Rin

If you were to return to Yor Bjorven's hometown and ask of his origin, nary a soul would be able to give you a satisfying answer. Residing in the small town of Akranes, Iceland, Yor Bjorven is most known for his quiet, welcoming presence behind the bar of a local tavern-style brewery and pub. A venue rich in wood paneling and rustic decor, it's a small hole-in-the-wall type of spot in an already sparse and close-knit town. With only a few employees on hand to pour fresh meads and beers, and perhaps cook up a bar snack or two, Yor Bjorven and his small crew are revered as local legends for those in the know. The stress and trouble of any bad day can be washed away after a night within those walls, surrounded by naught but good friends and good drink. Of those legendary few, however, Yor Bjorven sticks out as particularly mythical. None know where he lives, as his nights ends with him retreating back into the more mountainous regions of inland Iceland. Like the age-old American legends of Paul Bunyan or even Johnny Appleseed, the 6 foot 3 inch brickhouse of a man retreats into the wild to live as he so pleases. Sometimes, he returns with a cooler full of fish to cook as a special for the evening. Occasionally, he'll return with Duck or other poultry that, assumedly, were felled and collected by his own two hands. Nobody has ever seen Yor Bjorven outside of the small town, and none can vouch for what happens when he leaves its premises, but one things for certain-- all believe that he's an extraordinary man, capable of anything he deems possible. Naturally, Yor Bjorven's true origins are entirely unknown. The only thing known for sure, confirmed through the lips of the man himself, is that he is a proud, native Icelander. None have tried digging deeper into his past, for nobody cares to know or pry. All are fond of his gentle, giving soul, and are happy to simply live, let be, and enjoy the times before them. While hockey is a small and ever-growing sport in the country of Iceland, it finds itself popular enough among a small group of people within the limits of Akranes, Yor Bjorven included. When drink and dinner aren't enough to wipe the stresses of a long day away, the inner circle of Akranes find themselves out on the pond or at the local rink for regular games of pick-up ice hockey. It's here that Yor Bjorven continued to add to his legend, and begin a hockey journey that would eventually see him off into the VHL system. Leveraging his six-foot-three frame and his unnaturally graceful movement, the mythical Icelander commands respect within the crease as the city- nay, the nation's- best goaltender. Sharing a laugh and friendly competition with the regular patrons and staff of his bar, Yor Bjorven commands respect as he calmly positions himself to leverage his large frame and keep pucks out of the net. It's this dominance, combined with his odd man-of-the-land, that earned him the nickname of "the Icelandic Ironman." Of course, Iceland isn't a nation known for it's hockey pipeline whatsoever. Only a select handful of esteemed Icelandic individuals have played in the NHL at all, none if you consider only the more modern era of the world's iconic hockey organization. Any Icelandic players made their mark on an early 1920's era game. In the VHL, only a single player of Icelandic origin has made into the upper echelon of the system-- current Vancouver Wolves blueliner, Einar Mathiesen. Through 97 seasons of the Victory Hockey League, Mathiesen hold the claims to being the FIRST Icelandic player to partake in a major league game. By starting this journey, Yor Bjorven hopes to become only the second, and additionally the first Icelandic goaltender to make it. Notably, The S91 Ottawa Lynx goalie Olafur Gunnleifsson came close to staking the claim for himself, but fell just short as he topped out as a serviceable goalie in the VHLM system. It's unknown just who made it all the way out to Akranes to scout the local beer league game which brought Yor Bjorven overseas. Whoever spectated the event left only a letter on the door of Yor Bjorven's tavern, inviting him to come and try out against top-tier North American talent in the VHLM. Not one for the bright lights or fame and fortune that comes with being a professional athlete, the Icelandic Ironman would have promptly turned down (or rather, ignored) the offer were it not for the encouragement of his fellow beer-leaguers and tavern dwellers. Moved by the support of those closest to him, the burly Icelander said his goodbyes and swore to send a majority of his salary back home, so that the tavern and town might live just a little bit more comfortably. He departed by boat the next morning, venturing off to the United States and Canada to enter his name into the VHL draft. With a little luck, and a large application of his talents, he hopes to etch his name into the VHL's history book. For those watching at home. For the livelihood he sought to protect, to improve. For Iceland. 879 words Mentioned: @xsjack

In the dying moments of season 97, a wave of new players enter the VHLM to help bolster rosters in a final push for the playoffs. Included among them is a young Yor Bjorven, a man known affectionately in junior hockey circles as the Icelandic Ironman. Donning the jersey of the last place Mississauga Hounds, the silently intimidating goaltender prepared for a small stretch of starts that would serve mostly as a taste of overseas competition; a way to gain his sea legs before the S98 draft and subsequent season, as it were. With expectations low and focus set on settling in, few eyes would be set on his first career start against a league-toping Miami Marauders squad. And yet, despite the large disparity between teams, the game ended in a 2-1 nail biter in the dying moments of the 3rd. As expected, the Hounds were outshot and outplayed, but a young Yor Bjorven stayed calm and collected while giving the team a real chance to win. The final box score attributed 31 shots to the home Marauders to the mere 12 of the visiting Hounds, with Bjorven exiting the ice having turned away 29 of 31 for a save percentage of 0.935. With only a few matchups left to go, the Hounds will mostly look to secure a win for their freshly debuted goaltender. While there may be little left to play for on a team level, there's still plenty to strive for as scouts and general managers begin to look toward the VHLM's S98 draft class. What may appear to be a bleak situation now could easily bear fruit as the calendar gives way to a fresher start.

