Ruminations on Campbell's Journey. (3,841 Words)
Mar 13, 2022 11:38:25 GMT -5
CJ Phoenix, Johnny Bacchus, and 1 more like this
Post by The Vanguard on Mar 13, 2022 11:38:25 GMT -5
Magnificent, isn't it?; Bronze finish over a combination of fir and pine wood.; Designed with a little extra comfort around the arm and shoulder.; Yes, this shield and I have been through a lot together.; A brief history lesson, Grindhouse: back in the day, long before I came to Action Wrestling, I fancied myself something of a gladiator. I've kept the overall motif, but decided to lean more into the Dionysus bend of things, if you will. Sure, being a grunting gladiator would sell, but where's the showmanship? Where's the biting remarks? Where's the cutting words?
...Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself. See, I studied history at the University of Minnesota, with a focus on the classics. I wouldn't call myself a model student, but I did well enough to succeed. But why history? Well, put simply, my love for greek myth drove me to it. You name it, books, movies, video games, if it had any ties to greek myth, I was for it. Granted, gladiators were more of a thing of the roman empire, but other nations had their own form of arenas. And that is what we are today modern gladiators sent out to inflict pain on one another to the entertainment of the masses. Yes, little Johnny and Sally are sitting with dear old dad watching Downfall squeeze a watermelon of a head between his thighs.
...Or maybe that was just a dream I had once.
If it seems like I'm uninspired to actually go in hard on you lot, its because the same thing I could say to you has been said to a number of other teams we've run through on our journey to shape the tag division into the place of prominence it is today. There seems to be the weird misunderstanding of what our message is as a team, and what our overall goal is here. I keep hearing the same tired line of "We're here to change this division," and "You're too busy with other belts to really care about this," and "Dionysus, I wrote this fanfic about you and Wendigo in APWO, can you read it and give me your thoughts?" (And yes, Matt Knox, I WILL read it, so stop asking)
Now, I could also go down the childish route and do stuff like, oh I don't know, make a promotional picture of you two as the thumb henchmen from Spy Kids.
I don't really think it adds anything to the conversation though; it just exists as a shitpost. But then again, if there's any word that best describes how this match even came to be, it is "shitpost." See, Pasternak decided that, since it had been thirty days since we had a "proper title defense," new champions apparently needed to be named. But he also didn't have the stones to force us to relinquish the belts back to him. And that is how Grindhouse, the little engine that could, ended up with the champion name, but only on paper.
As stated before, we are not in this division strictly to hold these titles. I really don't mind that you're champions, even if it is just in name for now. Hell, I don't even mind that you ran in and cost both of us a shot at the world title. It isn't the first time either of us has had them, and it certainly won't be the last. No, our purpose here is to build a division, to push forward this otherwise ignored talent pool and force it into the light. We've been able to accomplish that so far, and we have the proof right in this card. But is our entire dynamic going to fall away just because we lost these belts? If that happened over in CruiserClash anytime the Gents or Red White and Bruised traded with one another, we wouldn't have a division there. No, we'll still come in hot pursuit to either claim them back or find another worthy team.
You guys just might make that cut.
But you won't get that far if your only accolade is bumping off Team Extreme so hard that management had to let them go.
See, we are not the same. We defeated the longest reigning tag team champions in the company's history. We went to war with The Dangerous Gentlemen. We stood our ground against not only Bentley Unlimited, but the newly formed Affluenza and the weird fanfic team of Carter and Dandy. Meanwhile, you two arrived, beat Team Extreme for the "championship," and made a scene at Casino Night. All of those things were possible with the work we put in. The impact of that moment when Downfall went through myself and the ladder underneath me wouldn't have been as great if the tag team champions were not out there. Therefore, this is something I can forgive.
Then last week happened. We came out. Called you out. We brawled...and you scampered away. Ran away from the fight you have coming to you but know you couldn't handle at that moment. Sure, you can claim "strategic retreat" all you want, but for the team that is "going to change this division," I didn't expect it to be one where retreat was the first option. You ran off while we stood tall, stalwart, repelling the invaders for another day. Sure, swords can break shields. I've seen it firsthand. Hell, I've even done it a time or two on really bad shields. But shields are also weapons. You know how an 18-pound disc made of solid wood and metal feels when the edge of it catches your chest? Your neck? Your head? Not great, by any stretch of the imagination.
