#the mortifying ordeal of being connor mcdavid

[msmargaretmurry]

THE CONNOR-DYLAN FEELS 😭😭😭 this has made me want some sort of futurefic where Connor finally decides to jump ship w/the Oilers and where should he land but the team of his former... Dylan. Who has finally found a team where he can thrive, and Connor is the one who has to find his place here. Second-chance romance ensues.

And Leon can also jump ship and wind up on the same team as his former enemy, Ratthew, and can be utterly dismayed at how seeing the curls and décolletage up close and personal every day does not dull their effect, and even more dismayed at how much he likes Matthew the teammate.

hi anon!! sorry to you also for taking a week and a half to answer this, but don't worry, i am still in my mcstrome feelings. i am always, to some extent, in my mcstrome feelings.

first of all it must be said that this scenario you've spun would involve connor signing with washington which is just........ so funny to me. washington capital connor mcdavid. just absolutely absurd vibes (affectionate).

however a) yes this is the exact type of fic i would want for them at this point, the being stuck together again and have to reconcile their past with their present and future, to deal with their feelings as adults and figure out how they can fit together again. i love second-chance romance SO much. b) you're sooooo correct about connor, being connor, always having a place on a hockey team and the actual real hard part being finding his place in dylan's life. because at this point their lives have been so separate for so long? does dylan even want connor in his life now? does connor even want dylan in HIS life? (yes he does but he definitely spends some time trying to convince himself it's not that important because it feels too hard)

what a delicious scenario for not only dealing with the mcstrome of it all but also one of my favorite topics, the mortifying ordeal of being connor mcdavid (i.e. the predetermined legacy, the ever-increasing expectations, the pressure from inside himself and the pressure from the outside world, the way all of that affects his relationships with other people and his relationship to the sport of hockey....... i do love to ponder these guys' relationships with the sport of hockey) ❤

[goaltenderness]

my 9 to 5 is cutting open old scars

[msmargaretmurry]

do you think tkachuk/drai/mcdavid (or 2 of the 3) would have been anything if matthew was drafted to edmonton instead of jesse puljujarvi?

hello anon! it says something about how uncaffeinated i was when i first read this ask that at first i thought you meant like, as a line, and i was like "well someone would have to learn to play left wing and it would probably be smarter to spread that firepower out over two lines" and then i had one (1) sip of coffee and was like OOOOooohhh you mean in a hrpf way. (i assume. sorry if you actually wanted lineup analysis.) and then i got briefly distracted thinking about a beautiful world where poor jesse puljujärvi never had to endure the dickings around of the oilers management. and THEN i got briefly distracted thinking about how having all three of them would make the oilers' cap situation even more funny. BUT ANYWAY.

short answer: yes. long answer:

so like, on the mcdavid front, hrpf nation has been exploring the mortifying ordeal of being connor mcdavid since before he was drafted. if matthew was drafted to his team people would be interested by default. if the oilers had him, drai, AND matthew, for marketing purposes they would have packaged those three all together like eberle/hall/nuge 2.0 and people would have loved it. matthew would have been giving nonstop quotes about playing with these special players and learning so much from them and whatever the fuck. matthew cares very very deeply about being a Good Teammate. he would have become connor's guard dog the same way he did for auston matthews in the ntdp. folks absolutely would have latched onto it. plus the added dimension of matthew being a Legacy Kid while connor has had Legacy Thrust Upon him would have been like rpf narrative catnip.

also, in addition to the legacy kid thing making him already a person of interest, if matthew had been drafted to the other side of the battle of alberta he would have been exactly as rambunctious and annoying and divisive and shit-stirring and fun to watch, just on the other side of the battle, and manyof us would have still gotten weird and wild about him. imho!!

i think it's a really interesting thought experiment to ponder how being in the shadow of mcdavid (and doing his shenanigans in what might be perceived as in service of the mcdavid experiment) might have possibly changed perpections/portrayals of him, and also how being drafted to a team where he knew he would never, in the eyes of the hockey zeitgeist, be the best player, might have changed matthew's own approach to his career and developing his game. because he's such a family-oriented guy i do still think he would have gotten homesick in edmonton the same way he got homesick in calgary, but i'm really curious if the concept of Playing With McDavid would have been enough to pressure him into sticking it out in the great white north. also, back to the cap crunch of it all — it feels so unlikely that the oilers would be able to afford to keep all three of them, and i wonder, if matthew was there, if drai would be the one to go. and that would have provided some RICH hrpf narratives.

on the draisaitl front, hrpf nation has been info him since he was drafted being he's hot, lmao. (laying these foundations just because if a guy is on the rpf radar it's much more likely for pairing with him to being a Thing(tm).) if matthew had been drafted to the oilers, mattdrai as we know it would absolutely not exist (and que tragique!!). it just wouldn't have that antagonism! i've always said that if leon and matthew were on the same team from the beginning, they would have been fast friends. they would have had a great time terrorizing people together. the things about matthew that pissed leon off so much wouldn't be pissing him off if they weren't being used against him!! so the dynamic that drew so many people into mattdrai wouldn't be there, and it would definitely be a very different thing, but i do think it would still be a thing.

honestly from what i know about hrpf, i feel like if we lived in the matthew-to-the-oilers universe, connor/matthew would be the big ship, with connor/leon and matthew/leon as rarer pairs on the side (and of course connor/matthew/leon hanging out there too). what a world!! i would read a million versions of the au though.

