#outside i am a longboi

[an-aura-about-you]

I Was a Queer Salvation Army Bell Ringer

Part 2: The Salvation Army's Anti-Queer Reputation and Their Response

Content Warning: This part is going to touch on bigotry, anti-queer discrimination, homelessness, and suicide. Also this is one coconut longboy.

It's amazing how much I looked into this, so much so that this is the one post that's getting its own unofficial bibliography. (That is, I'm including all my sources and making it clear where my information's coming from but I'm not worried about properly formatting it.) It ultimately feels like a bunch of wasted effort because all I was really looking to do was prove that the Salvation Army has an anti-queer reputation. And the thing about that is that's not hard to prove because the Salvation Army itself has acknowledged that reputation in their attempts to disprove it.

I don't plan on unpacking everything regarding the Salvation Army and queer people, but I am opening up the suitcase and examining some choice items.

The first thing to understand is that the Salvation Army's anti-queer stance is baked right into who they are as an evangelical Christian organization. The Salvation Army has Methodist roots, as its founder was English Methodist preacher William Booth. While there are a lot of denominations of Methodism and a lot of varied beliefs, the more traditional ones are anti-queer. We even have a modern schism in the United States as of 2020 with a new denomination of Methodists separating into a new branch of the church specifically so they can retain their anti-queer stance.(1)

The actual reputation reached my awareness circa 2011 with a story by Bil Browning of LGBTQ Nation. (2) Browning lists a number of lobbying actions the organization has done in attempts to exempt them from anti-LGBT discrimination laws and briefly shares a personal anecdote in which he and a former boyfriend were denied assistance unless they break up. It wasn't long after that, just June 2012, that Australian branch spokesperson Major Andrew Craibe affirmed the idea that gay people deserve death is part of the Salvation Army's belief system. (3)

So at this point, what has the Salvation Army done in response to these heavy accusations?

Well, I did exactly what the Salvation Army wanted me to do: I turned to their website and their official response to their reputation. (4)

I won't go into every single link available on their page in detail since a majority of what's available is in-house made propaganda that can't be verified by outside sources. In particular the propaganda I'm most wary about is the collection of Youtube videos made by queer Salvation Army employees that basically boil down to, "Yeah, people say the Salvation Army is anti-queer, but they treat ME ok!" Because the thing about that is if my employer is paying me to say something, then that is what I'm going to say in that official capacity regardless of my own feelings. I am not myself expressing an honest opinion but a representative of my employer. That's why I just spent roughly 6 hours most Saturdays in November and December saying, "Merry Christmas," to others: I was getting paid to.

But here are some interesting things I did find, and I do apologize but I fully intend to bury the lede here a little bit. You'll understand why when I actually get to it.

One of the first links on the actual page is a link to an article about the Salvation Army in Houston, Texas partnering with Tony's Place, a homeless shelter that DOES specifically help queer people. (5) That link is not just broken but has been broken so long that I couldn't even retrieve it using the Wayback Machine. So I decided to look up what I could find about Tony's Place and that partnership. The most recent article I could find about it was from 2022. (6) It states that Tony's Place used to share a building with the Salvation Army's Young Adult Resource Center but has since moved to a new location and makes no mention of them actually working together then or now. I regret to inform you that this is the most current article I have found in any of my research that didn't come from the Salvation Army itself.

Most of the other links on the page about services they offer to queer people in need are just general links about their services. Perhaps the most infuriating of these is the link under the section titled, "Teenage Suicide," as the offered counseling support is a page that offers to help find a religious counselor or clergy member near you for spiritual help. (7) I would say it's incredibly tone deaf if I thought any actual consideration went into putting that on this page. I will go ahead and spell it out for anyone who might not get it: so many queer people, especially queer youth, suffer trauma from religious institutions who repeatedly preach to them that their very existence is a sin. Explicitly offering religious counseling to queer people considering suicide is insensitive at best and outright harmful at worst.

