#sasha's out of his divorce era <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[toofarovertherainbow]

matthew tkachuk and sasha barkov's relationship is not mum and dad it's dad and his innapropriately young and sexy new girlfriend

[mitchiegonewild]

bitchie mitchies aot cinematic universe pt. 2

since you guys seemed to like the other ones, i have PLENTY more in my notes app:

connies a gumball (awog) kinnie 

historia binged all of stranger things in 3 days and she hates the show

ymir listens to lil peep 😟

eren INSISTED on going as rainbow dash for halloween for ages 5-9

armin can TWERK OMG

mikasa makes her own soaps and their names are always something like “deaththroat orgasm” or “beta male sweat and tears”

armin has a shrimp allergy and everyone found out when they went to the beach and he ate shrimp scampi and almost fucking died in a pineapple willy’s 

on the same trip, levi and erwin fucked in a margaritaville bathroom while wasted on said margaritas

hitch gaslit everyone into thinking she went to their school only for annie to tell them “oh she doesn’t she just likes to mess with peoples heads”

armins their discord mod

jean posts marco to ALL of those couple-y tiktok audios 

gabi got in trouble for being a habitual grass eater in pre k

falco provided more grass when she was in time out. he is not an innocent man

zeke and levi brutally fist fought outside of a chili’s while eren, mikasa, armin, historia, and erwin stood to the side and watched

bertholdt had a “soft uwu boy” era in quarantine

reiner videos annie eating and then puts sad music over it

connie is unaware pirating movies and music is illegal and has been doing both since he was seven

one of those mall interviewers came up to sasha and mikasa and sasha bit his mic

armins name in erens phone is “malewife🥰💗”. jurys still out on whether or not its ironic

bertholdt was on witchtok for a month and they’re not even wiccan

ymir kills wasps with her bare hands 

hangë has access to levi’s twitter account but levi’s never on twitter so he doesn’t know. hangë posts truly the most heinous shit on there

moblit gets hangë a box of organ-shaped chocolates every year for valentine’s day

onyankopon had a hamilton phase

& bertholdt had a be more chill phase ���

erwin proposed to levi three times before levi accepted to “make sure he wanted to be married”

armin did a magic routine for the eighth grade talent show and killed that shit. they won 1st place

connie & ymir have neck yourself battles. ymir is currently winning

ymir also has the humor of a 12 boy addicted to fidget spinner 

annie is a manager at mcdonald’s and loudly proclaims her hatred for it

erwin carries a glock everywhere he goes. bro is strapped up fr

the first time bertholdt had a panic attack in front of reiner, reiner freaked out and gave his beats to them and played dubstep to try and get him to concentrate on something else

jean only says “balls” like cartman does (bawlz)

bertholdt does not know what MILF stands for

hitch has a monster can wall

sasha does this thing where if anyone yawns she shoves her fingers in their mouth and yells “CHICKEN FINGER”

erwin has a tiktok account to monitor what his kids post & he comments on them

levi calls mikasa brat number 1, historia brat number 2, and armin brat number 3

levi calls eren, sasha, & ymir his “forth, fifth, & sixth brat”

reiner has memorized all of the wenomechainasama spellings

bertholdt is a clairo enthusiast 

annie CANNOT STAND the smell of pork

zeke has a podcast

pieck is his editor and trolls the shit out of him with it

mikasa knows how to vogue & death drop

reiner does that thing where he plays tiktok audios and pretends he’s in an edit

mikasa is the biggest fucking internet troll but is supremely undercover about it

the only person who knows is jean because he’s her favorite victim but nobody believes him when he tells them

another one of sasha’s tiktoks blew up & it was a “baby got back” dance that she did with armin and connie and all of the comments were like “THE TWINK CARRIED THIS” or “GO CAILLOU GO”

zeke accidentally married a stripper in vegas one time. she was super chill about the divorce and they keep in touch

pieck collects shiny things

niccolo beat connie with a remote control because every time mario said “it’s-a me, mario!” connie would whisper “it’s-a me, niccolo!”

