#okay at this point i have an additional essay in the tags so i'm done lol

[sojourner-between-worlds]

I normally don't vague post about other people (and I'm not really here, even) but someone in the tag suggested that Jack would make a better Team Leader than Yusei and it made me realize something, in part, about why people think that Yusei is boring.

tl;dr: Yusei isn't boring; he was written as the MC in the wrong genre.

See, Shonen protagonists typically have the following personality traits: loud, brash, hot-headed, sometimes abrasive. Yusei is none of those things, and Jack is ALL of them. Which, I'm sure, is what led that person to say that Jack would make the better leader and what leads so many people (who are mostly only fans of Shonen anime) to say that Yusei is boring. He doesn't fit their expectations of what a Shonen protag is supposed to look like, therefore he's boring.

But the thing is, if you popped him into, say, a Slice of Life, he'd be perfectly at home (well...except for the Trademark YGO Hair anyway) and well-loved by the fan base. I can say this with fair certainty because I've at least never seen anyone say that Natsume Takashi (Natsume's Book of Friends) is boring in any way, and honestly the two of them have very similar temperaments. The difference is, obviously, the genre of their respective stories.

Slice of Life allows for its protags to be softer-spoken, more reserved; Shonen often does not.

It's time people stopped saying that Yusei is boring and just admit that they like loud, brash characters as opposed to quiet ones, and that Yusei just doesn't fit what they expect from a Shonen protagonist.

He's not boring; he was just written for the wrong genre.

[officiallanxichen]

Yes I’d love to hear the elaborate thoughts, I’m very very intrigued! When I read your tags it totally made sense to me, so I just wanted to know more in case you felt like writing it up

Oh my dear anon, you have done me a grand service (given me a reason to infodump about my special perfect boys). I actually already have a 600 word document of unhinged nonsense on this very topic (in preparation for an actual scholarly discussion of my thoughts which i will write at some point in the future, probably after i finish finals hehe) so let me summarize my Thoughts!

I do have some specific text-supported reasons for headcanoning both james and thomas as autistic. Some specific things are: James' emotional dysregulation (those of you who were here for my guardian hyperfixation may recall my extended essay on my deep personal feelings on portrayals of emotional dysregulation in TV), Thomas' Hand Talking (lil mr stimmy i see you), the fact that both of them are Stubborn Bitches in SUCH an autistic way, which of course also brings in both of their commitment to their personal ideals to a fault, the list could go on forEver.

In addition to that, I think that reading their narrative through a disability lens gives it some extra depth and meaning. I connect SO much to the experience of having people who support your ideas up until you whip out the really radical wild and crazy suggestions (Let's Pardon The Pirates Because It's The Morally Right Thing To Do), which is an experience that is deeply tied to my own existence as a disabled person in academia. Obviously that happens to all marginalized people, but for me it's so deeply tied to the fact that lots of people can't get it into their brains that Some People Experience The World Differently And We Should Respect That and therefore reject "radical" suggestions for disability change because they can't fit that into their own worldview (this is a whole nother extended post...).

This is (to me) also really similar to that wonderful disabled experience of people being okay with disability until it gets Weird. Thinking here of some stims being cute and fun (aww flappy hands!) and some stims being Weird ("why the fuck are you chewing on that you're an adult!"), and also other related autistic traits (it's funny when i take you completely literally but when i have a meltdown over what you perceive as being a very small thing then I'm being immature). Again, this is less a textual thing and more this is similar to my experience, and if you read Thomas (and James!) as autistic then that puts this similar experience into a perspective of this being a pattern of rejection for being Too Weird Too Radical Not Fitting Into Our Norms.

Also getting into the James-specific things, the Hennessy plot twist where he betrays James to bitch boy Alfred rings really true to me as an ADHD/autistic queer person. I think many of us have had the experience of a mentor figure revealing that they hold beliefs that are harmful towards you as a person (the many profs I've had who have Deeply abelist ideas about how teaching should work and how teachers should present...) Of course, me experiencing (fairly traumatic, tbh) abelism in my field is significantly different from Your Entire Life Falls Apart Because Your Mentor Thinks That Your Relationship With A Man Is Disgusting, but the parallels are still there. There's also a certain amount of being surprised by a social line that you (or James) the autistic person wasn't aware of. Hennessy is going to be on board with James and Thomas' plan because he's been supportive of other things, right?? He's our ally......right?

