#HERO SPOTLIGHT. (PROMO TAG)

[dbzebra]

Different anon here, but I don't think I could even begin describe my visceral irritation at Toyotaro's reveal that this Super Hero mini-arc was apparently mostly developed with Trunks SOLELY in mind, and for that matter, the rather notable implication that Goten is only involved in the first place BECAUSE Trunks was going to supposedly be a big focus for this thing.

UGGGGHHHH I KNOOOOOW

I don’t know if you saw my other posts about the recent chapter but I said from the start that I had a bad feeling Goten would just be a sidekick (AGAIN) but wanted to give it more time.

When the chapter came out, I knew it deep in my gut. I knew Goten was just to the side and it was clearly a Trunks story, but I was holding out hope that he’d still get things to do on his own

That scene where Trunks bails on Goten to make plans with Mai should’ve been obvious enough to me but I was in denial. I still kinda am

I purposely didn’t allow myself to get excited from the moment I saw Teen Goten in that outfit in the promo art because deep down I KNEW.

And Toyotaro proved me right 🙃

Goten gets shafted in favor of a romcom between Trunks and Mai. Like come on man. This shit isn’t funny anymore. He can never be his own character, he’s just forever Trunks’s tag along :(

Just please leave my boy alone. Don’t even show him anymore if you’re just gonna do that. It’s really a shame.

Like for real I do love Trunks and I’m happy he is getting spotlight but why at the cost of Goten? He is pretty much an afterthought by everyone in his life

This is why I like to joke that I stole Goten from Toyo/Toei/Toriyama and that he’s my character now because clearly they have no interest in using him so I will

Maybe I’m just on huge copium that Goten will still get his own things to do, but it’s not looking good man

It’s not fair :(

[jace-the-writer-guy]

You're given immediate control over the WWE. What do you do in order to make it better in your eyes?

After answering this, send this question to another wrestling fan you know.

Probably a lot more I could think of if I gave it more thought, but here are a few things (40 points) I thought of.

Book believable heels and faces to the best of my ability

Give Big E the push he deserves without it being cut short because of Vince's love for a part timer

Give Lashley a long, dominant reign as champion that isn't cut short because of Vince's love for a part timer

Let Roman be more of a dominant champion rather than being one that has to be helped by his family in most cases

Have Roman go against more than just part timers

Book a believable face (maybe Sami) to go against the Bloodline and let it go for a year, have him win the Rumble, and finally dethrone Roman at WrestleMania

Give Sami his old entrance music back

Give people memorable entrance music again.

PUSH CESARO

Give Ricochet a good push with a midcard title for a while

Turn Sami Zayn face and give him a good push

Give Kevin Owens a push he desperately deserves

Let Shinsuke Nakamura just vibe

Return NXT to Triple H's control

Stop trying to fight AEW, just try to improve the product given to me

Stop bringing in part timers that take away the spotlight from younger talent deserving of opportunities

Stop giving championships to part timers

Give people a basis for promos, and let them speak as themselves and not by script

Stop giving Charlotte every opportunity in the world just because she's Ric Flair's kid

Let Becky be the face that fans want to see rather than force her to be heel

Give Shayna Baszler her old entrance music back and book her to be a killing machine again

Book Rhea Ripley to be the dominant bad-bitch she should be, rather than someone who cries after losing to Charlotte

Stop with the super hero shit for Nikki Cross

Give a certain amount of creative control to the roster

Healthcare

Rotate who are active and who can go home to their families for a while instead of everyone being on the road all the time

Stop 50/50 bullshit booking all the time

Stop splitting up tag teams

Stop shortening names

Stop with DQ finishes all the time

Stop with "surprise roll-up" finishes all the time

Remove a bunch of PPV's and return to calling them that instead of "Premium Live Events"

Stop using Hell in a Cell for a long time so it could hopefully return to it's status as a feud ender instead of just a match

Listen to the fans (not do everything the fans want)

Let wrestlers have their Twitch accounts or other side things they do

Remove the no-compete clause for released wrestlers

Release those who request to be released

Forge bonds with other companies rather than try to poach talent from them

Knock on the Forbidden Door

End Saudi shows

[lambourngb]

re: your tags on that one post abt plotholes in rnm: what are the plotholes that make you lose the most sleep?

(this is my main btw, my rnm blog is @curlyguerin )

Hi! Okay... strap in, because there are a lot of little and big things that wiggle into my thoughts and makes me wonder ...am I the only one who couldn't follow that plotline?

In my opinion RNM suffers more from abandoned narratives and continuity errors than plot holes I guess, since we only have 2 seasons, with at least 2 more to go I guess I can hope they come back to these issues... but: [Under the cut plus some spoilers for season 3]

Things I would like explained :

1. What did Jesse Manes fund with family money in 1x08 ? I'm guessing it was surveillance of the town and the search for more aliens that could have escaped the military in 1947-1948. The idea that Jesse funded Caulfield is just laughable to me, along with how he was able to get his Army-assigned son moved from Germany to New Mexico for 5 years and no one noticed?? Caulfield has to be separate from whatever Jesse was doing in Roswell. Clearly there is still an ACTIVE military project focused on aliens because Flint isn't AWOL, Flint also takes Noah's body to Area 51, so where was Jesse in violation of his orders (Alex's threat to Jesse in 1x08 and then shipping him to Niger)? Surveilling citizens and setting up cameras all over town?

2. Did they ever build an Air Force base on the Fosters Homestead Ranch? (1x01-1x02) ...then it's never mentioned again.

3. I am aware I am the only one who cares about this little bit, but the show seemed to set up a narrative in season 1 about the spotlight Roswell shined white victims of crimes - like Katie and Jasmine, that the town of Roswell holds quite a lot of racism regarding justice- vilifying Rosa for over 10 years, ignoring the deaths of people around Ranchero Night, and then Noah kills Wyatt Long's best friend Hank Gibbons in 1x13. I dunno, I was expecting more from Wyatt in season 2 about this than picking a fight with Michael over Mimi's missing persons sheet and showing up with a crossbow in 2x04. And like, there was a theme of people going missing in season 2!! Mimi, Jenna, the weird twins from 2x06, Charlie -- but yet, no closer scrutiny by Sheriff Valenti other than her focus on Max Evans and the story about Mexico- Like this felt not like a plot hole, but a dropped narrative -- to wrap up the fate of Racist Hank in a missing persons sheet in 2x01. To treat him weirdly like all of Noah's other victims (who were women and men of color and poor), but for a few factors like he was white, he had actual lines in the show over a couple of episodes, and he's one of the few townspeople we learn his first and last name still sticks out in my mind as strange. The Doylist explanation is the actor wasn't available for season 2, but the Watson-perspective of this is just someone the in-show universe doesn't care about ...? Okay. I will keep that in mind, and try to ignore the fact that the town of Roswell swings wildly back to caring about white victims again in 2x13 with Jesse Manes.

4. The Alighting from 1x13 - just how far away was it from happening? Noah was ready to stick a sheriff's deputy, the town event planner and Michael (who probably would be been the only one to go missing without much fanfare, except maybe by Alex) into a pod...for how long? Months? Years? What was his endgame? how did he expect to go unnoticed by the town while he waited for his alien salvation/alien UBER to arrive? Could he just mindwarp everyone into forgetting about the pod squad? Since we didn't see any alien ships show up in the six months from 1x13 to 2x13, and no further follow up by any of our heroes about what Noah was babbling about... I'm going to say this should come back into play for season 3, otherwise it's the most egregious plot hole from season 1.

5. Why did Flint want to work with Helena? Jesse had this master plan that Helena knew all about apparently but she never shares the plan with Flint? Jesse never shares this plan with Flint either? Why? As far as I can tell from the plot of season 2, Jesse takes the console piece from Alex, he was going to kill Alex to keep him out of the way, use the console to blow up civilians, he created a paper trail that pointed the finger at Max, and then when everyone knew the truth about aliens, he was going to use HIS atomizer bomb to release the toxin that Charlie had already developed for Project Shepherd to kill all the aliens.... WHY would Flint want to stop that, especially since they fight in 2x11 over how slow Jesse was moving in his plans? Other than objecting to killing Alex, why would Flint turn Alex over to Helena to blackmail Michael into building a second atomizer bomb? He should have just kept Alex out of the way until it was all over and let Jesse proceed with his plans. Flint's desire to work with Helena Ortecho remains a plot hole to me, that is explained in the most flimsy way of he thinks his dad isn't serious about killing all the aliens even though he has the means? And if he takes Alex from Jesse's control so easily, why not steal the bomb Jesse had too?

6. These are more gripes about continuity, not really plot holes, but the fact we have this loose timeline of events but it doesn't match the weather of filming.... Like Heather Hemmens looked so gorgeous in that little silk outfit in 2x01, but she's wandering outside in Dec in Roswell New Mexico looking like that. I get that it was filmed in August/Sept of 2019 but come on... so my main frustration is I have no idea what season and month is supposed to be on screen. Universe timeline says Winter but filming schedule meant it was early fall with still having the heat of summer there...then the show ends in May/June in the universe, but we all know RNM wrapped in Dec 2019/Jan 2020 so they are all bundled up in winter again.

