce Wayne was a rare sight to see, considering how he would rather keep private about his relationship with you.

His warm lips connected to the coldness of your knuckles , making a mental note to bring an extra pair of gloves just for you in the future.

“If you lean down further you’re going to eat shit”

“shush I’m having a moment here”

“just saying”

Tried to make it as accurate as possible bc, again I know nothing about ice hockey. I had googled the rules and watched videos

And god knows how many references pictures I tried to find about hockey. Probably spend like an hour trying to find them just to draw Damian :|

I will be taking a short break from writing requests just bc school is starting in like a few days or so. So I can get my life together and actually have time to mentally prepare myself and fix my schedule seeing as I’ve been up most night until 6 am and waking up at 2pm.

#damian al ghul #damian wayne #damian wayne x reader #robin x reader #damian x reader #damian al ghul x reader #damian scenarios #hockey player!damian wayne

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hugshughes · 4 months

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mad woman N. Moyle

Nolan Moyle x fem!reader

synopsis - Nolan is back in the place you two fell in love, and he can't get you out of his mind.

wc - 2.5k!

contains - UNEDITED SORRY!! cursing, NO HAPPY ENDING!(between Nolan and reader, I don't leave my readers sad you know that), um asshole!nolan as fuck, MAD WOMAN BY TSWIFT?????, um yeah i don't know, BAD BITCH!READER (you go girl), hints at future!frank nazar x reader (YOU KNOW I HAVE A HARD TIME HELPING MYSELF!!!!!!!)

an - hey y'all....... im not deceased!!! um yeah HOPE U HAD A GOOD HOLIDAYSSSSSS. some of this I couldn't tell, if it was funny or cringe so don't hate me. I don't loveeeeeee this but whatever. Frank is so cute SOMEONE REQUEST HIM ;))) anyways love u hope you enjoy!

what did you think i'd say to that? does a scorpion sting when fighting back?

Nolan felt weird. It was the first time he was back in Ann Arbor since leaving for China in the summer. He was stopping to see the boys and watch a hockey game before going back home to New York.

It was the first time he'd been in Ann Arbor since you broke up. The breakup was rough. There had been a lead up for weeks before, all you did was argue. You couldn't understand him, or anything he was doing. When you found out he was going to move to China, you felt like that was him saying you weren't important to him. He didn't seem even slightly upset about having to leave you, and when you were hysterical over it, he just called you crazy.

they strike to kill, and you know i will. you know i will.

When you realized Nolan wasn't going to be anything but indifferent about the situation, all you felt was rage. Maybe you were crazy, you felt it.

Nolan had been your boyfriend since you were a freshman, and he was a junior at Michigan. You dated for almost three years, and then he threw you to the side. Now you were interning in the athletics department at Michigan while you finished school, and you were talking with your supervisors about a job opening after graduation, so you were sticking around in Ann Arbor for a while longer.

It was honestly embarrassing the way you tried for you two, while it seemed he couldn't have cared less. The boys felt bad, they'd known you their whole college careers, you'd help them through losses, comforted them, cared for them. You were the best female influence they had while at college.

They hung out with you all summer, trying to include you in all of their activities, because they knew what you were going through. They loved Nolan, and they loved you. You didn't make them feel like they had to choose, and Nolan really couldn't even if he wanted to, being on the other side of the world from all of you.

You were still in Ann Arbor, along with the boys because they still had hockey games to play before they could go home for winter break, and you worked with the hockey team in the winter, so you were sticking around as well.

what do you sing on your drive home? do you see my face in the neighbors lawn?

Nolan couldn't get you off of his mind as he drove through the small Michigan college town. He saw you everywhere. You were the only person that had stuck around with him while most of his friends left to the NHL over the years. You could tell at the last moments of your breakup Nolan was jealous, he was jealous of people like Luke, who was leaving from their loss in Tampa straight to Boston to sign with the Devils. He had always dreamed of it, but had just not come close enough.

China would take him away from it all, a new place, as far away as he could be, because it did hurt to look at all the guys he captained, knowing they'd go on to do greater things than him.

He deflected what was going on in his head to you. He accused you of being crazy, and envious, and insecure, but it was him. He felt so shitty about himself on the inside that he threw it all to you.

does she smile? or does she mouth, "fuck you forever"? every time you call me crazy, i get more crazy.

Nolan was being suffocated by the overwhelming sense of you, that Ann Arbor held. Every corner, every road, every stoplight.

Nolan pulled into a parking spot on the side of the street, unbuckling his seatbelt and turning the car off. He sat in the empty car for a few minutes. Would you be there when he walked into the dinner the boys had planned? He knew they were really close with you, seeing as he stalked your and their Instagram profiles often.

He didn't know if the guys would do it to him. He also didn't know if they knew that seeing you would affect him so much.

You knew Nolan was invited to this dinner, but you didn't really care. You'd met your peace with him over the summer, at least in your mind, you were happy. Single life had been treating you well, you were prioritizing yourself, your friends, your family, and your career and it was a perfect balance for you.

what about that? and when you say i seem angry, i get more angry.

You'd always loved the idea of working for a sports team, specifically hockey. You'd been the daughter of the Minnesota Twins physical therapist since you were born, so seeing the behind the scenes of major league teams was always exciting for you. You'd gotten your first opportunity to work with sports teams in high school, when you had an internship with a smaller hockey team in Minnesota, and since then you'd loved working with hockey. It was how you met Nolan, interning with the Michigan team your freshman year.

You were already on your second drink when you saw Nolan walk into the restaurant. Seeing him left a pit of red hot anger in your stomach. You just looked away from him before he could catch you and kept talking to Luca. Maybe the anger never left, you didn't care as long as the love you had for him did.

and there's nothing like a mad woman. what a shame she went mad.

You chose not to acknowledge him, and he understood why. The last time you talked to him, you were screaming, crying, completely confused as to why he didn't love you like you loved him. You didn't understand how after committing three years to him, he could throw all of it away without a second thought. He probably had someone. Someone he could entertain halfway across the world.

You both ignored each other, deciding it best not to talk. You knew that it wouldn't end well, the rage sitting in your chest would release itself the second you said a word to Nolan. You both drank, a lot. You partially because you wanted to get your mind off of him, and partially because Luca was challenging you to go shot for shot with him.

Nolan was embarrassed before you two broke up, and he still was, sort of. Then, he was embarrassed because he felt like he wasn't talented enough to lead his team that was chock-full of NHL prospects. Now he was embarrassed because he had realized what he let go when he let you go. And obviously all these boys could tell he had lost a good one, because they all loved and admired you so heavily.

Nolan wasn't exactly good at handling emotions like embarrassment and insecurity, since being raised on "men don't cry" mentalities. And when he was so full of these unfamiliar feelings, he took it out solely on you.

And it made you crazy, like completely batshit. You were head over heels for Nolan, had been since the day you met, and when he flipped on you, you didn't know what to do.

no one likes a mad woman. you made her like that.

Nolan was drunk. Anyone in the bar could tell you that. He didn't always handle his alcohol well, either. His eyes locked onto you, all the way down the long table full of people. You were currently talking with some of the media girls, discussing the upcoming Monday video, thinking of question ideas.

Drunk Nolan was mad you weren't paying attention to him. He always wanted your attention, while you were together, and now. He started talking, rather loudly, about you. He was saying how you were crazy, and controlling and that's why you broke up. It was because he was drunk, but that didn't mean it was okay. You heard your name, and your head snapped to the side, staring Nolan down.

"No, she's a crazy bitch! Y'guys are lucky you haven't tried somethin' with'er, she's like the bossiest girlfriend ever. Like, like when we broke up, she was just beggin' me to stay and like wouldn't let me break up with'er!"

You were seeing blood red. None of that was true. You let Nolan do whatever the fuck he wanted during your relationship. He was the possessive one.

and you'll poke the bear, 'til her claws come out.

Most of the table was staring at you, those who weren't were staring at Nolan in bewilderment. No one believed him, they had witnessed your relationship. Some of the guys were telling Nolan to shut the fuck up, knowing you were angry.

You stood up, going to the end of the table Nolan sat at. You stood on the opposite side of the table, between Frank and Nick's seats.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, Nolan? Do you really need my attention? It's pathetic, to talk about me like this, especially while I'm sitting right fucking there. We get it, you're not as fucking famous as you were here in China, but you don't have to bring me into your attention seeking."

and you find something to wrap your noose around. and there's nothing like a mad woman.

Nolan saw this as an opportunity. He knew he was getting you angry, he was thriving off of it.

"See? She's crazy!"

Adam slapped Nolan over the back of the head, telling him to shut up again, looking at you with wide eyes.

"It's alright Adam, you don't need to stop him from being a bitch. Anyways, Nolan, you calling me crazy is laughable. You were the one that didn't let me wear shit! The one that got mad when I went out with my friends!"

Nolan started to turn into an angry drunk guy. You were saying true things, all of that happened through the duration of your relationship. Nolan was getting embarrassed, again. He look around the table, his eyes catching on the one person likely on his side. A media girl in her junior year at Michigan. In her two years on the team with Nolan as a part of it, she'd had a crush on him, and made it clear to you and him. He turned back to you, ready to say something that would hurt you deep.

now i breathe flames every time i talk. my cannons all firin' at your yacht.

"It's your fault I was like that, I had to worry about you whoring yourself out to everyone."

You could've jumped over the table and strangled him. Frank grabbed your hand under the table, being the sweetheart he was. You squeezed his hand back, thanking him silently. You knew Nolan was embarrassed, and jealous that you were over him, when you obviously occupied his thoughts.

"You have to be kidding me."

they say, "move on." but you know i won't.

"She's not worth it Nolan."

A bitchy little voice came from down the table, every head snapping to look at the girl who'd said it. Of course, it was the one that wanted Nolan down her throat while you two together.

"Alright babe, just because you're feening to get in his pants doesn't mean you're apart of this conversation."

She gasped, many of the people at the table let out laughs, including the other media girls, leading the girl to turn in anger at them and shout out them to stop. You laughed hard, watching her try to blubber out insults at you.

and women like hunting witches too. doing your dirtiest work for you.

"It's obvious that you're both obsessed with me, and I understand, trust me."

They both got angry, starting to let out insults at you, but they were just funny to you.

"You two are gonna be very happy with each other, you can think about me together."

