#mydiygifs

[mitchtheficus]

CAN WE TALK about the way that Tommaso's Purposeful Re-enactments Of The Past used to be about "I Can't Let This Go" and NOW they're about "I Want This Back"? Like, placing himself and Johnny just so during that cagematch to try to muscle-memory Johnny into DIY-ing it up

That wasn't just "stay here in this endless cycle of violence and betrayal where I'm your whole world" but like "do this WITH me again, fight WITH me."

And I cannot tell if he did that again tonight. Like he put them in a situation where they fought two men and won, and then sat in the ring together just like old times.

But looking at Tommaso, I'm not sure if this time was on purpose...

I don't know if jumping Ricochet like that was just a knee-jerk "Johnny Said It Wasn't About ME Which Is UNACCEPTABLE So I Need To Fight His New Rival" reaction, or a more self-aware "I'm Going to Position Johnny So That We're Allies Once Again" plan...

He looks like he really doesn't know what Johnny will do directly afterwards, he acts like a man carefully confronting a wild animal, all slow-movements and hands clearly visible... but when Candice gets between them, Tommaso points at the ring.

Like he's trying to get Johnny to remember what they just did, how it felt to have each other's back, which feels so deliberately manipulative, and so completely in-line with the moment in the cagematch, that I'm back to thinking maybe he DID plan it all!

Either way, Johnny follows Tommaso's gesture. He looks at the ring. And he snaps out of it. When he looks back at Candice, it's like he can finally actually hear her.

And I don't know why that is. Maybe he caught a glimpse of the puppetmaster pulling his strings.

[mitchtheficus]

PART 2

(sorry about me!) [part 1] [part 3]

Rudderless, without his beliefs or the certainty of who he is, Johnny’s sense of morality is easily twisted into something that allows him to attack Aleister in that parking lot. All he knows to be true is that Tommaso needs to pay for what he’s done, and Johnny’s one desperate hope is that maybe, just maybe, if he can beat Tommaso (complete The Narrative) and win the NXT Championship (giving The Narrative extra oomph, since this is a dream he’s had all his life, a dream intimately tied into his identity pre-betrayal) that will make him Johnny Wrestling again. He thinks that in Brooklyn he can fix everything.

And with that as his guiding light, the ends will always justify the means. Because his present is unbearable and the only justice in the world is what he makes himself.

“Johnny Wrestling is gone. I wake up and I look in the mirror and I don't know who I am anymore...All I want is to end Tommaso Ciampa...”

But guess what!!!!!!!!

He fails.

He fails to keep his promise to the audience

He fails to correct his mistake of accidentally crowning Tommaso champion

He fails to control his own rage and violence

He fails to make the attack on Aleister Black “worth it” by achieving the “ends” that would’ve justified “the means”

He fails to heal himself

He tried to go forward through the darkness, looking for the light he thought he saw up ahead, but now he’s just lost in it and there doesn’t seem to be any way out.

To get out and achieve his goals he tried breaking the rules, doing some bad things, taking a few pages out of Tommaso’s playbook, and those actions have not reaped the rewards he hoped, but have had consequences on his fragile sense of self.

I’ve got to be better.

And here’s where we get back to the audience’s role in this story. Like I said, he relied on us to be his anchor, to tell him who he is. Unfortunately the fickle, violence-loving crowd isn’t the best barometer of whether or not you’re making healthy choices.

Maybe Tommaso was right about us. Maybe we really are villains in this story. In moments of extreme violence, Johnny looks to us to ask if this is Right, if this is Who He Is, and sometimes we say “no”

But sometimes we say “yes”

Not because it IS right, not because it IS him, but because we wanna SEE IT.

Every time Candice has tried to pull Johnny back from the brink, we’ve begged Johnny to ignore her

because we want to see Tommaso punished or because we want to watch what happens next. (I’ve never felt so personally responsible for a wrestling storyline before. It’s really incredible.)

And now that Johnny has failed to beat Tommaso twice, the crowd is a little divided on whether they still support him or not.

Johnny’s always taken losses as “letting down the audience” but now that we’re one of his last tethers to his own identity and one of the only important and trusted entities in his life, the idea of us turning on him is unbearable. He’ll do anything to keep his promise to us.

