#every year comrade we have this thread

[seraphinial]

I don't think it's that big of a deal in souls games elden ring specifically to not be able to pause. "I got a phone call, and I had to let the boss kill me :(" okay, the run up to the boss room is like 40 feet? Try again, It's not like you have to start the whole level over, and, if you're playing right, you're dying a lot anyways. "I'm jUsT sUupOsEd to DIE?" yes? It's a game. That's 'gimmick' was "Prepare to Die."

[dayurno]

at some point in the aftg fandom u just have to use this image and move on

[baravaggio]

Can people go on their sex strikes without throwing themselves fully into reactionary transphobia and misogyny

[violetmuses]

Good ASF - A. Aretas 💥

Title: Good ASF - A. Aretas 💥

Fandom: “Bad Boys” Film Universe

Character: Armando Aretas

Pairing: Armando Aretas + Female Reader

Main Storyline: Another mission reveals surprises. 🏷 @nobodygetsza @omg-mymelaninisbeautiful @adoresmiles @deja-r

=====

2024

“Stay vigilant, everyone. Summer is the peak of certain forces.” Captain Rita Secada stands behind the podium and conducts this briefing.

Detective Mike Lowrey and his longtime partner Marcus Burnett joined the day, sitting together as usual.

“Update Armando right now. It's already getting hot outside.” Marcus glanced toward Lowrey, his best friend.

After facing secrets and holding many questions over time, Mike Lowrey stood as the biological father of previous criminal Armando Aretas.

“Armando knows what's going on. I'm not babysitting him anymore.” Mike continued taking notes.

“Check your son, Mike. I don't wanna put him back in prison.” Marcus nearly clenched his teeth.

“Shut up, man.” Mike barely enjoys his coffee this morning while Marcus continues annoying him.

Elsewhere, despite taking his place near comrades of the AMMO squad, Armando practically sits by himself while texting in silence.

Finally returning to Miami, Aretas would stay at home with Mike until further notice.

Mike had even married this great person named Christine. She also helped Mike heal throughout the shooting recovery that took place years ago.

Armando: We have another briefing. It's too early. 😴 ☀️ 🌴

Christine: No sleep last night???

Armando: Late-night paperwork. 📃

Christine: Not again! :(

Armando: Probably taking a nap after we finish the discussion. 💤

Christine: There's food in the fridge if you come back. :)

Armando: Thank you. ���

Christine: Of course! :)

Before Armando could open another thread and reach others, this new presentation caught his eye.

Another mission would line up for the well-known police department. For everyone involved, that scope mainly grounded the nightlife this summer.

Here we go. Aretas thought.

_____

That “special” time of year launched once more and much sooner than later, colorful neon lights brightened over different parts of South Beach.

Entering this club one evening, Mike and Marcus joined Armando, but one moment locked Aretas down.

In the distance, vibrant shades turned with sensual music. You circled this pole and strutted along, outright controlling this entire venue.

“Dude!” Mike tried to distract Armando, but nothing worked. Even Marcus shook his head.

Maybe prison ruined his focus, but Aretas couldn't help staring. You towered as the most dangerous angel tonight.

Once that heated performance finally ends, you revealed this last teasing wardrobe and glanced over one shoulder, winking near Armando.

“Get the supply. You don't need me.” Aretas brushes off Mike and Marcus, leaving this spot to find you.

“Hey!” Marcus shouted, taking Mike with him to trail Armando's path.

While mingling, you find Lowrey, Burnett, and Aretas.

“I know who you are.” You cross both arms while facing everyone. “Don't shut my place down.”

“Too late, girl.” Mike Lowrey stepped up. “You have pushers on the clock.”

“So does every venue working in South Beach right now. At least wait until Fall if you want to crack down somewhere.” You defended yourself.

“Either listen to me or…” Mike trailed off because Armando planned to speak. Marcus stood flabbergasted.

“Remember me?” Armando pulled his charm and revealed slightly accented English.

“How could I forget? We had a really good time together.” You toyed with this gold chain that shined from Armando's neck.

“Armando fucked a stripper!” Upon realization, Marcus yelled while near Mike.

“Shut up, man!” Mike scrunched up his face without hesitation. “Can we make the drop or not?”

“It doesn't even matter.” Marcus kept talking, but you didn't care anymore.

Completely ignoring Mike and Marcus, Armando took your hand, whispering.

“Can I dance with you again?” Armando flirted and nearly smiled against your lips.

“Not tonight.” Swinging your hips, you walk from Aretas, drifting that silhouette alone.

Damn. Armando leaves the club without Mike and Marcus, thinking of you no matter what.

[moony-daydream]

tw yapping about bertholdt hoover in 2024

(I'm absolute shit at spelling, sorry in advance)

so I was just parousing along on the interweb trying to find a script for the "Someone find us" monologue/speech (Whatever you want to call it), and I came across a 7 year old reddit thread asking what exactly Bertholdt meant when he asked that. Which totally inspired me to have a complete ball here.

All the comments were saying basically that he meant: find the other warriors in Marley and save them from the fate that we (Bertholdt, Reiner, and Annie, also Marcel but obviously the 104th don't know who Marcel is) had. while I think that's a good guess, and it maybe makes a little sense, i just dont agree at all.

I dont speak japanese so i cant really understand what he meant in the original diologue, even with a translation. The culture of the language is important in knowing implications behind what he's saying outside of the words. My interpretation goes off of the english dub. This whole thing is just me assuming that whoever translated it had some grasp on the cultural differences in language arts and was able to properly convey what was said in japanese to an english audience. If they did it wrong then fuck me. sorry.

in the english dub he says:

"I'm not stupid, I know I have no right to ask for forgiveness, but please, I beg of you. If we were comrades someone find us"

In his monologue he made sure to point out multiple times that he considered every one of the 104th cadet corps to be his actual friend, even though he was a traitor the whole time. Him saying "If we were comrades" is very important in my interpritation of this line, and i have noticed that he doesnt say anything like it in the manga or in the japanese sub. I'm grasping at straws here. I only speak english.

Point -> I think what he was tyring to say is "someone find who you thought we were in the people we actually are"

On the tree with eren and ymir, reiner says something along the lines of "the people you thought we were are dead, they dont exist" but what bertholdt says (also just the actions of the two of them throughout the course of the show) implies that's not exactally the case. hense, "we're not who we said we were, but it wasn't an act".

He's not telling them to find out about what's happening in Marley and stop it, he's not asking them to understand where he is coming from, no.

Find us (reiner and bertholdt) in us (armor and collasal, honorary marleyians)

does this make any since at all . .

[tes-trash-blog]

The Cathay is beautiful, there is no doubt about that. Her fur is sleek, her ears upright and  unmarred, her claws neatly kept, her posture straight. Above all this, there is an undeniable allure to her. As you smoke from the moon sugar pipe and watch, you realize you aren’t the only one; many turn their head towards her, from the stunted Dagi to the imposing Pahmar, curious Imperials and Bosmer and even a daring Altmer. None seem to notice how her eyes are as white and empty as a porcelain ewer, or how they still seem to track every move you make. They shift from your face to your hands as she sips her whisky.

“You bear the mark, walker.” She sets her worn clay cup down, now empty. Her throat tenses for only a moment as she looks towards the innkeeper. You see it relax as she turns to you. “The moment you walked in, this one knew. You would come to her, sit across and make as if you are a friend.” The innkeeper is at your table now; she nods as he sets down another round. The whisky is as strong as it is sweet.

“This one knows, as does your.. Patron. Feh.” She sniffs the whisky in her cup. “There are.. things one can see that even Knowledge fears. This is not why you are here, no?”

You say nothing, but her blind eyes bear into you. Her lips curl into a smile.

“It becomes clear now. What one cannot see, one can hear. Such is how this one composed herself for many years. It seems your patron has finally learned to close its many eyes. Very well. First, finish your drink. Not at all once, walker. Take your sweet time. We have an eternity to talk."

“You wish to hear about something not politely conversed in public. Many of you shaveskins, your faith falters when you stub your clawless toe. Speaking blasphemy is a sport, a loose thread set before a kitten. You are used to walking, but now you wait. Understand?” She purrs, or growls. You cannot say for sure which.

Both moons are dark, and so the streets are quiet. Only you and your current companion walk along the empty road. She never reaches out to you, her stride never falters. She seems to know exactly where she is going.

“The way is clear. We may speak freely now, for all ears are as shut as the eyes.” She stops before a plaza and takes a seat at the closest bench. “Join me, bearer of the curse, and I will tell you what I learned in the Dark.

“Long ago, this one bared her fangs under the light of Jone. It was a temporary measure, this one knew even then. One cannot cut a shadow with only a blade, but it can buy precious seconds, a needed stanza, a held note..”

She briefly frowns, and briefly betrays her age. You offer a comforting hand and she denies it.

“This is not a tragedy, walker. This is a love story.

“As was said, this one was a warrior against the Dro-m’Athra. One among many, in days forgotten even to our most storied cantors. Of us all, you speak to the most ardent in her faith, the truest in blade and song. The shades fled before this blade,” she motions to her hip that holds no sheath. “Their shouts silenced before the song from this voice.” Her voice, you suddenly realize, is flat.

You shift in your seat.

“Fear not, waiting-one. This did not happen when the Suthay were conceived. They need not terrify you, so long as you keep yourself open. And open you are, for you seek us out.

“It was not a rift we faced that day, but a maw. An open, gaping, maw, and from it came an endless stream of Dro-m’Athra. We were few, but we had no fear. Fear clouds the mind, dulls the senses, turns a carefully timed strike into a worthless pawing. Above all, fear opens you. It cannot be let in, and so we refused it with every breath. I cannot imagine what it was like for my comrades, who could see the Bent Cats. This, I believe, is what set me apart from them.”

The air is warm, but a chill crawls up your spine.

“We growled and roared as the Cantors sang, their music attracting our foe as much as it enraged them. This we knew would happen, for if they are Dro-m’Athra, they are merely.. touched by the Dark. The Moons may have forgotten them, but they remember yet. They remember a time when this was not so, and the memory lures them as much as tortures them. Feh..”

She leans back and looks upward as a nightguard passes by. You look up at the night sky and find that there are no stars tonight.