Continuing this theme, the whole underlying narrative in the flashbacks about James' temper and how Hennessey doesn't know what he's going to do with it reminds me very much of how so many neurotypical people I know have this assumption that there are certain behaviors that everyone can control and everyone knows aren't Allowed. When I look at that through my own ADHD/autistic experience I see soo many connections to people getting frustrated with me for not being able to express my emotions in the Right Ways. I'm an adult, shouldn't I be able to not call out at the wrong time class/have a meltdown/yell/etc?? See above re: I Am So Obsessed With Characters Who Display Emotional Disregulation Characteristics.

In conclusion: I think that there are some really really delicious things to get into if you read their narrative through a Disability Lens! And that's not even getting into the intersectionality between queer and disabled marginalization. Being forced into a specific role by society and then being punished for breaking our of that mold, anyone? Anyhow thank you for coming to my TED talk I am always happy to yell about this topic due to having Gets Excited About Interests And Talks For 5 Hours Disorder <3

[a-flickering-soul]

Okay so #2, #40, and #42 for the fic question thingey pls!!

2. Go to your AO3 “Works” page, to the sidebar with all the filters, and click the drop-down arrow for “Additional Tags.” What are your top 3-5 most used tags? Do you think they accurately represent your writing habits?

Um.

Yeah, I guess they do at this point.

40. Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?

Oh, I'm big on rereading things in general. For longer fics, especially those I really like, I'll come back to over and over again. Even if I don't necessarily pick up on something new every time, it's still a comfort to reread and when the writing's good, I find a lot of pleasure in just reading something and relishing it again.

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?

YES! There are absolutely comments that stick with me for ages, especially now that the practice of commenting in general has slowed down quite a bit. I have received comments from authors I personally admire a lot that have meant quite a bit to me. Of course, there's the essay-style comments every author loves to get that I've been privileged enough to receive in my time that I reread often. There are serial commenters that leave a comment on every new chapter, and I cannot overemphasize how much those people do to convince me to keep updating. And then there are incredibly funny comments I've received! Honestly (and I mean this seriously) every comment stands out to me. They are the reason I keep publishing works. If i didn't receive feedback like that, I would've stopped a long, long time ago.

send me a fic writer ask!

[duamuteffe]

Okay, so this one has been bugging me for a while, but that recent post I reblogged about white veganism putting the concept of animal rights above things that can be fixed that are actively bad for the earth, the animals, and us finally gelled it the thing percolating in my brain to where I can put some thoughts down on a related topic.

Somebody whose work I enjoy and whose stated opinions I usually agree with said awhile back that hunting is "barbaric" and that frustrated me on a few different levels, personal and societal and general, but also from the privilege that opinion takes. Because there is privilege there, some of which I'm qualified to talk about and some of which I'm only qualified to point out and leave to those directly affected.

So there's a knee jerk reaction in "hunting is barbaric" that paints all hunting as one inordinately rich white colonist standing over the body of an endangered species he shot from miles away, with no personal difficulty or risk to himself, with no thought of game management or food or respect or his place in the natural world, having commited what big game guide Peter Capstick once derisively referred to as "elephant murder" that "you could teach an orangutan to do" without a single ounce of his own skin in the game. That's not all hunting. [In fact, neither I (nor Capstick, for that matter) would call it hunting at all, but that particular field is not one I'm qualified to speak on. I'll leave that particular part of hunting to Capstick and others like him, should you care to read his work.] To roll all hunting into one big ball of rich white man antics leaves out everyone who doesn't fit into that particual monied paradigm.