After his breakdown he actually takes some time to recover and when we next see Johnny he says what he’s said a hundred times before: I know how to be Johnny Wrestling again.

(I know I’ve yelled a lot about him being an idiot in the past, but I have to admit that Johnny’s amazingly resilient really. He’s able to pick himself back up over and over, and yeah maybe there’s parts of him missing every time he gets back up, but goddammit he’s standing again and that’s fucking incredible.)

Johnny was at a crossroads. The cognitive dissonance caused by the difference between his actions and his ideas about who he is, what is Right, how the world works, demands that *something* give, something change.

And in the end it’s Johnny.

The Johnny who comes back to us after his post-Brooklyn breakdown and kick’s Aleister’s face off is full of this reckless, unapologetic Certainty.

Johnny’s given up being worried about his own violence and “bad” behavior. He IS the Good Guy, so any fuckin thing he does is, and has always been, justified, regardless of current results.

I mean the world is fuckin’ chaos right? You gotta do what you gotta do to make sure the right people win and the right people lose. And even if he completely failed to do that, he was still right to try and also he will do that in the future so like get off his back!

This wasn’t Aleister Black’s fucking story anyway.

This new Johnny also has some different priorities. Cause you know what the audience seems to want?

Victories and Titles, baby

Murdering Tommaso is still endgame for sure, but Johnny’s obsession has wavered enough to allow him to focus on other things

And Tommaso fuckin hates that.

[PART 3]

[mitchtheficus]

The way Johnny and Tommaso include the audience in their storytelling is so incredibly compelling, and so deeply upsetting. If they continue with this theme of our cheers encouraging Johnny's decent into darkness (and continued failure), that's gonna be rough on my heart...

[mitchtheficus]

Tommaso interacts with some members of the NXT audience

[mitchtheficus]

Looks like someone’s not replaceable 

[mitchtheficus]

okay here we go

last week Ciampa came out to deliver a monologue that blew my damn mind and we have to talk about it.

the first thing he does (once the audience lets him talk) is pretend to call Johnny out to the ring, knowing full well that Johnny isn’t there.

it’s a classic heelish moment, and it reminds me of Kevin Owens coming out to Sami’s music after NXT Takeover Unstoppable. Like Kevin, Tommaso is deliberately antagonizing the audience by giving them hope of seeing a someone that they love and are currently worried about, and then squashing that hope and reminding the audience that not only is that person not here, but they’re not here because Tommaso/Kevin hurt them so much that they are unable to be here.

But that’s where the parallels end. Kevin played that little joke because it was fun. Tommaso did it because (as we learn) he hates us and he wanted to make a point.

(of course the answer is no. we don’t want to replace Johnny. we don’t want to replace EITHER OF THEM. but Tommaso doesn’t believe that.)

this has got to be one of the most interesting heel turns i have ever seen. Tommaso isn’t motivated by greed or ambition. His motivation was his own self-esteem, not ego. Just the simple belief that he is valuable. 

now there are things about the way he handled this that make him unequivocally a heel obviously (Attacks a face: check, Attacks the Audience: check; Coward: check, altho in an unusual way. he was too cowardly to find out if johnny would wait for him while he was on injured-leave. he would rather burn everything to the fucking ground, then risk being replaced and hurt), but the root of his heelness isn’t a heel quality. and that’s pretty interesting.

The way he works to include the audience as an active participant in the heel turn is also very very cool.

you see, everything that happened to Johnny at NXT Takeover: Chicago is our fault.

In tommaso’s mind DIY was this perfect, beautiful thing.

(the way he brings his hands together to demonstrate closeness, that bond, because words aren’t adequate.)

a thing that we, the audience, were a part of. that’s why our betrayal (imagining DIY without him in it) hurt him so much. we were a part of this beautiful, special thing that he and Johnny created with our help.

their losses were our losses

their victories were our victories

i always wondered how much of that was was just Tommaso humoring Johnny, but i was wrong. Tommaso bought in 100%.

when he’s telling the story of his injury, he makes sure to emphasize both his willingness to sacrifice his body for us/Johnny/DIY, and also his understanding that that is what DIY was about. He wants us to know that he loved DIY, he still does. It was us who didn’t love it enough.

didn’t love him enough. loved Johnny more. (or so he believes)

we planted the seed of doubt when our “johnny wrestling” chants were always louder than our “psycho killer” chants

and it was our betrayal 

that led him to see the potential for betrayal in Johnny. 

