dekedangle_rpfanon | #23 — Brown Goes Down

#23 — Brown Goes Down

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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It was my first, too, but I didn't think it held up well on rereading. The whole bet/"rape" thing just felt even weirder each time and I itched to chop out pretty much the entirety of the reality show thing that seemed to go on forever.

na

I tried to read it when I got into the fandom, but that awful sex scene completely killed all interest for me.

What awful sex scene? I never read it because I couldn't get behind the pairing.
This thread is already giving me a lot of questions about the fic lol

ayrt

Ovi and Sid make a bet that if Ovi scores X many goals in a game (six? maybe?), then Ovi gets to fuck Sid, even though at that point I don't think either of them had expressed interest in guys or each other. So Ovi does score the goals and Sid shows up at his house and insists Ovi fuck him, and Ovi does because Sid keeps insisting, and Sid hates it, but he won't let Ovi stop.

I've read a fair bit of noncon and dubcon, written either for kink or for plot, and I have never had a sex scenes with consent issues bother me the way that scene bothered me.

ayrt

thanks for the summary!

I can definitely see why this would bother people since it would bother me, too. :/ Even just reading this comment had me going NOPE.

da

Yeah, it was a weird one where the dubiousness of the consent was on both sides, despite no external pressure being applied. But that was actually what made a lot of the fic interesting to me, them both trying to deal with the consequences of that and how they could find their way through it.

yeah, i didn't catch how dubious *ovi's* consent is until i reread that scene at a considerably later date and realized that sid *is* definitely verbally pressuring ovi for sex despite repeated "no's". i think a better fic could have done more interesting things from that start.

+ 1 on the consent issues bothering me when I usually don't have major non- or dub-con squicks.

Yeah, I agree with this. I liked the world building of it and them both trying to deal in their own (dumb) ways. And I think Ovi's coming out is more realistic than 99% of fics portray with the whole media shitshow.

ayrt

Yeah, the coming out narrative and the sympathetic portrayal of Ovechkin, despite the POV character being Sid, was another big part of why I liked it. Part of the different handling of coming out may be because it predates the NHL's partnership with You Can Play. New fics are dealing with a league that at least pays lip service to the idea that an out player would be welcomed, but before that? Not so much.

Even now YCP exists, most things I've read skim over the part where a Big Hockey Name would be a HUGE deal to be gay. Most tend to be "oh wait you're gay that's cool no one wants to report anything about this". And I find the that unbelievable. If it was some guy in the AHL, okay, but if Crosby/Toews/Benn etc come out then it is going to be media crazy. Even with YCP.

If the main thrust of the fic isn't explicitly about coming out as a pro athlete with all the media hype that goes along with it, I'm OK with pretending the fic taking place in a slight AU where people care less. Basically every fic in this fandom takes place in a slight AU where people are at less homophobic anyway, and I don't really consider one any less realistic than the other. But if the fic is about coming out, it seems weird that it's always so simple. I don't know if there's any fic in this fandom that deals with how complicated and, frankly, terrible coming out would be in a satisfactory manner.

Huge in what context? To whom? The US as a whole does not give a damn about hockey or the sexuality of its players. If Crosby or Toews came out, it'd be a pretty big deal to Canada, but most of the US still wouldn't care. And anyone lower on the food chain, I'm not sure how much Canada would care about, either.

Well, there's enough caring that there are no out players - the perception of caring is more important than the caring, it seems.

ayrt

Do you think that's really due to media pressure, though? It seems like that's more hockey culture itself, not, like, "What would ESPN say if I came out?" That's why I was asking in what context it would be a huge deal. Would it be a huge deal to the NHL itself, to its players/management/etc? I could definitely see that. I just have a harder time seeing it blow up huge in the media.

There aren't even (to my knowledge) any out *retired* players. Pretty much all the other big US sports have at least had retirees come out (starting with Dave Kopay coming out in 1975 after retiring from the NFL.)

Eh, the US doesn't normally care about hockey, but if an Crosby/Toews/Ovechkin type player came out while still active, that'd definitely make the news, and not just the sports news. Mostly because no elite-level players have come out while still active in pretty much any sport in the US that wasn't women's basketball or something we only hear about during the Olympics.

It'd be less of a sports story in the US and more of a "holy shit, this happened" human-interest type thing that liberals would hold up as a victory and Fox News would go on screeds about the decline of Great American Traditions about.

Nobody would actually start watching hockey over it, they'd just wank about it.

If a hockey player of any caliber came out it would make the news just because they're the first. Plenty of people watch hockey and the recent focus on LGBT athletes in other sports pretty much guarantees that people will talk about it. To think otherwise is just ignorance imo. It's hockey, not pro bowling. Plenty of people care.

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Basically this. (Fox News would definitely do that and I would die a little inside.)

Not sure I agree with your analysis, but whatever.

Fuck, mentioning "some guy in the AHL" makes me want BizNasty to be the one coming out (preferably as bi/pan/flexible/the most *Biz* wording the author can come up with). Because a) always here for more Biz fic and b) interesting things could be done with Biz's being twitter-famous imo.

I want more Biz fic too, but I have no idea who to ship him with besides hoards of pretty girls on spring break.

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I remember really liking it and then getting to the part when Sid's accepting an award and just flinching really hard. That choice of when and how to come out, after leaving Alex hanging out to dry, felt so selfish. It's why I've never re-read it despite expecting it to be a definite keeper when I was ~3/4 through the fic.

NA

So much of it is awful, but it was my introduction to the fandom, so I'm weirdly fond of it nonetheless. But that ending with the public coming out + relationship reveal guarantees that I will never reread it.

It worked for me both because it was an impulsive reaction to homophobia and to a perceived injustice, and because he'd already begun the process of coming out.

Like, he made the considered decision to do what he saw as the right thing in coming out and had already come out to family and team, and his rejection of the Hart was because of hearing homophobia towards Alex right there, and having a deep and sincere reaction towards it. If he'd planned to make a public announcement at the awards it would be different, but it felt reasonable to me. (Also, it really helped that the other person was Ovechkin; if there's one person I would feel confident would accept a huge flamboyant public gesture in the spirit in which it was intended, it's him.)

I guess I'm the opposite of you because I don't like the hockey parts and the characterisation that much in most of the fic, but the handling of the mutual pining and Sid's struggle with his coming out and final gesture worked well for me.

da

I don't mind the coming out. The end of the fic is cute. It's the almost-end when the one reporter character takes over where I start scrolling. I understand that the author was in a pickle conveying what was happening with Ovi via Sid PoV post-breakup, but "character watches TV for 20k" is not my favorite.

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