It leaves out, for instance, the hunting that is done by poor people in rural areas, in places like the one I grew up in where most of the inhabitants work very hard for very little money, and for whom hunting is both a traditional pastime and a way to put additional food on the table. It is no different in that respect than keeping chickens or cows or pigs, and it lends itself to land stewardship and game management, two very important things that white people need to work on since we killed all the natural predators and fucked up in a hundred different ways the land stewardship the native people had going when we arrived (more on that shortly.) Land Back isn't a reality yet, so we have wild lands and game lands that need stewardship. They only support so many animals, so the numbers need to be studied and maintained. Enter Game Commissions and hunting programs, with managed habitats and carefully planned hunting seasons. And there are immediate local benefits- a resident license and a doe tag can be purchased for not much money, and if you're skilled enough and lucky, you can bring home pounds of good food for your family. If you've never faced food insecurity, that's awesome. I'm lucky like that too, and I wish no one ever had to go through it. But I went to school with lots of kids for whom the deer their father or mother or brother or aunt or whoever shot would be all the meat they'd see all winter outside of subsidized school meals (themselves never very high on protein, thanks to Reagan and his ilk screwing over the poor at every opportunity, but that's a whole other essay.) Hunting was vital for those kids to get fed.

Still, I've heard, "Well, if poor rural folk had more money they wouldn't have to hunt, " and I suppose some of them might not, but many of them still would, the way many people keep chickens in the city though they're a block from the grocery store. The grocery store isn't intrinsically more moral, just like having more money isn't intrinsically more moral. Modern factory food production means there's a big disconnect between your food and how it was acquired, and it's been leveraged towards looking down on people who get their own food, which is why fish you caught and cleaned yourself is poor people food but the same fish served at an expensive restaurant is haute cuisine because the person eating it bought it and didn't get their hands dirty catching it. There's nothing intrinsically shameful about getting your own food, and it's also enjoyable. People have gardens, they keep bees, they fish and they hunt, and they do it all both because food is necessary to life and because it's enjoyable. Gardening is enjoyable. Small-scale farming is enjoyable. Fishing is enjoyable. Hunting is enjoyable. And it's all a metric shit ton more sustainable and better for us, animals, and the planet than factory farming and factory meat production, both of which are short-sighted, destructive, and uncaring of the toll on the land, the people, and the animals involved as long as one more dollar can be squeezed out of the process.

The small stuff, though; gardening, hunting, fishing, small-scale livestock and farming - humans have been doing those things for thousands of years; it's part of who we are. Thoughtful hunting is not barbaric. The ideal outcome, the one you work very hard for, is that game is killed quickly and cleanly, with no fear or pain. Hunters are not all that white guy in khakis and thousand dollar desert boots. My father and my grandfather, two of the kindest men you could ever want to meet, who loved the forest fiercely and had supported conservation before that was even a cohesive thing, taught my husband- also one of the kindest men you could ever want to meet- how to hunt and fish the way they were taught by their fathers and uncles, the way they were taught by their own ancestors, on and on back through endless generations. It's not shameful to get your food directly, with no hidden layer of factory meat farm or exploited migrant workers. We have been doing this as humans a very long time, and doing it well, and doing it with as little disruption as possible to the world we share.

And that leads me to the reason that the descriptor of barbaric has been digging at me. If you want to talk land stewardship and respect for the Earth and Her creatures and admiration for the animals one hunts, you should naturally look to the indigenous cultures of the world, for many of whom hunting is a large part of their cultures. To call hunting barbaric is to call their culture barbaric, and it implies that if we just gave them a grocery store they could give it up and be more like the colonizers that took their land and killed them and tried to destroy every link with their cultures and ways of life. That's...really racist, and one of those things we need to think over and stop doing. But that's as much as I, a random white person, am qualified to say on that aspect of the subject.

[mayfriend-archive]

Totally understand if you're not up for it and fully recognize the ronald mcdonald dom/sub anon vibes which is an AMAZING post btw but like...now i'm curious, what the hell did Lord of the Flies anon DO that got him blocked for the discourse? like...i just can't wrap my head around high school lit being...uh...that inflammatory i guess?

