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respitelocklyre · 1 year ago

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I made the cheer squad!!! I have a lil more to say but that's the important bit- updates under the cut like always ✨

Cheer tryouts were waaay different than i expected!! I kind of thought it'd be a big ordeal but it was just me and one other freshman who tried out, so we were obvs accepted lol Not that we wouldn't have made it in anyways since we both looked fucking great!! Especially considering I haven't even done any of those moves since last fall. The squad is pretty small and i don't think they do competitive stuff but that's fine, we never did in high school either. I'm more interested in getting to know the rest of the silkball team we'll be cheering on, if the try-outs were any indication of what's to come 🤭 There's this cute owl-guy I might have my eye on- i think he works at the tavern too!!

Oh yeah, i also got the work-study at the tavern! I figure i'll just quit if i don't like it lol but anyways come say hi if ur on campus- i promise you'll recognize me on sight. I'm pretty easy to spot hehe

Oh oh oh and congrats to Mire for getting on the team too!! and for scoring some points with their crush (they can thank me later~). I wonder if they're gonna be able to play well while being cheered on lmaaooo

Classes have been fine, but tbh i haven't rlly been able to pay attention to them since i've been busy partying, meeting new people, and adjusting to life on campus! It's kinda overwhelming, my contacts have like doubled since i got here. And everything is like...way different, yknow? Obvs I didn't think it'd be the SAME as high school, but the vibes are soooo different is all. idk what to make of it all yet but i know that im LOVING being away from home and enjoying my freedom so far <3 Cathy told me the first month or so would probably be rlly hard but idk what she was talking abt bc no one grounds me for waking them up when i get home at 2 am and not even the raven queen can stop me from eating icecream for dinner now.

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In reality, this party was kind of lame, even as Respite typed otherwise to his friends— they'd opted to ditch him for a studying session, so he sure as hell wasn't going to let on that the party was anything but lit. They had a feeling most of them probably wouldn't care, but Willow might feel a touch regretful, so the lie was worth it.

After sending the message to the group chat and briefly checking tinder for any new DMs or matches— maybe he could escape this place and turn the night around— to no avail, they pocketed their phone. How annoying. They rolled their eyes and leaned against the wall, taking a slow sip at the drink they’d been nursing for the past hour. Respite wasn’t really a fan of drinking on the best of nights and all they had to offer here was shitty beer. After a moment of pouting and observing the dimly lit room, they turned and parted the dusty, moth-eaten curtain to look out the window again.

If anyone had noticed the way Respite kept flitting out to the porch or the front window, no one said anything. They did try to keep it discreet, at least, and simply worked it into the way they naturally made the rounds every now and then to talk to different people or get another drink. He liked to move around a lot at parties anyways to make sure that he saw everyone's faces and said hi to them all.

On the opposite side of the spectrum was Mettie, who, shortly after arriving and greeting a few people, had taken an edible or something and parked himself outside on the porch. From there, he seemed to be spending most of his time at the party smoking with other people who needed some fresh air and enrapturing (ensnaring?) them with his long-winded conversation. Respite wasn't sure if this had been his goal when agreeing to come to the party, but it had been the result.

It dawned on Respite slowly that they hadn't really seen Mettie at a party like this before. Well, okay— they'd seen Mettie at one or two big house parties in passing, but they'd never actually spent much time watching him. He’d been the dealer for about 75% of their high school (it was a devastating loss to the community when he’d done his year abroad), so it was hard not to run into him from time to time at parties. But in high school, he was mostly regarded as weird and off-putting. People got what they wanted from him and were generally polite, but it wasn't like he was always invited to stick around. And when he was, it did usually end up like this— he'd put himself in a less populated corner somewhere and make puzzling conversation with those willing to listen.

In their hometown, it had felt like everyone else tolerated it because Mettie was a valuable resource. They knew his penchant for rambling, though, and tried not to engage— Respite himself included.

