Post by Regan Voorhees on Sept 4, 2022 13:38:01 GMT -5
The one thing Regan found reassuring about the ocean, even with its infinite and terrifying mysteries, was that one day it would rise up to overtake the land and swallow humanity whole(not unlike how she did with fistfuls of dried chickpeas). A ravenous, endless appetite for devouring earth’s greatest mistake and leaving her species’ collective corpse to bloat within a watery tomb from which it could never again hope to rise.
Even with the crashing waves and the nighttime sea breeze, it was miserably hot in Venice Beach. The air conditioning was cranked in Jill Park’s house, but Regan found the atmosphere oppressive. The stink of Hollywood desperation and the misery of neverending networking exhausted her, even by proxy. Thus, she absconded from the house with a tray of spinach artichoke cups and a 20-ounce turquoise tumbler topped off with peanut butter whiskey. She retreated to the sand outside and took a seat on the beach, to debate whether she would rather drown herself or go back inside.
“I hate Los Angeles.”
And the waves kept crashing.
Imagine having your world title reign nearly ended by some bozo. Good thing Cypher smashed Lissie in the face with that camera, ha ha. You get it, you’re a smart crowd.
So it goes, Gerard. I’m as tired of clowns proliferating pop culture as anyone, but if I were you I’d want to smash Bozo in the face until his nose was rendered unhonkable. Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but clowns are rarely as happy-go-lucky as their painted-on smiles might suggest. They’re often sad or deranged or even dangerous. Shocking, I know. Pray that you never meet a Juggalo.
But as is so often the case, Action’s unofficial jester used humor to poke fun at a very real issue plaguing our society.
That being your title reign.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not personally offended. People can whine over whether or not you deserve to be at the top. The only thing I care about is that you are at the top, and scoring a victory over you under any circumstances means my fingers scratching, clawing, grasping at your title. Doesn’t matter if I tap you out with a Red Camellia or if Jill shoots you and I score a pinfall before anyone realizes you’re dead. Though I do suppose a dead champion would be prime for a cash-in.
An unenviable situation. All the usual pressures of being the prize pig, while an opportunist with an itchy trigger finger is just aching to put a bolt through the back of your skull. If you so much as stub your toe, Jill will be there salivating, wondering if you’re too incapacitated to defend yourself. Woe is you, Gerard. Couldn’t even enjoy your dubiously successful title defense at Uprising. The clown made you a punchline and now the Sword of All-In-ocles dangles overhead.
Maybe it even falls on Monday.
But tragically, I myself don’t possess a briefcase with an instant title match hack. So if I want another, I have to do things the old-fashioned way. Roll up my ruffled sleeves, line up those pasty knuckles, and hurl myself back into that delightful fray of mayhem and fisticuffs we’ve all insanely chosen as a career path. And to think, I went to college.
Jill beating you means she’s obliged to give me a shot. You understand how these sorts of arrangements work, Gerard. If I suddenly find myself back in the title picture, that situation has the potential to become so much more complicated. But I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself. Why not savor what I have right here, right now? A magical evening in… Ugh… Charlotte, North Carolina. An opportunity to really get to know Action’s tippy-top champion. Who knows what might happen? Maybe you lose the match, maybe you lose your championship, maybe it’s the worst night of your professional career. Or maybe you walk out unscathed. Maybe Clash works out fine for Gerard Angelo.
Maybe.
But I wouldn’t count on it.
Regan’s Lyft driver initially objected when she climbed into his backseat with the half-eaten tray of spinach artichoke cups and the twenty-percent less full tumbler of whiskey. She silenced him with a one-hundred-dollar bill and then requested he not speak to her for the duration of her trip from Venice Beach to Griffith Park. The open invitation to sleep at Jill’s was one she would decline, as it was a little too open for Regan’s taste. Guests already began dropping like flies, too intoxicated to stand, let alone leave. She had little respect for people who could not hold their liquor. The peanut butter whiskey was satisfactory, though Jill’s ever-mounting pile of recent successes left Regan feeling jelly.
