Smitty never stops to amaze me because how on earth did he come out of the ntdp still this "soft".
and before there are some anons losing it I am not calling him effeminate or even feminine in the grand scheme of society as a whole but in the hyper-masculine space of hockey he is very much a soft soft boy.
and somehow he has gone through this wild experience (his mom and people he knew from before being there definitely helped) and he's come out of the other side not even a tiny bit less confident of what he likes. in fact he is still 10 toes down on his romcoms and pop music etc.
and I think that's really his rizz it's his confidence and knowledge of who he is and what he likes. that's not to say he isn't also the people pleaser extraordinaire who needs everyone to like him and to be perceived as a nice person but that doesn't interfere with him liking what he likes. because these interests don't determine the "goodness" of a person.
and so much of what that ideal hyper masculinity that these young men think they want to embody boils down to is that confidence of knowing who you are, what you like and not changing just to fit in. this nonchalance when it comes to other peoples opinions on your interest. and will needs people to like him and so he'll be very nice and attentive but he won't change who he is at his core. and I think that just blows these hockey boys minds. and even worse for them he isn't even an ass about it.
I find it so fascinating that he was thriving in that environment (probably because all the other boys were in awe of his manic pixie dreamyness and lack of giving in to certain peer pressures) and came out the other side the way he still is.
sometimes I think that while he has definitely always been a romanticizer of life that the ntdp of it all made him lock into it even more as an escape mechanism. and so he's latched onto his whimsy even more as a response to that strange environment and so his response was kinda the opposite of what you would expect it to be but he was still thriving.
yes forever in awe of how will managed to cultivate a small kernel of softness and whimsy in the harsh unforgiving terrain of usntdp, the program, here we breed lions, take responsibility for your own personal hell, etc etc. a boot camp intentionally designed to break down the individual boy and package him back up as a fine-tuned calibrated machine of a man; a place where coaches could and did force 16yo boys to change in public hallways with security cameras and fluorescent lighting; a surveillance state where trainers tracked heartrate monitors and cellphone usage and time spent with your girlfriend; where you were ground down into less than nothing in order to win and then all you did was lose, and lose, and lose, against boys older and bigger and stronger than you.
i do think a large part of it was that he had colleen during those years; that she and voter's mother were able to trade off providing a home to will and leno and vote rather than handing off their children, their care and feeding and legal powers alike, sight unseen to strangers on the program's payroll. but remember this is also a woman who knew that her son was being forced to change in public for at least a month and was still able to call the program "unbelievably exciting"; a "once-in-a-lifetime thing." who watched her son develop eating patterns bordering on unhealthy and not only did not stop it but in fact catered to it, cooked to its specifications. who told the world that she knew her son was special from the moment he was placed in her arms, and meant it. what kind of weight do you think that places on a child? how impossible is it to live up to?
how can you tell your mother that you're having panic attacks in the penalty box when she flew to europe two years in a row to watch you win for once? when she sacrificed two years of her life, her husband, her daughter, because of the special boy you are? how can you even admit it to yourself? so you don't. instead, you become even more special. you become the second top scorer overall in the program's history. you put up 127 points in 60 games. you win worlds juniors tournament mvp. and you become special in other ways, too. the songs you listen to, the hobbies you pursue, the way you cultivate your friendships as intentional, precious things instead of the casual whoever-cares-less-wins entanglements of the hockey world. some of these softnesses are just for you, but others you share with the world, not as a vulnerability or weakness but as simply yet another thing that sets you apart. and you get to frame it that way because they love you for it. because everyone knows. you're a special boy.
(and then when he finds mack—mack who is the most special boy himself, who knows what it's like to bear the weight of all that specialness on his shoulders, who also sees will as special, the most special, and demands that everyone else see it too, but who never, ever asks more of will for it than will can give!!)