[msmargaretmurry]

(sorry to connor mcdavid who has to listen to him try to decode banal text messages)

this is one little sentence but it means the world to me

connor is actually the person who suffers the most in haw. first he has to deal with having a best friend with the world's most embarrassing crush. then he has to deal with his best friend asking his opinion on the nuanced meanings of different happy face emojis. then he has to deal with his best friend being SAD. then he has to deal with his best friend being sad AND concussed a little. and then his best friend doesn't answer his text messages all night!!!!

[msmargaretmurry]

mcstrome and bogosort (like the compsci algorithm lol)

ok i read the wiki article for this and also several memes about it and i'm still not sure i understand it, because i am a humanities girlie whose brain makes dial-up noises when anything too math-y or science-y is introduced into my enclosure. so i'm sorry if i misunderstood the concept but i am going on vibes alone here. this would be a multiverse fic. a fic about connor mcdavid experiencing the multiverse.

so, at the start of this story, maybe connor and dylan aren't totally estranged, but they're not close like they used to be either. they've drifted apart. they text for, like, birthdays and major life events. connor's not sure whose fault that is, and it makes him kind of sad to think about, but honestly, he doesn't think about it too much. they just have their own lives now. connor is very busy trying to drag edmonton kicking and screaming into something resembling a success story; dylan has finally found a team that appreciates him in washington; they are living their lives, separately.

the oilers come to dc for their annual visit. connor and dylan don't get dinner — they stopped doing that a long time ago. sometimes, they'll chat in the hallway after a game, but sometimes the most they do is bump each other on the ice in that way that means hello, i'm aware that you're here. this feels like it's going to be one of those nights, where it's just the bump, the acknowledgement. it's whatever. not important. the oilers need the win. they've been having a rough roadtrip. they go up two early, then cough up three in a row in the second, and in the third, connor takes a big hit while he's crashing the net and whacks his head hard on the crossbar of the goal. everything explodes, and then everything goes black.

and then he wakes up. not on the ice, not in the hospital, not anywhere he recognizes — he's not in his own life. maybe this first one is the universe where buffalo won the mcdavid sweepstakes in 2015, and he's in a condo overlooking lake erie. maybe there's a recent picture of him and dylan on the refrigerator, which is weird, because they haven't taken a photo together in years. i am physically restraining myself from figuring out all of the universe-hopping stuff, but long story short, this keeps happening. every time he falls asleep, he wakes up in a new universe. sometimes he's an oiler, sometimes he's not. he's almost always a hockey player, but sometimes he's not. once, pretty early on, he wakes up to a familiar voice while someone shakes him gently awake on a couch.

"come on, davo, you know sleeping out here always gives you a crick in your neck," dylan is saying. connor, half-asleep, lets himself be tugged to a bedroom, arranged into being a little spoon. as he's drifting off, he wonders if he was on the couch because they fought, wonders what they could have fought about, wants desperately to know what lives they're living here in this world, but he's too far gone, and he wakes up alone in another new universe feeling so dumbstruck with sadness that he rolls over and goes back to sleep without even figuring out where or what he is.

most of the worlds are just a few steps away from his own reality, but some of them are weird and wild. dystopian worlds, worlds with incredible technological advancements, a world where he can see ghosts, a world where he can read minds. a world where he has dylan inked on the inside of his wrist, and he thinks it's a tattoo until he sees that everyone has a name on their wrist like that. he looks everywhere, convinced that because the name is there, dylan must be nearby, but he can't find him anywhere.

he doesn't know if any of this is real, if it even matters what he does in all of these worlds, and he doesn't know if he'll ever get back to his original reality, or if one day he'll wake up in a world and just be stuck there, so he does his best in each one, trying not to fuck things up. sometimes he's married to a woman. he never knows how to act in those universes. sometimes, he wakes up with guys who are clearly one-night stands. a couple of times, he has a boyfriend who's a secret. once, he has a boyfriend who's not. he doesn't know how to act with them, either. he doesn't know them.

then he wakes up with dylan again. or, he wakes up with with lips on his neck and a hand sliding into his pajama pants, a good morning murmured in his ear. they never did this in real life. or — in that life, connor's first life, the one that's starting to feel frighteningly far away. but connor doesn't think about that in this moment, because they never did this in real life, even when he wanted it, when he was a teenager with the most painful crush in the world and there were a moments when he thought it might be possible. they have slow, lazy sex. dylan touches him like every inch of him is familiar. afterward, when they're laying together all sated and pleased, connor thinks to himself, don't fall asleep don't fall asleep don't fall asleep, but he must doze off for even half a second, because he opens his eyes in a hotel room in atlanta. he's in a universe where the thrashers still exist.

and on it goes. worlds upon worlds, universes upon universes. it gets lonely; it gets boring. connor wants to go home. he wants to wake up with dylan again. if he woke up with dylan again, he wouldn't mind one more universe, but he's just about had it with the rest of them. he misses his real teammates, misses his stupid text thread with his brother, wants to call his mom. he starts waking up and, if it's not his real life and dylan's not there, he just goes back to sleep. if he can't fall back asleep — fuck every well-rested version of himself, seriously — he bullshits his way through until he can figure out where to buy some melatonin or whatever.

maybe he's dying. or maybe he's dead, and this is hell. or purgatory. he doesn't think his family believes in purgatory, but that doesn't mean it's not real.

the barrier between worlds starts getting thinner. now, if he just closes his eyes for too long, he's gone. new universe. he starts to be able to — hear isn't quite the right word, but it's the best one he has for the sensation, so — hear the next universe coming, if he closes his eyes and concentrates. it makes it easy. a new kind of tedium. flipping through worlds with barely a glance, because all he wants is—

he wakes up with dylan again. or, precisely, he wakes up to a giant, fluffy golden retriever licking his face, and dylan in the background, calling out with laughter and resignation, "buddy, no, let him sleep!"

too late, connor thinks. "too late," he says out loud. it's been dozens of universes since he spoke out loud.

