Clouds

chinese, unfortunately no longer living in canada (im so far from hockey nooo🥲), not exactly sure but 🏳️‍🌈, she/her. always unhinged bc when else would i be on here

[lando-la]

I saw these two pictures and I’m once again like…why are there only 17 fics in the matthew boldy/brock faber tag on ao3?

Like the potential is huge people.

[habitant]

lane makes it a 2-1 series | R1G3 TBL@MTL 24/04/2026

[ilyalogists]

THIS IS WHO ENDED U TAMPA BAY

[tkstrandr]

cementing my prediction now before the first round starts, if the habs dont take home the cup this year its gonna be the oilers. let davo hold the cup already pls he deserves it

[moondoggiestyle]

okay i am making this post because i want to continue to enjoy willmack but this particular subset of hprf has grown so uncomfortably large that so many fandom norms are out the window (or perhaps more accurately, the sheer size of it has invited the particular norms that go along with a larger fandom, like tinhatting, which is unusual for more niche fandoms like hrpf).

i am mostly preaching to the choir here, as i have cultivated my own smaller circle of like-minded people, but assuming i have any reach whatsoever, that whoever might be reading this is new to fandom in general, new to hockey specifically, or maybe this is your first (or just most intense) rpf ship; please, please understand rpf is short for real person fiction. it is SO much fun treating public figures like a text we can analyze, building up characterization notes and headcanons, losing our collective minds at the things they do. and willmack specifically do some crazy shit!

but we can never forget that foundational pillar: our interpretations are fiction. we do not have any personal insight into what they are truly thinking or feeling. when we start to think that we do, that is when things get dangerous. that is when people start to get parasocial to a toxic degree, start to interpret things as "signs" from the objects of rpf, start to create these echo chambers where logic no longer exists. it eventually breeds harassment when one or both ship members stop following the "script," which destroys their private life (or god forbid, the life of their future partner). this happened in 1D fandom (and others too i know; i'm just speaking from my particular experience) and the real life friendship it impacted has never been the same to this day.

so i'm just posting this as a general PSA. a moment to check yourself and ask how invested you are in an rpf ship comprised of two straight hockey players, and if you're here to have fun and play with the paper dolls we've constructed with the understanding that the real people they're fashioned after are out there living their lives completely disconnected from fandom, or if you've started to think, "well, but maybe..." because if you have: stop right now. bring yourself back to reality. don't be the person who ruins fandom for the rest of us, who encourages and enables tinhatting, who contributes to all the awful things that always follow: the gross invasions of privacy, the whittling away of the fourth wall, the harassment that eventually leads to less publicly available content as the objects of said tinhatting try to put out the flames before they get burned. are you hearing me?

[moondoggiestyle]

#imo the 'they could be gay' line of thought is logical in theory but the nuance is too hard to control in practice for a large fandom#so it's probably just better to ask everyone to assume they are straight as a rule#don't agree with the notion that the fans were to blame for 'destroying 1D's friendship' though#they don't get to take advantage of the immaturity of their young fanbase AND complain about it#this is not the case with any hockey rpf pairings though obviously

i see this post is going around again! responding to your tags because the implications of this post remain very important to me. 1) elaboration on why i called them straight is linked here (tl;dr: will & mack being hockey boys saturated in hockey culture means that straight is the norm/default for them within the context of their lived experiences & what they assume others assume about them, and nothing they are doing challenges that, including acting the way they act. it would be heteronormative to assume straightness in general, but with hockey players specifically, i think there is a presumption of straightness because of hockey culture (and even if they do identify as some flavor of not straight, analyzing their behavior to out them against their wishes would be shitty!)

