Post by Lissie Hope ♥ on Apr 12, 2022 19:44:08 GMT -5
Who is Lissie Hope? Do you know? Does she know? Does anyone know anymore? The name Lissie Hope means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Everyone you ask backstage, and everyone you meet in the crowd - they each have their own memories of her. Some would say she’s bold and confident on the surface - to others, that condescending arrogance masks the pain she lives with every day. Some would say she’s a homegrown pillar of this organization - and to others, she’s easily swayed in every direction. Some would call her an All-In winner and a World Champion and a Havoc runner-up - to others, she crumbles under immense pressure, incapable of sustaining it. Four years is a long time. Not everyone makes it to their fourth Havoc - not when they’ve reached the pinnacle of achievement twice within a year in the industry. Making that climb is the hardest thing any of us can do, and making it again after years of routine failure - when the deck is perpetually stacked against you - some may even call that impossible. There are those in the locker-room - and watching from home - and in the executive suite - who believe I’ve lost Havoc before it even begins. Before we even step between those ropes, under the bright lights of the Action Wrestling ring - the sacred grounds of this industry, the mecca of this business, where the greatest on earth lace up their boots and fight - drowning in our own spilled waste until there’s nothing left to bleed. We are all engraved in the bones of Action Wrestling. And Action Wrestling is ingrained in the fabric of our souls. I’ve given my heart, and my body, and my identity - my blood, my talent, and my legacy - I’ve given it all to Action Wrestling. But still, a Lissie Hope documentarian would conclude that in the end? I’ve failed - I’ve failed this company, I’ve failed all of you, and most importantly? I’ve failed myself. I wanted to be transcendent. Instead, I’ve become transitional. I was once a generational talent. I turned heads, and I turned Action Wrestling on its’ head. I commanded the attention from the moment I arrived, with my first words into a camera - “take a break from your regularly scheduled programming, ‘cause I’ve got some shit to say,” - though that may sound familiar to our recent re-arrival Ryan Kincaid, it’s never not been true since. I’ve never stopped talking, right? It’s probably what I do best - I’m a spitfire, holding serve with the best of them, and sometimes it gets me on the hot-seat. It’s why my friend Johnny Bacchus has assumed the responsibility my brother once held of shutting me up. My mouth is also why Dionysus tried - in vain - to keep me on a leash. But I grew stale on him too, even though we were tasked with depending on one another. Now there lies a chasm we’ll never bridge - particularly as long as he holds one-half of the Tag Team Championships. And time will tell that as the Swallowing climbs the ladder of tag-team supremacy again, week-by-week and win-by-win, if our trust has been repaired - we sure as hell look unstoppable when we’re in the ring together. We look like we have the belts at our fingertips as we dispatch every team they put in front of us. We can promise that we won’t stop until Affluenza and Vanguard lie in our crosshairs. But this is about the World Championship. This is about putting aside our team unity to win Havoc and declare our reservation with Dandy DiVito. And we know that the World Championship has pulled us apart before - but we can handle that. We’ve done it before. It's the people where we diverge. It’s the people who have always led us to a crossroads.
I’m just not good at making friends. At finding a support system among all of you. I willingly abandon what makes me me, and attempt to mold myself into the kind of person who is endeared to all of you, all of you who I entrust my health and my safety into - there are those sex-deprived do-gooders who make ironic crass jokes to be just one of the guys - there’s rookies like Serenity Holmes who I’ve tried to take under my wing but am met with blind, naive resistance. Do I have to give myself a pseudo-evil identity and speak like a functional idiot to be accepted by a locker-room? Perhaps. But I don’t want to. I have my fans, and I’ll always have my fans, no matter what poor decisions I’ll make along the way - clearly, if Philidor Holdings is any indication - and for that? I’m thankful. But back here? Among all of you? There are a few of you who don’t openly hate and resent me, so you send me pleasantries and condolences after my failures - but under your compassion lies a vengeful smirk. ‘She did this to herself.’ ‘She asked for this.’ ‘When will she ever learn?’ And you’re right. I don’t blame you for butchering me with your insults and your indifference and your dismissiveness. Every time I’m discredited, it’s like you’re stabbing and prodding and ripping hunk of flesh from my bones - but my skin is leathered. It’s resilient and hardened from a thousand cuts, and all of you baby kill█ers are going to need much sharper knives. I’m on a mission to find peace, even if Havoc is all about hearing everyone from every corner of the locker-room dissect you, piece-by-piece. Indulging all of your predatory comments about how I’m doing things wrong. How I’m making terrible decisions. How I should hear the lessons from you, all of you who openly despise me - but healing myself can be offensive to those who’ve only benefited when I was broken.
