Post by styg on Jun 7, 2015 10:58:46 GMT -6
#np the sea wants to take me. the knife wants to slit me. do you think you can help me?
Memory is a spiteful and capricious bitch. Jolts of static fracture the most important moments of my existence. Friends' faces are scribbled over in magic marker. Hills and streets and fields and buildings bleed into one another, squirming under glass plates of vibrant desaturation and shards of contrast no real light source could ever replicate. And that's before the drink and drugs and the concussions.
I don't remember the grace period. When the soil fell across Christum Furor's eyes and a prophecy faded into darkness, was there an indivisible instant of respite? A reset? Or were the end of Gods & Monsters and the upwelling of stakes and dotted lines and barbed wire and trenches two refractions of the same event in spacetime?
I don't have the answer to that, and at this point it's never going to come as the shapes and spaces become distorted through passage, but one thing above all about that night is burned into my memory like it was happening right now: it was the night that, with the common enemy vanquished, the people of EXODUS turned on each other again. The 17th of November 2014. The night Orestes slew Clytemnestra, and a flare went up for The Kindly Ones.
I don't remember the grace period. When the soil fell across Christum Furor's eyes and a prophecy faded into darkness, was there an indivisible instant of respite? A reset? Or were the end of Gods & Monsters and the upwelling of stakes and dotted lines and barbed wire and trenches two refractions of the same event in spacetime?
I don't have the answer to that, and at this point it's never going to come as the shapes and spaces become distorted through passage, but one thing above all about that night is burned into my memory like it was happening right now: it was the night that, with the common enemy vanquished, the people of EXODUS turned on each other again. The 17th of November 2014. The night Orestes slew Clytemnestra, and a flare went up for The Kindly Ones.
#np do you realise that everyone you know someday will die?
Wait. It is happening right now. It's always happening.
If there was a lull it was nothing but the break before the next wave, the silenzio poi subito fortississimo, the inception of the incalzando. The snake went back to its meal of its own tail. The needle jumped back into the groove that skips. The irony was not lost on at least one person in the office: repetition of hatred. Repetition of filth. Repetition of acquisition. Repetition of the self. Like a sitcom, everything goes back to normal at the start of the next episode. Lessons unlearned, doomed to the same script over and over, the same punchlines with barely a variation in the setup.
If there was a lull it was nothing but the break before the next wave, the silenzio poi subito fortississimo, the inception of the incalzando. The snake went back to its meal of its own tail. The needle jumped back into the groove that skips. The irony was not lost on at least one person in the office: repetition of hatred. Repetition of filth. Repetition of acquisition. Repetition of the self. Like a sitcom, everything goes back to normal at the start of the next episode. Lessons unlearned, doomed to the same script over and over, the same punchlines with barely a variation in the setup.
#np they say the next big thing is here...
I never did address Devan, GRENDEL, Aries and Shozo - before he was SHOZO - attacking myself, Wulf - in those halcyon days when he wasn't Beowulf - and eight other people after TLC II, all the way back when. I wonder, idly, if my silence was taken for reticence. I wonder if our benevolent belligerents felt satisfied that they'd felled even the fearless yours truly - that the most dangerous person on the payroll was petrified, fossilised with panic. Or maybe not. I can't say I'm really all that invested, but... professional curiosity, y'know? When you have as many public perceptions of your personal identity as I do it's worth keeping at least something approaching tabs on them.
Anyway, I wonder if it was a mistake to stay out of it. I was busy with other things, of course. Other foci. With other problems preying on my mind, at home and abroad, these kids faded into the white noise of background detritus, ghosts of battles the bugle had called time on long, long ago. Perhaps a new war would have saved my soul from what would happen to it over the holidays.
Oh well. Too late to play 'if'.
A near-axiomatic sentiment seems apt here: war is hell. Did we have the reserves to face a new enemy so soon after HATE, after Gods & Monsters, after Chuck Matthews' Adventures In Capitalism seminar was over? Perhaps not. Perhaps turning on each other was the easy option. But there's another saying which seems to strike deeper at this heart - familiarity breeds contempt. And that, my semi-worthy adversaries, is the root of my ambivalence concerning you and your war: it's all so, so very familiar. I've been fighting your war since before you ever set foot in a ring, and I've been on both sides.
Bring every weapon you have to this freshest battle. Pierce me and burn me and strike me with whatever you've got. I may be immortal, but I'm not invincible. But as much as you can do to me, I've suffered it before. Hospital trips for everyone? Cool. I've almost filled up another loyalty card. Two more overnight stays and I get a free saline drip. And if you happen to care about why I remain uncowed and unbowed in the face of evolution, this is why:
I don't. fucking. care.
