#stromecat primer

[linskywords]

Stromecat Primer

This is for the anon who asked for one, which YES I will do this thing. I now have copious notes on these two which have to go somewhere. But also I’m relatively new to the pairing, so if people have corrections or things to add, have at it!

Also it’s super long (haha I might as well just have had you guys read my story draft) so I’m putting it after a cut.

OKAY SO.

Here are our boys:

(Dylan. This is his Wikipedia picture but just look at that face. Could not resist.)

(Alex. What a precious Tolkienian Dwarf.)

Okay. So those are our boys. Let’s have us some TIMELINE.

They start playing together in the fall of 2014, after Dylan goes second overall in the 2013 OHL draft to the Erie Otters and Alex signs with them undrafted the following spring. He did not get drafted because he is short and therefore underestimated. They tear it up that year, along with Connor McDavid, who’s playing on a line with them: Alex gets 104 points in 68 games--pretty great for going undrafted--and Dylan gets a whopping 129 points and wins the OHL scoring title.

So our boys are good! Everyone’s very impressed with Dylan. He’s drafted third overall in 2015, after Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel, and everyone’s very excited about the Stromes as the next big hockey family (older bro Ryan was drafted fifth overall to the Isles in 2011). The future is bright.

Dylan goes to Coyotes 2015 development camp. He goes to training camp. He plays in a couple of preseason games. But they don’t think he’s ready, so they send him back down to Erie. Pretty normal. Nothing to worry about.

2015-2016, Dylan’s the captain. Alex and Dylan play on a line together (without Connor this time) and have another great year where they are playing and also living together. Alex gets 101 points in 60 games and Dylan gets 111 in 56. They have a kind of rough World Juniors in there--Dylan plays for Team Canada and ends up in 6th place, and Alex plays for the U.S. and gets bronze but gets injured early on and only ends up scoring a single goal in the whole tournament. But, you know, good year with Erie. Future still bright.

(Look at this adorable pair. Ignore the facial hair on one of them who shall remain unspecified. Also this is presumably 2017 based on the letters on their jerseys but shhhh.)

However, Alex continues to be underestimated because he is short! He also had a bad World Juniors, so people are worried he might only be situationally good with the Otters. He’s passed over in the first round of the 2016 NHL draft and ends up being drafted 39th, by the Chicago Blackhawks, who have a history of drafted very competent undertall players. Also they didn’t have a first-round pick that year so I like to think they might have taken him either way.

Dylan and Alex both go to their respective 2016 development camps. And training camps. Alex plays in a preseason game with the Hawks but gets sent down--again, normal. Dylan plays the whole preseason with the Yotes and stays up, but they don’t really commit to him. They scratch him a bunch and only put him in for 7 games--this is either the limit of what they can play someone and still send them down to Juniors or close to it--over the course of a month and a half. Finally, on November 20, they send him back down to Erie, after 7 games played and...one point scored.

So at this point Dylan’s probably feeling pretty bad about himself. His former linemate Connor went straight to the NHL and is about to start his Hart-winning season. Dylan’s getting sent down for the second year straight.

But! 2016-2017 is an awesome year for the Otters. Alex is an A. Dylan gets made captain again at some point.* Dylan and Alex are living together again, and they’re playing together, and they freaking tear it up. They lead the Otters to a first-place finish in the O and win the J. Ross Robertson Cup (the highest award in the OHL). The guys on the team like to talk about that as the best night of their lives. They make it to the final game of the Memorial Cup, the championship for the whole CHL (which includes the OHL, the WHL, and the QMJHL), and lose narrowly to the Windsor Spitfires. However, Dylan gets a tournament record for 7 points in a single game, and they both have great seasons overall. Dylan gets 75 points in 35 games, and Alex gets 127 points in 63 games--more than two points per game for each of them--and Alex wins the Red Tilson Trophy for most outstanding player in the OHL. Also Dylan got to captain Canada’s World Juniors team, and many people (including me) were excited that he got that opportunity as a way to balance his failures thus far in the NHL, though Canada lost in a devastating final game against the U.S.

*If anyone knows when Dylan became captain again, let me know -- all I could figure out was sometime before the playoffs.

Here is Dylan with the Robertson Cup:

(Note the blond hair, which is an abomination they all inflicted upon themselves as a means to achieving playoff victory. You know, apparently it worked.)

Summer of 2017, Dylan and Alex go to their NHL development camps and training camps yet again. Everyone’s excited about Alex after the year he just had in the O. Everyone’s a little antsy about Dylan because good Lord it’s been two years since he was drafted third overall and is he ever going to be good enough for the NHL? (This was definitely me.)