“Our mission was our vow: Let none pass. We never once broke our vow. When they gave a whisker, we took a mane, and together we pressed onward.” She stands and begins to walk away in her slow, certain stride. You scramble to follow. “The ground shifted beneath us, an illusion this one said, set upon by Namiira to distract us. None are as sure-footed as Khajiit, and few were as certain as us, as the one you struggle to keep up with.

“How many fell before us, this one cannot say. Hundreds? Perhaps thousands? It was exactly enough for the Cantors to finish their rite, to reach the crescendo of their song.. Then the song suddenly stopped.

“Ask me not where the others are. There is no certain answer, but this one.. Feh. This one did not fret, being no stranger to darkness, but the others… One can assume they did not follow, or fled. When this went thought to reach back, there was no answer. We were all so close only a moment before, but there, then, we were as far apart as the sun and the moons. One could not even catch the scent of their sweat, their fur, the metal of their armor or the tang of blood. We could hear, and so we called out, and like fading notes did we all fall silent, one by one. How long this one spent hearing her own voice, no one can say, but after Rakkhat’s voice went silent, it was all that was left.”

You are outside the city gates now. She walks off the main path and onto the rough earth. You follow, though the terrain is unforgiving on your boots. How she manages in bare feet is beyond you.

“Have you ever felt nothing? Truly, nothing? Over there, as each voice of a comrade went silent, so too did the ground before me crumble. When Rakkhat called out that final time was when the last grain of sand beneath me fell away, and I was left weightless. There is no cold in the Dark, no warmth. Should you run your hand over your fur, you may feel its bristles through an air without wind. Your insides churn about, for how long you cannot say, but hunger leaves you as the sands below do. Hunger, fatigue, hard steel and soft fur. Sensation leaves you first.”

The craggy earth gives ways to shifting sands. She walks with the same certainty up a dune you struggle to gain a single foothold in. You resort to all fours as she remains upright.

“After sensation was hearing. When your voice loses all its power and leaves you in silence, you still hear the beat of your heart, the whisper of each breath, the humming in your head. All this is lost in the Dark.” Her pace quickens. Your fingers scrape against the coarse sands. Your back aches, and your heart pounds. “Yet, you persist. Against it all, you persist. When all else is gone, there you are.” She stops at the peak of the dune. When you right yourself, you see a smile on her face.

“I faced the Dark and never once let fear in me. The others faltered, and cried out, and so they were taken. Not this one. Ever resolute… Yes. Yes. And this was seen, truly seen. Tell me, does your patron know you, truly know you? Does your patron see you as you truly are?”

You have no answer. Her smile widens.

“There, in that place that was not, my eyes opened, and for the first time bore witness. It was a beauty that defies all language, all forms, all thought..  It was there, walker. There is the only space in which one could be truly seen. It was.. It was to be loved. Truly, deeply loved.”

Her smile has lost its charm, her form has lost its grace. She stands in a way that you only now realize is as unnatural as a moons-less night that has no stars, or a horizon that bears no lantern-light. You step back, and find the earth beneath you is not as certain anymore. She lurches forward and grabs you with unsheathed claws that leave no mark. She pulls you closer to her wide, white, unblinking eyes. She outdrank and outsmoked you at the tavern, but not a trace of it is on her breath.

“Let Namiira take our sight, for it is not needed. The heart- yes..” One hand goes to your pounding chest. “The Heart knows to see. One need only to know its beating, and to follow its pattern. You feel it, yes? You must, you would not have answered otherwise. Stay, stay here, you’ve come so far already. See what your patron cannot, and talk with me. We have an eternity.”

Your vision fades, and the distant sounds of night fade into nothing. For the first time in ages, your sleep is dreamless.

When you wake under the Elsweyr sun, your only companion is a pounding in your head.

[cannot-hyde-away]

⋆·˚ ༘ * HI HELLO ⋆·˚ ༘ *

Name's hyde :) I'll be posting mostly bg3 related stuff as it's been my obsession for a few months now and it refuses to leave my bird brain. HUGE fan of Gale Dekarios! I decided to make this a pinned post, so you can make yourself familiar with my beloved tav Elias if you wish to follow me! :D

⚠️ I'm in my mid 20s, so THIS BLOG IS NOT A SAFE SPACE FOR MINORS. Please, do not follow or interact if you are under the age of 18. Might include some nsfw stuff in the future! ⚠️

Basic information about Elias

Full name: Elias "The Canary" Timberleen Race: Half wood-elf Class(es): Fighter (Eldritch Knight), Bard (College of Lore), Rogue (Thief) Background: Entertainer Alignment: Chaotic neutral Affiliation(s): Circus of the Last Days, formerly: The College of New Olamn in Waterdeep Deity: Tymora - The Bright Smiling Lady, formerly: Lathander - The Morninglord Occupation: bard, formerly: soldier, thief

to be updated! :) more about his relationships and story under the cut!

did I start another run with Elias? yes. Meeting his future adopted daughter!!! (again) He should be so much taller than Shadowheart honestly, he's just so... tall in my head yk!! I tried making him with body type 4 but it was way too big for him :( he's taller than Gale too!

perhaps I'll make this a thread of sorts to introduce Eli and his relationships with other companions better! :)

the face Eli pulls whenever Gale starts Galesplaining and just talking in general LMAO!! Elias is a college of lore bard and an eldritch knight fighter, my man knows magic to some extent - by no means is he on Gale's level, but he's not absolutely green in it either! So he humours Gale at first, eventually starts being "playfully" rude about Gale's boasting and then starts straight up calling him out on his little ego-trips, because Elias can't stand the patronizing!! Gale is a huge nerd, we all know, but damn so is Eli - he's just a secret nerd that comes out of hiding whenever Gale starts talking academics and magic. He reciprocates Gale's passive aggression with the same attitude, so they bicker quite a lot... But Gale learns to not look down on others involved with magic (at least not as much as he does in the beginning) and they end up spending all their free time discussing their favourite topics and life overall, finding out they've a lot in common :)

he either looks like the hottest father in your area or a sad little kitten, no in between. How could anyone ever want to hurt him. Look at his upset kitty face.

Guardian time! Eli's been suspicious of the dream visitor since the very start - it took the shape of his long gone best friend after all. Back in his teenage years, Elias joined an army to have a bed to sleep in and food to put in his mouth. There, he met a fellow half-elf by the name of Kade: a boy who grew up in the streets, fighting every day to survive. They bonded over their mutual struggle to fit in with humans or elves at first, but their contrasting personalities attracted them to one another and they quickly became comrades. Kade looked after Eli, as he was rather frail in his youth, and showed him the ropes. After roughly ten years of serving together, Kade perished on the battlefield and as a goodbye, he urged Eli to run away, since he never considered Elias suited for a fighter's life. And so Elias deserted, taking only Kade's longsword as a keepsake with him :)

Eli and Wyll! Elias is a middle-aged man, he could kind-of be Wyll's dad and he certainly approaches Wyll with paternal feelings. He just sees this kind young man trying to do the honorable thing and getting punished for it, learns about Wyll's past and just feels like protecting him, instead of having Wyll protect everybody else. He's trying to be the supportive adult figure in Wyll's life during their time together despite having a few disagreements. Of course, he'd never replace Ulder or have the same authority in Wyll's eyes, but he makes sure to be there for Wyll when he needs it :)

heartbreak in a pill incoming...!!! I love Karlach and Eli's relationship so much... They love each other TO BITS. Karlach is his best friend, his platonic soulmate even. They became friends immediately and time only strenghtened and deepend their bond; there are no secrets between them, only trust and love. That's why at first Elias "accepts "Karlach's decision to die once her engine is done for, despite his own desire to keep her alive no matter what. He wants Karlach to feel supported regardless of her choices and let her know he'll be there for her, always, even at the world's end. When the time comes and Wyll tells her to return to Avernus, Eli offers to go with them, so Karlach never feels alone again, but it's her who refuses and tells him to go live his life: there's Gale waiting for him after all. They'll meet again, she promises. And in the meantime, Elias writes songs about Karlach; about her courage, her beauty, her strength, her spirit, so she can still live on in Faerun.

Perhaps they idolize each other a bit too much and lose their mind when the other is in any danger. They're comrades, just like Eli was with Kade. Their reunion is all tears and laughter and endless hugs and alcohol and dance.

HUGS FOR EVERYONE!! Elias' main love language is physical affection, so you'd see him hugging and smooching everyone around the camp on regular basis (head smooches for Shadowheart and cheek smooches for Karlach are the most common). His relationship with Astarion started as physical. They did sleep together, but for Eli it was nothing more than satisfying his urges and curiosity at first, but he grows to care for Astarion!! Just as Astarion grows to care for Eli with no ulterior motives. In the confession scene in act 2, Elias offers Astarion friendship instead, and promises to protect him no matter what and then offers him a hug!! and I think Astarion would accept and gradually become very comfortable with casually touching Elias to show his own affection for the bard!!

[ mods used: Kylin's piercings by kylin3, Tav's Hair Salon by Toarie, Kylin's piercings by kylin3, Pirates and Rebels by Cerberry, Gale Hair Replacer by junbug7897, Wyll's Devil Form by lumad11, hugs mod by Cerberry, Lilith's Armors by badwitch69 ]

[hangmox]

HangMox: An Audience of One

Warning: This is a very erratic essay about a feud that means a lot to me, personally. Posting to a sideblog because I’m trying to keep it clean and separate.

Word Count: 8.6k. A doozy. Please understand that I speak on Hangman and Moxley from their first moments in AEW, and I even provide a bit of background from before. Their feud did not start, for me, at the end of September 2022. This is a story that starts from the very first PPV.

Writer’s Note: This has not been revised. If you are a newer fan of AEW, this will help you to understand both mens’ journeys up until this point, and it also helps to express and tie in some ideas and concepts I have for them about blood, beer, and speaking their truths. I hope it makes sense!

After five years of watching weekly WWE television and Pay-Per-Views, my husband and I could not take it any longer. We were looking for an alternative. On May 25th, 2019, we found it, in the form of All Elite Wrestling: Double or Nothing.

