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quickbeamkoshki-blog · 4 months ago

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The AEW Wrestling Tarot

unfortunately im back on my wrestling tarot bullshit again (aew only edition this time). my supercard pack never arrived :( so i have to make my own fun. and even worse ive started drawing recreationally again which means theres a chance i may actually try to make this oh dear. anyway. i think i finally, finally have a major arcana im satisfied with and im ready for this to be another 0 note classic but truly if anybody has thoughts and opinions, i wanna hear them:

The Fool: Harley Cameron. I feel like I was waiting so long for a perfect Fool wrestler to appear and no one had quite the right combination of wide-eyed innocent glee, creativity and clear stonking potential. Harley has Jester Qualities, she basically annoyed her way into a TNT title match, she is a woman of many talents most of them creative and entertaining, she's funny, she's original and most importantly she's only just getting started. Godspeed dear Fool.

The Magician: The only reason it's not Kenny is because he's needed elsewhere but really, Will Ospreay is a good fit for this. again, aesthetically it works cause he's got that Assassins Creed overcoat and when he puts his hands out idk it's giving wizard a bit. and then there's the way he's mastered the craft, and is able to produce acts of what look like pure witchcraft with scientific precision. pure confidence, skill and the right amount of hubris to make this very Magician-coded.

The High Priestess: Hear me Out. Renee Paquette. This was the hardest one, even when I was doing this for WWE, AEW and any other active wrestlers I could think of. it's just not a wrestling personality profile, "divine feminine" and inner wisdom and truth and clarity and detachment. clearly there's a gap in the market for this kind of character in wrestling, but so far and at least in aew, all I've seen from the wrestlers themselves are action-oriented hot heads who do very little if any introspection. and it's not quite that Renee does that introspection herself, but she is the conduit for it, right? she is the closest they have to an unbiased truth seeker. despite being literally married to one of the most violent and unhinged members of the roster! whenever revelations are had, parts of the inner worlds of these people that they may have otherwise never shown, either she coaxes it out of them or it happens in her presence. i need to unravel it a bit more but I like this for her I think. and again if anyone has a better high priestess i am all ears.

The Emperess: Emi Sakura. Not a whole lot to this choice other than Emi being the nurturer of the roster, the closest to both a "mom" and someone who actively helps bring the next generation of wrestlers to fruition, like the Empress tending her garden and many children.

The Emperor: Christian Cage, again this is a pretty open and shut book I think, he's literally called the Patriarch. Don Callis also came to mind for this, but Cage has a much more explicit Obey Your Father thing going on, Don is quite openly much more of a blatant opportunist.

The Hierophant: One of my revelations after much soul searching today. It's Bryan Danielson, and the BCC as a whole, as it was originally meant to be, an ideology of wrestling that was supposed to bring it back to its simple, glorious roots. Bryan, like some of these nurturers before him, has focused much more on the future of wrestling than himself, eager to leave a mark on it by virtue of creating the next generation in his image. He also carries this reverance around him, particularly from a subset of the fandom with quite pointed views about what wrestling is/should be - but he himself is sort of painfully human, emphatically not the god of wrestling but a vessel for divine teaching. or something.

The Lovers: Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi do I really have to explain myself here. I don't but if you're even reading this post I bet you scrolled to this point just to check I made them the lovers so you'll want something. There are no soulmates in wrestling like these two. No two who, while having completely distinct and phenomenal careers of their own, have told such a long, aching story of love transcending time and space and circumstance, of waiting for each other and holding onto that love, and of having been transformed by each other, inspired to be their best selves. all that could be their story without it also being an explicitly queer love story by the way, but that's also what it is. i cant go on anymore my feelings are getting mushy

The Chariot: Mercedes Mone. FOUR BELTS MONE BABY! RIDE the mone train. Etc. The Chariot is a triumphant victory lap, rubbing it in the faces of your enemies that you made it suckaahs. is one of those cards that could sort of be any wrestler who's "made it" really, and Mercedes hasnt even won the Women's World Championship yet, but she so perfectly exemplifies the spirit of this card, the sheer domineering ego and bombastic success of it. Truly a Girlboss Card. And her chariot's still a-rolling!

Strength: Eddie Kingston. Strength is about heart above all. Also very hard to pin down to one passionate babyface, one underdog who forges a deep emotional connection with the audience that carries them through their fight, one wrestler who just emanates that inspiring strength of body and mind and soul, but Eddie feels right here. hardened on the outside by a cruel world, but the beating heart of the whole place underneath that. grounded, relatable, honest and good in his soul. Specifically, his journey to winning the Continental Classic is on my mind here as a classic Strength story in wrestling.

The Hermit: Darby Allin. A late switchup here, as I had Darby as Death for a long time, mostly for aesthetic reasons. but really, he is the quiet loner who hangs back, who only ever found kinship with another loner like him. The Hermit is a card about solitude and reflection and, respectfully, Darby is currently literally away on a months-long journey of self-improvement up Mount Everest. Only a Hermit Wrestler could do that. Don't know if he's going to have gotten any wiser by the time he comes back and if he'll stop throwing himself off genuinely dangerous apparatus, but we will see!

