Post by Downfall on Mar 9, 2023 14:48:14 GMT -5
I'm going to take another, final moment to register my disappointment with this whole charade, not just this week, but in toto. That in the end, this is what you turned down my offer for. This, all of this, the silly, petty bickering this has denigrated into and the sad state of how you've tried, so hard, to prove that you're fitting into this. Fuck, Dion, I'm disappointed in your approach in that you have twenty two YEARS of my history to call on, my triumphs and my failures, how I've been nothing but transparent this entire time that before I joined AW, there was a good stretch of years in the 10's where I had hit rock bottom and was working for chicken scratch; How I nearly let my career slip out of my hands due to ego and pride, and yes, I did push people away.
I don't make a secret of that, though, and that's what you don't get.
Nah, you could've chosen to comb through any of that, but the staggering height of your pettiness, the absolute nadir of your childish, low-rent tactic to try and throw me off my game, was to claim that you can pull me back from a brink where Michelle couldn't... and, failing that, you tried to snark that my temper pushed Michelle away.
Except... if you'd paid even the slightest attention to anything I'd been doing since November, you'd have seen that not only did Michelle come back to my life, but even though things between us changed drastically, we started life anew... and in my new home, in my new city, with the people like Michelle, like Rumiko and everyone else that DO stick around, and do support me, I've put down roots that you haven't. The supporting players in my life now, don't go off on "finding themselves" voyages or excursions to other companies and absolutely ghost me for weeks while they try to get their mind right, or team with other people. You'd probably know that, except... You know, tell me you don't watch the shows or read the results without telling me, you don't watch the shows, right?
"Oh, classic Dion! Such a cheeky bastard, so personable, so amiable when he's making a joke about his negligence to engage or understand any of the stories that make up this fed work! What fun!"
Also disappointing in how it's made this entire feud go over like a lead balloon is that it actually didn't have to happen at all... You complain bitterly how it was my actions that led to this because I gave into my rage, how I spent all these weeks injuring people with crowbars and how it was up to you to take a stand and pull me back from the darkness... And then, because I don't actually respond to thinly-veiled pleas for attention, you said that I'm breaking up the Vanguard.
Except that I actually pitched for the Vanguard not to break up at all, and who knows? If you'd actually listened to my pitch, and just stopped acting like this is some honorable quest when it started as a misunderstanding, then the Vanguard would've been fine. In all honesty, if you had just said "Okay, fine, but I'm still not cool with you beating up Holden Ross, even though he's a grade-A piece of shit", then I'd probably have said "You know, maybe I was too harsh on Joey Scala, I'm sorry." ...Maybe, probably not.
But I didn't give you what you wanted this week, though, Dion... I didn't even, attack you with the crowbar in any of this, you know, the supposed inciting point in our schism, the justification you use to claim that I've gone too far to turn back. I didn't give you more than a light warning, because I wasn't going to let you off with "knocking me on my ass", but Dion... I also wasn't going to buy in to this idea you came to me with, that you're suddenly going to be the goalkeeper stopping me from doing anything.
But regardless, the entire impetus for this feud is built on that shaky, sandcastle foundation, which, I immediately kicked over in my first promo. Because once you cotton to the idea that, actually, your entire argument is based on a weak premise and this feud didn't have to happen, then the only answer that's left, Occam's fucking Razor, is that this isn't you trying to be the Superman and shielding these men with bullets bouncing off your chest, this is you, opportunistically and weaseling, trying to find your angle so you can make yourself look good.
And you continued to disappoint from there.
When you tried to start this off with an appeal to my reason, trying to paint this portrait of a man corrupted by the Hardcore title... how this isn't you, Danny, you're blinding yourself with rage, and if I take your hand and step into the light, you'll help me now, as you did when you lead me away from my terrible, blackest days working as a henchman for Jimmy Nights. How if I didn't back down, you'd come down to the ring and stop me now, as you did back then when James tried hurting NATE.
Unsurprisingly, your callous, disrespectful and reductive painting me as a thoughtless foot soldier who you saved and brought over to the light side, how you changed me and brought me into this wonderful creation of yours, did not appeal to my sense of rationality or engender warm feelings.