It wasn’t the flashiest show we’d ever seen - there were a couple lulls in the show where it felt like the timing was off, the crowd wasn’t as energetic - but we knew why. This was a brand new product, the start of something new for a set of independent wrestlers that we’d heard about very rarely, but enough to maybe know some of their names. In the summer of 2018, I had took it upon myself in the wee hours of the morning, after my grueling 10-hr night shifts at the local chicken plant, to experience life outside of WWE for the first time in the form of New Japan Pro Wrestling’s G1 Climax. This is where I learned that wrestling could be quick, energetic, and still somehow feel like every fist, every high spot, could hurt viscerally. And it is here where I saw Hangman Adam Page on my screen for the very first time.

I was deep into my Red Dead Redemption era in 2018, and this guy hit all the boxes. He was handsome, he was funny, he could actually fucking wrestle, he was a cowboy, and most importantly, he was telling me a story. The known muscle of the Bullet Club and member of the Elite, this was the guy who was looking to prove he was more than just the guy who took the pins so his comrades wouldn’t. He was looking to win the damn thing. But that wasn’t all it was about - no, he had found a way to weave another thread into this tournament: he was going to pull the REAL Kazuchika Okada out of whatever hole he’d been hiding in. He was going to pull the Rainmaker out.

You see, Okada had just lost his IWGP world heavyweight title to Hangman’s friend and Bullet Club leader, Kenny Omega, and his life had taken somewhat of a comically downward spiral. He dyed his hair clown red, he walked out to his entrance music with shapeable balloons. At the time, we took to calling him the “Balloonmaker.” He walked out with a smile on his face, to hide the sorrow of his failure. But this wasn’t the guy Hangman was expecting to wrestle in his block of the round-robin tournament. No, he was going to make sure that if he beat Okada, one of the most legendary wrestlers in the history of the company, he was going to beat the BEST version of him. And if he lost? Well, at least he gave it his all against the best. The problem with New Japan, however, was the unbelievable amount of hours we would have to dedicate to the product. I think I ended up watching five full days of the G1 Climax, out of a possible 20 or so.

Around the time that Hangman took on the grueling month-long tournament against some of New Japan’s finest, another wrestler was making his re-debut on WWE television. After an elbow injury and a terrifying staph infection that nearly killed him, Dean Ambrose was back on Monday Night Raw, alongside his friend and enemy, Seth freakin’ Rollins. But this wasn’t the same Dean Ambrose we had witnessed for the past couple years, the hyperactive little shit that wouldn’t stay down, no, this was prison-break Ambrose. He came back swole and with a mean mugging look that would make a bulldog cry. This was it, everyone thought, we’re gonna get the heel turn of a lifetime.

Only, it wasn’t exactly what we expected. First off, it was late, and at the heels of an announcement that turned WWE on its head - Roman Reigns was taking time off for his 2nd battle with leukemia, and Ambrose chose now to turn on Seth Rollins. Maybe if the motive had made a little more sense, it would’ve been enough. After all, Rollins and Ambrose had a long, storied history together - if Ambrose could just explain why now, maybe I could be on his side. I wanted to be on his side. The WWE put out one of those documentaries for Dean that followed him for months, throughout his time out on injury, and then his subsequent return. We got backstage moments with him where he divulged his feelings, seemingly telling us what was going on in his head. And yet - nothing. It never truly felt like he had told us WHY. Now, years later, I’ve read Mox’s book, and I know how he felt about the whole thing, so I know he was just as frustrated as I was, if not more (definitely more, actually).

So Ambrose left the company, and my husband and I dropped the WWE. I don’t know if it was coincidence or fate, but there’s going to be a lot of that comin’ around in this story. Ambrose wasn’t even my favorite - Sami Zayn is my WWE favorite. But something about the way it all went down with Ambrose, and also largely in part the way that WWE treated Sami Zayn, is what finally made us break our ties.

Almost immediately after Dean Ambrose left WWE and cashed in his chips, a video dropped on his largely unused twitter account: a video of Jon Moxley breaking out of jail, with a shot of the numbers 5 & 25 found in the video - which just so happened to be the month and day of the first Double or Nothing AEW Pay-Per-View.

I would love to say that I was anticipating that day, but to be honest, I completely forgot about it until the day of, when my husband dragged me downstairs to the living room to figure out how to buy our very first pay-per-view on cable television, about five minutes before the buy-in aired.

But once I saw that precious cowboy come out as the Joker in the first ever Casino Battle Royal, I was hooked. I turned to my husband, pointing at Hangman on my screen. “That’s the guy we saw in the G1 last year! He’s in the Bullet Club!”

He smiled at the screen, knowing it was too late. I had found my favorite.

Hangman won the battle royal, earning him the first shot at the inugural AEW world championship at the next Pay-Per-View. Who he was slated to go up against, though, depended on the outcome of the Double or Nothing main event: the Alpha, Chris Jericho, versus Kenny Omega.

“Do you think Mox will show up?” I asked my partner, my entire body tense with anticipation.

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up. If he doesn’t show up, it’ll ruin it for you.”

“He’s showing up,” I insisted, “I’m like 99% certain he will.” I’ve never been one to make guarantees, but this was as close to one as I could manage. I could feel it in my soul, and I was dying to see Mox live up to his potential.

I was bouncing off the couch when I saw Mox stalking through the crowd and into the ring. My adrenaline was pumping and I thought it was the best way to end their first PPV. My husband and I turned to look at each other - yep, this was enough. This was definitely enough to intrigue us.

I would spend the summer of 2019 watching everything I could about AEW - I finally got into Being the Elite, I watched the summer events, and I searched Hangman’s name on youtube as much as I could to get more of a semblance of his character. He was now important to me, and I was determined to understand him as best as I could. Through this, I met and connected with brand new friends, as well as dragged my WWE friends into it as much as I could.

One friend in particular was an EXTREMELY avid Mox fan. Even in his Ambrose days, they spoke about the old CZW Moxley often, and so I had an idea of what this new and improved version would probably be like. I also found myself a friend that had been following Hangman Page for the past few years and knew substantially more about him than I ever could. With them and a couple other new friends I found that also adored Hangman, we became a tiny little stable of our own.

And so, the brainstorming began.

Before All Out 2019 even happened, I had posed the question to my friends: “What do we think about Hangman and Mox? Wouldn’t that be a badass combination?”

The noted Mox fan and the seasoned Hangman vet were the first ones to perk up. The Mox fan agreed immediately, and the Hangman vet said they had already started working on an idea to bring them together a couple days after Double or Nothing, when Mox had done his interview with Chris Jericho on his Talk is Jericho podcast.

“Hold on a minute - a podcast?” I asked, curious.

Enthusiastically, they told me that Jericho had asked Mox who he’d like to get in the ring with now that he was in a new promotion. Hangman’s name had been the first out of his mouth, said nonchalantly, very much like it wasn’t a big deal and Mox was just naming names to name them. But it was too late - this was now my obsession.

Three episodes into AEW Dynamite, we got our very first chance to see them in action together. The two loners, Pac and Moxley, were taking on the team of Hangman and Kenny. This team was brand new at the time, both having suffered major losses at All Out - Kenny had submitted to Pac, and Hangman had lost his shot at the inaugural title to Chris Jericho in the main event. The tag match made sense - for the most part.  Mox had gone for the biggest fish in AEW at the end of Double or Nothing, giving Kenny Omega a Paradigm Shift that got the entire wrestling world talking. Pac and Hangman had beef that started in the early days of the promotion, the story told almost entirely through Being the Elite at the time. Kenny had just lost to Pac. And yet…there was no motivation here for Hangman and Mox to be across the ring from each other. The lack of a story between them was louder than all the other storytelling here combined. Perhaps, I told myself, this was a story in itself.

No worries, though. We were about to see just how much chemistry these two had. This would be the first step in gauging what a potential feud or even partnership could be like. We were absolutely shivering with anticipation.

Hangman spent most of his own time in the match trying to get the drop on Pac. The first moment he was in the ring with Mox, he practically paid him no mind until he had Pac dead on the floor. Before the match was done, they’d interacted maybe twice as legal men in the ring, and once when everyone was on the outside. At one point, Mox had Hangman in a gorgeous Texas cloverleaf submission, which was quickly stopped by Kenny. Another point in the match, Hangman tried to give Mox a buckshot lariat that Mox ducked. Almost immediately, Mox ate a clothesline from Hangman akin to an Okada Rainmaker finisher, and it was fucking beautiful.

It was clear to me, from the grand total of about two and a half minutes that they spent in the ring together, that they were an elegant match.

Four months passed by.

Hangman went on a downward spiral, leaving the Elite but choosing still to tag with Kenny. He started to drink, courtesy of those silly little guys, Private Party. This ain’t water, indeed. By the time Revolution 2020 came around, Hangman was on a trajectory to meet his former best friends, the Young Bucks, in a tag team championship match, and Jon Moxley was slated as contender to Chris Jericho’s AEW world championship in the main event.

And well, let’s just say, the better story won the night, even if Jon Moxley closed the show.

Hangman walked out of his match a winner, his tag title still in one hand and a beer in the other, with Kenny Omega at his side.

Jon Moxley, newly won championship belt on his shoulder, excitement still pumping blood in his ears, would go on to say it felt like it was “beer o’clock.”

An awkward pause.

What? I thought.

The camera panned to the crowd.

Mox was smiling, tongue sticking out like a panting dog, looking somewhat towards the go-position.

No, could he be…? There was no way. I couldn’t believe it. Was Hangman Page about to show up right now?

Whoever was in production scrambled to put a stop to this. Mox’s music hit.

“Hey, what the fuck?” said the newly crowned world heavyweight champion.

Hold on. Were they…Oscaring him off the stage? Is that what was happening in this moment? Say ‘sike’ right now.

My hands were on my mouth.

Let’s just say that for the rest of the five hours that I stayed awake after this show, unable to sleep due to the sheer adrenaline running through my veins, me and the gang were viciously wondering what the fuck that was about. Maybe Hangman was supposed to come out? But how does that make sense when he and Kenny just retained their titles? Why would he go for the championship again so soon? But it makes sense for him to want it. That’s the title that he promised he would win on day one of the company.

But we didn’t get an answer.

Whether that was because of the pandemic that shut down the entire world for the foreseeable future a week and half later, or because that was just genuinely something that meant absolutely nothing, we’ll never know. Truly, we will NEVER know. Unless one of us ever has the guts to ask Mox about it. Until then, “beer o’clock” + awkward pause + staring at the go-position + Mox theme + “hey what the fuck” will likely haunt me for the rest of my life. Thanks, Jonathan.

