Upon seeing Capitolium donating CA$500 to her, and the fourteenth achievement being earned, Caro then makes an announcement:

"Sorry for cutting the stream short tonight, but this buzzkill makes me not want to keep streaming the remainder of the writing of game seven in Winnipeg!" Caro announces to her viewers, much to the dismay of some.

With 14 of the 16 achievements already earned, and the final 2 still 7 days away, Caro now stands at a crossroads. Should I still aim for 100%ing NaNo, or just cut to the chase and write the offer sheet arc right away, in which case I must give up on the 100%. Because I don't think revisiting every chapter to make them wordier is going to go well with my viewers, who have come to expect a certain style of writing from me! Making my chapters wordier is only going to make me a writer that I am not! At the rate at which I wrote past chapters, 7-8k words is about 3 chapters' worth of extra content I need! That means I could have Gus introduce Emma to his Latvian parents after the heartbreaking loss to Winnipeg, but before the Hockey Worlds. Yet, that's only 2 chapters. I could have the Gunners extend him his QO then, or I could do so after the Worlds, her brain's lightning speed makes her head spin.

It also dawns on her that she could have Gus' parents announce to him that he made the team for the Worlds, and then reunite with his parents in Stockholm.

As she continues her research into Latvian hockey culture, she also makes Gus' parents plan their vacations around them, as some of the wealthier Latvian hockey fans do. For them, it was seemingly more important than the Stanley Cup, and the Hockey Worlds were almost a patriotic duty to them.

Yet, it seems like the voices from that Latvia game resurface in her mind when she reads about the fanaticism of Latvian hockey fans. And not simply the Latvija! Latvija! chants she kept hearing during the game against Latvia. That, even though, in the actual game, there were only a handful of Latvian fans in the crowd at the old Colisée de Québec, mostly parents of players on either U13 national team, relatives of their coaches, or players on the boys' U13 NT (Latvia qualified both U13 NTs at the Pee-Wee Worlds that year).

"Sarauj!" the hallucinatory voice of the Latvian head coach's brother yelled at her.

"What does sarauj mean?" a confused Caro asks herself, not knowing anything in Latvian, and rolling her eyes.

After failing to get an answer from the hallucinatory voice, she also has flashbacks of the designated Latvian national anthem singer, a player, singing Dievs, Sveti Latviju (i.e., the Latvian national anthem) at center ice before Ô Canada could be sung, in French.

The following day, Marie-France DMs her on Discord about the consequences of the heartbreaking loss Gus endured in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. After Caro started to write the chapter where Gus gets back in touch with his parents:

Marie-France: The Hockey Worlds? You know that it's not a best-on-best tournament

Caroline: To Latvia, it feels like the Stanley Cup playoffs to them, so I wrote this chapter about his parents telling him and his girlfriend he made it to the Worlds

And, of course, teams advancing past the first round in the playoffs are off-limits, with Canada and the US being the countries affected the most, and, of the top 10 hockey countries, Latvia is one of the least affected, Marie-France's words about how the Hockey Worlds were not a best-on-best tournament resonate with her. This means a couple of his teammates, current or former, will make their respective countries' national teams at the Worlds.

With these hockey considerations out of the way, she begins to write the chapter about Emma being introduced to Gus' parents.

And, of course, this means that Gus must tell his parents, whose English is very poor, about her. As well as how foreign the notion of long-distance relationship is to them, along with how to maintain one. With, of course, Emma feeling very "Latvian" to them, at least physically. Which then makes Glitter DM her later that day:

Glitter: How could Emma remind Gus of these Latvian girls? Their accent would be the main way to differentiate them

Caroline: Gus believed Emma to look the same as some other Latvian girls her size

He probably saw Québécois girls for the first time at the World Juniors since he would have played at least once in the editions staged in Canada. And how, to him, they have more or less the same range of beauty as Latvian ones, and both nationalities are known across the hockey-playing world to have pretty girls, Caroline ruminates on Glitter's remarks. I guess, I could write Gus making Latvia's NT as not making much of a difference. Except that she would root for Latvia at Worlds because Latvia, while a regular fixture, is a relative underdog at the highest level of international hockey.

Glitter: Your manuscript doesn't even read like a hockey romance anymore!

Caroline: What do you think it is then?

Glitter: A sports comedy with a romantic subplot

Caroline: Maybe you would appreciate the book better then

By now, Caro knows about how some romance readers might prefer internal conflict, and assume that a relationship has no impact on life outside of it. Unless sacrifices endured by one side drive a plot point, or an arc even, Glitter is also reminded of how some romance readers would even eschew external conflict entirely, and write purely about how characters interact.

Glitter: Since you appear dead set on 100%ing NaNo, you just added an extra arc about the Hockey Worlds that can be removed

Caroline: If you knew what kind of NHLer would make a national team for the Hockey Worlds, you would realize that Gus would be a lock for playing at the Worlds

Glitter: Your story is very heavily skewed towards external conflict, and follows a cycle of games and then back to each other; it feels pretty monotonous for someone who knows nothing about hockey

Caroline: The opposite would be equally monotonous to me, but I think I could remove the whole Hockey Worlds arc, just not right now

Glitter: Then why did you go to such lengths to describe how the Hockey Worlds are not a best-on-best tournament?