Watching them get angrier and angrier with you was so funny, objectively. You turned to Frank next to you, who was laughing, hard. You mouthed, 'I'm scared' to him, making him laugh harder.

it's obvious that wanting me dead has really brought you two together.

You stepped out from between the chairs, letting Frank's hand go, moving to grab your jacket, wallet, and phone from your spot, walking back to where you were when you gagged Nolan and media girl.

"Well I'm leaving, you two have given me enough entertainment for one night."

You left the bar, giggling to yourself as you pulled out your phone on the walk to your car. You saw one of the girls texted you, reading, 'mr obsessed is going out to see you WALK SLOW ;)' You knew who she meant, Frank. He'd had a little crush on you since he'd joined the team, in age, he was only a little over a year younger than you, so it wasn't weird or anything. You thought he was super cute and he was a lot more thoughtful than Nolan had ever been, even though he wasn't even your boyfriend, you'd never even entertained him, but he was still kind and caring towards you.

i'm taking my time, taking my time, 'cause you took everything from me

You looked behind you, stopping when you saw none other than Frank Nazar jogging up to you, you smiled brightly at him.

"Hi Frank."

He smiled, laughing as he said hi. He told you he wanted to make sure you got to your car safe, of course he did, he was a gentleman. So you let him walk with you, laughing about what had taken place in the bar. When you got to your car, you got in but talked to Frank through your open window for over ten minutes. When you told him he should go back to get out of the freezing weather of Ann Arbor, he nodded and agreed, but didn't leave.

This kid would probably end up being the death of you, with his smile and pretty hair. When you finally got him to head back to the bar, he was physically shivering. You smiled warmly to yourself as you sat in your car for a couple minutes, thinking about the whole night. Seeing Nolan be such a dick confirmed everything you'd thought about him over all the months, so it felt like you were really able to let go. Move on.

watching you climb, watching you climb over people like me. the master of spin has a couple side flings. good wives always know she should be mad, should be scathing like me, but no one likes a mad woman. what a shame she went mad, you made her like that.

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thursdaygxrls · 9 months

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thin ice — one

part one | part two | part three

summary — she didn’t handle the sports section of the campus newspaper, but apparently, she did this week. interviewing hockey players was easy, though—unless one of those players happened to be peter parker.

pairing — uni hockey player!peter parker x fem!journalist!reader

disclaimers — i don’t own peter parker. and pls don't come for me with the accuracy of this situation i'm begging

warnings — reader is referred to as ‘kitty’ (there’s a reason, i promise), slight one sided enemies to lovers, sewer slide jokes (very briefly), possible maybe slightly ooc, and very unedited

“You’re joking. You’re pulling the biggest prank I’ve ever seen, you are the impractical joker,” she huffs out, her eyes wide as furiously clicks her mouse, “I’m gonna die. I’m writing the note tonight—farewell, my lovely!”

“Woah, okay,” MJ, her roommate, had only just entered the room when she was bombarded with a sudden rant. She didn’t even have time to take down her ponytail of thin, red braids before her eardrums were assaulted.

“I mean it.” Spinning her chair, she meets MJ’s eyes.

“I literally just got here,” MJ plops down on the bed in front of the desk, “Care to tell me why you’re writing that note?”

“I’m a dumb, dumb girl, that’s why,” she groans in response.

“We already knew that.” MJ’s words only cause the girl in front of her to shoot daggers with her gaze; “Sorry, sorry. Why are you a dumb, dumb girl?”

“God, okay, so,” she lets out a loud sigh, “Eli is gonna be gone for the rest of the month—Europe or something, good for him. Anyways, they needed someone to cover his assignments for him until he gets back, and I volunteered, but, like, only to be nice, y’know? I did it as an obligation. But…”

“But?” MJ pressed.

“I just got an email, and it’s me,” she grumbled, “They’re putting me on Eli’s assignments.”

“Hm, I see,” MJ’s lips curl into a frown as she gently rubs the girl’s arm, “Too much work?”

“Oh, no, my stuff’s easy,” she waved her off, “Just reading the poetry submissions. I mean, it can be exhausting, but it’s not too bad.”

“Then what is it?” MJ cocks her head.

“Eli…Eli does sports,” she shuddered. MJ couldn’t contain the loud laugh that slipped out, clamping a hand over her mouth to stifle it.

“You’re worried about sports?” She giggles, her eyes twinkling.

“It’s not funny!” She smacks MJ lightly, “Sports aren’t unbearable or anything, but, like, why me? I don’t know enough! I’ll screw it up, I’ll lose my spot, they’ll stick me back in—”

“Relax,” MJ grabs her shoulders, bringing her closer, “First off, no, you won’t lose your spot, we both know they’d be losing their minds without you. Second, they wouldn’t just throw it on you if they thought you’d give them bad work, right?” She eyes MJ almost suspiciously. There’s a momentary stare-down before she relents.

“I hate that you’re right,” she sighs, spinning her chair around. MJ stops the spin by putting her hands down on the arms of the chair.

“Thought you’d be used to it by now,” she giggles, “So, what do you have to do?”

“I don’t know.” Is the mumbled reply.

“You didn’t even look?” MJ laughs again, “You were losing your mind, and you didn’t even know what you’re doing?”

“I’m sorry that I’m sensitive,” she huffs. Her gaze moves back to the laptop before her. The email is open on the screen, so she begins scrolling through it, MJ reading the words over her shoulder. Her eyes nearly bulge out of her head when she gets to the end.

“Fuck this,” she almost slams her laptop shut, but is stopped short by MJ.

“Slow down!” The redhead slaps her hand out of the way to read the rest of the email.

The ESU hockey team had made it to the NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey tournament for the first time in six years—and they were doing damn good. Eli had been tasked with interviewing the team captain as well as a few other star players, but, of course, it was no longer Eli's job.

"Oh, come on,” MJ rolled her eyes, “They gave you a Google Doc with questions, all you have to do is ask them and write down their response."

“That's the problem, I have to ask,” she shivered.

"You've done interviews before!" MJ was ready to smack her.

"With professors! And cool artsy people! Not hockey guys," she cringed, “I bet half of them are in a frat. They're probably gonna be assholes and tell me I have cooties."

“Are you twelve?” MJ groaned, “You sort of lucked out with this—half the work is already done for you! You don’t need to write up any questions!” A sigh left her lips as she took on a more comforting tone: “If it makes you feel any better, Harry is on the team.”

Ah, Harry. MJ had been seeing him for a little over a month by now. He wasn’t a bad guy at all. A little full of himself, but nice enough to talk to. Her eyes roved over the list of players she was set to interview. Sure enough, Harry Osborn was there. So was Miles Morales, who was described as an extremely promising freshman. Zack Coleson, who had the highest number of goals for the season. Last on the list was the team captain: Peter Parker.

“I can talk to Harry,” MJ offered, “I can let him know that it’s you doing the interviews. I’ll make sure he tells them to go easy on you—”

“No, no,” she shook her head, “That might make it worse. And they already know that it’s not Eli coming. Or they should, at least”

“You sure?” MJ quirked a brow, her features crinkling in a way that was only intelligible as concern.

“They’ll be walking on eggshells around me if they know I’m chickenshit, I won’t get a good interview,” she sighed. Even if the interview wasn’t what she wanted to do, she was going to have to. And she would do a good job—a great job.

“You got this, Kitty,” MJ squeezed her shoulders. The nickname pulled a smile from her, and she gave into MJ’s touch.

“We’ll see about that,” she relented. Her eyes traveled back to the computer screen. The interviews were scheduled two days from now at the Stark Memorial Rink.

“Hey, MJ,” she hummed, “Could you grab me my noose?”

The rink was colder than she expected. The empty stands provided no body heat, not to mention there was a literal sheet of ice on the floor. Tugging at the strap of her messenger bag, she took slow, careful steps to the plexiglass.

Clink.

Her eyes widened. There were around ten to fifteen guys in full gear out on the ice, and another ten to fifteen more on a bench near the glass or flitting around the edge of the rink. She was nervous, so she got there early. Now, she was stuck watching them practice.

Leaving was so tempting. She could go back to her dorm, or better yet, leave college entirely. She could just give up and fall off the grid, cut her credit cards, throw her phone in the ocean, sail off to Greece—

“Hello?”

She cursed the muffled voice that pulled her back into reality. Blinking, she found that standing before her was one of the very hockey players she’d seen skating on the rink before her. He was tall, and gear under his black and purple jersey made him appear far more bulkier than she theorized he was. He slipped his helmet off to reveal brown, curly hair that was drenched in sweat.

“Hi,” she replied, trying not to sound as nervous as he would. He cocked his head at her as he popped out his mouth guard.

“This is a closed practice,” he said, though, he didn’t sound all too upset that she was here.

“Oh, yeah, I know,” she nodded quickly, her fingers toying with the strap of her bag again, “I’m a bit early, I’m supposed to be interviewing some people on the team. I’m—”

“Kitty?” She was interrupted by the sound of a voice as well as skates scraping across the ice. Glancing past the guy in front of her, she saw Harry slide off the ice and clomp to benches where they currently were.

“Hey, Harry.” Her lips were screwed up in a tight grin. He’d heard MJ call her Kitty once, and now it was the only thing he’d refer to her as.

“Kitty?” Mystery guy repeated the name with a hint of intrigue.

“It’s not my real name, my friends just call me that,” she shook her head.

“What’re you doing here?” Harry asked, swinging an arm around the shoulder of the guy in front of her.

“I’m Eli’s replacement,” she explained, trying to plaster a friendly smile to her lips, “I’m doing the interviews.”

“Aw, shit, why didn’t MJ tell me we got the cool Kitty-cat on the case?” Harry grinned.

“Could you try to never say those words again? Really hated it, thanks,” her nose crinkled.

“You got it.” He tried to point finger guns at her, but with the thick gloves on, it just looked like he was pointing his whole hand.

“Hey,” he started up again, “You’re a little early, so practice isn’t over yet, but we’re almost done. It’s just the four of us, right?”

“Right,” she nodded in response. It was a relief that they’d been briefed on the situation.

“Alright, well, I’m Harry, obviously, Miles and Zack are on the ice somewhere, and this right here—” Harry jostled the shoulders of the Mystery guy, “—is Peter. Oh captain, my captain!”

