That’s no good! I spent too much time playing today that I must rush writing about the insecurities of draft day! Curse you, Capitolium, for making me delve into the intricacies of draft day! And why prospects are the hardest class of assets to properly assess in trades! The speed at which Caro wrote the antepenultimate chapter of Player Masher makes her head spin, and she feels like it’s shaping up to be one of the worst parts of the book. But this means that her version of the Flyers, the Constitutions, are going to shop players around the league, in hopes of getting something from them when they still can.
Caro’s father keeps reading the newest additions to the manuscript whenever he could the following day. When he talks about these to her, around the breakfast table:
“Tabarnak! Tu niaises pas avec la rondelle!” (You don’t fool around with the puck!) “Ton personnage principal a été ballotté, puis échangé, et maintenant il a peur d’être échangé de nouveau” (Your main character was waived, then traded, and now he’s afraid to be traded again)
“Pôpa, hier soir j’avais l’impression d’écrire trop vite pour mon propre bien” (Dad, last night, I had the impression of writing too fast for my own good)
And I barely scraped together the requisite 1667 words, since I came in at 1700 words for yesterday. I really wonder how I stack up, quality-wise, compared to other NaNo entrants. Some of them, too, write fast to satisfy the challenge’s requirements, Caro starts thinking about the harrowing experience of writing about draft-day insecurities last night from a player’s perspective. And often they give up or fail in some other way from what I heard.
“Tu es peut-être inexpérimentée, mais tu as du talent” (You might lack experience, but you have some talent)
“J’ai peut-être du talent, mais j’ai du talent pour une et une seule chose comme écrivaine: intégrer le hockey dans la trame narrative!” (I might have some talent, but I am good at one and only one thing as a writer: fitting the hockey into the plot) Caro retorts.
I guess, better believe one’s talent is very narrow in scope than no talent at all… Caro’s dad sighs.
And then Sampoong DMs her, not on Discord, but on Twitch, about streamers she might want to “raid” after her own stream ends. That is, have one’s own viewers offloaded onto another stream.
Sampoong: Here are a few streamers you could raid in the coming nights, schedule permitting
All right, some Discord servers to join, at least for the rest of the month, Caro peruses each streamer page on Twitch, looking for Discord servers, whose links are normally posted elsewhere on the page containing schedules.
And people on these servers who attempt NaNo themselves have a variety of projects in progress: yes, romance, but also mystery, fantasy, horror and other genres. Perhaps Glitter might like some of the romance or horror books other people do for NaNo… she then proceeds to DM the links to the romance book manuscripts to both Sampoong and Glitter, and horror ones to Glitter only.
Glitter simply devoured the romance WIPs as they come, and these came at a variety of lengths. I guess, some relationships start out non-abusive, much like Caro’s, but some of these books don’t turn into abusive relationships until much later. The non-abusive ones I liked best were slow burns or friends to lovers. And the only thing that could redeem Caro’s book in my eyes is making sure that Gustavs continues to behave normally towards Emma, despite his financial superiority over her. And, of course, put in more stuff happening between them, outside of the hockey-related chapters!
At night, when the stream begins, Caro starts by getting the daily battle pass quest done, and then she tells the other viewers about what Capitolium reminded her of last night.
“Last night, Capitolium, who, by the way, started writing his chapters out of order, reminded me of how prospects are the hardest class of assets to value in trades. Like I get it, draft day trades are the only time where you can see picks traded away on their own. However, outside of draft day, picks are traded away for the other two, and the other two for each other” Caro explains to her viewers, now including some hockey romance fans.
“Why do the media call certain teams buyers and sellers? How do you think players feel about the deadline?” Sampoong asks, in a Korean accent.
“The media call teams buyers and sellers based on the roster players being traded. Buyer teams trade away prospects and picks for a shot at winning the Cup. Selling teams trade players away to get more picks or prospects” Caro answers the first question, having laid the groundwork for the answer to the second one. “If you’re on a selling team, the deadline would induce anxiety in players, be it because you bounce teams a lot or because you played for several seasons on a team you got loyal to, and you lose your sports identity overnight. If you’re on a contender, there’s more nuance”
“On top of that, what makes prospects so difficult to gauge trade value for is that there are so many variables in a player’s development. But, in general, the further away from the NHL a prospect is, the lower the value, ceiling being equal” Capitolium adds.