It’s been three years since I stood as the elite among the elite, yet I’ve still tried to hold on to my fading legacy with all of the strength I’ve got up until I’ve squeezed out every ounce. But it’s been on life support, nearing it’s expiration date - it’s begged me, and you’ve pleaded with me, to kiss it gently before I reach behind and pull the plug - and finally? Much to your satisfaction? I’ve killed it. My momentum? Strangled. My potential? Drowned. My legacy? Gutted, like a fish. I dreamed of being the first woman inducted into the Action Wrestling Hall of Fame. There was a chance I was reserving that honor - or perhaps it was a figment of my imagination. But let’s assume it was possible - my match with Bonnie Blue last year was the test, to see if I should even be in that conversation. If it wasn’t all false hope. She won the match, and she was immediately announced as the first Hall of Famer of 2022. Now, that was likely always the plan - I’m not that much in denial - but the fact that one of her achievements included in her official announcement was that victory over me? It lends credence to the idea that my failures uplift others. Hell, maybe I should’ve never been rescued in November 2020 and I would’ve gotten it posthumously, but I missed the boat on that one, too. But I digress. Gerard Angelo has had an extraordinary first half-year, even if some of his methods and alliances are… questionable. He beat me in January in the finals of the Trials of Despair on his way to his first U.S. Championship, and now he’s a breakout candidate for this year’s Havoc. He’s an oddsmaker’s bet, a gambler’s wet dream for a life-changing payout. I was a two-time Woman of the Year. Regan Voorhees, on the heels of one of the most impressive years on record, an unparalleled, unprecedented jump from CruiserClash to the flagship and an unlikely Wrestler of the Year finalist - after beating both me and Corey Black - and she commanded that honor last year so much that it was universally acknowledged without even a consideration of any others, much less me. I saw Jill Park, the leggy blonde with a no-fucks-given attitude arrive in this organization and demonstrate that she had the balls to step up to one of the most decorated champions in Action Wrestling’s rich history. Frank Venable, my personal kryptonite, was shelved due to her now-patented FrankleLock, but all she ever carried that momentum into was supplementing the fat paycheck from her terrible television show and a desperate plea for my friendship and my acceptance - it certainly wasn’t one of her many failed opportunities in the main-event, owning a success rate comparable to a GTA NPC who repeatedly walks into the wall. Ash Blake - she used her powers of persuasion and her psychology degree to infect my mind, to spearhead a three-headed monster who would go on to poison the soul of Action Wrestling - with me by her side. Doing her bidding. Abandoning my morals and irreversibly damaging my reputation, and I’ll spend the rest of my career - the rest of my fucking life - trying to rectify that. Trying to earn back the trust of this locker-room. Trying to gauge if the cheers I hear now are only… placating me. I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering if this is merely an effort to convince me that I’m not completely lost, not entirely hopeless. I made one comment a year ago about showing some resentment for Ash Blake replacing me in the annals of Action Wrestling history, and that comment burrowed so far into her mind that it was her ammunition for beating me in January. Nothing bothers Ash Blake - that’s part of her vacant, emotionless, dead-eyed charm. But that one did. And I wish I could be like that sometimes, y’know? Where I can focus less on my self-destruction, and more on the people who’ve had a hand in it. I know, what the fuck is Lissie Hope thinking - how could she identify with the woman who manipulated her so heartlessly? Johnny has morphed into her defender, so maybe she’s not all bad, right? Maybe everyone has a soul worth saving.