The novelty of being alone in a city teeming with people amused her, and when her driver protested that Griffith Park was closed to the public after sundown, she eased his conscience with more cash. When he asked about waiting, she waved him off and took the trail to the top of Mount Hollywood. Along the way, she stopped to glare at the Hollywood sign itself. The most blatant display of bad taste in a city built upon the back of the worst taste in human history.
“I hate Los Angeles.”
I’m sure you’re mad about the whole scrambling-your-brains-with-a-steel-chair thing, Alice. Who wouldn’t be? You seem like a person who prefers her brains hard-boiled.
Heat of the moment, you understand. An attempt by me to lessen the chaos of a chaotic situation by effectively removing a variable, call me a control freak. But look at you now, still breathing. Still bitching, but not so much brutalizing. Been a rough couple of weeks for you, and I know what you’re thinking. If I’d only swung the chair harder, maybe you would be on a nice, permanent vacation right now. Keeping yourself busy while you relearn how to spell your own name. Really, I think my form was a little off when I swung that chair. If I kept my wrists looser, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. See, Alice? We all have things we need to improve on.
Look at you go. Two Clash main events in a row, tagging with the world champion no less. The rabbit hole spat you right out and you landed at the top of the card. Now you just have to prove you belong there. Such pressure. The kind that will make you wish that chair shot sent you back to Wonderland.
Start kicking those legs, Alice. It’s the only way you’ll stay afloat.
Regan’s glares were an offensive weapon usually reserved for a singular target - a nervous intern, a rude fan, a too-slow barista. A way for her to break them with no more than her eyes and her malevolent will. But from the top of Mount Hollywood, Regan pushed the full extent of her powers and glared at the entire city of Los Angeles, with its twinkling lights, swaying palms, and infinite traffic. Few places inspired such a pure, reptilian hatred within her.
Los Angeles was bad enough. Parties were never Regan’s scene(outside of a handful of murder mystery dinners she hosted in which “guests” kept getting mysteriously “hurt”), but she relaxed her usual policy of limited human interaction to celebrate Jill’s All-In victory. But among their many differences, Jill was a sloppy drunk while Regan preferred to get quietly shitfaced while plotting, planning, listening to YouTube playlists for 19th-century villains scheming against their enemies. Wrestling was a physical sport, of course. But to have a functioning brain among colleagues plagued by years of head trauma, was akin to being a one-eyed person in the world of the blind. Though all things considered, given her recent successes Regan did have to wonder just how well her own brain was functioning. Perhaps it was the alcohol.
She had already finished the spinach artichoke cups on the ride over and charitably offered to let the Lyft driver keep the garish silver platter they were served on. There was plenty of whiskey left in her tumbler, but the idea of getting plastered seemed less appealing than normal. She dumped the contents on the dirt and glanced over to the Hollywood sign again, wishing she has brought along matches and a can of gasoline instead. An attempt to make art from artifice, a flaming tribute to her own pretentious sensibilities. Most people wouldn’t get it. But of course, perhaps that was the alcohol talking. Defacing a nationally recognized landmark via arson would hardly be a productive use of her visit to Los Angeles, no matter how satisfying it might be.
She took a final look at La-La Land, a neverending sprawl of urban grime full of the stupidly hopeful and their hopeless futures. Regrettable as the eventual melting of the ice caps might be, the city could not be submerged fast enough for her tastes. A final Lyft request was made, and Regan was off to LAX, eager to banish the metropolis to nothing more than an unpleasant memory.
From her window seat in first class, she took a final depressing look at Tinseltown, as the plane left the runway, the ground, and the city behind them. Regan wasn’t quite sure she could see all the way to Venice Beach. Not that it mattered. Jill could celebrate her accomplishments well enough on her own. Regan adjusted her sleep mask and slipped in her earbuds, eager to embrace the solace of the redeye flight and hopefully blackout until she was back in Birmingham. Before drifting off, a single thought slipped from her brain, escaping quietly through her lips in a sleepy grumble.
