On Actualized Personhood. (994 words)
Jan 10, 2021 12:40:55 GMT -5
Stuart Slane and Reo Raijin like this
Post by Downfall on Jan 10, 2021 12:40:55 GMT -5
"Yes, hello, we're just giving you a customary call-back re: your interest in my friend. When I asked Daniel about appearing on Juggalo TV at some point, he... well... burst into a round of laughter that - well, I'll put you on speakerphone... Suffice to say, not interested, but, if you wanna reach him, I'll give you my cell number; ask for Alec. Yeah. Thankyou. Goodbye."
The pencil makes a line against the paper; that's the way it always starts, isn't it? And we stay in tight on the pencil, marking the page. Before long, he's sketched out a blank, nondescript face.
"It didn't happen overnight for me to birth myself into what I am today. Lord knows there were growing pains and learning curves at the start, but it was all in the line of what I knew I had all along. It took insight, grit I didn't think I had in the tank, but the fact is becoming the Television champion meant discovering new levels of drive, to be better than I was."
The pencil is adding shading around the eyes, taking on the appearance of a familiar facepaint.
"So, Charlie... Tell me, my borderline brain-dead friend, what the fuck do you know about drive? What gets you up in the morning?"
You can't see anything but his hands and the scribbling of his deft pencilwork, but in his voice, dripping disdain.
"I'm calling you by your government name not because I invite you to reply in-kind and think Daniel Fehl is your friend, but because calling you Twiztid Insane sounds anything but honest. It marks you. Charlie, in the two decades I've been wrestling I've beaten the living shit out of over half a dozen choads exactly like you - Twiztid Nightmares, Insane Juggalos and enough Wicked's to make me fucking sick. Then comes you, out of "retirement" and pretending like your glory days of 2009 can come around, when your fandom has been a guttering ember in the camp firepit of wrestling even five years before that. You wanna recapture the glories of your career. But unlike my comeback tour from the indies to a rekindled, rising triumph... you walk in here after eleven years, tell management that you used to jump around on trampolines, and beat exactly three people who haven't shown up here since then, and you wanna talk about drive."
The instrument's lines are becoming fiercer, more jagged, as he's scribbling over the ugly facepainted gob he'd etched out. Slashing lines through it. Obliterating the features. It sickened him.
"You don't know shit about drive, because the avatar you follow is a one-dimensional marketing ploy aimed at broke teenagers stealing their mother's make-up so they can put on clown facepaint. You don't know what it's like to have your muscles spent, every fiber of your being strained beyond their capabilities only to get back up and keep fighting… not for fame, money, or the fucking fans… for yourself, for something you want more than your own wellbeing. Something that keeps your shoulders off the mat for anything longer than 2 seconds."
Hands tear the page out, crumple it up easily, throw it away. Deliberately.
"And the thing about it is, so many years past it's shelf-life of relevancy, even you know there's some closet shame in it. It's why you ask every single one of your opponents a question. Your sweep the leg, Johnny: "what are YOU going to do if you get beaten by a Juggalo?"
He's drawing again.
"Problem is, it comes with its own tacit admission, almost could be a flash of self-awareness if you were just a braincell smarter, that you should be embarrassed yourself for being in your thirties and dressing from Hot Topic."
He snorts derisively at the thought.
"Even if we both hadn't taken hiatuses from our career and started over again here, my skill would outstrip yours like you're standing still just off the fact that you're nothing more than a backyard wrestler. I take even more disrespect at the fact that you think bumping around on a makeshift ring grab-assing with some idiots chugging lukewarm Faygos puts you on a similar skill level. I have been honing my edge for decades, and you fucking walk around here talking about the good old days where you hit a backflip off a double jump. Fuck you. You goddamned tourist. You fan."
He sets the pencil down against the page. Those rough, calloused, scarred hands flex.
"You don't have your own identity, you don't have your own personhood. You're nothing but a cipher with your Juggalo TV and your played-out catechisms. Nothing but a dim-witted member of a cultish group of jackasses devoted to mediocre white rappers, and that is the extent to which we know or care about your personality. But because you have nothing that represents real, actualized personhood, I don't have to feel any remorse about breaking your jaw. See how that works?"
Close in on the page, he's drawn an incredibly detailed rough of a wave. The water is surging into a stony shore, to crash, and be broken. Apt metaphor.
"Here's what I want from you asshole, show me something, anything. Not part of your boring-ass gimmick, something that might be a trait of a real person. Maybe, if you can prove that you're more than just a cut-out from a Shaggy 2 Dope poster, the next time those assholes in the audience clap for you, it'll be because they actually have something resembling respect."
Finally, we come in tight on his face. His eyes show no hint of mercy or care.
