Ugh, yes, hockey culture. Boarding school plus hockey culture? Doozy. How do you think it affected mack, specifically?
I saw some of his ex gf's tiktoks of them and i watched because I was curious about his formative years. Yikes. I was struck down hard by themes of exploitation and growing up without parents around, and tbh, i think it reveals a lot about how his idea of family and relationships and women is probably really messed up and/or distorted at best. Boarding school kids are a different breed, but toss in hockey culture around that, ooof. I think will's experience is much different, as brutal as the ntdp is. He always had a parent onsite and very likely wasn't bonking girls when he was 14.
I'm gearing up to read We Breed Lions. I'm familiar with the case having read about the details in media reports years ago but may save it for winter depression season ðŸ«
hmm not sure wym by exploitation? mack’s ex was a child dating another child who sometimes posted abt her bf like any high schooler. imo consensual underage sex with a longterm gf is a totally normal part of the teen experience which should absolutely not distort anyone's view of relationships or women, and in fact was probably the healthiest part of mack's childhood. i do agree will prob was not bringing girls back to the plymouth house for colleen to whip her up an extra plate of eggs in the am (tho worth noting at 14 he wasn’t in the ntdp yet).
look, regular boarding school culture mostly isn’t that bad, just a bit weird. mack also only attended ssm for a year (and apparently remembers it and its choco milk fridge v fondly). more striking to me is that mack went from being homeschooled doing hw in the backseat of his teammates’ parents’ cars on the way to the rink, directly to covid hockey boarding school for one season, before moving to chicago to play for the steel for another season, before becoming THE 17yo freshman at BU that everybody knew was leaving next year for the show. the kid talks about how hard the move from vancouver to san jose was, but he spent his formative teenage years bouncing around from team to team, city to city. he was the new guy on every roster, in every locker room, every year, and the best guy at that (which is much better than being the worst guy, but still so isolating and hard). he never had the chance to put down roots; i'm not sure that he ever wanted to. why would he, when it would only mean ripping them all up again in a matter of months?
he was always new, and he was always the best. think of how fucking lonely it must have been there, alone at the top. everyone knowing he was above them; everyone knowing he was just passing through.
do i think mack was hazed the way you’ll read abt in wbl? no, for many reasons: bc he was always the best; bc he had a father who seems involved enough to have noticed and connected enough to have pulled mack out of any truly bad situation; bc he had aiden looking out for him at shattuck's and in boston; bc his only year without aiden was spent with a seemingly kind billet family in the ushl, where hockey culture is less insane than in the ohl, in what i am sure was a very intentional choice by rick celebrini. that said, i think the objectively crazy trajectory of his juniors career—how he learned not to grow too comfortable with any one team; how he learned to slide seamlessly into a locker room and latch onto one best friend, then drop them equally seamlessly when he slid right back out; how he learned to love his parents and siblings deeply, intensely, but from a distance—all conspired to form him in very specific ways. this is what i mean when i say that mack is undersocialised, that he’s not always loyal, that he sometimes leans on will to bear the brunt of building team camaraderie on both their behalfs, the same way he did with aiden and jayden perron and lane hutson. that he doesn’t know how to be anything other than his best attempt at a Real (Hockey) Boy. it's not me disparaging mack; it's me mourning his childhood.
but think, even so, of how far he's come!— mack now, who likes cookies’n’cream ice cream and wants to improve his chip shot, who plays catan with toff and dickie and goes to broadway with the boys; who facetimes will "all the time" because finally, finally, he's latched on to somebody who latched right on back; who openly gushes over how much he admires will and loves his team. look at how happy he is to regrow his roots in san jose: how fucking delighted he is to get to stay!
amandla
jacobvanloon
kianamaiart
gummygunk
andulkaphoto
titsay