So go on, bring your swords. Breach the gates. Take what is ours. At Battlebowl, we'll repel the blades. Because the best offense...is the best defense.
He'd been haunted by the dreams of the Badlands all last night and the night before. That was where the trouble had started.
Every time he closed his eyes lately, he found himself back in that canyon... blasted red-ringed rock walls and natural formations that twisted and looked like they had shrieking human faces embedded in the stone. He ambled forward, even though there were branches and forks where a long-ago river had cut through the stone... but he was disoriented. And, now and again, he would see a flash up ahead, and think he saw Michelle, or the large man with her, but they would keep moving. Take a step left. And then would be gone. He'd hold his arm out, cry out "Michelle!", but she couldn't hear him.
He closed his eyes at the weight bench, let out a trembling breath. Sweat was heavy on his upper lip.
Dion, sitting at the next bench, spoke to him, although it was distorted as if coming through the glass and water of an aquarium.
He blinked it off. Dion, eyebrows furrowing, spoke again, clearer. "Daniel, are you okay? You look off... are you okay?"
He cut his eyes to Dion, eyes gauging over his partner. Ever since January 25, things had been off... maybe it was Dion's own ultimatum that he was gunning for the title too that had made things different. Or maybe, it was the fact that he didn't know how far he could trust anymore... seeing as Dion had willingly walked off with a devil wearing Rebecca Owens like an itchy meat-suit. He narrowed his gaze suspiciously.
But then he sighed, sitting up at the weight-bench. He saw no reason to lie. "I keep dreaming about the Badlands. I'm starting to wonder if that getting inside my head was what led to me losing the World title."
Dion crossed his arms, cocking an eyebrow, "An elaborate subconscious sequence of you feeling lost in a vast network, and you think it has no bearing on your mental state. Daniel, really..."
He closed his eyes, and shook his head brittlely. "No, it's..." A beat. "Dion, for so long I've been laboring under the assumption that Jason's curse isn't a joke. After my five years was over, I lost my first World title, spent years-almost a decade!, in the wilderness. Never able to make it work. If I won big anywhere else, the... the sky would fall, the ground would cave in. It was only this past year that I started pushing out of that feeling. That with your help, I started putting in the work, and I felt when I did win the World title... that was it. The curse was broken. But..."
"But maybe it's not a supernatural jinx that causes disaster just before you attain your hearts desire. Maybe the answer is, it's just you. And everything, including the struggles of those ten years you spent feeling these effects were in your head."
He sighed. But then his eyes whipped back up to Dion's. "Or... maybe that's just what he wants me to think." He pointed at Dion. "After all, one of us here did recently go for a talk with the damn devil."
"Daniel come on..."
"No you come on," he snapped tersely. "That's been our problem. This is what's gotten between us, every time I think about you, I think about what that fly's put in your ear."
"I told you you needed to trust me."
Danny glowered at him, and then, he lowered his gaze.
"I can't."
He stalked outside the gym, door hitting with a bang, trembling with rage and pent-up frustration. Just now, he was feeling so lost, and he wished there was someone who could tell him how to navigate this. He was feeling as if he never made it out of the Badlands.
"If you're going through Hell, keep going, they'd tell you, in that way they've got," came a voice.
Danny whirled. It wasn't the chill of the mid-March air that was raising gooseflesh on his arms. That was Alec's voice, from faraway. He started.
The voice didn't say anything else, but he felt the spirit of his friend standing beside him, stepping up to stand side-by-side. He breathed, and calmed visibly. And he was filled with the understanding that he had help from the other side of the veil.
He took that serene moment, looking up at the moon, and the wind tugged at his hair.
He looked, thoughtfully back to the gym, but before he went inside, his eyebrows knit in surprise... he saw a small band glinting in the light. When he grasped it in his fingers, he turned it over, and saw that it was Alec's wedding band. That guiding wind rose again, and he looked at the trees.
Still holding the ring in his hand, he came back inside the gym. Dion was standing there waiting, as if he knew his partner was going to reconcile.
"Dion, listen..."
"No, Daniel, listen. I know that the Badlands, for you, are something that can be both. But the thing about it is... you aren't walking through them alone."
"I know."
"Good," Dion said, cocking a rakish smile, "Now, who's up for helping me plan my stepfather's bachelor party?"
If I'm being honest with myself (and I'm self-aware enough to note that there have been times in my career when I've given myself over to focusing on the horizon), then I'm thankful for this opportunity.
