#cesy

[star-anise]

cesy replied to your post “WHO decided English church bells should not play pretty songs, but in...”

Crowley?

Given the music each side prefers, I’m afraid that weird clangy bell sounds are straight up Heaven’s alley in Good Omens-verse.

[garden-of-succulents]

cesy replied to your photo “Just in at Fabricland: ✨THE MOST HIDEOUS NHL FABRIC IN THE WORLD✨ Just...”

It's amazing how many still look terrible even for the teams with good colours and good logos! Of course there's no hope for Edmonton.

There was never any hope for Edmonton.

[abominableobriens]

cesy replied to your post: someone ask me questions about Kent  or about the...

What does Kent think of Brooklyn 99?

He loves it. He loves all of the characters so fucking much and tries to catch it as often as playing in the NHL will allow (but if he can’t, that’s what his hulu subscription is for). He loves Terry, Holt, Amy and Jake in that order but his fav characters are Rosa and Gina and he wants them to be queer and in love with their one kid that they raise to be a badass ballerina that’s the human form of the smirking emoji. 

One year he tried to recreate the heist episodes by holding a killer Halloween scavenger hunt party. It was a giant clusterfuck but somehow Johnny still won. 

ask me about Kent and/or babyfics

[garden-of-succulents]

More Andy?

(Extension of this headcanon, inspired by reading this article; I’m inventing people rather than writing real ones. TW: Fatphobia and bullying)

In 1998 Bethany Greene dominated the pop charts and Andy, 13 years old, had hated her ferociously.  So it feels kind of weird to wake up in Bethany’s guest room.

The LA mansion is easy to navigate. By LA standards, it isn’t even large. After she’s pulled on jeans and a shirt, pushed her hair back with a wet brush, Andy follows the balcony over the front entryway and descends curving stairs to the kitchen, where the gleaming granite countertops are scattered with ordinary debris: Grocery receipts and school permission slips, a washed-out milk jug, half-empty coffee cups. Bethany slides off her stool at the kitchen nook when Andy comes in. “Can I get you something?” she asks, reaching for the coffee pot.

“No coffee,” Andy says with a queasy wave. “Thanks.”  Maybe she should have showered and woken up more. She’s not really seeing the face under the mask, as it were; Bethany’s already made up for the morning, face flawless, eyes bright, Barbie doll hair in a crisp and perfect ponytail. She’s wearing a pastel track suit.

“Yeah, Kenny said you were having some acid reflux,” Bethany soothes, refilling her own cup. “I’ve got some yogurt if you want, or I could make you a smoothie.”

Andy, feeling guilty as hell, lets the woman make her a protein shake.

She watches her awkwardly, and remembers, now, the most humiliating part of 1998. At a track and field day near the end of the school year, sitting on the grass after an exhausting 400-metre race, she’d tentatively pulled the hem of her t-shirt to the front, twisting it into a knot to bare her stomach, the way the popular girls did to emulate Bethany. They noticed almost immediately, and Andy’s stomach, even then, had been a soft thing, concealing considerable abs that no one ever complimented her on.

“Oh, look at Andrea,” one of them had cooed. “That’s nice.”

“I wish I had that much confidence,” another sighed.

For the briefest moment, Andy had thought they were being sincere. That’s what made it so humiliating.

(She can remember their names. She can remember all of their names.)

They take their cups, smoothie and caffeine, into the living room, where Kent is playing a video game about cars with Bethany’s children. Andy just missed coaching them; they both played with the Li’l Aces when they lived in Las Vegas. The younger of the two, now 10, has transferred his affections to skateboarding instead. The elder is still playing hockey at 14, but in a rec league only; he understands that he started too late, and that two hours a week isn’t enough to build a career on. It’s a hobby for him.

They don’t love hockey; they love Uncle Kenny. The way their mother is half-sister, half-aunt to him, he is half-brother, half-uncle to them, elbowing them as his thumbs guide his car around the bend, putting down his controller when one of them needs to exult and dispensing noogies whenever called for. 

None of them notice the two women who sit down behind him in loveseat and armchair, sipping their drinks.

Andy doesn’t know how to take it, this kind of tentative peace. She never actually knew Bethany at all, has no reason to truly personally hate her; but in a way it still feels like, twenty years later, meeting the general of the army that crushed you, and finding you have interests in common. The old griefs are still there, but the context has changed so utterly that it’s not like you can resume hostilities.