They couldn't place the feeling as they watched Mettie from the window now, with a handful of people gathered around him, held captive by the way he spoke. These people weren't just being polite, either. They were listening— sometimes even smiling and laughing with him. Sure, they were probably stoned too, but that hardly mattered. It's not like this was the first time it had happened since he’d learned Mettie was also attending Strixhaven. At their cafe shift, during orientation, and at the career fair...things were clearly different here.

A couple of years ago, Respite never would've invited Mettie to a house party with him. It would've been social suicide— he knows; he'd thought about it once early on and didn't even get far enough to invite Mettie before the ridicule started up— and though it had taken a lot to fight against their instinct, they needed to test their theory: Did people here actually like Mettie's company? This party seemed to confirm it for the positive.

In Respite's mind, the jury was still out on whether or not Mettie was cool, but at the very least it seemed like no one was going to corner him in the bathroom and interrogate him about why they saw him talking to the freak who looked like he was one bad day away from shooting up the school (untrue, of course, and tasteless in a way only teenagers could be, but Respite had forced out a laugh at the time).

There was a feeling of relief in that. In knowing that neither of them would be under constant scrutiny from peers and adults alike. Being unknown was freeing in some ways.

But there was a dread in it, too. In losing the structure Respite had spent years delicately building the pieces of their identity around.

A memory from when they were kids came to mind unbidden, of the time Respite had accidentally knocked over one of Mettie's earliest sculptures. It had been unsteady and the base made of air-dry clay toppled easily when Respite bumped the dresser in a fit of energetic excitement, sending it crashing to the ground. The roughly attached bits and bobs came loose and scattered across Mettie's bedroom floor, transitioning from art to disjointed pieces without purpose or clarity in an instant.

For what it was worth, Mettie had taken it in stride even as Respite desperately crawled under his bed with a flashlight to gather everything, apologizing and promising to help him glue it back together. After staying quiet for some time, he'd declared it an act of fate that only added to the piece and gave it new meaning. Respite didn't understand, but they'd been so terrified of being yelled at that they nodded in agreement even as their cheeks were pink from crying. They still attempted to fit some of the pieces back together until Mettie insisted they just put it in an empty shoe box so that he could make something new of it. To this day, Respite had no idea if Mettie had ever fixed it, restructured it, or simply left it as a memorial in his closet.

They wrinkled their nose up at the unwarranted assault of a flashback. Clearly they'd been hanging around Mettie too much already if their thoughts were starting to get this metaphorical. He downed the last of his warm beer, hoping the bile on his tongue would force him to refocus on the party.

#Strixhaven life updates

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formulatrash · 5 years ago

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(gently holds up the video where Lando willingly describes himself as “the girl” between him and Carlos) I just think he’s neat and I love that he doesn’t care about his high-pitched silly laugh

This, exactly.

It’s hard to explain how policed masculinity is in motorsport and especially in F1. Like, it’s bad out there everywhere but hooooly shit.

I was in the pub with a bunch of F1 journos on Monday (well, to be fair, I went to the ROKiT thing which happened to be in a pub) and oddly I was like, one of the lads for the session. This never happens. No one respects me. I blame Crofty pushing tequila shots on us all.

Anyway, we’re all fairly woke in Formula E - or at least, anyone who isn’t has learned the hard way that they will find themselves getting aggressively told off by me. But I haven’t worked in F1 media for years and I’d fucking forgotten what it’s like.

They’re all nice guys, who I like but god it was wearying having to tell a dude ten years older than me off for making a fucking gay joke. And the others all like, went “oof, sorry ma’am, we forget it’s not acceptable normally” which is significant progress from five years ago when they would’ve been like “well if you can’t take a joke, fuck off” but I did have a ‘what the fuck’ moment.