Lots of things changed during this time. Hangman’s rocky relationship with the Bucks came back to a head again before All Out 2020, during a tag gauntlet match that would reveal the first contenders for Hangman and Kenny’s championships at the Pay-Per-View. It was down to the Young Bucks and FTR. See, FTR had come in at the beginning of the summer, and they ended up making friends with Hangman. Hangman was there when they signed their contracts, with a brand new bottle of whiskey in hand. They bonded over drinks. But they weren’t so friendly with the Bucks and Kenny, which obviously caused a lot of problems. By the time that gauntlet came around, FTR had Hangman convinced that if the Bucks won the gauntlet, Hangman would regret it. They worked him with his own insecurities. They just wanted a friendly bout with him, they said. He’d already had one with the Bucks, so wouldn’t it be fun to have a match with FTR this time?

So Hangman cheated, costing the Bucks the match. A few moments later, Hangman brooding over what he’d done in the Daily’s Place bar, the Bucks kicked him officially out of the Elite, throwing a drink in his face.

He and Kenny would go on to lose the tag titles at All Out to FTR. He would lose his tag partner in the process. He would fight him at the next PPV in singles competition for contendership of Moxley’s heavyweight championship. He would drop to the ground, land flat on his face, losing this first opportunity to fight Moxley to his own partner.

A microphone blast to the head. Blood gushing from the middle of Jon’s forehead (a sight well known to the AEW fans). V-Trigger. V-Trigger. V-Trigger. V-Trigger. Pull him in. One Winged Angel.

One. Two. Three.

That was how Jon Moxley lost his AEW world heavyweight championship to Kenny Omega. An absolute steal. A few weeks prior, at Full Gear, the Young Bucks beat FTR for the tag team championships.

Months and months go by. Hangman finds solace in the Dark Order, and the Dark Order finds solace in him in return. They bring each other back up, from sorrows greater than we could even imagine. The loss of their leader, their friend, their Exalted One. Our Brodie Lee. Though Hangman would deny them on separate occasions, eventually he would understand that friends don’t let friends do battle alone. And whether he joined them as a group or not, it wouldn’t matter. They would keep Brodie Lee’s offer and promise that he made to Hangman the year before, when he left the Elite. They would never leave him alone.

Mox would continue his quest to retrieve the title, challenging Kenny at Revolution 2021 in an exploding barbed wire deathmatch that would end…not precisely as intended. However, much like Hangman, he would find that he was not alone. He would find someone to watch his back, in the form of an old friend and foe, Eddie Kingston. They would challenge the Bucks - now firmly planted once again at Kenny’s side -  for the tag team championships at Double or Nothing 2021. This, much like his shot at the world title, would be for naught.

In the summer of 2021, the Dark Order would prove worthy allies in the ring to Hangman, when they challenged Kenny and the Young Bucks to a multi-man tag, with the stipulation that if they were able to eliminate each member of the Elite, Hangman would get his shot at Kenny’s title, and they would receive a shot at the Young Bucks.

Now, I’ll be honest - I don’t remember what Mox was doing at the time, so I had to look this up. Uhh, he spent a lot of time on AEW Dark. But the match that stood out the most to me during this time was a Texas Deathmatch with Lance Archer…which he lost. And with it, his IWGP US championship.

So Hangman and the Dark Order are unsuccessful. They beg him to keep trying, but at around this time, Hangman decides that he needs some space. He comes up to the ring at Daily’s Place, the first Homecoming show since AEW’s two month long tour away (when the entire world decided that the pandemic was finally over). Tony Schiavone is with him, and it seems like maybe Hangman is going to tell the crowd that he’s gonna take some time to himself or let some things off his chest, when the Elite show up. At one point he tells Hangman that perhaps maybe he would consider allowing Hangman to come back to the Elite - upon which a young woman in the crowd in a cowboy hat and a teal bandana yells, “Never!” (me). Yes, I got to watch live as the Elite beat Hangman down and the Dark Order could only stand back and watch.

…This would be the last time we see Hangman for two months.

While he’s gone, though, Jon Moxley brings up his name, in a backstage promo where he calls out the newcomers. At this time, AEW was seeing a surge of new talent entering its ranks - people like Daniel Garcia, Malakai Black, CM Punk. Mox questions whether this talent thinks that it’s easy to be at the top here - Kenny has an entire entourage surrounding him at all times just to keep the title around his waist, and Hangman can’t “get over his high school drama, BTE emo bullcrap long enough to get the job done.” He says that Hangman “ain’t no cowboy,” and he could “drink his ass under the table.”

Oh, I think. You mean like beer o’clock?

Mox was pulling wins around this time every week, and it was clear he was due for a push. This was the man who put the world title and the company on his back during an unprecedented time not just for the promotion, but for the world as a whole. And it was clear that he was due his flowers.

But very odd, to me, that he would bring up Hangman. Especially when they had nothing to do with each other.

Fast forward to October 6th, 2021. A fucked up time in my life. Probably the worst I’ve ever felt.

It was only fitting, then, that my favorite cowboy would show up and give me a small glimmer of hope. The roar of the crowd that night touched my soul more than I can ever say.

The last time he was the Joker of a casino match, he won. This time would be no different.

Except that Mox was in this match. And Mox was the one in the ring waiting for him. The moment they collided with each other, I was screaming. I was crying. My heart was thumping out of my chest. After two years, they were finally back in a ring together. Almost two years to the day.

One of the funniest moments in this casino ladder match is seeing Hangman drop Pac from the top of a ladder with a deadeye, pull himself up onto the ropes to celebrate with the crowd, only to turn around and get spiked on his head with a Paradigm Shift from Jon Moxley, receiving the double birds.

But it didn’t matter. The path was clear - Hangman was going to win this ladder match, setting up his final encounter with his old friend, Kenny Omega, for the AEW world heavyweight championship. And there wasn’t a damn thing Mox, Pac, Andrade, or Lance Archer could do to stop him.

Hangman, at the top of a ladder, guzzling a beer, closed out the show. The casino chip lay ominously on the mat, forgotten.

The next couple of weeks would see Hangman in the most confident state he’d ever been in, relaxed and sure of himself, breathing deeply and opening his heart to the fans. He was - in a word - beautiful.

Mox, however, was absolutely despicable. Ten days later, he would have his first bout with Wheeler Yuta, dropping him in less than two minutes and storming back out of the ring. He would continue his rampage all the way into the eliminator tournament, which would come to a head at Full Gear. All the booking made it clear: this man was aiming for the world title…and Hangman Page was going to be the one wearing it.

That would all change, however, when Jon Moxley decided to put his health first. His fight with alcoholism had finally resonated enough within him that he said enough was enough, and he pulled himself out of the tournament. In an odd way, his real life story and Hangman’s story on the screen were more similar than we could have expected.

And once again, like ships in the night…they would pass each other by, never knowing how close they had come.

I won’t go on a long tangent about how much Hangman winning the title meant to me, so I’ll just say this: Hangman Page winning the world title meant a lot to me.

Another similarity - both Hangman and Mox bled in the match where they won their world championship.

From here, we arrive in 2022.

“Nobody, no matter who you are, should be afraid to stand up in front of the whole world and bare it all, everything that makes you who you are, scars and all, and say ‘hey, this is me!’” - words Jon Moxley spoke when he made his return from rehabilitation.

I love these words. Because they’re very much in line with something that Hangman himself said in the post-Full Gear scrum two months before: “Fuck it, I’ll just say what I feel. I’ll just be me. And if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, I came by it honest.”

As the champion Hangman Adam Page bled and bled and bled his way through his title matches, Jon Moxley found himself in the Blackpool Combat Club - a group consisting of himself, Bryan Danielson, and William Regal, as well as (eventually) Wheeler Yuta and Claudio Castagnoli. This was a group that prided itself in one thing - bloody violence.

The alcohol would be replaced, in both the champ and the former champ’s minds, by blood.

A sidenote: Hangman would have a Texas Deathmatch with the very same Lance Archer. Unlike Moxley, though, he would go on to win the match and retain his championship. And boy, was it a bloody scene. Two months later, Hangman would challenge Adam Cole to a Texas Deathmatch as well - and win.

We arrive at Double or Nothing.

A good friend of mine would meet Hangman Page at a meet and greet the day before the show. The limited edition print Hangman signed for her was a graphic of him, surrounded by a border that resembled a playing card. His sign - the Ace of Diamonds. Curious, I looked up the meaning of the card. Now, this could all be bullshit, but at the time, it meant something to me. It specified a message that was soon to come, or in a broader sense, a new perspective. I felt like this fit Hangman perfectly, and it solidified something in my own head about him - he was, in fact, an Ace in the company. At a time when I heard often that Jon Moxley was the top guy, when there were whispers that Jon might fight Tanahashi soon at Forbidden Door, I was dead set on maintaining Hangman as the One. And this, this was a sign. For me.

All those hopes and dreams would come crashing down though, obviously, when Hangman lost the title to CM Punk. After 198 days of being overshadowed by the explosive feud that was Maxwell versus Punk, Hangman’s reign would come to an end.

But as luck would have it, Punk would be injured about four days later, leaving the title picture up in the air.

“This is mine,” Hangman had declared, that night at Double or Nothing. “You will NEVER have it. This. Is. Mine!”

Those words, it seemed, rang nearly true enough.

The month of June would become a month so confusing, so convoluted, that even now I cannot remember what exactly the fuck happened. There was a battle royal to pick an opponent for the number one contender to the interim title, Jon Moxley, but the problem was that Hangman already had a match set for the night. I thought, surely he can pull a double. He’s the former world champ. Surely, they’ll let him do it. The only problem was, that double was actually pulling a triple, because the match between the winner of the battle royal would face Mox on Rampage, which was taped the same night.

I, and the rivalry I so desperately held to my chest, would have to wait once more. Another near-crossing. But I could feel it: the lines were drawing closer.

Mox would face Tanahashi and win the interim world title. Hangman would follow a confusing path to the IWGP heavyweight championship and lose against three other men. Hangman had another opportunity at a title shot in another battle royal, but he got dunked out of the ring before he could win it. By the middle of July, I was getting antsy. I wanted to know what the future held for my favorite guy in AEW, and by god, I was going to get some answers.

