#and then got put in the torture nexus

[exclusivelyelbows]

Bills' relationship with Morrison in season 2 and the way he defends him reads so much like the victim in an abusive relationship, which honestly it was, and then paired with the toxic codependent loyalty and us against them mentality of the police as a system just makes for the most juicy character moments

[lord-squiggletits]

Has anyone besides me actually talked about how Tyrest literally used Pharma as a test subject for the killswitch and how he basically says that Pharma being "famous for being forged" is the only reason he rescued Pharma from a fate as "an amputee with a mouthful of snow, a disease waiting to happen." bc like. Honestly even on my first few read throughs of MTMTE I didn't pay much attention to that part and it's only after many obsessive Pharma-focused readings that I went "hey wait a second that's really kind of fucked up."

I mean there's even a panel showing Pharma looking battered and fried on his hands and knees while Tyrest talks about how the killswitch needed fine tuning to actually target only cold-constructed mechs. Though sadly most of it is covered by Tyrest's text boxes so we don't even get to see it very clearly. BUT IT IS THERE.

[thedemonsurfer]

Back on my bullshit with trying to guess character motives feat. Dark Sun

Sooo Dark Sun (or 'Just Sun') finally rolled up to talk to Sun in todays SAMS ep, and naturally I'm putting him on the high-speed cycle in my head trying to parse what his motives are. What does he GET out of this?

Because he was leaning on Sun really hard to kill Nexus-- specifically, he wants Sun to see Nexus as a representative of the worst kind of person Moon can be, and to recognize that as a threat that needs to be killed.

But-- why?

Roll back a bit: Dark Sun has been involved in every step of Nexus' fall from grace.

He did something to New Moon at their very first meeting.

He provided Eclipse with the means to bring back Solar, and then prevented him from acting until Dark Sun wanted him to.

He dropped Ruin off on New Moon's doorstep when Moon was at a point where he could have accepted Solar's death, causing Moon to double down on his efforts.

He plucked New Moon out of space and pulled the chip containing Old Moon out of his head and left it for Monty to find.

He's provided Nexus with a new base of operations and enables his monkeying around with dark energon dark star energy, despite the damage it's doing to Nex.

Dark Sun needs Nexus to make himself into a threat. Because that's what he does, he sets up the dominoes and pulls the strings, but he doesn't outright tell others what to do (unless it's bossing Ruin around, but Ruin is his bitch so he doesn't count.)

And today, he was leaning real hard on Sun to see Nexus as a threat. to see all Moons as a threat (though, curiously, not mentioning Old Moon).

So what is he getting out of this? Why does he also need Sun to see Nexus as a threat that needs to be stopped? Why does he want Sun to 'understand' that he has to kill his brother?

Dial back the motives. The most compelling and strongest motives are Simple and Selfish: Eclipse didn't actually want power, he wanted Moon to pay attention to him. Ruin did want to prevent a total catastrophe, but he also wanted revenge on the Creators for destroying his life and world.

(As an aside, this is why I feel that Bloodmoon didn't make a good antagonist, and why Ruin's initial appearance was kind of boring. 'I'm here just to fuck shit up' isn't a very compelling motive.)

What do we know about Dark Sun?

He lied about having killed his Moon and actually kept him to torture-- or he DID kill his own Moon, and the one Ruin met was a substitute

He never gets his hands dirty, he gets others to act for him

He's obsessed with Sun

He fucking hates Moon

Dark Sun tells Sun that 98% of dimensions lose their Sun, and Moon is often the one that kills them. But it's not exactly that straightforward, is it?

Atlas points out that Dark Sun is counting dimensions where Sun was reset as him being 'dead'. Dimensions where Eclipse has a hand in Sun's death could be considered Moon's fault, since Eclipse is a byproduct of the killcode. Ruin's situation resulted in the ego death of both his Sun and Moon, on his Moon's suggestion. Ruin also wiped out 5000 dimensions and I think that's gonna skew some of the numbers.

And... how many dimensions have we seen a dead Sun in the show? Two, I think? The one where they never split up and Moon consumed Sun after the killcode took full control, and Solar's. And in Solar's, that Moon went mad trying to bring his Sun back.

Almost every instance we've seen, Sun and Moon coexist just fine once they're in separate bodies.

And I think that's what Dark Sun wants. I think he's trying to justify killing his own Moon before they ever got a chance to get along.

Moons MUST be evil and unable to change, they MUST be cruel. It's impossible for a Sun to get along with a Moon for any length of time, and that Sun is in the right when he has to kill his Moon.

And he's going to use Sun and Nexus to prove how right he is.

[glade-constellation]

Okay, finally about to get all my thoughts down after yesterday’s episode. I’m going to start with Moon since he’s being the one most talked about.

This is going to be a long post, so I’ll put a cut here <3

Moon

A lot of people are hating on how Moon reacted to Sun’s current trauma. I agree that he is not handling the situation well. As much as I understand where he’s coming from, running from Sun is not going to help at all. Sun desperately needs his family with him right now. No one else may have considered Nexus daily anymore, but it was still clear that Sun cared. He basically had to kill his own brother. Not only that, he was made to feel as if he chose to kill his own brother. (There was no choice in the matter, it was physiological torture set up specifically to make Sun feel guilty for his actions. Sun may have threw the “fireball” but Dark was the one who forced him to.)