2) but regarding 1D fandom - i don't know who you mean by 'they' here, but i am not talking about 1D fans in general. i am talking about the subset of larry tinhats who harassed harry & louis and their families, harassed the women they publicly associated with & called their girlfriends/partners beards and PR relationships, who claimed louis' child was a doll, who insisted that they were sending coded messages to them because big bad management was keeping them closeted it and it was some heroic, noble crusade to free them from simon cowell's evil clutches, which finally caused louis to snap and tweet this:

he and harry stopped publicly interacting and their friendship was damaged from the invasive tinhatting. if you were not there (this was 15 years ago! my god!) their friendship in the beginning was incredibly touchy feely! they said they had "mutual crushes" on one another! they were perhaps playing it up for the cameras, as they had no idea the level of fame about to hit them, but they pulled back from one another after tinhatting fans got insane. once louis in particular went off script (got a girlfriend, thus shattering the fantasy he was dating harry), it got nasty. i have seen the sentiment that will and mack don't care about the willmack buzz or "they would have said something" and i am telling you guys: we don't want it to get the point where they say something. because that will mean the damage will have already been done, possibly irrevocably.

[moondoggiestyle]

okay i am making this post because i want to continue to enjoy willmack but this particular subset of hprf has grown so uncomfortably large that so many fandom norms are out the window (or perhaps more accurately, the sheer size of it has invited the particular norms that go along with a larger fandom, like tinhatting, which is unusual for more niche fandoms like hrpf).

i am mostly preaching to the choir here, as i have cultivated my own smaller circle of like-minded people, but assuming i have any reach whatsoever, that whoever might be reading this is new to fandom in general, new to hockey specifically, or maybe this is your first (or just most intense) rpf ship; please, please understand rpf is short for real person fiction. it is SO much fun treating public figures like a text we can analyze, building up characterization notes and headcanons, losing our collective minds at the things they do. and willmack specifically do some crazy shit!

but we can never forget that foundational pillar: our interpretations are fiction. we do not have any personal insight into what they are truly thinking or feeling. when we start to think that we do, that is when things get dangerous. that is when people start to get parasocial to a toxic degree, start to interpret things as "signs" from the objects of rpf, start to create these echo chambers where logic no longer exists. it eventually breeds harassment when one or both ship members stop following the "script," which destroys their private life (or god forbid, the life of their future partner). this happened in 1D fandom (and others too i know; i'm just speaking from my particular experience) and the real life friendship it impacted has never been the same to this day.

so i'm just posting this as a general PSA. a moment to check yourself and ask how invested you are in an rpf ship comprised of two straight hockey players, and if you're here to have fun and play with the paper dolls we've constructed with the understanding that the real people they're fashioned after are out there living their lives completely disconnected from fandom, or if you've started to think, "well, but maybe..." because if you have: stop right now. bring yourself back to reality. don't be the person who ruins fandom for the rest of us, who encourages and enables tinhatting, who contributes to all the awful things that always follow: the gross invasions of privacy, the whittling away of the fourth wall, the harassment that eventually leads to less publicly available content as the objects of said tinhatting try to put out the flames before they get burned. are you hearing me?

[croszukis]

nick scores his 100th point of the season — MTL @ NYI 04.12.26

[beauvilliers]

Cole Caufield scores his 50th goal of the season!

Tampa Bay Lightning @ Montreal Canadiens | April 9, 2026

[suzuki-supremacy]

captain knows best listen to your captain TBL@MTL | APR 9 2026

[pierremcguire]

[habitant]

what is thissssss???

[poke-checked]

Imagine being bill smith. You’ve never been grocery shopping in your life. And now your gay son is sending you to Trader Joe’s to buy cashew cream so he can make Dubai chocolate for sharks staffers

[inlightofitall]

"will gives wag vibes" i say bravely into the mic. the crowd boos. i begin to walk away, my head low, when a single voice speaks up from the back.

"she's right."

i look to the owner of the voice. it's william charles patrick smith.

[ohpuckno]

they sicken me

[springfable]

just unknowingly beefing with children

[maxz-b]

something something ending the season with 97 points

[staal-eric-archives]

21.02.22 // aka martin choosing violence by bringing up vincent in his anecdote

bonus: “it’s important for these guys to know that there’s someone out there making sure that they are not abused on the ice”