1) As miserable as it would be to not be able to experience music, I'd probably have to go with deaf. I feel like you can practically work your way around deafness easier than you could work around being blind, thanks to an uncountable number of accessibility tools and the invention of languages like ASL. From a purely practical standpoint, you have more ways to overcome it, I feel. 2) Yor Bjorven would choose absolutely nowhere. Bundled up happily in a small Icelandic city is exactly the place he longs to be, so much so that he tends to get incredibly homesick during road trips. Perhaps there are many places with greater opportunities and experiences, but home truly is where the heart is at the end of the day. 3) I HAVE to put anime recommendations in a question like this-- Frieren and Oshi no Ko are the current one, two punch that I've been onto for a while now. Really hoping the former gets a second season soon. I don't normally go all-out on watching/finding shows though (even anime) so other recommendations would be pretty basic-- Better Call Saul was phenomenal, I've heard a lot of good things about The Bear but still have yet to watch, Mad Men was a phenomenal watch and I really need to get back to my rewatch of it. Avatar: The Last Airbender was a really cute, easy to cut through series that I finally sat down and caught up with lately, and I don't regret it. ----- 1) Would anything ever cause you to primarily root for a different NHL team, or are you a guaranteed devotee for life? 2) The VHL openly considers starting up an All-Star weekend in similar vein to the NFL, where players are put through obstacle courses and dodgeball tournaments. What events would you suggest should be included? 3) What animal makes for the perfect "team/locker room pet" and why?

It really rolls off the tongue, was hard not to turn it down in my head

Transaction ID: 62634084BF8393259 5 uncapped (Claiming 2/2) Free Week Doubles Week (Claiming 2/2)

Player Information Username: Rin Player Name: Yor Bjorven Recruited From: Returning Age: 23 Position: G Height: 75 in. Weight: 238 lbs. Birthplace: Iceland Player Page @VHLM GM

48) A little predictable given the date/timing questions, a little cliche since it's always a big talking point for the NHL and other leagues when the time comes. I think highlighting it even further this year made it noticeably more disappointing when nothing of note happened. 50) Hilariously, I think more roleplay-focused communities would make for a decent recruiting target. It feel like it'd be far easier to convince roleplayers to type out articles or create custom graphics (essentially, do creative homework) than people who are into hockey but not into arbitrary online activities. I always pictured us closer to a complex D&D group or roleplay forum than a "Be a Pro" community or however we marketed ourselves in the past. 51) Sure, I don't see why not. I would want a little more effort to go into the actual advertisements themselves, though, and perhaps a bit more research toward the right creators to approach. The "just like Be a Pro" campaign we had some time ago brought over a LOT of (noticeably younger) people who thought we would be more like the EA NHL games, who then left upon realizing that everything revolved around text-based box scores LOL 53) It's going to be tight, but I think we have the talent to squeak into the playoffs and it's hard to feel bad about that. I think we could truly give any other playoff team a decent run for their money, but it's hard to deny that everything going forward is an uphill battle. 55) I've always loved what is essentially fake hockey. CPU vs CPU, managed by human players that put together rosters and put time into team identities, branding, etc. I love that the VHL is a big community of other people just like that, literally just a whole bunch of us taking up one small role to create something bigger than the sum of its parts. It's also a consistent creative outlet that gets me into hobbies I would otherwise struggle to do on my own, like write or edit photos. 56) No, and I probably never will be again. Around when I first joined, it was a pretty open secret that the league's Discord general chat was the worst way to engage with the community, and that stigma has just passively lived with me ever since. Even if that's changed, I think I'm just entirely exhausted with/over the idea of big Discord servers anyway. If you're not terminally online, discussion is way too easy to miss or keep track of. You could spend hours doing nothing but typing away in conversations that have little staying power unless something controversial or outright rancid was said. For trackability, ease of use, accessibility, respect toward one's time, and even recordkeeping, I feel like forums are far more useful. I'd much rather scroll through discussion threads that get a more thought-out reply every now and then than dozens of instant thoughts being sputtered out as quickly as they're conceived.