"i swear he can sense the moment you start even thinking of waking up," dylan says. "come on, if you're up anyway, i'm making breakfast."

connor is wearing a ring on his left ring finger. his stomach growls. he goes to the kitchen, and dylan serves him eggs on a plate held be a hand with a matching ring on the left ring finger.

"please tell me you made coffee," he says, and of course dylan did. connor downs as much of it as he can stomach. he is not falling asleep today.

they're still hockey players. they're in — raleigh, connor figures out through context clues. it's their day off. they're supposed to go grocery shopping. they do go grocery shopping. they hold hands while grocery shopping. it feels like a dream. it's perfect. after they put the groceries again, dylan looks at him askance and asks, "is there something on my face? you keep staring at me today."

"uh," connor says. "i don't know, maybe i'm in love with you or something."

dylan rolls his eyes, but also beams, and crowds connor against the kitchen counter to kiss him. they kiss for a long time before they move to the bedroom. having sex again, connor wonders if it's real that dylan's body feels familiar. he's so careful to not close his eyes for more than a blink. he wouldn't be able to handle it if this got ripped away from him, too. there's still a lot of day left when they're done, and it's lazy and lovely and perfect. when they go to bed that night, connor lays awake for as long as he can, watching dylan sleep. at around three in the morning, he wakes dylan up just so he can kiss him a little bit more. dylan complains about the waking up, but not the kissing, and falls back asleep quickly once connor lets him. connor makes it to sunrise before he can't keep his eyes open anymore. he tries, he tries so hard, but he hears the next universe whooshing in, cold, a bloom of pain in his head—

he's on his back on the ice at capital one arena. everything is too bright, and he makes out the feeling of the hand squeezing his before he can actually see anything. "hey, connor, don't move, we're bringing out a board," someone is saying. connor shuts his eyes, hard. he doesn't go anywhere. another squeeze, too tight.

"davo," dylan says.

connor blinks him into focus. their eyes meet, and dylan exhales something like a relieved laugh.

"hey," he says, his hand warm around connor's. "there you are."

[msmargaretmurry]

idk if you listen to the rural alberta advantage but they're performing at the heritage classic and i feel like much narrative can be drawn from their songs (like the one literally called edmonton lmao)

i'm not like a super avid rural alberta advantage listener but i am Familiar With Their Work™️ and anon, you are so right. great music for rotating concepts and spinning narratives. also hometowns is just a banger of an album as a whole. especially if you want to capture that particular ennui/angst that's baked into the prairies. that feeling of being a speck of humanity in the great wide nothing under an impossible sky. of being so so far away from everything except for what's within arm's reach. (honestly i think that driving straight from winnipeg to edmonton just one time changed me as a person; everyone should do it) (do not do it in the winter)

anyway this is a connor mcdavid song. someone make one of those pretty graphic sets with the lyrics overlaid on hurtful photos

[msmargaretmurry]

Could I ask if you have any thoughts on neurodivergence in hockeys. There was that post going around about how a lot of sports superstars (not just hockey) have autism. And I know lots of people talk about adhd in players as well as more. When you write fics, do you think about that stuff? Specifically, I was curious if you have any thoughts on Connor vs Sid as these two absolute stars who seem to both have neuroses and specific things about them but they’re clearly not the same thing. When reading tnno, I definitely felt a lot of feelings about Connor’s social awkwardness and aging and everything about his characterization. Hope you recover well and aren’t too bored!!

ok so first of all sorry for not answering this during my post-operation haze! i kept thinking this was such an interesting topic that deserved a thoughtful answer and then simply falling asleep or watching more love island instead, because that was about what my brain was up for, lol. but okay hello i'm much more lucid now. and also just spent two hours at happy hour with my coworkers but i had a long metro ride home to think my thoughts about this so here we go.

first of all part 2 i want to say up front that i don't believe in armchair diagnosing people. i don't think that's what you're suggesting here at all but i also feel like it needs to be said before i dive in.

my thoughts on this topic basically fall into two categories. category one is that i can totally see where people are coming from with the "superstar athlete is neurodivergent" ideas, when we are getting stories about these athletes being so fixated, obsessive, single-minded, superstitious, etc. it really can read so easily as hyperfixation and/or special interest. and because of the great sport myth (coakley, 2015) a young boy being so fixated on sport (especially a sport that is such a cultural institution, e.g. ice hockey in canada), is much more likely to be encouraged, supported, and enabled, as opposed to a child fixated on something considered abnormal or useless or simply, you know, nerdy. and because of the GSM, asocial and antisocial behaviors would be readily forgiven if they are viewed as serving the quest for sports success. in this context it's super likely that neurodivergence would never even be considered, much less diagnosed, even when to those of us familiar with the hallmarks of neurodivergence it seems to be ticking boxes all over the place. and like, hell, neurotypical kids are regularly pushed into behaviors that would in most environments be considered divergent or delinquent in pursuit of sports greatness or even just fitting into their sport community. sports are a mindfuck.

on the topic of connor vs sid specifically i don't have many thoughts, simply because i only think about sidney crosby in the context of the sid/ovi rivalry, and that is a topic for another happy hour. it does however bring me to category two.

