#its kinda like how its obvious that hes playing william as bi

[ghost-bard]

Me when i headcanon gillion to be just like me fr (aroace specifically demiromantic and gay and asexual and transmasc) (although him being ace is just canon)

[clarkewilliams-blog]

     hey lads!!! i’m reese ( 21, est, they/them ) and this here is clarke. i’ve played too many versions of him but i’ve revamped him a bit here to make him a slightly better player so he can have the contract that would let him fit somewhat into this rp lmao. all you need to know about me is that i fucking love hockey and my og team fucking sucks so all i’ve done for the past five years is love on prospects and watch them develop and ( sometimes ) make it to the nhl. so i apologize in advance for going absolute ham on the details of clarke’s path to the nhl no one cares abt. clarke’s a mix of some of my fav nhl prospects and players which i’ll list at the end if anyone cares. also i don’t really know anything about the rangers besides lundqvist being the king and how to properly pronounce skjei so bear with me here.

     i’m always super excited to play clarke, so let’s get to it!!!

          gregg sulkin. male. he/him.  ／  clarke williams just pulled up blasting high hopes by panic! at the disco — that song is so them! you know, for a twenty-four year old nyr defenseman, i’ve heard they’re really -private, but that they make up for it by being so +easygoing. if i had to choose three things to describe them, i’d probably say cold lakewater against sweaty skin, the cool shadows around a spotlight, and an easy smile captured by an unnoticed camera. here’s to hoping they don’t cause too much trouble! ( reese, 21, est, they/them)

THE STORY

--- clarke williams was born on the coldest day of december in a snowstorm, it was only fitting then he would love the cold like nothing else. he fell in love with skating long before he did the sport of hockey : he loved how it made him feel, how exhilarating and freeing it was. when he was eight, he picked up his first hockey stick ( a little LATE by some standards ) and fell in love again.

--- he ascended beyond his peers quickly, driving the game from the blue line even at a young age. his high school made a bid for the coveted state championship TWICE : once his freshman year and again his sophomore year. they never did make it all the way and that’s something he wishes he could have experienced. despite not winning it all, he was noticed by scouts and invited to the tryout camp for the us national team development program. he made the program and finished his last two years of high school with the ntdp in ann arbor, michigan with the u17 and u18 teams, respectively.

--- after his graduation from the program, he was selected in the second round of the 2013 NHL draft, 49th overall to the san jose sharks ( IRONICALLY, that draft pick was originally from the rangers ). he was scouted by the university of north dakota, quinnapiac, and university of minnesota; ultimately, he committed to north dakota, the first school to offer him a scholarship. his freshman year he was selected to team usa at the 18u world juniors where they won gold (2014 u18 wjc), and again his junior year to the 20u world juniors where they won bronze (2016 wjc).

--- the end of his junior year he chose to sign his entry level contract with the sharks instead of finishing his final year at north dakota : they made the frozen four all three years of his tenure, finally winning it all in 2016. it seemed like a fitting time to move on. waiting out the full four years of college and going to free agency had never been on clarke’s mind, the sharks were the ones who’d seen something in him, drafted him, and believed in him — he was always going to sign with them. he finished the 15-16 season on a professional try out with the sharks’ ahl team, the san jose barracuda.

—- the next season (16-17) he played for the barracuda and was called up at the end of the season when injuries plagued the team. he played well during the playoffs but was held to no points and the next season despite his best efforts, he was sent down to the barracuda halfway through training camp. that season (17-18) he was called up in january, once again the sharks made playoffs and he played in them, building upon his progress from the season prior. he entered the off-season feeling like he was in a good place and ready to work through the season, determined to make the big club in october.

—- however, that off-season brought chaos. he’d already flown into san jose for training camp when his agent called with news of a trade. clarke was sent to ottawa as one of the many pieces in the erik karlsson trade. but it didn’t end there, he was still packing when news of a second trade hit : he’d been flipped to the new york rangers in exchange for a third round pick.

—- he arrived at rangers training camp with something to prove, determined to show not one but two teams they’d made a mistake in trading him. he still didn’t make the team straight out of camp, but he played a mere three games with the hartford wolfpack before an injury hit the rangers and he got the call to join the big club. determined to not let this opportunity slip through his hands, he played his heart out on the ice, having an impressive breakout season and establishing his place as a talented two-way defenseman. he did not get sent back down that year (18-19).

—- this past off-season, the team took a gamble and signed him to a lengthy contract instead of a bridge deal, 6 years 4.5 AAV. he starts the first year of this contract this upcoming season.