There's a collection of links to news articles from other sources, some of them being more sneaky Salvation Army propaganda and some of them being so old that they really didn't matter anymore. I'm talking about links from 2013 or so. At this point, I'm trying to find the newest stuff I can, or at least stuff later than the mid 2010s since that's the date on most of the links that work. But one article that just baffled me so much was this one from the Advocate. (8) First, the title is such a backhanded compliment that it's a wonder that the Salvation Army actually put it on their page like they're proud of it. "No, really! The Salvation Army IS on our side! They even said, 'We prommy!!' and pinky swore to us!" Then things get confusing because the article is part of an interview with Lt. Col. Ron Busroe, an American member of the Salvation Army, but further in the article when they speak about the organization's Frequently Asked Questions page, the link is to Australia's Salvation Army FAQ page. That gets weirder because if you follow that, you find their page about inclusion. (9) If you follow that far, you can see why it was included. It has better optics than the United States inclusion page, complete with a prominently displayed Progress Pride Flag. And if all of that confusion wasn't enough, Lt. Col. Busroe mentions meeting with Bil Browning regarding a proper apology to him and the queer community. (For the record, the Salvation Army made an official personal apology to Browning, but it came right before the 2012 "gays deserve to die" incident, which Browning says made the apology ring hollow.) Busroe states that officially the Salvation Army does not want to make an apology to the LGBT community as a whole because it would look like pandering but offers an unofficial apology to the LGBT community from himself not speaking on behalf of the Salvation Army. How utterly embarrassing. If that's not enough, the article links to a followup done in 2017 that is not linked on the Salvation Army's page. (10) So why doesn't the Salvation Army link to the more current article? Probably because it mentions that in July of that year the New York City Commission on Human Rights filed a complaint against the Salvation Army and three other shelters for anti-transgender discrimination. Absolutely nothing about either of these articles makes for good optics, and I don't know whether it's worth dwelling on theories of internal sabotage or if the people who work for the Salvation Army really are dense enough to not know how incredibly bad this looks.

I found exactly one good thing that the Salvation Army says they did that I could verify using an outside source. (11) In 2013, the Salvation Army of Las Vegas, Nevada built a dorm specifically to house transgender people in need. There were still problems with how it was run, such as only offering shelter for one gender at a time even though it had 9 beds when it opened and opting to shelter people of other genders in nearby hotels they were partnered with. But for its imperfections, it seems like the most sincere good the Salvation Army has done for the queer community. And they seem to be proud of this because this is the ONE accomplishment they have multiple links about on their page. However, the newest links on the entire page about the Salvation Army's LGBT support are all from 2019 and most of them are in-house propaganda. I did a little looking and found an article from Caring Magazine, which is a publication by the Salvation Army. (12) This is from January of 2022 and is the most current thing I could find from the Salvation Army itself regarding what they're doing to help the queer community, and it is surprisingly hopeful. The transgender shelter has now expanded into being a general LGBTQ shelter and doubled in size from 9 beds to 18. But what puzzles me is why aren't they linking to this article on their LGBT support page? This is an actually good thing! And even though this recent article comes from the Salvation Army, we've at least been able to verify the Las Vegas shelter with other sources! Why isn't this on the page replacing something like the article from The Advocate?

Everything I found led me to one simple, sad conclusion: the Salvation Army doesn't actually care. They never did, but they had to put in some effort in the mid-2010s to make it LOOK like they cared. They threw together a webpage about it circa 2015, updated it a few times, and then just stopped in 2019 as if it's a one-and-done sort of thing. They probably figured it would be better if they stopped trying to draw attention to it because the more attention they draw to it, the less likely people are to forget about it, and forgetting is exactly what they want people to do. Every good thing that happens to the queer community as a result of the Salvation Army seems to be because the people who make up the Salvation Army are not a hive mind and there are people who are kind in spite of the organization they joined rather than because of it.

And thus concludes the part of this whole thing that was making me go coo-coo bananas, I fucking swear. I was talking about this to anyone who would listen to me ramble because I just couldn't believe the Salvation Army would put something so bad on full display. It was a research rabbit hole I didn't intend to fall down, and I am as glad to be done with it as much as the Salvation Army is glad to be done with thinking about queer people.