When that didn't work, you tried cherry-picking any quote I said in 2021, when I was under the impression we would be working under equal partnership and I wouldn't have to bear the brunt of emotional labor, shoulders to cry on, work ethic to push you to try your hardest or a straight voice to keep you from going off the rails and hailing the Swallowing, who'd just spent an entire segment burying us right to our faces and claiming we were ducking them, and treating them like they were old friends. When that didn't work, you just tried pulling out any quote I said, where if you and I pushed each other, iron sharpening iron, that both of us could push ourselves to main event prominence, and both be World Champions. And when that didn't work, you claimed that you were my sternest test to date. That you were giving me competition for this Hardcore belt that I couldn't match, and that you were my Bacchus, my Corey, my Waterloo.
Because it was never about the title...until it was always about proving, you belonged in my world.
And when that work you just flipped your entire stance on violence and threatened to break my teeth.
You justified, you raged, you Straw-Man Argumented, you presented all of these out-of-context and bananas lines about how well, ACKSHUALLY, you're in high demand in XWF, but you're sticking with AW because you wanna do what's right, you wanna stop evil from perpetuating itself. As the week wore on, your arguments became ever more snippy and defensive, but the fight... went right out of you, and I know you saw it too. You gave the fuck up. Just exactly as I said you'd do, as you always do, once you get that few days' manic motivation to do something and be somebody in this fed out of your system. When you go in without a coherent plan, and the shit you fling at the wall like the Rhesus monkey you are doesn't stick, then you're left absently stroking your lip, shovelling a fucking corn chip into your gullet and wondering how you can do this so you don't sound bad. Unless you're already off the bandwagon and already spewing out something fucking silly, like when ya began speaking Klingon in our one shot at getting into the Battlegrounds match.
And you're the one that wants to say I walked away from the Vanguard, I'm not.
But, again, I'm not letting you treat the Vanguard as this sacred cow to you, when even a cursory glance at what you do elsewhere tells the story more fully; What the Vanguard had wasn't imminently special to you, what we did as a team loses a lot of it's punch if you're also ranging around in other feds at the exact same time, teaming with other people. The Vanguard was your special project? Your baby? Because of how hard the two of us worked at it for 288 days? Ah, cool story; Except that that's demonstrably false, because you went out there teaming elsewhere with Lissie Hope, someone who's never taken an opportunity not to dunk on how much better she thinks she is, than both of us. Then ya teamed with Blondie, and created Chardonnay... And oh, how you bragged, on Twitter, about how glowingly that team was going, how you went undefeated your first few weeks and how you were taking that team to XWF prominence...
Except, oh, wait, Blondie is the one who ghosted you, and walked away from your partnership... probably because they already saw that they would have to be the straight player in the relationship, the one who shoulders your emotional baggage and convinces you to stay focused this week in a championship match so you don't go rambling about Tostito's.
I'm sorry, does that sting you? Does my pointing out these obvious truths stick in your mind?
Why don't you do, what you do, every single time someone shuts you down with a logical argument. Why don't you send a funny Tweet about it.
Why don't you just Tweet out that fucking gif of "Dionysus looks blankly into the camera and walks out of frame", because it got you a mild chuckle or at least a semi-amused snort of air through the nostrils from at least one person, once upon a time, so of course, you're bound to beat that dead horse further.
This, here, is the end. This encapsulates every bit of frustration, disappointment and utter sadness that this is what you've become when the chips are down, when you tried so hard to get this brutal, bloody masterpiece out of me that you didn't earn.
You can try to jokingly soothe things over, come up to me, shake my hand and say "Downfall, you stocky fuck, how are you! XD" before you try to pretend as if this never happened (Which I'm actually, partially positive you will now, you made a right ass out of yourself in how you spoke to me this week)
Or, as you claim you're going to do... you can come out every week and oppose me. Chastise me, wag your fucking finger like Ned Flanders and say "Now now, you need to play nice with those men and not swing that cockadoodie crowbar around in those hardcore matches!" You can try... to come out there every week, and stop me from doing what I will, which is forge a strong, brutal, HARDCORE division where people, that aren't like you, that don't quail at the thoughts of using a weapon or doing their damnedest to bring blood-churning levels of violence before, after, and during going bell-to-bell. You can TRY to talk reason into my head.
I've just stopped listening, after this.
But what you haven't gotten done this week, and what you aren't going to do at any point in the near future, is get any more help from me. Nahh, son. You made this bed and I calmly, coolly let you know every step of this that there were consequences that you're reaping from this. Your consequence is, you actually turned down keeping the Vanguard going, letting me do my own thing and letting the entire arc of me using force sort itself out.
