#this is really all over the place

[rattkachuk]

Hello! Hope you are having a good day.

So I have a question for you, just ignore when you don't feel like answering.

I came to Mattdrai via the enemies/rivals to lovers tag and then got sucked into hockey. I really like the fanon take on Leon, fav character, fanon Matthew was fine but way too woobified and infantilized in so many fics. So my surprise when I started to watch games, interviews etc. Public Matthew is so confident, so loving, awesome family to back him up, especially Brady, hot as hell, sexy way of playing hockey, amazing public persona. Loved and respected by his team, beyond hockey.

Then Leon. His only trait seems to be that he's pissy which I can appreciate but it seems that he's just a downright mean, arrogant guy with a superiority complex (see that interview when he puts Silovs down.) I don't find him stoic at all but he's just seems boring and bland and yeah, pissy. It doesn't seem like he has fun or likes his team a lot or is liked by them (Connor aside and his skills aside.) His friendship with Connor seems the only endearing or likeable thing. He even looks good in a bland way and his hockey is while it's so skillful it's not hot and also I wonder why his dirty plays aren't called out more often.

So what do I miss? Where does great fanon Leon come from? Why is he written mostly so superior to Matthew and where comes the "his team likes Leon so much but Matthew is an outcast in his own team come from?) It's so far from what I gather from old and new interviews or games and I have watched a lot, also German interviews. I really would like to like Leon, shipping them had been more fun when I didn't find his public self so jarring. What do I not see what everyone else seems to get?

Sorry for the long ask! Have a great day and thank you

first off thank you for such a thought out ask! i don't get to dive into things like this a lot outside of writing fic and it got my brain gears going.

to get right into the bulk of this ask: i get what you are saying about leon. that can be the way he comes off for sure, and look everything i'm gonna say? i'm talking out of my ass here. i don't claim to know anything about him as a person besides what's publicly presented, and i don't have much right to theorize about why he is the way that he is, but i'd be lying if i said i didn't think about it. how would i write rpf otherwise, right 💀

i think he cares a lot. and i think sometimes he gets so wrapped up in things, how things should be, how he should be performing, etc, and when it doesn't go a certain way he gets frustrated and snarky (eg, pissy comments and such). but i don't see that being bad necessarily, especially when it's seems to come from such a team oriented state of mind. which, i dont think he dislikes his team at all? i think if anything, he has a sort of blind faith in his team, and that's the only context i could see a 'superiority complex' making sense in. and yah maybe a little misplaced at times, but ultimately i think it comes from believing so fully in his team and not seeing that come to fruition. he really does not seem to care about his individual performance much at all, so how self obsessed can he be? when i think about leon i just see someone that is ultimately very passionate and committed to the game he plays. i'm also curious to know where you get the vibe that his team doesn't like him? simply because i never got that impression from any of the other oilers, they all seem like they're obsessed with him.

beyond hockey, i see a caring, sweet, kindhearted individual. anytime i see a picture or vid of him interacting with bowie, or even the things his girlfriend posts about him, the comments he leaves for people on ig, and yah of course in the way he talks/acts around connor, i see fragments of someone soooo different than the little two minute post game interviews (which, can we judge any hockey player on those? i think they all hate them dfkjgsd). it's not always something i actively go digging for or have examples of the top of my head, but i do see it, and it definitely goes into creating the version of leon that i have in my mind.

hey, and, he's a silly guy!!! please, i know the reputation is pissy and humourless, ESPECIALLY in fic, but that man is so funny. so many random offhanded comments that make me pause and then laugh. a different sense of humour but it's so there. i love the sandcastle vid from the asg last year and feel like it's a good example of that, all sunburnt and happy. also hey, big man in tune with his fear of the ocean? love that. that little vid of him dancing on the ice earlier this season, those halloween photos where he's dressed as a monkey, every time he talks to a kid. hell, seeing him in warmups and watching the way he takes time to interact fans?? loveee watching warmups but i'd never had a player actually acknowledge my existence before leon!