Anyway, I wonder if it was a mistake to stay out of it. I was busy with other things, of course. Other foci. With other problems preying on my mind, at home and abroad, these kids faded into the white noise of background detritus, ghosts of battles the bugle had called time on long, long ago. Perhaps a new war would have saved my soul from what would happen to it over the holidays.
Oh well. Too late to play 'if'.
A near-axiomatic sentiment seems apt here: war is hell. Did we have the reserves to face a new enemy so soon after HATE, after Gods & Monsters, after Chuck Matthews' Adventures In Capitalism seminar was over? Perhaps not. Perhaps turning on each other was the easy option. But there's another saying which seems to strike deeper at this heart - familiarity breeds contempt. And that, my semi-worthy adversaries, is the root of my ambivalence concerning you and your war: it's all so, so very familiar. I've been fighting your war since before you ever set foot in a ring, and I've been on both sides.
Bring every weapon you have to this freshest battle. Pierce me and burn me and strike me with whatever you've got. I may be immortal, but I'm not invincible. But as much as you can do to me, I've suffered it before. Hospital trips for everyone? Cool. I've almost filled up another loyalty card. Two more overnight stays and I get a free saline drip. And if you happen to care about why I remain uncowed and unbowed in the face of evolution, this is why:
I don't. fucking. care.
#np cant stop (cant stop) cant stop the beat wont stop (wont stop) wont stop the beat and GO!
Five years ago...
Orange light spilled across Rowan's face, and the flickering cast shadows like bone marrow in his beard. Everyone else at the camp had gone to bed - but Laurel and Rowan, the hardest drinkers out of the eight of them, were still sharing a bottle of whiskey by the fire.
"...and that's when," rumbled Rowan, continuing his anecdote after pausing to let out some trapped wind, "He hits me in the head with a damn cast iron skillet..."
Laurel, twenty years of age but already a veteran of violence and bloodshed - and yet still easily impressed by other people's war stories - grinned. "Fuckin' crazy, man."
"You don't have to tell me," replied Rowan, "I was there... but yeah. That's how I fractured my skull. Damn lucky to be alive. I missed months of my career because of that. Hell... I lost months of my life."
"Weird how when you don't expect something like that coming, it catches you so much worse," observed Laurel.
Rowan shrugged. "S'how it is. You get used to it."
"It shouldn't have to be, though," reflected Laurel as she stared into the fire and sipped from the bottle. "All over a bloody title."
"Well. That's what our cause is about. That's why the wrestling world needs The Asylum."
Laurel shook her head, but didn't look up. "More than that. More than the spirit of anarchy... this is about the soul of what wrestling is. People cheatin' on each other over scraps of leather and tin. Fightin' in circles like dogs over the stupidest shit, and the fans and advertisers bayin' em on..." She spat, and the saliva fizzled in the flames. "I ain't havin' it."
Rowan smiled. In his years as a trainer, and his longer time still as a wrestler, he'd heard it plenty of times. "What you gonna do about it?"
For a moment, Rowan wasn't sure if the fire in Laurel's eyes was just a reflection or if it was coming from within. Then he shook his head; he was drunk as a badger, after all. Even so, the steel in Laurel's voice was unmistakeable: "I'm gonna change the world."
#np you say i only hear what i want to.
You said that night, Shozo, that this was no war.
How things change, even when they remain the same.
I'm all for revolution. you know? Nobody's worked harder to foment change in wrestling than me. Nobody's done more to try to help usher in a new era in which we can finally move on from the mistakes of the past. I dream of the day when our art form is free, when the thrill of wrestling as its own reward can be recognised without the circles we're forced to trudge in, chained together neck-deep in shit in the septic tanks of self-interest. And I'm working on it, guys. I'm doing my bit. I'm saving up my winnings and drafting the manifesto and soon enough I'll be ready to undertake my grandest work yet. I cannot wait to share that day with the world, and if you lot are serious about change, I'd like for you to share in it directly.
But there's a problem there. You talk so much talk of change, of evolution, of the problems with the old ways. We know what you stand against.
How things change, even when they remain the same.
I'm all for revolution. you know? Nobody's worked harder to foment change in wrestling than me. Nobody's done more to try to help usher in a new era in which we can finally move on from the mistakes of the past. I dream of the day when our art form is free, when the thrill of wrestling as its own reward can be recognised without the circles we're forced to trudge in, chained together neck-deep in shit in the septic tanks of self-interest. And I'm working on it, guys. I'm doing my bit. I'm saving up my winnings and drafting the manifesto and soon enough I'll be ready to undertake my grandest work yet. I cannot wait to share that day with the world, and if you lot are serious about change, I'd like for you to share in it directly.