Okay so, I'll start by saying I've had a new anon from apparently the same anon saying they are NOT the person I blocked, just a rando making the same points, but I'll answer your question anyway just to set out why this person in particular got blocked, out of the several thousand who reblogged/commented on that very successful addition to the LoTF post I made.

First off, I added the 'real life Lord of the Flies' story because I thought it was a good story. I had read about it only a couple days beforehand in Humankind and, after reading out the entire chapter to my parents who weren't very interested, I was excited that there was not only a post where it would be relevant to post, but that I wouldn't be hijacking it, as it was already rejecting the widespread interpretation taught in many schools, that humanity is inherently savage.

When making the addition, I a) did not think it would get more than a couple reblogs, because the post was already at 50k notes and I figured anyone that might be interested would already have seen it, and b) I did not know the very specific context that prompted William Golding to write the book; all I knew was that he had been a teacher at a public school (basically, the poshest schools in the country - think Eton, Harrow, very 'old money' places that pump out Conservative politicians by the bucket-load 🤢) who hated his job and the boys he taught (which, valid), and new information I'd been given in Humankind - that Golding had said to his wife one day, "Wouldn't it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave?" - which had no mention of The Coral Island by R. M. Ballantyne, which I have since learned was the text that Golding loathed enough to write an entire novel in refutation of - and included what I considered a very telling letter from Golding to his publisher, in which Golding wrote of his belief that 'even if we start with a clean slate, our nature compels us to make a muck of it.' Another Golding quote that I believe portrays his belief in humanity's 'innate savagery' is that "man produces evil as a bee produces honey."

Obviously, the author of a book putting forward the case for humanity's inherent goodness was going to oppose Golding's hypothesis; Bregman not only noted Golding's literary accomplishments and beliefs, but his personal life.

When I began delving into the author's life, I learned what an unhappy individual he'd been. An alcoholic. Prone to depression. A man who, as a teacher, once divided his pupils into gangs and encouraged them to attack each other. "I have always understood the Nazis," Golding confessed, "because I am of that sort by nature." (Humankind by Rutger Bregman, p. 24-25)

I have bolded the part about him as a teacher, because it is incredibly relevant to the original post that I commented on, which begins with a comic of a teacher locking her class in to see them 'recreate' Lord of the Flies, something which the follow up comments before mine staunchly reject as both misunderstanding the point of the book, and the fact that it took the kids in Lord of the Flies a significant amount of time without adult supervision to go 'savage'. This misreading of the text is widespread enough that when Golding won the Nobel Prize for Lord of the Flies, the Swedish Nobel committee wrote that his book 'illuminate[s] the human condition in the world of today'. Whether or not they misread it is beyond my expertise - they do at least mention the factors of the outside world neglected by many when analysing the book, but still seem to believe it says something about human nature as a whole rather than just, to quote thedarkbutbeige 'British kids being rat bastards' - but Golding quite happily took his Nobel prize on this basis. Which, in fairness, I would too. It's a fucking Nobel prize.

It was with this knowledge, and this knowledge alone, that I stated in my now very, very widely read comment that Golding 'wrote the book to be a dick', in response to the tags of the person I reblogged from. As I said, I now know that Golding did not write the book (solely) because he hated the kids he taught, but as a response to The Coral Island and the general idea that clearly the British were inherently civilsed, whilst the people they colonised and enslaved were inherently savage. So. That's the background.

The anon - or rather, the person I thought was anon - was the sole exception out of dozens of replies, who instead of telling me about The Coral Island politely decided it was time to go ALL CAPS and regurgitate points already made by thespaceshipoftheseus, and implied that the only reason that the real life Tongan castaways didn't go all Lord of the Flies was because they weren't British. Not because they weren't surrounded by violence like the boys in Lord of the Flies, or there wasn't a World War ongoing, or that they weren't the upper, upper, upper crust of a class-obsessed society like Britain - but because they weren't British. A complete inversion of the concept that Golding was trying to get across - now, instead of all of humanity being equally prone to savagery in the right conditions, it was solely nationality that determined it. As in, the British were inherently savage, but nobody else was.

I, trying for humour, made the terrible mistake of replying to them.