also i really enjoy his personality on the ice, i like the rat behaviour and the sassy comments that he makes to other players/refs, i like the bitch moves, and i like his hockey too. i think his game is dependable and like you said skillful, and while maybe not the most creative, the sureness and the technical aspect it is hot to me. so my thoughts on everything are probably skewed in that regard.

anyways this was just a whole lot of rambling about why i find him interesting, endearing even, but i understand the perception you have. i don't like some players that other people love, just cause i cant see what they see. and honestly that's sometimes just the way it is! if you don't like leon, maybe u just don't like him and thats fine.

disclaimer that i have only been on hockeyblr for a couple years, and really didn't spare many thoughts for leon til the beginning of the 22/23 season. truthfully i'm hardly the person to ask about leon imo, but of course i have thoughts anyways! if someone else with more knowledge reads my bit of rambling here, please feel free to chime in and add your voice to this!

and side note, ofc, i have to touch on this bc who would i be if i'm not one to talk about matthew; in the way of m.tkachuk, i think that in the early days of mattdrai it was maybe a fair take away during his time with the flames (minus the woobifying). even though he was loved so much here and had some fucking times, and i think the team was mostly good to him (player wise if not regarding management, that is), i see such a stark difference now that he's on the panthers. he seems much happier and more confident, and obviously he's clicking with the cats on another level, and i do see a shift in how he's been portrayed in fics since tbh.

[wanderlustmagician]

hi friend I am respectfully making demands at risk of siege that you talk about something in your modern au that might never come up in text but is a piece of it nonetheless

you have 72 hours otw canadas next

Somer. You nearly made the temptation to wait on this too much. Luckily I’m a Grade A rambler being asked to ramble and there is a good bit that either won’t or might not ever be in this. Buckle up buttercup. 🤪

So I have included, in some of my ramblings, references that the First Hero (ie the one mentioned in Skyward Sword as being Sky’s predecessor) and that trains will be in this AU. Currently the plan is to make this very slice of life, one-two shot set up for the Before the Adventure stuff and then have a “introduction of plot” fic that’s chaptered… before the rest is back to the one-three shot slice of life stuff. So my opportunity to have many things be brought outa the vault is pretty high. So that said…. This will be pretty much bits and pieces of ideas I had and scrapped but still like or things I’m holding onto but likely won’t write;

That said… Mister First will likely stay as just referenced as the Queen’s companion, until or unless he appears in LU canon and I feel it necessary to include him more. Mostly cause nine is the biggest cast I’ve written for… ever. Which isn’t even the full number for LU but it’s the most consistent one. Also because i don’t know enough to feel like I’ve got a good grasp. Plus it’s fun to make him kind of cryptid like in this quasi-political court field I’ve created.

Then the trains! Spirit Tracks is really cute and very much set far after Wind’s time. So I thought it could be fun to have that as a little teaser to maybe having the train boy come in. We’ll see. I want to go through a little more and see how some others shake out with the plot I currently have.

The Champions were actual people in this! Not just constellations. They did pass in The Calamity and I will likely only ever reference them briefly for feels. Urbosa was the soccer coach at Wild and Flora’s school. Revali was Link’s rival in archery. Mipha was Swim Captain and in a flirtationship with Wild. Daruk was the wrestling coach. Both Urbosa and Daruk taught actual classes. Daruk did Math, don’t ask me which.. pls I don’t like math. Urbosa did the Gerudo language class.

Urbosa was Riju’s cousin, it was distanced though. Daruk was Yunobo’s grandfather still. Mipha and Sidon still siblings, can’t change that. Revali was Saki’s nephew.

None of this will ever really come up because Wild’s past amnesia will only come up occasionally. It’s said that in BOTW that he has regained his memory by the end, so im going to run with a version of Wild who remembers, is grieving, and is trying to move on. So at most there will be a reference to them as his still healing grief comes and goes.

A lot of my world building are things that likely will not be big big in the story, just things I’ve made note of so I remember that they’re important references.