Peter chuckled as Harry clapped him on the back. The noise that emanated from the friendly hit was harsh, but Peter didn’t move a muscle.

“Right,” she nodded, “So, I figured we could do them individually? There’s some sort of specific questions for each of you.”

“Sounds good, Kitty,” Harry replied. She’d smack him if he said that name again.

“Sit tight for a bit,” Peter spoke up. Even with the stubble on his chin, his smile gave him a boyish appearance. He looked her up and down quickly, “We can try to wrap up practice early.”

'A bit' ended up feeling like forever. At first, she tried to distract herself with her phone, but it didn't work: she would open apps, scroll through them, then close them just to reopen them over and over again. So she organized her bag, which took about five minutes. Time seemed to tic by in a tauntingly slow manner. It was only when she saw a few of the players emerge from the locker room did she let out a breath of relief. She immediately sucked that breath back when she realized that she would actually have to talk to some of them.

Harry went first. It was easy enough to go through the questions with him. It was like talking to an over-eager relative at a family reunion, one who was just dying to talk about all the new things they're doing. Miles wasn't all that bad to interview, either. He was a lot more nervous than she was. His awkward pauses and constant strings of 'um' and 'uh' was almost comforting. Then came Peter.

"Kitty," he grinned as soon as he saw her seated on the bench next to the rink. He no longer wore his gear—just a hoodie and a pair of gray sweats. His hair, however, was still wet and tousled. She gave him a tight lipped smile in return.

"That's not my name," she replied. Before she had time to properly introduce herself, his raspy chuckle was already echoing through the open arena.

"You said that's what your friends call you, right?" He cocked his head as he sat down on the other edge of the bench.

"You're not—” If she could just make it through the interview without fuss, she'd be one person away from being free, "—right. That's what my friends call me."

"I'm going to be recording this, just so I can reference it later," she explained almost monotonously.

"This isn't my first time," he responded with another light laugh. She had to physically bite her tongue to fight off any comments. A soft click sounded from her phone as she started a new voice memo. Her eyes scanned the list of questions on the page before her. Some she'd already asked to Harry and Miles: How does it feel to make the tournament? What is the atmosphere of the team right now? She chose a fresh question to start with.

"What's it like to be the captain of this team? Are you proud? Overwhelmed?" She asked, her voice taking on a new tone closer to a news anchor than a regular person. Peter's lips curled up at the change.

"I'm proud, yeah," he nodded, his voice smooth, "This is a great group. But we all work our asses off, so I'm not surprised by how far we've come. Being their captain is really something."

"And—"

"Do you normally do sports? For the paper, I mean." Before she could even get her next sentence out, he interrupted her. Her grip on the papers in her hand tightened.

"No, not normally," she grit out, "And going along with your thoughts on being captain, what about making it to the tournament this year?"

"It's the best feeling in the world. It's something I've been chasing after for years now, finally getting to it is just...sort of indescribable." Even when his tone is nothing but sincere, he can't wipe the cocky grin from his lips.

"I can imagine," she smiled tautly in reply, "What was it like working your way up to captain? Was it a personal journey, or did you get support from the team?"

"I'd say it was an even mix of both," he hummed, "Do you like hockey?"

"What?" She furrowed her brows.

"Are you a hockey fan?" He reiterated, "Because our next game is home, and it's sort of packed, but I could get you some tickets assuming you don't have some already—"

"No—Peter," she let out a frustrated huff, tapping on her phone to momentarily pause the recording, "This is an interview, not social hour."

"Aren't interviews inherently social?" His smirk was infuriating.

"I mean that I ask the questions, you answer them," she grumbled, "Do you act like this with Eli? Are you not taking me serious because I'm a woman?"

"What?" His smirk fell immediately, "What? No—no. I'm taking you seriously, I take women very seriously. I'm all for women. They're great."

"Then can we just do this interview and get it over with?" She sighed, her finger hovering over the unpause button. He nodded, but before she could resume the interview, he quickly added: "But do you want tickets?"

Ignoring the question, she carried on. Peter seemed to mellow out after a while and didn't interrupt again. It was almost surprising how well he'd listened: he was giving her real, insightful answers to her questions without a hint of flirtation. The final interview with Zack flowed easily, and she fled Stark Memorial Rink as quick as she could.

Transcribing the interviews was the easiest part. Days later, she would be hunched over her computer in the darkness of her shared dorm, playing and replaying the recordings and typing out the words onto the screen. Her concentration was briefly interrupted, though, when the door opened and a stream of light threaded its way through the room and onto the back of her head.

"Light bad!" She slapped her hands over her eyes, "Light very bad!"

"You're gonna go blind if you keep staring at your computer in the dark," MJ spoke in a warning tone, but ultimately closed the door.

"Then blind I must go," she sighed, swiveling on her chair to look at her roommate, "How was class?"

"Normal," MJ shrugged, sliding her bag off her shoulders, "But I have a little something for you."

"Something for little ol' me?" She gasped in dramatized delight.

"Yes," MJ grinned widely as her hand reached for the zipper of her bag, "Close your eyes."

She obliged immediately, her nose scrunched in anticipation, "I hope it's a million dollars. Is it a million dollars? Am I close?"

"Almost," MJ giggled. After a moment of anticipation, MJ gently grabbed her hands and place something into them. It was thin and papery and rectangular. Opening her eyes, she looked down to see a white envelope with 'Kitty' written out on the front. Her brows furrowed at the unfamiliar handwriting.

"Is there a check for a million dollars inside?" She asked as she cocked her head.

"No clue, it's not from me," MJ shrugged.

"Then who's it from?" Her fingers slid under the lip of the envelope.

"Harry gave it to me to give to you," MJ grinned, "He said it's from Peter."

She should've sailed to Greece when she had the chance. Inside the envelope were two tickets—Empire State University versus Pennbrook University this Saturday at seven. A long groan left her lips before she finally met MJ's eyes.

"You never got me that noose I asked for."

a/n — not sure how i’m feeling abt this one guys. hockey peter has been causing me brain rot tho so i couldn’t help myself.

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princesssmars · 2 years

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I NEED ;) a poly Steve Harrington and Eddie Munson fic with either any kind of reader. Maybe protecting each other in the upside down, or being completely parents to the kids (lots of cute fluff), or reader is with Mike/will/the others because they went with Mike to see el and Will and Eddie/Steve thinks they are safe there and it’s funny because it then goes to their pov and their being shot at (maybe they call each other at some point and their like got to go we’re running from the literal FBI).

Relationship HC's - poly!steddie x reader

MY FIRST REQUEST MFS LETS GO also you guys work quick lmaooo. but I also like eddie more than I thought I would so here this is. i wanted to include both if you were with them vs with mike will and johnathan so idk if it works but uh yeah enjoy it anyway (anon im sorry this took me 5 years)

cw: uhhh fluff, violence bc Stranger Things. i guess scary things bc Stranger Things. a hiiint of spice bc i cant help myself

so here the three of you are, the ex-king, the freak and the nerd

how you got together ? no idea

most likely you and eddie met steve while going to pick a movie as a treat for him since you tutor him so he wont fail senior year a third time

steve went through his usual bi panic when he saw these two pretty people walk into the store and tried to turn on The Harrington Charm™️ and lets just say hes lucky you both thought he was cute

so badda bing badda boom ur all dating

the party loving you to bits

not being upset when you get asked to "babysit" or just hang out with them, like being an extra for hellfire, chilling and listening to music with max, etc.

and also eddie adores you for being into dnd, he tried to get steve into it and he loves him but was like nah 😐

jane and will even start to like you before they visit based on everyones letters

steve being highkey lowkey jealous because eddie already basically stole lucas dustin and mike and here you go winning over everyone 💀

but he does love it, as we've learned mans wants a whole damn hockey team of harringtons so seeing you being so good with kids does something to him

breeding kink anyone

then that just makes me thing of the three of you lying in bed late at night talking about the future you all want

if its rich boy!steve then him thinking of moving you all to some big house near the city with enough room for the 3 9 of you <3

you and eds def tease him for it but the idea of staying in a nice house and raising a family with them doesnt sound that bad...

but then spring break happens

you think itll be fun, a chance to relax from your studies, chill with your friends, maybe even go on a date or two with your loves

then the next thing you know your house phone is blowing up because dustin n steve say your eddie is wanted for the murder of chrissy fucing cunnigham

greaaaat

now your all driving around in the woods and you find eddie nd hes so god damn terrified and grabs you n steve and hugs you so tight :(

you and eddie being shocked but also kind of hurt when finding out about the upside down and stuff bc why didnt steve warn yall about this shit ???

but he was scared of putting you both in danger wanted you both to be safe etc etc

valid ofc bc hes definitely not pytting the loves of his life in danger hello ??

you and steve being so hesitant to leave eddie by himself so you leave him a bunch of kisses to get him by <3

and then after all this your girls max is cursed next ? and some stupid high school jocks are hunting your boyfriend ?

best spring break ever .

this was messy as shit and i might continue but until then peace out .

#steddie x reader #stranger things x reader #stranger things #steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x steve harrington #poly reader #from ur beloved procrastinator

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ijustreallylovethem · 1 year

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can i request dating luke and being one of the umich media girls

you smiled as the boys started to out of the locker room, ready to get out on the ice. you held up a small whiteboard, holding the question of the week on it. what would be your walkout song if you had one? there were lots of answers that you probably could’ve guessed: lots of migos, all i do is win, gangsters paradise, etc. of course some of the boys made you laugh with party in the usa, hey ya, and even big bad john by jimmy dean.

most of the team had cleared out onto the ice but luke was still in the locker room. you waited, knowing he wasn’t fond of doing the weekly question, but the fans had been asking for more luke and who were you to deny them? he poked his head out of the door and you smiled and waved. he sighed, shaking his head.

“i’m not doing it.” you pouted.

“why not?”

“i don’t wanna.”

“but luke! everyone’s been commenting for you!”

“nope.” he shut the door, but then opened it and took off running toward the ice.