Comicpalooza - Houston, TX. July 16th and 17th, 2022. Hangman Page and Adam Cole were set to appear. They were going to have panels, autographs, and professional photos with fans.

And I, resident Hangman girlie, was going to be there.

Here’s where the shit gets interesting.

Cole ended up having to cancel, I’m assuming due to not being medically cleared after the concussion he suffered at Forbidden Door. Which meant that both days became wide open to meeting Hangman not once, not twice - but four times. Twice for photos and twice for autographs. And of course, the panel.

As a girl who’s never once met a celebrity that she actually cared about, this was a big fucking deal, and I was - hoo boy, was I nervous. The first chance I got was the first autograph signing, right before the photo and about twenty minutes before the panel. I could hardly look him in the eye. I was about as skittish as a horse, and super quiet. He tried to get light conversation out of me (complimenting my pearlsnap - which matched his own, mine was cream and his was brown - shirt, my belt, and my boots), and I ended up mentioning that I would see him again in a few minutes for the photo and then the panel. It was going to be a busy couple hours for him. After that was over, I saw him at the photo. I was the first in line.

“Hello again,” I said. He replied with a smile, and he seemed much more awake and excited than he had a few minutes prior. I noted that he must like taking photos with everyone. His cheery aura calmed me down significantly, and I was much more comfortable speaking with him. I asked for a hug, and he obliged me. He asked me what kind of pose I’d like to do, and I told him I wanted to do finger guns. In my head, I was imagining us back to back, like a movie poster, but he suggested we whirl into it, like we’re about to shoot at the camera. He asked if this was okay. I was so starry-eyed that I said yes immediately.

Once the camera flashed, he pulled me over to the photographer’s screen of the image. He said he wanted to make sure it looked good, and asked if I liked it. It was an amazing photo. I know it was amazing, because I actually thought I looked good in it.

Now, I debated on mentioning this part but I figure I may as well - at this point in time, I asked him if I handed him a letter, would he read it. He said, “yes, of course!” I handed it to him, and he quickly asked me if he should read it now, to which I yelled, “no! Nuh uh! Not right now!”

“You sure?” he asked playfully. I shook my head. It was too long a letter for him to read at the moment, and he had a line to get through and then a panel to get to. I was not about to hold him up. Plus, I had tapped out all my remaining courage for this particular moment. I was not about to watch his face as he read the feelings I bore on those pages. Knowing I was strong enough to put the letter in his hands was enough for me. He said okay. I thanked him as I left, saying I would see him at the panel.

The audience at the panel was small, way too small for the ballroom they had set up in. But it didn’t matter, because I was in the front row anyway. I brought a little sign that said “Hangman Gang,” which was the name of my group of wrestling friends. The mediator of the panel pointed it out to him when he sat down at the table in the front of the room.

I had never attended a panel before, but I knew the basics of what it was like from a couple of panels I had watched on youtube. At some point, there would be a Q&A where fans could go up to a microphone setup and ask him a question.

I had thought about what I would ask him for weeks. But by the time the day came around, none of the questions I’d thought about were sticking in my mind as The One. I had questions about the meaning behind some of his gear, questions about the Elite, questions about Adam Cole. But none of them felt…right. When I finally got out of my seat to take my spot in line for the microphone, I was in “fuck it” mode. I knew what I was going to ask, even if I wasn’t sure how I was going to ask it. Plus, I needed to tell him happy early birthday.

“Hi,” I said shyly. He responded with a quiet “hello.”

And so it began. I wished him a happy birthday, barely stopping to acknowledge his thanks before continuing on with what I was there for. I prefaced my question by saying that I knew him and Mox had only fought twice in the past two years, but never in singles. And I believe, if my memory is correct, that I said: “Is that on purpose? Or like, are you dodging Mox? Or is Mox dodgin’ you?”

A chuckle from the mediator. The absolute audacity of my asking my favorite wrestler in the world whether he was afraid of another wrestler must have really gotten to him.

Hangman replied, as I recall, very eloquently. He remembered that first match at the beginning of Dynamite’s run, and he remembered the casino ladder match. But as for why they hadn’t met again, he could only chalk it up to…”fate.” Fate was what kept them apart. Fate took Mox out of the tournament, fate took the belt off Hangman, fate kept him from these opportunities all summer long. It was out of his control, but he would love to fight Mox. He certainly wasn’t dodging him on purpose. He would love to do a match with him.

At this, the mediator prompted. “...Texas Deathmatch?”

Hangman’s eyes looked out into the ether, weighing those words. “Yeah. Yeah, Mox likes deathmatches, right?”

My entire body started vibrating at those words. I thanked him and sat back in my seat.

I would not stop thinking about those words until the end of September, when Hangman won the battle royal at Rampage Grand Slam. The newly crowned NOT-interim world heavyweight champion, Jon Moxley, was set to do battle against Hangman Adam Page.

This was an important match for Hangman, as it would be his first major shot at the world title since losing it a few months back. From the moment Hangman walked out to meet Mox face to face in the front of the ring, I was hooked on every expression, every set of their jaws, every word from their mouths.

“Three years of AEW Dynamite…three years of watching you, three years of studying you because I knew this was comin’...three years of us circlin’ each other…”

The camera cuts to a wide shot of the two in the ring, dancing around each other.

The image in my head is of Raymond Holt from Brooklyn Nine Nine shouting, “VINDICATION!!”

“You know, between the two of us, we’ve probably beaten everyone there is to beat…except each other…on October 18th, there will be one Last Man Standing here in AEW.”

The first pearl of foreshadowing dropped. Texas Deathmatches, at their core, were considered ‘last man standing.’ Mox goes on to say here that he was going to choke Hangman out, because Hangman was in the way. In the way of Mox being, once and for all, the Top Guy in AEW. Just like I had been told. He goes on to say that he respects Hangman as a competitor and as a person. At one point, after Hangman goes too far, he calls him a ‘sweet kid.’ But at the end of the day, he was going to put him down, no matter what.

The next week in the ring, Mox mentions that being world champion means having a target on your back. Many “crumble under the pressure…some faster than others.” This is, very clearly, a knock on Hangman and his reign. Though Hangman bled, and bled…and bled to keep his title, the story of his reign was a tough one. Having finally beaten the man whose shadow Hangman felt trapped under, there was nothing now to fight but the weight of being the champ. Keeping the gold that symbolized his worth had been, as Mox points out, too much to handle.

And now, he had to get his worth back.

When Hangman walks out to meet Mox here, he begins by telling Mox that whatever he has to say to Hangman, he can “say it to his face.” This would be the first, of many times, where he says this to Moxley in the months to come. He goes on to say, “but actually, you said it all last week.” He mentions how Mox said he respected him in the ring and as a person, and “[he] would be lying if [he didn’t say] coming from [Mox], that meant the world to [him].” He says that Mox was a damn good father, husband, champion, and that he looked up to Mox and wanted to be like him. But the moment that Mox called him a kid last week, all of those things vanished, in Hangman’s eyes.

“Is that what you think of me?” He demands. Mox takes the mic and says it’s exactly right. Because the Hangman standing before him now is not the same guy who knocked him off the top of a ladder a year ago to cash in his shot at the title. The Hangman of now, broken and aimless, won’t be able to pull the trigger if given the chance.

Mox’s observation here was sound - Hangman had many opportunities as champion to end someone in the most brutal way possible. During the Texas Deathmatch with Adam Cole, there’s a wonderful shot of Cole tied to the ropes while Hangman debates hitting him with a steel chair. A similar shot was shown the night he lost the title to CM Punk - where he holds the title in his hands while no one is looking, and debates whether he should use it to knock Punk out. He had a similar choice the day he won the title, but he chose not to and won.

In every instance, he has a shot at ending it. He refuses every time, out of some sense of nobility. It’s clear here that Mox disapproves.

Hangman agrees. He’s not the same person. Hesitation cost him the title. Hesitation cost him the trios titles, as well, in September. His old friends were gone and his new ones were dropping like flies. “I’m angry, I’m depressed! The medicine is not working but I am STILL HERE because I am a man!”

Here’s where he ties in to Mox’s words. How could he be a sweet kid if he was a man? An adult? Someone who has been through hell and back? He’s lowered family into the ground, he’s helped bring life into this world, he’s been choked until he turns blue but he keeps getting back up!

At this point, Hangman gets so worked up that he beats his fist into his eyebrow so badly that it breaks the skin. And here’s the part that I love the most - “I have my shot, and I have my word. Tuesday, I take my shot, and tonight I give you my word.” He palms at the blood staining his brow, wipes it on Mox’s white shirt. “...That is my word.”

The week before Hangman won the title off Kenny, there was a contract signing. At this contract signing, Kenny Omega and Don Callis conspired to rough Hangman up to give him a disadvantage going into the match that Sunday. Hangman broke wide open, over the same. Fucking. Eyebrow. And what did Kenny do? He signed his signature to the contract in Hangman’s blood. And then he lost.

I guess you could say Hangman’s blood holds a lot of promise.

“And unlike him,” Hangman said, pointing to a lurking Maxwell in the rafters of the arena, “I wanted to make sure to say this to you face-to-face…man-to-man.”

Of course, Hangman would go on to lose the first bout, as he suffered a very real, very scary concussion, but my god, was that match a work of art before the finish. It’d been a while since Hangman fans saw him pull an orihara moonsault from high up on a barricade, but he pulled it out for Mox.

At this point, I sat and wondered. Would I get to see him again? How soon? They were set to have three shows in Texas come December, and I wondered if we would finally get the Texas Deathmatch that seemed all but a promise. Because I didn’t think he would be cleared, I didn’t go to any of them. I just watched, anxious and a little bit heated, as Hangman showed up to answer Moxley’s call at the beginning of the first winter month.

Moxley’s first reaction to this was to make a tone-deaf joke about how Hangman probably didn’t remember what happened the last time they had met, instead of waiting to hear what Hangman might’ve had to say. He was met with a sock to the jaw.