[peri-hellion]

Agnes/Gertrude and/or Martin/Tim for the ship meme?

I adore Agnes/Gertrude but I did do a really long post about them somewhere on here before so I will put on my ‘#1 Martim shipper’ foam hat for this ask. 

(For context, I am considering the Fluff eps as canon. I know, I know they’re not, but they ARE). 

I find the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ romcom chart of S1 endlessly amusing; Martin is interested in Jon, who (IMO) is *maybe* interested in Tim, who is interested in Martin and/or Sasha, who is interested in getting some f****** work done. 

Anyway, I love the offscreen turn from Tim finding Martin particularly boring/too nice to Martin just being a huge bitch to Tim all the time and Tim being ecstatically happy about it. Tim is, I think, the only character where we see Season 3/4 era Martin coming out. The “Dance’s Card’s Open” moment is also SO SIMILAR to Tim’s jokes to Sasha about their epic romance narrative; Tim tends to frame romantic interest as a joke even though (as we learn) he tends to care really aggressively but also take his relationships with the Archives crew much more seriously (the joke at the birthday party about ‘when we’re all old’ makes me cry every time, Tim really think about these people as his found family). 

I do think they’re particularly well suited, since Martin calls Tim out on his bullshit with pristine accuracy and Tim draws Martin out of his shell/ seems genuinely concerned about his tendency towards reckless selflessness and his ability to absorb verbal abuse.  

That being said, Tim is really awful to Martin in S2/3, I think partly out of extremely transparent jealousy (again, Jon automatically gets Martin in the Archives Divorce TM) and because he knows Martin will take it/ push back when he needs to. My favorite Martim moment remains when Tim follows Martin into the tunnels while loudly and aggressive protesting that he’s NOT GOING DOWN THERE because refuses to leave Martin alone. 

[jafreitag]

The Death of the Auteur

Amanda Petrusich is a rockstar. Figuratively. She’s not a musician. She’s a writer.

Her wiki says that she’s “an American music journalist and the author of three books” – 2007’s Pink Moon (a 33 1/3 series dissection of Nick Drake’s ’72 classic), 2008’s It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music (a sorta travelogue in search of what matters about roots-y bands), and 2014’s Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records (descriptive title). She’s a Guggenheim Fellow, a former staffer at Pitchfork, and a current staffer at The New Yorker. She’s a member of a rock scribes guild that includes Robert Christgau, Michael Azerrad, Anthony DeCurtis, Greg Kot, Jim DeRogatis, and the ghost of Lester Bangs. (All dudes.) Along with her contemporaries and cohorts Jesse Jarnow, Sasha Frere-Jones, Hua Hsu, and a very few others in that field, she’s good at her job. Fwiw, she’s the best.

What makes her the best? She understands that, pace comedian Martin Mull, “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” So she straps on her tap shoes and just goes. Her stuff is always well-phrased, sure, but also well-structured. Her pieces typically feature something professional, and big – historical perspective, like she’s researched and listened. They also typically feature something personal, and small – individual perspective, like she’s lived and breathed a life informed and enriched by music. A jab here, a digression there, and then a deeper digression here and there. Grace, above all, everywhere. She makes me want to write – to write better, smarter, tauter and looser at the same time. She probably had/has good editors, but the craft and art is hers.

This post isn’t entirely about Amanda Petrusich. It’s also about Roland Barthes. I’ll get there, promise. (I’m assuming the tl;dr crowd checked out way before now. If you’re still with me, cinch up and hunker down.)

Last week, LN banned Ryan Adams for his indefensible treatment of women. I liked alot of Adams’ songs (tbh, who didn’t dig “New York, New York” post-9/11?), as well as his prolific output (another new album, I guess I’ll check that out). The things that kept me from loving him were his work-like approach to songwriting, and his generally douche-y look and demeanor.