“hey!” you ran after him, but weren’t fast enough. he got to the ice and quickly skated away. you stopped at the edge of the rink, scoffing at your boyfriend. “luke warren, you can run but you can’t hide from my camera out there!” a few boys of the boys laughed and a few “ooooh”ed at your little threat, and you turned around to grab your phone and your camera. you sat and took pictures during practice, focusing heavily on luke but making sure to get some of the other boys as well. you smiled as you looked back through them, already knowing which ones you would use.

after practice, you worked on editing and posting and then had plans to get food with some of your friends, so you didn’t make it back to the sophomore house for a few hours after luke. you walked in and plopped down on his bed, but instead of cuddling you like normal, he huffed and rolled away from you. you frowned, running your nails up and down his back in an attempt to coax him into talking to you.

“hey, lu, what’s wrong?” he turned his head to luke at you, finding you concerned. he sighed, rolling over fully to face you and showing you his phone. it was pulled up to the umich hockey instagram, showing the photo deck of pictures you had posted earlier, all of them of luke. you had captioned it “giving the fans what they asked for 😉” and the comments were going crazy.

“did you have to?” he asked.

“do you really hate being posted that much?” you thought what you had done was in good fun but maybe luke was more affected than you thought.

“i’m just… trying to enjoy my privacy while i can,” he said, and your heart broke a little.

“awe, baby, i’m sorry. i didn’t realize-“

“no, it’s okay. i understand the thought process, and it is kinda funny.” he cracked a smile, causing you to smile as well.

“i’ll show you next time i want to post you, how about that?”

“or just don’t post me.”

“no can do, lukey. you’re too pretty not to post.” you gave him a cheeky grin before kissing his nose, and he rolled his eyes.

“why did i ask you out again?” he joked, and you wrapped yourself around him.

“because you love me.”

“yeah, i do.”

#blurb #luke hughes #umich hockey

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starsandhughes · 1 year

Text

Penalty Box— Quinn Hughes Edition (Part Twenty-One)

SERIES MASTERLIST

previous: twenty

if you saw the premature posted version of this… no you didn’t! welcome to the final game edition of penalty box! thank you for loving and supporting this series! it would not have evolved into this (47 penalty box chapters plus bonus chapters and now imagines! wow!) without any of you! i got some surprises coming soon! i hope you enjoy it!

THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2023

yourusername

liked _quinnhughes, colemcward, and 18,486 others

yourusername welcome to my final 2022-2023 season postgame penalty box update show: quinn hughes edition! tonight, my best friend ended his season strong with a penalty! for what? stick holding! this beautiful dum dum held somebody else’s stick during his 25:54 minutes of ice time! goodness gracious great balls of fire that’s a very funny penalty. hockey has playground rules, people! hands to yourself! there was actually eleven penalties during this game, and two of them brought us power play goals! p.s. shoutout to my fav canuck (sorry bestie & co.) petey for getting the opening goal! i love you!!

to the team, this game was a beautiful way to cap off the season. i’m so sorry you all didn’t get the ending you wanted, but i’m really proud at how hard you all pushed through the hardships that this season brought. you deserved this win tonight, and so much more. thank you all for accepting my unhinged love and affection. and thank you burroughs for getting a fighting major as an end of the season present to me! i love each and every one of you💚

to garly, congratulations on your hat trick tonight!! you won the game for us in overtime, and were truly the star of the show. for those wondering, yes, i gave him a sticker book as a reward and he cherishes it! to my son, cole, you’re kicking butt out there and i can’t wait to see how this summer treats you! love you!

and to quinn, my best friend, an absolute light in my life whom i would do anything for, you worked your ass off this season and i could not be any prouder of you and admire you any more. the second you got that A on your jersey, you immediately stepped into the roll. hearing you be more vocal and outspoken and hearing the praise you receive in interviews has made me the happiest person in the world. you’ve always been a big brother to me, even before i moved in, and now it’s like you’re a big brother to the team. maybe that’s a bad term for it, but it’s the best analogy i’ve got because you’re always going to be the best big brother in the universe! for those wondering, yes, i have given him a giant trophy when were kids for being the best big brother in the universe and he still has it!

i love you, quinn, bigger than life. i can’t wait for that sweet spot in the summer where we can all relax and bask in each other’s company before i sit back and relax and watch you doofs work out! you’re going to do amazing things next season, and i can’t wait to see what i brings for you <3 i love you, bubba!💙

tagged _quinnhughes, colemcward, and canucks

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_quinnhughes can't wait for our yearly tradition of making you work out with me the day before i leave for training camp💙 i love you, too, sissy!

yourusername i can wait for that <3

jackhughes @/yourusername then why do you still do it six years later?

yourusername @/jackhughes because you’re all superstitious dilholes i’ve been cursed to love

_quinnhughes there’s the sissy we know and love!

lhughes_06 @/yourusername be nice, sissy! it’s my first one as an nhl player!

yourusername @/lhughes_06 don’t tell me what to do

trevorzegras THERE’S the sissy we know and love!

yourusername @/trevorzegras try again.

trevorzegras THERE’S the y/n/n we know and love!

user6 this was so cute omg

trevorzegras my post had a play by play of penalties and quinn’s team gets a love letter?

yourusername I WAS AT YOUR GAME AND GAVE MY LOVE LETTER TO YOUR TRAM IN A VERBAL SPEECH

jamie.drysdale it’s true and it was very sweet!

_quinnhughes @/yourusername put him on probation for throwing a fit in my post

yourusername @/trevorzegras sorry babe

trevorzegras this is a public announcement that y/n and quinn are the worst over the summer and i am still traumatized by them

lhughes_06 this is a public announcement that it was worse when we were kids

jackhughes this is a public announcement that me and sissy might’ve been worse

lhughes_06 i take mine back. jack and sissy are menaces.

_quinnhughes i agree

yourusername whoopsy daisy

user15 i cried over garly’s hatty that small bearded man was brilliant out there

colemcward i love you, too, mom! can i join for the before training camp work out tradition?

_quinnhughes if you find yourself in michigan, sure, kiddo!

yourusername whatever you think it is, it’s not

trevorzegras that is very true

colemcward well that’s… off putting

jackhughes that’s kinda our thing

yourusername <3

user57 i’ll be sobbing until preseason and then there will be single tears until the real season

_eliaspettersson i’ll miss you over the summer! and i love you, too, girly hughes!

yourusername i’ll miss you, too, petey! don’t forget to facetime!

_eliaspettersson i won’t!

_quinnhughes please remember because she gets spazzy if she doesn’t get one

_eliaspettersson @_quinnhughes that’s sweet!

_quinnhughes it is not

user55 i’m heartbroken that the season is over, but i’m elated for hughes bros and sissy content!!!

jackhughes i’ll be searching for you two in the stands at playoffs!

_quinnhughes i won’t be sitting with her. she’ll give me away.

yourusername i’ll be wearing my custom lukey moosey and jacky boy jersey and shoving quinn in a devils hat <3

_quinnhughes this is sadly true and my previous statement was a lie

lhughes_06 @_quinnhughes thanks for all the brotherly support ❤️

jackhughes @_quinnhughes might want to remember what that trophy says in your room

_quinnhughes @/jackhughes don’t tell me what to do

user40 we need to address that picture of quinn and cole because cole has the hughes dead eye stare😭

lhughes_06 i have to admit, you did good, shorty

yourusername why? just why? i have to deal with the damage

lhughes_06 how?

yourusername idk buy him boots? maim you?

jackhughes @/yourusername do the second one but after playoffs

yourusername @/jackhughes deal

lhughes_06 MOM! DAD!

trevorzegras @/lhughes_06 i’ve been told to tell you that your parents fled the county

_quinnhughes @/trevorzegras did you mean country?

trevorzegras @_quinnhughes sadly that is not what they said

user81 the hockey gods really gave y/n the greatest night ever with the ducks and canucks

yourusername this is true! i had an amazing night!

_alexturcotte can’t wait to see you this summer, mr. record breaking season!🫡 @_quinnhughes

yourusername come early so we can roll out the red carpet for him!

_quinnhughes @/yourusername i’ll sell you

trevorzegras @_quinnhughes it’s a little late for that

jackhughes @_quinnhughes waayyyy too late

colecaufield sweet y/n alarms me

yourusername all i do is love you!

_quinnhughes she definitely likes you more than the rest of us

colecaufield @_quinnhughes i meant when she’s sweet to you

_quinnhughes oh yeah no that’s fair

_eliaspettersson added this to their story

_quinnhughes added this to their story

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blindbatalex · 20 days

Text

bruins fic rec list 💛🖤

after 4+ years I've recently found my way back to hockey -- and hockey rpf -- which has meant that I had so much fic to catch up on, because man, you guys can write. here are some of my recent favourites, listed in alphabetical order, with one cheeky self-rec thrown in.

feast season by @sphesphe. swaymark, 5,963 words. 5+1 with ully hand feeding sway food. as with any story by sphe the characterisation and the language are spot on in this one, sway as the pov character is a delight to read, and sphe possesses a singular talent in taking food sharing to hitherto unknown levels of hotness.

finally i feel like i have a home here by @fvcking-damage. marcheron, 21,257 words. an au fic, in which bergy, who is trying to get his life back together after a bad break-up meets brad, a photographer, on a chance encounter late one night and it goes from there. hands down one of the favourite fics i've read in any fandom. every character is written with so much care and depth the healing the story affords them without dismissing their heartbreak is sublime. simply a masterpiece.

Funny That You Mention It by @thebluejayawe. marcheron, 7,531 words. marchy realises that bergy is going to propose - things spiral from there. this is a rollercoaster of a fic which grabs you by the throat and does not let you go until the last word. it is such refreshing take on bergy and marchy's relationship, and marchy is a revelation in this story. his insecurities and love and anger - it's all done to perfection.

like a stranger by yours truly. marcheron, 13,142 words. bergy was the person brad wanted by his bedside any time he was injured or sick -- except now bergy is retired and things haven't been the same between them in some time. what can i say? i am still trying to process bergy's retirement and i'm a hoe for the way ppl can grow apart and find their way back to one another.

they must have been leafs fans by @dragongirl180. marcheron, 9,704 words. brad is missing and there remains little hope of finding him with each passing day. beside himself, Patrice makes a impulsive decision to buy a pet rat. an absolute delight of a story. bergy's anguish at having lost marchy is written so vividly it comes alive off the page and you read it and think -- yes, this is exactly how it would go if marchy was turned into a rat via some hockey magic.