Like Sky and Twi’s nicknames for each other! They defend them ruthlessly, even if they’re a little embarrassed by them. They were penpals as kids, a program ran by their schools to encourage the grade schoolers to practice writing, and got made fun of by their classmates because their names are the same! So the usual school yard taunts of their penpal being themself and things a long those lines. Little kid logic of let’s give each other nicknames and that’ll solve the problem! It didn’t but it made them feel better and special, so they stuck. The nicknames come from their middle names and I haven’t decided if those get revealed in story or not, so no sharing here yet.

There is some funky magic stuff that happened, happens, and will happen. Time and Lullaby do have the whole time magic stuff. So while Time remembers meeting Warriors… Warriors remembers meeting someone much younger and thinks Time is his own younger brother (this may come up, it may not). Warriors did deal with some funky portal magic stuff like from his game, yes Cia was in the middle of it, and The Calamity was a magically driven disaster.

I played around with the idea of the depths also being a part of the Hyrule map and having it be the home of the Twili people… except that was going to be a little much to handle as far as keeping track and mentioning. So I scrapped it.

The Twili people do have a land of their own, it is outside of Hyrule, but it is not a part of Hyrule. Midna lived with Dusk when she was an exchange student. Her phone number was turned off because Hylian phone carriers don’t work in the Twili lands. The Twili people are more nomadic despite being modern times, they still move from place to place. They have ‘Village Sites’ where there are some buildings that they move into when they move. Their clothing reflects that more nomadic lifestyle and they tend to not keep anything that can’t be carried easily.

There will be more probably… once I start actually hammering out full pieces, there will be for sure.

[youarentamaybeyoureayes]

I'll never understand why people act like the first season of HSMTMTS is or should be deemed the best?

Don't get me wrong, it's totally fine to have a sense of nostalgia because you might recall season 1 being the first time you fell in love with the show or you're reminiscing about what drew you into it in the first place, but most arguments about season 1 never involve talking about any aspects of the show other than the fact that it ended with the R*ni love confession, and it makes it difficult for me to believe that there's any other reasons why you deem the season so superior to the others.

When you remove the nostalgia blinders, season 1 only gives a semblance of justice to a tiny amount of characters. Ricky and Nini get the most attention devoted to them, but whether it's because of the writing or simply the fact that she's the best actress on the show who's also capable of elevating any material that's given to her, it's Gina personally that stands out to me this season. Yet while it was airing, she was getting harassment from R*nis who were ignoring the obvious issues in their relationship to take all of their anger out on Gina. This would go on to happen for two more seasons.

Everyone other than Ricky, Nini, Gina, and maybe EJ, gets abandoned or shoehorned into things that age in a horrific way. I would argue that Kourtney's character suffers the most this season, and it was actually jarring seeing someone as vocally talented as Dara Reneé play a character that wasn't initially a singer. She wasn't even supposed to have a role on the show that lasted beyond two episodes, and yet she has one of the strongest, if not the strongest voice in the entire cast. For a show that was meant to revolve around theater kids, that alone was unrealistic and as a black woman, I can't ignore how colorism played a role in that. No one with a voice like that would have been given a supporting position if they were nonblack. Somehow the likes of M*tt C*rnett were given more solos on the show, and he is easily the worst male "vocalist" of the cast.

I won't even get into the fact that other than Gina, EJ was one of the most hated characters that season singlehandedly for getting in the way of R*ni, yet once the chances of R*ni making it to endgame status were getting increasingly lower, everyone decided that he was their favorite person and became P*rtwells. Not because they saw potential in anything (we all know one of the biggest plot points of season 1 was Rina getting closer, no matter how many people want to ignore it) but because they hated the idea of any character involved in R*ni being happy with someone who wasn't a part of their ship. Because I'm saving that for a later conversation.

The point is, like every season, season 1 had more flaws than most of the fandom wants to acknowledge, especially in the characterization of the ensemble cast, which was never the right move for a show that would not be as strong without their ensemble. Nostalgia as well as the plague of real life shipping has made people believe that this season was somehow unbeatable, when I would even argue that at the show's absolute worst in season 2 we would already see the improvements and corrections that season 1 failed to expand on. Such as giving underutilized characters like Kourtney and Carlos more depth by introducing their storylines with dealing with self doubt and acceptance.