The Wheel of Fortune: Moving from just wrestlers to more conceptual cards, this is The Elite but it's also specifically them as the catalyst for AEW. Wheel of Fortune is about the winds of change and upheaval, exciting new fortunate things on the horizon, luck that may just be on your side. The Elite, quite famously, made a bet, on themselves. It's paid off. But if not the Elite as a whole, this feels particulalry like the Young Bucks' card, those defiant agents of chaos who changed the whole industry by taking risks.

Justice: It's Aubrey Edwards. Justice is fairness, law and order, cause and effect and action and consequence. Vengeance doesn't count, it's gotta be objective. Sorry wrestlers, none of you fit this at all, it has to go to a referee, and why not the top referee of the company?

The Hanged Man: Wheeler Yuta. Look. LOOK. Do you think I wanted it this way either. The Hanged Man is my favourite card, Hangman is my favourite wrestler, he look so pretty hanging upside down with his long blond hair all floating by his face but I'm sorry he's not the hanged man at all, Yuta is. It's a card of stasis, sacrifice, uncertainty, imprisonment - where is Yuta right now! He is completely wrapped up in those ropes, unable to move forward or backwards, made the sacrificial lamb again and again, told every time that the sacrifice is worth it, that all his bridges being burned is worth it, and yet never managing to win anything for himself. His arc will ultimately need him to break out of his prison.

Death: Jon Moxley. Another guy who has floated all around this arcana until, after moving Darby up to hermit status, I realised yeah this fits Mox way more actually. He is, I think, the wrestler whose resurrection in AEW after his previous life is most like a death, first of all. Danielson is the same as Daniel Bryan, Kenny's Kenny wherever he goes, but Dean Ambrose is dead. And Jon Moxley is haunted. He also seems to see himself like a kind of memento mori, especially now, taking a grim sort of pleasure in reminding his foes who get to big for their boots of their mortality. Starting with the aforementioned Danielson. More than any other, he is furious for change. Either change, adapt, or fall at his hands. That is Death if ever I saw it.

Temperance: Similar potential problems with this card as with the High Priestess, but fortunately, Orange Cassidy exists. The rock-solid calm of him, the sheer incongruousness of his blue-shaded serenity as he sidles up to the ring. He's not a perfect paragon of temeprance by any means, he summons fire when he needs it in almost every match, but moving him to real anger felt like like an accomplishment from Mox when it happened. A bad accomplishment. He's as temperate as wrestlers get, I think, and he seems to spread that even keel to the people he spends time with, like the wrestling version of a capybara.

The Devil: MJF. Next.

The Tower: This one's also more of an event than a single wrestler (mostly cause making any one wrestler The Tower feels like a dig, like your thing is crashing and burning spectacularly. Owch) but it belongs mostly to Swerve Strickland and the visual of his house going up in flames, with everything in that hellishly destructive feud that represents. It's really what they did to each other more than just what Hangman did to Swerve that night, and the imagery of houses and homes (invaded, immolated, claimed) running through their feud really fits the Tower aesthetically as well.

The Star: Toni Storm! There's once again an aesthetic bonus because she is a starlet of course. I've historically found The Star a little difficult to differentiate from Strength when applying it to wrestling, both seem to invite those hope-inspiring underdog stories. But having it be represented by Toni I think brings out the more artistic, inspirational aspect of the Star, and the sense that it's really about faith. There's the faith Toni has in herself, in the story she tells about herself, that ultimately becomes true in a strange way only possible in wrestling, and then there's the faith she ultimately inspires in all of us. May she shine on forever.

The Moon: when i first was putting this together, it was Malakai Black and the House of Black, but now it's Julia Hart. The Moon is mystery, the unknown that lies in the shadows, as well as lunar insanity, giving into your darker, hidden self. The black mist is very moon-ish, and Julia seems to embody the witchy, unnerving demonic quality of this card the most. *

The Sun: Willow Nightingale. Sun's all about optimism and celebrating life. This is a vibes card, and I just needed to think who is the sunniest wrestler on the roster? and it was quite an easy pick, really. Whoever's smile is the most radiant is a good hint.

Judgement: Here's Adam Page. Judgement is revelation, a calling, rising up to meet your destiny and embrace the change, redemption, forgiveness. In other words, it's main character shit. And it's exactly the story that Hangman has been telling since he got here. He basically did complete it at Full Gear 2021 when he won the AEW title, and that's the image that this card would draw on, but he's just now embarking on what might be an even greater redemption arc, one that sees him rediscover himself having gone down a far darker parth than he ever did before.

The World: EITHER this is the AEW World Championship or it's Sting's retirement match. I'm kind of leaning towards the latter for something more heartfelt and specific that really communicates this card's meaning of completion, accomplishment and endings.

*there's another very different route one could go down for the Moon, which also means deception, false identity and betrayal - in which case this is Adam Cole lmao. He's not very Moon-ish in his aesthetic though, and aesthetic is quite important in these matters.

#this is true factual #so true factual insane #aew #jon moxley #bryan danielson #hangman adam page #willow nightingale #swerve strickland #toni storm #kenny omega #the young bucks #will ospreay

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