Anyways, back to Moon. I think what a lot of people are forgetting is that Moon also just lived through a trauma. He was kidnapped and tortured, almost killed before Ruin saved him. The only reason Ruin saved him, as Ruin explained himself, was because Ruin hated Dark and Nexus. It was not because he wanted to save Moon, it was because he wanted to thwart Dark and Nexus’ plans. When he’s finally on his way to getting out, he finds two of his brothers being tortured, and almost watched one of them die before he got there. (I think that’s why he started screaming when he did. He was buying time for Solar by directing Nexus’ attention at him.) He then watched Nexus die. He was not close to Nexus in any way, but watching anyone die in front of you is not great for your mental health.

After all this, Moon is then told he has to not only process his own trauma, but take on Sun’s trauma as well. Moon does want to help, but he is too overly burdened by his own problems and knows he wouldn’t be of any help. To make up of his guilt, he is coving up his own trauma response by saying he’s doing it for Sun. He very likely knows this isn’t going to help Sun emotionally, but he feels he can stop any farther trauma to Sun by stopping whatever’s causing it. It’s both genuinely feeling this is the only way he can help Sun, and feeling guilt over not being able to help him in the way that is currently needed.

Is that the best response? No. But is it a very Moon response? Yes. This is actually exactly how he used to fix problems. Moon should not have abused Sun in the way he did, and he still needs to apologize for that, but Moon genuinely thought in some of these instances that he was helping Sun. He is not an emotionally available person, so he cannot handle his own emotions on top of others. So he does the next best thing he can think of and tries to stop what’s causing the trauma. Moon has just as much trauma as Sun does, people just don’t tend to feel that way because he took out his emotions on Sun to process them. At least this time he’s not taking it out on Sun. At least he is trying to actually stop the problem.

All in all, Moon isn’t as in the wrong as everyone keeps saying. Yes, he definitely should go talk to Sun. Hell, even just sitting in the same room as Solar does all the talking would be a big help. Just showing that he is there for Sun. But then Moon would feel more guilty, because he wouldn’t see how he’s helping and would still want to go after Dark and Ruin. He may seem apathetic, but he genuinely is trying to fix the situation.

(Edit : I also think people are forgetting that Moon had absolutely no insight as to what the real situation was. Sun did not tell them he was forced to make a choice, he simply saw Nexus explode. He probably thinks Sun intentionally killed Nexus. He does not realize the true gravity of the situation like we do.)

Sun

Obviously, Sun is the most emotionally distressed over the situation. The entire time he was talking with Nexus, a few episodes before his death, Sun tried to say he didn’t care about Nexus. Nexus saw through the lies, he knew Sun for an entire year by this point. They used to be brothers, Nexus wasn’t going to believe Sun didn’t care because Sun never stopped caring. As much as Sun was hurt by Nexus, that was still his brother. It’s kind of similar to his feelings of Moon at the beginning of the show. Moon did some genuinely terrible things to him, but Sun still cared. The only reason this situation is any different is because Moon would sometimes try and show regret over his actions, and Nexus blatantly didn’t care.

Sun found out his brother was kidnapped, had to bargain with the enemy to try and get past another enemy, almost got caught in the crossfire of a deadly fight, and was then tortured by someone he used to call a brother. He was almost forced to watch Solar die purely as a revenge tactic to get back at him, and Sun would have felt it was his fault Solar died. The was only stopped by Moon rushing in to start fighting. Right when it looked like Nexus was about to kill everyone, Dark forced Sun into a rigged choice between killing his brothers. (Edit: It was Ruin’s device that killed Nexus. Sun had no part in physically killing him.)

Once again, really want people to understand that Sun did not kill Nexus. He was simply made to feel like he did. It’s psychological torture, make someone feel as if they are choosing a certain outcome when you are actually in control so that the person will be traumatized by “their own” actions. Dark was very in control of the situation. He very much knew who Sun was going to choose, but forced him into doing so in a way that would make Sun feel like it was his fault. Sun is in no way at fault for Nexus’ death. That is completely on Dark.

In the end, Sun is forced to watch his former brother, someone he still cares very deeply about, die a very violent and painful death. He is forced to think he is the one to cause it. He was already in high distress before hand from Moon’s kidnapping and attempted rescue. Now he is dealing with what is quite possibly his worst trauma yet. This forces him to shut down and dissociate from the problem.

Notice how Sun forces himself not to breakdown until he gets back to the house, and even then he goes to his own room and very quietly starts to cry. Even while he was in extreme emotional pain, he was trying to be considerate of the people around him. He didn’t want to force them to handle him while he was suffering, so he made his suffering as silent and unseen as he could. Because Sun never stops caring.

To say the least, Sun is in an unbearable amount of pain right now. It will be a very long road to recovery for him, if he ever recovers from this.

Solar

Solar seems to be the most level headed in the situation, which isn’t an odd thing. He will usually take on that role in these types of situations. He was also one of the first to say killing Nexus was their best option. He was probably the most prepared for this kind of outcome.

The thing is, as much as Solar might not like it, he is still an Eclipse. He still deals with his problems like most Eclipses do, though arguably better than others. He finds work to do, and he drowns himself in it to avoid his own feelings. Eclipses are kings of repression. Solar doesn’t want to acknowledge his own feelings, so he’s going to forget he even has them.

His current choice of work? Helping Sun. To him, Sun is obviously more hurt than he is, so his own emotions don’t matter. He feels Sun needs more help than him, so he’s not going to show any distress so that the others will focus on Sun and not him. If they focus on him, he will have to feel his feelings, and he doesn’t want that. He wants Sun better, because to him Sun obviously is the one more in need.