And as an adult Andy can look at someone who puts on makeup for breakfast, and think about why she’s had to be so unrelentingly perfect instead of needing to cut her down. It’s about being able to measure up, herself.

Kent, as always, makes this possible; she can curse him under her breath for making her question all her assumptions about where she doesn’t fit in the world, and all the victories she isn’t allowed to claim. He doesn’t hear her. He’s playing video games.

Bethany makes good smoothies.

[garden-of-succulents]

Maida

“Nah, I can feed us here,” Kent says, sticking his head in his fridge. “I have some steaks I was gonna use, they’re… oh.”  He pulls the pack out; the eight steaks inside it have moved from deep read to a slightly brownish colour. “I dunno, do those look–”

“Let me see,” Maida says. When he hands it to her she cuts a slice in the plastic with a knife, then puts her nose to the incision and takes a deep breath.

Swoops tries to make eye contact with Kent over her head, but Kent doesn’t seem aware there’s anything amiss.

“Oh yeah,” Maida confirms. “Those have started to spoil. Can I take them home with me?”

Kent smiles deeply, kisses the top of her head. “I’ll get you a freezer bag. Should we get pizza?”

“So,” Swoops says awkwardly, when Kent has disappeared into the pantry. “You… like rotten meat?”

“We have a new vulture in at work,” she says, as though there’s nothing at all unusual. “Our food budget is ridiculous. So I get donations whenever I can.”

(Send me the name of one of my OCs and get a little bit about them!)

[garden-of-succulents]

Andy's friends giving banter?

(Send me an ask with the name of an OC I’ve written and I’ll tell you about them!)

Okay so I do know details about some of them!

Carrie Hoekstra (@carrieliney87)One of the other members of the Love Quadrangle of Doom Andy got caught up in on their college team; the only other member of the quadrangle Andy still speaks to. Got Andy back as a coworker at the state hockey association, but didn’t date her again. Now works as phys ed teacher for a high school with a nationally ranked girl’s hockey team, and has a fiancee. Gets 6 nights of Andy’s Minnesota Wild season’s ticket while Andy’s in Las Vegas.

Melanie Nilson (@puckingonice)Friend from Andy’s year in Div III. No longer plays hockey, though she watches the NHL on TV and she and her husband plan to put their four-year-old son in hockey next year. Assistant-manages a sporting goods store in North Dakota. 

Patricia Lee (@PattyLeeCWHL)Technically Andy’s oldest friend, since they played minor hockey in the same area and went to high school together for freshman year, eating lunch at the same table and having each other’s backs during frosh. They weren’t really friends, though, until they got to college and ended up on the same team and in the same dorm. She watched the Love Quadrangle of Doom happen and dispensed sage advice, but did not become ensnared. Played in the CWHL for three years, and then moved back home to be close to her parents in St Paul, get married, and have children. (It was a very planned move, down to, “I have to get pregnant within this time window”).  

Runs a successful consulting business that helps train several local hockey teams and players. Is currently waiting for her C-section scar to heal enough to begin seriously conditioning again. She figures she has a couple good years of pro hockey left in her, and so do a couple NWHL teams. Her husband works at a bank, and her parents get 12 of Andy’s tickets while she’s out of town (her treat)

[star-anise]

cesy replied to your post “The clinical parts of my job are amazing, and I am of course thrilled...”

Is it bad training or just stuff you already know?

“This is an example of an appropriate work email. Here is something Julie posted to her company’s Facebook page: is it appropriate?  Also, never swear at or be rude to customers. Be polite to your coworkers...”

I think it mostly exists so when people break the rules of good conduct, they can’t say they weren’t warned.

[abominableobriens]

Thank you for the responses! And yes, any order is fine, and feel free to skip any that don't speak to your muse or whatever. If Nursey joins the NHL after Samwell, what could that look like? Would he ever drop out of Samwell if he got an NHL offer?

((I had to bounce my ideas off a few people so thank @des-zimbits @yoursummerfrost  and @samwell-womens-hockey   for the assist))

This question is interesting because of its specificity. I think since there’s already a canonical narrative in place for Jack finishing up college, we can assume a similar narrative for Nursey quite easily. But what you’re asking is if he’d “risk it for the biscuit” (this is something frat boys say I swear)

Something to consider: is he pre or post diagnosis

lets go with pre first. So he’s a known dreamer. He’s big on making grand fantasies and he’s a pretty capable guy. Being the antiestablishment guy he is, he’s probably been disillusioned by a degree in creative writing. As I discuss in my first post, he has a really hard accepting feedback from critiques. He’ll only listen to so much of it; it sours his mood quite quickly; and in the long run, he doesn’t think it improves his skills that much. He can always go back to school, but the NHL wants him NOW. What if he’s reached his peak and this is his only shot to be a pro athlete? (He thought extreme FOMO was just a symptom of youth, not of BPD) Also, you have that impulsiveness telling him he has to do it, how could he not do it? 

Cue concerned Eric Bittle asking Derek if he’s talked to Jack yet. (Nursey grumbling about how he doesn’t want to be talked out of it)

Here are some gems from the Jack Laurent Zimmermann fatherly “wtf are you doing” talk:

Okay, realistically, how many games are they talking about dressing you for? What if you get sent down to the AHL? How long is your career likely to be? Do you know anyone in this city?

Has an agent looked over your contract? What’s stopping them from paying you to warm a bench all season?

Or worse, NOT paying you to warm a bench all season, but preventing you from playing for anybody else?

So in short: Nursey not knowing he has BPD doesn’t mean that he’s alone. It does, however, mean that his first season would be harder. (Cue SMH crew having his back and him getting help)

Ok now for post-diagnosis options:

He’s probably constantly going back and forth. He still wants it just as much, but now he’s really fucking freaked out about how much of that is him talking and how much is this a lowkey terrible idea spurred by his BPD

at the end of the day if he’s talked it through with his therapist and his parents, maybe it’s not the safest choice, it’s still his adult decision to make. I think there’s a lot there about talking about the lifestyle change and getting him settled and having ways to communicate effectively with a new coaching staff about his needs

Tangent: Nursey’s agent because he’s too good not to talk about 

(thank Lis) 

If Shitty had a spiritual twin, it would be this guy. Idk where Jack found him but:

“I didn’t sleep last night but I now know Everything about you as a player, these guys can’t get one up on us” *slugs a redbull*

“Bob Zimmermann tapped me as your agent yesterday and I don’t have a change of clothes but I did spray myself with Febreze in the airport bathroom, let’s do this”

Aka Derek Nurse’s support system is filled with similarly flawed but highly capable people

Ok and now back to some NHL Nursey with BPD thoughts 

((because I need to give every team some love and because either way, if Nursey’s made it this far, he’s discussed the realities of being signed onto a not as great team))

Cue: Nursey as a Colorado Avalanche. 

Watch his instagram be the most followed account of any NHL player because he’s got those gorgeous mountains and scenery all over the place. He would totally live in Boulder (correction: he would live in Fort Collins if it weren’t so far from Denver to commute there regularly). You yes, imagine your queer hipster Nursey hitting up eclectic shops on Pearl Street. ((I just realized that most NHL contracts probably prohibit snowing boarding, but it’s ok, there are other things t do in the winter.))

Can Nursey be friends with the ladies that dance jog across Boulder every Wednesday morning? I think he can. I also think he becomes a microbrew snob and as long as he doesn’t over do it. 

ANYWAY

Because Joe Sakic enjoys fucking me in the ass–Nursey would get traded (despite being their best dman). And yea it would send him through a loop, but he’s got his family, his friends, his “people” and (insert love interest(s) here). So he’ll manage after some adjustment. 

Because I am constantly negotiating the longevity of pro players’ careers in all my fics, I had to ask how long does he stay in the NHL. The consensus was he’d take it one step at a time. He’d have to deal a lot with the uncertainties of being traded and resigned (but he can manage). And he’d get his name on the Cup once or twice (who am I kidding, it’s Nursey. Three times, take it or leave it) 

and then because Lis said “Well I could also see Nursey lowkey expecting every season to be his last and then one day they’re like ‘It’s your tenth season and you’re still going strong!! How’s it feel?’” I responded with “in the most Nursey move ever ‘huh, I have been playing for ten years, well I guess that’s enough of that’”

And that’s how Nursey goes back to college at 32