#also i don't know enough about sports commentators yet to comment on more than surface-level observations

[spoonerisrns]

I know this might not be a huge thing, but I love that nearly all the commentators seem to be women??? Realizing I've NEVER seen so many female sports commentators before, and so many different kinds of presentation among them? I've often seen One Pretty Cis Het Woman on a panel of cis het dudes. This is hella refreshing.

[valalice]

PRELUDE: POPULARITY CONTEST

punk rockstar!vi 𝑥 fem!popstar!reader

summary. label mandated events. everyone dreads them, but social networking is a must; an art form managers have mastered and a sport to artists in order to thrive in the competitiveness that is the music industry. and it’s here where the two of you were closer than you had even thought.

warnings. it's just the prelude, so no major warnings. angst a little bit. industry parties. mentions of alcohol and drugs. original non-canon characters. mentions of not so great friends (surround yourself with people you love). not much more i can think of, if i missed any, please lmk.

wc. 1553

a speaks. well! here she is! the first chapter of the series. i'm not completely satisfied with it, but it's just the prelude, a little teaser for what's to come, she is on the shorter side because it is a prelude, regular chapters will be longer! and with that i have to plug my ao3, i will be dully posting her on tumblr and on ao3, so if you prefer the formatting of ao3 over tumblr's then feel free to head over there! there will be no explicit of vi within the prelude *wink* but the next chapters y'all will be fed, i promise! and lastly thank you so much from just the amount of sweet comments saying how excited you are for the series, it not only motivates me but also warms my heart. i love you guys, thank you for the support. happy reading <3

series masterlist | read it in ao3 | series playlist

YOU STARE STUNNED at your manager. Mouth agape, skin drained of all its color, and eyes wide, bulging even, to the point where if you even tried to widen your eyes further they’d pop out of your sockets and roll onto the floor ridden with fallen confetti.

“And you chose to tell me this now?” you questioned, voice fluctuating to a pitched shrill. Out of the frustrated and impending heavy stress-ridden weights you already feel stacking on your shoulders and in hopes that your manager could hear your distaste for the delivery of this news over the bumping music.

“I didn’t know when to tell you.”

There wasn’t enough restraint nor care to hold the scoff that bubbled up in your chest, up to your throat, and out your mouth. “So, here was the perfect place, Corinne?” quirking an eyebrow.

“I knew the news would get you,” pausing to look down the length of your antsy figure, a clear standout in the sea of swaying people against each other. Trying to gather the right words that won’t send you off your rocker, further. “wound up. And I was right. But you’re at a party, the environment is fun, loose, and light. Enjoy it, you’re with friends.” she eases, inching closer towards you, knowing what works with you in the near decade of being your manager.

Your eyes bore into Corinne's, squinting at her just before dropping to eye at the little glittery clutch in your hand that matches your skirt. Flicking at a few of the glitter specs on the clutch with a manicured nail before huffing, shoulders deflating upon the exhale from the involuntary hunch you had them in seconds before. 

Corinne’s words soak past surface level for a moment, absorbing, and trying to understand that, while unideal, being in an uppity environment could busy your racing mind from running laps around any and all possibilities on why your boss urgently wants a meeting with you. Yet, still, you would’ve much preferred this news in private. Wrapping your arms around yourself, looking over your shoulders to the people in the room—some faces you knew, whether they're fellow artists, celebrities of varying lists, or casual socialites who find their way into parties like these often, but most of whom you don't know, that's how it's always been; being in a room full of people who you have no idea who they are, yet they know everything about you. Turning back around to Corinne, “None of these people are my friends.”

“Then, colleagues.” she fixes, raising her voice when the music starts to roar.

Instead of scoffing a humble chuckle takes its place. “Colleagues who want to see me crash and burn into the Bermuda Triangle to never be seen again. Then, yes, they are.”

Corinne gives you a look you know all too well, a disciplinary look when the older woman thinks whatever you’d just said was inappropriate. Her head drops and a hand finds home on her waist as her body slants. “Morbid. These colleagues who ‘want to see you crash and burn’ are also fighting with each other to get a feature.” 