I think that’s one of the reasons he got so upset with Moon over the whole “go talk to Sun” situation. No one is helping Sun, and he’s confused on why no one is helping. Sun obviously needs it, why is everyone just leaving him alone? They need to go check on Sun, he’s obviously not okay right now. Why is no one helping Sun?

I thinks there’s a lot of factors at play here, besides just repression. I think is also somewhat projection and reliving trauma too. He basically lived the beginning of his life without help when he was in emotional distress. His Moon never cared about him, blamed him for Sun’s death, and constantly verbally and physically abused him. He was never allowed to grieve. Seeing Sun hurting like this and not getting help is reminding him of his own feelings in past situations where he never got help. He may not realize it, but it’s a possibility. Also, he still has the attachment to his own Sun. I don’t think he likes seeing any Sun (besides Dark) in any sort of pain.

Then there’s the last thing.

Solar had to kill his Moon.

This situation is striking way too close to home.

Solar is probably the only one who genuinely can feel empathy for Sun’s current situation. He’s the only one who knows what it feels like to “pull the trigger”. Nexus was also acting very similar to how Solar’s Moon used to act. And Solar never got any help when it happened. He didn’t even tell anyone, he covered it up and tried to forget. I think Lunar is the only one who knows about it, and Lunar never did anything about it. Solar was forced to go through nearly this exact situation, and he does not want to see Sun go through what he had to go through.

(On top of all this, Solar was very close to Nexus before his death. He’s not showing it, but he is very much hurt by what is happening. The only reason he is probably not in more distress is because he prepared for this being a possible outcome.)

Earth

To be completely honest, I have been way more focused on the others in this situation. Earth is also one of the easiest characters to read, as she verbally voices her feeling to everyone and has never really felt the need to hide them. We already know she’s upset by the situation, and is probably going to have some sort of mildly poor coping mechanism, but she is going to be the most emotionally okay out of everyone. Not because she is feeling okay, but because she’s the most in tune with her own feelings, and with how to properly handle those feelings.

I’m not saying she’s going to be perfectly okay over this. She is obviously still very hurt and troubled. I am also not trying to downplay her emotions. She is definitely going to need the others to help her. This portion isn’t short because I don’t like her, it’s just short because she is genuinely the best off in this situation. She knows how to find help when she needs it and, even better, she will ask for it.

Monty & Lunar

I’m sticking them together because I feel very similar ways about them.

I do not understand their reactions to the current situation.

Monty is more understandable. He was always closer to Moon than he was to Nexus. That much was very obvious. The moment Moon came back they got drunk and partied, and then feel right back into their old friendship. Monty was seemingly completely unaffected by Nexus’ change of heart. He very much only cares about themself and Earth.

The way he’s acting currently is not helping the situation. At all. It’s even worse than Moon’s reaction, in my opinion. Moon at least feels he is helping Sun. Monty is doing nothing. “Nexus is dead? Cool. Let’s hide this from Earth because it will hurt her and I can’t stand seeing that.” That is going to hurt Earth a lot worse in the long run if she was never told. She doesn’t like lies, even by omission. You already are hurting others by being apathetic, do not hurt Earth because seeing her hurt will hurt you. That’s fucked up.

Then there’s Lunar. I’ve already talked about my feelings on him, but I still cannot figure him out. He’s always been a very apathetic character when he’s not interested or running from emotional pain. But this? This feels almost malicious. He doesn’t seem to care. Usually when he is running, he’ll verbally tell everyone he knows what he’s doing. He knows it’s bad. But right now he is not saying anything. His is either dissociating from the problem to the point he is numb, or he is so genuinely unbothered that there isn’t any sort of care in his heart.

This doesn’t feel like Lunar. This has never been his reaction to anything before. We haven never seen this from him at this scale. It feels so violently out of character for someone who is very emotional and loud about it.

At this point, I am starting to wonder if the Star power is having a bigger effect on him than we think. We all know that the Astrals deal with apathy to most things. Even Castor and Pollux has said they don’t react to things like most people expect them to. They do not have the ability to care in a way the feels human. Since Lunar has been training to become an Astral, I’m starting to wonder if this will begin to mentally change him as well.

I am not saying that apathy is a bad thing to have. I am not saying Lunar is wrong to feel this way. I am simply saying it feels violently out of character, and is not helpful in the situation at all.

These two are currently being the least helpful in this situation. They do not care, and do not feel the need to soften their apathy and help the others. Lunar is actually the most unsympathetic out of the group, which is actually a stark contrast to how he usually is portrayed.

[peachyfnaf]

Hello chatters. currently 8:30 in the morning, and I've been seeing a lot of Sun love going around (based btw) which reminded me that even though I don't yap about him nearly as much as I do Nexus, Sun was also given such a short end of the stick when it came to this arc.

I don't care for Monty, but I do love Puppet, but the way they both pressured Sun into choosing what to do with Nexus (New Moon at the time)??? that shit is so fucked. and yeah, because I am who I am (a Nexus apologist lol), I was mad and hurt when Sun was unable to tell them to not kill him. but unfortunately that tracks for him.

Sun's trauma response is, most of the time, to freeze. he's done it before when confronted by past Eclipse's, Bloodmoon's- if you're willing to use other dimensions as examples, Servant Sun quite literally froze and surrendered with his hands in the air out of fear when Old Moon first met him.