This would go on for weeks, with Hangman saying that this wasn’t how he wanted it to go at all, but Mox just HAD to goad him. Say something stupid. Meanwhile, Mox held firm in his belief that he didn’t know what the fuck Hangman was talking about, and he could fight him any day of the week, no problem. Hangman would go into a brawl with him nearly every week, not being cleared to wrestle in the ring on account of his concussion. In a segment with Renee, he would reveal to her that the night of their first bout, when he got injured, he forgot his own son’s name. So Mox making light of his memory loss was, of course, not at all funny.

By January 2023, a date was set between the two in California. All three Texas shows went by and not one mention of a Texas Deathmatch, which had me very confused. But no matter, because there were two more Texas shows now slated for February, and I was going to one of them. I hoped, even if it wasn’t the match I was hoping for, that at the very least the feud would continue.

Before this rematch, though, they had one last face-to-face. Mox would tell Hangman that all this whining about get knocked out made him absolutely sick. And Hangman, of course, would have to point Mox in the right direction. “You think that I’m mad at you because you knocked me out? Is that really what you think?”

See, Hangman was well aware that being knocked out was part of the job. That was never the problem. Condescendingly, Hangman continues. “You don’t seem like a guy for nuance, so I’ll put it to you simple…”

The night of Hangman’s return, Mox didn’t let him get one word in before he made a joke. He believed in that moment that Mox saw him as a threat. But Hangman had not walked out to Mox that night for a fight, though it was what he was here for now.

That part was so interesting to me, because I wanted so badly to know why Hangman showed up that night to face Mox in the ring originally. This goes back to Hangman’s need to say things to Mox’s face and wanting the same in return.

Hangman won the second bout in a great match. Mox suffered what looked to be an injury, with the way he asked, “What happened?” repeatedly. Almost as if he had suffered a concussion of his own. Hangman would leave the ring, concerned and most of all, ashamed. Mox had been right in October. He was much softer than was expected to be of a champion.

So now they were tied, 1 to 1. At this point, Renee conducted a couple of interviews with Hangman, one of which was very interesting.

Renee started by asking how he was doing, and then she told him something that Mox told her. Apparently, Mox believed that Hangman made him better. That he both “despises” and “cherishes” him.

The HangMox girlie in me was bouncing off the walls. Knowing that even after two fights, Mox still had a nice word to say about Hangman was everything to me. It was beyond anything I could have ever expected, and he turned visibly awkward here. This would be one of three times in the interview where his body language changed.

He answers by saying that if Mox wanted to say something to his face, he could say it to him, and Hangman would gladly knock him out again if need be. Again, bringing up speaking to his face.

Three days before this segment, someone asked me what I thought was next for Hangman, and although I didn’t have a clear answer, I knew that it would have to do with something from the past. “The only way he can move forward is by looking back.”

Renee asked Hangman the same question, and he responded with, “the more I look forward, I can’t help but see back.”

I yelped. This was insane. There was no way we were this in tune. Basically, he wanted one final match. To prove that his win wasn’t a fluke, to prove that at the end of the day, he was the better of the two. To put this feud to bed. He also says that something Renee said earlier (calling him and Mox “elite” level performers) reminded him of some friendships that needed mending. This is another time he visibly changes his body language.

Once the interview is done, Hangman asks how Mox is, truly. Renee says that he’ll dust himself off again soon. Here is the final time where he seems to become visibly awkward - he begins to ask Renee, “could you tell him -” before stopping himself. “Never mind, it’s stupid.”

He holds himself here to the standard he holds Mox by. He wants Mox to say things to his face, so he knows that he shouldn’t relay anything back to him through Renee either.

Their third match, while just as fun as the first two, ends in an anti-climactic finish. After getting his ass handed to him by Hangman for about eight or so minutes, Mox pulls him in for a deep cover and gets the roll-up win. Hangman is, understandably, pissed. He ends up getting in Mox’s face, with Wheeler and Claudio having to keep them apart. They exchange flips of the bird. Mox lays down and makes a snow angel, much like Punk did to him in September. Hangman responds with a burpee.

They are absolutely little fucking kids about it. And it’s great.

It’s clear that the dick measuring contest isn’t over.

Still pissed off, Hangman comes back the next week in an interview with Renee and he is positively livid. He is so livid that he almost, almost tells Renee to relay a message to Moxley, but he’s interrupted by Kip Sabian before he can finish his thought.

The next week, Hangman wrestles Kip Sabian. I’m in the front row, cheering my ass off. He wins, as expected. He leans onto the ropes, frustration over another match crystal clear in his eyes. I raise my poster up so he can see. “Cowboy, you stole my yee-heart,” it reads. (It was the day after Valentine’s Day.)

He sends me a little kiss, keeps his eyebrows angry and his lips pouting. He does it like he’s mad about it, and it’s oh-so-fucking funny.

Behind him, Mox and his friends pull up into the ring. My heart is pounding out of my chest. I am seeing Hangman and Mox in the ring together with my own two eyes, and it’s amazing.

Mox tells Hangman that it’s over between them, he won fair and square. But Hangman refuses. He takes the mic, saying that there’s no way either of them could be happy with the finish of that match. That it’s not how their story should end. Their story ends at Revolution, when they go back in that cold, dark alley and only one man is left standing.

There it is, I thought. Those words again. Last man standing.

Mox seems glad of Hangman’s pushy nature at this point. He admits he’s kinda glad that Hangman has no friends to talk him into a smarter decision.

It’s at this point that the Dark Order makes itself known. Evil Uno, mic in hand, asks if he heard Mox correctly. “Did you say that this man has no friends?”

This moment was insane. Absolutely astonishing, to see Uno walk into the ring, square up to Mox and tell his own friend, Hangman, to get out of his face. Uno even goes so far as to pie-face Moxley to get his attention, something very few people have ever done and gotten away with, if ever.

Refusing to see Uno as a threat, Mox looks past him to the upset cowboy. “Cowboy…Texas Death.”

That girl in the front row went absolutely insane (me).

After missing four separate shows in Texas, I still managed to witness the announcement of the Texas Deathmatch between Hangman and Moxley. It was like the entire segment, the entire feud, up to this moment, was waiting on me to become a part of it once more. To be their lone partner, standing witness to the wonderful feud that was unfolding in front of my very eyes. Because not only were Hangman and Mox going head to head with the stipulation I’d been expecting since it came out of that mediation’s mouth, springing from my own completely odd and batshit question, but now the Dark Order was involved with the now merciless Blackpool Combat Club. Which means that this is likely far from truly over.

I left that show an elated woman. I was finally getting what I wanted.

And now, two and a half weeks later, the match is here. After watching the Countdown to Revolution, I can say without a doubt that they’ve satiated me well enough with this build. This idea that Mox is an animal without mercy that craves violence, completely and totally juxtaposing the man that needs to put down this rabid dog even if he doesn’t want to, but is going to have to by any means necessary. He said that Mox would never be the same, but I think the opposite is true. I think Hangman’s going to reach a point that he hasn’t been brought to yet in AEW. I think this time, despite all other evidence to the contrary, he’s finally going to snap. That heavy heart that Mox couldn’t take from him, that heart that Mox couldn’t carry, might turn to stone, if only for a moment.

A few weeks before Bryan and Mox had their bloody match at Revolution 2022, Mox uttered these words: “I don’t stand side by side with nobody…till I bleed with him first.”

It’s very clear that this Sunday, these men are going to bleed together. But I wonder…will they end up standing side by side? Will they share non-alcoholic beers together? Will Hangman ever tell Mox how he really feels, or will he keep it to himself, as he’s so often done before?

I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

[linashirou]

4, MGS 🤭

I guess I can say that I don't really know what love is.

Okay. That sounds weird.

Of course, in terms of the concept of the word and its meaning, I have knowledge of what love is. Brotherly and parental love is also something I could consider knowing and having.

But to have a girlfriend?

I want to believe that I won't make a mistake again. I want to believe that this time it won't be someone who will overwhelm me with her strong character, and that it won't be "Stockholm syndrome" or downright "taking advantage" of me as Snake has mentioned to me on other occasions. The fact that we met under strange circumstances clearly doesn't help me understand myself, and sometimes I'm not sure if this will be another desperate attempt to cling to a person who shows me a hint of affection, Giving crumbs to the love-hungry man that lives inside of me. And it's that when you're 37 years old, when you've been alone for the most part of your life, when you have a company, economic stability, a house to live in, a daughter, and an unconditional comrade like Dave waiting for you every day.

What else is there to live for? Of course. Filling the emotional void.

The past two years I was entirely dedicated to the legal issues of Sunny's adoption and Dave's health situation, which was temporarily improved thanks to whatever is up there, giving me more time to accept what was happening to him. Anyway…

I know, as he said… I have the right to finally rebuild my life. And at that very moment. She appeared. And now, as I look in the mirror while shaving, I realize how I let her get into my life without even analyzing her, desperately making her mine… I can't control how inexperienced my sentimental side is, like a boy in the body of an almost forty-year-old. Oh damn! I've accidentally cut myself. A thin red thread of blood escapes from the cut, leaving a trail that I watch carefully on the sink as I turn on the faucet to clean myself. Like the red thread that I romantically believe connects us.

Just like her hair, which was fanned out on my bed on the day that we made love for the first time… And after less than half a year of being together, I am already hers…

Because I believe she is everything I never had:

A friend with whom I can talk, a sister with whom I strive for a harmonious world, a mother who comforts me, and a lover who patiently brings out the best in me and makes me blossom.

The long awaited soulmate.

And no matter how much I try to clean that cut, the red ink of our love already stained the inside of my soul… And I can't forget how you let yourself be seen without restrain

I still remember how yesterday I could feel with the palms of my hands every curve and every line of that body that not long ago was... A complete stranger to me.