(Not gonna name them cus it’s not fair to pick out a small subset of dudes I genuinely really like and also they were fully reasonable and embarrassed about it and then one other dude gave me an incredibly needed pep talk so it’d be churlish for me to be like ‘time to cancel everyone!!!’)

And then there’s Lando with his silly laugh and his paintings and getting fucking beasted by Carlos every five seconds and he gets nasty comments about it. Carlos himself actually used to, for the crime of being pretty and sincere. Pierre gets a bit of shit over it. Lewis and Nico got shit all the time.

The difference now is Lewis and Nico would get defensive at interviewers if their bromance was poked at. They obviously adored each other (at one point) and the fascination with their relationship remained constant but they really were not into any line of questioning like that bride question. The sport wouldn’t have allowed either of them to answer like Lando did without devouring them. There wouldn’t have been any sweet, wholesome content feeding each other snacks. Only this strict form of standoffish masculinity, enforced like a coronavirus exclusion zone. Stand too close to another man and you gotta say ‘no homo,’ (I’m not, sadly, joking)

But that’s not F1′s fans now. Not all of them. There’s, well, all of us - I was so delighted by all the photos of ultra-femme and openly LGBT fans having a blast at testing this year. There’s all these people who are so much more fucking on it in social justice terms than even I am and I’m the fucking blue-haired paddock gay. W Series, Racing Pride... there are little ripples of change everywhere.

It’s partly driven by increased commercialisation - if you’re Coca Cola, you can’t stick your logo on a car driven by an open homophobe, in 2020. Also younger people just generally are less bigoted, so there’s a steady trickle even through the motorsport machine. F1 needs money, viewership, fans - a spring clean of its most outdated, dusty trappings is one of the easier bits to do.

But like, I am weirdly proud of Lando for not trying to change himself too much. He’s a gross little gremlin, I am sure and like any driver I never want to see his internet history cus it’s probably nearly as bad as mine but even as a woman who’s obviously way older than him, it’s really nice - as it was with Lewis - to see someone being openly, comfortably (mostly) different in the paddock.

I wish it didn’t get him shit. But he seems to have people around him (I am... how you say... cripplingly jealous of this ‘supportive parents’ thing he seems to have) and clearly he’s well-liked within F1.

God, it’s silly isn’t it? ‘This guy is not angry all the time, he counts as diversity.’

(I’m not implying Lando’s gay incidentally - I have absolutely no idea what his sexuality is - I just mean that he is not The Emotionlessly Aggressive And Restrictively Heterosexual F1 Male Ideal that’s been peddled for years and nonconformity has made anyone a target but unconventional masculinity doesn’t imply sexuality obv)

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closetofanxiety · 8 years ago

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50 wrestling questions

I answer these burning questions here, below the cut:

1. What got you into wrestling?

I don’t really know. I’ve gone through three phases of being a wrestling fan in my life. The earliest was probably just because all the other kids in the neighborhood liked wrestling, and I was a people-pleaser even then, so I wanted to fit in. I remember the older kids like AWA or NWA because they were “real,” while us littl’uns thrilled to the exploits of Hulkster Hogan in the WWF. I like nothing else that I enjoyed as a child, not the movies or the TV shows or the books or whatever, so there was something about wrestling that stuck with me.

2. What is your favorite wrestling promotion?

ECW, if I’m being honest. A lot of that stuff has not held up well, but I got into it at the perfect age, when a lot of my friends were getting into it, and I have very fond memories bound up with ECW. For better and for worse, the most influential American wrestling company of the last 30 years.

3. Favorite male wrestler of all time?

Gorgeous George, but if we’re talking about people who were alive when I was alive, then Dusty Rhodes.

4. Favorite female wrestler of all time?

The Fabulous Moo- no. I don’t know. I don’t have the background in Japanese grappling that would allow me to make an informed answer here. Women’s wrestling in the USA was pretty terrible between the mid-1950s and the mid-2000s, and I mostly know American stuff. Let’s say Gail Kim, though.