category two is that sports are a mindfuck and if people want to use their sports fanfictions to explore neurodivergence, especially their own neurodivergent conditions, i think that's awesome and i totally support them. i don't in my own fics sat down and think "okay so my characters are neurodivergent" but i am always thinking on some level about the ways in which the great sport myth has infiltrated their brains and colored their values and worldviews and also infused their lives with a rigid structure that might feel like a prison or might become a coping mechanism. with connor specifically — in tnno and just in general when i write him — my characterization is very, very influenced by the knowledge of what a shy, quiet, intensely focused kid he was and the massive about of pressure he put on himself + how absurdly early the canadian hockey media started heaping pressure on him, how i've heard plenty of gossip about him being unsocial and unpersonable away from the cameras, and how he has always seemed to handle things better with a sidekick. it's very easy to chalk the unsocial behavior up to "superstar diva athlete" and maybe that's the case for real — i don't know the guy, i can't say. but it's much, much more interesting to me to consider more nuanced takes on the situation, and if i'm turning connor mcdavid into a character for my own devices, sorry to him but he's always going to be a vessel for exploring the great sport myth.

[msmargaretmurry]

hi! for the game, 'blue sun' and any combination of matthew, leon, connor

"blue sun" as a title has very edmonton in winter vibes, doesn't it? or maybe that's just me, but having experienced edmonton in winter i feel qualified to make that call. (also, i do not recommend experiencing edmonton in the winter.) anyway i feel like this is a fic about how connor mcdavid needs a hug.

okay so, i'm not against connor/leon — i totally see the dynamic duo appeal — but i have always had some trouble coming up with a narrative for them that i would find compelling enough to write, so i kind of challenged myself here to come up with a story that feels like something i would want to write for them. as usual, it got long! really long! sorry! i wanted to talk myself all the way through it and there was just a lot happening!

let's set this in the 2019–20 season, because a) peak season for shoehorning some matthew content in there and b) what a grim time to be connor mcdavid. his fifth season in the league and other than that one brief shining season in 2016–17, it doesn't matter how well he plays, the team has been dogshit. the oilers are a joke. they have made the playoffs one (1) time in the past 13 years even with four entire first-overall draft picks at their disposal. they have traded away almost the entire core they thought they would rebuild around in the early 2010s. their poor management has basically run multiple promising prospects out of the organization. and you are the mcjesus who is supposed to be saving them. it's year five; you've collected some trophies; you've gotten used to the prairie winters. it's not that much colder than toronto or erie, really, and you spend most of your time inside anyway. sometimes, the frigid fresh air is refreshing after hours in the artificial cold of the rink, even though it burns your throat and chaps your skin.

besides, this season is going to be different. it already is different. it's still early days, but the team it winning more than it's losing, and connor has decided: this season is different.

i feel like around this time is also when we really saw the transition from young connor to adult connor. he was such a shy, awkward, anxious kid (they named him captain at least a season too early for real) and i think this fic would explore that as well — him becoming more self-assured, or at least better at faking it; becoming more confident in his leadership skills; learning to trust his relationships with his teammates more instead of feeling like he has to do it alone — but at the same time, taking on even more of that pressure to succeed, feeling the patience of the organization and the city and the hockey world at large already starting to wear thin.

so what of the leon of it all? obviously they're good friends now, but i've always felt that the friendship was a little bit manufactured in the beginning — the oilers did not expect leon to be as good as he is, they did not expect to have a two-headed monster, but how serendipitous that they found one. only natural to stick them together as much as possible for marketing purposes. connor, though, is a soft, stubborn heart wrapped in a perfectly bland public persona; he's something of an island, and leon's closest friends on the team in the earlier years are guys he can be way more fucking normal with. so this is also a story about them coming together in private instead of just in public.

connor doesn't want to be an island. he just feels like he has to be. he has, after all, been told constantly and consistently that there is no one else quite like him. he was happier in erie, where he was half of a whole, but that relationship started crumbling as soon as he left for alberta to pursue his destiny. it was an excruciating falling apart over long distance, and the loss left a hole inside him that would still ache if it wasn't so obscured with scar tissue. anyway, he's pretty sure it was his own fault, and it's not really the being in love part he misses — being in love was as much nauseous anxiety as it was joy and comfort — it's the having a teammate so completely on his side that he could let his guard down and just be connor instead of Connor McDavid.

he likes leon. he wishes they were better friends. not that they're not friends, because they are, but connor knows he's everyone's first choice on the ice only. but, again: this season is different. they're winning again. he knows people find him much easier to like when they're winning, so maybe that can be different this season, too. it already feels different, like he and leon are clicking better as people this year, although connor can't tell if that's due to the extra effort he's making or just because they've been stuck together for years now so there's an inherent comfort level there. but it's nice. connor likes it a lot. he's afraid of liking it too much, but the more space leon allows for him, the more of leon's space he takes up. he can't seem to help himself.