MISC

—- clarke spends his summers in minnesota at his family’s lake house. he 100% has that dumb minnesota energy and posts videos of him wakeboarding all the time. when he’s not training and preparing for the season or playing in da beauty league ( a summer minnesota hockey league ), he’s probably on a boat. he’s most likely just returned to new york very recently.

—- very calm off the ice ; very easy-going and likes to keep things light. it’s his way with dealing with stress and pressure : just pretend it isn’t there and it won’t affect you.— he’s a hella private person but kinda not in an obvious way?? like he doesn’t share much about himself, esp what he’s feeling or even when massive things happen in his life; even his mom doesn’t know a lot of things that happen/happened to him. however, at the same time he’s extremely personable and friendly, which makes it not super obvious to his friends that they don’t really know a ton about him until they really think about it.

— “tough as a junkyard dog” ; “an absolute beast” ; will play injured ( i don’t condone this and no one should but i can’t stop him… ). there’s this large blotchy thing on his neck that kinda looks like a hickey or rash but it’s actually a three a half inch scar he got when he was 16 when a skate slashed his neck. he’s very lucky it didn’t hit his main artery. it runs from about his adam’s apple and extends toward the side of his neck.

—- he lives in an apartment with two of his teammates during the season, it makes the rent a little more reasonable.

—- ain’t no lie, baby. bi bi bi. ( but on the DL obv ).

—- hockey may have been in clarke’s blood; however, his mother knew the merit of clarke being a well-rounded athlete : he ran cross-country and track, played baseball, and lacrosse. he especially excelled at baseball, but he absolutely hated the practices, so his stint with it did not last particular long. but he had a tough competitive streak, doing well in xc and track, and even lacrosse to a degree ( it certainly helped spades with his hand-eye coordination ). he started focuses more on hockey once hitting high school.

—- SEHNSUCHT : it’s a german word that roughly translates to a yearning for the future, and can maybe be considered a rough antonym for nostalgia. it’s rooted in a belief of constant improvement and that perfection is impossible to achieve ( but that it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive for it anyway ). it fits will very well ; he’s not one to dwell on the past and is constantly working to improve himself and his game.

—- he really likes being high up, not because of any sense of ego but actually being high up and looking down at things helps him keep things in perspective ( everything is just a small part of each other ).

—- he hates when people worry about him which is real ironic since he worries about everyone else too much ; be it his team, his friends, or family. it comes with being extremely loyal. on the ice he hates to see teammates pushed around and pretty much will always do something about it.

—- he was raised by a single mother and he appreciates her very much #doubleshifting. it’s given him a humble outlook on life and for a while, he worked as a line cook in a diner to help pay for his hockey equipment. he never wanted to make the nhl for the money or fame, he just wanted to make a living playing the sport he loved. the most he’s made the tabloids was when he briefly dated a model/singer ( possible wc??? ) — they broke up after three months: she couldn’t cope with his schedule and said he was distracted from her.

—- he studied aeronautics in college because besides going into the nhl, the one thing he wanted to be was a pilot.

—- there’s this video of brock boeser where he says “y’know” 45 times in a three minute interview and that’s clarke trying to do media. ( like i said, dumb minnesota energy ).

—- PLAYING STYLE : clarke is an excellent two-way defenseman. his most prominent skill is his ability to skate. he’s very quick and evasive and very good on his edges. he’s good at defensive zone exits and capable of jumping up in the rush, and his speed allows him to get back quickly if he needs to. his slapshot finds its way through traffic and he’s looking to get more minutes on the second powerplay on the point. he can throw big hits when necessary and doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice his body to block shots. he’s good muscle on the ice when scrums break out.

—- 6’3” 201 lbs.

—- PLAY COMPARABLES: brendan guhle ( skating ability and speed ), seth jones ( two-way game ), jake mccabe ( physicality ).

—- PERSONALITY COMPARABLES : brock boeser, will borgen, casey mittelstadt ( just... dumb minnesota energy )

if you actually read all that... i’m very impressed and we definitely need to plot. i’m not one for listing wc’s mostly because i’m bad at them. i’ll be back later after my family thing to read intros, plot, and get interacting with you all!! 

oh also fun fact, i also wrote most of this without brady skjei in mind until i went on campfriendly to find contract comparables and i lowkey kinda accidentally made brady skjei huh.

[bigskydreaming]

A lot of the discussions about AoX and the stuff said about the X-Tremists has altered my view of some elements of all that, I’m not gonna lie. The X-Tremists definitely isn’t what I initially thought it was, and in the context of all the X-Men being heavily brainwashed and operating based on a selectively altered sense of self and reality, even if I still don’t agree with it, I GET the intention behind picking gay and bi characters to be the cast of this particular book. 