Sources:

United Methodist Church Announces Plan to Split Over Same-Sex Marriage by Campbell Robertson and Elizabeth Dias for the New York Times, January 3rd, 2020 Article Found Here [link is unfortunately paywalled, but if you use reader mode and hit f5 you should still be able to read]

Why You Shouldn't Donate to the Salvation Army Bell Ringers by Bil Browning for LGBTQ Nation, November 21st, 2011, updated July 17, 2017 Article Found Here

Salvation Army Official: Gays Deserve Death by Alexander Abad-Santos for The Wire, June 25th, 2012 Original (Broken) Link Here Saved Article courtesy of the Wayback Machine

LGBTQ+ Support from the United States website for the Salvation Army Page Found Here

YARC, Tony's Place Join Forces from the Salvation Army's Houston website Broken Link

Tony's Place Has a New Home by Marene Gustin for Outsmart Magazine, August 1st, 2022 Article Found Here

Spiritual Healing from the United States website for the Salvation Army Page Found Here

Salvation Army Insists It's on Our Side - Really by Dawn Ennis for The Advocate, December 23, 2015 Article Found Here

Inclusion, Salvation Army of Australia Page Found Here

The Salvation Army and the LGBT Community: A Complicated Relationship by Trudy Ring for The Advocate, December 8th, 2017 Article Found Here

For Transgender People, a Place to Call Home by Susan Milligan for US News, September 29th, 2017 Article Found Here

The Salvation Army's LGBTQ Safety Dorm fills shelter gap in Las Vegas by Hillary Jackson for Caring Magazine, January 6th, 2022 Article Found Here

[jebazzled]

troubleshooting: common quandaries and thots to overcome

It's no surprise that people whose major hobby involves writing, the internet, and fandom are often people who carry a lot of anxiety and tension around with them. For many of us, writing is something we do to escape, relax, unwind, and flex creative muscles we might not get to use at work or school. I get it.

For many of us, however, it also seems like forum rp is a stressor, a cause of great anxiety and insecurity. We've all seen or known people who go through a major rp-related crisis.

Sometimes, these crises are truly major - catastrophic falling-outs and permanently damaging rumor mills and etc etc. But a lot of the time? Well. It's not that it's "in your head," because obviously what you are feeling is very valid. But I think sometimes the way we think of internet spaces fuels dysfunctional thinking.

This isn't quite a tutorial; it's more in the vein of my tough love re: writer's block. I'm going to talk through some common scenarios, anxieties, and other issues I see in the rp community, and offer my (fully unsolicited) thoughts and advice. As always, your mileage may vary, but I'm trying!

Topics covered, because this one is a LONGBOI:

Insecurity & thread reactions

Insecurity & completionism/ Being Liked

Jealousy (especially ship-related)

The server is not therapy.

So here's the thing about the internet: for better or worse, it's for everyone.

On the far end of the spectrum, this means that the internet is a great incubator for toxic garbage. See: right-wing radicals, etc. But for most of us, this means that there is room on the internet for weird little me and my weird little hobby. You can find a community to talk about virtually any interest. You, for example, found the rp community.

So here's the thing about the internet: for better or worse, it's for everyone. This means that while you can find a community to talk about virtually any interest, you are never going to find a community that is completely without flaws.

There will always be people who annoy you, rub you the wrong way, or who you think are mean-spirited and negative. There will always be someone you don't get along with. There will always be people who disagree with you.

I have been in servers where members come to me time and time again to complain about other members, as though I am going to boot someone for wanting to talk about x just because they, personally, are sick of hearing about x. I am not going to tell someone to change their personality because someone else, personally, finds it annoying.

Offline, you wouldn't tell your manager at Starbucks to fire Susie because you don't like talking to her. You would simply not talk to her outside of a professional context. You would simply not take your break at the same time as her. You would simply not make small talk with her when the store is quiet and would instead, like, read the liner notes on whatever CD is at the register. (Does Starbucks still sell CDs?)