“There won’t be much to feature on if I get fired.” you gloom, grey, thundering clouds of pessimism altering your mood.

“You’re the label’s darling, no one’s getting fired.” she comforts, or tries. Even after all these years, it’s still foreign to her to properly comfort you in moments like these, but she does her best as the arm against her side raises. The coldness of her hand on your upper arm startles you, an icy comfort soothes over your burning skin, relaxing into her touch. ‘You’re the label’s darling’ runs on repeat like a record on a record player, the only thought that occupies the dark space of your mind right now, attempting to stomach the words in hopes that you’d digest them and be able to believe that Corinne is right.

The pressure of her hand leaves your arm, the pads of her fingers wisping down your upper arm as she catchers her arm to lay at her side once again, taking a step back from you with a click of her heels. Now, it’s Corinne’s turn to look beyond her shoulders to observe the room, everyone’s in their own fantasy land—maybe that’s due to the boos and drugs making their rounds through the room for each guest to get their desired fix—yet, she digress when she focuses attention to the younger in front of her. The pesky grey clouds persisting overtop of your head, your slumped figure reminding her nothing less than a kicked puppy; she pitties you.

“I’m going to network. I think I spotted that one videographer you’ve been wanting to work with.” She hoped that with this mention you’d perk up, but she got nothing more than a tight-lipped smile followed by a weak nod.

“It would be pretty cool if we got him to work on the new album visuals.”

Corinne shares her own tight-lipped smile with you. “Atta girl. Try to loosen up, yeah? You’re going to get more knots if you stay tense.”

A feathery light laugh falls from your lips that she turns her worries to the hypothetical knots you’ll develop. “Noted. I’ll see if I can find my friends.” contradictory to your earlier statement, but it’s a win-some-lose-some situation when all you’ve got is a small pool of people to refer to as a friend. Never genuine a friend, no, but you do develop a bond when mutual use of each other is used to forget the loneliness that is guaranteed with fame.

“You mean colleagues?” she quips, testing you on your past ideology.

There was a space that became as the two of you began to drift apart. “They’re starting to overlap for me.” you shrug, already knowing that both wish to see the same thing happen to you. Leaving Corinne to watch as you disappear into the abyss, pleased that you’ve regained even just a bit of pep in your step—she knows you too well to not know how to get your spirits back on track.

Working your way through the crowd you shout your fair share of “Excuse me’s” and “Right behind you’s”, refraining the best you can from elbowing your way through after a few shoves to yourself; although you’re almost positive that most deserve the elbow. 

Balling your fists up, still grasping your clutch in your grasp, as you bring your hands up to your chest, thinking you’ll move fast through the crowd without your arms at your sides. Just when you’re near the other side of the room you hear the shouts of your name—stage name, but name nonetheless—through the music, certain that when you exit the building your ears will be ringing and your heart still vibrating in your chest cavity from the blaring music the DJ is mixing up. Whipping around you squint, attempting to see the caller of your name past the blinding light effects. With defeat, you shuffle through the crowd, following the indicator of the person’s arm flailing in the air every so often.

Not knowing what happened next, if your foot got caught or if someone had shoved you again, but you end up bracing onto someone’s back. Taking a hold of their broad shoulders the best you can, cringing when the blunt sound of your clutch meets the person’s back in the abrupt moment, while your other hand desperately tries to get a grasp on them, but you end up just missing the mark as your sweaty hand (courtesy of the cramped space) slides down the leathery smoothness of their jacket.

It’s a blur when you crane your neck to look out to the crowd once more upon the call of your name, a hand snapping around your wrist and pulling you into their grasp—it’s Gwen, her model legs reaching you quicker than you would’ve ever been able to. Before you can process an apology for bracing on the random person, Gwen is already whisking you through the congested room. Too preoccupied with trying to catch a glimpse over your shoulder from where you previously were to pay attention clearly to whatever she’s rambling about, not that you could hear her anyway over the DJ’s newest mix. But as you move further along, you can no longer spot the mystery person, or well their back, who had generously been in the right spot at the right time for you to catch yourself on them. Not that you’d be able to know what they looked like, just going off of the fact that they’d be wearing a leather jacket—though who would wear a leather jacket in here?