7. Also on continuity, small things like Rosa's birthday being wrong, the fact her astrological sign isn't Pieces for either date, openly letting Greg Manes see Rosa, not seeming to care that Liz's ex-fiance hears that Rosa is alive - like i'm sure her "dead" sister came up in conversation between Liz/Diego

- the show gives us this beautiful conversation with Michael sharing his background with Alex in 1x10, but then Alex completely forgets it in 2x04 by dropping some line like "this is what you do with family" when Michael expresses confusion about a height chart. Also, on the same note- the jabs about the Library being a dive bar, also felt like a drop in continuity because Alex knows that Michael just lost his mom (1x12) , the government IS studying aliens, and his brother is in a pod, so like, he has some very valid reasons to drink if that's what he wanted to do with in his life in early season 2!! but, also he knows Michael is a genius??

- Why Alex never mentions Rosa, Isobel's blackouts/why Michael gave up UNM, or even hint about what happened with his dad in the shed during his conversation with Maria in 2x05 is also beyond bizarre to me. It was an "information" dump conversation that Alex still doesn't share all the information he has about a situation and just ends up looking kind of judgmental in my opinion.

- the truck conversation in 2x06 between Maria and Alex, why Maria prompts a girl's name when Alex says he's never been in a real relationship INSTEAD of addressing the very real elephant in the room, Michael Guerin, that they had a conversation about in 2x05- also feels like a gap in continuity.

8. Science wise- the pathogen that Charlie developed? It was supposed to be so specific that it could kill a leader of Al Quada and all of their direct descendants but leave the rest of the population unharmed. [Which um, that's a war crime, but whatever!] How was Maria affected? the DNA they had at Caulfield to develop it - like, Maria was descended from Louise and Louise lived free. The only person that pathogen SHOULD have affected was Michael (if they used Nora to base it on) Unless you're telling me that there's some protein in "alien dna" that is so specific to aliens, that no other human shares it, but also so completely undetectable that Kyle couldn't find it in Maria's blood... ? I suppose it's possible. I hope we get more explanation about that in season 3. It makes me wonder why Caulfield/Project Shepherd ever let Patty Harris go after she volunteered for some study then, and remained content to just pay her medical bills through a fake insurance company? [But also didn't flag Mimi and all the doctors that Maria took her to???]

9. Michael's hand. I'm going to reserve judgment about this, because some of my salt on this is based on season 3 promo pictures, but I really thought that moment in 2x13 when he takes off his hat, while Alex is singing, you see him without the wrapping on his hand, that maybe he found some peace with Jesse dead and demolishing the shed with Alex. But then it looks like the hand-danna is all over season 3, right up until the finale of season 3, so... was that a mistake in wardrobe AND not a beautiful moment of character growth??? I wish I could extend some grace to RNM about that, but alas... see above for why I have trust issues.

10. Perhaps I wasn't watching season 1 closely, but I thought Noah's madness was brought on by the fact he was stuck in his pod? That it was "lower class travel accommodations" and Isobel's scream at 13 got his attention? I assumed that he stayed in the pod, possessing Isobel on and off, right up until he used her body to kill Rosa in 2008, absorbing enough power to break out. So how did Noah find Jim Valenti so quickly? If it was through Isobel's memories, then why did Jim not immediately have Noah, some random alien approaching him about his recently dead daughter, hauled off to Caulfield? Jim pays $1,000 for Rosa's body, putting her in a pod [Noah's broken pod??] and stores her, waiting for...something? An alien to come along to bring her back. So did Jim know about The Savior? Why would Jim work with Noah and vice versa? Again, I'm hoping we get more about this in season 3.

11. Was there a point of keeping Alex in the Air Force? He arranges a place for them to work on bringing Max back, but I feel like anyone could have done that? Like Isobel had money, she could have rented a storage facility. All of the equipment was borrowed from the hospital, not the military. The information about 1947-1948 was from the drives decoded from Caulfield or the AAR report left by Flint in the Project Shepherd bunker (which again was decommissioned, not an active military installation). I could support the decision if it had provided some richness to the plot or some conflict within the character, neither of which really happened. Alex hacking the government and going undercover in the Air Force to protect Michael is basically fanon. I love that fanon, but alas...

12. Finally, the time jump. What year are we jumping into? 2020? 2021? Why does it make me think none of those questions above will be answered.

[xradiationed]

[Tag reference under the cut.]

General tags:

[Ⓧ] ||  I’M A NINJA !  || • (ooc.) 

[Ⓧ] ||  IMMA GHOOSST !  || • (anonymous.) 

[Ⓧ] ||  XRAY & VAV RESCUE HOTLINE !  || • (asks.) 

[Ⓧ] ||  I FEEL LIKE I’M THE WORST ; SO I ACT LIKE I’M THE BEST !  || • (about.) 

[Ⓧ] ||  START NEW GAME ?  || • (ooc.) 

[Ⓧ] ||  I MEAN ; YOLO RIGHT ?  || • (mentality.) 

[Ⓧ] ||  SICK BEATS !  || • (radio.) 

[Ⓧ] ||  I’VE GOT TROUBLED THOUGHTS !  || • (musings.)  

[Ⓧ] ||  INCREDIBLY HANDSOME SUPER COOL GUY !  || • (visage.) 

[Ⓧ] ||  GOTTA GET ME ONE OF THOSE !  || • (wishlist tag.) 

[Ⓧ] ||  THE HEIGHT OF FASHION !  || • (wardrobe.) 

[Ⓧ] ||  BADASS ! I’D RISK SERIOUS INJURY FOR ONE OF THOSE !  || • (likes & interests.)   

[Ⓧ] ||  AND I’M A PARKOUR MASTER !  || • (capabilities.)      

[Ⓧ] ||  OH GOD I’M GUNNA DIE A VIRGIN !  || • (desires.)  

[Ⓧ] ||  IT’S OK ; I WOULDN’T REMEMBER ME EITHER ..  || • (fears.)

[Ⓧ] ||  I PUT THE ‘’PRO’’ IN PROCRASTINATION !  || • (mun.)

[Ⓧ] ||  DOG OF WISDOM !  || • (munday.)

[Ⓧ] ||  THE COSTUME FITS JUST A LITTLE TOO TIGHT !  || • (ic.)  

[Ⓧ] ||  YOINK ! FINDERS KEEPERS !  || • (keepsake.)    

[Ⓧ] ||  SPOTLIGHT STEALING JERK !  || • (self promo.)

[Ⓧ] ||  WE’RE SUPERHEROS !  || • (promo.)

[Ⓧ] ||  SOUNDS LIKE JUST MY LUCK !  || • (dash commentary.) 

[Ⓧ] ||  HOW DARE QUEUE ; I’LL NEVER GROW UP !  || • (q.)

[Ⓧ] ||  GET A REAL JOB BOY ; DON’T BE A FOOL !  || • (char. study.)  

Character Tags

[Ⓧ] ||  PARTNER IN JUSTICE !  || • (vav.)

[Ⓧ] ||  STOCKS & BARRELS BE PLUMMETING & ALL THAT BULLSHIT !  || • (corpirate.)

[Ⓧ] ||  ROYAL DICKHEAD !  || • (mad king.)

[Ⓧ] ||  PROBABLY A SECRET AGENT !  || • (rusty.)

[Ⓧ] ||  THE REAL MVP !  || • (dwayne.)

[Ⓧ] ||  MOTHER DEAREST ; I LOVE YOU SO !  || • (mamá.)

[Ⓧ] ||  IF YOU LOVED ME ; WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME ?  || • (papá.)   

[Ⓧ] ||  KAZOO NOISES INTENSIFY !  || • (dragonface.)

Verse Tags

[Ⓧ] ||  WE COULD BE HEROES !  || • (v; main.) 

[Ⓧ] ||  YOU’RE NEVER GUNNA FIT IN MUCH KID !  || • (v; childhood.)

[Ⓧ] ||  YOUR DAYS CALLING ME ‘FREAK’ ARE NUMBERED !  || • (v; villain.)

[Ⓧ] ||  I’M DOUBLE SIDED ; I JUST CAN’T HIDE !  || • (v; gta.)

[Ⓧ] ||  LEAP BEFORE YOU THINK !  || • (v; undecided.)

Relationship Tags

[Ⓧ] ||  ODDS ARE WE’RE GUNNA BE ALRIGHT !  || • (xvav💚)

[Ⓧ] ||  VEGAS LIGHTS ; THE LIES AND & AFFECTATIONS !  || • (edgarocalypse💚)

[kuronomancer]

Tag muns you want to know better; repost - don’t reblog.

What inspired you to try/create that muse/s: I’m a huge yakuza fan and it’s obvious. After making @plagued-yakuza​ read the manga, we both got obsessed with Chisaki and the birds. We spent literal solid months talking about them, and to this day we still share headcanons, theories and we just... Pour a lot into them. It was only a matter of time until Rina told me she was joining the rpc as Chisaki and I decided to follow her as Hari. The fact that I love minor characters that deserve more backstory and spotlight doesn’t help - in fact, it makes my urge to rp him stronger.