Because in the final analysis... you again, don't know who you're dealing with. The Hardcore Title didn't make me this way, Dionysus. I was always this brutal, unforgiving, unflinching monster. Did you think when I told Johnny Bacchus that "When I lift this crowbar up, it's an uneasy feeling from the crowd, a begging, pleading for me to turn back and stop this before it's too late, but my determined fingers close into a fist and I'd chose to pick that crowbar up every single time".
I've always been THE most ruthless person on any roster, and if you had bothered to go back and look at a single step of my history, you'd actually see that that's what's brought me success. I stepped on people, I used people, I picked up weapons and I battered opponents into submission, broke the jaws of people that crossed me, used crowbars to punish members of my own teams when they didn't get the job done... and for twenty two years, there have been long strings of success where that made me a damn KING. It isn't something I just came to.
But with you, oh, with you, I did find honor. I did play under the rules and for a long time in there, I held that side back, from everyone. Including, not letting it out on you, when you inevitably did fail me... And in all honesty, you should have thanked me, all along, for staying my hand.
You claimed that you made the Vanguard, but you didn't make me, because you don't make weakness.
That's the one line that stuck out to me as the most laughable, right up there with you swearing up and down that you go out there week in and week out and stop all of the evildoers like me from injuring other superstars (When I don't actually think you can successfully name ONCE you did that.) But no. You don't make weakness.
You just perpetuate it, and glory in your own mediocrity, fueled by your own deep-seated insecurity and incessant need to be liked, to be seen as this hero.
We saw this week that, when you're pushed, that "Nice Guy" mask slips and you're actually more of the "Nice Guy" trope of the simp who leaves heart eyes on an E-girl's Twitter, replying to her stories with "Yesssss queen! Looking amazing!" and cute good morning texts until that time you work the nerve up to ask for a crumb of pussy or to send a nude, and then you get mad and call the E-girl a bitch before she blocks you.
But you proved, more expertly than I can put into a thousand 800 word posts, Dion... you were VASTLY out of your league, this week.
Still, you tried... You tried, so many things, chief among them was you tried to convince us that the Crimson Gladiator was more than just a name, that when it came to it, you could be as vicious, as brutal, as unforgiving as I am.
You just failed. And you're left in the bombed out ruins of your own reputation, your own nice-guy, protector, kind, friendly hero image shattered, and the Vanguard left on the table because you thought you had a point to make.
Good luck out there in the wilderness by yourself, without anyone to hand you your Sword, and say "It's dangerous to go alone take this."
As I said.
We all live with our consequences.
I don't make a secret of that, though, and that's what you don't get.
Nah, you could've chosen to comb through any of that, but the staggering height of your pettiness, the absolute nadir of your childish, low-rent tactic to try and throw me off my game, was to claim that you can pull me back from a brink where Michelle couldn't... and, failing that, you tried to snark that my temper pushed Michelle away.
Except... if you'd paid even the slightest attention to anything I'd been doing since November, you'd have seen that not only did Michelle come back to my life, but even though things between us changed drastically, we started life anew... and in my new home, in my new city, with the people like Michelle, like Rumiko and everyone else that DO stick around, and do support me, I've put down roots that you haven't. The supporting players in my life now, don't go off on "finding themselves" voyages or excursions to other companies and absolutely ghost me for weeks while they try to get their mind right, or team with other people. You'd probably know that, except... You know, tell me you don't watch the shows or read the results without telling me, you don't watch the shows, right?
"Oh, classic Dion! Such a cheeky bastard, so personable, so amiable when he's making a joke about his negligence to engage or understand any of the stories that make up this fed work! What fun!"
Also disappointing in how it's made this entire feud go over like a lead balloon is that it actually didn't have to happen at all... You complain bitterly how it was my actions that led to this because I gave into my rage, how I spent all these weeks injuring people with crowbars and how it was up to you to take a stand and pull me back from the darkness... And then, because I don't actually respond to thinly-veiled pleas for attention, you said that I'm breaking up the Vanguard.
Except that I actually pitched for the Vanguard not to break up at all, and who knows? If you'd actually listened to my pitch, and just stopped acting like this is some honorable quest when it started as a misunderstanding, then the Vanguard would've been fine. In all honesty, if you had just said "Okay, fine, but I'm still not cool with you beating up Holden Ross, even though he's a grade-A piece of shit", then I'd probably have said "You know, maybe I was too harsh on Joey Scala, I'm sorry." ...Maybe, probably not.
