#24 – Not Sure If Serious or Playing Dumba

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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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Comments

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

I'm wondering if it might be a n00b thing. Because I've read so many fucking fics featuring dressingless salads and reduced-salt cassava chips and one egg white omelets for about five years now and it's all all turned out to be directly contrary to actual articles about how hockey players (both generally and individually) eat, morally tied to players' seriousness about their sport, and (somehow! conveniently!) in line with the eating habits of a five foot tall women on a weight loss diet, all of which are things that fans here and elsewhere have pushed back on, so I can't understand how you could be around for any of that and feel like stories of an NBA player counting out each precious almond is a thing anyone ever needs in their life. How does Phil Kessel count out his ~forbidden~ hot dogs, one wonders.

Also, you make a great point about how, even if it were true, no one wants to fucking hear about it.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

Hockey fandom has gone through a couple of phases on this. You don't see egg white omelettes and diet food like you used to, now that people better understand calorie requirements, but you still get the obnoxious self-shaming and "indulging." I get that it's people/women putting their own cultural programming onto their characters, plus it's just something to talk about in a fic besides "they ate a huge pile of chicken and pasta for dinner," but it's a lazy go-to for a lot of long-time writers (there was a recent offender) that's both inaccurate (dudes just eat junk or they don't IME, they don't angst about it) and also drags in all this stuff I don't want to see.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

NA It's especially frustrating because so many of these guys have given video tours of their homes. You can see the junk food in their kitchens. Johnny Gaudreau: canonically confused by produce.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, especially when they all say, "Oh, our nutritionist better not find out about that," with about as much sincerity as middle schoolers say, "Of course we didn't cheat on our take-home test."

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

Well, the Pens employ Gary Robesrt partly to do dietary stuff, right? He's a huge clean eating guy and plenty of players follow his guidelines. I agree most fics that touch on diet have excessive angst, but I don't think it's a big deal for a guy to waver on, say, ordering a pizza rather than having something nutritionist-approved.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

It might be realistic, and it might have no effect in a vacuum, but neither of those things means that it needs to be in a fic at all, much less to be tied to morality. Like, if you were writing a fic about Brooks Orpik and had him eating nothing but chia seeds or whatever, cool, he probably does that. But if you had that as a major plot point, or leaned hard on it for no reason, or had it as a direct moral contrast to Alex Ovechkin chugging a Coke before a game (a thing that is also realistic), or had every Capitals player on a 1200-calorie chia-centric diet, etc, your fic could be not only stupid but also actively gross given the intended audience. I'm sure there are plenty of players who are super into nutrition, even to great extremes, but there are also plenty of players who aren't, and the things you choose to emphasize in a fic aren't immune to criticism because nutitionists.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

Plus, being aware of your calorie intake doesn't mean you're necessarily eating healthy. You can just as easily meet that calorie goal by cheerfully having a giant slice of chocolate cake as you can having that meal of chicken and broccoli.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't say they were immune to criticism. I agree that it shouldn't be tied to morality. I just don't think we should go all the way from "hockey players live on organic kale and are shocked by candy" to "hockey players live on chocolate cake and pie and wouldn't recognise a nutrient".

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

hockey players live on chocolate cake and pie and wouldn't recognise a nutrient

Wow, not just a ridiculous strawman but one that no one in this thread even remotely suggested. Pretty impressive. Congrats, I guess?

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

Well, we've gone as far as "confused by produce". But re-reading this thread you seem to be spoiling for a fight, so carry on I guess.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Because Gaudreau literally can't tell an eggplant and a plum apart. That is an actual thing that has really happened. I think the main point here is that any sort of fixation on players' diets is boring and probably inaccurate in fic, unless we're kinking on Gaudreau's sugar stomach aches.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

NA

Gaudreau literally can't tell an eggplant and a plum apart. That is an actual thing that has really happened.