Ever since I won through the Wrestler of the Year tournament, dethroned Dandy for my third World title and fought my hardest to stand atop the mountain... I couldn't help but feel as the weeks went on that I was losing my edge.
Even though I pushed myself farther and higher than anyone ever thought possible, I let doubt creep in.
It's funny, when Dion asked me if I thought going for the World title was a mistake that doomed the Vanguard... if I thought it was worth it, or if I was juggling too much, if it took my focus away from the Tag titles and led to our doom... no, I don't.
I feel like gaining the World title was exactly the point of our partnership. He and I both teamed explicitly for the reason that we do make each other better. Push each other harder... and I can say honestly that having Dion pushing me and supporting me is why I felt strong enough to get myself there.
But if I wasn't missing focus... then what I needed was a sudden shock, like the ones you meatheaded knuckle-draggers provided, to wake me up and show me that losing the World title was not the end of the road.
Scala, Holden... do you understand why exactly you've fucked up?
Do you understand that you two have elected yourselves to be little more than the bumps we have to run over on our mutual path to fulfilling the promise we made each other when we began this journey, in the wake of last year's Havoc?
Campbell's Heroes' Journey moves in one of two carefully-elaborated arcs; The short version is the call, where the subject is prodded forward by a simple stimulus; They meet a threshold... and then, they stick with what is known and familiar. That short-sighted decision-making choice, sticking only to the known, the safe, ends with the subject ending the arc prematurely, not having experienced any growth, and starting right where they began.
But if you meet temptation and challenge. If you fall short right when you *think* you've reached the peak, and you find yourself staring at yourself in a puddle at the bottom of the arc... you've reached the part of the larger arc that brings about transformation, atonement... and advancement.
Despite your being gifted those Interim Tag titles, neither one of you have the bandwidth for the type of growth that comes with a real narrative.
It stands to reason then that your being gift-wrapped those belts isn't the culmination of your efforts, it was just a stimulus that pushed you off your asses and set you on the road towards us.
This's the part of the cycle where you get set to square one, prepare yourselves.
I think even you know that you don't deserve this spot.
Despite Holden's cretinous, beef-witted assertions of being the most destructive, animalistic monster, known for splitting men's heads open left-right-center... despite Joey Scala's... existing... the two of you sit there with the little toy belts you'd buy a child that dresses themselves in streamers on their arms and a t-shirt with their slogan etched on the front in marker and watches "the wrasslin'" with their little brother every Sunday mornin'.
You pretend you deserve them.
You pretend that, teaming for exactly one month, facing competition nobody could name if you put a gun to their wife's face and barked to give them an answer to the trivia question.
Being given a title match in a completely-sus fashion on a nothing house show against two idiots (both of whom, AW management has since decided, didn't matter enough to our bottom line to even keep giving a paycheck.)
But you think this is your story. You think, you ARE the champions.
So tell me. What have you done "as champions" since then?
Have you put your titles up against the best this division has to offer, like when we overcame a match containing five competitors who have main-evented pay-per-views in the last year and pulled down the belts? No.
Have you overcome being double-booked with a title defense in one slot and a main event match thirty minutes later, and won both? No.
Hand on the Bible, have you even teamed together and faced any competition since then? No.
But both of you wasted my time this week with identically smug, irritating rants proclaiming how you're the only real team in this division and you deserve those belts, since you worked soooo hard for them.
This is where I rather violently disabuse you of that notion, and set your records straight.
Let's start with you Holden, since you can't quit reminding everyone of what you accomplished in Pure Class Wrestling despite the fact that your own record only shows you winning their lowest-tier title once. While I wasn't there in person... I know Kyle Shane, and therefore know enough about you to know that far from this Breaker Of Man persona you want to embody, all you really are is a posturing symbol of fragile redneck male ego.
The type of person who would flex his three-hundred pound frame of muscle and sinew and scream about destruction until he was blue in the face... but even a marginally-talented hundred-ten-pound girl would flip you like an omelette, and we'd watch in real time as your steroid-shrivelled little dick exploded like a cartoon cigar. You ain't shit.
You've been trying hard to get my attention through all of this, but I scarcely even need to mention how lopsided your PCW record that's carrying over to the present was. You're already showing how much of a bitch you are here.
As if you couldn't help underlining what a follower you are by hiring on to be Gerard Angelo's enforcers, you mooned around Tatiana Jolee around on Twitter like a lost puppy, coming across as the creepy 40-year-old with an extreme close-up of himself as a profile pic that can be seen panting in the comments sections of every pic she posts "Lookin sexy hun..." followed by a string of emojis.