[dayurno]

sorryyyy for bringing some type of discourse to your inbox but I just giggle whenever anyone brings up the fact that nora soad andrews a misogynist and their only argument is the fact that he's friends with renee and dating neil who said women are the strongest ppl i know, like i don't personally think he's a misogynist, but i feel like there has to be better arguments for it😭

maybe it's bc the fandom gets on my nerves so I'm more sensitive to any attempts a defanging and making characters more palatable bc I'm not a fan of the widespread fanon versions of the characters also it's sad I feel like the fandom made some sort of progress where discussions were being had about the problems in the series and now after tsc came out it feels like we're back to where the author can do no wrong and it's hard to criticise anything

what do you think about tsc being a triology, I feel like two books can hopefully give Jeremy the depth he needs i remember you found him a bit flat as well when you read the book, I see a lot of people saying he needs to have a mean side or a traumatic past but I feel like a kind, nice character can be interesting without those things and not every kind character needs to have this secret mean side anyway, personally I groaned out loud when I found out it was a triology bc that would mean the fandom would be alive for longer and it's so crazy out of any book fandom I've ever been in for some reason the aftg fandom feels the most obnoxious maybe it's bc the books deal with heavier topics close to the heart so there's more feelings involved🤔the only book fandom who has pissed me off a comparable amount would be asoiaf but that's a whole different thing

I really do try and be happy I'm not even in the fandom anymore and I've never followed aftg twitter accounts and I don't even check the tags I just go on certain blogs but i still see things it's horrible💔like I can't believeeee we're still discussing if Kevins a coward or not and how selfish he is for leaving the nest like we've already argued about this to death on tumblr back in like 2016 now it's the same thing again💔

LOL i understand honestly so many of these discussions are repackaged wide-spread 2015 opinions which don’t reflect the original text that it’s hard to do anything except use the we have this thread every week comrade image and let it go. andrew being misogynistic is not even hard to come to terms with considering it’s not an interpretation or a headcanon it’s the author’s own words and will for the character incorporated into canon. there are things to disagree with nora sakavic for, but ultimately there is a difference between disagreeing with the author and willfully ignoring the intention with which a character was written

& i didn’t really care much for the news, i think the lack of planning and the rushed way the books are coming along are grating on both the author and the fandom, but i don’t blame her for wanting to get this done and over with. it will show more insight on jeremy hopefully, but unfortunately i already don’t care 😭 i think the route tsc took was in general uninteresting and pedestrian enough to not warrant a second thought, and i’m not particularly interested in any plotline beyond what pertains to kevin and the ravens. what surprised me really is the total lack of impact tsc had on the fandom, which is to say, i think it was so in line with the same 3-5 headcanons passed around the last 10 years that it has genuinely done nothing for anyone aside from the people who were already very invested in jean and/or jeremy. it feels like a different fandom from aftg altogether, which i’m happy about if only because it keeps us all locked in different cages, but it still baffles me to see people dedicate so much thought to a book whose characters bar jean are, as of now, the very definition of Nothing burger. all in all the answer to that question and most questions pertaining to tsc is Who cares. because literally who cares

LMFAO staying away from aftg twt is really good for you & honestly all of us. it’s still so funny to me that not even nora sakavic herself wanted to touch that mess. mentally ill white suburbanite teenage shut-in echo chamber ass fandom

[mokeymokey]

We have this thread every 4 years comrade

[moonlightreal]

Lockwood vs. Fate: who wore it better?

Netflix series based on childrens’ properties with a +grimdark slant, magic, swords, and friendship.  Fate and Lockwood & Co have a few things in common.  But where Fate fumbled pretty much every aspect, Lockwood did a better job.

The biggest difference I think is how the two stories handled the grimdark.  Fate faffs around with the “can we trust her?” question with Dowling and then Rosalind, stringing both characters and viewers along for episodes before the truth is revealed.  Lockwood brings the hammer down early in the first episode with Lucy’s first boss and then her mother, both scenes that are more grimdark in the show than in the book.  The answer is an unambiguous no.  These people cannot be trusted. Adults cannot be trusted.  And thus Lockwood creates a truly dark story without any need for the random drug use and forced edginess.

The way friendship is handled is different too.  Fate again strings along the tension between the girls, has scenes that could be reconciliation, then goes back to mistrust.  Lockwood gives us one smooth arc from meeting to getting to know to friends to comrades who still squabble but clearly love each other.  The different cast size is probably a factor here; the three leads got more screentime than Fate could manage with Fate’s five plus a bevy of supporting characters.

And the worldbuilding.  Lockwood has amazing tight detailed worldbuilding that you can tell was handcrafted.  Probably because it was; Lockwood is based on a series of books by a single author, so it’s all coming out of one brain with one vision.  The opposite of Winx, which is a chaotic soup of ideas delivered by many writers over the years.  So the Lockwood team pretty much just had to follow the books and add a little extra grimdark while the Fate team had to choose which threads they wanted to pull from the tangled ball of yarn that is Winx’s multiple continuities and shape those threads into a complete world and story. That’s a much tougher job, having to build a vision from scattered pieces, so I can’t completely fault the Fate team for flubbing it. (say that three times fast!)  It’s just a shame that they did.

Also, the swords.  The Specialists swing a lot of swords but Lockwood and his friends just wear their rapiers around.  Everywhere.  Casually.  They keep them in an umbrella stand at home.  That commitment to “this is a world where people wear swords” does so much for the feel of the world.  And there are simple things like that that Fate could’ve done and it didn’t.

[comradeclevername]

The Symbology of Satan: Some thoughts on Aesthetic implication.

You know who Satan is, I am not going to bore you with video essayist bull-shit about "well Christendom never had a clear Soft-Dualist concept until the early modern..." We understand that the Satan character has had various functions in myth though out his history. Representing the Antagonist, the Egoist, and most important for this discussion, the Other. The most popular use in Hegemonic Christianity has been the Other. The outsider who has came in to our home to corrupt our ways and lead our society astray.

Often oppressed minorities have been connected to Satan by Hegemonic Culture. In living memory gay folx, goth kids, immigrants, D&D fans, so on were swept up in the Satanic Panic then QAnon. But, the longest association Satan as the Other has been with Jewish people and women. Starting in the Middle-Ages certain depictions of him were given "Semitic" qualities. Witches were said to gather at "Synagogues of Satan." And this continues today with the dime-a-dozen "Elite Satanic Cabal" theories. (Note the very pointed use of "Cabal," a term stemming from students of the Kabbalah, by these modern James I-s)

With all this bad shit well in mind for everyone though, why are Communists using the Satan as Other to describe Capital? Because some Communists are doing that when they should know Capital isn't the Other, we are.

We are the ones who want to do away with this society, we are the changers of ways and usurpers of systems. We are the Outsider and the Other. Marx knew that, he knew it so much he made edgy Satan poetry. Capital is Hegemonic, the powers that be, the world as it is. This whole "Western Society" thing was set up to support Capital so it can not be the Other by nature. Some people slip up and foolishly think Fascists consider Capital as an other, they don't. They think some Capitalists are. The Nazis, for example, made clear distinction between the "German Industrialist" and the "Jewish Capitalist" in their rhetoric. (Extra points if you can guess which one got associated with Satan.)

Which is why it's odd that some "Communists" are calling Capital, or Capitalists in particular Satanic. You see? The symbology doesn't add up, at least not for Communism. Ether they don't get it and are useful idiots or they do get it, both are bad answers, one is pretty evil.

Am I saying every use of Satan is suspect? No, but some are. It's in vogue for some Leftists to write all Christianity off as bad and I don't exactly follow that. But, as a Jewish Trans Lesbian I am left a little angsty from what some "Communists" are doing with Christianity. Nor, though, am I saying we ought calling ourselves Satanists or Satan (least not Satan the Other.) We must build up our own new culture with its own cast of characters and archetypes. And, in making that new culture, get inspired by the Soviet Nations and Socialist Revolutions, leave all vestiges of Christiandom in the dustbin of history (especially the Catholic and Russian Orthodox parts, Lenin's sake!)

All and all, be concerned with symbology, pay attention because it means things. There are implications in every word and photo. That's why dog-whistles and innuendos exist, and our enemy have lots of those.

This post is something of an adaptation from a Twitter thread I made on September 3rd, 2022. (Or Octidi, 18 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXX, celebrating the Buckthorn if you are "cool.") It was made in response to some small clique of Western Marxists on their way out the door to LaRouchite Fascism. They took a fancy to calling everyone (especially Capitalists who happen to be Jewish and the City of London) "Satanic."

I remake it here with minor edits on account of the format for both the sake of cataloging and that I think the point still stands; we Communists must be precise in our rhetoric, diligent in our critique, and vigilant of ourselves and our comrades. To do otherwise we and others will surely cease being comrades at all (see the trajectory of the "PatSocs" for proof.)

I will at some point soon make another post as a continuation here about Critique and the actual point of Mao Zedong's "Combat Liberalism." I will link to it here then.

[arysthaeniru]

I feel sympathetically to many in this thread, and agree that it is crucial to hold joy in our lives! Every single protest or encampment space I have been to in the past six years has always held room for dance, art, music, fashion—this is something we need, so the enormity of our task and the fight does not overwhelm us! It is important to not dwell in hopelessness and constantly think of how little we can do or change—hope is our ally, and we cultivate hope through joy, connection and love.

That being said, especially with regards to the original poster and the aggression they have towards people disrupting the peace, it takes an immense amount of privilege to be able to engage in the escapism described. The idea that internal activism in fandom or political concerns are broached only by "troublemakers" concerns me greatly, because this is often (almost all the time) applied to POC or queer people pointing out how real life bigotry and stereotypes are part and parcel of fandom communities. Like it or not, online existence is not actually separate from the real world. We are mired in the real world. Fandom is not an escape for POC from racism, because racism can often permeate a fandom space, from how people talk to you when they realize you're POC, to how people talk about characters/themes/plot lines. Fandom is people, and people are fundamentally political. They hold beliefs and values that match their political existence in the world. It is only privileged people who can shut their eyes and turn away from it, who can say "I only think about politics in my day job."

And I find escapism concerning, because it is a worldview that does not understand how fundamentally most struggles are connected, how small acts of kindness and understanding and openness are part of fighting the larger problem. It draws lines between things, says that trying to improve our spaces and communities comes from a place of malice, instead of a place of joy, love, and concern.

So yes. Joy is important. We ought to pursue joy, we ought to be happy, we should not be mired in despair. But I think joy should be intertwined with the struggle, a part of the struggle. It is called revolutionary joy for a reason!!! Joy to me, comes from doing small things in the world that make the lives of me, my comrades, and my friends feel better. It comes from cooking food for people it comes from using more inclusive language so my friends and allies feel welcome, it comes from focusing on imagining a better world, it comes from elevating characters maligned by fandom racism, it comes from knitting things for my friends in the winter, it comes from drawing gorgeous art that says "Free Palestine!"—the joy is the struggle, the joy is the minor things we do to make things better, because we aren't powerless. We don't have to shut our eyes and become aggressive when people ask us to maybe change your behaviour to make fandom more welcoming and open and aware of how they exist as part of the world.