I won't lie, I was absolutely blown away that this was real life. What I think they were trying to do was be that Cool Tumblr Person who, after somebody's been shitty on a post, goes to their blog and sees something Damning in their about/description. In an ideal world, I imagine I'd have gone nuts or done something Unforgiveable. In what I can only call the rant that followed, they stated several times that I needed to go back to high school to get some 'proper literary analysis' skills and that the story of the Tongan castaways was completely unrelated to the point at hand which. I mean, I disagree, considering that I made the addition, but I couldn't get my head around how commenting on a post that was already rejecting the thesis that the 'point' of Lord of the Flies was that humanity was inherently savage and was, in fact, about how kids - British or otherwise - learn how to function from the adults around them, and that traumatised, terrified children aren't going to create a mini-Utopia, and put forward a real life example of how without the key additions of an ongoing world war, a colonial Empire and the subsequent mindset of thinking you are 'inherently civilised' and therefore can't do anything wrong, actually, people just want to take care of each other.

A friend has since asked me why I even have 'england' in my description. To be honest, it's a timezone thing - I talk to a lot of people online who don't share my timezone, and it generally makes me feel like if I don't reply immediately because it's 3am, they have the tools to see that I'm not in their timezone and not just ignoring them. I did consider changing it to 'british' or 'uk' after it was... 'used against me', I guess, simply because I didn't want to deal with it, but you know what. No. Not gonna do that. I am from England, and I have never hid that fact. I have a tag called 'uk politics', during Eurovision I refer to the UK's act as 'us' (even if I really, really don't want to. Because James Newman slaughtered that song and it was downright embarrassing), I regularly post stuff in my personal tag about where I live (and mostly complain about this piece of shit government). If people really think my nationality makes every point I make null and void, then they don't have to follow me or interact with my posts; tumblr is big, and I am one medium-small blog very easily passed over.

I did reply to them, trying to explain the above, but their next response really just doubled down. Because I used the word British instead of English - foolishly because the posts above mine focused on Britishness, and also because although Golding was English and taught English kids, the pro-Imperialism author of The Coral Island, R. M. Bannatyne was actually Scottish so, ding ding ding, falls into the 'British' category - they then decided that I was somehow trying to pretend I wasn't English and made all the same points, before ending with this doozy:

At this point, I knew there was nothing to be gained from replying, because if we're whipping out conditions like they're pokemon cards then there's no actual conversation anymore, and I'm not going to start mudslinging like an identity politician. They made up their mind, and I figured there could be no harm in letting them think that they 'won' by blocking them instead of replying.

Until the ask. INNATE ENGLISH SAVAGERY did, I'll admit, make me think it was them, back again. I even thought up a really good response approximately 12 hours after I replied, I was that sure. Until the second message came in, and said they were just someone who came from the post and made the same point by chance. So the saga draws to a close... for now.

It may have been them, it may not have been - the anon feature makes it impossible to be sure, but as the second message I got said, we're in a heatwave. It's too hot to argue. And I've just written a goddamn essay about a book I dislike anyway.

My pasty English ass is going to go melt. If there's Disk Horse, do not tell me. I am Done™

[danwhobrowses]

20 AEW Dark and Elevation Regulars that AEW should sign

Now I know, AEW has a very stacked roster, in fact I've considered writing an essay on the risk of AEW's growing roster being top-heavy

I mean we've barely scraped the potential of Brian Cage, Scorpio Sky, Wardlow, Sammy Guevara, TH2, Sonny Kiss, Matt Sydal, Proud and Powerful, Nick Comoroto, Will Hobbs, Serena Deeb (who I know is injured atm), and many more. But with Rampage oncoming maybe there is room for them.