5. Favorite current male wrestler?

Joey Janela

6. Favorite current female wrestler?

Su Yung, obvs

7. Favorite theme song?

"Psycho Killer,” when that was Ciampa’s theme song. One of my favorite wrestling memories is Americanrana ‘16, when the PA system died and the crowd sang the song a capella for his entrance. If we’re talking songs written specifically as wrestling entrance music, then Steve Austin’s music. With Shawn Michael’s “Sexy Sexy Boy Ooh La La” or whatever it’s called as a close second. That song makes me laugh every time I hear it.

8. Least favorite theme song?

I hated Ballz Mahoney’s ECW theme song, it just encouraged the worst meathead elements of the crowd, and it always heralded a crummy match. For wrestling-specific theme songs, Lana’s, while new, is almost unbelievably shitty. It’s like incidental music from an episode of “Night Court” where they go to a jazz club.

9. Favorite gimmick?

Gorgeous George, which is still being imitated to this day. Again, if we’re talking about people who were alive when I was alive, the Road Warriors. They were almost 100 percent gimmick, and they were massive stars for years. They were the only non-WWF guys us WWF-loving kids would buy action figures for, because their look was so good.

10. Least favorite gimmick?

It’s hard to choose from all the racist and gay-hating gimmicks that have been used over the years. By sullying the image of the immortal Prince Rogers Nelson, fucking Velveteen Dream is making an impressive run for this designation right now.

11. Best entrance (either their usual entrance or a special one, like a Wrestlemania entrance)?

Again, Gorgeous George had the best entrance of all time, it was 70 percent of his act and it made him a fortune, and everyone has copied it since. In terms of more recent stuff, I liked the Sandman’s entrance. It was 90 percent of his act. Pretty much everything Sandman did except his entrance was so-so to terrible, if we’re being honest.

12. Best Undertaker Wrestlemania match?

The one where he got his ass beat by the savage god Roman Reigns

13. Most overrated?

The Undertaker. I acknowledge that he made a massive, unthinkable success out of a truly ludicrous, sub-Memphian gimmick, but he was never a real draw, and I was never a big fan of his at any point in his career. Maybe no one in WWE history benefited more from protective booking, where he was always billed as an unstoppable, supernatural monster even when he had a mid-life crisis and decided he wanted to be a motorcycle man instead.

14. Most underrated?

Pretty much anyone who had their entire careers, or the bulk of their careers, prior to the 1980s and the attendant explosion in wrestling’s popularity. It’s hard to properly rate someone like Nick Bockwinkel, when so much of his best work was done in the 1970s, let alone Gorgeous George or Buddy Rogers. Of guys since then, I’ll say Ted DiBiase, who is fixed in the public mind as the cackling rich guy caricature, but who was a phenomenally talented wrestler who could effortlessly pull off being a charismatic babyface or a cheating, despicable shitheel. Ted’s Mid-South run is amazingly good stuff.

15. Have you ever been to an event? If so, which one?

I have been to many pro wrestling shows. Last year I averaged three per month, which is, I’ll have you know, Too Much Wrestling Shows. My mother took me to my very first one, and since she died when I was five, I must have been very young indeed. I remember almost nothing about it, except that Bob Backlund was there.

Since then, I’ve been to a lot of ECW shows, including the 2000 Living Dangerously PPV with the famously hideous New Jack scaffold bump; many WWE shows, ranging from Raw and Smackdown episodes to house shows to Backlash 2003, where Goldberg met the Rock in the ring FOR THE FIRST TIME ANYWHERE; and lots and lots of indie shows, which are my favorite. I’ve sort of limited my show-going this year to Beyond Wrestling, Blitzkrieg Pro, and Northeast Wrestling, and I don’t go to all of their shows.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s I used to go to shows with big crews of friends, but these days it’s usually me and one or two other people, or sometimes just me. It turns out most people my age are not down to drive to West Warwick, R.I. to see Zack Sabre Jr vs. JT Dunn! I enjoy it, though, it’s been a nice thing to have in my life at a time when there isn’t much else going on.