Like, I can understand how when focused on the end goal rather than the set up, there’s a satisfying payoff to it being gay and bi characters pissed at being shoved back into the closet who are the ones best positioned to figure out what’s really going on and fight back against it once they do. I can connect those dots, see how that story choice makes sense and has the sense of catharsis Williams talked about getting from writing it. From the angle of gay/bi characters fuck shit up because they’re not gonna take society or some higher authority determining who they can and can’t love, that fits.

In a lot of ways, its the compulsory sexuality story I’ve ranted for months about wanting to see in regards to Bobby’s situation and the fact that Jean’s actions are ultimately the reason he spent so long in the closet.

BUT. At the same time....that’s kinda the problem?

Because that story I talked about wanting to see with Bobby, it didn’t come from nowhere, I didn’t just go ‘oh hey what if.’ It came from just putting together the pieces that were already there. Everything needed to tell this particular story about being pissed at someone overriding your own sense of self and telling you who you needed to be for the sake of society, the timeline, whatever....it was already there. In the main universe. Already written. Every single element needed to tell that specific narrative was already in place.

Completely unacknowledged.

And I think that’s a big part of where my cynicism comes from, beyond just not trusting Marvel as a whole. Because the fact that this specific narrative was already laid out, already in play, hell, already the fallout of a Grey’s choices and mucking around with Bobby’s head.....without it ever being addressed, its hard to see how a five issue mini (that needs at least an issue or two to set up the revelations to the characters) can do for that narrative spread out among three gay/bi characters what nobody bothered to do with just one character in three years worth of opportunities.

(And if in the end it turns out by the time all of this is over NOBODY in-story has drawn the parallel between this and Bobby’s own narrative even before all this, like.....that’s gonna bug.)

But anyway. When you look at it from that perspective, as essentially the same narrative that was already set up and put in place and then completely overlooked for Bobby already.....then its hard to see this as anything other than gratuitous. Because that was already this same narrative, WITHOUT the fascist imagery and associations. Bobby already had every reason to be pissed - just needed those reasons to be raised and acknowledged - WITHOUT needing the trauma of being made unwillingly complicit in storm trooper actions heaped on top of how much he would already be fucked up from just the forced closeting. The painful catharsis of watching a gay hero push back against forces trying to make him something other than he is and wants to be, it was already locked and loaded ready to go - WITHOUT the trauma part of that narrative needing to be added to two other characters’ narratives additionally.

It just feels...unnecessary.

Like, I can’t stop fixating on that damn armband, is one of the things. I understand the in-story logic, that its ultimately one of the clues that makes them wake up to the realization something is very wrong, for Bobby to be wearing that. I understand that the intention there is for it to be a motivating factor for Bobby’s anger, making him intensely furious that this was done to him, put on him. But the thing I can’t understand is what makes the armband necessary to do all that?

Its not needed in order to leave bread crumbs for them to see how things are messed up and where. There are other options available, other ways to portray how things are different or wrong. I’ll never agree its necessary for THAT to be the thing that makes Bobby enraged. Like look at everything I was saying about his main universe storyline. Why not just use this to allow Bobby to have a different perspective on his lack of agency in all that and the how and why of his staying repressed for so long, have this second instance of telepathic meddling with his sense of self make the first more clearly obvious to him. Isn’t that already more than enough to make Bobby furious and intent on beating the fucking shit out of Nate Grey because he’s sick of not knowing how much of his sense of self is actually HIM and how much of it is the result of telepaths sticking their nose where they don’t belong, without any hint of remorse?

When its your perspective that the more offensive elements of this story aren’t necessary, its all but impossible to look at anything else. They’re the elephant in the room. The things your eye can’t stray from in those ‘what in this picture doesn’t belong’ games once you find them, because its so painfully obvious then that they don’t belong.

And the other thing, the big thing that I’m really upset at seeing so many other white LGBTQ+ readers dismiss or just trivialize....personally, I find it impossible to find empowerment in three white gay/bi characters who are used to police the romantic and sexual relationships of characters of color and especially LGBTQ+ characters of color. I get that this isn’t on Williams, that it wasn’t her choice to have the X-Tremists arrest Bishop and Bling specifically, that those happened in other books. But this is an area where editorial oversight - used properly - would not only be useful, but I honestly believe was NECESSARY. If you’re gonna tell a story like this, do an event like this, play with these themes specifically and talk about how its meant to explore intersectionality, about how intersections of power affect how an individual interacts with society and its institutions....you need to bring your fucking A game, and this event just didn’t. At all. 