In the past, I read a romance book whose sources of conflict were purely internal and 90% of it was inner monologue of the individuals and dialogues between each other, with no trace of their lives outside the relationship. I stopped reading it by the 80% mark, Glitter starts thinking about past experiences with the sort of romance books Caro is describing. My favorites are books where the off-relationship impacts feel natural.

But then Caro returns to writing the scene where Emma meets with Gustavs' parents virtually. Gus' parents, in Kraslava, seem a little uneasy about Emma being Gus' love interest but have a lot of questions about Quebec, about which they know only about him having played for Montreal, French language and how fanatical Québécois are about hockey.

Caroline: She decides to root for Latvia at the Worlds, despite Latvia not being in position to win, out of love for Gus

In Montreal, a lot of people would know about Latvia only as some opponent of Canada in international hockey, if that. She then learns from Gus' parents what Latvija and sarauj mean to Latvian hockey fans. Then again, while I knew what Latvija meant for years, it's only now that I feel compelled to learn what sarauj means.

But when, on Monday night, Caroline starts streaming, Capitolium, on the other hand, is knee-deep into writing the downtime between an emotion-rich Game 7 of the Courteau Trophy final, with the MMC scoring its game-winning goal, and the Memorial Cup. Don't forget: a strong performance during the Memorial Cup, one of the most difficult championships to win in hockey, might make my MMC redeem himself from a WJC that didn't go as well as he hoped, to the eyes of the NHL at least. And I may as well make my FMC feel like the MMC's obsession with his draft stock is unhealthy from her POV.

"Tonight, we are discussing a topic that, for those who read the draft-day scenes in the manuscripts of either Caro or me, will hit a chord. Draft-eligible players' draft stock!" Capitolium starts talking as he writes the period prior to the Memorial Cup.

"Oh, for sure, NHL teams tend to overvalue how players perform on the biggest stages: the WJC, and, for those who can't play there, the Memorial Cup and the Frozen Four" Caro shares an observation that might be of interest to those who could be interested in the transactional aspect of hockey. Or, at the very least, on draft day.

"Frozen Four? What's the Frozen Four?" Sampoong asks, shaking his head.

"The Frozen Four is the American college hockey championship, although the Frozen Four proper refers to its last two rounds" Caroline answers the Korean viewer's question.

"And, in hockey, you have these myriads of junior leagues, both in Europe and in North America, of varying competition levels, which complicates things a lot..." Capitolium follows up on Caro's answer.

"Which makes scouting very much of an art, rather than a science. Marie-France contributes to the discussion of scouting. "Scouting goalies has challenges of their own"

"But while the NHL is more about drafting for what is called BPA in the hockey world, a lot of busts end up being busts in part because the teams that drafted them focused on some type of need, or had flashes in the pan" Caro adds, while she continues to write about Gus' parents learning more about Emma.

A lot of hockey fans tend to obsess over what they perceive as the next big thing, especially when one is a fan of a struggling team. So I may as well show my MMC's insecurities over the draft, going into the Memorial Cup, and also his team's, especially after they traded out of the first 4 rounds for the next 3 years just to even play here, Capitolium starts showing his cast's vulnerabilities going into the Memorial Cup.

"What the hell am I hearing? You seem to be talking about sports psychology! There are those people who seem to taper off in their effort after reaching a milestone, either because they exhausted themselves just to reach it, or feel that, once they get there, everything will sort itself out over time" Glitter comments on the role of attitude.

Maridun: Yet, here, I feel like there is such a thing as too much!

By this point, Caro begins writing the pre-game speech for Latvia, but unlike a lot of her previous voice acting performances, here she portrays Gus' mom before he gets into the locker room for the game:

"Honey, you know the drill by now. You wore the national team's jersey, I hope you understand that just playing on the national team is not the end of the story, much less when you step on the ice and play against Finland!" Caro puts on her best imitation of a Latvian accent.

And she then writes about putting Gustavs in to start the game, while, on the opposite side, the starting Finnish center is a player he played with and against. Nattinen. Who wins the opening face-off moments after the national anthems are sung.

From this point onward, the streamer seems to write much faster than she did prior to this point, but she must devote some space to how both Gus and Emma feel, separated by an ocean, and not just the play-by-play. I feel like Glitter will scream at me if I neglect the more emotional aspect of the story. Heck, even if I dropped all pretense of Player Masher being a hockey romance, I still need to introduce some emotional bits!

Later in the stream, however, she keeps a close watch on her daily word count, along with the clock, hoping that she doesn't overshot, or miss the deadline for it to count for the day.

Yet, Sampoong reminds everyone of the harsh reality of the game Caro is playing:

"Looks like I'm dangerously close to hitting the wall!" Sampoong is about to give up on the game Caro used to play on air. "Now I feel like I'm not making any progress!"

"There's no shame on giving up a game if you find it not fun anymore" Marie-France reacts to Sampoong's statement.

"After what I've seen of the competitive aspect of the game, on Twitch, I quit!" he then uninstalls the game.

I've been playing this game less and less on air, waiting for the next battle pass to come out, which won't come out until January 1. But until then, I feel like I would be better served just spreading the Worlds arc into 2 chapters, if I want to stick to my guns and do the extra words in 3 chapters. And draw out the time where Gus meets his parents in person before the game somewhat, Caroline sighs, feeling like the next few days are going to be a slog, and forcing her to choose which games to pick for the second chapter on the Hockey Worlds. But I'm not about to give up on 100%ing NaNo just because this part of the book features more games!