16. Who has the best merch?

The Young Bucks have something for every aesthetic.

17. Do you own any merch?

Yeah, I mean, too much. T-shirts, 8 x 10s, DVDS, loads of old wrestling magazines. I have a Young Bucks foam “Too Sweet” hand. I have a little plaster sculpture of AJ Lee where she’s a zombie, because WWE Shop was selling it for five dollars. I’m a disgrace, as a grown adult man.

18. Best nickname?

"The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes.

19. Worst nickname?

I’ve always thought “The Cerebral Assassin” was the dumbest goddamn nickname. Is the assumption here that assassins are typically stupid?

20. Best mic skills?

Bobby Heenan. He could do screaming and angry, he could do calm and menacing, he could do blustering and funny. He had the timing of a professional comedian and the verbal dexterity of the Midwest’s best used car salesman. People hated this man so much that a member of a Chicago crowd shot a pistol at him.

21. Most annoying?

All-time: The Ultimate Warrior. Currently: Bray Wyatt.

22. Most attractive male?

Roman Reigns. The WWE is leaving money on the table by having him wrestling in a shirt/vest and long pants.

23. Most attractive female?

I really like Hikaru Shida’s complex aesthetic, which combines “hard-hitting Japanese wrestling” with “elaborate theatrical strangeness” and “Hey, check out my ass.”

24. Favorite faction?

The first two incarnations of the Four Horsemen. If pressed, I prefer the Flair/Arn/Tully/Windham lineup.

25. Worst faction?

It’s easy to pick one of the five million here-and-gone WWE factions like the Union (ugh) or the Social Outcasts or the League of Nations, but they didn’t really last long enough, or have enough of an impact, to be truly wretched. Same deal with, like, the Aces & Eights: they just stunk up TNA, which was already bad to begin with. The answer is the nWo, from January, 1998 onwards: until that point they had been the most compelling thing about American wrestling, but after that they became a bloated, tedious, airtime-gobbling monstrosity that helped drag WCW down into depths it never recovered from.

26. Best ring gear?

Su Yung and Penta El Zero Miedo. I like the spooky stuff.

27. Who do you think would be the nicest in real life?

I’ve had very few interactions with wrestlers beyond the standard “Hey, great match, how much is that DVD,” but among those I have had more substantive encounters with, JT Dunn, Swoggle, Gangrel, Su Yung, and Santana Garrett stand out as particularly nice. I’ve also heard people from all walks of life praising Little Guido as the nicest dude around, and universal praise is vanishingly rare in pro wrestling. I like to imagine Kevin Owens is a good egg.

28. Who would be the rudest in real life?

Like anyone else, I’ve Heard Things, but I haven’t had a really bad encounter with a wrestler beyond this one guy who works local indie shows and who is a rude chud in real life. It seems unfathomable to me that Matt Riddle is the kind of person I’d want to share a cab ride to the airport with, but maybe that’s just the strength of his brand working.

29. Favorite heel?

The Dudley Boys in ECW. I legitimately hated them, and bought tickets in the hopes of seeing them get their asses beaten.

30. Most hardcore?

I bet the real answer to this is like the answer to the great “Who is the most legit tough guy” question that everyone asks. Like, it’s someone we’d never suspect. It’s not Nick Gage, it’s Eva Marie. That woman has seen some shit that would turn your hair white, I bet. I honestly don’t know the answer to this. Probably a guy in Japan who blew himself up in a volcano.

31. A wrestler you could beat?

At wrestling? Absolutely none of them. Eva Marie would destroy me, Goldberg style. It’s like sports: the worst fucking guy on the worst fucking NBA team would beat the best pickup player in your town by a hundred points in a one-on-one matchup. Once-a-monthers who have office jobs and still wrestle in singlets and are 30 pounds overweight could put me in a coma without breaking a sweat. But what about ... trivia regarding papal history? Ah, now the worm has turned, Eva Marie! You’re on my turf now.