But there's a problem there. You talk so much talk of change, of evolution, of the problems with the old ways. We know what you stand against.
#np when you say its gonna happen now well when exactly do you mean?
What do you stand for?
You've never offered a solution. You've never presented a manifesto of your own. You've never shared your vision for a better way with the rest of the world, like I have.
What do you stand for?
Nothing.
You don't.
All you do is what almost everyone before you has done: try to get to the top of the food chain and claim as much territory for yourselves as you can.
That ain't a revolution. It's a coup d'etat, maybe. An insurgency, sure. But it sure as fuck ain't no revolution.
You've never offered a solution. You've never presented a manifesto of your own. You've never shared your vision for a better way with the rest of the world, like I have.
What do you stand for?
Nothing.
You don't.
All you do is what almost everyone before you has done: try to get to the top of the food chain and claim as much territory for yourselves as you can.
That ain't a revolution. It's a coup d'etat, maybe. An insurgency, sure. But it sure as fuck ain't no revolution.
#np this one is different because its us.
You're doing better with the other half of your imagery; evolution has no direction, after all. There is no grand plan, no set end point. Evolution doesn't get a mission complete screen. But evolution is progression. And you - Shozo, GRENDEL, Aries, Devan, and all your mates down in the (R) - you are progressing nothing. You're trying to evolve by fighting the same battles as the fuck-ups who came before you - ghosts of the Civil War shooting the same phantom musket balls every night while the world outside moves on. Lost souls seeking cover behind carts and crates long since rotted, hiding behind hillocks long since levelled, charging across open fields long since built over. The doors you're opening got bricked up decades ago and new, better doors - with motion sensors and fire safety hinges and everything - lie just a few feet away. But your dead eyes don't see them. The bones in your spectral hands can't grip the handles.
Evolve or die? You're already dead, and Storm had nothing to do with that.
Evolve or die? You're already dead, and Storm had nothing to do with that.
#np its herd behaviour
Five minutes ago...
The drip glittered in the dingy glare from the halogen light above her head as it tumbled down. Was the sea green tinge to the refractions real, or were her tired eyes playing tricks on her? The answer arrived in a splash of turquoise, spelled out like tea leaves in the beads spattered across the grimy linoleum: both.
Laurel leaned back, resting her head against the wall of the infirmary, and focused on the itch of the sweat streaming down her face. She caught sight of herself in a bottle of pills, green rivulets streaking pale flesh where her blood had subsided but the heat hadn't. As glitter and facepaint stung her eyes and seeped between her lips, she let the microstimuli build into something approximating a real feeling, anything, even if that feeling was merely of pain and irritation.
Maybe it would be easier if, when she shared with the world her intentions or her positions, she was lying. At least then she'd know she didn't mean it. Not that she didn't mean it when she'd said she didn't care about XWA Gladiatorial Champion Razer, or XWA World Heavyweight Champion Jericho Shaw, or their upcoming match with XWA Hardcore Champion Laurel Anne Hardy to unite the three titles into the XWA Supreme Championship. She most assuredly did not care about the whole situation or anyone involved in it - save for the fact that as one of those same people, she had to care whether she wanted to or not, even if only to the extent of it swallowing so much of her time and energy. She cared about ending this whole farce. But the paradox that presented was just another to throw on the heap of paradoxes she'd been building up for at least the last year.
"How are you feeling?"
She forced her heavy eyelids open and took in the shadow in front of her. She couldn't see it well enough to identify him by sight, but his voice rang clear.
"Hey, Mark."
The closest thing she had in XWA to a friend. In fact, Mark Sanction and his broadcast colleague Rose were among the barest handful of people in the company that she even liked. She felt Mark press a cloth into her hand, and she nodded weakly in thanks before wiping her face.
A creak of plastic told her that he was sitting down in the chair opposite. He was quiet for a moment, then asked,"So did you mean it?"
She didn't need him to clarify. He meant she speech she'd given Razer to close Monday Night Mayhem suggesting that she was withdrawing from the game everyone else was playing. She choked out, weakly: "I don't know."
"You know if you really mean it - if you refuse to compete in the unification match at Winner Takes All - they'll find a new champion who will."