What is inspiration for that muse/s: I wish I was joking, but I have this literal vaporwave and lo-fi playlist on my spotify that I use as inspiration and writing music for him. I take much inspiration from other kinds of music, tho - the one in my blog, the ones I quote on my promos... 

Haruki Murakami is a very important writer for me too, as well as Richard Adams. Kafka on The Shore and Watership Down are literally tied as my favorite books of all time and I always come back to them for inspiration, not just for Hari but in general. Birds and insect videos/pictures also make my Hari muse happy.

Thread/AU that made you really happy: My whole hero Hari AU makes me feel warm and fuzzy. He’s a decent person with a decent upbringing and it just shows. He’s so bright in there, so content and helpful towards everyone. Of course, it doesn’t mean that life as a hero doesn’t have its sour moments - it does - but hero Hari is so much happier than his canon verse counterpart.

Something really special on your wishlist:

I’d actually cry if I ever got to rp some kind of total reverse AU thing, with Hari being a pro hero or UA student along with the other precepts and the canon heroes being villains. I love this concept.

Something you are looking for in short future for your muse:

I’d do anything for him to reappear in canon. Please, Horikoshi, let Hari shine. He needs a decent fight scene so badly.

Share something related to your muse!:

He has a folder in his phone that’s filled with pictures of the other precepts being cute/funny. He may or may not use it to his advantage.

What do you think about character’s design/how do you came up with this:

I love Hari’s character design. One of my favorite anime tropes is when the characters have unnatural hair colors and hairstyles. Hari’s hair fits this so perfectly, and I love how Horikoshi made arrow hair look... Good. It fits him well, adds much charm to him and it makes for so much room for creativity when it comes to quirk usage. I love Hari Kurono’s hair, period.

As far as the rest of his design goes... He’s a beauty. Very nice to the eyes. I guess Chisaki likes working with handsome people, and honestly that’s a good aesthetic choice. I’d actually like to see some art of him in casual clothes, though.

What your muse taught you: Time is an illusion, I guess? I honestly don’t know how to answer this question and I apologize :’D

What is roleplay for you: An opportunity to build stories, explore characters and meet new people!

Just say something nice about other mun!: Gonna gush about my dash because I can’t choose just one person! You guys are all amazing, with beautiful writing styles and portrayals. Some of you are very close to me, others not so much, some I’m yet to interact (but I hope this will change soon!), but I care so much about all of you and I’m so happy to share the rpc with you here. You make me so happy, be it when we’re talking or when I’m scrolling through the dash watching your muses interacting with each other. I’m very glad knowing that I can share these experiences with you.

Tagged by: Stolen from @cconstruct​

Tagging: You! Yes, you! Do the thing!

[tigermaskdan]

Dickbag of the PPV: Survivor Series 2017

Last night’s Survivor Series was a pretty great show.  From top to bottom, competitive and compelling matches with generally clean but close outcomes made for an incredible enjoyable night of wrestling.  

Hats off in particular to the four teams from the tag division for showing up and putting on some incredible wrestling.  I’m hard pressed to think of a better time for tag wrestling in WWE since the Hardy/Dudley/E&C days.  Great teams that work as a unit doing new and inventive spots, the finish to Usos vs the Bar was brilliant.

What I also found remarkable was that, for the most part, the people I was rooting for as a fan all lost, but I still enjoyed the show.  I was pulling for New Day, Bliss, Miz and AJ, as well as SmackDown on the whole, and they all lost, but I still was entertained! Imagine that!

BUT…there was also a main event, which brings me to:

Dickbag of the Pay-Per-View:

Hunter. Hearst. The Worst. Helmsley.  When are you going to go away? When? Never? Aren’t your muscles just one small non-contact injury away from all ripping off your bones under the strain?  You’re the wrestling equivalent to that Dad that wants to tell you he can play a song on guitar that you play on Guitar Hero.  NO ONE GIVES A SHIT! Go away, we’re just trying to have fun.

The Survivor Series team building started off alright.  Sure we had the old guy GMs at the helm, but they were surrounded by “young” (I mean, Roode’s 40) talent.  Then all the sudden, the roster from WWE Day of Reckoning decides to pop in and take over the team.  

I get why they did it too.  Look at TLC.  Nobody gave a shit, then suddenly they added Kurt Angle and we all ate it up.  I ate it up.   I still popped tonight when Kurt’s music hit!  I love that potato of a man!  Then Triple H started doing scattered tour dates and people ate it up!  Hardy’s at Wrestlemania got the biggest return pop I’ve ever heard!  So this being WWE they decided “GUESS EVERYONE LIKES OLD GUYS, BETTER BRING ‘EM ALL BACK!”

It went about as you’d expected.  The young guys we quickly disposed of.  Even John Cena was in and out in like 5 minutes.  From then on it was the Triple H show for the last 15 minutes.

Lately I’ve read a lot of younger fans say things like, “He was great against guys like Jeff Hardy, and started nXt!” I’ve heard older fans say things like “He was awesome in the Attitude Era, I’d love to see that again!”

WE STRAP ON IN FUCKERS, BECAUSE I’M FROM THE ERA OF FUCK THIS GUY!

You think the Authority was onerous?  Try the Goddamned Reign of Terror.  Raw was such a fucking chore to watch.  Just Triple H burying contender after contender.  Every week started with a 30 minute Evolution segment where he just shat on his opponent.  Kane, Booker T, Scott Steiner, RVD, Jericho, all fucking neutered by Triple H.  Even guys who got over on him like Goldberg or Randy Orton eventually got shat on and Triple H got his belt back.  Benoit was really the only one to get over him until Batista finally ended the Reign of Terror, and even then, Benoit was beat by Orton who was beat by….Triple H.

“Tiger Dan, you loathsome canteen of whale puss, that was a long time ago.  He’s put tons of guys over since!”

Well ox-felator, can I call you ox-felator? Yes ox-felator.  Here’s the thing about Triple H: he never goes away.  Even when he puts guys over, it’s all about him. No matter what angle he’s in, he becomes the center of attention.  He’s the one out making the big promos.  Getting the upper hand in the build.  Basically after all his Attitude Era peers left, he stopped sharing the spotlight with anyone that wasn’t Shawn Michaels.

The main event was the most Triple H-est thing that ever happened.  He wasn’t in the build at all.  He was the only one on his team not wearing a RAW shirt (opting, of course, to wear a special made red Triple H shirt).  He had his cute little moments with the nXt guys, and then BOOM!  The people that you want to see wrestle were all gone.  Nak, Roode, Joe, Balor, gone.  The only full timers left were Braun, and Randy “Please become a Part-Time” Orton.

And from then on, it was a slow confusing finish that was all about Triple H.  Sure Braun got do to the “send them home happy” power-slams, but did Braun really need it?  And wouldn’t him being the sole survivor been even better? Did Triple H need to even be in this match to set up his and Angle’s Wrestlemania match?  Why?

Because it’s always about Triple H.

What bums me out is that the rest of the show was so good, and this really, truly would’ve been an opportunity to finally give the new generation the rub.  You had four former nXt champs and the company’s monster of the future in this match.  You could’ve had them all take out the old guard, still have your Triple H vs Angle thing, and made the finish something to remember.   Instead it was just another match about Triple H, and I’m sick of shows being about Triple H.

[lifes-a-dick]

The spotlight has turned to point at the audience

I keep thinking about Derren Brown’s 2011 show “The Experiments” because I’m convinced Moftiss have drawn straight from this particular episode for some of their symbolism in S4, which would tell us that this series ended with the spotlights swinging around to point at us, the audience.

Derren set up a fake game show and filled a big audience who thought they were just there to watch an “experiment” on a man who was being watched with hidden cameras on a night out with friends. Well into the swing of the game show something unexpected happens. The subject they’re watching on hidden cameras is hit by a car (it’s okay, it was a stunt guy). But for the audience it sort of came out of the blue while they were yelling and cheering the events on. The audience gasps in shock then goes silent. Derren listens to his ear piece and paces the stage. The transmission cuts out, replaced by the TV test pattern screen.

While the Sherlock S4 promos were being released in Nov/Dec last year, somebody (maybe @skulls-and-tea?) noticed that the flashy rainbow colours behind the “It’s not a game anymore” text on the promos matched the colour bars of the standard test pattern screen:

The order of colours is the same - see? White, yellow, cian, green, pink, red. Once the test pattern pops up, the house lights go up and cameras turn to the audience.

The audience sits stunned because tragedy has struck during something they were cheering and laughing about only moments before (It’s not a game anymore). This audience is basically the tjlc fandom as the credits rolled on TFP.

(Tag yourself, I’m the girl leaving)

Derren turns to the audience again and reveals the secret to them that the ‘show’ was fake and it was all a stunt. THEY were the subjects of the experiment all along. Not the guy they thought they were experimenting on. I think the hidden test pattern in the S4 promos is a BIG hint. Those colour test bars are behind the pretend game show that was S4, the flickering image hinting that we’re about to go off air.

