#23 — Brown Goes Down

[dekedangle_rpf_mod]

This is the twenty-third post of Deke Dangle RPF Anon, a community for all your ice hockey anon meme needs.

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Comments

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

There were multiple people on ffa the other day going "I'm not into hockey, but that fandom has such good porn." We've come so far!

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly, I was out of hockey rpf fandom, but the Dylan Strome Sex Tears genre pulled me back in.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

Out of all sports fandoms, I feel like hockey's got the most fic (second being soccer?). I wonder why that is..

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

Baseball rpf fandom was larger back in the day, but mostly on locked LJs since Deadspin decided an article about baseball rpf incest fic was newsworthy. There's some archived on Ao3, but a lot is gone.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

SA
Basketball rpf apparently also had a good showing on LJ as well, though not as large as baseball, but again didn't make that jump to Ao3. I think ionthesparrow was trying to make NFL rpf happen, but I don't think it worked.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

DA Football RPF seems to have a pretty steady flow of fic, too--not a ton, though. It's a bit like hockey fandom pre-2010.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

NFL football or soccer football? If the former, recs?

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT Soccer Football. Sorry, should have clarified!

I'm not actually in the fandom, so I can't make any person recs, but you might try looking around FFA. There seem to be a decent number of nonnies over there who are in the fandom, and they tend to have a Football RPF thread going on most posts.

Two of the most recent threads with recs:

http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/182515.html?thread=990350835#cmt990350835 (These are all gen/team fic)

http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/181309.html?thread=985058109#cmt985058109 (Long comment with general recs/rivals-to-lovers recs)

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know much about the soccer/football rpf fandom's output nowadays, but it's a huge fandom, I would guess still considerably larger (in terms of extant fic) than hockey rpf. It only partially migrated to AO3. I always felt like it was a fandom where I could never run out of things to read, and that was back in 2006.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

There was another article written about baseball RPF on a site that's pretty respected in those circles (like, GMs freely admit to reading it type of site) that quoted huge chunks of several fics as well. I think they may have been around the same time, and it basically killed the fandom. Which was a shame.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

Some reasons that spring to mind:
- Existing fic creates more fic, people are more willing to write stuff (especially for RPF) when there is existing characterizations to get excited about.
- People are more likely to get introduced to it in a fandom context, I grew up with hockey but I bet for some people writing about the NFL for example if that was something you grew up watching with your family might be awkward.
- Very white, fic I've seen for other more diverse sports still favour white players as subjects.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

I also think a bunch of BNFs getting into it at the same time helped with the 2010 and 2012 fandom expansions.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, and the whiteness is not just about individuals, but how the sport as a whole is perceived (hockey players are classier than other athletes, more down to earth, etc.). I feel like it ends up fitting something of a "hipster" niche for a lot of people who otherwise don't like sports and who really look down on sports like (American) football and basketball.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Yeah and could say the same for soccer (second most popular on AO3) in North America which has a similar white hipster niche thing.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

na

I think one factor is also that hockey and soccer are more of an international thing. I know people have said hockey isn't as mainstream as other sports in North America, but outside that those "popular American sports" really don't have much presence at all. So I think part of it is also that hockey is more popular or at least more known in Europe for example than basketball/baseball/American football.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

Baseball is pretty international, albeit, not in Europe.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

na

Apart from the fact I love ice skating, this was a huge thing from me (I'm from the UK). I know nothing about baseball and American Football but ice hockey has sort of similar rules to regular hockey. It helped I already knew what the purpose was to hockey (to put the puck in the net) while American Football I'm still lost, despite who knows how many TV shows feature it (do you put the ball over a line? Do you run with the ball for a certain distance? Does it work if you kick it?).

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

I think only people who've grown up with the sport and imprinted on its culture think hockey is classy. No one else looks at a sport with that much fighting and violence and thinks it's classy.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

Nah, there's definitely the idea that hockey players aren't as 'flashy' and 'showboaty' (ie not white) as other sports. Which basically boils down to them having media personalities of wet cardboard. Hockey seems less tolerant of big personalities than other sports, and people confuse boring and media trained with classy.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, but again, that's coming from inside the sport. People who aren't into the sport - especially people who aren't into any sports - don't just walk in and take that narrative as given. At least, none of the people I've known who've gotten into hockey. They all get here and go "LOL wtf."

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

Haven't we debunked the myth of media training yet?

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, and people also see every "good" thing hockey players do as "evidence" of the sport's moral superiority. The r/hockey threads and comment sections every time a hockey player visits a children's hospital, good lord.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

The coded use of "classy" is often used separately from violence or dirty play, people will decry player for not being "classy" with stuff like celebrations and attitudes in interviews. I saw someone call Matthew Dellavedova "classy" because they thought he gave a humble interview lmao.

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

na

In the US at least, hockey is not really universally well-known like the other big 3 sports, and if you aren't from somewhere where it gets cold it's easy to have zero exposure to it (I knew nothing about the rules before I got into the fandom). Pair that with the fact that fandom is full of nerds like me who turned up their noses at "sports" growing up, and it makes hockey and hockey culture feel new and interesting, versus a mainstream thing like NFL football.

(I actually came to hockey from another sports rpf fandom, and was just a mainstream fan of that team before I went looking for rpf, but it still took me years to get over the instinctive "ew sports" position I'd had since high school.)

Re: Fic Discussion - Deja vu

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

I mean, I think you're not wrong (speaking as someone who was very "ew mainstream sports" in high school), but the conception of what "mainstream" jock/sports culture is versus what "new and interesting" hockey culture is is very obviously conditioned by the racial demographic of sports' athletes and fans.