(sorry to leon for sticking him in yet another scenario with an anxiety-ridden weirdo who can't seem to see that the people close to him really do just like him. from his side here, i feel like he wasn't really sure what to think of connor or how to get close to him for a while, and is equally quietly pleased about this coming-together. he knows to the rest of the world he'll always be in connor's shadow, but he also knows that every great hockey team in recent memory has had a duo at its emotional core. he thinks they could be that.)

anyway so we've got this slow burn thing happening where connor and leon are getting closer, becoming each other's confidantes, starting to really feel like they are building this thing together, and also at the same time the battle of alberta is at a fever pitch and they keep losing to the fucking flames.

off the ice connor likes matthew tkachuk just fine. they've trained together in the off-season, and he's actually an incredibly nice guy. as an opponent on the ice, though — woof, he really is annoying. leon finds him particularly irksome, and while it gets tedious listening to him go through the same laundry list of complaints every time the guy comes up, connor likes being the person leon complains to. besides, connor thinks leon is secretly having fun — he always comes out of those scrums grinning — although when connor says this, leon rolls his eyes and scoffs.

then comes the all-star game, the "i'd get off the ice" of it all, the silly little media storm around all that. connor can't tell if leon actually meant it in the moment or if he was trying to be funny, but he's selfishly a teeny bit glad it means less attention on him. they're in the same division with matthew but matthew has his own people at the game, so they don't interact much beyond exchanging pleasantries. connor chats with him a bit during the skills comp while leon huffs in the periphery, but later connor catches a glimpse of them across the ice talking for a moment without a chaperone. tkachuk is grinning, and leon is rolling his eyes, so it all seems very normal.

but then they run into him AGAIN out in the city that night, matthew with his friends, them with theirs, everyone varying levels of inebriated. matthew greets connor with a one-armed hug that catches connor off-guard, but with leon, he tugs on the front of his shirt and leans in to say, "remember, i'm gonna sauce you the sickest pass you've ever seen tomorrow, you better be ready."

leon laughs and tells him to fuck off, but as the tkachuk crew melts back into the club, leon watches him go, grinning to himself, and connor says with a sinking stomach, "you like him."

"what? i do not," leon lies.

"yeah, you do," connor says.

"eh, fuck off," leon says, but he scans the crowd again, and connor is so, so jealous. he's so jealous, and he hates that. he tries to be a good sport, but his night is pretty much ruined, and he dips out early, feeling every bit the stick-in-the-mud he got teased for being when he was younger.

the all-star game the next day goes fine. they win, which is nice. matthew does indeed set leon up for a nice goal, which leon pretends he's not grinning about for several minutes. he's not acting bothered at all about what connor said last night, and connor isn't going to bring it up again. he would rather not think about it, except for of course how he thinks about it constantly for the next few days, all the way through their first game back, which is against the flames, and is a huge tkachuk-centric shitshow that they lose in the shootout. connor is in a shitty mood about it, and leon is also in a shitty mood about it, but he tries to say something conciliatory when he drops into his stall next to connor anyway, and connor hisses back something mean and uncharitable about leon's crush, because he wants to throw a temper tantrum so bad, but he's not allowed to, because he's the captain and the savior and, as always, he is in this alone.

leon is not a person who takes kindly to people being a dick to him, so he kinda cold shoulders connor for a couple of days. then they play the fucking flames again, and it is once again a shitshow, but they finally get the win. leon gets four points and snipes at connor when no one else can hear, "you think he'll suck my dick now?"

connor, who is good at nursing his anger but bad at confrontation, totally deflates.

"sorry," he mumbles, and goes about his business. the team was great tonight, and he needs to put on a mood that reflects that. he does an okay job of it, he thinks — the mood in the room helps, and the fact that leon doesn't feel quite so icy next to him helps, but he's still got this awful hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach that he's never going to get what he wants. but he knows that's not true, because he's spent his whole life deciding what he wants and taking it. so maybe he'll decide what he wants and take it.

he and leon walk out to their cars together, and when they get there, he opens the door to his backseat and nods for leon to get in. leon gives him a puzzled look; connor says, "well someone should suck your dick."

so they do that. it doesn't leave connor feeling exactly how he wants to feel, but it's satisfying in its own way.

he goes home and spends the whole night wondering if he just made everything worse or if things are going to be unbearably awkward now, but leon shows up the next morning with coffee and breakfast sandwiches like, we should talk, so they do talk, about a lot of things — about how this season feels different, feels good; about the winning tradition they want to build here, where they've already put in so much work; about what they need to be to each other to make that happen. connor apologizes for kind of jumping leon in the parking lot, and leon laughs and says don't apologize, it was fun. they talk around the question of being together or commitment to each other, couching everything in terms of being in edmonton, commitment to the team, but leon squeezes connor's hand when he says these things, and connor is filled with nauseous anxiety and dangerous hope.

and i feel like that would be like 50k worth of fic. it would end there and everyone would be very mad at me, and then 2–3 business years later i would drop a sequel titled "pink moon" where they actually get together during the 2022–23 season. i'm so sorry about me.

[msmargaretmurry]

Perspective Flip: the next next one!!!! (I have so much love for that fic!)

hi anon! sorry this took so long for me to get to, but also thank you!! here's a little bit from connor's pov the morning after the big fight in dylan's apartment, i hope you enjoy it! ❤

Dylan’s apartment feels like a foreign country.

Connor, of course, lost him too early in adulthood to know what he would do with a place that was truly his own, getting brief glimpses of messy starter apartments in Tucson and Glendale and Chicago before they dropped out of each other’s lives for those empty years in the middle. If he had been asked to guess, he wouldn’t have pictured this downtown Toronto condo in beiges and blacks. Pictures he can count on one hand — Dylan’s parents; Dylan’s brothers; school portraits of Dylan’s nieces and nephews stuck to the fridge with magnets. A half-unpacked box of books and knick-knacks tucked into the corner of the living room, as if it’s waiting for Dylan to remember it’s there. The view, yes, is great. But it doesn’t feel like a home.