Last in a series of sigs inspired by Rin-featured albums, I've finally gotten around to making a sig based on my favorite album cover. Using Hikarisyuyo's "Day's Footsteps" as a reference, we've got a pretty simple design that I honestly ended up putting way too much work into. In all honesty, this would have been one of, if not THE first album I used as reference if I had played for a red team earlier in my career. Now that I'm getting ready to retire Rin and recreate into my fourth player, I really regret not putting a little more into Rin's career than I did. This run was plagued with quite a bit of inactivity, which isn't at all what Rin deserves out of me. It would have been fun to look back at an entire career's worth of album-inspired signatures, but only three ended up being completed (with one of them kept generic because I hadn't found a permanent destination yet). Notably, all three albums chosen were Hikarisyuyo albums, which is remarkably fitting. He's been a consistent producer of j-rock featuring Rin for YEARS, and he works closely with my favorite vocaloid artist in the scene by far- NEGI. I discovered her artwork shortly after getting into vocaloid music as a whole, and her unique art style made it so easy to pick out her work in a crowd. She's done work, officially, for vocaloid/Miku (Crypton being the company at large) a number of times, and I've even been beyond honored to have her draw a fair amount for me through commissioned works. I love how the vocaloid scene is built on the backs of not only musicians and their works, but also the traditional artists that support and help bring their visions and imagery to life. It's why I love collecting physical CDs from various producers-- so much effort goes into the overs, the imagery on the discs, even the little lyric books that are written in a language that I can't read. It's been a pretty alright career for Rin as a depth piece, here's hoping Seattle can add one more cup to her resume. Having her become my first player to win multiple cups would be a wonderful sendoff for someone that holds such a special place in my heart. For fun, the other sigs and their references: And, of course, my favorite song from the album:

Coming back to this with an interesting addition-- totally forgot I have access to Clip Studio Paint, which targets itself as more of a drawing software but happens to have a LOT of the features I'm looking for out of a Photoshop-like tool. I started dabbling with digital drawing late last year (and own a decent enough drawing tablet to supplement that), maybe I can marry two worlds and find something that really works out here.

I feel like it's becoming tradition for me to throw some thoughts like this together in a .com article for 2 TPE, so here's hoping this is the last time it ends up happening. For the majority of Rin's career, I ended up going entirely inactive. I thought it would be fairly easy to at least keep up with boosted welfare and a practice facility click every week, but something about this run really just didn't stick. Even with my player taking the form of someone I really wanted to see succeed, I wasn't able to keep up the motivation to update. Only recently have I returned, and it's mostly because I knew that it would be within reasonable time to recreate and start anew, which is always a fresh and exciting experience. I'm glad Rin has stuck around in the league as a cheap and rather important depth piece for some teams. In my absence, she was able to pick up a Continental Cup victory as a member of the Riga Reign, which means every one of my three players has been a Continental Cup champion. I'm glad that's a streak kept alive, it's about the only modicum of success I could have asked for with a ~500 TPA player. This time around, I really think the VHLE completely killed my momentum and desire to keep updating and checking scores. Now that I've had multiple players hit the bigs and compete at the very top, even returning to the VHLM can feel a little bit dull or "tutorial" -ish. Adding an entire extra year of padding between the M and the pros only increased the impatience and feeling as if what I was doing meant nothing, especially given the situation I was thrown into. Literally the only active player on an actively tanking VHLE team, no locker room or GM interactions to speak of, not giving a remote fuck about results because the story was the same every time; Rin picks up a few points, perhaps, but the team loses because nobody else is playing. Eventually I stopped giving a shit and stopped trying, and when the time came to finally jump to the big leagues, I had already moved on to other things. I'd like to say that I've had really interesting projects going on during that period of inactivity, but I'd be lying. I mostly hung out with friends and bullshitted around after work. I've been introduced to a newer in-person friend group, so I've been transitioning into someone who actually regularly has things to do and people to see (I still don't know if I like it or not LOL). Despite that, I'm still left with a big hole where some kind of creative drive exists, and stupid hockey roleplay with other people on the internet is a fantastic outlet. I really can't wait to recreate and get back into some kind of VHL rhythm. It might be a stupid idea, but I really want to recreate with another goalie. I really, really love goalies and feel like i'd be more likely to fixate on my player if that was the role I played. Here's hoping I'm not overpopulating the position.

Oh no, I'm with you for sure. Even worse where I'm at; it's a tiny company so we're additionally expected to QA, and the boss is so disorganized that we also end up having to become project managers. I'm regularly handed stories that aren't remotely close to done, and am expected to be able to fill in the gaps with assumptions. The other dev on the team is complacent with this, mostly because he's been here for almost 5 years and is so used to this bullshit that he CAN just make the correct assumptions, so now I'm also expected to. Shit is out of control and I'd really like to be somewhere else, but I'm still working fully remotely and can, for the most part, just coast. Super hard to give up.

Not a bad point LMAO I think, thankfully, some of the alternatives are good enough that the bravery isn't required. It's always on the table, though