[Basically I’d wager that Moftiss drew specifically from this Derren Brown stunt, at least for the test pattern idea: it aired in 2011. It’s not that outrageous an idea. Anything Derren does is of interest to us, for these reasons.]

In TFP we’ve gone off air earlier than expected (no S5?) because something unexpected and tragic happened (John Watson was kidnapped and replaced with an imposter, villains became heroes, the baby survived, sherl0IIy threatens being considered canon. Basically, the show was hit by a car). We’re on stage now, or in other words, the cameras have spun around to point at us, the audience. Luckily, for Derren’s participants at least, it’s soon revealed that it was all fake, and all done for their benefit. He never leaves people hanging for very long (just long enough to make his point).

I just need to nab this gif (from @sofuckingchuffed) and put it here with this Derren quote, because it’s relevant.

“We’re all trapped inside our own heads. Our beliefs and understandings about the world are limited by that perspective. It can not work without you. You are a fundamental part of this show”

Tags under cut

@longsnowsmoon5 @devoursjohnlock @wssh-watson @gosherlocked @221bloodnun @antisocial-otaku @kunstninja @teaandqueerbaiting @a-reocurring-dream @ebaeschnbliah @monikakrasnorada @just-sort-of-happened @isitandwonder @loveismyrevolution@tendergingergirl @may-shepard I think it was @jenna221b​ who pointed out The Experiments originally (??). I could be wrong. I have a bad memory and poor tagging skills.

[wwewrestlemania35]

WWE WrestleMania 35 Card, Date, Rumors, News, Predictions, and Matches

WrestleMania 35 is on the horizon! WWE’s biggest show has been a staple since the 80s and has given us plenty of fantastic moments. From the days of King Kong Bundy crushing Special Delivery Jones in mere seconds to Braun Strowman pulling a child out of the crowd to help him win the tag titles, WrestleMania has been the wrestling show with the brightest spotlight.

Then again, the Raw and SmackDown after it are way better. The NXT TakeOver show the night before is pretty much superior too. The Hall of Fame ceremony...? Eh.

Get ready for the long haul because not only is it a huge stretch of wrestling shows, but WrestleMania itself is extremely long these days.

WRESTLEMANIA 35 DATE & TIME The show will take place on April 7, 2019 at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

WWE HALL OF FAME CEREMONY As always, a lengthy Hall of Fame ceremony will be available on the WWE Network. The inductees so far are D-Generation X, The Honky Tonk Man, Torrie Wilson, and Harlem Heat.

NXT TAKEOVER: NEW YORK On Saturday April 6, NXT will have a big show of its own. No matches are announced quite yet, but the TakeOver before WrestleMania tends to be an extra special one due to writing off major names so that they can appear on the main roster on the Raw and SmackDown of that week.

WRESTLEMANIA 35 MATCHES BROCK LESNAR (C) VS. SETH ROLLINS BROCK LESNAR (C) VS. SETH ROLLINS Universal Championship Years ago, Seth Rollins shocked the world by cashing in Money in the Bank during a title match between Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns and pinning Roman. He and Brock had a title match shortly after, and Brock most definitely dominated, but Seth was rescued by the Undertaker. In the years that followed, Brock would rise again to the top and would regularly feud with the likes of Roman Reigns, Braun Strowman, Bill Goldberg, and others.

read more: The 100 Worst Moments in WrestleMania History

Seth Rollins regained his mojo and courage over time. He has been one of the top heroes of Raw, especially with Roman being sidelined with leukemia. Rollins won the 2019 men's Royal Rumble by last defeating Braun Strowman. On the next Raw, Paul Heyman talked up how much of a mistake it would be for Rollins to challenge Brock. Rollins stormed out and started attacking Brock, only to eat several F5s in a row. A weak Rollins egged Brock on and ate one more for good measure.

Since then, Rollins has been making it sound like Brock is his white whale. He will take down Brock or destroy his own career trying. He did make a good point, though, about how Brock has had the most problems with the smaller opponents (ie. Finn Balor and Daniel Bryan) and he'd use that to his advantage. Paul Heyman tried to have Rollins taken down by a surprise Shelton Benjamin ambush, but Rollins defeated him and moved on.

BECKY LYNCH VS. RONDA ROUSEY (C) VS. CHARLOTTE FLAIR Triple threat for the WWE Raw Women's Championship Last November, when Survivor Series played up Raw vs. SmackDown and all the champion vs. champion bouts, the one many looked forward to was Raw's Ronda Rousey vs. SmackDown's Becky Lynch. Ronda had been dominant in the Raw women's division, but Becky was the first to really humble her in the lead-up. This included a segment where a bloodied Becky beat Ronda down with a chair and posed in the crowd, looking like a battle-damaged million bucks. Unfortunately, she suffered a legit injury from a nasty Nia Jax punch during that segment and they had to drop the match. Charlotte was chosen to replace Becky and had a bit of an episode late in the match. She snapped and got herself disqualified by beating Ronda with a kendo stick.

The three-way feud continued when Becky defended the SmackDown Women's Championship against Asuka and Charlotte Flair. Ronda walked out and shoved Becky and Charlotte off the ladder, allowing Asuka to win. Becky got another match against Asuka, but ended up tapping out.

Although Becky wasn't listed as a competitors in the women's Royal Rumble, an injured Lana meant that only 29 would compete. Becky insisted on taking her place and it was granted. She ended up defeating Charlotte in the end. On the Raw after, she got in Ronda's face and made it clear that she's going after the Raw Women's Championship.

read more: The 50 Greatest WrestleMania Storylines

Unfortunately, an altercation between Becky and Charlotte led to Becky aggravating her injured knee. She refused to have WWE doctors look at it out of fear that the brass wanted an excuse to keep her out of the match. This led to her attacking Stephanie McMahon and Triple H, which gave her an ultimatum: apologize or miss her match. Becky apologized, but Vince McMahon decided to suspend her for 60 days anyway, causing her to miss WrestleMania. Charlotte was brought out as her replacement.

At Elimination Chamber, Ronda easily defeated Ruby Riott with Charlotte watching at ringside. As the two had a staredown, Becky hobbled to ringside with her crutches. She then beat down both of her rivals with said crutches before being escorted out of the building.

On Raw, Becky got arrested for showing up to attack Ronda one more time, but Ronda desperately pleaded with Stephanie McMahon to reinstate Becky and put her back in the match. Ronda discarded her title and left, feeling that the championship was being disrespected. Stephanie later agreed to bring back Becky and have Becky vs. Charlotte for the vacated title. This angered Ronda, who claimed that she never truly vacated her title. Instead, Stephanie had Becky vs. Charlotte decide whether or not Becky would be involved at WrestleMania.

At Fastlane, Charlotte seemed to have the injured Becky taken care of, but Ronda ran out and attacked Becky for the sake of having Becky win.

TRIPLE H VS. BATISTA No Holds Barred For the 1,000th edition of SmackDown, all four members of Evolution appeared for a reunion. Batista made a reference to how Triple H never beat him, which he played off as being all in fun. Months later, Raw was holding a celebration for Ric Flair's 70th birthday. When Flair was supposed to appear, they instead showed him getting beat up by Batista backstage. This was apparently Batista's way of getting Triple H's attention.

Things got weird, mainly because they were trying to build to a match where Batista was the heel and the dickish authority figure was the face. Triple H did a goofy worked shoot promo that gave people plenty of second-hand embarrassment. Eventually, it was decided that the two would square off at WrestleMania and there would be no rules.

Batista later explained his actions as being sick of Triple H taking credit for his accomplishments while also being a bit pissed about the real-life situation where Triple H didn't think Guardians of the Galaxy was going to be much of a success. Of course, Michael Cole tried to respond with talking up what a wonderful man Triple H actually is, causing everyone to roll their eyes.

SHANE MCMAHON VS. THE MIZ At Crown Jewel, Miz took part in a tournament to crown the Best in the World. During the finals, he endured a leg injury and had to bow out against his will. Shane McMahon decided to replace him, despite it being the finals and Shane being fresh, and was able to defeat Dolph Ziggler. Miz handled it well and considered he and Shane to be "co-besties." He then started bugging him about being his tag team partner. Shane was reluctant and annoyed, but accepted the offer once Miz opened up about how he was trying to win the love and respect of his father.

The two immediately climbed to the top of the tag division and won the titles off The Bar. Soon after, they lost to The Usos and lost again in a rematch. Both times it was Miz who ate the pin. As the two walked off from defeat, Shane attacked Miz from behind, thrashed him a bunch, and assaulted Miz's father. Shane later said that he was sick of being used by others and announced this upcoming match with his former tag partner.