Not that it’s any of Connor’s business. Maybe Dylan spends more time at his parents’ place, at his teammates’ places, than hanging out here alone. He’d had those two rookies over last night, but it’s not like Connor really knows anything about Dylan’s life now. He expected Dylan’s place to feel homey because Dylan has always felt like home. And, well, he kind of evicted himself. He doesn’t really get to have an opinion anymore. But it’s not that he’s judging. It makes him sad.

When he woke up, it took him a moment to remember where he was. Dylan’s bed doesn’t smell like it did when they were in junior — different laundry detergent. Different shampoo and body wash in the shower, as Connor stood under the hot water and replayed the last twenty four hours meticulously in his head. He has to do that, now, with Dylan. He can’t read Dylan’s mind like he used to, but he can sometimes figure it out after the fact. What he did right and what he did wrong. Whether he still has a chance.

The fight felt good, last night. Maybe that’s weird to think. It felt awful, of course, but it felt good, too, because it felt real. Connor’s had enough of putting on a neutral face and talking around feelings for a lifetime. If Dylan wants to yell at him, he would rather Dylan yell than keep it bottled up inside. Can’t deal with it if you don’t say it, his therapist likes to tell him.

He scrubs himself dry with the towel from the rack. Changes into sweatpants and a hoodie from the drawers that Dylan had vaguely gestured at before falling back asleep. The clothes smell like the same detergent as the bed. He breathes in; tries to slot the new memory in alongside the old.

The book is where Connor left on the sofa the night before. He’s still kind of embarrassed by it. Not by the content, but by how easy it was to make happen. Connor McDavid writing a book — surely with a ghostwriter, right? No, no, actually writing it. Okay, instead of a ghostwriter, here’s an editor to shape the rambling pages of your journals into something that people can read. Whatever you need. Sure, we can condense our usual publication schedule to get it out at the start of the next hockey season. Sure, we can set up signings at NHL games. So many people tripping over themselves to make this happen for him, and Connor, happy to let it happen, because it got him what he wanted. It got him back to Dylan.

Okay, maybe the whole thing isn’t about Dylan. That wouldn’t be very healthy. But right now, in Dylan’s living room, wearing Dylan’s clothes, damp from Dylan’s shower, it sure feels like it’s all about Dylan.

Connor takes the book with him to the kitchen and leafs through it while the coffee brews. He knows the damn thing front to back by now, but he sat with it for a while last night, after Dylan stormed off to bed, trying to read it through Dylan’s eyes and utterly failing. Just like he can’t read Dylan’s mind anymore, he can’t figure out how Dylan feels about the words he’s put on these pages. He had hoped, obviously, for sympathy — understanding — he’d hoped Dylan would have read it before they saw each other again, but he knows now what a ridiculous hope that was. Dylan’s read part of it, now, he knows that, but he doesn’t know which part. Connor looks at it and sees the I love you, I love you, I love you screaming from between the lines. Dylan probably reads right past those. He can’t read Connor’s mind anymore, either. All he sees, apparently, are the things Connor left out.

It takes him a minute to find the sugar, but the milk’s in the fridge door, and he drains half his cup of coffee in one go and refills it before moving back to the living room. Going back to the bedroom would probably wake Dylan up, and he doesn’t want to do that. Instead, he settles in on the sofa with Dylan’s soft, fuzzy Maple Leafs-branded blanket, coffee on the coffee table, book open on his thighs, pen stolen from the kitchen counter in hand.

Connor stares at the dedication page — and for the other half of me, who deserved better. It would be an easy place to start. Circle it. Underline it. Big arrows all pointing straight to it. Don’t you know? How can you not know? It would be the easy place, but somehow that makes it the hardest, too. That doesn’t make sense, except for how it makes perfect sense in Connor’s head. Just another thing he’ll never be able to explain.

Instead, he flips a couple of chapters in, finds the passage he’s looking for, and hunches over to write as neatly as he can in the margin under it: My favorite memory from this season: the first time I spent the night at your billet house, and you made me hang out with you while you skyped your brother, and you told him I was your best friend. It was the first time you called me that.

The words look strange. Even when he’s writing carefully, Connor’s handwriting isn’t very good. But there’s no taking them back now — it’s ink. It’s a tattoo. No undos or re-dos.

He turns a few more pages and does it again.

The way you smiled at me the first time I saw you in Erie filled me with relief. Isn’t that strange? Relief. Somehow I knew from the first moment that you were someone I would always be able to lean on.

There’s a strange rush to it. When he was writing the book, these were all the places he had to hold back, and now he doesn’t have to at all. He wanted this book to tell Dylan something, and now it can. For the first time since he finally saw Dylan again, he feels like he has a real plan. Feels gripped by determination in a way he hasn’t felt in a long time.

I started missing you right away and I don’t think I’ve ever stopped.

After a while, the sensation of being watched tingles in Connor’s peripheral vision. He looks up and Dylan is there, leaning in the hallway entrance in his pajamas, watching Connor with a sleepy look on his face. An awful yearning blooms up in Connor’s chest, but he breathes, and it ebbs. He closes the book. He’ll take it home. Finish later.

“You’re up,” he says.

“Practice,” Dylan says, and continues shuffling toward the kitchen.

“I made coffee,” Connor calls after him. “You have the same machine as my mom. It’s probably still warm.”