“I fucking hate Los Angeles.”
Oh, these odd couple tag team affairs. Will Gerard Angel and Alice Gemini(GA and AG, marketing team get on that) coexist? Can they possibly?
Yes, for one night, one main event, one match I suspect that they can. At the very least, I have no doubt they can agree to focus their mutual disdain on their mutual opponents and mutually try to vaccinate Action Wrestling against the ongoing Affluenza outbreak. Congratulations, Team GAG. I believe in your ability to function as human beings at the most basic level - cooperation for the sake of shared advancement. Think about it, kiddos. This is what brought our species from animal instinct to sentient awareness, and then after that we proceeded to fuck absolutely everything up.
But some of us have managed to crawl to the top of the festering pile that is humanity and now here we are. Gerard, on guard, ever wary. Alice, full of malice, pseudo-scary. I do suppose Jill and I prodded you both at Uprising, in the pursuit of our own professional success. You would have to be stupid to take that personally, and I’m perfectly willing to give you both the benefit of the doubt. If you’re determined to prove me wrong, that’s on you.
We’re all drowning here, kiddos. And there are no lifeboats, no passing ships, no driftwood to save us. Gerard Angelo as the world champion with enemies on every side, title reign threatening to capsize at any moment. Alice Gemini with more eyes on her than ever before, everyone watching to see if she sinks or swims. Jill Park clutching a lucky briefcase guaranteed to keep her afloat after the waves swallow everyone else.
And me, having tried so long ago to abandon my humanity, even though those irritating traces of it still linger. My vestigial gills haven’t quite kicked in, but I can hold my breath for a very long time. Long enough to circle silently below your pitifully kicking feet, waiting for the last of your strength to give out. All razor teeth and icy hatred, devourer of your hopes, your dreams, your everything.
Hold onto each other, Gaggers. And just keep swimming. If you’re lucky, I’ll only devour one of you.
Even with the crashing waves and the nighttime sea breeze, it was miserably hot in Venice Beach. The air conditioning was cranked in Jill Park’s house, but Regan found the atmosphere oppressive. The stink of Hollywood desperation and the misery of neverending networking exhausted her, even by proxy. Thus, she absconded from the house with a tray of spinach artichoke cups and a 20-ounce turquoise tumbler topped off with peanut butter whiskey. She retreated to the sand outside and took a seat on the beach, to debate whether she would rather drown herself or go back inside.
“I hate Los Angeles.”
And the waves kept crashing.
(´･(00)･｀)
Imagine having your world title reign nearly ended by some bozo. Good thing Cypher smashed Lissie in the face with that camera, ha ha. You get it, you’re a smart crowd.
So it goes, Gerard. I’m as tired of clowns proliferating pop culture as anyone, but if I were you I’d want to smash Bozo in the face until his nose was rendered unhonkable. Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but clowns are rarely as happy-go-lucky as their painted-on smiles might suggest. They’re often sad or deranged or even dangerous. Shocking, I know. Pray that you never meet a Juggalo.
But as is so often the case, Action’s unofficial jester used humor to poke fun at a very real issue plaguing our society.
That being your title reign.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not personally offended. People can whine over whether or not you deserve to be at the top. The only thing I care about is that you are at the top, and scoring a victory over you under any circumstances means my fingers scratching, clawing, grasping at your title. Doesn’t matter if I tap you out with a Red Camellia or if Jill shoots you and I score a pinfall before anyone realizes you’re dead. Though I do suppose a dead champion would be prime for a cash-in.