Nonnie I require proof of this.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

http://video.flames.nhl.com/videocenter/console?id=888541

@~1:09. He is confused by many a squash, as well. Josh Jooris also considers himself something of a father figure to "the little guy," for those of you out there who are into such things.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Aside from Gaudreau's confusion over vegetables, the thing that strikes me most in that video is how impersonal all of the decorating is. Boy can you tell that a decorator did that entire place, right down to the throw pillows.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter and unsubscribe to everyone else's.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

Sadly, I don't think Gaudreau is all that alone in that matter. As someone who used to work in a grocery store, people know about a dozen (being very generous here) produce items that they purchase regularly, but give them a new recipe to try or something like that and they are completely flummoxed.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

In general that sounds plausible, I do see new things I don't know in the grocery store every once in a while, but - plums?! Are plums rare in North America?

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

That's just so alien to me. But then my reaction to seeing a produce item that I don't know what it is is usually closer to well, let's try one! And then googling what to do with it.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, you're so above a fight but you keep responding. Makes sense!

A team can employ all the nutritionists in the world and that doesn't change the fact that individual players may fall (way) more or (way) less in line with the party line and, more importantly for the purposes of this argument that you really don't seem to understand, the way you portray it in fic can very easily be stupid, gross, damaging, etc. Like, sure, I can imagine a single player somewhere out there ~wavering~ over whether to eat a slice of pizza. But that doesn't mean that putting their moral dinner crisis in your fic can't be weird or completely unwarranted, no matter what kind of nutritionist their team employs. And framing it as a war of completely healthy nutritionist-approved perfection versus all cakes and pies all the time is actually feeding right into the gross food morality that you are claiming to be against.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

"And framing it as a war of completely healthy nutritionist-approved perfection versus all cakes and pies all the time is actually feeding right into the gross food morality that you are claiming to be against."

Poor reading comprehension or deliberate misinterpretation? One can never really be sure.

(frozen comment) Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

I just don't think we should go all the way from "hockey players live on organic kale and are shocked by candy" to "hockey players live on chocolate cake and pie and wouldn't recognise a nutrient".

no u

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I think there are both good and bad ways to handle this in a fic.

I was completely thrown out of a fic that I really wanted to love because of a couple of guys going out to eat and "this only has 600 calories!" being a thing, followed by the OMG-so-guilty! splitting of a dessert.

On the other hand, especially when you've got a guy who is known to be strict about the diet side of training, or superstitious in a way that food is part of, I think that can help with the characterization. Like, there was a thing where a bunch of his teammates were chirping John Tavares about "don't let him plan the Super Bowl party or we'll all be eating kale chips with our guac and that's it!" Doesn't mean I'd want a fic full of him obsessing about diet, but the friendly teasing or a one-off mention that's part of establishing that this is not just an Any Two Guys fic? I like that kind of detail, so YMMV.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

OP who originally vented

Yep, this is what I mean. Certain players are famous for being health nuts (Toews dragging Brad Richards to a smoothie place in Tampa) or junk food addicts (Gaudreau, Neal who can't cook?) but what I really hate is when any of the zillion guys between those extremes are finishing up dinner and doing the want-to-but-I-shouldn't dance about dessert, or similar scenes. It's shitty cultural programming anyway, but specifically feminine in the west, and I feel like I'm watching a yogurt ad or reading a mainstream romance novel, because female guilt over wanting to eat "decadent" food is often subtly tied to guilt over wanting sex but being a good girl. So it doesn't just bug me because it's factually inaccurate, but because it brings in all that baggage.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

NA
Yeah, I'm not a fan of when fic spends a lot of time on what they ate or when they ate it even when there isn't guilty feelings attached, but I especially don't like when having a piece of cake is presented as some huge internal struggle, or they talk about how hard it is to stay on the meal plan or whatever. I don't consider myself somebody with major issues around food but I've realized I don't enjoy it being a big deal in my fandom spaces, and that's probably because of the media pressure stuff you're talking about. It sucks when you feel like you can't escape it.

Re: Hockey Media

[(Anonymous)]

NA

Most guys I know who are really health conscious will give themselves a day where they're like, fuck it, I want ice cream, so they get ice cream. As much ice cream as they want. And they eat it that day. But anything that's left over the next day gets given to their significant other or thrown out, so they don't have two days where they eat a ton of junk. None of that splitting dessert bullshit, unless the dessert in question is an entire cake.