Dylan’s grunt in response tells Connor that he’s not awake enough for conversation yet. Connor sets the book aside and picks up his phone instead. He’s got texts and emails he should answer, but he scrolls through Instagram instead, not seeing any of the posts that he scrolls past. After a minute, Dylan reappears with a mug. He’s got bags under his eyes, but then again, he’s always got bags under his eyes. 

“I’m glad you got some sleep,” Connor says.

Dylan gives him a grimace that’s almost a smile. “What were you writing?”

“Just some notes.” Connor sets his phone aside to pick up his coffee instead. “You said I left stuff out, so.”

[msmargaretmurry]

I love tnno so much and I followed you not realizing it was you who wrote that masterpiece!! The scenes with the little rookies following in Connor and Dylan’s footsteps really got to me! And that one line about how Dylan always thought he and Connor would be grizzled old veterans together but somehow Dylan kept playing and Connor didn’t really hit me hard. Also, I don’t know if you read this one article about Connor’s relationship with his mom but I read it after reading your fic and they just really connected for me.

aww, thank you so much! yes i have read that article about connor and his mom — required reading for any mcjesus scholar imo. i'm glad you found it and connected with it too!

i love it when people tell me they loved the rookies in tnno, because they are very dear to me. they weren't supposed to be a big part of the story, but once i invented them, they just kind of wormed their way in and made themselves important. i've never been big on making up my own OCs (even though i've seen so many other people do it brilliantly!) so it felt like taking a risk to me, and i'm very glad i let them do what they wanted.

i'm feeling very self-indulgent today, so below the cut pls find a little excerpt from my google doc entitled "wonder twins activate" where i keep all my post-tnno rookies thoughts and feelings ❤

-----

Dylan has only posted once this summer. Tanner knows this, because he’s gone back to Dylan’s insta to look at that one post more times than he’s willing to admit, and enough times that he feels a little creepy about it.

In the photo, Dylan is on a balcony with Connor McDavid in the south of France. Dylan is leaning back against the railing, his head turned toward McDavid, mid-laugh. McDavid is propped on his elbows, facing outward, his face just visible enough to see the tiny smile on his lips. Behind them, a city street lined with pale pink and yellow buildings, white-framed windows, plants spilling over balconies, and beyond that, a strip of beach and an ocean bluer than any lake in Ontario.

Nice views in Nice, says the caption. For some reason, Tanner can’t stop wondering who took the picture.

In the comments, Kevin has left a string of hearts. Of course. If Tanner’s being honest, he is envious of how easily Kev got himself in good with one of the best and most elusive hockey players of their lifetimes. Well, really, he got himself in good with Dylan and somehow wound up buddies with McDavid as part of the package deal. Tanner is in good with Dylan, too, sure, but not the same way Kevin is. Like, Tanner knows everyone thinks of him and Kev as a unit — hell, Tanner thinks of him and Kev as a unit— but, if pressed, he’s sure everyone would also admit that he’s the sidekick to Kevin’s superhero. The Robin to his Batman. The Strome to his McDavid.

Which seems like a mean thing to say about Dylan, but Tanner doesn’t mean it badly. Dylan is one of the best people he knows. It’s just that McDavid is McDavid. He’s such a legend that Tanner had to meet him multiple times before he felt like a real person.

[msmargaretmurry]

I just read the next next one and am so in awe of your writing and characterization of Connor. I was wondering if you have any thoughts or major points that you go off of whenever you write him.

ohhh, this is such an interesting question. i haven't written connor as a main character since tnno, which was over three years ago now (wtf @ the passage of time), so i would probably write him slightly differently now than i did then, because he's grown up a lot, and because his team has had more success in the interim than they were having back then, and because i as a writer have hopefully grown since then. but i think my fundamental characterization would remain pretty constant!

this answer got kind of long, so please see under the cut for some things i tend to think about when writing connor mcdavid:

first off, that anecdote from juniors (i think from dylan, but i don't entirely recall) about how he would never buy/bring his own snacks anywhere but then would always ask to have some of someone else's food. idk why but this is the funniest and most endearing mcdavid anecdote to me. after he got drafted, him asking to stay and watch the third pick, too — not just as a mcstrome thing, but as a thing that speaks to how his attachments and loyalties manifest. i think a lot about his growth from a seemingly pretty awkward and earnest but shy/quiet/maybe a little untrusting kid who didn't have the easiest time making friends to the guy he is now who laughs when his teammates make "mcdavid? who's that? overrated" jokes.

honestly i base a lot of my characterization in stuff i remember from when he was in juniors, because the public/private divide felt blurrier there and we got more moments that weren't so honed for the media. the draft year miniseries remains foundational to the way i write him, lol.

there's an article from a few years ago about his relationship with his mom that someone mentioned a few asks ago (i am too lazy to go find it but the excerpt they sent is a few posts back in my tnno tag) that's great on the mom front, but also for conceptualizing how seriously he's taken himself and his goals since he was very young, and that contributes a significant amount to my characterization of him as someone who's kind of self-absorbed, but not in a mean way. that picture of his dad holding him while he cried after losing his last ohl game. and there's that clip from right after he wrecked his knee in 2019 of him and leon encountering each other in the hallway at the arena and having this brief but awfully tender moment of comfort and sympathy, which they almost definitely didn't know was being filmed, that's very important to my conception of his relationship with his team now.

if i were to write him as a main character now, i would fold in him being the one to say the oilers should but the EBUG in for the last few minutes against chicago last month — the understanding of what hockey can mean to people and using the opportunity to quietly give them a dream moment about it. him seeming to get more deliberately private about his personal life (and good for him), and, VERY importantly, him being willing to openly take issue with the edmonton media being shitty to him. rip in pieces to jesse spector. i feel like these are things that all jive with how i characterized him in tnno but definitely add some updated color, if that makes sense.