An unenviable situation. All the usual pressures of being the prize pig, while an opportunist with an itchy trigger finger is just aching to put a bolt through the back of your skull. If you so much as stub your toe, Jill will be there salivating, wondering if you’re too incapacitated to defend yourself. Woe is you, Gerard. Couldn’t even enjoy your dubiously successful title defense at Uprising. The clown made you a punchline and now the Sword of All-In-ocles dangles overhead.
Maybe it even falls on Monday.
But tragically, I myself don’t possess a briefcase with an instant title match hack. So if I want another, I have to do things the old-fashioned way. Roll up my ruffled sleeves, line up those pasty knuckles, and hurl myself back into that delightful fray of mayhem and fisticuffs we’ve all insanely chosen as a career path. And to think, I went to college.
Jill beating you means she’s obliged to give me a shot. You understand how these sorts of arrangements work, Gerard. If I suddenly find myself back in the title picture, that situation has the potential to become so much more complicated. But I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself. Why not savor what I have right here, right now? A magical evening in… Ugh… Charlotte, North Carolina. An opportunity to really get to know Action’s tippy-top champion. Who knows what might happen? Maybe you lose the match, maybe you lose your championship, maybe it’s the worst night of your professional career. Or maybe you walk out unscathed. Maybe Clash works out fine for Gerard Angelo.
Maybe.
But I wouldn’t count on it.
(´･(00)･｀)
Regan’s Lyft driver initially objected when she climbed into his backseat with the half-eaten tray of spinach artichoke cups and the twenty-percent less full tumbler of whiskey. She silenced him with a one-hundred-dollar bill and then requested he not speak to her for the duration of her trip from Venice Beach to Griffith Park. The open invitation to sleep at Jill’s was one she would decline, as it was a little too open for Regan’s taste. Guests already began dropping like flies, too intoxicated to stand, let alone leave. She had little respect for people who could not hold their liquor. The peanut butter whiskey was satisfactory, though Jill’s ever-mounting pile of recent successes left Regan feeling jelly.
The novelty of being alone in a city teeming with people amused her, and when her driver protested that Griffith Park was closed to the public after sundown, she eased his conscience with more cash. When he asked about waiting, she waved him off and took the trail to the top of Mount Hollywood. Along the way, she stopped to glare at the Hollywood sign itself. The most blatant display of bad taste in a city built upon the back of the worst taste in human history.
“I hate Los Angeles.”
(´･(00)･｀)
I’m sure you’re mad about the whole scrambling-your-brains-with-a-steel-chair thing, Alice. Who wouldn’t be? You seem like a person who prefers her brains hard-boiled.
Heat of the moment, you understand. An attempt by me to lessen the chaos of a chaotic situation by effectively removing a variable, call me a control freak. But look at you now, still breathing. Still bitching, but not so much brutalizing. Been a rough couple of weeks for you, and I know what you’re thinking. If I’d only swung the chair harder, maybe you would be on a nice, permanent vacation right now. Keeping yourself busy while you relearn how to spell your own name. Really, I think my form was a little off when I swung that chair. If I kept my wrists looser, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. See, Alice? We all have things we need to improve on.
Look at you go. Two Clash main events in a row, tagging with the world champion no less. The rabbit hole spat you right out and you landed at the top of the card. Now you just have to prove you belong there. Such pressure. The kind that will make you wish that chair shot sent you back to Wonderland.
Start kicking those legs, Alice. It’s the only way you’ll stay afloat.
(´･(00)･｀)
Regan’s glares were an offensive weapon usually reserved for a singular target - a nervous intern, a rude fan, a too-slow barista. A way for her to break them with no more than her eyes and her malevolent will. But from the top of Mount Hollywood, Regan pushed the full extent of her powers and glared at the entire city of Los Angeles, with its twinkling lights, swaying palms, and infinite traffic. Few places inspired such a pure, reptilian hatred within her.