Sweet by anonymous. marcheron, 15,559 words. per the NHL rulebook, teams must provide any vampires on the roster with an emergency blood-use donor for medical treatment, should they be incapacitated during a game. an ingenious take on the vampirism trope, this fic makes you think YES this is exactly how it would go if bergy was a vampire. brad's voice as the pov character is so good and i am obsessed with the way the author uses the vampirism set up to explore who they are to one another and what it means to want and to care for someone. it is also ridiculously hot.

Please do reblog and add more recs -- including self-recs -- because i still need more fic to read! also, given that I am me, these are almost all marcheron but I am here for any and all bruins pairings. 👀

#boston bruins #hockey rpf #marcheron #swaymark #fic rec

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hopetorun · 2 months

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i'd love to hear your beliefs about the tension in their relationship because i'm a very nosy bitch but obviously only if you feel like it!

lol well i did offer! beliefs is a strong word, tbh. more of a like ... is this stuff true? i don't know. but if i were writing a story where i wanted to have tension in that relationship, these are the places i would be inclined to introduce that tension. maybe there is tension in some of these places in real life! that's none of my beeswax.*

anyway: some places i think it is plausible that there's tension in the relationship, or at least plausible enough to play with in fiction. receipts on these where i can find them, sorry if they're paywalled but them's the breaks.

*unless they make it part of their public narrative

back in 2022 matthew was on the athletic hockey podcast and he talked about feeling "like a babysitter" when keith visits and how much keith enjoys being one of the guys. now mostly i think they probably have a pretty good time, but babysitter is a word choice there. i don't think it's a stretch to imagine that having your retired dad show up at your workplace and becoming the life of the party to relive his glory days could be ... trying.

not to beat around the bush but they're both opinionated guys! opinionated and chatty! and as a result you get: keith slamming the panthers on the radio. matthew sticking his nose into brady's contract negotiations (brady being grimace emoji about it). like, we know for a fact that the radio thing bothered matthew! and there's plenty of opportunities for one or both of them to offer unsolicited opinions that don't go over well.

to the previous point: i considered not including that because it's not as speculative as the others on the list. but it's definitely something i'd draw on if i was writing a story where their relationship is tense.

look, i'm not a man and not only am i not a man but i don't have any brothers and my dad died four and a half years ago and he never talked about his dad. so i can't claim to be an expert on the fathers-and-sons relationship dynamic. but why would i let that stop me from speculating wildly!

anyway: legacies. oldest sons. expectations. @ohtemporas touched on this briefly earlier, the way there's often an extra pressure on the oldest kid to be the same-gender-parent's legacy. do what i did. represent me well in the world. and i don't think it's even particularly weird for that to potentially lead to some conflicting feelings if all that legacy building leads to you being surpassed in some way. that's just human! especially for competitive people, and as i have said on this website before: no one becomes a professional athlete without being competitive.

here's keith being presented with matthew's 99th point puck from the 21-22 season, which his then-teammate did up with the writing for this specific purpose. chantal thinks this is SO funny. do think maybe being conflicted about being surpassed makes him not proud of matthew? no. but people can be complicated.

speaking of people being complicated: that one post-game after matthew scored 5 points on the blues. i think the tension between keith wanting his own team's success and wanting his sons' success isn't something people were making up out of whole cloth. but maybe it was especially noticeable when matthew was still in the western conference? i feel like it got dialed back after the trade. lol.

i'm mentioning it only because otherwise someone else might: i don't care about the hat thing. i think it's silly. if i was asked to throw my favorite hat onto the ice at an nhl game just because some schlub scored three goals i probably wouldn't.

a few concluding thoughts

i don't think any of this means they have a bad relationship! mostly i think that no two people have a perfect relationship where they agree on everything and never butt into each other's business uninvited and never hurt each other's feelings, because that's impossible.

i'm not making some counterpoint list of all the reasons i think they love each other. someone else can. i don't think having high expectations of someone means you hate them and i don't think anyone spends their time and money following their son's hockey team around the country on a road trip hoping to see him score his 100th point out of hatred or spite.

maybe i'm wrong about all of this and they've hated each other since 2002 and someday we'll get a tell-all story and people can come into my ask box or whatever and tell me how wrong i was. i don't care. all rpf characterization is fake. i watched keith froth at the mouth in the stands at the 2016 wjc every time someone so much as breathed on matthew, though, so i don't think i'm wrong.

#ask maggie #matthew tkachuk

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hearts4hughes · 1 year

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sunflower, vol 6 - quinn hughes

quinn hughes x fem! reader

fine line imagines list

warnings: unless fluff is a warning, then nothing :)

a/n: i really like this one! hope you enjoy reading <3

“i don’t wanna make you feel bad, but i’ve been trying hard not to talk to you.”

gif is not mine

it’s been 3 months since i moved to vancouver and every morning i’ve went to the same coffee shop. i’ve been there enough times for workers to notice, but i guess not enough for the cute boy in there to say hello or even acknowledge me.

growing up in a family that loved hockey, i immediately recognized him as quinn hughes from the canucks. and to be honest, it’s torture watching him scurry in here every morning, ordering the same drink, and not even looking towards my direction.

i’ve been trying to gain the courage to say hello or ask him out, but every time i chicken out. its not fair that i find the perfect guy, and he doesn’t even notice me. well that was until today at least.

today, quinn came in with probably his whole hockey team. it was surprising to see him being very talkative.

i tried to focus on my work, but i got the sense that people were staring at me. when i looked up from my laptop, i saw all the canucks players, making direct eye contact with me. they all look away and i start to hear them whisper, “dude, she saw us staring.” and “go say something.”

trying to at least get one thing for work done, quinn catches the side of my eye, making his way up to my table.

“hi, i’m quinn.” he says, taking the seat across from mine.

“um, hello, i’m y/n.” i respond, confused as to why after all this time he was saying hello, but excited that he was.

“sorry for those idiots over there.” he redirects his gaze to the team which is now staring us both down.

“i think they might have a staring problem.” i laugh and he grins.

“i just wanted to say,” he pauses, looking down at his fidgety hands, “that you’re really cute and i was wondering if you’d like to go out sometime.”

my cheeks turn bright red as butterflies fill my stomach. i try to bite back my cheeky smile, but i can’t.

“i’d love to go out with you.” he breaks out in a toothy grin and takes a deep breath, probably more calm now that i said yes. “but, i want to know why you’ve never asked me before? i’ve been coming here for over a month and i know you’ve seen me.”

his eyes go a little wide and he nervously laughs before explaining, “i don’t wanna make you feel bad, but i’ve been trying hard not to talk to you.” he takes his hands off of the table and runs them through his hair, “and i know that sounds bad, but you’re just so pretty, i thought you were out of my league.”

“that’s funny because i thought you were out of mine.” i giggle as his teammates catch the corner of my eye, making kissy faces at us. “so quinn, where are you planning on taking me?”

“where ever you’d like to go, love.” he grabs a pen and a napkin, before writing down his number and handing it to me. i take a moment to scan over the paper and smile.

“then how about the movies tonight?” i suggest.

“see you tonight, y/n.”

#hearts4hughes #quinn hughes imagines #quinn hughes #canucks hockey #quinn hughes x reader #nhl imagine #hockey blurb #nora's writings 💐

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fruitcoops · 8 months

Note

Hey eve! Saw someone do this a while ago and thought it was a lovely idea: I thought I'd request a sequel of whatever fic you'd like! I love when you do sequels/series b/c then I have an excuse to reread MULTIPLE fics in a row like a mini novel :) Have a great day and I hope you get some ice cream (or whatever sweet treat of your choice) in your future! -aj (Also letterkenny is fantastic and always makes me think of these LADS)

Of course! Sequel to the end of this fic for the lovely AJ <3 Coops credit goes to @lumosinlove!

Sirius Black: Notorious Liar?

Black-Lupin Wedding…Faked? See Page 7 for Full Story.

Runaway Grooms of Pro Hockey!

Why the Lie, Cap? Speculation Around Sirius Black’s Supposed Gay Wedding.

“You drive these poor people insane.”

Sirius tucked his feet beneath Remus’ thigh and cackled.

“They are running themselves in circles—”

“They are minding other people’s business,” Sirius interrupted, eyes glittering with maniacal glee. “And getting what was coming to them.”

Remus shook his head and turned back to his phone. “I can’t believe you.”

“Yes, you can.”

He refused to dignify that with a response. Sirius looked far too pleased with himself in Remus’ periphery already.

“Hey.”

Remus bit the inside of his cheek.

“Hey.” A toe poked his hamstring. “Yes, you can believe I would do this.”

What an utterly impossible man he had married.

“Re.” Sirius dragged himself upright and stretched his way into Remus’ lap—they toppled to the other side of the couch in an undignified lump. Despite Remus’ protests, his phone was plucked away and set aside so Sirius could make himself comfortable across his body. His eyes were bright and happy as he settled his chin on Remus’ sternum. “Say it.”

Remus arched a brow.

“Say you can believe I would lie to those very, very annoying people.”

“Your knee is digging into my thigh.”

Sirius squeezed his thighs together, effectively paralyzing Remus from the waist down, and kissed his chest. “I would make a great massage therapist. Now say it.”

Remus huffed.

“I think it’s funny,” Sirius continued, kissing the edge of his shirt. His mouth trailed over the faint slope of Remus’ collarbone in a lazy path. “I think I’m doing what everybody always wants to do. So, if you think about it, I’m being so brave and funny and you love me so much.”

Fuck, he really did. “You said ‘think’, like, seven times there.”

Sirius’ groan vibrated against his ribs; Remus laughed and pushed a hand through his hair. “You can’t give me this one thing?” Sirius complained. When Remus ran a thumb over his half-smile, he turned to kiss the pad. “I did this for us, you know.”

“That’s true.” Remus pretended to consider it, tipping his head back and forth on the couch cushions under Sirius’ soft attention. The thing was, it had been pretty fucking hilarious. He still wasn’t sure how Sirius managed to think up a real wedding venue on the spot like that, nor how he kept his (entirely fake) story straight for three and a half months. It was an impressive display of commitment to the bit, which was, of course, wildly attractive.

Sirius narrowed his eyes. “I know you. I know you thought it was funny.”

“…how many people fell for it, again?”

He loved how mischief looked on Sirius’ face. “Five media teams, thirty-four fans, and a news van.”

