fic rec: a hockey novel

[psocoptera]

Dress for the Weather, by electrumqueen. 200K words with the must-read coda.

This is so, so, so good you guys. It's set in 2016, about a new gender-integrated NHL expansion team with familiar faces from hockey RPF in management, and the slow reveal of the alternate history that has led everyone there is just amazing, and SO painful, and, wow. This story ripped my heart out over and over again and had me on the edge of my seat and literally crying at the end. Gorgeous, glorious intense angst and romance, plus a wonderful cast of vivid secondary characters and a really satisfying not-over-the-top sports story arc. Up there for me as an unforgettable read with things like "The Student Prince" and "Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose".

When I first started reading hockey RPF, I was really leery of career-ending-injury stories. Either I felt like it was too downplayed in the story, as a cute and convenient way to give one or both of the guys a different career, or it *was* taken seriously and then it was just too heartbreaking to read about someone trying to make the best of things after losing their dream. Except it turns out that when it's done really well those stories have a deep resonance for me that's almost more personal than what I want to deal with in my slash reading except for how sometimes it's really not. I mean, obviously my own personal little lost life plan is not the stuff of epic tragedy, but there's still something really cathartic for me in stories about how people manage to move on and rebuild and make meaning in the aftermath. (And also stories about how something awful indirectly or directly led to something really good coming out of it even if the characters never realize it, see Dira's amazing Teen Wolf hookerfic.) Dress for the Weather is about *not* being a broken man on a Halifax pier and is by far the best story about *not* playing hockey I've ever read.

Comments

[une-jonquille.livejournal.com]

At one point -- I think it was through Metafilter, not you -- I read a very funny "Hockey RPF 101"; do you know what I'm talking about? Or have an equivalent?

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Hrm, I didn't, off the top of my head - my recollection is that I got sucked in by a certain long fic - but the fanlore page for hockey rpf suggests:

http://thefourthvine.dreamwidth.org/165283.html

Or actually, just look at the resources section there:
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Hockey_RPF

from which the "hockey or gay porn" post is pretty priceless:
http://puckling.dreamwidth.org/75506.html

[une-jonquille.livejournal.com]

Okay, my reward for doing the dishes was looking at these links, and they were fascinating (especially the fanlore link, and the discussion of the dustup with Aja Romano. Which... yeah, very much can see both sides of that one.) There does seem to be a surprising paucity of pairings, or maybe I'm just used to K-pop where an idol group is doomed if it doesn't inspire some shippers quickly. Anyway I am just terribly sad that the history of hockey RPF does not include a series of epic in-jokes about Joe Thornton, Self-Absorbed Man-Whore.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I don't even know who that is really, except I think he turned up recently in something, um, extremely gratuitous, shall we say. Sharks? (Are you a Sharks fan? Are you a *hockey* fan?)

[une-jonquille.livejournal.com]

Ha, forgot to respond to this. Joe Thornton was drafted by the Bruins in 1997 or maybe '99 and had some minor hype that he by and large did not live up to as best I recall. And no, I don't really follow hockey -- honestly the Dany Heatley/Dan Snyder tragedy really made me sad, for some reason I can't quite articulate, other than the Thrashers v2.0 felt like it could be a team I could see grow... until it wasn't. But I'm enjoying learning a little bit about hockey via Check, Please! which seems richer than the actual real hockey itself, as far as ficcable source material goes. (Not that I should knock hockey players for being locked in to a system that's overworked them since they were teenagers.)