KURT ANGLE VS. BARON CORBIN Since returning as Raw GM a few years ago, Kurt Angle has had a handful of matches in WWE. Recently, he's accepted that his time is coming to an end, so he's decided that WrestleMania will be his farewell match. As he spends the weeks taking on those who look up to him like Apollo Crews and Chad Gable, he's chosen Baron Corbin as his final opponent. As his former assistant, Corbin undermined Angle repeatedly and took over his role for a while. Now Angle wants to humble him before he rides off into the sunset.

AJ STYLES VS. RANDY ORTON The two tentpole members of the SmackDown roster have recently been clashing, including Orton pinning AJ in the Elimination Chamber and AJ knocking out Orton out of nowhere at Fastlane. The two got to air out their grievances in the ring and went back and forth in looking down at each other's histories and accomplishments. Finally, AJ made the challenge for WrestleMania and while Orton slinked away from ringside, he ultimately accepted.

THE ANDRE THE GIANT MEMORIAL BATTLE ROYAL Since WrestleMania XXX, there's been a throwaway battle royal featuring the men on the roster who don't have anything else going on. Former winners include Cesaro, Big Show, Baron Corbin, Mojo Rawley, and Matt Hardy. So far, only Braun Strowman is announced for this match and it will apparently tie in with his head-scratching feud with the two Weekend Update guys from Saturday Night Live. Sure, why not.

WRESTLEMANIA 35 RUMORS AND LIKELY MATCHES Kofi Kingston vs. Daniel Bryan for the WWE Championship is practically a done deal, for sure. Kofi's star shot up right before and during Elimination Chamber and a match was signed for Fastlane. WWE seemed to realize what they had on their hands and had Kofi screwed out of it, presumably to give us a match at WrestleMania instead. All he has to do is...win a gauntlet match against a big pile of opponents. Hoo boy.

The Women's Tag Team Championship will probably be defended in a Fatal 4-Way with Sasha Banks and Bayley defending against Nia Jax and Tamina, Beth Phoenix and Natalya, and The IIconics.

Expect the the WrestleMania Women's Battle Royal. Maybe they can figure out a non-problematic woman to name that match after this time around.

read more: The History of WrestleMania Battle Royals

Drew McIntyre vs. Roman Reigns is on the plate after McIntyre beat the returning Roman so badly that he seemingly suffered a concussion. McIntyre then made short work of Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins (with a little help from Brock Lesnar) and laid down the challenge for Roman.

Buddy Murphy will be defending the Cruiserweight Championship. Against who? Well, we have to wait for an eight man tournament first. As of this writing, it's down to Tony Nese and Cedric Alexander.

[flauntpage]

The Velveteen Dream is WWE's Chance to Move Beyond Gay Panic

Patrick Clarke Jr. is only 22 but he has come a long way since 2015, when he finished 9th in the WWE reality series Tough Enough. These days you probably know him better as the Velveteen Dream, sexually ambiguous, gender-fluid ascendant NXT superstar. On Saturday night, he participated in one of the marquee matchups at NXT Takeover: War Games, an extremely entertaining affair that ended in a close loss to the unbeaten Aleister Black and served as the culmination to what has been one of the most interesting feuds on NXT television for weeks.

For as athletically gifted as Velveteen Dream is, it’s his innate, unteachable ability to truly inhabit a character that puts him lengths ahead of where most wrestlers are at the same age and experience level.

There was certainly no guarantee that Clarke was going to be able to make this kind of character work, but he has completely thrown himself into the role, and wrestling fans—not stereotypically known as a particularly progressive or tolerant audience—have responded in kind. The course of his career going forward will say a lot about how WWE, which has a long history of reducing these types of characters to lazy and offensive stereotypes, has evolved—or hasn’t.

To really understand the type of character The Velveteen Dream is, you have to take a look back at professional wrestling history. As long as it has existed, it’s been a medium that plays on its audiences most basic fears and desires. Up until the 1940’s it was mostly an endless cycle of the same generic story—clean-cut hometown hero vs. evil foreign or ethnic stereotype—but it didn’t really begin to resemble what we recognize as pro wrestling until generic Nebraska boy George Raymond Wagner grew his hair out, bleached it platinum blonde, donned an extravagant cape and became Gorgeous George. Coinciding perfectly with the rise of television, he quickly became one of the most famous and highly paid athletes/performers in the country, single handedly dragging both the wrestling industry and American culture itself into a bold, modern direction. He did this not by appealing to a sense of nationalism, but by challenging and mutating what were then very rigid gender norms, and causing the massive audiences he would draw both on television and in person to simultaneously fear and revere him.

Since then, this eagerness to challenge traditional views of gender has become one of pro wrestling’s most recognizable tropes, from Gorgeous George to the Exoticos of lucha libre to Adrian Street. In a way, it’s one of the most progressive things about the sport—there have been gender non-conforming or queer-adjacent characters in pro wrestling for a lot longer than most other mainstream storytelling mediums—but at the same time it’s reactionary; a way to play on the basic prejudices of its audiences in order to sell tickets to a violent spectacle. Although wrestlers like Ric Flair, Rick Rude, and Shawn Michaels have incorporated various elements of this particular trope into their personas to tremendous success, it was always in service of their portrayal as heterosexual lothario figures. Any time in the modern WWF/E era that a character has attempted to really lean into the inherent homoeroticism of the business, it’s almost always ended up as a negative, reactive exercise in shock value and, in wrestling terms, cheap heat. A tool that a villain uses to gain the upper hand by turning his good guy opponent’s traditional masculinity against him.

From “Adorable” Adrian Adonis, who began his career as a generic bruiser and was re-branded in the early 80’s as a walking collection of every negative homosexual stereotype imaginable, to late 90’s tag team Billy & Chuck, who started as a comedy act in the vein of SNL’s ambiguously gay duo but eventually led to a now-infamous “wedding” segment that was denounced by GLAAD, WWE has repeatedly botched any efforts at portraying these kinds of characters with anything resembling subtlety or nuance. When Darren Young came out and was subsequently supported publically by the company, many believed it was a sign that WWE had turned a corner in this regard and were serious about presiding over a more inclusive modern era, but it’s hard to square that with the reality that Young was unceremoniously released a few weeks ago after a few minor pushes never went anywhere. Goldust was the closest WWE came to a genuinely subversive, androgynous character, and his appearance in the still squeaky clean era of mid-90’s wrestling essentially kickstarted a more adult-oriented focus that would lead to the biggest boom period in the company’s history; but this may have had more to do with Dustin Runnels’ skill as a performer, as Goldust’s initial storylines with Razor Ramon and Roddy Piper veered into ugly homophobia and the character’s ambiguous elements were eventually toned down.

“I think the evidence is pretty clear that Vince McMahon and the WWE treated queerness as a device for generating heel heat and had zero interest in channeling gender-fluidity into a positive "face" trait,” said Josh Howard, sports historian, wrestling fan, and co-author of A Secret Fascination, a study of gender non-conformity and masculinity in pro wrestling.

His co-author, writer and queer theorist Elizabeth Catte, was inclined to agree.

“I think many of the wrestlers who did gender non-conforming gimmicks were reactive, in the sense that they were reacting to exaggerated stereotypes of masculinity that are native to wrestling, but also to our culture itself (a bit like camp),” she told VICE Sports.

Yet despite the company’s negative track record, The Velveteen Dream feels like an opportunity to do something that rises above the outdated and inherently-conservative form of storytelling they’ve always relied on and present a gender-fluid character that actually feels progressive and subversive. The feud with Aleister Black has served as a tremendous opportunity to show that the character works under a bigger spotlight, and at the same time has really challenged Black, himself one of the company’s top prospects, to transcend the limitations inherent to his own persona—a stoic Satanist who kicks people in the face—and prove he is capable of backing up his significant in-ring ability with equally compelling character work.

NXT audiences have indicated that they’re happy to be along for the ride. During their match at War Games, Dream—ostensibly still a heel—was just as popular with the crowd as his opponent. And when Black pointedly said his name in a brief post-match promo and later glanced back at Dream while making his way up the ramp, finally giving him the precious acknowledgment he had been demanding, fans cheered hysterically.

In 2017 and beyond, wrestling audiences are ready for boundary-pushing characters and storylines that aren’t simply vehicles for gay panic and subsequent homophobic rage. The question now is whether or not WWE is ready as well. If they can take advantage of Velveteen Dream’s significant gifts as both an athlete and performer and truly embrace the unapologetically non-conforming elements of his character, it will go a long way to proving that their talk of being a more modern, progressive company that has moved beyond its reactionary conservative roots is more than just empty corporate jargon.

The Velveteen Dream is WWE's Chance to Move Beyond Gay Panic published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

The Velveteen Dream is WWE’s Chance to Move Beyond Gay Panic

Patrick Clarke Jr. is only 22 but he has come a long way since 2015, when he finished 9th in the WWE reality series Tough Enough. These days you probably know him better as the Velveteen Dream, sexually ambiguous, gender-fluid ascendant NXT superstar. On Saturday night, he participated in one of the marquee matchups at NXT Takeover: War Games, an extremely entertaining affair that ended in a close loss to the unbeaten Aleister Black and served as the culmination to what has been one of the most interesting feuds on NXT television for weeks.