The question would linger in your mind for the rest of the night, scoping through the crowd for anyone who had on anything eerily similar to a leather jacket. And when the night rounds out to an end you’re left with an irk buried deep beneath your skin that the question is left unanswered, with no real reason on why you’re bothered by this.

Yet, this incident out of many—the countless right times, right places missed—unknowingly brings you one step closer to the meeting that’s always been bound to occur.

thank you for reading <3 remember to comment and reblog!

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[thistledropkick]

I haven't been keeping up with the Junior Heavyweight tag league, but Okamoto of Tokyo Sports posted an article he wrote about Umino and his backstage comments to twitter recently, and the replies are absolutely brutal.

The article covers Umino's backstage comments from 11/2, with the headline "Umino Shota requests a one-on-one fight with his master and AEW World Champion Moxley. 'Perhaps the time has come'" The excerpt from the article that people seem to be reacting most strongly to is towards the end. NJPW has translated it on the official subtitles, but I'll translate it myself here too. Umino says, "I absolutely don't approve of your way of doing things. But I know how to heal you. First of all, send me a message. Since our IWGP match in America, I haven't gotten a message, a phone call, or heard anything from you at all... Perhaps the time has come."

Japanese wrestling twitter is usually more positive than English-language wrestling twitter. (That may not be saying much given the state of English-language wrestling twitter in general, but it is generally the case.) But the replies to Okamoto's tweet are overwhelmingly negative, to a degree that really shocked me. As I went through and read them, I only saw a few scattered positive replies mixed in among almost universally negative ones.

Many of these negative comments reflect the issues that many people seem to have with his character - that his influence from Moxley feels shallow and surface-level, that he seems to be a mix of influences rather than his own man, that he isn't understanding or taking in the reason the crowd is booing him in the first place, and that he keeps being given way too many chances without having the results to justify them. And there are still some comparisons between him and Stardust Genius Naito, as well. Besides these criticisms, there are also a lot of replies that are just heckling, or are outright mean.

I think Umino is in a really tough situation right now, and I'm not even sure how they can get him out of it. Out of the "Reiwa Three Musketeers", Umino is the only one who has had zero results - Tsuji Youta has held the IWGP 6 man tag belt and won the New Japan Cup, and Narita Ren has held the IWGP 6 man belt and is the current World TV champ. Umino has had many chances, but he has won no tournaments and no belts.

Because of this, it doesn't make sense to me that they'd give him yet another match against Moxley. I don't feel like Umino's at a place where it would make sense to have him win against Moxley in a fair singles match right now - as it stands, Umino's coming to this from a string of losses, although he does have his match with Sanada coming up soon. But even if Umino wins that match, I don't know that it would make him feel like he's at a high enough level to get a victory there.

And also, while I don't watch AEW or follow it at all, I know that Moxley is a wrestler who only rarely takes a pin. I decided to look up the stats, and it seems that he's only taken one pin in all of 2024 - to Naito, for the IWGP HW belt, in a situation that was completely unavoidable because NJPW needed their belt back eventually. And that pin was to Naito, who is unquestionably the most popular wrestler in NJPW.

Given those things, I can't imagine that Umino will get a win over Moxley if this match happens. But why set him up for a match against Moxley just to have him lose again? That would make him look even worse. But a win at this point wouldn't feel right to me, and I don't think it would feel right to the crowd either.

And putting all that aside, if Umino does win over Sanada and then tries to use that to challenge Zack for the belt for 1.4, I think the crowd is going to revolt. I really do think they'll have another Naito situation on their hands, where the crowd will rally for some other match to take the main event spot. But if they're trying to make this play out like Naito's story did, I don't know how successful that's likely to be - Stardust Genius Naito had a much more established career and fan base than Umino did, and he's also just a different person than Umino is. I don't know that that's something that can be intentionally repeated.

I can't stop thinking about this Umino Shota situation, so I'm gonna write about it.

Umino has been in a very weird position for quite a while now, when it comes to his character, his booking, and his crowd response. I feel like it has finally hit some kind of breaking point at the recent KOPW show.