The Pitchfork review of his 2008 record (with his occasional band, The Cardinals), Cardinology called it “melodically sound, remarkably insular and largely unaffecting.” That gets to my former point re: songwriting. I feel like there’s another review of another album on Pitchfork that riffs on how Adams’ music is simply finger exercises in mopey, alt-country. There’s nothing of him in his songs, just distant musings on relationship tropes that use rural, everyperson scenery, as well as vaguely twangy delivery and dated Nashville/Muscle Shoals instrumentation/arrangements, to provide cred. I scoured P4k (wow, they hate and love him in almost equal measure), but couldn’t find what I remembered. Trust me that that review exists. Or don’t, and just buy what I’m trying to say. Dude is “good” at his job. And it’s just a job. To borrow from P4k again – its take on 2005’s Jacksonville City Nights: “Nearly a dozen albums in, counting Whiskeytown, Ryan Adams’ shtick is that it’s all shtick.”

And then it wasn’t. He married and divorced Mandy Moore, decided to devote an entire album to the demise of that relationship – 2017’s Prisoner. Here’s his comment about it to the Japan Times:

“I started writing this record while I was going through a very public divorce, which is a humiliating and just a f—-ing horrible thing to go through no matter who you are. To be me and to go through that the way that I did was destructive on a level that I can’t explain. So a lot of extra work went into keeping my chin up and remembering what I did and what I loved about who I was.”

That hints at my latter point, and feeds the former. “To be me” is the weird part. Like he needs the interviewer knows that he’s a sensitive, press-shy guy, so any details of what that process entailed – the pains, the doubts, the regrets, the gotdam details of who gets the kids/pets and when (full disclo, I’m divorced, too) – was off-limits because of, well, him. But it was all good because of, well, him. He told the JT that he wrote “quite literally 80 songs, probably more” (OMF, that’s such a Trump quote) for Prisoner, discovering that he could “write out the bulls—- so I could get back to myself and say, ‘Cool. This is what is real.’ ”

That record is ok, but there’s nothing real about it. Again, P4k, from it’s review (after quoting some lyrics):

“[L]ines that feel like placeholders for universal truths or even personalized expressions of pain that rarely emerge. While it’s impossible to evaluate the album’s sincerity, inspiration is a more tangible quality, and Adams comes off like an A student uncharacteristically frozen by an essay prompt, filling the margins with the hopes that his reputation can get him out of this jam, this one time.”

Reputation, ok. That definitely goes to the latter point. Adams has a difficult one. The Ringer says, “Adams’s reputation has long preceded him, by design, like a human shield.” Basically, he’s difficult, and revels being so because he thinks he’s some sort of rock genius auteur – the attitude, like the disheveled hair and the frumpy clothes, serves the grander brand. Per Spin, he has used his influence to get websites to remove negative content about him – namely, a 2017 Consequence of Sound profile about Phoebe Bridgers, a singer-songwriter, a member of boy genius (whose s/t ep was my fave record of last year), a co-founder of Better Oblivion Community Center (with Conor Oberst), and, least of all, a former parter of Adams. What was so bad? In the profile, Bridgers observed that Adams “wigs out at people on Twitter all the time,” but added, “Do I ever text him and say, ‘Stop?’ Never. I think I’d wind up on the wrong end of a Twitter rant.” Wow.

Adams has also flexed on critics who have given his music less than glowing reviews. That includes Amanda Petrusich. She has previous with him. For P4k, she savaged his 2003 album, Rock N Roll, which then prompted him to summon her (via people) for an interview. It starts with AP saying that he talks fast, and then Adams hearsaying his “writer” friend informing that the website is “not very cool at all.” Ugh. He tells her that P4k is a “good resource,” which has a nice vibe because it supports indie material. To relate, I guess, he adds, “Today I got the first Pussy Galore record for $50,” (I doubt that), which he had been “looking for for so fucking long”  because he gets “cool records.” But. if I wasn’t him, he’d pass on Jon Spencer and Neil Hagerty, and “be like, ‘Dude, you have to check out this record, Gold, it kicks ass.’ ” (Aside: In the history of the world, there has never been a human being who has gone into a record store to buy Dial M for Motherfucker and settled for Gold, not even Mad Ego’s Ryan Fucking Adams.)