So, he did it again. he was put in a terrifying situation, and he froze. which led to Nexus freezing in space too amiright ahahahahhhhh

So, shit was already fucked for him at this point. because not only did he lose a close family friend (Solar), tried to help the other 3 through their grief and prioritizing their feelings over his own because he was- objectively- the least close with Solar, lose his brother to madness (which we now know there was like 10x more to that then just 'grief' makin' him act as he did. y'know. glares at Dark Sun and NSP), could basically do NOTHING as Earth was kidnapped by Ruin/Bloodmoon, and Nexus was blasted into space by Puppet.

And even though that was the end of that main arc, dude CONTINUED TO BE HANDED L'S AFTERWARDS. Old Moon being brought back by Monty (Monty.. >:[) without Sun even being asked about it first, Sun not being given the chance to properly heal from/mourn Nexus because O.M was now there, he filled his role, and O.M does not like Nexus. (chatters, I'm gonna warn you, ever since he came back, I've been an Old Moon hater. do not like that guy.) anD THEN EVERYTHING WITH DAZZLE/EVELYN??? july 16th of this year was like a very high peak in what's, to me, a very low-on-the-chart arc, but THAT DOESN'T MEAN SUN WAS OKAY DURING IT JFCCC. the TRAUMA he was reliving during that time HURTED

And even where he is now- he got his magic back, yuippee yayyy!!!

Because of it it seems like he's now intrinsically intertwined with NSP, and multiple people want to use him as a goddamn radar to find Wither Shards now. one of those people literally being The Creator, yaknow, like the stories Biggest Bad???

And another, "oooh, yaknow, that happeneddd, ahahahahhh.." was The Creator psychologically torturing him in one of the darkest SAMS eps' to date because of it.

AND. And, finally, the most recent episode that was Yapped to me about that well. 1, just made me hate O.M more, and 2, made me want to just wrap Sun in a blanket in front of a fireplace. The "Invaded By CRINGY FNAF in Vrchat" one. the way O.M spoke to Sun in that ep, the use of the gravely K.C voice that O.M only uses when making threats, I- I'll fuckin-

LEAVE THAT LITTLE GUY ALONE. I HOPE WHEN YOU AND NEXUS INEVITABLY FIGHT YOU GET CLOCKED IN THE JAW FOR THAT ONE. GOOD LORD.

...I've been typing this for like 50 minutes, apparently I had a lot more to say when it came to Sun than I first thought DGAIEPHDWGWLAH

Canon. canon, please, let Sun do something. let him be the one to free Nexus from NSP corruption, because of how much he's been shown to be resilient to it. let Sun be the one to stop The Creator's next big scheme instead of Moon. let him do things as important as all the others instead of just cleaning. the pieces for him to do so are right there. now put them in place.

[sergeifyodorov]

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

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

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

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

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

A Generational Prospect

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At least he has a friend, though, right?

Dylan

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jack Eichel most of all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is how the draft goes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, the Leafs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

World Juniors and the Memorial Cup

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connor Complex

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

He was not, and everyone knew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Babcock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then news of the list leaks.

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

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

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

Babcock told the others.

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

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

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

Go West

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dylan wins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And for that, he was demonized.

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

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

153

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beyond McDavid and Draisaitl, they have:

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

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

One genuine shutdown defender.

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

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

One decent 2C.

Sarah Nurse’s cousin. Sarah’s better.

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

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

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

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

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

There’s No Place Like Strome

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

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

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

And then he signed in Washington.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Blue Wedding

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

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

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

The stories, as they do, go on.

[nadinescholtes]

It’s kinda sad that Sun and Laia relationship would be strained because Laia was just helping Nexus?? I mean I get it, that was his brother corpse being held by his girlfriend. Not everyday you see that, but what other options there would be? Let nexus be insane to go around torturing your family?? I think not.

Eventually, I think sun will come around and just apologize for being selfish and wants his ex brother back. He’s glad that she’s helping a lot with it and wishes he had helped too. He got a lot to make up for it.

Is it a corpse if Nexus is in a coma though?

Sun is in no way selfish in that situation. He's disappointed in Laia for not trusting and telling him that she would meet Nexus and put herself in danger. Still, he's grateful that Nexus isn't dead.

Laia would have to apologize and both would need to work on rebuilding their trust in each other.

But all this was just an idea, I do not intend to make a full story out of this. 😅

[absolutelybifurious]

the thing is im usually allllll for putting eddie in the torture nexus, its actually my favorite favorite thing, but it hits so different when its chris. when its the person eddie has tried so hard for again and again and again. when its this thing he's poured his entire soul and life and being into for YEARS to try and Not Fail His Kid. when its now his kid being merciless in punishing him. now the same kid is ghosting him for this one mistake that also hurt eddie terribly.

and i get it isnt out of place for a teen to do something like this, bc their emotions are so big, but can someone CALL THAT OUT? can someone be like yeah hes taking this a bit far lets maybe put a stop to it??? but eddie's parents are just ignoring eddie and letting this Angry Teenager uproot his entire life and break his dads heart while eddie is powerless to do anything about it because he, once again, so desperately, wants just to be a good father. but he actually kind of isnt being one because he doesnt value himself enough to be like oh hey, wait, you're actually being unfair. we need to discuss this. he can't teach chris that running and being selfish and icing people out is Not Healthy because that would mean prioritizing his own hurt over this months-long temper tantrum christopher is having. and it would be great if this arc ended in a way that addresses THAT.