Lagado joins the voice chat for the first time. “I wonder why is it that the draft is almost never in sports romance books, even without any draft-day trades. You would think that a college athlete or, if hockey, major junior, would have found a kiss on the draft floor romantic”
The draft should be easier to fit in a plot than the transactional aspect of the sport. Try fitting the transactional aspect in a basketball romance book: it’s far, far more complicated to deal with cap hits and free agency. You have stuff such as the mid-level exception, the trade exception, Larry Bird exception, the luxury tax, the first and second aprons... Give me the NHL’s salary cap structure any day, Lagado reflects on what to expect from both Capitolium and Caro. Trying to make sense of the NBA salary cap would be enough to write a novella about.
“Once again, that was very instructive for me, but I am made to feel like trading is not an exact science” Sampoong comments on an aspect of the transactional aspect of sports.
Marie-France: You might never know when a player can get injured, or whether a player needs either a specific system or to avoid another one to play well
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Jacques: The media is often too quick to anoint a team a winner in a trade
Football is the most system-dependent sport I know, and hence trades happen much less often in-season, Lagado is reminded of this discussion of how hockey is the only sport with all 3 classes of assets. Football and basketball have draft picks but not prospects, baseball has prospects but not draft picks. I guess you can call rights to a non-roster player, prospects in football or basketball, but they aren’t usually worth nearly as much as in hockey or baseball.
Maridun: What are the victory conditions of trades?
Jacques: Usually, winning or losing a trade is about which team had the better players
While Caroline’s own draft-day scene would also feature trades that are more reminiscent of a trade deadline deal than the classic “picks-for-picks” deals that happen every year, she struggles to think of a deal that could make a team worry that Gustavs could be next. I might be wondering: what kind of trade do I want to see trigger Gustavs’ anxiety? Ideally, I would want a pick in the top 15, but outside of the top 5 because I know that a lot of attempts are made every year to trade into the top 5, yet none succeed for whatever reason. They are the trades more likely not to be pure “picks-for-picks”. Like Romanov and pick #98 for pick #13, which was then traded away by the Canadiens, along with pick #66, for Kirby Dach.
As with Capitolium last night, albeit on air as opposed to off it, she puts on a voice acting flair for the first draft of this line in her manuscript:
“We have a trade to announce: Seattle trades Tuukka Nattinen to Buffalo for picks number nine and seventy-one in this year’s draft, along with…” Caroline stops reading the line, feeling that something is amiss.
“What’s wrong, Caro?” Sampoong asks her, seeing Caro having some kind of malaise.
“Remember what I said about prospects being the hardest to evaluate in trades? While I don’t plan on keeping track of every team’s standings, I just didn’t want to just pull some prospect out of nowhere! Especially when I don’t have said prospect play, nor have Buffalo play Montreal as a plot-bearing game!”
“Yeah, Caro, even without throwing in a prospect, having another player traded away for just number nine and seventy-one is enough to make Gustavs feel like he’s next! Unlike me, you’re not doing it from the POV of a potential draftee!” Capitolium tells her.
I improved by leaps and bounds this season. I am due for a big raise, but it seems like my current team can’t afford it. However, Nattinen, also playing on a team with a player or two due for big raises, makes me feel like I could be next, Caro writes Gustavs’ inner monologue, and then have him text Emma, in French, about how he dreaded this year’s draft day. With, of course, updating the word count.
This makes me feel far too much like the hockey version of Draft Day, that these two writers are, for their respective current chapters anyway, relying too much on the sort of “by-the-numbers” storytelling that only a statistician would love, an amused Lagado watches the two writers discuss how players approach the draft.
“I’m afraid our runtime for tonight’s stream is over, so I will raid another streamer momentarily” Caro announces, while updates her word count and then checks Twitch’s directory against the list of potential streamers to raid that Sampoong gave her this morning. Once she enters the command in Streamlabs…
Caroline’s stream ends, and her viewers are now treated to another stream of another NaNoWriMo participant, writing another book on air as well.