Who am I kidding? Some souls are not worth salvaging. I feel like I’m walking on eggshells sometimes - that I can’t let people in and see the real me. People don’t want to hear it, people have grown tired of it. That’s the only explanation for how even when I’ve been torn apart, I’m still more resented than the ones who did the damage to begin with. I guess it comes with the territory - but it doesn’t make me any less jealous of those who can jump into the deep-end, while I’m dipping my toe in the water. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that it’s okay to feel. I’m allowed to hurt. I can express myself. I should demand happiness. But sometimes, I feel like I can see you taking the middle seat of the flight, and you can talk to anybody about anything - and I’m a few rows back, eye-mask on and Airpods in, having to apologize a-dozen-times for the most minor inconveniences. And I have to remind myself that it’s okay - I’m allowed to take up space on this earth. I’ve done things in my career that Action Wrestling have found - unsettling. They’ve tried to flood the airwaves with rationalizations and justifications that protect me - once, a budding star and cornerstone of this company. Far before I took my talents to represent the greatest company in the world at Denzel Porter’s Invitational, I was putting my neck on the line in company wars, never backing down from a challenge. I exposed my insecurities and absorbed the punishment from unapologetic people who didn’t owe me any decency. And I’ve embarrassed myself too many times to count. There are times when I feel like I’m at the end of my rope. That I’m ready to be cut off - and that’s the thing that cuts me the deepest. Deeper than any two-inch slice across my vein. Harder than Ash Blake piercing my throat with her venomous fangs - more disrespectful than any sharp blade to my heart about my dead brother or my extended stay in a Miami hospital. The thing that will affect me the worst - and hurt me the most - is the reality that when times get rough, you’ll walk away. You’ll turn and run. You’ll leave me to fend for myself. I don’t have much family anymore. Action Wrestling became my family. Action Wrestling became my sanctuary. And Action Wrestling will be my graveyard.
I’ve spent so much time lately trying to convince you, and trying to convince myself, that there’s nothing more important to me than the ring. This ring. The Action Wrestling ring. I’ve let this industry consume me, swallow me whole, depriving me of a lifetime of health and happiness. Demanding my commitment at the expense of my security and my independence. You’ve grown to resent that I’ve split my focus, that I’ve taken what I’ve earned and what I’ve meant to this company for granted. You want me all to yourself. So once again, I arrive at a crossroads. There are times when I feel like a kill█er. When I’m reminded of where I’ve been, what I’ve done, and what I’m capable of. Odin Balfore is the only person in this field who has ever eliminated me from a Havoc - and that was my first one, when he targeted a kid who didn’t know what the fuck she was doing. I came back stronger and more focused and set records on my way to a a runner-up, until I met the unstoppable force known as Walter. But Corey Black couldn’t stop me then. Sam Kidsgrove? Claire Hawkins? Teo Blaze? None of them could stop me then. And last year, when I was public-enemy #1 for my allegiance to Carter Shaw and Philidor Holdings - that school of challengers from Downfall to C.J. Phoenix to Cass Adler to Johnny Bacchus to the karate champion or Grand Wizard of a Dungeons & Dragons league or whatever Max Daemon is that inspired the confidence to go get destroyed by Conor McGregor - they all made their big jumps at my expense, because I wasn’t seeing clearly. My focus wasn’t on winning for myself - it was on representing the entity I’d given my soul to. So you can clamor about how I’m not invested in Action Wrestling, about how my commitment has wavered, but is this what you really want? Do you want her to stand in the middle of the road while this new schoolbus of students like Tatiana Jolee and Holden Ross and Alice Gemini and Tony Savage rides off the fucking cliff? Do you really want Lissie Hope giving everything she has to the Action Wrestling ring?
This is a story about redemption. If you knew what it was like to think - just some of the time - the way I do all of the time - maybe you’d understand. You’d understand that this is a story about retribution. About how I’ve waited for two years to get my hands on Dandy DiVito once again. How he saw the bird, gliding over the horizon, and he took the shot that fractured her wing. And it still hasn’t been repaired. That’s what winning Havoc will do. This is a story of fate. I allowed Dandy DiVito to turn a champion into a punchline - and while I’ve been swimming against the current since, he’s carved out an unprecedented four World Championships. It’s time to rectify that. Havoc is going to turn that punchline - into a killer. |