“Oh my god,” Remus laughed.

“There it is!” Sirius crowed, burrowing his arms further under Remus.

“A news van?”

Sirius’ grin was sweet-sharp, like spiked lemonade. “Ouais.”

“Talk about a wild goose chase.” Remus pinched the bridge of his nose as another laugh bubbled out of him. “God. I really should feel bad for them, but I so don’t.”

“They were nosy and rude.” Sirius’ mouth found the edge of his jaw. “They deserved it. Can you imagine how awful it would have been to have them there if I told the truth? News people? At our wedding?”

“…you were very brave and very funny.”

“And you love me so much.”

His chest felt pressurized, as if it had been stretched like a balloon beneath Sirius’ comfortable weight. Whatever filled it was light as air and twice as warm. Sirius went happily when he pulled him up to kiss his forehead. “I love you so much.”

“Moi aussi.” Sirius shifted and heaved a long, happy sigh. “Pour toujours.”

“You could do better,” Remus whispered through his smile. Sirius shook his head. Silk-satin ink slipped between his fingers. “No?”

“Non,” Sirius murmured back. “Not even a little.”

#remus lupin #sirius black #coops #sweater weather #vaincre #lumosinlove #my fic #fanfic #wedding #fluff #aj

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baiyunli · 10 months

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how to watch baseball now: a primer

This is a long, hopefully-comprehensive guide on how to watch baseball for hockey fans feeling adrift during the offseason — I have constructed this from the perspective of not only how to understand what you’re watching, but how to make it interesting to yourself.

If the numbers aren't interesting to you, forget about the numbers! They don’t have to exist in your version of baseball. Make up your own rules and use them to watch the game. Watch games only for the one kind-of okay player you like. Pick your favourite team because of a video you saw of one of them bouncing a baseball off his ass (Sean Murphy, then of Oakland A's and now of Atlanta Braves). Baseball Olds will try to pretend like the game is this big thing that only people who already watch it can appreciate, but you just have to find what you love most about it.

I’m using the NHL as my best point of reference: in terms of growing the game, I’d say MLB suffers from a very different problem than NHL (other than like, the current uproar around letting queer people exist, which is a throughline in both), in that while the NHL has a very exciting product but can’t reach people where they’re at, baseball is by and large perceived as a boring, slow game and the league will bend over backwards to make polarizing changes to the Boringest and Slowest parts rather than capitalizing on what excites fans about the game. However, both leagues are plagued by Shitty Commissioner disease. Such is the way of life.

Feel free to read all of this, or none of it, but I’ve tried to split it up in a way that makes sense and is easy to navigate. Last note: many people will tell you baseball is the only major sport going on in North America at this time of year. This is false. The WNBA and NWSL are both in full swing—not to mention the World Cup next month. Supplement your baseball watching with a wide variety of sports where you can!

How to Love Baseball

Pick a Team, Any Team

The first step in becoming a baseball fan is obviously picking a team! I could probably give you NHL comparatives and let you figure it out from there, but I don’t personally think your favourite NHL teams have much bearing on your favourite MLB ones, so I’ll give you a quick and dirty rundown of my teams instead and how you might want to pick a team.

The easiest team for me to love is the Seattle Mariners because I live just across the border, and they aren’t good enough to be annoying but also not bad enough to be embarrassed about. They’re just kind of there, which I enjoy greatly. I also love the Philadelphia Phillies because they’re my friend’s favourite team. They went on a Cinderella run to the World Series last year (before losing to the Astros in the final) and are now solidly middling. My other favourites are the Washington Nationals because of their fantastic social media presence and their hilarious stadium traditions. The current-day Nats are very much the epitome of "how can we lose when we're so sincere?"

Some teams you might want to look into are the LA Angels (actually of Anaheim) for Shohei Ohtani, the Milwaukee Brewers for — at least from what I understand — their boyband energy similar to the New Jersey Devils, the Baltimore Orioles or Tampa Bay Rays for an exciting and winningest team, and the Oakland A's for a miserable fan experience including horribly dysfunctional team management and a coming relocation to Las Vegas.

The easiest team for me to hate is the Toronto Blue Jays, which is a result of their god complex re: being the only Canadian team. A funny thing from this season is that the Rays opened their season with a historic 13-game win streak, only to be killed 6-3 by the Blue Jays to end it. Something about Toronto teams and ending another team’s 13-game heater, or whatever.

Also look into any local teams if you can. In Vancouver, our local minor league team is the Vancouver Canadians, and setting up a little picnic on the grass with friends while watching a Canadians game is a summer staple. Here’s a very cute article about them. There are a variety of lower-level and exhibition teams across the world, especially in countries where baseball is incredibly popular. One exhibition team is the Internet-famous Savannah Bananas who are dearly loved on TikTok. If there isn’t a huge baseball foothold in your area, it’s worth looking into which MLB teams are most popular where you live and/or have the most coverage. Some analytics sites like FiveThirtyEight will occasionally create maps showing each team’s popularity in different states, countries, etc. and that can be a great guide.

Petty Rivalries 101

You can always just Google these, but I decided to just list off a few major ones for your perusal: the Yankees and Red Sox, the Rangers and Astros, the Dodgers and Giants, and the Orioles and Nationals. As Toronto Maple Leafs scholar Acting the Fulemin once put it, the point of sports is to be sad in a group, and the counterpart to this is that it absolutely rules getting to see a team you hate lose.

A quick note on the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is that it's brought us one of my favourite ever quotes from ex-Mariner and current Yankee Nestor Cortes:

Once you’ve chosen a favourite team, they’re bound to have some kind of geographic or historic rivalry, and you can search those up to find out the background behind them. Also, I highly suggest deciding on a random team you hate for no reason. It makes the season experience much more interesting and gives you the chance to pray on their downfall whenever possible.

Where to Watch

As with most things about baseball, this will vary by your team. Depending on your cable package, you might be able to watch your favourite team already! That’s great news. Even if you can’t, feel free to turn on the TV, find a random baseball game, and imprint on either of those teams like a baby bird. The MLB website offers games broadcast with an MLB.tv subscription, but if you have an account you can also watch the Free Game of the Day and collected highlights from previous games! This is a great way to expand your team repertoire and figure out which team broadcasts you hate with a burning passion. Local radio stations do commentary on games if you like listening to that.

If you just want to get your feet wet rather than diving in straight away, pretty much every major game of the postseason will be uploaded by some “FirstName BunchOfNumbers” user on YouTube: for example, you can watch Game 1 of the World Series last year by just searching 2022 World Series Game 1 Full Game. However, watching the full game might be a slog if you don’t know what’s going on, and you can learn the intricacies of the sport without having to watch all four hours and twelve minutes of like, the 1962 World Series Game 7 (although that is a very exciting game). In that case, skip to the ‘How the Game is Governed’ section and read on.

All of this pertains to MLB teams, but there’s plenty to watch elsewhere. If you have a local baseball team, you might be able to catch a game or two in-person! Minor League Baseball also has their own broadcasting services and highlights are available on YouTube or their website.

League Structure

The MLB season is 162 games long. Spring training, aka the preseason, begins in February. During the regular season, teams play a three or four-game series with the same team before playing another with a different team. For example, this month the Philadelphia Phillies played 3 games in a row against the Washington Nationals on consecutive days. The day after the conclusion of their last game against Washington, they started a series against the Tigers, which was three games with one rescheduled due to weather, and then another three games against the Dodgers. This leads to a schedule that looks like this:

Occasionally, due to weather issues or other postponement reasons, a game will be rescheduled for the same day as another game against the same team — so they’ll play two full games in one day. This is called a double-header. They used to be routinely scheduled in MLB, but now they’re only played as a result of scheduling problems.

Team-wise, it’s a little more complicated than the NHL. Like the Eastern and Western conferences, MLB is separated into two ‘leagues’: the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). Both leagues have fifteen teams, and until the 1990s teams in different leagues didn’t play each other during the regular season at all, leading to different styles of play, tactics, and rules implemented between them. This is no longer the case! However, it’s important to recognize that unlike the NHL, NBA, NWSL, etc., Major League Baseball comprises two leagues, rather than two conferences of the same league. This matters because individual awards like the Cy Young or Gold Glove are given to the best players at their position in both the AL and NL, and the MLB MVP includes both an AL MVP and NL MVP.

MLB is made up of six divisions, with three in each league: AL East, AL Central, AL West, NL East, NL Central, and NL West. A division has five teams. If you know much about US geography, you might notice that the teams in each division don’t actually correspond very well to their geographic location: this is for a variety of reasons, not least of which is expansion teams requiring change in division partitioning, but nobody’s going to fix it at this point. And that’s okay!

Fandom and Things As Such

Baseball fandom, regrettably, is not much of a Tumblr phenomenon these days, but Baseball Twitter does have some incredible gems. The Baseball RPF tag on AO3 is also fairly fleshed out (albeit not to the extent of HRPF) and you’ll find that many authors who write HRPF have dabbled in baseball as well. If you’re lost on where to start choosing a team, going through the AO3 grab bag and choosing a random player who you really like in a fic is also a very respectable avenue.

I cannot stress this enough: the easiest way to learn the game without having to learn the characters is reading baseball AUs. That’s it. They’re ten times more approachable than trying to memorize everyone on your favourite team’s roster, and they abound in HRPF if you’re looking for a landing port. I have witness testimony from Lil (@wymgreenteam) that she learned what pitching signs and shortstops were from the wonderful Jack/Nico baseball AU. It works! Obviously fanfiction won’t teach you everything, but if you’re feeling overwhelmed they can be a fantastic first step and really illustrate the game from a fan perspective.

Other Media

I will caution against taking the ‘consume baseball-related media’ advice too seriously, because I find that unlike baseball AUs, other media involving baseball does not always come from someone who watches and loves the game. Think of it like hockey romance books—just like the main characters of those novels are probably not scoring hat tricks in 5 consecutive games, they probably aren’t reaching such baseball heights either.

With that said, I have not watched Daiya No Ace but I’ve heard that people do enjoy it! For genuine baseball culture-oriented media, Roger Angell wrote fantastic articles and books on the game. I love his book ‘Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion.’ Then there are movies like Moneyball and shows like A League of Our Own which tackle specific aspects of the game and how it’s played. Depending on your eventual favourite team(s), hometown coverage will also play a huge part: for the Phillies, that’s outlets like the Philadelphia Inquirer or Penn Live.