And then AP prods him, and mentions his comment that rock journalism is just exhibitionism. She says that she’s not cool and listens to the Grateful Dead (so do we at LN!!). His response:

“I fucking love the Dead! Jesse Malin got me a coupon for a Steal Your Face tattoo for my birthday. ‘Cause, you know, I want to be badass. [Laughs] There are a lot of things expected and not expected. I mean, back in the day, Jim Morrison fucking going crazy in Florida and maybe or maybe not pulling his penis out, or attacking a police officer– all this unbelievably decadent shit. That was news. Now it’s ‘singer/songwriter can be slightly hotheaded.’ I’m not trying to hurt anybody.”

Or maybe he was. Last week’s ban post linked the New York Times article about Adams’ abuse of women. I don’t need to revisit that, but here’s his preemptive tweet (since deleted, typos are his) before the article was out:

“Happy Vanentines day @nytimes. I know you got lawyers. But do you have the truth on your side. No. I do. And you have run out of friends. My folks are NOT your friends. Run your smear piece. But the legal eagles see you. Rats. I’m f—ing taking you down. Let’s learn I bait.”

Last week, The New Yorker published Amanda Petrusich’s “Ryan Adams and the Perils of the Rock-Genius Myth.” There, she mentions that Adams is now under investigation by the F.B.I. for communications with a then-14 year-old fan, which may have crossed legal lines. (Adams’ attorney denies any wrongdoing by his client. And, as I said in the ban post, the presumption of innocence is constitutionally important.) AP also mentions comments by Bridgers on social media, where she described Adams as stifling, domineering, and frightening. Bridgers thanked her friends, band, and mom for support, then called out Adams’ “network,” none of which, she says, “held him accountable,” but rather “told him, by what they said or what they didn’t, that what he was doing was okay.” AP says:

“What Bridgers is emphasizing—that most people who have been subject to this sort of behavior can just as clearly recall the dude in the room who refused to meet their gaze, who was visibly uncomfortable but nonetheless remained silent—feels more important than ever to remember. It’s not simply the alpha abusers at fault for poisoning the music industry but also the whole odious web of enablers that surrounds them.”

AP continues (and this is a long quote, but it’s so finely rendered, and provides such great insight into her experience as a serious journalist who happens to be female, that you should read the whole damn thing):

“It almost feels silly, in our present era, to point out that sexism is pervasive in the music business, from the major labels on down—it’s now so ingrained in the system as to simply be presumed. Nearly every woman I know who works in music has a bottomless grab bag of stomach-turning stories about being harassed at shows, demeaned during interviews, inappropriately and aggressively propositioned, objectified, insulted, or treated as a joke. For most of us, it goes on until these sorts of incidents become normalized—a job hazard that you don’t think about because you’ve never known another way of working. ‘The concept of male genius insulates against all manner of sin,’ the critic Laura Snapes recently wrote in the Guardian. For men, childish or cruel behavior is often not just excused, but lauded—held as evidence of passion, vision, verve. A man behaving hysterically can be reconfigured as brilliant, whereas a woman doing the same thing will, in all likelihood, be dismissed as a maniac. I think often about a conversation I had with the musician Chan Marshall, who records as Cat Power, in Miami, in 2014. Marshall has been subject to several decades of name-calling for her occasionally erratic behavior, which has included walking offstage mid-show—something dozens of male rock stars have done before her. ‘I’m not crazy,’ I recall her telling me.

When I first started working as a music critic, in my early twenties, the industry was still almost exclusively male. My first real writing job was for the music-reviews site Pitchfork, where at times I was one of just two, maybe three, women on staff. My early editors and colleagues were supportive and encouraging—I was fortunate—but music criticism itself has problematic roots. The practice was largely founded and developed by male writers, who understood hedonism as a display of authenticity (maybe as the only display of authenticity), and its language still hinges around vaguely mystical ideas about art-making as a kind of bloodletting. For decades, that language has been used to protect and enshroud troubled men, and to dismiss and humiliate women working in the same register. I learned the vocabulary of the trade as a young critic, and the process of un-learning it has been slow, deliberate, and difficult.