"Either way, it ends the same, Charlie. You can choose to go down as a Juggalo, wooping and spewing catchphrases, or as man, fighting for something valiantly as he faces his last stand."
"It all comes out the same, but wouldn't you rather be your own man instead of a face in the crowd?"
The pencil makes a line against the paper; that's the way it always starts, isn't it? And we stay in tight on the pencil, marking the page. Before long, he's sketched out a blank, nondescript face.
"It didn't happen overnight for me to birth myself into what I am today. Lord knows there were growing pains and learning curves at the start, but it was all in the line of what I knew I had all along. It took insight, grit I didn't think I had in the tank, but the fact is becoming the Television champion meant discovering new levels of drive, to be better than I was."
The pencil is adding shading around the eyes, taking on the appearance of a familiar facepaint.
"So, Charlie... Tell me, my borderline brain-dead friend, what the fuck do you know about drive? What gets you up in the morning?"
You can't see anything but his hands and the scribbling of his deft pencilwork, but in his voice, dripping disdain.
"I'm calling you by your government name not because I invite you to reply in-kind and think Daniel Fehl is your friend, but because calling you Twiztid Insane sounds anything but honest. It marks you. Charlie, in the two decades I've been wrestling I've beaten the living shit out of over half a dozen choads exactly like you - Twiztid Nightmares, Insane Juggalos and enough Wicked's to make me fucking sick. Then comes you, out of "retirement" and pretending like your glory days of 2009 can come around, when your fandom has been a guttering ember in the camp firepit of wrestling even five years before that. You wanna recapture the glories of your career. But unlike my comeback tour from the indies to a rekindled, rising triumph... you walk in here after eleven years, tell management that you used to jump around on trampolines, and beat exactly three people who haven't shown up here since then, and you wanna talk about drive."
The instrument's lines are becoming fiercer, more jagged, as he's scribbling over the ugly facepainted gob he'd etched out. Slashing lines through it. Obliterating the features. It sickened him.
"You don't know shit about drive, because the avatar you follow is a one-dimensional marketing ploy aimed at broke teenagers stealing their mother's make-up so they can put on clown facepaint. You don't know what it's like to have your muscles spent, every fiber of your being strained beyond their capabilities only to get back up and keep fighting… not for fame, money, or the fucking fans… for yourself, for something you want more than your own wellbeing. Something that keeps your shoulders off the mat for anything longer than 2 seconds."
Hands tear the page out, crumple it up easily, throw it away. Deliberately.
"And the thing about it is, so many years past it's shelf-life of relevancy, even you know there's some closet shame in it. It's why you ask every single one of your opponents a question. Your sweep the leg, Johnny: "what are YOU going to do if you get beaten by a Juggalo?"
He's drawing again.
"Problem is, it comes with its own tacit admission, almost could be a flash of self-awareness if you were just a braincell smarter, that you should be embarrassed yourself for being in your thirties and dressing from Hot Topic."
He snorts derisively at the thought.
"Even if we both hadn't taken hiatuses from our career and started over again here, my skill would outstrip yours like you're standing still just off the fact that you're nothing more than a backyard wrestler. I take even more disrespect at the fact that you think bumping around on a makeshift ring grab-assing with some idiots chugging lukewarm Faygos puts you on a similar skill level. I have been honing my edge for decades, and you fucking walk around here talking about the good old days where you hit a backflip off a double jump. Fuck you. You goddamned tourist. You fan."
He sets the pencil down against the page. Those rough, calloused, scarred hands flex.
"You don't have your own identity, you don't have your own personhood. You're nothing but a cipher with your Juggalo TV and your played-out catechisms. Nothing but a dim-witted member of a cultish group of jackasses devoted to mediocre white rappers, and that is the extent to which we know or care about your personality. But because you have nothing that represents real, actualized personhood, I don't have to feel any remorse about breaking your jaw. See how that works?"
Close in on the page, he's drawn an incredibly detailed rough of a wave. The water is surging into a stony shore, to crash, and be broken. Apt metaphor.
"Here's what I want from you asshole, show me something, anything. Not part of your boring-ass gimmick, something that might be a trait of a real person. Maybe, if you can prove that you're more than just a cut-out from a Shaggy 2 Dope poster, the next time those assholes in the audience clap for you, it'll be because they actually have something resembling respect."
Finally, we come in tight on his face. His eyes show no hint of mercy or care.
"Either way, it ends the same, Charlie. You can choose to go down as a Juggalo, wooping and spewing catchphrases, or as man, fighting for something valiantly as he faces his last stand."
"It all comes out the same, but wouldn't you rather be your own man instead of a face in the crowd?"