For as athletically gifted as Velveteen Dream is, it’s his innate, unteachable ability to truly inhabit a character that puts him lengths ahead of where most wrestlers are at the same age and experience level.

There was certainly no guarantee that Clarke was going to be able to make this kind of character work, but he has completely thrown himself into the role, and wrestling fans—not stereotypically known as a particularly progressive or tolerant audience—have responded in kind. The course of his career going forward will say a lot about how WWE, which has a long history of reducing these types of characters to lazy and offensive stereotypes, has evolved—or hasn’t.

To really understand the type of character The Velveteen Dream is, you have to take a look back at professional wrestling history. As long as it has existed, it’s been a medium that plays on its audiences most basic fears and desires. Up until the 1940’s it was mostly an endless cycle of the same generic story—clean-cut hometown hero vs. evil foreign or ethnic stereotype—but it didn’t really begin to resemble what we recognize as pro wrestling until generic Nebraska boy George Raymond Wagner grew his hair out, bleached it platinum blonde, donned an extravagant cape and became Gorgeous George. Coinciding perfectly with the rise of television, he quickly became one of the most famous and highly paid athletes/performers in the country, single handedly dragging both the wrestling industry and American culture itself into a bold, modern direction. He did this not by appealing to a sense of nationalism, but by challenging and mutating what were then very rigid gender norms, and causing the massive audiences he would draw both on television and in person to simultaneously fear and revere him.

Since then, this eagerness to challenge traditional views of gender has become one of pro wrestling’s most recognizable tropes, from Gorgeous George to the Exoticos of lucha libre to Adrian Street. In a way, it’s one of the most progressive things about the sport—there have been gender non-conforming or queer-adjacent characters in pro wrestling for a lot longer than most other mainstream storytelling mediums—but at the same time it’s reactionary; a way to play on the basic prejudices of its audiences in order to sell tickets to a violent spectacle. Although wrestlers like Ric Flair, Rick Rude, and Shawn Michaels have incorporated various elements of this particular trope into their personas to tremendous success, it was always in service of their portrayal as heterosexual lothario figures. Any time in the modern WWF/E era that a character has attempted to really lean into the inherent homoeroticism of the business, it’s almost always ended up as a negative, reactive exercise in shock value and, in wrestling terms, cheap heat. A tool that a villain uses to gain the upper hand by turning his good guy opponent’s traditional masculinity against him.

From “Adorable” Adrian Adonis, who began his career as a generic bruiser and was re-branded in the early 80’s as a walking collection of every negative homosexual stereotype imaginable, to late 90’s tag team Billy & Chuck, who started as a comedy act in the vein of SNL’s ambiguously gay duo but eventually led to a now-infamous “wedding” segment that was denounced by GLAAD, WWE has repeatedly botched any efforts at portraying these kinds of characters with anything resembling subtlety or nuance. When Darren Young came out and was subsequently supported publically by the company, many believed it was a sign that WWE had turned a corner in this regard and were serious about presiding over a more inclusive modern era, but it’s hard to square that with the reality that Young was unceremoniously released a few weeks ago after a few minor pushes never went anywhere. Goldust was the closest WWE came to a genuinely subversive, androgynous character, and his appearance in the still squeaky clean era of mid-90’s wrestling essentially kickstarted a more adult-oriented focus that would lead to the biggest boom period in the company’s history; but this may have had more to do with Dustin Runnels’ skill as a performer, as Goldust’s initial storylines with Razor Ramon and Roddy Piper veered into ugly homophobia and the character’s ambiguous elements were eventually toned down.

“I think the evidence is pretty clear that Vince McMahon and the WWE treated queerness as a device for generating heel heat and had zero interest in channeling gender-fluidity into a positive “face” trait,” said Josh Howard, sports historian, wrestling fan, and co-author of A Secret Fascination, a study of gender non-conformity and masculinity in pro wrestling.

His co-author, writer and queer theorist Elizabeth Catte, was inclined to agree.

“I think many of the wrestlers who did gender non-conforming gimmicks were reactive, in the sense that they were reacting to exaggerated stereotypes of masculinity that are native to wrestling, but also to our culture itself (a bit like camp),” she told VICE Sports.

Yet despite the company’s negative track record, The Velveteen Dream feels like an opportunity to do something that rises above the outdated and inherently-conservative form of storytelling they’ve always relied on and present a gender-fluid character that actually feels progressive and subversive. The feud with Aleister Black has served as a tremendous opportunity to show that the character works under a bigger spotlight, and at the same time has really challenged Black, himself one of the company’s top prospects, to transcend the limitations inherent to his own persona—a stoic Satanist who kicks people in the face—and prove he is capable of backing up his significant in-ring ability with equally compelling character work.

NXT audiences have indicated that they’re happy to be along for the ride. During their match at War Games, Dream—ostensibly still a heel—was just as popular with the crowd as his opponent. And when Black pointedly said his name in a brief post-match promo and later glanced back at Dream while making his way up the ramp, finally giving him the precious acknowledgment he had been demanding, fans cheered hysterically.

In 2017 and beyond, wrestling audiences are ready for boundary-pushing characters and storylines that aren’t simply vehicles for gay panic and subsequent homophobic rage. The question now is whether or not WWE is ready as well. If they can take advantage of Velveteen Dream’s significant gifts as both an athlete and performer and truly embrace the unapologetically non-conforming elements of his character, it will go a long way to proving that their talk of being a more modern, progressive company that has moved beyond its reactionary conservative roots is more than just empty corporate jargon.

The Velveteen Dream is WWE’s Chance to Move Beyond Gay Panic syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

[mermaiid4life-blog]

Viral Marketing instructions Can You Make money? Viral internet marketing is frequently touted since the new technique to increase market place penetration and create brand concentration in the internet room or space. Viral promotion isn't really as catching among individuals as marketers would like, depending on a new survey from Jupiter Research. Virus-like marketing is as well sometimes labeled viral marketing and advertising. Marketing Marketing and advertising on the web is often a whole new stadium, and companies/people are going to have a shot at anything to person promote. Virus-like marketing and virus-like advertising insist on marketing approaches that use current social networks to provide increases within brand understanding, through self-replicating viral steps, analogous towards spread with pathological together with computer trojans. 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When ever views begin trailing away after a 7 days to a few days, it's a chance to add some a lot more generic labels, tags which draw out the exact long longest tail of a video clip as it sets out to appear and search results online and Look for engines. For the first days that a training video is on line, we avoid keyword labels to enhance the video with regard to searches online. I'm in no way talking about maussade tags; Now i'm talking about special tags, tag words that are not spent on any other Vimeo videos. Buddies A large proportion of workers' friends and family members are actually online or simply soon are going to be. An Outbreak of "Viral Marketing" Acquiring Web users to secure ads along with promos to friends is beneficial and affordable -- simply perfect for today's dot-coms. Social professionals tell us that all person provides a network connected with 8 to help 12 folks in their shut down network associated with friends, friends and family, and patrons. A professional does a specific thing and a purchaser tells six or 12 friends. Several of those colleagues might notify a friend. I will frontward this article in order to my advertising friends. For some time marketers acquire friends from newspapers as soon as they want to trickle stories, I know it's not some sort of leap to lift weights who chooses content from video expression companies and set them to the entertainment catalog too. Software programs The choice that brings your marketing and advertising message should be easy to move and indicate: e-mail, web-site, graphic, software package download. Virus-like marketing "started out to be a business-to-consumer resource for huge marketing products" such as popular music, books, and even software, affirms Kim Creeks, Internet-marketing marketing consultancy at Bardo-Brooks Marketing, operating out of Kirkland, Rinse off. If some may be competent inside creating packages for different software, he can truly use them that will as internet marketing tools. A single must make convinced, though, the fact that the software is made up of some kind of advert containing the main marketing note. Although it of course lends itself to free of charge "communications" or simply network apps, Viral Promotion could also be utilized on traditional stand-alone software to help accelerate the main word-of-mouth pass on of good applications. It plays software piracy into a income opportunity. Virus-like marketing is a nice bit related to winning heart and intellects. It is broadly touted given that the new option to increase marketplace penetration and make brand mindset in the internet spot. Viral promotion is not with regards to wasting individuals time; its instead related to giving something want to waste time on. It isn't only getting yourself nowadays with some free of charge information, nevertheless utilizing the very "coolness" issue by convincing people to write about who you are and distribute the word, in this instance the iPhone. Virus-like marketing is definitely as helpful as some others say the item if it might be done the right way.