It’s all our fault. he hates us because we ruined the best thing in his life. we took it from him with our grubby, demanding hands, and our lack of faith in him, and our short attention-span. and he tells us this with such conviction that I actually feel guilty.

he didn’t want to hurt johnny.

(i remember thinking that the way that he paused while Johnny rested his head on his thigh…he didn’t seem angry at Johnny. it’s a moment born out of tommaso not wanting to do this. he believes he needs to do this, but he’s not enjoying it.)

he wanted to take johnny away from us. 

and take away johnny’s opportunity to betray him the way we had. because as much as our betrayal hurt him, Johnny’s would’ve been so much worse.

Tommaso has been told that he’s not enough his whole career.

(his voice is fucking trembling go watch it)

I wonder if he was hoping that if they could just win the titles again, he could prove to us that he deserved to be loved as much as he believes we loved Johnny.

i’ve said it before, there’s a difference between a heel being cruel to another wrestler, and a heel turning that anger towards the audience. the way it feels as a fan is different. it’s one of the things I think Miz does so well, placing the audience in the face’s corner by attacking them both in the same way. in this speech tommaso takes that idea of Addressing the Audience to the extreme.

he brings us into the story as both an active participant in the betrayal (he gives us an agency in the way the story happened), and as one of the parties being betrayed.

Tommaso’s whole reason for giving this speech is basically to break up with us, the audience. To tell us that he is valuable and deserved better than how we treated him. He believes that he’s unloved, both by us and by Johnny. Or more accurately, he believes that he loves us more than we love him. That’s so fucking tragic (and i hope the real tommaso ciampa doesn’t feel that we don’t appreciate him).

and so so fucking cool

[mitchtheficus]

It’s not my fault. It’s your fault! It’s Johnny Gargano’s fault! Because, man, we had something special with DIY, but you all ruined it!

[mitchtheficus]

A different Nonnie, but how about that Tommaso couldn't walk away from Johnny either. He sat practically ontop of him after the knee and then ontop of the announce table as the staff looked after Johnny in the end. Like Tommaso can't fully break that connection, even if it's him causing the pain he can't walk away from Johnny.

listen. tess says I karmically deserve these asks for giving people feels but what the hell does she know, so first of all how dare you.

second of all RIGHT???? like. fuck. okay. the PAUSES during the whole sequence are the parts that stood out the most to me. he pauses next to Johnny after attacking him,

he walks away, and then he sees Johnny pulling himself up

and attacks him again. he sits with Johnny

(recalling for all of us other fucking moments when they’ve sat together after matches. times when Tommaso comforted Johnny after a loss.)

and then Tommaso looks over at the announce table (possibly spurred on by Johnny pawing at his face)

and then pauses again

(while Johnny feels him the fuck up jesus)

he keeps pausing and then when he’s finally done he just sits there while the paramedics/refs help Johnny. 

this all plays very well with my understanding of Tommaso. he’s not turning on Johnny because he doesn’t love him, he’s turning on him because he can’t stand being made weak by that love. he’s not angry with Johnny. this violence isn’t easy. he’s forcing himself to do this. it takes effort. 

i think in those pauses he’s doing what we saw him do during the CWC match. he’s trying to find the will to hurt Johnny Gargano.

and like you said, he can’t fully break away. he lets Johnny rest his head on his thigh. he sits there at the end not only to survey his good work, but also to watch these people take care of Johnny. something he doesn’t get to do anymore.

[mitchtheficus]

The thing that kills me, i mean all of it kills me, but the thing that KILLS ME is that they lost because Tommaso loves Johnny. They lost because instead of grabbing a ladder and going for the titles, Tommaso took time to help Johnny up, because he wanted them to win together.

I don’t think he blames Johnny for them losing. I think he knows that loving Johnny makes him weak.

[mitchtheficus]

Y’all are just alike.

[mitchtheficus]

CWC // Takeover: Chicago

[mitchtheficus]

I love this guy.   I love you too.

[mitchtheficus]

Tommaso doing that thing