Los Angeles was bad enough. Parties were never Regan’s scene(outside of a handful of murder mystery dinners she hosted in which “guests” kept getting mysteriously “hurt”), but she relaxed her usual policy of limited human interaction to celebrate Jill’s All-In victory. But among their many differences, Jill was a sloppy drunk while Regan preferred to get quietly shitfaced while plotting, planning, listening to YouTube playlists for 19th-century villains scheming against their enemies. Wrestling was a physical sport, of course. But to have a functioning brain among colleagues plagued by years of head trauma, was akin to being a one-eyed person in the world of the blind. Though all things considered, given her recent successes Regan did have to wonder just how well her own brain was functioning. Perhaps it was the alcohol.
She had already finished the spinach artichoke cups on the ride over and charitably offered to let the Lyft driver keep the garish silver platter they were served on. There was plenty of whiskey left in her tumbler, but the idea of getting plastered seemed less appealing than normal. She dumped the contents on the dirt and glanced over to the Hollywood sign again, wishing she has brought along matches and a can of gasoline instead. An attempt to make art from artifice, a flaming tribute to her own pretentious sensibilities. Most people wouldn’t get it. But of course, perhaps that was the alcohol talking. Defacing a nationally recognized landmark via arson would hardly be a productive use of her visit to Los Angeles, no matter how satisfying it might be.
She took a final look at La-La Land, a neverending sprawl of urban grime full of the stupidly hopeful and their hopeless futures. Regrettable as the eventual melting of the ice caps might be, the city could not be submerged fast enough for her tastes. A final Lyft request was made, and Regan was off to LAX, eager to banish the metropolis to nothing more than an unpleasant memory.
From her window seat in first class, she took a final depressing look at Tinseltown, as the plane left the runway, the ground, and the city behind them. Regan wasn’t quite sure she could see all the way to Venice Beach. Not that it mattered. Jill could celebrate her accomplishments well enough on her own. Regan adjusted her sleep mask and slipped in her earbuds, eager to embrace the solace of the redeye flight and hopefully blackout until she was back in Birmingham. Before drifting off, a single thought slipped from her brain, escaping quietly through her lips in a sleepy grumble.
“I fucking hate Los Angeles.”
(´･(00)･｀)
Oh, these odd couple tag team affairs. Will Gerard Angel and Alice Gemini(GA and AG, marketing team get on that) coexist? Can they possibly?
Yes, for one night, one main event, one match I suspect that they can. At the very least, I have no doubt they can agree to focus their mutual disdain on their mutual opponents and mutually try to vaccinate Action Wrestling against the ongoing Affluenza outbreak. Congratulations, Team GAG. I believe in your ability to function as human beings at the most basic level - cooperation for the sake of shared advancement. Think about it, kiddos. This is what brought our species from animal instinct to sentient awareness, and then after that we proceeded to fuck absolutely everything up.
But some of us have managed to crawl to the top of the festering pile that is humanity and now here we are. Gerard, on guard, ever wary. Alice, full of malice, pseudo-scary. I do suppose Jill and I prodded you both at Uprising, in the pursuit of our own professional success. You would have to be stupid to take that personally, and I’m perfectly willing to give you both the benefit of the doubt. If you’re determined to prove me wrong, that’s on you.
We’re all drowning here, kiddos. And there are no lifeboats, no passing ships, no driftwood to save us. Gerard Angelo as the world champion with enemies on every side, title reign threatening to capsize at any moment. Alice Gemini with more eyes on her than ever before, everyone watching to see if she sinks or swims. Jill Park clutching a lucky briefcase guaranteed to keep her afloat after the waves swallow everyone else.
And me, having tried so long ago to abandon my humanity, even though those irritating traces of it still linger. My vestigial gills haven’t quite kicked in, but I can hold my breath for a very long time. Long enough to circle silently below your pitifully kicking feet, waiting for the last of your strength to give out. All razor teeth and icy hatred, devourer of your hopes, your dreams, your everything.
Hold onto each other, Gaggers. And just keep swimming. If you’re lucky, I’ll only devour one of you.