But I didn't give you what you wanted this week, though, Dion... I didn't even, attack you with the crowbar in any of this, you know, the supposed inciting point in our schism, the justification you use to claim that I've gone too far to turn back. I didn't give you more than a light warning, because I wasn't going to let you off with "knocking me on my ass", but Dion... I also wasn't going to buy in to this idea you came to me with, that you're suddenly going to be the goalkeeper stopping me from doing anything.
But regardless, the entire impetus for this feud is built on that shaky, sandcastle foundation, which, I immediately kicked over in my first promo. Because once you cotton to the idea that, actually, your entire argument is based on a weak premise and this feud didn't have to happen, then the only answer that's left, Occam's fucking Razor, is that this isn't you trying to be the Superman and shielding these men with bullets bouncing off your chest, this is you, opportunistically and weaseling, trying to find your angle so you can make yourself look good.
And you continued to disappoint from there.
When you tried to start this off with an appeal to my reason, trying to paint this portrait of a man corrupted by the Hardcore title... how this isn't you, Danny, you're blinding yourself with rage, and if I take your hand and step into the light, you'll help me now, as you did when you lead me away from my terrible, blackest days working as a henchman for Jimmy Nights. How if I didn't back down, you'd come down to the ring and stop me now, as you did back then when James tried hurting NATE.
Unsurprisingly, your callous, disrespectful and reductive painting me as a thoughtless foot soldier who you saved and brought over to the light side, how you changed me and brought me into this wonderful creation of yours, did not appeal to my sense of rationality or engender warm feelings.
When that didn't work, you tried cherry-picking any quote I said in 2021, when I was under the impression we would be working under equal partnership and I wouldn't have to bear the brunt of emotional labor, shoulders to cry on, work ethic to push you to try your hardest or a straight voice to keep you from going off the rails and hailing the Swallowing, who'd just spent an entire segment burying us right to our faces and claiming we were ducking them, and treating them like they were old friends. When that didn't work, you just tried pulling out any quote I said, where if you and I pushed each other, iron sharpening iron, that both of us could push ourselves to main event prominence, and both be World Champions. And when that didn't work, you claimed that you were my sternest test to date. That you were giving me competition for this Hardcore belt that I couldn't match, and that you were my Bacchus, my Corey, my Waterloo.
Because it was never about the title...until it was always about proving, you belonged in my world.
And when that work you just flipped your entire stance on violence and threatened to break my teeth.
You justified, you raged, you Straw-Man Argumented, you presented all of these out-of-context and bananas lines about how well, ACKSHUALLY, you're in high demand in XWF, but you're sticking with AW because you wanna do what's right, you wanna stop evil from perpetuating itself. As the week wore on, your arguments became ever more snippy and defensive, but the fight... went right out of you, and I know you saw it too. You gave the fuck up. Just exactly as I said you'd do, as you always do, once you get that few days' manic motivation to do something and be somebody in this fed out of your system. When you go in without a coherent plan, and the shit you fling at the wall like the Rhesus monkey you are doesn't stick, then you're left absently stroking your lip, shovelling a fucking corn chip into your gullet and wondering how you can do this so you don't sound bad. Unless you're already off the bandwagon and already spewing out something fucking silly, like when ya began speaking Klingon in our one shot at getting into the Battlegrounds match.
And you're the one that wants to say I walked away from the Vanguard, I'm not.
But, again, I'm not letting you treat the Vanguard as this sacred cow to you, when even a cursory glance at what you do elsewhere tells the story more fully; What the Vanguard had wasn't imminently special to you, what we did as a team loses a lot of it's punch if you're also ranging around in other feds at the exact same time, teaming with other people. The Vanguard was your special project? Your baby? Because of how hard the two of us worked at it for 288 days? Ah, cool story; Except that that's demonstrably false, because you went out there teaming elsewhere with Lissie Hope, someone who's never taken an opportunity not to dunk on how much better she thinks she is, than both of us. Then ya teamed with Blondie, and created Chardonnay... And oh, how you bragged, on Twitter, about how glowingly that team was going, how you went undefeated your first few weeks and how you were taking that team to XWF prominence...
Except, oh, wait, Blondie is the one who ghosted you, and walked away from your partnership... probably because they already saw that they would have to be the straight player in the relationship, the one who shoulders your emotional baggage and convinces you to stay focused this week in a championship match so you don't go rambling about Tostito's.
