An angsty stream of consciousness from a fanfic writer procrastinating writing.
As a fan-fiction writer, I feel most home when I’m in the land of make believe. When I can cultivate the world into how I want it to be and I can make people, characters, be how I want them to be. I can make their flaws adorable; their challenges easily fixable and I can make them love and feel and live the way I want to love and feel and live. When you write, you write for a reason. For money or for fame or in my case, just to get out of my head for a while. You can take attributes and attractions and manipulate them into storylines and moments that make you feel happy or sad, aroused or enraged. You can create characters that reflect how you see the world and more so, how you want the world to be. This however, becomes very tricky when the characters you create are actually real people. It was the number one thing that challenged me the most when I began to write Sid fanfic. It made me uncomfortable to create a personality and thoughts and feelings and situations for someone actually did exist in this world. But I think what made it easier was that when I started writing I knew nothing about the hockey world. I knew nothing about Sidney Crosby. And so everything I wanted him to be I could create because I was starting from a blank slate.
Now over four years later I know lots and lots about hockey. I fell in love with the sport, I fell in love with the team, I fell in love with the captain. But also four years later I know nothing about Sidney Crosby. He has meticulously cultivated a persona that shows nothing more than someone who loves to play hockey, who’s polite and kind and gives as much as he can in all the ways he knows how. And that’s great. That’s admirable. But it also remains true that there is so much I don’t know about him. That we don’t know about him. And in some ways it’s concerning. Is there more to him? Or is this it? I like to think that it’s not. I like to create stories where he’s more than just what I see in post game interviews or silly fake Christmas movie trailers. He provides an opportunity for me to create whatever I want and most the time it works and it’s believable because we have so little to compare it to. And it’s great. It makes for great stories and it makes for feeling all those feelings you feel when you adore someone you know nothing about. It’s a methodology that worked when I was a little girl admiring pop stars and TV stars. They were simple and malleable and they were marketed that way because then every girl or boy could fall in love with them because every girl or boy could make them who they wanted them to be. And then you would watch their shows, you would buy their merchandise, you would buy those magazines and put those posters up on your wall. And you got to live this very perfect life simply adoring someone you knew nothing about.
And then you get older. And you learn that the fresh face teen on the cover of your favorite magazine didn’t pay his taxes. He had too much to drink and drove drunk. He’s mean to his assistants or he’s difficult on set. And as you get older you learn that people are complicated. You learn that they have flaws. And that those flaws aren’t adorable. Those flaws are challenges for you because suddenly who you love and the reasons you love them aren’t real. Because they’re not what you created. It’s who they are. It’s what makes them them.
And when you see those flaws and you see those personality characteristics and they are so different than what you thought that person had, it’s disappointing. It’s frustrating. And more than anything it’s sad. And it’s not sad because maybe they don’t agree with what you want them to agree with. It’s sad because you learn that what you’ve created in your head isn’t true. And with that sadness comes loss. Because you’ve lost that image. You’ve lost that ideal. It’s situations like that, that make us grow up. That make us realize the world can really suck. That the people we look up to can sometimes suck.
So is the answer not to create these false ideals? Of course it is. We’re not supposed to idolize other people. We’re not supposed to create personas and personality traits based only on our own ideals. It’s not fair to those we idolize and it’s not fair to ourselves. But we do it anyway. We do it because we see someone that we want to love so much and we know that there are so many things about them already that we love and all we need to do is just tweak a few things and there is that perfect person that makes our heart race, our toes curl and our breath quicken. There is that person that makes us feel alive.
For the past few days I’ve been incredibly sad. I’ve been disappointed and frustrated. I’ve seen someone that I’ve wanted so much to be this person that I have in my head, flounder. And maybe it’s not fair. Maybe that person is just what I see and not what I think.
And I don’t know who’s fault that is. I think it’s mine for creating someone in my head that doesn’t exist but think that they do. But I also think it’s his because in my mind he needs to do better. Be better.
I echo all of the people who I’ve seen write extremely eloquently and much better than I could ever on the subject of what’s going on right now. I’ve seen them nail every feeling that I’m feeling. I feel strangely comforted to know that so many others outrage is the same as my outrage.
And it hurts to see a majority treat this as a non-issue. Act appalled and put out that we question this decision. Act surprised that people are disappointed in this team, in its players. Act angry that we don’t just stick to sports. It hurts,that most of the surprised and irritated are actual members of the organization. What they have said about the White House situation doesn’t even make me nearly as mad as how agitated they are that we even questioned them. It enters in a whole world of hockey culture that I know nothing about and don’t have the wherewithal to figure out.
Mostly because it’s a world that doesn’t embrace me as a fan. Hockey is for everyone, right? But only if you play by the rules.
And that’s what Sid is doing. Playing by the rules.
And it sucks. It sucks so much.
And it makes me sad. Not because he’s not the person I created in my head to be. That he’s not the person I have written about for the past four years. No, it makes me sad because maybe he is that blank slate. He is that guy who loves hockey, is kind and polite and gives in every way he can. But that’s all he is. He’s not going to stand up, speak out and do what I and many others want him to do. He’s not anymore than he shown us. And I guess that’s fine. Because he’s not a bad person. He’s just not the person I wanted him to be.
And maybe that’s on me. That’s what I get for making him one of those teen dreams on the cover of a magazine. That’s what I get for living my life in my own head. For creating stories and moments that blur the line of reality and fiction.
But in my perfect world he would stand up and say no. We’re not doing this. I’m not doing this. He’d be that guy in my head. On that page. And my toes would curl and my breath would quicken.
And I wouldn’t need a story.