I've always said that the episode that really made me stick with the show was episode 5 of season 1, and it isn't just because I'm an avid Rina. One of my favorite parts of the episode will always be the Born to Be Brave group number. Seeing Carlos start off dancing by himself and then Ashlyn going up to join him was one of the first moments of the show where I noticed just how strong the ensemble was and just how much heart they all brought to the show.

One love confession that didn't even manage to end up being the best love confession on the show is not what made the show what it is now. Delusional nostalgia is trying to tell you that despite other seasons allowing characters who were overdue in getting their own storylines finally have their moments to shine, nothing will ever amount to season 1 because of what you shipped. Season 1 didn't even deal with their deepest subjects. In retrospect, the entire season was essentially like a trial run. Even the first 4 episodes were written by a different show runner. The entire thing was an experiment. And while it was a good start and while I do understand why it's a season that's so loved, I just wish more people would unpack the reasons why they loved it and stopped dismissing the fact that there were seasons that did things better, even if your nostalgia is trying to tell you otherwise.

[buddieinmybeddie]

LGBTQ+ folk what was your gender/sexuality pipeline?

[lilybug-02]

This is Pixel, my Porygon2. She gets really excited when touching carpet - like hilariously so. I always figured it was because real life textures are kinda new and exciting for a digital creature. @realpokemon

[amelia-yap]

meow

[time-slink]

obsession

[chiquilines]

In honour of mha ending, have some old (and i mean OLD) miryumi scribbles i never got around to posting. They were the main characters in my heart

[egophiliac]

now that I can think semi-coherently again...whooooo's ready for Friday WEEHOO

[zevranunderstander]

i dont think i will ever be over dragon age 2. like. bioware made an epic fantasy story about a chosen one having to save a country and stop the apocalypse and then they made the second installment of the series be about the sociopolitical climate in ONE city through the lens of a family of refugees fleeing from the war of the first game and just. made it about political tensions and class dynamics and the influences of living in a church-mandated state and the growing tension over an occupied piece of the city and political killings and interpersonal conflict and power and its story is ENTIRELY character-driven. it has easily the most iconic set of companion characters. the premise of living through a story told over the course of ten years and knowing from the start that something really bad will happen in the end was so fresh and exciting. the fact that the acts really built on top of each other andhow much the city changed over time. and the game was so mature in terms of the topic of fighting against oppression in so many ways (im usually generous and say that the short development time left some things a bit wanting), and as much as some people say that the game treats mages and templars as being equally bad, i don't think that that is actually true about the game and it very earnestly tries to grapple with some pretty complex political dynamics.

and then the game completely flopped financially and was almost universally hated for its queer themes and its sympathy for "terrorism" and a lot of the things that stemmed from basically having no production time at all and then the studio just made another epic fantasy story about a chosen one that has to save the world from the apocalypse

[featheredadora]

[collophora]

Do yourself a favor and go read the entire fanfic work of @fanfoolishness

(In order: Under sun and shade, Blind Side, and Breathless (patching up is one of my fav too, I just had no cool sketch idea for it)

[chalkscrub]

study of the sinister scrumper

[pomidaea]

I keep seeing unmasked ghoul art from so many talented artists and it's making me want to make my own ghoul designs (and probs add a little bit of worldbuilding with some headcanons about the ministry)

[cozylittleartblog]

worst way to start my new year, thanks. i have a lot of things to say about these companies but i'm tired and just keeping it focused to the pin side of things for this one. do not ever buy pins from these companies, literally ALL of them are stolen from small artists like me. if you want to buy enamel pins, check out etsy, and artist's personal websites and shops! (though even Etsy has some bootleg pins that ship straight from china, so tread carefully…)

Every pin I've designed is, thus far, EXCLUSIVE to my etsy. if you find it anywhere else, it's been ripped off! and once these stupid bootlegs pop up, it's basically a never ending game of whack-a-mole trying to get them all taken down...

[mugwot]

funnyjokespunperson