Narratives

Once upon a time there was a young man named Shohei Ohtani who was breaking records set in the 1920s while playing on a horrible, failing team that refused to build around him. I assume you have some familiarity with Ohtani, but he is very difficult to describe because he is literally making history. He is the only two-way player in MLB right now: a two-way player is someone who is both a pitcher and a batter; there are a ton of rules about what constitutes a two-way player, but currently Ohtani is the only true two-way player at the Major level. This is not a perfect analogy, but he’s sort of like if Jason Robertson went out there and had a 50-goal season, then immediately jumped into net and played like Juuse Saros. He’s the best all-around player in MLB, and even though he isn’t the best pitcher or the best batter, the fact that he’s incredible at both of them makes him stand out. He also plays with Mike Trout, who’s breaking records of his own, while trying to drag the LA Angels to any sort of notoriety. Here is a prescient article about the Ohtani-Trout era in Anaheim.

Each team has their own current narratives and pairings, but Ohtani and Trout are the biggest one right now. People compare them to McDavid and Draisaitl, but it’s more like if the Oilers had McDavid and Draisaitl but were also one of the worst teams in the league right now. However, Trout is currently in the worst slump of his career while the Angels have won the last 11 of 14 games, so really all this means is that baseball is fake.

Baseball is rife with redemption and villain arcs—you just have to dig a little to find them. I have presented the Ohtani and Trout trainwreck because it’s the closest comparable to the Oilers tragedy, but there are plenty others that really depend on team and current events.

Bush Leagues

MLB teams have a very different relationship to their minor-league affiliates than NHL teams do. There are about five hundred various regional minor leagues, but the MiLB levels are Rookie, Single A, High A, Double A, and Triple A, each of which has two or three individual leagues similar to the AL-NL system in MLB.

The fun thing about MiLB is that it’s a lot closer to home than MLB! Most places don’t have an MLB team, but there’s a good chance anywhere in the USA has a nearby MiLB or regional/collegiate league team. They also have way more interesting names, like the Portland Pickles, Rocket City Trash Pandas, and Sugar Land Space Cowboys. The prospect pipeline in MLB runs a whole lot slower than it does for the NHL, and generally through those Double or Triple-A affiliates, so it’s definitely worth paying attention to minor-league teams and their standout players to see who might be the next rookie on your favourite team.

MiLB player compensation has been an issue for a long time, and the players recently unionized! A few great write-ups on it: 1, 2, and 3.

Regional Popularity

I’ve said this plenty, but I truly do think that finding your baseball niche hinges upon imprinting on a hometown team or a player you just really like. This sport isn’t just an American pastime: it’s hugely popular in Central America and parts of East Asia, and some of the best and brightest up-and-coming (and current) players hail from countries that haven’t traditionally been viewed as bastions of baseball. The game is growing every day, and it’s wonderful to see.

Baseball is very popular in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Japan, and Korea. Out of those, I’d probably say the Dominican Republic has the largest MLB presence, with only American players outnumbering Dominican ones in the league, but the sport is also fast-growing in Japan, Korea, and Australia. Japan won the 2023 World Baseball Classic, which is the baseball equivalent of the World Cup of Hockey, where the best players in the world compete against each other and Shohei Ohtani (captain of the Japanese team) pitched to Mike Trout (captain of the American team) in possibly the most electric moment of baseball in the 21st century.

How to Understand Baseball

How the Game is Governed

Rather than doing a big writeup on this, I figured I would just find some articles and videos that go through the rules well and hold your hand through it! Think of these like helpful assets, similar to the first time you search up ‘what is goaltender interference’ or 'what is offsides' after hearing it mentioned on the play-by-play and a goal got turned over and all the fans were mad and you wanted to be in on the reason why. This is that search.

Baseball Explained in 5 Minutes

How to identify baseball pitches

Everything there is to know about the The Strike Zone in Baseball.

Intro to Baseball: Positions

What’s going on with the DH in MLB? (MLB Originals)

Rules Glossary | MLB - PDF Version

Lastly, once you’ve got a good grasp on the rules and positions, I probably wouldn’t go straight to watching a full game—you want to make sure you’re using your three hours well rather than staring at a game you don’t really get or don’t care about, or both. Instead, watch YouTube highlights of various players and best (or worst) plays of the week! This gives you an idea of what creates excitement in a game and why, and different positional strengths. From there, you can start watching longer clips, like full innings or the highlights uploaded after each game, which give you a better idea of the game’s pace.

Pressing Play

While I was writing this I remembered that a fun and unique baseball tradition is players having walk-up songs when they’re up in the batting lineup.

Most teams will post their players' walk-up songs on Spotify, YouTube, etc. and while there are a few songs that are synonymous with legendary players - like Mariano Rivera's "Enter Sandman" - players usually like to switch up their songs. Often, a song will become emblematic of an era in that team's history (Anthony Rizzo's "Intoxicated" and the Cubs' 2016 playoff run). After a while, you'll notice patterns in what players pick.

Learning about each player’s song rotation can be extremely revealing, like Mark Canha switching his walk-up songs to Born This Way, Vogue, and I Wanna Dance with Somebody in honour of the Mets Pride Night last week!

Diamond Sports Bankruptcy

I’m not going to pretend to know anything about broadcasting or RSNs, but Diamond Sports, the group that runs Bally Sports, recently filed for bankruptcy, which has really affected some franchises’ profit margins and where their games can be streamed. Not sure if this interests you, but you can read about it here!

The Oakland A’s Relocation

Again: I’m not an Oakland fan, but there’s a lot of debate right now about the owners of the Oakland Athletics moving the team to Vegas despite the wishes of the town and city. Rob Manfred, the MLB commissioner, also made rude comments about Oakland fans as a result of their Reverse Boycott Night, where almost 28,000 fans came out to support the team. A professional sports league commissioner acting like an asshole to fans of a small-market team is nothing new, but it’s the culmination of a lot of drama between terrible owners and a market that loves their team.

The Long, Storied History of Cheating

The long, storied history of cheating in MLB encompasses not only stealing signs and tipping pitches, but also foreign substance usage on hands (which pitchers sometimes try in order to change how they pitch the ball), illegal equipment, and more. It’s kind of a lot. The most notable, recent case is the 2017 Houston Astros World Series Win.

Houston’s Fucking Astros

Nobody likes the Astros except Astros fans. They won the World Series last year and are universally hated, not least of all because of the 2017 cheating controversy.

In baseball, ‘signs’ are what catchers use to communicate to pitchers what kind of pitch they should throw. These rely on knowledge of the hitter currently on the plate and catching them by surprise. Each pitcher-catcher battery will usually have their own signs. In 2017, a year in which Houston won the World Series, the team set up a video camera in the center field seats with a full frontal view of the catcher, and they would use that to figure out what pitches the pitcher would throw. Then from the dugout, whoever was watching the video feed at the time would use a signal (audio cues, like banging garbage can lids) to tell the hitter who was up what pitch they had to expect. This was mostly possible because of the time delay between a catcher signalling and a pitcher throwing, which has been changed by this season’s pitch clock implementation.

In 2020, The Athletic published the first exposé article about the Astros cheating scandal, and it rocked the baseball world. Several immediate consequences followed: the Astros GM and field manager (head coach) were suspended for the full 2020 season, and although players received no punishment, the team gave up four draft picks (their 1st and 2nd round picks in 2020 and 2021).

Pitching and Sticky Stuff

Pitchers applying foreign substances on their hands is always a controversy in MLB games. Recently, star pitcher Max Scherzer was ejected and suspended 10 games after an umpire decided his hand was unusually sticky. TLDR: cheating is common, and consequences vary. Nobody has gotten over the Astros cheating scandal.

Expected By Whom

A quick rundown on the analytics side of the game and how baseball stats look very different both in their progress and insights than hockey. This is how you can sound like you know ball.

The Moneyball book does a great job explaining the rise of sabermetrics (baseball analytics) in the early 2000s, starting with Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s. Because MLB doesn’t have a salary cap and their luxury tax isn’t difficult for big-market teams to pay, small-market teams like Oakland have to constantly innovate in their game tactics in order to stay competitive, and that’s why the game today is so numbers-oriented. Watching a baseball game, you’ll see far more stats than you would in an NHL broadcast: OBP (On-Base Percentage), ERA (Earned Run Average), pitching speed, slugging percentage, pythagorean win percentage, and more. Do not fear the big numbers. You don’t have to know what every stat means in order to love the game, but if you watch enough and you hear commentators discussing what, say, Kodai Senga's ERA is, you’ll come to learn what they mean! In a pinch, you can also easily just search up ‘league average [stat]’ to figure out what the standard is.

Some websites that are really instrumental in baseball analytics are Baseball-Reference, FiveThirtyEight, and FanGraphs, plus YouTube channels like Foolish Baseball and statisticians like Bill James and Tom Tango. Baseball is a lot further along in its analytics revolution than hockey, and as a result, such analysis is not just a thing for Stats Nerds but also a huge part of the way the game is played and watched today. Personally, I love stats that assess umpire accuracy in calling strikes, and so Umpire Scorecards on Twitter is one of my favourites.

It's Too Long and Too Much Money

If Connor McDavid played in Major League Baseball and was close to the kind of player he is in the NHL right now, he would be getting paid north of 400 million dollars, not to mention endorsement money. Instead, he sold his soul to a sport where reporters ask about his biological clock and his only consolation for living in Edmonton is his heated driveway.

Because MLB payrolls are so much larger than the NHL’s and they have a luxury tax rather than a salary cap, contracts are worth much more. The sport itself is less volatile as well: both a product of the longer season (larger sample size) and the luck factor inherent in chance-based games like hockey that isn’t present as much in baseball, a player's year-to-year performance is easier to predict and therefore teams feel more comfortable betting on their production. In contrast to the NHL’s 8-year limit & penalty for long contracts (like the Kovalchuk deal), and bridge deals made when a player hasn't demonstrated that their performance is sustainable, MLB GMs often give their stars contracts over 10 years, and for hundreds of millions of dollars total. Mike Trout is on a 12-year contract for almost $430 million, and by several estimates, his endorsements and the money he receives for being named All-Star, AL MVP, etc. brings that up significantly.