When Umino walked out to challenge for the IWGP HW belt, he didn't just "get booed" - he got a mix of cold silence, some scattered booing, and some overt heckling from people in the crowd shouting "Go home" at him. That wasn't even the kind of booing you want in pro wrestling - it was an outright rejection of him by the crowd.

(You can hear the heckling starting at about 3 minutes in during this video - people in the crowd start shouting "Kaere!" "Go home!" This mix of scattered booing, icy quiet, and heckling is not the kind of response NJPW goes for even for actual heel wrestlers.)

It was also absolutely not the response that anybody there had planned for or anticipated. Umino looked legitimately upset, Zack immediately took action to calm down the crowd before things got ugly, and then Takagi came out to keep things moving when it was clear the crowd was not going to change their tone. If any of this response had been planned, they would've encouraged it instead, or at least given it a little more space to play out.

In his backstage comments afterwards, Umino addressed the comparison that fans have repeatedly been making between himself and Stardust Genius era Naito. Umino rejected that comparison.

(Personally, I agree that the two situations aren't identical, but for a different reason - Naito was a much more well-established wrestler when the crowd turned on him, while Umino has never even held a title.)

In any case, the fact that Umino is directly addressing the comparisons that fans keep making, rather than ignoring them, was noteworthy to me.

Today, an article about the situation was released in Tokyo Sports. Tokyo Sports is a kayfabe magazine, and anything published there is generally done to forward the intended story of the wrestlers involved.

The headline reads: Umino Shota - "Booing = Big Shot" Proof of his decision to fight for the IWGP "Even Tanahashi-san himself said, I'm leaving it to you, Sho-chan"

This is... not helping to counter the feelings of the fans that Umino is being given a spot he doesn't deserve, to say the least. And quoting Tanahashi calling him the cutesy nickname "Sho-chan" isn't helping either.

With this being addressed directly in the kayfabe ToSpo, I have to believe it means they'll be addressing it directly in the storyline as well. And it's very easy to imagine some scenarios where they could repeat the infamous fan vote that eventually turned Naito ungovernable. But with the differences between Naito's situation and Umino's, I'm not sure how well this will actually work if they do end up trying it...

As for my own feelings about all this - I don't like or dislike Umino as a wrestler right now - more than anything, I feel like he hasn't solidified as a wrestler enough for me to have much of an opinion on him yet. But this whole situation has been fascinating to watch as it plays out.

[transhawks]

What do you think about Hawks being a mentor? I really like his relationship with Tokoyami. There are a lot of interesting parent/mentor relationships in BNHA imo (All Might, Aizawa, Gran Torino, Inko) and they're have clear differences but it still feels a lot different from Hawks? Hawks is a lot closer in age to the students and he also mentions he's not interested in "nurturing the younger generation" but it seems he is still making an effort? We don't see much from siblings besides Fuyumi...

Ahh, this is such a good question! First off, someone has written a bit on this already and it’s such a good take that I have to link it: (x)

Here’s my thoughts: Hawks and Tokoyami are different than our general mentorships in series because they have the actual possibility of rivalry given closeness in age and personality differences that don’t mimic the other student/hero mentorships. 

Anyway, let’s break this down a bit. First off, on the “Nurturing the younger generation” comment, you hit the nail on the head on something I’ve talked about before here: (x) 

Hawks is a man of contradictions and this extends to his personality.

Confusing, right? It’s why Endeavor didn’t know if Hawks is being sincere or not - it’s why he keeps everyone on their toes with the things he says. Personality-wise, I’d almost call him duplicitous, except I don’t think it’s even conscious on his part (mostly). What I’ve noticed with him is that he says one thing, does another, and wants something else completely. It’s stunning because you think he’d be straight-forward with the way he talks but he’s more a maze than a path.

That’s why you have to look beneath the surface when you look at that comment.

Hawks says that line to Tokoyami after treating him to a flight. Given how he sort of ignored Tokoyami (or at least that’s how Fumi felt), this is obviously a very nice gesture, and probably meant as reward because Tokoyami proved himself first. But, whereas Tokoyami always felt that Hawks was ignoring him, we had a surprising twist where Hawks admitted to having watched Tokoyami all along.