I'm sorry, does that sting you? Does my pointing out these obvious truths stick in your mind?
Why don't you do, what you do, every single time someone shuts you down with a logical argument. Why don't you send a funny Tweet about it.
Why don't you just Tweet out that fucking gif of "Dionysus looks blankly into the camera and walks out of frame", because it got you a mild chuckle or at least a semi-amused snort of air through the nostrils from at least one person, once upon a time, so of course, you're bound to beat that dead horse further.
This, here, is the end. This encapsulates every bit of frustration, disappointment and utter sadness that this is what you've become when the chips are down, when you tried so hard to get this brutal, bloody masterpiece out of me that you didn't earn.
You can try to jokingly soothe things over, come up to me, shake my hand and say "Downfall, you stocky fuck, how are you! XD" before you try to pretend as if this never happened (Which I'm actually, partially positive you will now, you made a right ass out of yourself in how you spoke to me this week)
Or, as you claim you're going to do... you can come out every week and oppose me. Chastise me, wag your fucking finger like Ned Flanders and say "Now now, you need to play nice with those men and not swing that cockadoodie crowbar around in those hardcore matches!" You can try... to come out there every week, and stop me from doing what I will, which is forge a strong, brutal, HARDCORE division where people, that aren't like you, that don't quail at the thoughts of using a weapon or doing their damnedest to bring blood-churning levels of violence before, after, and during going bell-to-bell. You can TRY to talk reason into my head.
I've just stopped listening, after this.
But what you haven't gotten done this week, and what you aren't going to do at any point in the near future, is get any more help from me. Nahh, son. You made this bed and I calmly, coolly let you know every step of this that there were consequences that you're reaping from this. Your consequence is, you actually turned down keeping the Vanguard going, letting me do my own thing and letting the entire arc of me using force sort itself out.
Because in the final analysis... you again, don't know who you're dealing with. The Hardcore Title didn't make me this way, Dionysus. I was always this brutal, unforgiving, unflinching monster. Did you think when I told Johnny Bacchus that "When I lift this crowbar up, it's an uneasy feeling from the crowd, a begging, pleading for me to turn back and stop this before it's too late, but my determined fingers close into a fist and I'd chose to pick that crowbar up every single time".
I've always been THE most ruthless person on any roster, and if you had bothered to go back and look at a single step of my history, you'd actually see that that's what's brought me success. I stepped on people, I used people, I picked up weapons and I battered opponents into submission, broke the jaws of people that crossed me, used crowbars to punish members of my own teams when they didn't get the job done... and for twenty two years, there have been long strings of success where that made me a damn KING. It isn't something I just came to.
But with you, oh, with you, I did find honor. I did play under the rules and for a long time in there, I held that side back, from everyone. Including, not letting it out on you, when you inevitably did fail me... And in all honesty, you should have thanked me, all along, for staying my hand.
You claimed that you made the Vanguard, but you didn't make me, because you don't make weakness.
That's the one line that stuck out to me as the most laughable, right up there with you swearing up and down that you go out there week in and week out and stop all of the evildoers like me from injuring other superstars (When I don't actually think you can successfully name ONCE you did that.) But no. You don't make weakness.
You just perpetuate it, and glory in your own mediocrity, fueled by your own deep-seated insecurity and incessant need to be liked, to be seen as this hero.
We saw this week that, when you're pushed, that "Nice Guy" mask slips and you're actually more of the "Nice Guy" trope of the simp who leaves heart eyes on an E-girl's Twitter, replying to her stories with "Yesssss queen! Looking amazing!" and cute good morning texts until that time you work the nerve up to ask for a crumb of pussy or to send a nude, and then you get mad and call the E-girl a bitch before she blocks you.
But you proved, more expertly than I can put into a thousand 800 word posts, Dion... you were VASTLY out of your league, this week.
Still, you tried... You tried, so many things, chief among them was you tried to convince us that the Crimson Gladiator was more than just a name, that when it came to it, you could be as vicious, as brutal, as unforgiving as I am.
You just failed. And you're left in the bombed out ruins of your own reputation, your own nice-guy, protector, kind, friendly hero image shattered, and the Vanguard left on the table because you thought you had a point to make.
Good luck out there in the wilderness by yourself, without anyone to hand you your Sword, and say "It's dangerous to go alone take this."
As I said.
We all live with our consequences.