Part of the problem is that music thrills and bewilders us in a way that can feel at odds with natural laws, so we instinctively codify and exalt its creation. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and writing about what happens to a person when they hear a song that they love, and what sense, if any, can be made of that strange, glorious melting. When I look at my own record collection, I see a desperate monument to my desire for that feeling—for some fleeting brush with the sublime. There are neurobiological processes to point to, and loads of social and cultural cues that help explain and unpack fandom, but the experience itself is such a hard thing to hold on the page. Never being able to fully explain it in a concise or useful way is a big part of why I first began writing about music, and why the work remains interesting to me. There’s a little bit of God in it.

But mystifying the creative process also allows for the genius myth to expand and endure. When nobody can say for sure why a certain melody is so satisfying, or so evocative, or so pleasurable—and this is criticism’s grandest prerogative, to somehow get close—we inevitably begin to imbue its creator with supernatural strengths. Ergo, people get away with things, for horrifyingly long stretches of time. It seems essential that critics remain vigilant about who is being granted leniency, and for what. But I also wonder if there’s a way for critical discourse to make more room for the receiver—to give more credit to our own consciousness, and the magic it makes of sound. That communion, after all—between player and listener, in which both parties create something extraordinary together—is just as sacred. Perhaps we can start to look for the genius in there instead.”

Yeah. There is a way, and it harkens back to the heady days of late-60s French deconstructionism. In 1967, Roland Barthes published an essay called “The Death of the Author.” I’ve referenced it a bunch through various iterations of this blog. (OM is fake sick of it, but he’s a pomo fiction geek, and a student of lit-crit, so whatever.) The wiki is actually p fly, but I’ll dig into the original text for pith.

Barthes writes that

“the image of literature to be found in contemporary culture is tyrannically centered on the author, his person, his history, his tastes, his passions; … the explanation of the work is always sought in the man who has produced it, as if, through the more or less transparent allegory of fiction, it was always finally the voice of one and the same person, the author, which delivered his ‘confidence.’ “

Man, not woman. Hmph.

Barthes’ essay is about literature, so it’s tricky to extrapolate it for a more performative (less interpretative) art form, like music. It’s also baseline difficult to decipher, and I’m not as smart as I used to be. (As I reread it, I tried to remember why I underlined certain passages when I was a grad student twenty-five years ago, and oof.) Essentially, Barthes wants to kill the Author by ending authority, by establishing that “utterance in its entirety is a void process, which functions perfectly without requiring to be filled by the person of the interlocutors: linguistically, the author is never anything more than the man who writes, just as I is no more than the man who says I: language knows a ‘subject,’ not a ‘person.’ ”

There’s a passage in the essay that suggests a de-personed hand (“his hand, detached from any voice, borne by pure gesture of inscription (and not of expression), traces a field without origin”) that goes a bit too far for me, but the idea is incontrovertible: “[T]he true locus of writing is reading.” And the true locus of songwriting is listening. I could riff on this, but I’ll get back to AP and her query.

The meaning/significance of any song or album belongs to us, not to the person who hummed it, demoed it, recorded it, and released it. If there’s wonder, it’s built into what we already do. And we can choose to direct that – that communion, that magic – toward artists who deserve it. The Auteur is dead. Long live rock.

More soon.

JF

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[placetobenation]

What a strange week it’s been in the WWE! A trip to Saudi Arabia not only gives us The Fiend as your new Universal Champion, crowned on Halloween no less, but it also sets up an historic Friday Night Smackdown! When I first heard most of the Smackdown talent couldn’t make it to Buffalo for the LIVE show, I cringed at what we’d see. But, for the first time in a while, a show not named NXT delivered the one thing it needs: UNPREDICTABILITY! And we got it in spades!

Brock Lesnar quits Friday Night Smackdown to search for revenge on Rey Mysterio, Jr.on Monday Night RAW.

NXT takes over the night on FOX!