32. Best story line?

Have to agree with Tape Machines, it’s the Freebirds vs. the Von Erichs

33. Biggest missed opportunity for a story line?

The WCW Invasion angle didn’t work for a lot of reasons, and some of those reasons were probably beyond WWE’s control, but holy shit did they bungle what could have been a gigantic machine that spit out money.

34. Worst story line?

I can’t pick just one. The 1990s were an absolute golden era of terrible storylines, from Cactus Jack getting amnesia and thinking he was a sea captain to the terrible saga of Katie Vick. I’ll say the Chuck and Billy storyline, because it somehow managed to be insulting to people who had never heard of wrestling in their lives.

35. Which wrestler should turn heel?

Matt Riddle. I mean, I guess he is a heel, in the sense that his act today is the exact same as it was when he was breaking into the business in 2015 and was hated by indie audiences. He hasn’t done anything differently, but the smug choads from the Internet Wrestling Community have decided he is their savior because they can chant the syllable “bro” in public.

36. Which wrestler should turn face?

Kevin Owens. I’d love to see what he could do as a fearless asskicker with witheringly sarcastic putdowns on the microphone.

37. Who would be the worst to room with?

If you’ve ever had close friends or relatives with drug problems, you know the answer to this is Jake Roberts. On a more lighthearted note, sharing an apartment with the Ultimate Warrior would have been a mindbending ordeal, since he was pretty much like that all the time.

38. Who would be the best to room with?

Candice LeRae is a former professional baker, so as a fat guy, I would be very happy to be the person she tests out new cakes and stuff on. But most contemporary wrestlers are people obsessed with the gym, video games, and meal prep, so calibrate your roommate expectations based on those parameters.

39. Who would be your best friend if you were a wrestler?

I like to imagine it would be Kevin Owens, and I would constantly joke about him betraying me like he always does with best friends, until finally he’d stop responding to my texts. AND THEN I’D KNOW.

40. What would your job be in a wrestling promotion?

I would be styled as “Engagement Director for New & Emerging Media and Content Outreach,” and my job would be taking tickets at the door, applying wristbands to people old enough to drink, and keeping my fucking mouth shut when the wrestlers were hanging around.

41. Favorite wrestling podcast/Youtube channel?

AIW’s “The Card is Going to Change” is the best wrestling podcast in the world. I recommend it to people who don’t even like wrestling, mostly because it’s three dudes telling picaresque tales about restaurants getting trashed and bizarre exploits in northern Ohio. Their recent episode about being paid to put on a show for a child’s 10th birthday is amazing. My favorite wrestling YouTube channel currently is Rassle Reel, which is constantly uploading obscure shit from the 1970s and 1980s.

42. Favorite finisher?

Mr. Perfect’s Perfectplex, a thing of artistic beauty

43. Least favorite finisher?

The Pedigree

44. Favorite match?

Taz vs Sabu at Barely Legal in 1997

45. Favorite PPV?

I’ll always have a soft spot for the first Survivor Series, which is the first PPV I ever watched (we didn’t order it; the neighbors did, and a bunch of us crowded into their den to watch). I don’t know if the first Starrcade was technically a PPV, but that’s one I can watch over and over.

46. Guilty pleasure wrestler?

I don’t like the concept of guilty pleasures, but if we mean which wrestler do I like that some vague critical consensus insists I should hate, I’ll say Honky Tonk Man.

47. Favorite submission?

THE KATA HA JIME, otherwise known as the Tazmission.

48. Most entertaining to watch?

Randy Savage

49. Best spot?

Anyone spitting mist into the unsuspecting eyes of their foes

50. Who do you most respect?

I respect you, booker man.

#wrestling #questions

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