But, we'll stick a pin in that for now, because tonight is AEW's 100th Episode of Dark. A big deal still considering it's one of AEW's 2 weekly youtube wrestling shows, and one of AEW's many Youtube weekly shows if you include vlogs such as BTE, SammysVlogs, Ethan Page's vlog and the AEW-promotional Countdown to and Outside the Ring with Lexy Nair segments and the Unrestricted Podcast. In the pandemic era, Dark became a home to several indie talents in need for work, some got signed but not all, so I'm gonna list 10 men's and 10 women's wrestlers who were regulars on Dark and Elevation who AEW can and should still sign

Note: I will not be including wrestlers who look set for regularity, so Wheeler Yuta, Jora Johl, Fuego and the Wingmen won't be on the list, as will any AEW Women's tournament entrants (Maki Itoh, Madi Wrenkowski, Nicole Savoy etc.). Danny Limelight and Konosuke Takeshita are also signed to MLW and DDT Pro just fyi

10 Men AEW should sign

The men's division is already stacked, and it has a lot of up and comers too, but there are still a few areas where AEW's Dark stalwarts have proven they can fill a void for.

Honorable mentions for: JDX, El Australiano, M'Badu, Jake St. Patrick, Brick Aldridge, Megabyte Ronnie, Suge 'Pineapple Pete' D and Vary Morales. Also Kidd Bandit, but he hasn't wrestled on Dark or Elevation so I couldn't add him in.

10. Marty Casaus Better known as Marty 'the Moth' Martinez from Lucha Underground, Marty trained with AEW after some time out with injury and made some appearances on Dark. As the Moth, Marty demonstrated his character work as a gross heel, but his size was also an asset to his disturbed and near-psychotic persona.

9. Dean Alexander An alumnus of the Nightmare Factory, Alexander has frequented on Dark and Elevation usually in tag action where he hasn't been able to get his dickhead persona across. He is your traditional cocky heel which in the Nightmare Factory showcases has led to his hilarious downfalls, even losing to Negative One in his multiple failures to win in the Main Event of these showcases. Frankly, this is what Baron Corbin should be like if you're gonna mock him, he's also very impressive in the ring.

8. Dillon McQueen Another Nightmare Factory alum, Dillon McQueen has also only been used for jobbing, but his character is actually great. The King of Queens, Dillon brims charisma that would be a winner for crowds, but he has a babyface fire to him as well, easily could be a rising talent with the right training.

7. Dan Barry To be honest, I like his Hawaiian Shirts. He has a lot of experience in the indies and can work in a similar way Colt Cabana works balancing serious and comedy wrestling, would just be pretty cool to see him more.

6. & 5. TNT (Terrence and Terrell Hughes) Sons of D-Von Dudley, TNT have had less appearances on AEW as of recent, which is a shame, because they can definitely be developed as some of the next gen tag teams the Acclaimed and Blonds have been. AEW haven't shied from legacy wrestlers in the past, and the duo definitely have potential.

4. Chandler Hopkins Chandler Hopkins has shown up to be squashed by the big men a lot, but somehow he also manages to eke out some strong entertainment and fluid wrestling in it. His match against Brian Cage is an effective example of this. Like Fuego, Chandler is definitely someone you can use on the undercard for some enhancement, maybe even push up once more character comes across.

3. Ryzin Ryzin has stuck with AEW for quite a while now, even having skits on BTE. The Unholy Father however never got a W on AEW, which is a shame because he has character and promo skills in hand. He could easily be a fit for Chaos Project as well or teamed with Abandon in a James Mitchell kinda role.

2. Carlie Bravo One of the first class alums of the Nightmare Factory, Carlie Bravo remains charismatic and athletic in his showings, he even had a great little pairing with Shawn Dean until Dean's signing, I'd love to see them bring that back - two Navy veterans tearing up the tag scene would be pretty awesome.

1. Baron Black Few have stayed the course during the pandemic era like Baron Black. Debuting in April and still yet to get his first win, he was one of the three touted stars by Cody on Sammy's vlog who he encouraged to be booked around the world because of his workrate and skill. If anyone has earned it that isn't named Fuego del Sol (or that other name Cody mentioned), it's Baron Black.

10 Women AEW should sign In contrast to the men's division, AEW's women's roster does look like it could use some buffing, for midcard and even building more stars.