You need to be conscious of the fact that Marvel has given its readers, particularly its most marginalized ones, NO reason to have any faith in them, give them any benefit of the doubt, after they’ve spent the better part of 20 years deliberately driving this franchise into the ground because they didn’t get any of the X-Men movie profits. Editorial absolutely NEEDED to be aware of the nuances of this story and be prepared to step in where necessary to prevent things like what happened with Bishop and Bling interfering with the intended point of the X-Tremists mini and costing it more readers. There should have been someone watching all the pieces, someone whose JOB it was to look at the script for NextGen and hand it back and say no, Ed, you can’t have the X-Tremists arrest Bling, you need to pick someone else, pick a straight white character. We’re not having three white gay/bi cops arrest a black lesbian teen for impure thoughts. Nuh uh, no way. Not happening. Same with Bishop. If he absolutely had to be imprisoned in order for the events of Prisoner X to unfold, there should have been a different reason, rather than a random out of the blue pairing with Jean Grey that gets him locked up and her a slap on the wrist. Like, how about the fact that Nate Grey - being from the Age of Apocalypse - is aware that Bishop being a time traveler enabled him to know the AoA wasn’t how events were supposed to happen, and preemptively locked him away because he was afraid Bishop would be similarly able to see through this altered reality and warn people?

Like, when you have a character LITERALLY playing God, as in that’s the entire narrative....deus ex machina isn’t a problem. It’s your actual story engine. You can set the stage however the hell you want and Bishop can be wherever the hell you need him to be with the only reason being Nate Grey arranged for him to be there because that’s where he wanted him to be, fearing he could be a threat.

But seriously, white LGBTQ+ fans need to shut the absolute fuck up about the instances with Bishop and Bling and stop talking over fans of color when they bring them up. Stop trying to minimize it or handwave it away as no big deal, like, that is ugly. That is just, plain UGLY. Stop telling fans of color and LGBTQ+ fans of color any issues they have with white characters arresting black characters for ‘impure’ and ‘barbaric’ thoughts and relationships...like, stop acting like these things are no big deal or that they’re not big ENOUGH of a deal to take away from the empowerment you get from three white gay/bi characters’ narratives. Stop saying the latter is what they should be focusing on, as if its the only variable here that matters, and that they’re just blowing things out of proportion.  Some readers developing a dislike for Bobby because they have to read and see him being depicted the way he is at the expense of characters of color - even if its not ‘his fault’ - like, some readers not wanting to read or see Bobby in stories for awhile or ever because they just can’t get that image out of their head, that’s a valid and understandable reaction to what’s on the page, what they can’t avoid if they want to take in this story on any level at all. Its a reaction EARNED by the narrative choices made overall, and if its not a reaction the narrative wanted to earn, different narrative choices needed to be made.

Honestly, the more I think about it, if this event was going to happen like it or not, if writers had to just make the best of it as much as they could, knowing editorial wasn’t going to be interfering on their behalf when other writers used their characters in ways detrimental to the first writer’s intentions....Bobby, Jean-Paul and Betsy should have been in the cast of Prisoner X, I think. Like, they shouldn’t have been the secret police, the guilty parties motivated by outrage at being used to hurt others like them, they should have been part of the ones who already had plenty of motivational outrage based entirely on experience with being told their love was impure and wrong.

LGBTQ+ characters IMO were already a natural fit for seeing through Nate Grey’s changes to reality, to be arrested for engaging in romantic and sexual relationships in defiance of society’s laws and arbitrary morals. It could have easily been built into the event itself that Nate Grey (who has never identified as anything other than straight) viewed the world through a heteronormative lens. And thus when ‘eliminating’ love and memories of it and things like that, he did so according to a straight person’s perception of what that looked like...and thus potentially overlooked where LGBTQ+ peoples’ experiences had taught them how to keep a secret part of themselves hidden away at the core of their being, their mind, where no one would stumble across any truths they weren’t ready to reveal. LGBTQ+ characters were already a natural fit to be caught breaking the rules of this society instead of keeping it to themselves and staying safe if they started to suspect something was wrong with the way things were....because they were the ones who had already defiantly pushed back against unjust rules and restrictions the first time they realized something wasn’t right with the way society told them they should feel.

The same is true of characters of color of any sexual orientation, given past laws against interracial relationships - I’m not expanding on that not to exclude them, but just because imprisonment narratives have a different context and history with characters of color and that’s not my lane.