MLB front office terminology is very similar to the NHL, but their contracts differ in another important way: baseball players can opt out of a contract and enter free agency. For example, last season Carlos Correa agreed to a 12-year, $310m deal with the New York Mets, but the Mets were worried about the results from his physical and his injury history, so they pulled out of the deal before the season began and instead, Correa signed with the Minnesota Twins on a six-year, $200m contract.

The Used Boy Auction

Drafting in MLB works very differently than the NHL. The amateur draft (the Main one, which is also called the Rule 4 Draft) takes place mid-season and lasts 20 rounds (used to be 40), plus picks that teams are given as compensation for other events. Teams can draft players either out of high school or college baseball—while the majority of players in the early days were picked right out of high school, nowadays the largest percentage are collegiate players. High school players are only eligible after graduation, and they don’t have junior leagues like the OHL or USHL. Players at universities can only be drafted after their 3rd season there in order to avoid going to a university only for drafting purposes.

Teams retain the rights to sign the players they draft until July 15 of the following year, and a player who does not sign with their team is eligible to be signed once again as long as they meet the age and educational requirements (attending an academic institution, three years of college, etc.) Unless the player has consented to be re-selected by their old team, they cannot be chosen again in another draft year. This leads to players like Brandon Belt having been drafted three times, by the Red Sox, Braves, and Giants, and ultimately playing for the Giants after his college career.

The Rule 5 Draft is another major part of the MLB drafting system. It's sort of similar to what happens in the NHL with an expansion draft, but it takes place in the winter every year. As the MLB prospect pipeline moves slower and it's easy for teams to Stockpile high-quality prospects and bury them in the minors due to the team's current success, this draft aims to ensure that young players have a chance to play in the bigs on a team that needs more manpower. Not every team has to select a player in the Rule 5 draft; last season, 15 players were taken, including the Nats selecting Thad Ward and the Phillies selecting Noah Song.

Here's the official MLB description of the drafting process:

Podcasters or Whatever

My most toxic trait is that I unfortunately love listening to sports podcasts, so here are some good baseball ones:

The Athletic Baseball Show

Ballpark Dimensions

Effectively Wild

The Strike Zone

I hope this serves as a useful first step! Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or want to yell about baseball - I wrote this for two people, so if either of those two people find it helpful, the three hours I spent on it will have been worth it.

#baseball #waiting for spring #yun talks #mlb #baseball primer #i guess???#pinned for the offseason

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goldenboots1 · 2 months

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I love how everyone is acting like Max didn’t “suffer” during his early RBR days. Like the reliability was shit. The car (or the engine) was mid. If everything was working and the Mercs had a bad weekend he got a podium very very luckily he might have gotten a victory. But his first years at RBR the car wasn’t good at all. So many people are acting like he always sat in a “great” car. And sure it wasn’t a Haas or a Williams or (I’m sorry MJ) an Alpine (this season) but the car wasn’t a winner car. He might have been in a “Top” team because they won championships literally a few years before Max joined them. But Max and the team needed to work their asses off to be where they are now. Also funny how RedBull and Max are at fault for the incompetence of the other teams. “the sport is boring” well the sport has been boring for years because the team that was dominating dominated most of the time for the most races! (Schumacher with Ferrari, Vettel with RedBull, Mercedes with both drivers! To name just a few.) If this sport is boring to you and you are tired of watching Max win. No problem watch F2 or F3 or a complete different sport. Maybe football is for you or handball or hockey. But stop complaining about the good job Max and RedBull are doing! Complain about the bad job your team is making. And to every “Max fan” complaining: do better and please stop calling yourself a fan.

Boots out.

#max verstappen #red bull racing #bootscorner #personal opinion

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pillarsalt · 4 months

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Any advice for women questioning if they might be bi?

This is an interesting question that I'm not quite sure how to answer. I thought I might tell you what my own experience in figuring out my sexuality was like, but I might have a bit of a weird story since understanding my attraction to men was actually more difficult than my attraction to women. This is stupid long and a bit navel gazey (walking down memory lane since I'm currently staying at my mom's place in my hometown). If you want to skip to the TLDR section at the bottom, I put the advice that came to me while writing this there. I hope it helps a bit, but if not, maybe others might want to add their own advice for anon in the replies?

I grew up in a smaller Alberta city that leaned conservative, but I was lucky enough to have open-minded and accepting parents who were pro gay rights. I went to catholic school (for french immersion lol), and before I even had the awareness that same sex attracted people existed, my elementary school friend group ostracized me, they said they thought I was a lesbian because I liked dinosaurs and roughhousing too much.

I was very confused until I was about 12 and learned that women could indeed be attracted to and have relationships with other women; that's when the understanding hit that there was a reason I felt differently about certain girls than I did about my other girl friends. Why I loved to sit next to them and stare at each individual feature of their faces when they talked, why I treasured the chihuahua webkinz Cristina from the bus gave me for christmas so much (I bought her a pack of lip smacker lip balm, this is so nostalgic lol), why I often gave Julia from my soccer team a playful shove if only to touch her for just a second. Now I knew what I was feeling. The problem was, aren't girls supposed to like boys? My peers would talk about how hot this one was and how they wanted that one's number; I just didn't get it. Boys were all just kind of weird and gross and scary to me.

In the next couple years I read more about lesbian gay and bisexual history and culture, learned that it wasn't wrong for me to love women but that many people wouldn't accept that. In high school (catholic high school!), if people asked, I answered truthfully, and it didn't make me popular. This is basically the reason I absolutely hate the word Queer; I had that word spat at the back of my head in the hallways by the grease ape hockey players who joked about "drinking beers and hitting queers". I had my share of crushes but didn't dare act on them. It frankly sucked, but I still made some friends.

(Funny tangent here: I had made a couple of new friends who were kind of in the 'cool bad girls' clique but didn't know my reputation. At lunch one day they stole my phone and as a prank they texted my mom "I have something to tell you... I like women" and she answered "you already told me that??" LMAOOO my mom felt so bad but like I told her, how was she supposed to know? anyway those girls didn't hang out with me much after that.)

Later on, I tried harder to fit in at school. I wore a lot of makeup and had a boyfriend for a couple months, which only confused me further. He asked me out and he was considered desirable and he was nice and didn't make fun of me, so I said yes. I used to set an alarm on my phone when I was at his place and pretended my mom was calling me and I had to leave. That scene at the start of But I'm a Cheerleader where Megan is just sitting there letting her boyfriend make out with her while she waits for it to be over, it really resonated with me when I watched it the first time lol. When he started hinting he wanted to have sex and put my hand on his boner through his pants, I couldn't take it anymore and ended it. I began to think I just wasn't into men at all. I kind of ignored them after that.

After a tumultuous almost-relationship with another girl who got then scared into claiming she was straight again by the homophobia at school and her religious mother (and then we weren't allowed to be each other's grad partners even as platonic friends), I had my first girlfriend after I graduated high school (we're still friends although she's fully into the theythem sphere now). She moved to another province and I discovered I'm not the type of person who can handle long distance relationships, so that was the end of that.

Finally in college, where people usually have their same-sex experimentation phase, I instead discovered that I am indeed attracted to men, I guess it just took me a while to find the ones who did it for me. A coworker turned close friend turned FWB turned long-term boyfriend confirmed that for sure. It was a whirlwind of self discovery but I was glad to have finally figured out what I was questioning for so long. So at the age of 19, I became as sure as I am now that I am not gay, not straight, but bisexual. I don't know if the kinsey scale thing is bullshit or not but I'd say I sit at about a 4. Things sort of fell into place for me eventually, which I think was lucky for me and I'm grateful for it.

TLDR SECTION:

I knew I was attracted to women from my early teens on, didn't figure out if I liked men until college years.

So if you're still with me, that's why I don't exactly know what advice to give you. Honestly, I wrote all of that mostly hoping you might find something relatable in there to build off of. Basically, are you romantically attracted to women, do you want to hold her hands, kiss her deeply, spend all your time with her, be filled with joy when you hear the beautiful sound of her voice, hold her closely until you fall asleep together? and Are you sexually attracted to women, is there a longing in you when you think about touching her body, her breasts, her stomach, her lips, her thighs, her vulva, the sensation of her touching you too? If it's yes to all of the above... yeah you're probably attracted to women.

But if it's yes to only one subset or another, here's the thing: I've seen a ton of straight people online and in my personal life claim they're bi because they're able to tell which individuals of their own sex are conventionally attractive or not. I posted a while ago about my straight male coworker who said "I think the guitarist in my favourite band is hot so I guess I might be queer?" and my other coworkers who immediately jumped in like YES YOU'RE QUEER YOU'RE SO QUEER leaving me like... okay but would you kiss him? Have sex with him? Fall in love with him? Again that's not necessarily your case, just that the lines have been seriously blurred when it comes to sexuality, between this sort of "everyone can be queer" thing and also the ubiquity and oversaturation of porn. Porn warps the shit out of all your mental processes but especially arousal and romantic and sexual bonding. This is how we get those women who talk about how they would fuck women but never have a romantic relationship with her. Porn culture warps their minds into viewing other women as objects from which to derive sexual pleasure, even if their natural orientation is heterosexual.

I guess my number one advice is that if you want to try romance and intimacy with a woman, MAKE SURE you are upfront with the fact that you're questioning your sexuality. There's no shame in questioning, of course. But another user and I were just talking about the large number of curious straight women who go on dating apps and waste the time and crush the spirits of gay and bi women who are just looking for love, not looking to be a litmus test or an experiment. I'm sure there are women out there who would be happy to explore your attraction with you, but also be on the lookout for people looking to take advantage of you and ABSOLUTELY run the other way if it's a het couple looking for a third, holy fuck don't even give those crusties the time of day.

Another piece of advice for you is that no two women are the same. Being attracted to women doesn't mean you'll be attracted to EVERY woman. This is why I'm wary of the types who say "I'm attracted to all women and only some specific men" like that sounds fake as fuck. Bi and gay woman have types and preferences just like straight women do.

All you can really do is keep thinking on it, keep exploring your feelings. It could help to talk it out with other lesbian or bisexual women in your life if you're lucky enough to have them. I wish you the very best but don't stress too much over it either. There's no rush, take your time, be well.

#ask #bisexuality

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