and if no one's gonna explain this to chris, i just need someone to explain it to eddie, i really desperately need someone to actually comfort EDDIE. i need someone to tell him, or at least acknowledge, that it wasn't completely his fault. that he tried to stop it before it affected chris. that he did the right thing but then got ambushed by kim. or even that the whole kim thing must have Hurt Him Too. like someone just hold him or talk to him or ANYTHING in a way that isn't wow you really hurt christopher huh :(

but i honestly can't tell where they're going with it bc its been one episode. i just know i, like christopher and eddie, am having Big Feelings and DONT KNOW HOW TO PROCESS THEM.

there's so much potential and im tentatively excited but also hahahahasf i would like this particular torture nexus to end immediately. this is a kind of emotional horror that might actually give me heart damage. christopher diaz get over yourself and go home.

im really hoping all this leads to a VERY heartwarming reunion because if it does not then i have beef with a fictional thirteen year old im so serious. (also the diaz parents but i've had beef with them so.)

[goodolddumbbanana]

God, how did I ever put up with you?

Because you love him and he always takes care of you, you dumb shit. No one cares about you now, no one still hopes to keep you alive like him, even after all the shit you have pulled, you fool.

Everyone has already given up on you, even your so-called brother Solar when you came to torture Moon and harassing Earth.

How does anybody put up with you? You indecisive unchoiced making fools! You have never made a single solid decision in your entire life!!! And that's why the problem keeps happening...!!!

Yeah, because every damn choice he made, someone got killed or was hurt, you butthead.

He refused to let Moon out, he became the one who got tortured mentally and physically for years.

He killed Bloodmoon, he accidentally drove Lunar to get killed in the hand of Eclipse.

He made a choice to get rid of Eclipse, guess what happens? Moon died.

He wants to protect Nexus by learning star power, he accidentally puts the rotten seed inside Nexus's heart and makes Nexus no longer trust him.

And now to save Moon and Solar, he has to kill Nexus.

He tried, tried and tried. But can you blame Him when the only solution that he knows seemingly solves everything is to kill someone or just put up with it?

How many choices does that poor man have to make before he goes insane?

I wonder what solutions Sun will do from now with his enemies?

Because since when Moon died, Sun has become a little aggressive. And when Nexus goes rogue, he really doesn't put up with any one's craps anymore.

Not counting Jack, no one makes fun of Sun these days (especially Monty) because they know he will get serious.

He can numb himself and become like Dark Sun. Kill everyone, every enemy before they become the problem like Nexus said.

Or he will hate his magic even more, and hide everything in the facade of 'He is fine' and becomes more and more cowardly, disgusted of himself even more.

Either way, I hope he can grief this time without people yelling at him.

I really wish Sun and Nexus will have a better ending, though I do believe Nexus didn't die and will be back in the summer.

[dana-chan-the-control-brain]

What are your favourite TSAMS AUs?

I love @emhm It really takes advantage of the Multiverse in a way I haven't seen done in many tsams fics before. Mainly because it's not restricted by the limitations of VRchat. So they cane get really wild with dimensional travel.

Like... Cringe Moon is an Alicorn and Cringe Solar is a transformer car and they are dating? .....Sure! why not!

Solar's Moon dies and his body is repurposed as a factory default Moon and is given as a gift to the Lonely Sun who was built without a Moon?

Ruin in EMHM is an entirely different character then Tsams Ruin and he's just......... Insane? He just wants to put on a show and torture and harm everyone in the process for complete control... maybe due to the lack of control he felt in his home dimension when his control was taken from him? ......Sure, why not!

Servant Sun and Lord Eclipse in EMHM are an iconic duo. Realizing their feelings really recently and are in a committed relationship. But overall live in a utopia with little problems. The Lord struggling with his own mental health and slowly starting to realize the pull and help he can be for Suns and Eclipses that suffer in the multiverse. Also discovering that in Lord Eclipse's Dimension, the Original Sun and Moon were FAR more hostile to him then even the Prime Dimension... which is why Lord is the way he is.

It takes advantage of Dimensions not being One for one copies of eachother that I just really appreciate.

Just be sure of the ratings. Because there is one chapter that is very non-consensual oral, but every other nsfw parts are consensual. And the tag "poorly justified robot sex" is there for a reason lol.

I just like all the different takes on different Suns and Eclipses through the multiverse.

It has a very large ensemble cast and it never feels too big to me. It puts the focus on exactly what they want to, and when the plot points converge it's very satisfying.

I also really love @kuuchaos Backstage Au. It is definitely a "four main characters" fic, but it keeps it very condensed and focused on the inner thoughts of the characters.

Because it REALLY picks apart Nexus's trauma and the hypocrisy of the family in a way that is lacking for me in canon tsams. (Just due to the nature of VR and having things explained to you rather then them actually happening. NMoon was imprisoned, treated like a criminal, shocked and violated before he actually did anything wrong and I will never that that go. I still like tsams as it is, but this will be something I will scream and yell at clouds for years to come to anyone who listens lol)

Also I am damn weak for SolarMoon you know me.

While "SolarNexus" is nice. I often miss the softness that came with New Moon.

Chill says "Why not both" XD

Nexus has his trauma and his family definitely left their scars. As well as the NSP that got extracted from him. Nexus is a changed person, but he still has that venerable soft side that I loved about NMoon as a character so much. If anything, Nexus is far softer because of his trauma and experiences and the personality disorders that developed due to how everything happened.