Hawks clearly looks for potential - this is important to note, as he stated it earlier:

Someone who could keep up with him because Hawks is the man who goes too fast. And then - someone with promise. He scouted Tokoyami. Perhaps like he’d been scouted?

He then landed them on a safe, but isolated place to talk, where he proceeded to dispense some wisdom.

Hawks here first states he doesn’t really care for ‘nurturing’ Tokoyami. We know he says he primarily scouted him because he wanted a voice about what’s going on UA and with the LoV (strangely enough far earlier than he was supposed to care given that he was only given his mission post-Kamino). I’m sure the nurturing comment came from Hawks’s own issues with heroism, and the choices (children) can make.

And yet, he thought Fumikage had potential, potential he wasn’t using. Hawks is most definitely, until you prove yourself, a fly or fall kind of mentor. He didn’t offer Tokoyami anything at first - until he showed he could try to keep up. Even if Fumikage couldn’t breach that gap between them, the fact he attempted endeared him to Hawks. How do we know this? This is the exact reason he admires Endeavor, admitted through his own narration. Attempting to cross gaps that seem impossible despite all others not even trying is something Hawks finds admirable. 

So, he then gives Tokoyami a short run down of what he’s doing wrong - yeah, covering weak points is important and Fumikage must have realized that after the Sports Festival, but he’s also not using his quirk to its fullest potential. Tokoyami has trouble with Dark Shadow, obviously, control is his biggest issue. 

As far as we know, Hawks doesn’t struggle with control over his quirk because control is his greatest asset. He has a telekinetic quirk, after all, one with sensory and transformation capabilities that also requires incredible focus due to the sheer number of feathers able to be deployed. The fact he can do that also means he has the freedom to be creative with his quirk. Tokoyami, who is still mastering Dark Shadow, is yet to achieve this. It makes a great deal of sense that Tokoyami is partnered with a mentor who is as flexible and creative as Hawks.

Hawks flying Tokoyami gave him an idea, and a desire to fly. He’d upgraded his Black Ankh move to allow him to fly, essentially copying the way Hawks had flown him. Edgelord name aside, Black Fallen Angel is really Hawks’s move and it’s so useful and game-changing that it’s no surprise he refers to Hawks as ‘Master’ later on. Or sees himself as his representation.

But what makes this a different relationship to any of the other mentor/student relationships?

Tokoyami is clearly paying lots of homage to Hawks in this arc. He names a move Hawks technically created for him after Hawks himself (in what might be a morbid piece of foreshadowing), defends Hawks’s ‘creed of speed’ in battle, acknowledges that the man is indeed a master to him - even if his original perception of Hawks had been extremely disappointing.

But he also challenges Hawks by trying to keep up, by trying to match his speed. Hawks’s interest and respect were piqued, and Hawks even gave him sound advice (and let that falsely cheerful facade of his slip around him). The age gap of six-seven years is also an experience gap of around five years.

That’s why this relationship feels a bit different. At once Tokoyami is displaying levels of admiration that seem normal to our hero/student relationships, but unlike everyone else the process, Tokoyami has a clear understanding of his own worth and doesn’t seem to believe the gap between Hawks and him is too big to fly over. 

Look at that face! Tokoyami is mad here - and look what the reaction is. Hawks’s sidekicks are in awe of someone practically managing to keep up when they don’t bother, Hawks is impressed, and importantly, Tokoyami has room to grow.

Does Hawks?

That’s a big question, how high can he go before he can’t? His whole arc is someone too fast for their own good, someone who rose too quickly. Does he ever plateau? 

And, I don’t mean to be drawing in the other theories surrounding Hawks, but as curious as it is that one of the main 1-A kids who have been shown to struggle with their quirk was paired with a hero with excellent control over his, it’s also equally curious that Tokoyami is consistently struggling with what must be the representation of his innate darkness, as Dark Shadow feeds off negative emotions. Tokoyami utilizes and embraces his shadows to fight, while Hawks has to learn to embrace his own or he can’t infiltrate the league. 

Oh - and didn’t the League see Tokoyami and see villainous potential?