"I'm not sure," she mumbled, "They might not wanna make me a martyr." She sighed angrily as she added, "Everyone upstairs knows how many asses I put on seats for this company," with the anger directed primarily at herself, "So they don't want to risk losin' me but they don't wanna risk givin' me even more pull with the fans either. I can find some way to use that."
Mark smiled slightly. "I know you said Razer wasn't right about much, but he was right when he said you're manipulative."
"Yeah. Well," she replied, growling a little in the back of her throat, "That's kind of a sore point cause of... y'know what, never mind. I ain't givin' him the satisfaction either way. But this whole... all this stuff with the title unification, it's just politics," she shrugged, "An' I always said I wouldn't do that, but..."
She sighed again.
"I don't do it to get ahead, but I still do it to get what I want. It's the... it's a fucking infection. I don't want this to be me, I promise I don't, but..." She growled and slammed her head back against the plaster. "No matter what, it's the same thing over - and over - and over... Razer an' Jericho, both of 'em, run around like they actually earned or deserve a damn thing. DGX an' DJS both makin' moves to go to war with each other, the network are leanin' on us because they think they know shit fuckin' one about wrestling... it's all the same. EXODUS, FGA, GCW... it's all the FUCKING SAME!" she screamed suddenly, and smacked her elbow into the wall so hard it left a dent. "Then here's me, the chosen one here an' GCW, the monster in EXODUS, somewhere between the two in FGA... and all I want is..."
...her eyes slid closed, and the sweat on her face swelled with tears.
"...what I want is to know what I want."
#np we all want to change the world
When I say I don't care, don't misunderstand me. I care a whole hell of a lot about professional wrestling. A lot more than you can comprehend. I care more about fucking any of you. When I say I don't care..
You're a sea of faeces-dirty faces and I'm drowning in the shit you spew. I sleepwalk from Tokyo to London, from Ottawa to San Diego, and the languages and accents might change but the words don't. Everyone's a revolutionary. Everyone's a crusader. And everyone's revolution, everyone's crusade, is a facsimile of everyone else's:
My turn.
And I'm the self-absorbed one for having principles beyond my own gain at any cost?
Okay, fine.
I'm still right. If I'm just as self-absorbed as everyone else then so be it. I'm a teenage brat. And you, REVOLUTION, collectively... you're the disposable razor I'm taking to my wrists. You're a cigarette, a little hit of death, and when I'm done using you to bring myself one tick closer to the end I'll toss you to the ground, stub your out under my heel and move on with whatever's left of my life.
Maybe you'll win in the end. Maybe you'll get everything you ever wanted. If you do, your revolution still won't have succeeded... but you know that. Somewhere deep down, you know that. The only revolution you really want is for the wheel to move faster, then to stop for a nice long while when your spoke reaches the top. I'd ask if I'm right, but there's no point. You'll deny it, and I know I'm right.
I oppose you, REVOLUTION, because someone might as well. At least you'll have legitimacy that way. I will go to war with you because it's what we do. I will take whatever pain and whatever suffering you have planned for me because that way I know my heart is still beating, and when my heart beats, I remember that revolution of my own.
Evolve or die?
I'm better at both of those than any of you.
You're a sea of faeces-dirty faces and I'm drowning in the shit you spew. I sleepwalk from Tokyo to London, from Ottawa to San Diego, and the languages and accents might change but the words don't. Everyone's a revolutionary. Everyone's a crusader. And everyone's revolution, everyone's crusade, is a facsimile of everyone else's:
My turn.
And I'm the self-absorbed one for having principles beyond my own gain at any cost?
Okay, fine.
I'm still right. If I'm just as self-absorbed as everyone else then so be it. I'm a teenage brat. And you, REVOLUTION, collectively... you're the disposable razor I'm taking to my wrists. You're a cigarette, a little hit of death, and when I'm done using you to bring myself one tick closer to the end I'll toss you to the ground, stub your out under my heel and move on with whatever's left of my life.
Maybe you'll win in the end. Maybe you'll get everything you ever wanted. If you do, your revolution still won't have succeeded... but you know that. Somewhere deep down, you know that. The only revolution you really want is for the wheel to move faster, then to stop for a nice long while when your spoke reaches the top. I'd ask if I'm right, but there's no point. You'll deny it, and I know I'm right.
I oppose you, REVOLUTION, because someone might as well. At least you'll have legitimacy that way. I will go to war with you because it's what we do. I will take whatever pain and whatever suffering you have planned for me because that way I know my heart is still beating, and when my heart beats, I remember that revolution of my own.
Evolve or die?
I'm better at both of those than any of you.
#np but if you try sometimes...