You couldn't be more pathetic than if you and Tatiana were actually to try teaming up and got steamrolled flat.
Which is, hilariously, exactly what happened.
That's the big difference between Vanguard as champions and Grindhouse as "champions", when Dion and I were given opportunities to step our games up, represent us both... we wouldn't get laughed off as utter jokes by Odin fucking Balfore of all people.
And I can tear Holden to pieces for the way that every time he opens his mouth to let us know how proficient he is at hitting people with objects until they bleed, repetitiously... at least he's showing us a modicum of personality, which is more than I can say for Joey Scala, who's sole defining trait just seems to be that he's from NY.
Fuck, dude, at least Bam Beefer gave me something. I wish more than that Joey was given a pink-slip instead of Team Extreme and Mini-Beefer... I wish more than anything that there was a midnight train leaving town, taking Joey Scala out of our lives forever, and that Joey Scala was underneath it.
If you have one takeaway from this entire embarrassing debacle, I want it to be this, that when you two jamokes were given the best possible opportunity to run with the ball: When you were practically hand-picked, straight-up gifted the easiest method into being able to add a title reign onto your resume without ever once deserving it... you basically wasted your time with it.
Two cardboard standups posing with belts would have been just as effective as you... that's how much you've done with your time calling yourselves "Tag Team champions".
I mean, how's it feel knowing that even this entire premise you've based three weeks around, "We are the sword that breaks the shield of the Vanguard" isn't even an original thought?
That you're reiterating the exact same sentiments as the Dangerous Gentlemen, about how they were the future of the Tag division, about how they were masters of tag team wrestling and we were just two singles guys who grouped together to grab gold? Wanna know what happened to the Dangerous Gents? Spoiler alert, they aren't here revitalizing and reinventing tag team wrestling.
You have proven yourselves to be irritants, it's true. But I don't hold fear for two idiots that both proclaim their ferocity and intelligence, but prove themselves to be little more than paid goons. I've been the leader of a stable... hired over a dozen nondescript Joey Scalas in my time. I've seen a hundred different Holden Rosses come and go, each one rhapsodizing at length about how much blood they've spilled.
Please, bitch. Who in AW, PCW or any-CW have you beaten so badly they didn't come back the next week smiling?
But you think you got under my skin. You think, I'm here to blame you, for costing me my shot at reclaiming the World Title.
I'm here to thank you, Grindhouse.
I'll own it, I did fail. Dion and I both failed, a few times at this point.
But both Dion and I understand that our journey as the Vanguard isn't about a single title run, it was about pushing each other to the next level... two guys who's careers needed a boost of motivation, who stood beside each other and kept pushing until they both stepped up to main event status.
And I don't think either one of you understands that.
You're just two granite-headed grunts; you're the type of low-rent help that answers Craiglist ads for dive-bar security.
Even calling you scraping the bottom of the barrel isn't accurate, because youre lower than that; you don't even belong in the same sentence as barrels.
With every step you take with those ill-gotten titles dangling from your bloated waistlines; with every mealy-mouthed word that squirms free from your lips... All you're proving is that you're just a difficulty for the heroes to undergo in their story, before they build themselves up even stronger and go on to claim their ultimate reward.
Before they attain the sweet redemption their souls hunger for.
Your motivations are paper-thin, and baser than that.
It's because you were the catalyst towards providing that necessary revelation and giving me the fire needed to focus, single-mindedly on getting on with my path and bringing this to a conclusion, that I'm going to thank you in the best way possible.
I'm going to give your simple, short arc the ending it's deserving of.
You get to go crawling back to Gerry with nothing, not even the ability to stroke your plastic titles or tell people you're real champions. You won't have the ability to foam about how many rivers of claret you've drawn from opponents in hardcore settings... because when the time came to step up against the Vanguard, you are going to experience the same result you would have gotten, even if Alexander Pasternak never got the wild hair up his ass that we suddenly needed Interim champions.
These are our titles. We're the ones who have brought the Tag division much-needed prestige and hard work.
You're not us.
You're not the team that's been calling down the god damn lightning for almost a year.
You're not the two men who believed in each other so strongly that they pushed each other to the moon, when nobody else thought they were worth it.
This is our story.
This is our road.
You're just the detritus that gets rolled under our treads.