Not only do we get NXT Women’s Champion Shayna Baszler punking out Smackdown Women’s Champion Bayley & Sasha Banks, but we get Tomasso Ciampa challenging and beating The Miz! And to boot, NXT Champion Adam Cole cleanly defeats Daniel Bryan, 1-2-3 in the main event!

You heard it here first… @TripleH warns #Raw and #SmackDown because #WWENXT is coming for a BATTLE at #SurvivorSeries. pic.twitter.com/ZXDJNpbqOE

— WWE (@WWE) November 2, 2019

Then, just to put the cherry on top of the Smackdown sundae, Triple H declares this the first blow in the new war. RAW vs. Smackdown vs. NXT – what do you got next RAW & Smackdown? The build to Survivor Series is set. Now, keeping all shows strong over the next three weeks will be interesting. I’m just not sure if I have enough faith in the creative to pull this one off. But, I’m hoping and can’t wait for the next week of WWE programming. And with pro wrestling and/or sports entertainment, that’s all you can ask for.

My biggest question going forward is this: with Triple H being “the authority face” of NXT, who will that person be for RAW and Smackdown? Will it be the executive directors Paul Heyman and Bruce Pritchard or do we get the McMahons vs. Triple H in an all in the family feud? The other question for the night is where was Finn Balor? Wouldn’t this have been the perfect chance to get back at the bigger brands? Or, will he be a hand played later in the build? And just how will War Games play out in all this, especially if NXT is fighting with themselves during Survivor Series weekend’s kick-off show and then back together to fight RAW and Smackdown? Food for thought indeed!

Kudos for stepping out of the box! When challenged, at least for a night, the WWE delivered.

RAW

RESULTS

RAW Women’s Champion Becky Lynch defeated Kairi Sane in non-title match

Buddy Murphy defeated R-Truth

Ricochet defeated Drew McIntyre by DQ when Randy Orton interferes with RKO

Non-Title Match: The Viking Raiders defeated The Chicago Cubs

Andrade defeated Sin Cara

Charlotte & Natalya defeated The IIconics (submission)

Falls Count Anywhere Non-Title Match: Champion Seth Rollins defeated Erick Rowan

United States Champion AJ Styles defeated Humberto Carrillo in non-title match (submission)

What we loved:

Holy RKO – You would think one move would get old after nearly two decades, but Randy Orton’s RKO delivers time after time. This time blindsiding Ricochet to give him the DQ win over Drew McIntyre.

Women’s Tag Team – I like the pairing of Charlotte and Natalya and hope they get a nice run together. Maybe a title pairing in future against the Kabuki Warriors would be some nice business! Plus, it’s nice to see The IIconics on TV once again. They’ve been wasted thus far on a tag team title run that went nowhere.

As the Paige Turns – Love the turn on Paige by the Kabuki Warriors! Solidifies them as top heels and gives the opportunity to have Paige seek out a new tag team to bring up to fight against them. Give me more of the green mist!

Becky vs. Kairi – Quality match to start the night off on RAW. The match got better as it went along and builds Kairi Sane as someone as more than just a tag team partner for Asuka.

What we didn’t love:

The vibe of RAW – Monday nights used to be the destination for WWE. The night where “anything” was possible. It seems like the show has turned into jus a run of the mill outing just to fill three hours on the USA Network. For a Falls Count Anywhere match that Vic Joseph kept hyping could go anywhere in St.Louis, the match went to the concession stands and back to the ring. Ho-hum. Plus, we get a King��s (Divorce) Court with Jerry Lawler, Rusev, Lana and Bobby Lashley in the main event. Heading into a PPV, Crown Jewel, it’s not quite what we should get. This is more of mid-night filler than something to pay off the night, especially when they don’t have a huge one-on-one match at the PPV. And now compared with what NXT and Smackdown delivered this week, it clearly comes in as the #3 show of the brand.

Humberto Carrillo gets another title match – I surely get trying to build up the younger, newer talent. But, in losing to both Seth Rollins and AJ Styles, it’s not quite the way to do it. Sure, he gets the rub on in-ring combat, but at the end of the day, all we’ve seen him do on TV so far is lose.