I absolutely love their softer take on Nexus.

I also like their take on Sunset. (darksun. I swear I prefer the name Sunset and I wish it was the default, because that's what a Dark Sun IS... the Sun setting. It's perfect)

Sunset is written as a canonical sociopath, but you can tell he has a weird fondness for Nexus. As his plans around him keep changing. He used him and manipulated him, obviously. But he keeps Nexus around just as a curiosity. Nexus is like a Moon he let in his home. He almost sees having Nexus around the same novelty as being an Exotic Pet owner and it's fascinating to me and I can't wait to see how Sunset develops throughout this thing.

I also read other fics. But I'm way behind but those are like the main two I am the most confident about.

[paradoxbeta]

was looks to the moon born with the tooth gap or did she get that from somewhere and just kept it

that is a really good question actually because

id never thought about that before, i just went "hee hoo toof gap pretty" one day while drawing her and never gave it a second thought. i think she was just created that way because she has it in all of the pre-collapse artwork i have of her. that or she got it via fidgeting by putting her tongue between her front teeth because i used to do that when i was bored and i know that doing that enough times can move things around. but that would imply the iterators (from moons time at least) have fleshy/manipulatable gums which wouldnt be a very sensical design choice because all that really does is invite the possibility of teeth becoming crooked or coming loose. ((to be fair, i do already have a handful of other crooked-teeth iterators: srs's snaggletooth comes to mind first but my early sliver of straw design also had brace-like metal over her teeth, and im toying with the look of misaligned or broken teeth for some iterator ocs.)) but then if lttm wasn't able to do it herself, then i would have find a reason why the ancients would have made her this way when iterator puppets are designed to be palatable and straight teeth tends to be the most safe/neutral choice. so my closest guess is that either the alignment of teeth isn't as big a deal in ancient culture (which would make sense, im sure body modification extends to doing funky dental stuff) and/or she was made with a tooth gap for the same reason i made her with a tooth gap: because it looks nice and makes her feel more like a person and less like a flawless corporate computer interface, which is easier to talk to. however even though it should not be possible i really like the idea of lttms tooth gap being something she somehow did herself because it kind of gives it personality. auuugh *enters the torture nexus*

[sabrondabrainrot]

☀️🌟☼🔅

Random Idea but with what I know about current spoilers I have two ideas. One is that Sun will somehow becomes the Witherstorm (I AM BANKING ON THIS) or he's going to be relevant to the Witherstorm of their dimension and be scattered through dimensions.

One of my most favorite series of all time is "Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles" and the crux of that series is they need to put someone back together and to do so, they have to travel to various dimensions to find the missing pieces of the person's soul. I totally see that happening to our Sun? I don't know why.

Even to this day, Sun still hasn't quite opened up about himself. Not to Old Moon, New Moon, Solar, Earth, Lunar, etc etc. I think the most he's been open towards thus far is probably Dazzle ironically?

I'm still getting caught up but I can tell Dazzle actually wants to get to know him so she's asking about him and he's honestly telling her. (also loving how Sun is spending more and more time with the kids in the show, He spends so much time with FC, Dazzle, Jack, etc. It's so wholesome) I'd say Earth and Lunar are in second place of knowing him best but they also still sometimes are kept an arm's length away.

Solution to this? Scatter parts of his 'soul' into the multiverse and make it the family's responsibility to find him! Heck he could even be in a coma the entire time they do this! When they find a Sun fragment they get to see his memories or feel and hear his thoughts.

In Tsubasa the fragments are called 'feathers' and they can warp reality, break time and space, or even gain sentience. I think it'd be so neat if one of the fragments of Sun became Dark Sun but I know it's not likely.

"I am doing this for Sun, Because I am Sun" vibes

Just an Idea but it'd be so cool if it happens!

My second Idea, has to do with a sketch I did a bit ago (still working on more sketches for it) but basically I know Sun's currently gathering power. He's a fighter and wants to help! His family is still keeping him away from the action though. It's not malicious and comes from them wanting to protect him but it's going to ultimately leave him more vulnerable and a target.

Dark Sun I know is tampering with dark energies, he's raising a dragon? He's associating more and more with Witherstorm energy and he still hasn't quite confessed what his motive/plan is besides the fact this is "all for Sun"

So wouldn't this mean Sun is going to ultimately becomes a Witherstorm? It's what the creator studies and the one of the main dimension is different from others so who's to say our Sun and Moon aren't also built different with different fates?

Creator created something specifically just to torture and wear Sun down but when you think of it, that's also what Old Moon was until they split. I don't think that was the intention but the fact Old Moon just decided to point blank torture Sun? Sus, like it was meant to happen.

Dark Sun I think needs Sun to be his pet Witherstorm, and he's maybe planning to use Nexus to make that happen? I just got to the point in the series where he just picked up New Moon from space and took a chip out of his brain. Bruh...he needs him but won't say for what.

I love it. Dark Sun my beloved what are you evil little plans <3

Hoping Sun doesn't fall into a Coma but it'd be so sexy of him aha~

I really like when Sun spends time with Earth and Lunar too it'd be so cool if they have an adventure to save him.

BTW I've been listening to Aurora's song "The Seed" and it literally gave me a big brain AU idea for tsams but idk if I should try to write it.