Honorable mentions are plenty in this one, so just missing out are the following: Ashley D'Amboise, Leila Grey, Renee Michelle, Jazmin Allure, Savannah Evans, Willow Nightingale, the Renegade Twins, Holidead, Kenzie Paige, Jennacide and Brooke Havok (who I would guess will be signed once her leg recovers).

10. Ashley Vox With or without her Sea Stars tag partner, Delmi Exo, Ashley Vox has proven herself a frequent flier for AEW. Talented in singles and tag competition. She also has a strong rapport with many of AEW's current roster.

9. Alex Gracia The Pink Dream has been on ROH as of recent but remains a freelancer, her last appearance being a squash from Dr. Britt Baker DMD. AEW must've been high on Gracia at one point because they gave her a title shot on Dynamite. With experience in Shimmer and Stardom, Gracia would definitely be a worthy addition.

8. Tesha Price Another woman who AEW put on Dynamite rare times, Tesha proved herself to play face and heel during her time on Dark and Elevation. As a heel she showed a lot of fire especially against KiLynn King and Ryo Mizunami, the Psycho Sweetheart definitely has something she can give to the division - who are tbf lacking in heels right now.

7. Vertvixen I am not sure what it is about Vertvixen specifically, but whenever I see her I think she has the look, not to mention the athleticism to boot. Her triple threat on MPW against Jennacide and Jazmin Allure was a definite highlight as of recent.

6. Miranda Alize A former Mae Young Classic competitor, like Jennacide and Gracia she's recently been used by ROH, but she is definitely a confident wrestler and does not shy from the intergender matches either, having fought Laredo Kid and Danny Limelight. She's worked with many impressive wrestlers too, including an Impact Knockouts Title match against Jordynne Grace and matches against Deonna, Taya and Tessa.

5. Reka Tehaka The Samoan Savage may've debuted on AEW's first ever house show, but regular Dark and Elevation appearances have been met with positive reactions. Being partly trained by the Nightmare Factory, Tehaka has done well to establish herself despite only wrestling for a year and a half, she could definitely be a prospect.

4. Veda Scott Okay, so I cheated a little by saying no competitors, but I could not leave out Veda on this list. She has in-ring talent and intergender experience - tagging with her Speedball husband - but on AEW Dark and the Deadly Draw she proved herself excellent on commentary. A female voice in the booth even for just the women's matches would go a long way for the division and Veda's the perfect voice for it.

3. Dani Jordyn The Mean Girl is definitely someone you can call a regular on Dark and Elevation. She works hard and works with a lot of main roster talent, and I don't think I've seen her put on a bad match. So it would be nice to reward her with a contract.

2. Diamante It still baffles me actually that Diamante has yet to become All Elite. Deadly Draw winner and involved in a lot of the Elevation/Dark women's feuds, Diamante has a wealth of knowledge and experience under her belt. She's still popular with fans and can easily step back into her LAX days by pairing with the Inner Circle. Few unsigned talent have won as much as her too, I would say it's when rather than if, but when is taking a long ass time.

1. KiLynn King The three names Cody praised highly were Fuego, Baron Black and KiLynn King, so I think above all else they should be given contracts. In fact, I was surprised King wasn't on the Dark 100 card, by virtue that although King has shown up on Dynamite a few times, she has been on Dark and Elevation 41 times since debuting in May 2020, it was a shock that someone so regular wasn't on the card. King showed she could work as the bully heel but also as a charismatic babyface, even having a little faction brewing with Swole and Red Velvet as RSK, but when crowds came back we seemed to drop the potential of AEW's first all-women faction. King is over with fans...so long as you don't put her against someone as over as Thunder Rosa, and she has put on some lowkey bangers during her time on AEW, especially the one against Riho. Tall and powerful, but fun in the ring and outside the ring with clips of her in the crowd chanting and even vibing to Angelico's music. King would definitely be on the top of my list of AEW Dark regulars that deserve a contract.

I'm sure I might've missed some and opinions may differ, but I think these lot would definitely be able to fit into AEW effortlessly thanks to their time on Dark and Elevation. Many of whom could be used to build or become future champions themselves, and I hope still to see more of them beyond Dark 100.