But like, if the event was structured to remove the variable of mutant oppression and thus explore intersections of power when everyone was on the same field in that respect, its disingenuous to make up forms of oppression to highlight the flaws in a dystopian society when existing marginalizations already exist once the mutant metaphor is removed. Those already marginalized in our society should be the ones marginalized in that society, else you end up with a ‘what if straight white people were the oppressed and sympathetic’ narrative that nobody asked for. And I do suspect that part of the way AoX is structured IS intended to reflect that, to have LGBTQ+ characters like the X-Tremists and characters of color like Bishop play key roles in toppling Nate Grey’s dystopian vision....I just don’t believe making any of them the secret police works in FAVOR of that rather than against. If your marginalized characters are united by common experiences of being oppressed by straight white mutants once they in turn are no longer oppressed by humans, then you also eliminate the stuff I was talking about earlier, the issue of having an oppressed group fight to put things back to where they were more oppressed. Instead of SPLITTING your characters’ identities along different axes, with the world according to Nate Grey being better for them in the sense that they’re no longer persecuted for being mutants but worse for them because it tries to restrain their sexualities...they don’t need to prioritize between their marginalizations at all. These characters don’t have to ‘sacrifice’ a world in which they aren’t oppressed for one where they are, if they’re still oppressed by that society as gay and bi individuals even though they’re no longer persecuted for being mutants. That’s still messy as hell for a variety of reasons this long fucking post doesn’t need to see their unpacking added to it, but like....

Sigh. Thing is, I know I have a tendency to go off and running in some AU direction like “this is what I would do if I were writing this story” every time I’m critical of shit. Its honestly not because I think I’m the greatest writer ever or oh my ideas are so much better than everything else. 

Its just....I don’t know how else to say it, even though it fails to sink in every damn time I have a variation of this argument...I’m not critical so I can hate things, I’m critical cuz I want them to be better. I don’t come up with different ideas for how else to tell a story BECAUSE I’m critical of it and hate it as is. Its the reverse. I’m critical of stuff BECAUSE I can’t turn off my writer brain and I can see where things could be better or at least fail in new and different ways than the same old repeated mistakes (and thus at least get us closer to better, by eliminating more of what doesn’t work).

Like, I’m just so fucking tired of being talked about like I’m this bitter angry dude who just hates everything and is never happy with any content ever. I’m not angry and loud when I criticize shit because I’m thinking like “This thing you like offended these three people and thus its fucking terrible and you should feel bad!” I’m angry and loud when I criticize shit because I’m thinking “This thing you like offended these three people AND IT DIDN’T FUCKING HAVE TO. THAT CAN BE AVOIDED.”

I don’t posit all these alternative scenarios when I criticize shit because I’m thinking that doing it any way other than my way is bad, and I’m just an egotistical jackass who will never be satisfied with any work other than his own. (LMAO, hell no, I’m insecure as hellllllll about my work, like lolol. How critical I am of other shit is nothing compared to how critical I am of my own).

Point is, when I do that, I’m only doing it to say like....see, look. Here are alternatives. If I can find some, other writers can too.

But other writers have to LOOK for alternatives in order to find them. They have to have a REASON to write things differently than what they already wrote. THAT’S WHAT CRITICISM IS FOR. TO GIVE THEM THAT REASON. TO TELL THEM THIS DOESN’T WORK THE WAY IT IS, BUT IT COULD WORK IF YOU DO SOME OF THESE THINGS DIFFERENTLY.

And when people say “lmao some of you just need to go the fuck outside, like calm down and let people enjoy shit for a change,” what that ACTUALLY sounds like to some of us is “well this thing works for me as is, and thus I see no reason to care about it being better for the people it doesn’t work for or actively offends.”

It’s honestly depressing as hell how many people on this site smugly reblog that “I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people” post, only to turn around and five posts later complain about criticisms of a show they like and are perfectly comfortable with as is.

Its not about telling you that you should never enjoy anything ever. Its not about saying well this thing offends us, and if we can’t enjoy it, nobody should.

Its just like.....its great that you enjoy this thing but wouldn’t it be better if you could still enjoy it and all these people who AREN’T able to enjoy it because of these reasons could now enjoy it more too?

People shutting up about the ways content offends or hurts them or people just settling for sucking it up and dealing with the microaggressions in a creative work, like those things shouldn’t be necessary in order for you to enjoy content or be comfortable with what you’re reading or watching. 

And if it is, that’s a you problem and if you could PLEASE stop projecting it on to people who just want things to be better and more enjoyable across the board - like that’d be great kthxbai.