I really hope Sun ascends to some kind of God-hood like being especially involving destructive energy like Witherstorm stuff. It'd be so neat and sad if one of the nicest people ever became the ultimate judge, jury, and executioner-like being. It's especially ironic since Nexus/New Moon can't decide what's real anymore and just decided to frick off and become God so it'd be realllyyyy funny if Sun was the one to become a reality altering being.

I'm just Madoka-ifying Sun at this point

[luigra]

I& guess while this ending was extremely important to me& and will leave a lasting and tangible impact on me& forever, I& have to once again battle with whether or not all of this happened to me& directly. Because I& awakened after DSMP has, for all anyone could possibly know, already ended. The whole reason I&'m here now is because I& was dead and my& soul had nowhere else to go.

In a way I& got my& own epilogue, just here instead of there. But I& missed that place so much. I& guess the big difference between the stream me& and the real me& is that I& really would do it all over again, with the wars and grief and all.

But I& also found a happier life here, one that also doesn't completely revolve around Tommy anymore, and one where I& kept all the experience and memories of DreamSMP without the scars to go with them. Do I& frequently wish to still have those scars to show for it? Usually, yes, but. After this ending.

It's definitely going to make me& rethink a lot of my& journey and draw more parallels between my& past and future, inevitably. I& already talked to my& Tommy about it all. I& kind of take this epilogue as cc Jack's send-off to me&, and all my& and his fans over the years. Thanks for making me& and putting me& through the torture nexus I& guess, Jack. I& really do appreciate getting to see home again.

I& guess I&'d like to point out this one particular line that felt like it spoke about, no, to me& directly. What, with the third person and all.

[mylifeisactuallyamess]

Sanctuary part 2

Chapter 2: Tantiss

A/N: Hey! Welcome to Stitch’s first chapter.

Warnings: 18+ Hemlock is a warning on his own, mentions of torture, anxiety, fear, canon violence.

Word Count: 1.6k+

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3

Masterlist

“Where is the specimen now?”

“On her way to Tantiss.”

“She should be heading to Mustafar,” a dark voice threatened.

“She has had no training.” A man’s voice slithered through the dark, drawing you closer.

“It does not matter.” The deep foreboding voice responded, automated and emotionless, giving you the impression of an endless pit of despair. The words were blank, hiding an ocean in pain and suffering waiting to be unleashed. “She would comply.”

“That may be, My Lord,” the first voice said calmly. “But she is an adult, I believe we could put her to better use.”

“How so, Doctor?” The shifting black around you shuddered and you were drawn even closer to the shadows that moved and twisted. They wound around your wrists, whispering and plotting, echoing the sound of the voice you had heard before. The one that ordered the death of all clones.

The Emperor.

“She could be a valuable asset in the project.” A pregnant pause had you trying to gulp down a breath, but there was no air in the void. The shadows tightened their grip, ignoring the way you thrashed and pushed against them.

“You believe she will give the desired results?” The Emperor asked, curiosity leeching into his words.

“I believe she will, or she will draw the answer to us. One of my staff has not been very forthcoming, I am hoping to change that.”

“Hmmm,” the Emperor hummed in contemplation and you got the impression of him moving around a room. A large, tall shadow stood off to the side and a man had his back to you. No matter how hard you squinted, no colours came through, barely any light, just the pulse of something dark and vile. “You have a year,” the Emperor said, with a glance at his taller companion. “If she does not yield results, I will have no choice but to hand her over to Lord Vader.”

“Of course,” the Doctor gave a small bow from his waist. “If she does not give results, I shall deliver her personally to Mustafar, My Lord.”

“I want her whole,” Vader intoned. “And undamaged. If anyone is going to break her, it shall be me.”

The Emperor chuckled, a deep evil sound that made you want to clap a hand over your ears. “You are dismissed, Doctor.”

The shadowy shapes dissolved before your eyes, collapsing like a black hole as your soundless scream tried to break free.

3 days after.

You came too slowly. The surroundings were blinding compared to the darkness you’d been swilling in for however long. Shades of grey and white were hard to focus on as you blinked, desperate to try and find out where you were, when the bench you lay on vibrated. The ship engines gave a deep rumble and you felt the landing gear take its weight.

“Get up,” a voice said. Echoes of automated voices clanged in your mind distracting you from the order you’d been given. “I said…” hands wrapped around your upper arms, hauling you upright. Your legs couldn’t take your weight and you slumped, using the trooper to lean on.

“How much did they give her?” Another voice asked, a second trooper taking your other side. Their grips were strong and sturdy, if you could feel your extremities properly you’d say they were bruising you.

“Better this, than her hissing like a nexu,” the first trooper replied as the ramp opened up. “Apparently she gave the Bounty Hunter some trouble.” Light flooded the compartment, hurting your eyes and you tried to walk with them as they began to lead you down. The clunk of your feet on the ramp told you, they were still numb and unresponsive. You desperately tried to get some sensation back into them.

An aggressive “stand up,” was growled your way and a jarring sensation passed through your body but you were concentrating on getting your eyes to work.

The hangar was huge, full of storage boxes that housed freshly delivered supplies and marching troopers with blue visors. They glowed eerily in your fuzzy vision, the shape of them vaguely familiar.

Except there was something else…evasive but dangerous, it made your insides quiver as it stalked closer. Closing your eyes, you attempted to concentrate, to register the intense inky blackness that brushed up against your senses like an eclipsing smoke, drifting through your grip.

“So this is her. Finally.” Your eyes snapped open and focussed quicker. A man came to a stop before you, flanked by more troopers with the bulky armour. He spoke the last word as a sigh, like he’d been searching the entire galaxy for you and it was his most arduous task. You’d heard his voice before.

“Where am I?” You managed to slur out, your tongue and lips feeling rubbery from being stunned too much.

“This, is Tantiss,” the man replied with a quiet reverence. “I am Doctor Hemlock.” He made a motion with his hand and the bulky troopers stepped up to take the others places, they handed you over willingly.

“Why am I here?”

“All in good time,” the Doctor told you. His crystalline blue eyes — as cold as chips of ice — demanded your attention, but thankfully you couldn’t concentrate on them. Just as well, they weren’t soft and brown and belonging to a certain man. Sadness welled up in your chest, remembering the Imperials now had you firmly in their grasp. The Imperials that had wiped most force users from the galaxy in a single move.

Anxiety trickled through your body, forcing feeling with blood flow and your skin pricked with pins and needles. You were steered forcefully through some doors, their mechanisms always activated by someone else and your heart thudded frantically in your chest. The deeper you went, the less likely you were to escape.

You tried to grab the elusive threads, the ones that linked you to everything around you, the ones that pulled just beyond your fingertips as they flexed. Fear built in blocks, filling you with dread and it made your heels dig into the floor. Not that the troopers noticed. You couldn’t do this, you couldn’t let them take you further into this place.

“No!” A sudden movement from you took one of them by surprise and his grip loosened. You managed to spin out of the other troopers grip, ducking as the second swung at you from behind. Using your shoulder, you barrelled into the trooper, making him back up a step and it was just enough time to drag your tired and half numb body into the first step of a run. You’d run right off the edge of the hangar if you needed too.

A second step made your heart pulse loudly, drawing a sharp breath into your lungs. All you could see was the drop, the expanse of blue and grey sky filled your vision. If this was your end, you’d were going to take it. Hope of succeeding grew and you were completely unprepared for the butt of a blaster connecting violently with the back of your head, buckling your legs and throwing you to the ground.

The world splinted with your vision, pain radiated down your arms, your bound wrists pulled tightly in the restraints. You attempted to crawl away but the trooper that stunned you, stepped over your body, hefting you up by your collar between his legs and spinning you round to face an impassive Hemlock.

“Stay down. If you know what’s good for you.” Your eyes widened at the sound of his voice, misplaced trust wanted to bloom and you twisted to get a look at the clone behind you. His armour was painted in yellow and grey, his blue visor blank and unfeeling as it stared at you.

Grey and yellow armour…you were too tired, too worn out, too scared to think clearly as his presence seeped into you. Definitely a clone — a commando — one you felt you knew.

“Such a show of strength.” The Doctor’s voice was like crushed velvet, brushing delicately along your ears: soft and comforting yet it made you flinch. But you stilled, like trapped prey, eyeing him apprehensively when he approached. He had one gloved hand, massaging it with the other as he glared down at trapped between the clones armoured legs.

“I have been waiting a long time for someone of your…abilities.” As he spoke, his icy gaze swept up and down your quivering body. “Such a shame you had to be brought in this way. The Bounty Hunter is effective, if indelicate.” He sighed quietly, his eyes narrowed and became glacial as he leaned forward. You wanted to recoil, everything in your body tensed in disgust as Hemlock cocked a finger under your chin, his thumb holding you steady, giving you no choice but to magnetise to his cold glare. The feel of his skin on yours had you screaming internally, desperate to snatch away because you couldn’t take the heaviness of his presence in your mind. He felt like oil, slick and oozing with an evil that stole your breath.

“I hope you and I, can finally bring the Emperor’s idea into fruition.” You swallowed. He made you want to scream and run in the other direction. All your senses were crying out to move away from him. His voice got under your skin, slithering like poison in your veins. He was dangerous, the sickness in your stomach churned with every motion he made.

After what felt like hours, he gave the smallest self-satisfied smile, gently tapping his thumb on your chin before straightening and adjusting the cuff of his sleeve. “Behave, and I shall see that you are comfortable, Miss Fett.”

You offered no more resistance when the commando lifted you off the floor. The Doctor’s words had floored you mentally, killing whatever spirit you had been holding onto. He knew who had raised you. What else did he know about you? More doors were opened and the outside world disappeared completely as you went deeper and deeper into the facility.

The faint kernel of hope shrivelled to nothing in your chest.

[bytedykes]

hey sorry about your boyfriend, he's been, uh, cosmically doomed to the torture nexus, yeah forever, and you never saw if he got ou- oh. oh uh. your girlfriend put him there? to save your life? and he willingly entered the torture nexus for a chance to meet you face to face? oh ok. alright

[cupcakeslushie]

Does the Hidden City not take into account Donnie being 1) fourteen, and 2) having been brainwashed, tortured, and virtually enslaved by Draxum? Or was it just regular disaster twin shenanigans that got Donnie and Leo banned from the Hidden City?

Unfortunately they don’t know any of that very important info. They just have a few very limited, vague witness descriptions to go off of from the one or two times Three accompanied Draxum to sell his ammunitions.

Also….the HCP is so stupid. I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt, just zero detective work was done before they put up the wanted posters for two turtle yokai. I’d even say some of Leo and Donnie’s charges got confused and some of their wanted posters have crimes the other twin was responsible for. It’s just a mess. Like going so far as to say if Mikey wasn’t as recognized as a Battle Nexus Champion the HCP would have probably thought about taking him into custody. Morons.