“Thank you for the raid!” LegnicaWrites, the host streamer, or Legnica for short, tells Caro’s viewers in a Polish accent. “For those who joined us from the raid, who among you take part in NaNoWriMo?”
Caroline: Me
Capitolium: Me
Legnica then announces a new sprint, or word war as they are sometimes called. “The next sprint is for twenty minutes, and you have five minutes to submit word counts for the sprint. The winner will have their name announced on air!”
Unbeknownst to the pair, Glitter somehow watches Legnica’s stream (even though Legnica isn’t her real name, it is her hometown).
Oh boy… for the next 20 minutes, I must go in deeper into the draft day scene! About how he practically agonizes during the first day of the draft, freaking out whenever he hears the words “We have a trade to announce”, Caroline furiously starts writing said scene. I won’t let Capitolium, nor Legnica, get away with this writing sprint!
At the same time, Capitolium appears to be running out of steam as he finishes off the scene where his MMC and FMC are kissing each other on the draft floor, with his MMC wearing Washington’s jersey. Now that I have settled for Tyler September as a prospect traded away to Pittsburgh on draft day, along with #17 and #70, I wonder how the World Juniors arc will proceed, and how much chemistry my MMC will have with the FMC by that point.
It seems that several of Legnica’s preexisting viewers are locked into a writing sprint with the two newcomers, and Caro makes Emma respond to him a little late into the first round. When he’s busy watching the draft at a teammate’s home, with his teammate’s family.
However, it’s obvious that Legnica is at a disadvantage because she must respond to viewers on the chat while she writes, whereas the other sprinters don’t necessarily chat during these 20 minutes.
Kind of like Sampoong who normally watched Legnica during weekend afternoons (Daegu time). I began watching Caro because the main Korean MAA streamers left the game, I first watched Legnica when she played Caro’s game for a few days. Caro might be pretty, but she has the build of a hockey player, and not necessarily as fit as one. Legnica, on the other hand, has a slenderer build. As much as their bodies are visible on air anyway.
At the same time, Glitter starts praying that both Capitolium and Caro keep quiet about hockey when watching Legnica’s sub-a-thon.
“Often people will ask me about how to create tension in a romance book without having incompatible personalities in the lead couple” Legnica responds to a viewer question.
Glitter: You can have “Why choose”, external factors, like the off-relationship life interfering, age or wealth gap, power dynamics, slow burn, to name those that I read
Incompatible personalities, such as grumpy x sunshine, bad person x good person are very common. Caroline understood that not every romance story needs to have one, Marie-France prays for Caroline’s success in this sprint. Read enough romance books, hockey or not, with incompatible personalities and you’ll wish for a book without these.
At the same time, Capitolium has finished writing the ending to his book, which he called The Penalty Box of Passion. He is also reminded of what it would mean if he chose to have the MMC play for a team in Quebec vs in Atlantic Canada.
Caroline feels like she needs to push herself harder as the clock ticks in on her, as well as the other sprinters (or belligerents). And her hands start shaking. Every word counts; I must finish the chapter about the draft! When the sprint ends, sprinters have a 5-minute window to post their word count for it.
She refrains from posting first, feeling like her efforts could be for nothing if she posts too quickly. And the viewers turned out to write at various speeds, from a writer who barely managed 100 words in 20 minutes, to, well, herself, writing around 500 words.
“And the winner is...” Legnica tells the viewers Caro’s Twitch username, and then makes a shoutout to her. “Could you please tell us about your project?”
There’s a reason why romance lovers tend to love reading about incompatible personalities in a couple, and some people swear by specific incompatibilities. And certainly some people who read books that Caro called horror books in all but name, Glitter feels compelled to talk in Legnica’s chat, as well as hit the follow button. And join Legnica’s Discord server, as both Caro and Sampoong did. However, Maridun, Marie-France and Jacques all left by this point.
“Thank you for the follow...” Legnica then tells Glitter’s Twitch username, of which Glitter was a shortened form.
Glitter: The “so what” tension source tends to melt away for me if you have two people with sufficient compatibility who can hook up and things will work just fine; I tend not to get as invested in the couple, nor in the resulting will they or won’t they