#FHKSDFJDS SORRY THIS IS INCOHERENT LITERALLY

[ariyadaivaris]

catsi replied to your post “i miss lucha chiropractic, and i miss mustafa’s teaming with gran and...”

oh i absolutely 100% know what you mean and agree

205 live has been putting a lot more emphasis on putting on incredible matches (with great success) but in the process i think it's lost a lot of the quirky upbeat fun attitude that made us all fall in love with it to begin with? i ALSO miss titus worldwide and seeing akira have friends, i miss seeing goofy interactions backstage like that box of flour that exploded in ariya's face that one time

and i LOVE drake, i do, but i miss the sort of open-ended free-roaming the boys had before? feuds felt a lot more personal before one person called all the shots. like the Drew vs Mustafa feud that was born out of Drew doing some dumbass shit and Mustafa being like "ahah no this will not do". like they drove their own feud and it had so much STORY. it was much more than just "grrr you were mean" "grrr yes i am fight me about it"

or the fucking Brian and Akira feud, jesus, that feud was one of my favourites in all of pro wrestling, i think? Brian teaching Akira these "lessons" via fucking with his matches and Akira finally snapping and parrotting every lesson back at Brian and then ending his whole shit with that senton thru a table. like i feel like the current 205 live would never allow that story-heavy of a feud to last as long as it did (it was like 2 months?)

this is a stupid analogy but bear with me - old 205 live felt like an open-world RPG where you can just go wherever and do whatever and in the process have wild interactions like Everything Alicia Fox Was A Part Of, or the trick or street fight, etc.. maybe the combat wasn't allowed to be as detailed as it could be to give the story room to breath but the story gave the combat DEPTH

and new 205 is like... an on-rails fps. the combat is good, it's so good, oh my god is it ever good, but there's so much focus on it that story feels lost and stuff just happens to make combat look cooler or last longer? and i still love 205 with all my heart but what made me fall in love with it to begin with and get obsessed with it was its thoughtful, deep, consistent storylines

SORRY THAT'S A LOT... i've just had the same thoughts as u of like... i love these boys SO MUCH i want their interactions to have more depth than "i have the title" "well I WANT THE TITLE..." "fight me for it!" like akira and neville's title feud wasn't akira going "i want that title!" it was titus going "YOU want that title. YOU CAN GET THAT TITLE. let me help you. let me be your friend" and neville being like "the power of friendship cannot defeat me!!"

CAT!!!!!!!!!! never ever apologize im gonna SING i love listening to you talk about 205 oh my god

you worded it PERFECTLY that analogy makes perfect sense? i absolutely feel that, it’s gotten so much more focused on technical work and, like you said, combat, but in the process it feels like...the heart of 205 has kind of gotten lost? it’s there but everything’s shut off from everything else that isn’t on the designated path and it’s so FRUSTRATING to have everything so CLOSE but so strictly separated

like....like you said, i LOVE drake, but i feel like he’s very very much Lawful Good and i love that character and i love how he interacts with the roster as a result, but he’s lawful good running 205 and 205 is very very VERY Chaotic Neutral/Good and fitting it into this alignment, things have gotten shaved off around the edges and it stings!!! there’s a thriving ecosystem of dynamics between everyone on this roster, take any two people and they’ll probably have an established dynamic (besides lince who has taken basically until now to be actually given a spotlight, and new dudes like buddy or lio) and knowing that, you can SEE them use that and weave it into their interactions and it feels so alive on such a foundational level!!!

like...talking abt mustafa v drew, you could see the story advance and you could see HOW that story changed their in-ring performances. like, the story wasn’t JUST in words, but as time went on, mustafa DID get grounded but it was exactly in the way he needed to be grounded to achieve his fullest potential! and you could SEE him learning that, you could see him incorporating technical pins into his matches, and waiting longer for risks that were more certain, instead of charging in blindly! you could see the story and characters evolve through JUST THE WAY THEY FOUGHT and its a level of storytelling that is so so so understated but its like. HOOOOLY SHIT like, it still blows me away thinking about it

like. LIKE!!! like you said, storylines lasting 2 months or more, that doesn’t feel...like something that could happen for just feuds between people who arent champions right now. the feuds that happen now are still good, but there’s a big fucking jumble of people involved in every one and that decreases the chance for individual feuds and also just...in lhp’s case it feels very much like a reason to not give lince or gran or kalisto individual character arcs which Yeah Okay Fucken Great You’re Not Sneaky, its

tony and drew having matches with gran and cedric? like, that rivalry, that was a team thing for a bit but it was enhanced because we’d seen the dynamics between these individual dudes already, and we saw that on display during matches. drew and cedric NOW, FUCK, its frustrating seeing it because on top of the FUCKING fandom shit happening lately, like, drew and cedric have a pretty significant title history already! like, its certainly been swept under the rug with the rat where he fucking belongs but cedric actually reached OUT to drew and told him that he COULD make a better 205 if he did the right thing. he was actively sympathetic towards drew and that was an interaction we never really got to see more of and that could add SUCH A DIMENSION TO THIS FEUD IF WE COULD ACKNOWLEDGE THE HISTORY 205 HAS INSTEAD OF ACTING LIKE THE LAST YEAR AND A HALF NEVER HAPPENED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

god my train of thought is all over the place im sorry fhdkjsd i agree with you wholeheartedly cat u worded it perfectly. christ i miss akira and titus worldwide. that arc was so good, akira trying to be alone and gradually learning to accept titus’s friendship and apollo’s concern for him, akira learning to tap when he couldn’t fight anymore instead of carrying on and breaking himself, that character arc is still the best in all of wrestling to be QUITE honest and now it feels like...akira’s alone again. akira is alone again after hideo, even, which is an arc im still a lil cross about! akira feels so...alone. and he wasn’t before. and it’s like...

akira’s support system he actively EARNED and WORKED FOR last summer, it’s all gone now. he doesn’t get to tag with mustafa or cedric or jack anymore, he doesn’t really have anyone looking out for him, he’s fighting his own battles again and it feels like everything’s just...been unravelled. and it HURTS! that story arc was EVERYTHING to me and its still my favorite an entire ass year later. and now it just...isnt there. 

i dont know. i love 205 with all my heart and it is my heart but i feel like...without matches on ppvs or on raw, their time is even more limited to prove what they can do, and its been streamlined and we dont see everyone’s antics backstage, we don’t see faces reaching out to heels, we don’t see noam and ariya bickering with lince, we don’t see akira and mustafa talking in passing before plot stuff kicks in, it just feels like...the fabric that made 205 feel like a living breathing creation and family is pulled out into just individual threads now? and i miss...when it wasn’t that