NXT

RESULTS

Io Shirai defeated Candice LeRae

Bronson Reed defeated Shane Thorne

WWE Women’s Tag Team Title Match: Champions Kairi Sane and Asuka defeated Tegan Nox and Dakota Kai

Cameron Grimes defeated Tyler Bate

Non-Title Match: NXT Tag Team Champions Undisputed Era defeated Matt Riddle and Keith Lee

What we loved:

Bronson Reed vs. Shane Thorne – For a match with no hype, this one was a barnburner filled with physicality. Kept me on the edge of my seat! No BS. True NXT type match here.

WAR GAMES x 2 – Not only do we get an historic announcement from NXT GM William Regal that the women will battle it out in War Games for the first time, but we also get Tomasso Ciampa declaring war on the Undisputed Era and putting his quest to get his “Goldie” back, the NXT Championship, on hold. For the women, we’ll get Shayna Baszler and Rhea Ripley as team captains in what should be an epic throwdown at the War Games Takeover Special Survivor Series Weekend.

The women’s division – When you talk about where the best is, it’s clearly here! From Bazler to Bianca Belair, from Io Shirai to Dakota Kai and from the Four Horsewomen to Candice LeRae, the women of NXT are outshining their counterparts on Wednesday night at AEW, but also outpacing the women of RAW and Smackdown, and that’s saying something! Kudos ladies!

What we didn’t love:

Finn Balor’s promo – While we welcome Balor Club getting the spotlight to try and explain what his latest heel turn is about, we didn’t really get a full explanation as to why Johnny Gargano was the target. Sure, we got a shot at Bray Wyatt being “cool,” but it needed some more depth especially when there are new eyes on NXT since the debut on the USA Network. They don’t know the backstory.

Full Sail University – Sure, NXT Arena is quaint and cozy, but if NXT really wants to take on AEW’s new momentum on Wednesday nights, it has to get out to bigger crowds. The NXT action and storyline progression speaks for itself, but the perception of the crowds in something the mainstream fan will need to see improved. Perception vs. reality folks. Time to check that box off Triple H! And with what we would see later in the week on Friday Night Smackdown, we now know they, as well as the crowds, can handle it.

CROWN JEWEL

RESULTS

Battle Royal For a US Title Shot: Humberto Carrillo

WWE Championship Match: Champion Brock Lesnar defeated Cain Velasquez (submission)

Tag Team Turmoil World Cup Match: Winners: The Good Brothers

Mansoor defeated Cesaro

Tyson Fury defeated Braun Strowman by countout

WWE United States Championship Match: Champion AJ Styles defeated Humberto Carrillo

Natalya defeated Lacey Evans (submission)

Team Hogan defeated Team Flair

WWE Universal Championship Falls Count Anywhere Match: The Fiend defeated Champion Seth Rollins

There's no stopping @WWERollins and #TheFiend @WWEBrayWyatt. Literally, though. Absolute carnage raged through #WWECrownJewel tonight! #FallsCountAnywhere pic.twitter.com/o43HHqGUIW

— WWE (@WWE) October 31, 2019

What we loved:

The Fiend winning the Title on Halloween – What better way to put The Fiend over then on Halloween! It’s something people can remember easily even if they didn’t watch it LIVE.

Uncertainty – With The Fiend winning the Universal Title, RAW doesn’t have a major championship at the top of its show and I, for one, is happy to see where this one goes. I’m hoping they let it linger for more than a few minutes and have some fun with it.

The INCREDIBLE story of the WWE's Women's Evolution continues as @NatbyNature and @LaceyEvansWWE competed in the FIRST-EVER Women's Match in Saudi Arabia at #WWECrownJewel. The #QueenofHarts got the win over the #SassySouthernBelle with the Sharpshooter. https://t.co/snXKQ5cbil pic.twitter.com/MpcG4atCo6

— WWE (@WWE) November 1, 2019

The women debut – History in the making as Lacey Evans and Natalya hold the first women’s match ever in Saudi Arabia! The pure emotion of the match takes precedence over anything else. Great to see and well done.

Mansoor – A solid match that gives the hometown pop with some raw emotion. Perfect pairing with Cesaro who absolutely made the kid look good.

What we didn’t love:

Only two minutes for Lesnar vs. Velasquez – OK, we get it was going to be short with Velasquez’ knee injury that he could reportedly have surgery on, but I don’t think it helped anyone out other than to say that Lesnar gets the win and now an eventual third bout between the two is coming.

Fury vs. Strowman – Count me as one who wasn’t a big fan of this pairing. It’s a no-win situation as neither side was going to get a clear victory and that’s exactly what we got. A countout by Fury and a slam by Strowman that gives each man with what they walked into the match with, nothing more, nothing less. It gave the WWE some mainstream media and that’s what they wanted.

The red lighting for The Fiend – I get what the intent is with trying to make The Fiend’s matches look different, but let’s be honest, it’s just tough to see through the red tinge in the lighting. Drop it already. It doesn’t work.

MEH – Team Hogan beats Team Flair. Solid effort with Roman Reigns pinning Randy Orton, but no real payoff with the two biggest stars, Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan.

FRIDAY NIGHT SMACKDOWN

RESULTS

Smackdown Women’s Title Match: Champion Bayley defeated Nikki Cross

Tommaso Ciampa defeated The Miz

Rhea Ripley & Tegan Nox defeated Fire & Desire (Sonya Daville & Mandy Rose)

NXT Title Match: Champion Adam Cole defeated Daniel Bryan

THE #WWENXT WOMEN'S CHAMPION @QoSBaszler IS HERE AND SHE IS TAKING EVERYBODY OUT!!!!#SmackDown pic.twitter.com/IsISDyZHdT

— WWE (@WWE) November 2, 2019

What we loved:

NXT! NXT! NXT! – No brainer here! The WWE takes a negative in the travel delay from Saudi Arabia that left all of the Smackdown superstars minus Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar left overseas and turns it into a HUGE positive! With Survivor Series coming up with RAW vs. Smackdown vs. NXT, the men and women of Wednesday night take the spotlight starting with Women’s Champ Shayna Baszler taking out Smackdown Champ Bayley & Sasha Banks to NXT Champion Adam Cole BAY BAY getting a clean 1-2-3 over Daniel Bryan in the main event! Unpredictable, smart and most important for us the fans – FUN and ENTERTAINING!

.@HeymanHustle just announced that @BrockLesnar is QUITTING Friday Night #SmackDown and going to #RAW… Watch out, @reymysterio. #BrockLesnar is coming for you. pic.twitter.com/QNRVRa0lSx

— WWE (@WWE) November 2, 2019

Brock Lesnar quits Smackdown – Sure, I would’ve loved to see how RAW would figure out its next champion with The Fiend defeating Universal Champ Seth Rollins at Crown Jewel, but Brock quitting Friday nights to find Rey Mysterio, JR. settles that. The WWE Title is coming home to Monday nights and that’s a good thing for business.

Pat McAfee – On-point, effective and put his stamp on this historic night! He was Paul Heyman-esque on the mic getting the brand and the talent over. Plus, he got in his plugs in too for people to know to watch on Wednesday nights. Brilliantly done!

What we didn’t love:

The downside to a beatdown – Yes, NXT looks awesome, but in the same show, you’re making Smackdown look a little weak. The building them back up will be in the pudding as we ramp up towards Survivor Series. I’m sure Roman Reigns, The Fiend and crew will have an answer.

Thanks for letting us share our thoughts! Shoot me an email at jcrowe567@gmail.com. We’d love to hear you comments and suggestions! You can also check out my blog, The Crowe’s Nest as we delve into more pro wrestling, sports entertainment and the World of Sports. My apologies ahead of time – I AM a Patriots and Red Sox fan! If you’re not down with that, I’ve got TWO WORDS for you… NEW ENGLAND!