overall my main approach to connor as a character — and why i find him interesting to write, even as a side character — is his role as this hockey savior figure, the intense media scrutiny and incessant coverage, the expectations, the pressure, the public image, the mess of an organization he's supposed to be saving, the set-apart-ness, even from his own teammates, and the fact that somewhere under all that there's a person with real feelings and relationships.

anyway, thank you so much for reading the fic! i'm so glad you liked it! <3

[msmargaretmurry]

hello my love! well my wips are causing me no end of grief - my main wip is stalled bc the various elements are not coming together in a way where they all speak to each other and it's killing me bc i KNOW this fic will be amazing if i can figure it out but i fully hit a wall (just asked our beloved lorna to read a draft out of desperation even tho it's so far out of her wheelhouse she might kill me); my less serious wip is in superhell bc i haven't ever written a time skip and don't know how to create a san jose sharks roster that covers the next 3-7 years that isn't just me creating a roster of ahl favorites and who it would be funniest to keep. like do i pull a you and just make up a bunch of rookies??? i'm strugglin' yo

to your other more important point, i don't do so good with remembering favorite lines. but in my current era as a connor mcdavid apologist, i have been thinking a lot abt your mcstrome wringer and the mcstrome soulmarks fic that only exists in me and maddy's inboxes...thinking a lot abt the tender images in those fics, but specifically the image of dylan kissing connor on the forehead when they win at worlds in tnno and dylan seeing the soulmark behind connor's ear. and how both those images are infused with so much emotion and how the fics are built around these images, either as a plot point of a moment or a very physical picture that has a whole history behind it. (i think a lot abt that line in your mattdrai fic that i still need to read the final draft of abt matthew taking a picture of his bruises, for purposes. which is a comedy line but also very much part of matthew's journey.) i think you are very good at creating anchor images in your fic that are part of the heartbeat of the story. it's one of my favorite things abt your fic, how well you build a story around a visual moment. (obvi you are great at emotions and setting and plot too!!! but one of my favorite things is how you're able to capture visually a plot point. and do it so gently too.)

i hope you are able to be kind to yourself today <3

kasper my love!! thank you for sharing your wip agonies with me, they sound very agonizing but i have faith that you will figure them out! for the first one, it is so frustrating when characters won't do what you want them to do. my very generalized unsolicited advice would be to try to figure out what motivation is missing for them to come together, or what motivation exists that is pulling them in different directions, and then hit them over the head with a rolled-up newspaper until they do what you want. i'm sure our lovely lorna will be able to provide much more helpful commentary though. for the second one, i DO highly recommend making up some gay ass rookies and just doing what you want, but also i love to speculate about future rosters so also feel free to ask if you want some help! ❤️

regarding my own monstrous fanfictions, thank you, i truly love this analysis of visual moments in the oeuvre of yourblues. i don't know what it is about it but the people LOVE the forehead kiss picture in tnno, which makes me very happy. i think a thing here is that i don't really visualize whole scenes when i write, it is much more like "what details do i need to provide to convey the correct vibes here" so when i have An Image in mind i do really want it to stand out! (i am going to be honest with u i haven't read the soulmarks one since i emailed it but..... maybe i will dig it up for my agonies) (also the ratnovel is not going anywhere, i have faith you will come for it when you are ready) anyway i maintain that connor mcdavid is a great guy for putting through the horrors, because he has already been through so many horrors and he is so inured to them on a day to day basis (i am thinking now of that post that's like "why are the horrors calling you babygirl") that you gotta REALLY commit to introducing new horrors into his ecosystem if you wanna break him down. and u know i love to break a man down!!!

ilysm 💙💙

[msmargaretmurry]

Okay but where is my mcstrome futurefic where Connor is obsessing over Dylan, as one does, trying to make up for the years of minimal contact and lost closeness (that he’s only just recently realized are things that bother him) by reading everything he can about Dylan, and he comes across Dylan saying he wanted to go where he was wanted… and feels some kind of way about it… maybe at some point (perhaps after Dylan is politely distant or wary or pushes him away) starts to put together that it wasn’t just a team who he thought didn’t want him… something something learning what he wants that can't be taken for granted and learning how to show it and that he must show it... where is it?? (Not putting this on you, of course, between grad school and the mortifying ordeal of possibly running into people about whom who you’ve written porn, but I’m sure you understand my dismay at this cruel, cruel deprivation)

anon are u inside of my brain because i do want this so badly. i love futurefic where it's just like... both parties are fucked up about what happened in the past and they both have to go on a character journey to get that sweet sweet reconciliation and second chance romance, but obviously someone has to make the first move. someone has to decide to do the scary thing and make the effort! and we all know i love any fic about the mortifying ordeal of being connor mcdavid, so a really good long slowburny character-driven connor-centric mcstrome futurefic would be sooooooo good for me.

unfortunately it is true that i probably won't be writing any new mcstrome novels while he's in dc due to the weird fourth wall situation of it all. and since i want him to stay here forever that does create a conundrum 😂 (i MIGHT be able to turn my brain off long enough to write something short, but absolutely no promises.)

however i do know that some fellow mcstrome scholars have been working on futurefics lately — i don't know if any of them totally fit the bill of what you're looking for, but, friends and countryfolks, if you've recently posted or are working on anything like this please let us know! ❤