[ennevuo-blog]

Viral Marketing -- Can You Make money? Viral marketing and advertising is greatly touted when the new solution to increase current market penetration and create brand level of sensitivity in the internet area. Viral internet marketing isn't really as infectious among shoppers as promoters would like, reported by a new review from Jupiter Research. Virus-like marketing can be sometimes termed viral marketing and advertising. Marketing Promoting on the web can be a whole new area, and companies/people are going to attempt anything to do-it-yourself promote. Virus-like marketing and virus-like advertising insist on marketing procedures that use current social networks to create increases throughout brand level of sensitivity, through self-replicating viral steps, analogous towards the spread involving pathological and even computer malware. [1] Virus-like marketing can be a marketing occurrence that helps and really encourages people to put across, pass on a marketing information voluntarily. Virus-like marketing will be based upon this purely natural human behaviour. The goal of advertisers interested in generating successful virus-like marketing packages is to discover individuals with higher Social Networking Possibilities (SNP) develop Viral Emails that bring this message of the people and have a very high probability to be passed alongside. One example about successful virus-like marketing is normally Hotmail, an agency, now owned or operated by 'microsoft', that encourages its services and its private advertisers' communications in every wearer's e-mail records. Viral internet marketing describes just about any strategy which will encourages visitors to pass on an advertising message towards others, resulting in the potential for rapid growth from the message's direct exposure and affect. Some virus-like marketing strategies function much better than other individuals, and number of work as clearly as the uncomplicated Hotmail. The particular medium that will carries your own personal marketing note must be an easy task to transfer in addition to replicate: email, website, visual, software get. Video Viral news may take are video clips, exciting Flash online games, advergames, photographs, or even texting. Here are some regulations we go along with.: Make it brief: 15-30 moments is ideal; pack in long tales into bite-sized clips Suitable for remixing: produce a video which may be simple enough for being remixed again and again by other people. Helpful study of a wonderful example of an on-line viral advertise aided by means of short TELLY ads in which lead drop some weight a 7-minute video. To paraphrase, not all films go virus-like organically tutorial there is a approach to the chaos. And Shelter Jeans delivered messages by using news of an cool video gaming featuring heroes from TELLY and printer ads. "There might be pick-up on a movie eight many months after that aired, as soon as the subject matter seems in the reports. Free An illustration of this viral promotion is the majority of the free email address services available online. Free email services, zero cost information, zero cost "cool" switches, free applications that conduct powerful attributes but not around you get while in the "pro" adaptation. The approach is simple: Donate free email addresses plus services, install a simple marking at the bottom of the free note sent out: "Get your confidential, free e-mail at..... Totally free Internet marketing information, web site advancement tutorials, the business sector strategies plus software solutions. Gifts valuable products. " "Free" is the most potent word within a marketer's words. They may not really profit nowadays, or future, but if they could generate the groundswell of great interest from anything free, many people know they might profit "soon and for all their lives" (with excuses to "Casablanca"). The beauty regarding all this is it is free of charge advertising. Article content Article marketing is just not yet wholly understood to be one of the best ways to encourage your website: better yet than pay per click traffic advertising. Content articles as a virus-like marketing tool A really successful system is the progress articles and even tutorials including these. Article advertising: the new internet promotion frontier functions. Authors, who seem to give away absolutely free articles, tend to position all their articles with others' webpages. A media release could be picked up by way of hundreds of catalogues and contact form the basis involving articles spotted by large numbers of audience. Submitting articles or reviews to Guide Archives in addition to eZine Web publishers submitting content articles you have authored is one of the simplest and fastest ways to get prompt FREE spotlight to your web-site and is also a very good way to get back links back to your web sites without backlinks back. An individual tube The exact core idea of video marketing online is to utilize the power of typically the site's website visitors. There are 1000s of videos loaded to Myspace each day (I've heard prices between 10-65, 000 clips per day). It seems evident, but consumers see a huge selection of videos on YouTube, as well as title along with thumbnail are a good way for video clip publishers towards actively encourage someone to mouse click on a video. Have you watched a movie with 75, 000 thoughts about YouTube together with thought to all by yourself: "How the heck did that video tutorial get plenty of views. If views start up trailing down after a day or two to a weeks time, it's the perfect time to add some far more generic tag cloud, tags that will draw out often the long bottom of a online video media as it will start to appear browsing results online and Yahoo and google. For the first days that a video tutorial is web based, we avoid keyword labels to optimise the video intended for searches online. I'm not necessarily talking about tragique tags; I'm just talking about exceptional tags, tickets that are not utilised by any other Facebook videos. Pals A large proportion of every person's friends and family members are actually online or maybe soon are going to be. An Crisis of "Viral Marketing" Having Web users through ads together with promos on friends is useful and affordable -- ideal for today's dot-coms. Social people tell us that every person includes a network involving 8 so that you can 12 people today in their near network regarding friends, friends and family, and acquaintances. A marketing expert does one thing and a customer tells all 5 or five friends. About three of those good friends might say to a friend. I will ahead this article towards my marketing and advertising friends. Consistently marketers acquire friends on newspapers after they want to problem stories, I'm certain it's not any leap to see who choices content within video expression companies make them for the entertainment checklist too. Computer software The channel that contains your marketing and advertising message needs to be easy to send and imitate: e-mail, internet site, graphic, software package download. Virus-like marketing "started out in the form of business-to-consumer instrument for huge marketing products" such as songs, books, and even software, states that Kim Creeks, Internet-marketing expert at Bardo-Brooks Marketing, headquartered in Kirkland, Rinse. If the first is competent around creating software packages for different use, he can in reality use them for you to as advertising tools. You must make absolutely sure, though, that software possesses some kind of advertising campaign containing the very marketing concept. Although it of course lends itself to 100 % free "communications" and also network software, Viral Promotion could also be ascribed to traditional stand-alone software towards accelerate often the word-of-mouth distributed of good program. It spins software piracy into a profits opportunity. Virus-like marketing is an excellent bit pertaining to winning minds and intellects. It is extensively touted when the new solution to increase sector penetration and make brand level of sensitivity in the internet room. Viral promotion is not in relation to wasting peoples' time; it really is instead with regards to giving something want to spend some time on. It is not necessarily only adding yourself on the market with some zero cost information, nevertheless utilizing the very "coolness" element by convincing people to write about who you are and get spread around the word, in such cases the iPhone. Virus-like marketing is often as efficient as other individuals say it all if it could be done adequately.

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The Velveteen Dream is WWE's Chance to Move Beyond Gay Panic

Patrick Clarke Jr. is only 22 but he has come a long way since 2015, when he finished 9th in the WWE reality series Tough Enough. These days you probably know him better as the Velveteen Dream, sexually ambiguous, gender-fluid ascendant NXT superstar. On Saturday night, he participated in one of the marquee matchups at NXT Takeover: War Games, an extremely entertaining affair that ended in a close loss to the unbeaten Aleister Black and served as the culmination to what has been one of the most interesting feuds on NXT television for weeks.

For as athletically gifted as Velveteen Dream is, it’s his innate, unteachable ability to truly inhabit a character that puts him lengths ahead of where most wrestlers are at the same age and experience level.

There was certainly no guarantee that Clarke was going to be able to make this kind of character work, but he has completely thrown himself into the role, and wrestling fans—not stereotypically known as a particularly progressive or tolerant audience—have responded in kind. The course of his career going forward will say a lot about how WWE, which has a long history of reducing these types of characters to lazy and offensive stereotypes, has evolved—or hasn’t.

To really understand the type of character The Velveteen Dream is, you have to take a look back at professional wrestling history. As long as it has existed, it’s been a medium that plays on its audiences most basic fears and desires. Up until the 1940’s it was mostly an endless cycle of the same generic story—clean-cut hometown hero vs. evil foreign or ethnic stereotype—but it didn’t really begin to resemble what we recognize as pro wrestling until generic Nebraska boy George Raymond Wagner grew his hair out, bleached it platinum blonde, donned an extravagant cape and became Gorgeous George. Coinciding perfectly with the rise of television, he quickly became one of the most famous and highly paid athletes/performers in the country, single handedly dragging both the wrestling industry and American culture itself into a bold, modern direction. He did this not by appealing to a sense of nationalism, but by challenging and mutating what were then very rigid gender norms, and causing the massive audiences he would draw both on television and in person to simultaneously fear and revere him.

Since then, this eagerness to challenge traditional views of gender has become one of pro wrestling’s most recognizable tropes, from Gorgeous George to the Exoticos of lucha libre to Adrian Street. In a way, it’s one of the most progressive things about the sport—there have been gender non-conforming or queer-adjacent characters in pro wrestling for a lot longer than most other mainstream storytelling mediums—but at the same time it’s reactionary; a way to play on the basic prejudices of its audiences in order to sell tickets to a violent spectacle. Although wrestlers like Ric Flair, Rick Rude, and Shawn Michaels have incorporated various elements of this particular trope into their personas to tremendous success, it was always in service of their portrayal as heterosexual lothario figures. Any time in the modern WWF/E era that a character has attempted to really lean into the inherent homoeroticism of the business, it’s almost always ended up as a negative, reactive exercise in shock value and, in wrestling terms, cheap heat. A tool that a villain uses to gain the upper hand by turning his good guy opponent’s traditional masculinity against him.