Anyway the Hawks keep Alex up and start playing him. 2017-2018 is a rough year for the Hawks but a good one for Alex, and he surpasses all draft expectations and leads the team in goals (28). He also gets a commitment from the Hawks early in the year, in the form of his housing letter, and he gets a dog that spring named Ralph DeBrindog who is a shiba inu with his own Instagram account. Here are Alex and Ralph:

But things are not so happy in Arizona. Dylan gets to stay up past the 2017-2018 preseason but the Coyotes once again do not commit to him (no housing letter for him!). Dylan barely plays with the team before he gets sent down to the Roadrunners, the Coyotes’ AHL affiliate.

He does really well with the Roadrunners, so they bring him back to the NHL in late November (and he gets to play against Alex and the Hawks!). But he doesn’t do great there, so they send him back down for most of the spring, only bringing him up for the last few weeks of the season before sending him back to the AHL for the playoffs.

At this point, the future is looking pretty bleak for Dylan. Too old for Juniors, can’t hack it in the NHL despite his high draft number.  9 points in 21 games with the Coyotes in 2017-2018. People saying he was only good because of his good linemates, which, yeah, Connor and Alex are doing great other places. And sure, lots of people have good linemates and don’t put up numbers like Dylan did, but how else do you explain his failures in Arizona?

So the next season, 2018-2019, Alex is of course still playing with the Hawks. He’s doing even better than he did his rookie year, scoring more consistently. Dylan actually gets to play with the Coyotes, which, woohoo, but he’s putting up terrible numbers: 6 points in 20 games. Theories abound, but the upshot is clear--whatever made Dylan good in Juniors doesn’t translate to the NHL. The Coyotes wasted a draft pick.

BUT.

The Blackhawks evidently don’t think so, because on November 25, 2018, they trade Nick Schmaltz to the Coyotes in exchange for both Brendan Perlini and Dylan Strome. And they put the two of them on a line with Alex. And Dylan starts LIGHTING IT UP. As I write this, he’s at 46 points in 48 games with the Hawks. That’s some elite play there.

And did I mention he and Alex are living together again?

That’s right: apparently Alex was Dylan’s second call when he was traded, right after his parents (you can read more about his experience of the trade here, though you need a subscription). And then Dylan moved into his place.

...I can’t figure out how to embed video, but here is the two of them being adorable in the Road to the Winter Classic. Including Ralph, and also the memorable line, “I want to bodycheck you so bad right now.”

And here they are on the ice:

If that pose is not part of their engagement photos, it should be.

So basically, there are two possible explanations for why Dylan was playing so badly for so long in Arizona:

1) Arizona really sucks. (This should not be ruled out regardless of your opinion on #2.)

2) Dylan and Alex are soulmates and Dylan couldn’t play without him.

To be fair, #2 doesn’t explain why Alex was playing fine in Chicago before Dylan got there. But, you know, maybe he’s just less soulmate dependent than Dylan. Either way, everyone, including the two of them, is talking about the chemistry they have on the ice, and it’s clearly made a big different to Chicago’s season. And they get to play with their best friend again.

(Yes, they’ve both called each other that. It’s adorable.)

Some bonus info:

There is an Otter alum group text! It also includes Taylor & Darren Raddysh, Anthony Cirelli, and Warren Foegele. Dylan says they talk about the OHL championship all the time because it was the best night of their lives.

Dylan became the Otters’ all-time points leader by the end of his OHL career (seriously, makes no sense that he couldn’t play in Arizona, barring soulmate-based explanations)

After Dylan played Alex as a Coyote, he changed his Instagram photo to the two of them facing off.

Alex’s nicknames include Brinksy and the Cat. He’s fine with either but is less fond of Kitty. XD

They are legit eight inches apart. More, if 5′7″ is just Alex’s stats sheet height and not reality.

They are adorable best friends and roommates and linemates and need to be together forever.

And now, some pictures to close it out (starting with the Instagram icon one):

[linskywords]

Hi! I’m new to the writing side of fandoms(so new I haven’t successfully written anything yet😅) but was wondering if you could explain what a primer is and maybe some examples?

Welcome to the writing side of fandom!! Hope you have an amazing time. 😄

A primer is basically just a guide with a bunch of real-world info about a player or a pairing. Sometimes people kindly create them and then you don’t have to do your own research. You definitely don’t need to read one in order to write about people -- you can research on your own, or read a bunch of fics, or just fake it; we’re not necessarily trying for maximum realism here. I tend to aim for mostly acknowledging the major events of someone’s life but not sweating the details too much. We’re in the realm of fantasy anyway. 😉

As examples, here’s one I wrote last year about stromecat (Dylan Strome and Alex DeBrincat):

https://linskywords.tumblr.com/post/183641034554/stromecat-primer

And here’s one I’ve drawn on recently in writing about Sid and Geno (from 2012, most pictures no longer viewable):

https://tongueincheeky.livejournal.com/14017.html

Sometimes they focus more on biographical details, and sometimes they’re more about someone’s argument for a romantic pairing. Not sure there’s a wrong way to do it. If you do want to find one for a given player or pairing, probably the easiest way is to google, but you can also ask hockey tumblr for recs. People generally like sharing their knowledge, so even if there isn’t a primer out there, you can learn a lot from other people.

Have fun with your writerly explorations! We can make the players do WHATEVER WE WANT. 😈🏒👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨

[linskywords]

I love your stories and I was hoping for some advice on writing my first ever fic How do y ou research a new pairing you haven’t written before? Also what is your process for planning out a new story? I’m in the planning stages of a Mitch/Freddie/Austin fic but I’m not super familiar with the pairing and I’m also nervous about writing in general

Ooh I’m sorry it's taken me so long to get to this! This is such a great question. I'm gonna address the planning part first.

I don't do a lot of planning for my stories—some people are much more into outlining than I am. You don’t have to do it my way, but I’ll tell you how I do it. I usually start with one of two things: either an inciting incident, or an obstacle.

The inciting incident is the jumping-off point of the story—what changes to move the characters out of their starting positions. Here are some "what changes" moments from stories I've written:

Alex tells Dylan they should get married so they can play on the same hockey team

Patrick, a werewolf, comes to Chicago to start playing hockey

Jonny finds out that unlike everyone else in the world, Patrick can touch him without being in pain

Jamie gets amnesia

Jonny holds a competition to find a hockey bond

Auston comes out to Mitch

Patricia Kane decides to dress up as her brother and enter the NHL

Tyler accidentally outs himself on Twitter

Note that not all of these come right at the start of the story. Sometimes there's world-building background that happens first. But the inciting incident is where the story properly starts, and the thing that moves us towards...

The obstacle. My favorite part. :) In my stories, this is usually the answer to the question of why the two characters can't just be together. It will, of course, be overcome, but a good obstacle is one that looks to the characters like it's completely daunting. Some examples from my stories:

Patrick knows Mormon!Jonny can't date him because it's against Jonny's beliefs and would ruin his life

Tyler knows Jamie won't date him because Jamie wants to date a wolf and Tyler (thinks he) isn't one

Patricia Kane is in disguise as a man, so when Jonny tells her he's gay, she interprets that as him not wanting to date her

Hallsy and Ebs both think the other is prejudiced against them because of their reaction to Patrick’s outing

Jonny has a timer that makes it look like his soulmate is someone else

In many, many stories: they don't want their teammate to know they're gay, or bi, or a werewolf, for valid reasons of fear of homophobia/lupophobia/etc.

Like I said, it’s usually an obstacle or an inciting incident that sparks a story for me: either a situation I want to get the characters into where it looks like there's no way out for them, or an initial setup that seems like it'll be fun to explore. The Stromecat fake marriage story and the 1988 amnesia/soulmark story, for example, started with inciting incidents. The Bennguin wolfverse and 1988 timer stories started with their eventual obstacles.

Once I have either an inciting incident or an obstacle, I'll figure out the other piece—where a story should start, if I've come up with the obstacle, or what kinds of problems should develop, if I have the inciting incident.

Then I’ll decide on the basic background setup of the story. That means (for me) answering questions like:

whether/how long the characters have known each other at the start

whether main character realizes he's attracted to guys

whether main character realizes he's attracted to the other person

how main character feels about that

the parameters, if it's an AU

how/whether homophobia functions in this world

Finally, the last thing I'll want before I start is a rough idea of the ending. Which is usually, in my case, the characters ending up together. But obviously not EVERY story is a getting-together story. :D

I don't go through these pieces formulaically. It's more like, these are the things that need to exist before the story feels robust enough to me to write. And your inspiration might come from a different place than mine—but if you're struggling, I'd recommend trying to put these four pieces in place to give yourself a framework to work within.

Then I’ll just start writing, and with each scene, I'll try to move the characters from the starting point to the ending point by way of the obstacle. The obstacle is what provides the tension, so I'll aim to amplify that as the story progresses. E.g. if the obstacle is Tyler thinking Jamie doesn't want him because he's not a wolf, the story will progress by means of Tyler falling more and more for Jamie and wanting him more and more desperately, while remaining convinced that Jamie will never want him back.

There are all sorts of scenes needed to make this happen, and those I pretty much come up with on the fly. If that's hard for you, you could brainstorm some of those scenes at the start, but I often find that what scene I need when is dependent on the mood of the story in a given moment, and it's hard to gauge that before you start.

Okay, so that was long. :) Let me quickly answer the other half of your question! How to research new pairings...well, my favorite way is to read a bunch of other stories about them. Granted, that only tells you what other fans have said about them, but that's usually fine—it's not like any of us are writing research papers here. :D If there aren't stories many about the particular pairing, other stories about the characters can be useful (like, I don't think you'll find a ton of Mitch/Freddie/Auston specifically, but there are a lot of stories that feature two out of three). If that doesn't feel like it's given you enough info, or if you want to learn faster than that, Google is your friend. When I was first preparing to write for Stromecat, I read their wikipedia pages and made notes about important dates, locations, siblings, major hockey achievements, other teammates' names, that kind of thing. I also found some videos they'd done together. I probably could have researched more extensively, but again, you don't have to know everything. If you get really lucky, someone else will have made a primer for them (I ended up making one myself for Stromecat, since there wasn't one I could find). I don't know what's out there for Mitch/Freddie/Auston, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were primers of subsets of that.

Finally, I just want to note that it's okay to feel daunted, and it's okay to write despite that! The great thing about writing is that it's totally fine to write something that's not as good as you want it to be. In fact, a lot of times writing stuff that's not as good as you want it to be is the only way to get to the other stuff. I have a lot of days where I'm like, "uuuugh everything I write sucks didn't I used to be better at this??" And then usually I'll keep working at it and something will click and it will get at least a little better. So be gentle with yourself and accept your insecurities but recognize that you don't need to let them stop you from diving in and writing.

Good luck—I hope your story brings much joy to yourself and to others! ❤️

[linskywords]

I'm Sidgeno anon again! I've been very busy so I couldn't check your blog to see if you answered my asks but I saw them today and thank you for responding! Life is really hard for me and I want to give back so much to you because your writing is literally the one thing that helps me go through the day and have something to look forward to. I don't have much right now because I'm looking for another job (I got laid off before the holidays season but I'm doing better now!) -

- but once I get things going, I'll try to subscribe on your Patreon. It's okay if Sidgeno didn't win or anything! Honestly, I'm just happy you gave it a chance and are considering it. Thank you and I hope you have a very happy, productive, and fulfilling 2020!

Awww thank you so much!! Amazing to hear that my fics are so powerful for you right now. I’ll have to write some more soon. :D Please don’t feel any pressure to join my Patreon -- though of course you’re very welcome! And I hope your life starts coming together and feels easier very soon!!

In any case, you don’t need to worry about not having seen my replies earlier, because: Sid/Geno WON. It was a surprise last-minute turnaround!! There were a few other top contenders (Mitch/Auston wolfverse, Stromecat fake dating) that I also plan to write soon (honestly Stromecat fake dating might end up getting finished and posted before Sid/Geno because it’ll be WAY shorter), but seems like it’s time to start diving into those Sid/Geno primers. People have sent me a handful recently, so I feel like I have some great starting points. Time for the alpha/alpha romance to begin!! 🐺🏒😍

[linskywords]

Your Stromecat primer is cute! There’s a 3rd reason for Dylan being bad on the Yotes that isn’t “he’s no good on his own” (Nick Merkley begs to differ!) or “Arizons’s just bad” (they’re having a great season!) and that’s: he didn’t fit with the coach/style of play in AZ. I see a comparable in William Karlsson being a 6 goal 4th liner with Tortorella/CBJ and then a star in Vegas. Doesn’t mean the team/coach were BAD, as other players clearly succeed there, but some guys need something different.

Ahaha. Yes. It’s possible I was being a liiiittle tongue-in-cheek there about Arizona. They could of course have been bad FOR DYLAN without being just universally terrible. I don’t actually have strong feelings about Arizona, but I do occasionally enjoy making low-key fun of things I don’t actually have strong feelings about (e.g. Yale).

Though it’s worth noting that Arizona had two different head coaches while Dylan was there. So.

(soooooooouuuuulmaaaaaaaaaaates)