#about the idea of bodily autonomy and self-sacrifice or sacrifice in sports

[crossbackpoke-check]

what are ur thoughts on the winners room trope?

ooooo okay surface level analysis: i like winner’s room fics :)

etwas tieferes: i think it’s cool that it’s (afaik) unique to hockey fandom and i enjoy the way it integrates a lot of unspoken rules in hockey with desire/makes them a physical/tangible reality… also the narrative potentials/world-building it opens up can be fun because there’s not really a set of rules for the “winner’s room” trope. are there in-universe rules? who gets chosen? who’s exempt? who gets to pick? where’s it going down? is it the entire room or one guy? what if your (ex)boyfriend is on another team? does somebody need to be taught a lesson or do you need to remind someone who got traded you still love them? also, most important, winner’s room gives you the chance to put two random-ass guys you saw interact for 0.002 seconds and went “hmmm. interesting” about into a Situation and i love that

#yeah buddy!! i love answering questions!!! unironically i have so many opinions!!!! #refraining from putting this in the main text but had to go: yeah who doesn’t love a good g*ngb*ng #it also doesn’t just have to be a bunch of dudes fucking though per always: i think winner’s room fics can bring up interesting dialogues #about the idea of bodily autonomy and self-sacrifice or sacrifice in sports #every fic can utilize a trope their own way so you might have lighter versions or heavier versions and #tw: sa #dub-con/CNC elements which. given the truth of SA and abuse in hockey it’s valuable to have tools to explore and i feel like i need to #address that when i talk about this? obvi dead dove do not eat for some fics re:winner’s room but i think a lot of them do talk about #control and power to some extent if you were to do a deep literary analysis. which we don’t need to. sometimes it’s enough to read a fic one #time because you liked the main pairing and didn’t know SHIT about the flyers and then come back to it years later and absolutely lose your #goddamn mind about the fact that actually you DID know about travis konecny before you thought you did and at one point there were all these #guys that you now know and love who were just like. random fuckers in the sides of the fic. i tend to do that a lot bc i will read for #nearly everything (if i love u. i will read your works even if i don’t know anything about the fandom and also i am always willing to jump #on new ships) so also tangentially i think winner’s room fics are a lot of fun because you can see a lot of different interactions between a #lot of guys like not only is it this guy and this guy but also this guy and that guy and these two interacting around the sacrifice etc etc #tangled web many layers und so weiter. not sure if any of that makes sense but also i’m gonna tag for mentions of sa/wjc/hockey canada stuff #i don’t even really know if winner’s room functions as well even in other sports bc of the Team Identity in hockey & cultural context #liv in the replies #winner’s room can be layered with SO many other kinks and tropes and aus and also just like. i like it & that’s probably all i needed to say #also obvi re: rules for trope there aren’t ever any there’s just some popular variations and we can kinda see some of those forming #but i’m not even sure if winner’s room has its own tag on the archive? i’d have to check i know i have a few saved in my bookmarks at least #OH also if you made it this far. wasn’t sure if this was like a ‘do u got recs’ or a ‘what’s your moral stance’ or ‘hey is this something ur #into’ so. good faith good vibes y’all and if this wasn’t what u meant please elaborate the question i do love answering things #ty for the ask!!!! #for the record i do watch hockey like the leonardo dicaprio pointing meme finding milliseconds of interaction to go HAHA GAY NARRATIVE about