dekedangle_rpfanon | #24 – Not Sure If Serious or Playing Dumba

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

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https://archiveofourown.org/works/7117963 - Burn Your Kingdom Down

I really enjoyed this one. The magical realism tag is misapplied as per normal, but it's a nicely done fantasy horror story.

(But, man, I wish fandom could agree on a way to tag stories that are mostly gen but do have some ships in them. I don't disagree that gen is the right tag for this fic, and they did note the background ships in the author's notes, but I hate that there is no easy way to say "this fic is gen in subject matter but contains references to non-canon/reality ships" without pissing off either the person looking for "pure" gen or the person looking for actual shipfic.)

I also really loved the horror elements - I thought it was really well done and creepy in parts. I really enjoyed how the relationship between Taylor and Jordan was written, although the ended felt a little - neat? I don't know, I think I either wanted more 'closure scenes', or (shocking, I know) less.

Agreed on the ending. Actually, in general, I felt like the balance and pacing were sort of off. It was a looooot of exposition, then finally some horror/action that was cool but definitely could have been cooler and less contained, and then boom, a neat little summary of what happened after. Way more readable and likable than most of the similarly-flawed fics I've read in this fandom, though.

It felt kind of a like a loose end to me that although they discovered what it was after they realized it wasn't a revenge curse for Gretzky's trade, they didn't discover why it was. How did it get started? If it's bound to Rexall, why not just build a new arena (which the Oilers are doing in real life anyway)? Now that it's unbound, will it disappear or float about until it gets tied to some other poor team?

I was fine with how the Taylor & Jordan stuff went. Mostly because I think they deserve to have their own separate fic. Any closure scenes would have felt wrong in Connor's POV to me, I guess, instead of their own.

I thought the fic did mention building a new arena after that, err, demon (?) left, with that whole "a new beginning" thing. I thought it was tied to Rexall and the Oilers as a team in general, but I wasn't super clear on it either.

AYRT

The fic did mention that they were building Rogers! I meant that I didn't understand why moving hadn't been tried in the past, not after the whole thing was over. I thought it was just tied to the arena, but maybe it was tied to the team too, which makes me wonder if a name change would help. Maybe that's the real reason teams get moved to new cities.

ayrt

Oh right, got you! Maybe it was just because they didn't understand the "curse", lol I'm willing to handwave it.

Also that sounds like a really good (spin off) plot idea, I'd love to read that! I always love to see more creepy things and that would be so neat either "historically" or as a speculative future fic~.

Wasn't there something about it being from the hockey gods since they didn't like the Gretzky trade? Personally, I think a level of uncertainty is central to horror-type stories, and I can't really fault a teenager who came in for the last act for not being an omniscient narrator.

I felt like it should have ended when Dylan confirmed that they were successful, leaving whatever happens next to the reader's imagination. I really did enjoy the story, though.

I don't think meme will ever be satisfied by an ending, lol.

This was a good ending. Closure. We have it!

I was joking about how some people would have preferred it without closure now that we have it, haha. Although full disclosure I've never really had an issue with this fandom's endings and have actively thought people were Wrong about calling something a non-ending on here before.

About your parens, I think the author did the exact right thing for a situation like you described where a fic has a so-called non-canon pairing in the background by not tagging the relationship and putting it in the author's note. Putting that author's note in doesn't seem very hard to me? I"m not sure what you mean by there being no easy way to do it.

Centeral Mystery & Ending Spoilers:

That said, I don't think Taylor Hall/Jordan Eberle are a background pairing in this fic. Connor McDavid is the POV character, but their relationship is still a major plot point. I think this particular fic would have been better served by having both the gen & slash tags added in the "category" field.

I liked this fic. I'm not into super creepy horror stuff, and I thought there was a good balance. Enough horror to make it feel like there were real stakes, but not so creepy that I'll be dwelling on it in the wee hours of the day.

SA

Sorry, for the spoiler tag fail requiring a second click. I did not mean to nest that last paragraph inside the other one like that. Oops.

I actually found some parts of this pretty creepy, which I liked because I haven't had an experience like that while reading fic in a while. I also liked Marner and Strome working together as a spell casting/breaking team, that's not something I remember seeing before in fic and it worked well for their relationship, I think.

The dream legitimately unsettled me.

ayrt

That was the part that got to me too! I've read other curse fic in this fandom but this one most effectively conveyed the feeling of something watching/stalking you and there not being anything you can do to prevent it or stop it.

I enjoyed the description of the thing a lot it really sounded creepy and unsettling.

I probably wouldn't have read this if it hadn't been posted about here but I really enjoyed it! There was a little too much exposition but I'm guilty of that when I write too.

#24 – Not Sure If Serious or Playing Dumba

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