From “Adorable” Adrian Adonis, who began his career as a generic bruiser and was re-branded in the early 80’s as a walking collection of every negative homosexual stereotype imaginable, to late 90’s tag team Billy & Chuck, who started as a comedy act in the vein of SNL’s ambiguously gay duo but eventually led to a now-infamous “wedding” segment that was denounced by GLAAD, WWE has repeatedly botched any efforts at portraying these kinds of characters with anything resembling subtlety or nuance. When Darren Young came out and was subsequently supported publically by the company, many believed it was a sign that WWE had turned a corner in this regard and were serious about presiding over a more inclusive modern era, but it’s hard to square that with the reality that Young was unceremoniously released a few weeks ago after a few minor pushes never went anywhere. Goldust was the closest WWE came to a genuinely subversive, androgynous character, and his appearance in the still squeaky clean era of mid-90’s wrestling essentially kickstarted a more adult-oriented focus that would lead to the biggest boom period in the company’s history; but this may have had more to do with Dustin Runnels’ skill as a performer, as Goldust’s initial storylines with Razor Ramon and Roddy Piper veered into ugly homophobia and the character’s ambiguous elements were eventually toned down.

“I think the evidence is pretty clear that Vince McMahon and the WWE treated queerness as a device for generating heel heat and had zero interest in channeling gender-fluidity into a positive "face" trait,” said Josh Howard, sports historian, wrestling fan, and co-author of A Secret Fascination, a study of gender non-conformity and masculinity in pro wrestling.

His co-author, writer and queer theorist Elizabeth Catte, was inclined to agree.

“I think many of the wrestlers who did gender non-conforming gimmicks were reactive, in the sense that they were reacting to exaggerated stereotypes of masculinity that are native to wrestling, but also to our culture itself (a bit like camp),” she told VICE Sports.

Yet despite the company’s negative track record, The Velveteen Dream feels like an opportunity to do something that rises above the outdated and inherently-conservative form of storytelling they’ve always relied on and present a gender-fluid character that actually feels progressive and subversive. The feud with Aleister Black has served as a tremendous opportunity to show that the character works under a bigger spotlight, and at the same time has really challenged Black, himself one of the company’s top prospects, to transcend the limitations inherent to his own persona—a stoic Satanist who kicks people in the face—and prove he is capable of backing up his significant in-ring ability with equally compelling character work.

NXT audiences have indicated that they’re happy to be along for the ride. During their match at War Games, Dream—ostensibly still a heel—was just as popular with the crowd as his opponent. And when Black pointedly said his name in a brief post-match promo and later glanced back at Dream while making his way up the ramp, finally giving him the precious acknowledgment he had been demanding, fans cheered hysterically.

In 2017 and beyond, wrestling audiences are ready for boundary-pushing characters and storylines that aren’t simply vehicles for gay panic and subsequent homophobic rage. The question now is whether or not WWE is ready as well. If they can take advantage of Velveteen Dream’s significant gifts as both an athlete and performer and truly embrace the unapologetically non-conforming elements of his character, it will go a long way to proving that their talk of being a more modern, progressive company that has moved beyond its reactionary conservative roots is more than just empty corporate jargon.

The Velveteen Dream is WWE's Chance to Move Beyond Gay Panic published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

The Velveteen Dream is WWE's Chance to Move Beyond Gay Panic

Patrick Clarke Jr. is only 22 but he has come a long way since 2015, when he finished 9th in the WWE reality series Tough Enough. These days you probably know him better as the Velveteen Dream, sexually ambiguous, gender-fluid ascendant NXT superstar. On Saturday night, he participated in one of the marquee matchups at NXT Takeover: War Games, an extremely entertaining affair that ended in a close loss to the unbeaten Aleister Black and served as the culmination to what has been one of the most interesting feuds on NXT television for weeks.

For as athletically gifted as Velveteen Dream is, it’s his innate, unteachable ability to truly inhabit a character that puts him lengths ahead of where most wrestlers are at the same age and experience level.

There was certainly no guarantee that Clarke was going to be able to make this kind of character work, but he has completely thrown himself into the role, and wrestling fans—not stereotypically known as a particularly progressive or tolerant audience—have responded in kind. The course of his career going forward will say a lot about how WWE, which has a long history of reducing these types of characters to lazy and offensive stereotypes, has evolved—or hasn’t.

To really understand the type of character The Velveteen Dream is, you have to take a look back at professional wrestling history. As long as it has existed, it’s been a medium that plays on its audiences most basic fears and desires. Up until the 1940’s it was mostly an endless cycle of the same generic story—clean-cut hometown hero vs. evil foreign or ethnic stereotype—but it didn’t really begin to resemble what we recognize as pro wrestling until generic Nebraska boy George Raymond Wagner grew his hair out, bleached it platinum blonde, donned an extravagant cape and became Gorgeous George. Coinciding perfectly with the rise of television, he quickly became one of the most famous and highly paid athletes/performers in the country, single handedly dragging both the wrestling industry and American culture itself into a bold, modern direction. He did this not by appealing to a sense of nationalism, but by challenging and mutating what were then very rigid gender norms, and causing the massive audiences he would draw both on television and in person to simultaneously fear and revere him.

Since then, this eagerness to challenge traditional views of gender has become one of pro wrestling’s most recognizable tropes, from Gorgeous George to the Exoticos of lucha libre to Adrian Street. In a way, it’s one of the most progressive things about the sport—there have been gender non-conforming or queer-adjacent characters in pro wrestling for a lot longer than most other mainstream storytelling mediums—but at the same time it’s reactionary; a way to play on the basic prejudices of its audiences in order to sell tickets to a violent spectacle. Although wrestlers like Ric Flair, Rick Rude, and Shawn Michaels have incorporated various elements of this particular trope into their personas to tremendous success, it was always in service of their portrayal as heterosexual lothario figures. Any time in the modern WWF/E era that a character has attempted to really lean into the inherent homoeroticism of the business, it’s almost always ended up as a negative, reactive exercise in shock value and, in wrestling terms, cheap heat. A tool that a villain uses to gain the upper hand by turning his good guy opponent’s traditional masculinity against him.

From “Adorable” Adrian Adonis, who began his career as a generic bruiser and was re-branded in the early 80’s as a walking collection of every negative homosexual stereotype imaginable, to late 90’s tag team Billy & Chuck, who started as a comedy act in the vein of SNL’s ambiguously gay duo but eventually led to a now-infamous “wedding” segment that was denounced by GLAAD, WWE has repeatedly botched any efforts at portraying these kinds of characters with anything resembling subtlety or nuance. When Darren Young came out and was subsequently supported publically by the company, many believed it was a sign that WWE had turned a corner in this regard and were serious about presiding over a more inclusive modern era, but it’s hard to square that with the reality that Young was unceremoniously released a few weeks ago after a few minor pushes never went anywhere. Goldust was the closest WWE came to a genuinely subversive, androgynous character, and his appearance in the still squeaky clean era of mid-90’s wrestling essentially kickstarted a more adult-oriented focus that would lead to the biggest boom period in the company’s history; but this may have had more to do with Dustin Runnels’ skill as a performer, as Goldust’s initial storylines with Razor Ramon and Roddy Piper veered into ugly homophobia and the character’s ambiguous elements were eventually toned down.

“I think the evidence is pretty clear that Vince McMahon and the WWE treated queerness as a device for generating heel heat and had zero interest in channeling gender-fluidity into a positive "face" trait,” said Josh Howard, sports historian, wrestling fan, and co-author of A Secret Fascination, a study of gender non-conformity and masculinity in pro wrestling.

His co-author, writer and queer theorist Elizabeth Catte, was inclined to agree.

“I think many of the wrestlers who did gender non-conforming gimmicks were reactive, in the sense that they were reacting to exaggerated stereotypes of masculinity that are native to wrestling, but also to our culture itself (a bit like camp),” she told VICE Sports.

Yet despite the company’s negative track record, The Velveteen Dream feels like an opportunity to do something that rises above the outdated and inherently-conservative form of storytelling they’ve always relied on and present a gender-fluid character that actually feels progressive and subversive. The feud with Aleister Black has served as a tremendous opportunity to show that the character works under a bigger spotlight, and at the same time has really challenged Black, himself one of the company’s top prospects, to transcend the limitations inherent to his own persona—a stoic Satanist who kicks people in the face—and prove he is capable of backing up his significant in-ring ability with equally compelling character work.

NXT audiences have indicated that they’re happy to be along for the ride. During their match at War Games, Dream—ostensibly still a heel—was just as popular with the crowd as his opponent. And when Black pointedly said his name in a brief post-match promo and later glanced back at Dream while making his way up the ramp, finally giving him the precious acknowledgment he had been demanding, fans cheered hysterically.

In 2017 and beyond, wrestling audiences are ready for boundary-pushing characters and storylines that aren’t simply vehicles for gay panic and subsequent homophobic rage. The question now is whether or not WWE is ready as well. If they can take advantage of Velveteen Dream’s significant gifts as both an athlete and performer and truly embrace the unapologetically non-conforming elements of his character, it will go a long way to proving that their talk of being a more modern, progressive company that has moved beyond its reactionary conservative roots is more than just empty corporate jargon.

The Velveteen Dream is WWE's Chance to Move Beyond Gay Panic published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv