Shitty's Flow/Jack's Ass OTP: The Samwell Men’s Hockey Team Tumblr
For the @omgcp-tropechallenge #6 Social Media // on AO3
Someone runs a Samwell Men’s Hockey Team tumblr. No one’s really sure who. Most people, when they hear about it, they think it’s going to be Jack Zimmermann’s ass and Shitty’s flow and Nursey’s flower crown and Ransom’s perfect cheekbones.
And it is. Sometimes.
(Okay, it’s always Ransom’s perfect cheekbones. Seriously. There are so many close-ups of Ransom’s cheekbones. Occasionally you get lucky and see the corner of his eye or really lucky and see the corner of his mouth.)
Mostly it’s Bitty from six different angles chasing after Shitty, wielding a wooden spoon and shouting angrily at him. Shitty has a pie held above his head; his face is triumphant. There’s a shot of some kind of pastry strewn across the kitchen floor of the Haus, Bitty waving a serving tray at a group of cowering men all larger and taller than him but definitely less scary than him. It’s a series of shots of various hockey players and one hockey manager sneaking mini pies from the kitchen while Bitty’s back is turned, and then the reaction shot when Bitty turns around and finds another pie gone.
It’s Holster sniffing his armpit. There’s a #sniff it sniff it good tag dedicated to Holster sniffing his armpit and it has 36 pages.
36.
Pages.
There’s one picture of Nursey wearing a flower crown, but then, inexplicably, there’s a picture of the flower crown on the ground, a single brittle red leaf on top of it. That’s followed by a series of pictures of Nursey with a single red leaf on top of his head, tangled in his hair.
#Nursey’s pet
Sometimes there are pictures of notes taken in classes or of homework. One shot shows a page of tiny, cramped handwriting that fills the whole page. It's illegible. A close up shot shows it to be a Sid Crosby/Kent Parson fanfic written on top of a calculus assignment. Another shows sketches of hockey plays in the margins of class notes. (The tags and replies on this one are all variations of JACK ZIMMERMANN.) One notebook is covered in sketches of sharks. There's a picture of a perfectly typed, 10-page paper. 12 point, Times New Roman, double spaced. Numerous attributions. A bibliography three pages long in APA format with a backup version in MLA format. There're no tags on the post, but when you read the paper, it's an ode to The Corner Jockey complete with proposed owners of said jockstrap. Someone has written on it in red ink: HOLSTER, IT'S YOUR JOCKSTRAP
The most popular tag is #secretly in love. It's Jack with his arm around a plate of perfectly scrambled eggs. It's Nursey reading a book of poetry. It's Chowder cuddling his shark plush. It's Lardo at a table, clearly in the middle of a game of beer pong, a crowd of boys and girls looking at her with hearts in their eyes. It's the back of Shitty's head, his long locks spread across a beautiful ass that can only belong to Jack Zimmermann. It's Bitty asleep at the kitchen table, his arm wrapped around his rolling pin. It's Holster watching 30 Rock. It's a lot of Holster watching 30 Rock. It's Ransom and two girls no one's ever seen before?? (That post gets deleted before too long and even the reblogs can't be found. Many people swear they reblogged it.) It's Ransom and his biology textbooks. It's Dex and his computer. There’s a lot of hockey equipment. So much hockey equipment.
There's a tag #obviously in love and it's all Nursey and Dex fighting. (It's mostly Nursey and Dex fighting. There's one picture of them, half the picture obscured by something, like the photographer was hiding. Dex is sitting on the porch, elbows on his knees. Nursey is next to him, his arm slung over Dex's shoulders. They're looking at each other, faces very close together.)
The second most popular tag is just shots of Lardo playing various drinking games. Winning various drinking games. Each picture is accompanied by a final score and the name of the loser. Occasionally fights break out in the replies where the loser tries to claim they are not, in fact, the loser. They never win these fights because everyone was at that party and they clearly remember that Lardo won. Lardo always wins.
#the great debate tag is only made of video posts. Every single one is video of Jack and Bitty arguing various language semantics. Some of the most popular debates include:
the pronunciation of "about"
the letter Z
coke vs. pop
aunt vs. aunt
pecan vs. pecan
The "pecan vs. pecan" debate is split over three separate video uploads. A second round was uploaded two days later. There are remixes and fan mixes and linguistic experts weighing in on the "pecan vs. pecan" debate.
The final comment on the matter is a picture of a pecan pie tagged with #he who bakes it wins it
The science side of tumblr is in love with Ransom. #ransom knows best is filled with videos and pictures of Ransom going into detailed explanations of various biology concepts. Every test he takes ends up on the tumblr. Asks are turned off, but the #ask ransom tag is a cult hit. (Ransom finds it one day and starts replying. No one knew he had a tumblr. He goes from three followers (two of which are porn blogs and the last is Holster) to 700 in a week. Followers of the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team tumblr briefly experience an influx of smug Ransom pictures.)
The only picture of Jack's ass is the Shitty's Flow/Jack's Ass OTP post. The rest of the pictures of Jack are of Jack standing in random places, arms by his sides as he stares blankly into the distance. People are so confused by the pictures they mostly don't notice the tiny, tiny link included. When they do find it, it leads to a music video of an artist no one has ever heard of, the singer's voice so slurred no one can make out what's being said. When the link is found, the pictures change. Jack sits at the kitchen table with a plate of chicken tenders. So many chicken tenders. There's no hidden link, but tumblr is not convinced of this. They will find it. There is a message in Jack's chicken tender pictures, they're sure of it.
Occasionally someone posts a picture of a sheep. Fights break out in the replies. There's screaming and yelling and name calling that makes even the most seasoned cusser blush bright red. These fights are more popular than the sheep pictures. No one really knows what they are about. There's meta.
Untagged is a whole series of Cards Against Humanity shots. The card combinations get posted first. Then the reaction shots. The reaction shots range from scandalized faces to Bitty crying, his face bright red as he rolls on the ground laughing. Soon, the reaction shots stop being of the team and start being of the tags on the posts. (There's a link on the theme to a page that tallies points. Dex is winning. Dex is winning by a lot. Dex is also winning by a lot in the Haus. He also has no reaction posts.)
There's a whole collection of pages. Each page is a tally of points. One page is dedicated to the different types of pies Bitty makes. For a long time there's no clear winner, then Maple Sugar Crusted Apple takes the lead by a large margin. One page is hockey stats, but not the stats that can be found on the Samwell Men's Hockey Team official website. No, these stats are things like: splits done on ice, flow-induced vomit incidents, chirps that make the other team laugh instead of fight, number of autographs requested of PEOPLE OTHER THAN JACK (Ransom is in the lead, Holster a close second; there’s a special mention section dedicated to the number of times Bitty’s been approached by someone who likes his vlog). There's also a page that tallies guesses on who runs the tumblr. Jack has the least number of votes. Bitty has the second most. The most guessed is all of them.
75% of Shitty's posts get tagged NSFW. He's naked. He has a tendency to bend over in the photos. His asshole is really, really hairy. Too many people in the world know this now. A couple of different gay porn blogs have reblogged his photos. Shitty's most reblogged photo, though, is of him in a dress. And not the good kind of dress. No, this dress is a grandma dress with an awkwardly floral pattern and a high neck lined with a lace collar. It's made for someone with large breasts, but Shitty has stuffed the top with soccer balls. Shitty wore stockings. The dress is caught in the stockings, and no one can decide if he did it on purpose or if it just happened. He's not wearing shoes and the stockings have runs. There are so many angry replies about his mistreatment of the stockings. He deserves them.
Aside from Lardo's drinking game domination, there are, strangely, no pictures of the kegsters.
That's a lie. There's one. It was taken across the street from the Haus. People are running in terror from the Haus, jackets and skirts and purses and baseball caps blowing back in the wake of their fleeing. The house glows an ominous orange in the windows and the doorway. It looks like the Haus is on fire.
The next post is video of Nursey, Dex, and Chowder in the living room playing Dance Dance Revolution. Nursey keeps tripping over his feet. Dex is halfheartedly trying. Chowder is owning both their asses and giggling while he does it. There's no sign of any fire damage. Not in that photo and not in any of the ones that follow.
Video game posts are a thing. Most of the posts are Smash Brothers and Mario Kart. Some first person shooters make an appearance but they don't stick around long. There's a lot of posts with videos of the game itself and someone on the team screaming each time someone gets knocked off the fight platform or bounces off another kart and into some ditch. Everyone screams when a blue shell makes an appearance. There are a lot of reaction shots of Jack. He makes the best faces. The only level of Mario Kart he's any good at is Rainbow Road. There's no screaming on Rainbow Road. There's just a softly whispered "How are you so good?" The person asking changes with each video.
Sometimes there will be a picture of a roach.
Sometimes there will be a picture of the silhouette of a man in the attic window.
Someone takes video of Dex repairing things around the Haus. Someone must be asking questions, because Dex will look over his shoulder like he's listening and then he'll answer, but the voice asking questions is edited out. Dex explains the ins-and-outs of repairing freezers and ovens and broken doorknobs and leaking toilets and there are even some basic carpentry posts. Several DIY house repair blogs follow the Samwell Men's Hockey Team tumblr just for Dex's posts. There are also pictures of him post-repair where he's sweaty, his cap on backwards, grease on his face and hands, the muscles in his forearms flexing as he wipes his hands off on a towel. Several gay porn blogs have reblogged those posts as well.
There are a lot of selfie pictures taken by Chowder with the team in the background, Chowder grinning widely at the camera. Chowder surges ahead as the best guess for who runs the tumblr but then there's a post of Chowder taking a selfie with Chowder. Both Chowders grin widely at the camera, their braces glinting with reflected sunlight. No one can tell if it’s photoshopped. No one knows how it couldn’t be. Twin theories get tossed around, but no one can find evidence of Chowder having a twin; his Facebook posts all have pictures of his parents and two little sisters.
The only reblogs on the Samwell Men's Hockey Team tumblr are shark related posts. Not just posts about the San Jose Sharks, but also posts about great white sharks and hammerhead sharks and Nurse sharks. After that post, there are a lot of jokes about Nursey. Nursey/Chowder becomes the ship of choice. A picture of Dex looking disgruntled gets posted. There's no context. The shark posts stop. The Nursey/Chowder and the Nursey/Dex shipwars are the worst tumblr has ever seen.
The less said about the shipwars, the better.
(Holster has Thoughts on this. He was at the forefront of the wars. He didn't even use a sideblog. He went from 60 followers to 450 followers in a three week period during which he enumerated his Thoughts. There might have been (Nursey/Chowder/Dex) fanfic written. (There is always fanfic written.)
Other series tags on the Samwell Men's Hockey Team tumblr:
#art my heart: Lardo's art projects in progress (there are never any final shots)
#felonious: Empty pie tins (there are never any whole pies)
#existential tango: Questions as posed by the newest member of the Samwell Men's Hockey Team (there are never any answers)
#TRAITOR: an exploration in the way one of the Samwell Men's Hockey Team's own can break their hearts (there are never any clear pictures, just blurry photos of people standing around)
#honk: goose shots (there are never any explanations)
There's a #zimmermann's ass tag but when you click on it, it takes you to a single post. That post is a shot of the Samwell Men's Hockey Team lined up, backs to the camera. Jack Zimmermann is not in the picture. It's captioned "OUR ASSES ARE FINE TOO"
For the @omgcp-tropechallenge Trope #1: Soulmate AU // on AO3
Eric didn't know of anyone who had initials. His parents had each other's names. His father even had "Suzanne" and not just the "Suzy" that he called her most frequently. His moo maw had his pa paw's full name too. Only one of Eric's cousins had a soulmate. She hadn’t known who her soulmate was because Elena had only known her by her dead name until the girl had come out. After that, Eric knew this meant that the marks know, so Eric had always thought he’d have a boy’s name on his wrist. Not this.
Still, Eric did his best to find out what it could mean in the weeks following his sixteenth birthday. He couldn't find any stories of people having initials, though he did find a lot of stories about platonic soulmates, either because they were in love with other people, or because one or both were aromantic. He also found stories about people who had multiple soulmates. Some were in polyamorous relationships while others were on some sort of team or in a group.
But all those people had a list of names on their bodies, not initials.
Eric tried googling his initials, but that turned up nothing. He was fairly certain that his soulmate was not a ukulele or some kind of hand tool. If Eric's soulmate was going to be an object, well then it was going to be figure skates or pie, for goodness sake.
As a last resort, Eric started scouring soulmate forums, looking to see if anyone had posted about having initials too. No one had, and so Eric resigned himself to fate and hoping that he would find his soulmate one day.
---
As it turned out, Eric didn't have to wait long at all. In fact, he had only to wait two years and countless pies later. It was standing in the kitchen of a rundown frat house, a line of overly tall teammates staring at him while he held a pie that it happened. Eric set the pie down and pulled off his oven mitts. He'd rolled his sleeves up and taken off the armband he wore to hide the tattoo. He hated getting questions about his mark, but he hated getting flour on the armband even more; it was damn near impossible to clean.
Eric turned, oven mitts in hand, and then three heavy hockey players were piling on top of him.
"Dude, brah, my man-" Shitty grunted in his ear, one arm wrapped dangerously high around his shoulders, threatening to choke him.
"Eric, we've waited so long for you," Holster moaned, his arms tight around Bitty's waist.
"Automatic dibs!" Ransom agreed, fingers digging into Bitty's side.
Eric wiggled, trying to free himself of the confusing mess of limbs. "What on Earth are y'all on about?" Eric exclaimed.
"Bro-" Holster said, eyes wide. He looked at Ransom, who nodded back, and then the two of them were dragging Eric down to the basement, Shitty following behind, yelling into his phone.
Eric allowed himself to be led across the floor to the far wall where Holster and Ransom flung their arms out in dramatic presentation of a series of names and dates sharpied onto the wall.
Eric squinted at it. "What am I looking at?" he asked.
"These-" Ransom started.
"-are the Samwell Soulmates," Holster finished.
Ransom nodded in agreement as Shitty slung his arm over Eric's shoulders. "These," he continued the explanation, "are all the players that came before us that were meant. To be. Here."
Eric frowned. "You called them soulmates."
Shitty let go of Eric to stand shoulder to shoulder with Ransom and Holster. Shitty spun around, dropped his pants, and bent over to expose his ass to Eric, who threw his hands up to block the view.
"Dude, look," Ransom said.
Reluctantly, Eric lowered his hands and looked. Ransom pointed to Shitty's ass- specifically to a dark mark on his ass. Eric leaned forward and realized what he was looking at. His mouth dropped open. His eyes shot up to look at Ransom, who grinned and hitched up the sleeve of his shirt. On the curve of his bicep sat the same initials. Holster lifted his shirt to show off the matching mark on his side.
Eric felt the smile grow on his face until his cheeks started to hurt. He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the sound of pounding footsteps. The four of them looked over to see Jack stumble down the stairs. He stomped up to Eric and leaned down to frown into his face.
"Let me see it."
Eric grinned and lifted his wrist, showing off the stark, black letters there.
Jack studied it for a moment before he nodded and straightened up. He pulled off his shirt to show off the letters on his chest, right over his heart.
SMHT
Notes:
The Samwell Soulmates date back to founding of the hockey team. The first full team of 20 players all had the mark. After that, one or two of each year had the mark. The number of soulmates has waxed and waned over the years, but there are always some number of them in the Haus.
Johnson, Jack, Shitty, Lardo, Ransom, Holster, Bitty, Dex, Nursey, and Chowder all have the mark. Tango and Whiskey probably also have the mark, but they haven’t shared yet.
Lardo is the first non-player to have the mark, but she's also the first non-player to really be involved with the team to the extent that she is. While past managers have been involved with the team, Lardo is the first to really become good friends with them.