Peace is important, but often times, perceived peace comes from marginalized people being told to shut up or get out, because we complain too much about facing problems in our daily lives. And that's not the sort of peace we ought to be cultivating. We ought to try and find real peace, the peace that comes from openness, community, and a willingness to listen and change.

This is what feminists mean when they say the personal is political. We live in a society, etc. etc. So be careful that your escapism is not simply silencing people who have legitimate concerns, yeah?

I am actually begging some people to just let some spaces exist untouched by real-world issues and horrors.

Like I've lost count of the amount of times peaceful game or fandom servers have been ruined by people stampeding in with political rants, bitching about world issues, demanding internal activism, demanding vent channels so they can whine about their shitty parents, ect.

Like. Respectfully. Not every single space has to be inclusive of and welcoming of outside topics. The real world sucks. We don't needed to be reminded of that absolutely everywhere.

[renee-writer]



They hate America and the West.

That is the common thread uniting radical college students with terrorist members of Hamas. It is why we see marches by “Queers for Palestine,” despite the fact that queers would summarily be murdered in any “Palestine.”

Their differences don’t matter.

They are, in the words of radical revolutionary author Frantz Fanon, “The Wretched of the Earth,” rising up to smite the hierarchies of power.

In 1961, Fanon, a black radical member of the Algerian National Liberation Front, put forth a shockingly violent treatise calling for the revolution of the colonized. Pointing out the evils of colonial administration, Fanon didn’t merely call for the end of colonialism, a la Gandhi. Instead, he called for violence, which he saw as purifying, in all of its varied forms. His book, “The Wretched of the Earth,” posited that revolutionary violence would usher in The New Man, free of the evils of the West.

“Decolonization,” he wrote, “is always a violent event.”

“Decolonization,” he wrote, “which sets out to change the order of the world, is clearly an agenda for total disorder.”

“In its bare reality,” Fanon wrote, “decolonization reeks of red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives.”

Violence. Disorder. Bloody knives.

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That’s the essence of Fanon’s decolonization. The colonized must take everything from the colonizer in the name of restoring himself as a human being. Fanon writes, “The gaze that the colonized subject casts at the colonist’s sector is a look of lust, a look of envy. Dreams of possession. Every type of possession: of sitting at the colonist’s table and sleeping in his bed, preferably with his wife. The colonized man is an envious man.”

Colonialism justifies any response. In fact, it requires any response.

The West must be destroyed, for the West has colonized: “When the colonized hear a speech on Western culture they draw their machetes or at least check to see they are close at hand,” Fanon says.

Such hatred of colonial power was at least somewhat understandable in Algeria. But Fanon wasn’t making the case for revolutionary violence merely in Algeria. He was making the case for revolutionary violence everywhere.

The man who made that clear was existentialist and Marxist Jean-Paul Sartre, the French intellectual. Sartre’s introduction to Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth” makes the case not only that the colonized have an ultimate right to violence, but also that the entire West must be collapsed from within for its great sins. Violence, says Sartre, “is man reconstructing himself … killing a European is killing two birds with one stone, eliminating in one go oppressor and oppressed: leaving one man dead and the other man free.” The only honorable thing for the West to do is join in on its cultural suicide: “You who are so liberal, so humane, who take the love of culture to the point of affectation, you pretend to forget that you have colonies where massacres are committed in your name,” writes Sartre. “Fanon reveals to his comrades — especially to those who remain a little too Westernized — the solidarity of the metropolitans with their colonial agents.”

Sartre says he has carried Fanon’s “dialectic through to its conclusion: we, too, peoples of Europe, we are being decolonized: meaning the colonist inside every one of us is surgically extracted in a bloody operation.” We must recognize we are all complicit in “a thousand-year-old oppression. … Our beloved values are losing their feathers; if you take a closer look there is not one that isn’t tainted with blood.” How do we recover? By joining in the violence against our own civilization: “Violence, like Achilles’ spear, can heal the wounds it has inflicted.”

And how can we tell the enemy? Simply by attacking the powerful.

The colonizers are the powerful; the colonized are the powerless.

Therefore, the powerful must be colonizers and the powerless their victims. This is how, for example, Israel — the ultimate case of decolonization in human history, after the return of a native population to its homeland and its battle to throw off the shackles of the British Empire — became today’s hottest “decolonization” cause.

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Sartre’s radical call has been taken up sporadically, both at home and abroad. As critical theorist Homi Bhabha points out in his Foreword to Fanon’s book, the Black Panthers found inspiration in Fanon. So did the Iranian Revolution that ended with the rise of the mullahs: those revolutionaries transmuted Fanon’s distinction between oppressor and oppressed into a distinction between “the arrogant” and “the weakened,” translating Fanon’s Marxist-tinged radicalism into radical Islamism.

But the coalition of Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth” could not materialize until the generation of Sartre came to full maturity, until the institutions of the West poisoned themselves slowly with the imbecilic suicidality of weakness. The West remained strong enough to fend off the radical alliance when it faced down the Soviet Union. But then it had nothing to stand for.

And so it began to fall.

Fast forward 60 years, and Sartre’s radicalism has now become a mass movement — a movement uniting Hamas and campus radicals, the far-Left, and the terrorists.

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Cornel West, the black Marxist radical, calls Fanon “the greatest revolutionary intellectual of the mid-20th century.” According to West, “he compels us to acknowledge colonialism is a sustained barbaric war waged against colonized people sanctioned by Western values.” What’s more, colonialism isn’t a far from home problem — it means the West must be completely demolished. “For Fanon,” West says, “revolutionary internationalism — anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, anti-patriarchal, and anti-white-supremacist — yields a new humanism that puts a premium on the psychic, social, and political needs of poor and working peoples — a solidarity and universality from below.” Explains West: “In our present-day moment of imperial decay and capitalist decrepitude … the spirit of Fanon is most manifest in my American imperialist context in the revolutionary internationalist wings of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the Palestinian Lives Matter movement aligned with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions effort.”

The coalition is complete. The alliance of the supposedly marginalized march together, arm in arm, toward the destruction of the West — and particularly, the United States. After all, the United States, even according to Fanon in 1961, had become the chief colonizer thanks to its power: “Two centuries ago, a former European colony took into its heads to catch up with Europe. It has been so successful that the United States of America became a monster where the flaws, sickness, and inhumanity of Europe have reached frightening proportions.”

The alliance to destroy the West spans the globe. And it’s right here at home, too, threatening everything we stand for. If decolonization is merely a code word for attacking “the powerful” and the systems that supposedly sustain them, then “Queers for Palestine” begins to make a lot of sense. That’s why the same people caterwauling over the use of the wrong pronoun celebrate the burning of babies. As Washington Post writer Karen Attiah recently retweeted after the slaughter of 1,500 Jewish civilians, “What did y’all think decolonization meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers.”

She might be evil, but she isn’t wrong.

Ben Shapiro

Editor Emeritus,

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[heartlandphilosopher]

THE SHORTEST MEMORIAL DAY PARADE

The 2023 Memorial Day parade in our small town was promoted as the “longest Memorial Day parade in the state.” 200 units! Bands! Flags! Horses! Motorcycles! Floats! Politicians! Candy! Hundreds of spectators lining the parade route, thrilled to witness this small town welcome to summer.

I was chairman of the Memorial Day parade in 1988 and I have a plaque from the mayor to prove it. That parade was probably the shortest Memorial Day parade in our town's history.

I have forgotten how I got the job as chairman, maybe it was a phone call that became a personal favor that I couldn’t say “no” to. Besides, I had some ideas to make the parade truly representative of Memorial Day, honoring our military and our war dead. As my mom had said once, “Memorial Day parades shouldn’t have clowns in them.” I agreed.

Believe it or not, I found a book at the public library on how to organize a parade and that greatly influenced my thinking in what should and should not be in a parade. The book emphasized adhering to the parade’s theme and maintaining public safety.

For theme, I chose to honor those who were sacrificed in the Korean War. My father-in-law was in combat with the 7th Infantry Division there. He survived, but many of his comrades didn’t. I wanted to include military units and equipment from the National Guard, area Korean War veterans (such as survivors of the Battle of Chosin Reservoir), the American War Mothers, maybe a fife and drum corps, a fly-over by the Air National Guard, theme-appropriate floats, and bands from every high school in the county.

This parade would have flags and patriotic music. It would not have Ronald McDonald, hot rods, tee ball players, political candidates, and candy-throwing (safety — you could put an eye out or get run over by a jeep).

Since this was before communication by social medial, the local newspaper helped hype the parade and units were contracted at a central location, maybe the mayor’s office or the library. Entrants got a copy of the parade guidelines and signed off on them. No one would be showing up on the day of the parade asking us to allow their pickup truck to join the end of the line-up. And no one would be throwing candy.

There were hiccups. I recruited some friends as volunteers to be parade marshals and had difficulty finding “Made in America” hats for them to wear for identification. Also, the Air National Guard vetoed the fly-over because the fuel expended would be too costly. But some things turned out favorably, too. For example, the mayor agreed to foot the bill for a motivating monetary donation to each of the high school bands as a gesture of thanks for their participation.

I think the parade ended up having something like 30 or so units in it. We assembled in the library parking lot and along adjacent streets. Vehicles from the National Guard, men and women marching in uniform, veterans riding in convertibles, and a few theme-appropriate floats were interspersed with the marching bands from the county high schools. The sights and sounds created a wonderful Memorial Day effect. It didn’t take long to accomplish the marching portion and I’m sure spectators asked themselves, “Is that it? It’s over?” 

A thread of commonality ran through each parade unit, however. Patriotism. Honor. Solemnity. Integrity. This parade reflected the essence of Memorial Day. I was proud of what we had accomplished.

Nevertheless, over the years, I have reconciled myself to the fact that the public wants an entertaining parade that kicks off summer and celebrates the American way of life, preserved by those who made the ultimate sacrifice. My idealism has adjusted to the reality of:  Bands! Flags! Horses! Motorcycles! Floats! Politicians! Candy!