There will always be people in your community who you do not like and whose logic does not make sense to you. If they are not doing anything genuinely abusive, they have as much right to be in your community as you do. There is, in fact, likely someone in your community who finds you somewhat annoying. C'est la vie.

A community is not an environment custom-curated to your exact specifications. It is a community. You are not entitled to it being perfect. You are entitled to a space free from harassment and bigotry. If the space is free from harassment and bigotry and you cannot enjoy the space because someone else in it is existing harmlessly in a way that you dislike or find irritating, you have the option to leave the community. Discord server links are not a binding contract!

This is all to say: I think a lot of us expect far more of our online communities than is fair. Remember that every single person in your server is an individual human being with an interior life as rich as your own, and a list of neuroses possibly as extensive. None of them, yourself included, are perfect.

Oh, speaking of that list of neuroses! Let's tackle it, babe.

Your neuroses are not anyone else's problem.

It is on you to work through and overcome your anxieties and insecurities.

It is kind of other people to accommodate your growth, or to modify their behavior so as not to trigger your anxieties and insecurities. They are by no means required to do so.

Note: they do need to respect your triggers, if you have them and list them.

So here we go: troubleshooting frequent freak-outs. Buckle up!!!

Insecurity & thread reactions (or lack thereof)

Some people experience a lot of anxiety and insecurity around how their writing partners react to their threads. This might surface in the form of feeling unappreciated/disliked if the thread partner doesn't drop an emoji react on the link in your server's tag channel, or in feeling like no one likes your writing because they aren't swooning over it in #affirmations/ #thread-shoutouts/ #quotables/ etc.

You are serving as both texters in this meme.

So... you don't actually know what's going on with your thread partner at any given moment, you know? Personally, here are some possible scenarios with me as your thread partner:

You tag me and I put a passage from your post in #thread-shoutouts: I am at my desk, on my computer, not engaged in active DM conversation with anyone, and your post either made me cackle or it made me emo

You tag me and I DM you to gush about it: there's a lot happening in the server right now/ I don't want to derail a public conversation

You tag me and I react with an emoji: I am at date night with my girlfriend and she is in the bathroom. I have had time to read your post. I probably haven't put it in my tracker and will try and remember later, when I find it in one of 100 tabs open on Safari on my phone.

You tag me and I don't react at all: I am swamped with work and read your post in between emails. Instead of taking a second to react I immediately jumped into my tracker to log your reply, and now I am back to emails.

You'll notice none of these rationales are: "I don't react at all because I dislike you as a human." "I actively chose to quote Susie in #thread-shoutouts and not you because I want to hurt you." "I don't DM you about our thread because I hate our thread."

It doesn't have to be that deep! Stop hurting yourself. Let yourself assume the kindest option. After all, don't you want people to assume the best of you, too?

If your thread partners know you value emoji reacts or thread shoutouts, it is kind of them to do them. But it isn't inherently unkind for them not to, either. You're better off trying to kick that need for public validation.

Overview for addressing thread reaction insecurity:

If your server has a thread shoutout/quotables/etc channel, mute it. Don't look at it. Stop giving yourself something to fixate on.

When you are worried that someone hates a thread because they aren't giving emoji reacts, instead of building a narrative in your head that may or may not be true - communicate! "What beats do you want us to make sure we hit in this thread?" is a good introductory question to see if a thread is doing something for either or both of you, and gives your partner a chance to say something if they do want it to go in a different direction and would be more excited.

If someone is continuing to write with you, regardless of whether they post an emoji, it is probably because they enjoy writing with you!

Be deliberate about your thread premises! In my experience, threads done "just because" without a specific purpose (e.g. building chemistry between ship partners, introducing a subplot about a cursed hairbrush, kidnapping a house elf) are the first to lose steam and lose interest. It's entirely possible that someone likes you, likes writing with you, and simply doesn't prioritize this thread above their others because there's nothing meaningful to prioritize!

Keep your eyes on your own paper and stop reading so much into what other people do or don't do. It's probably not that deep!

Insecurity & completionism/ Being Liked

You would not be the first person to exacerbate their own problems because of a sense of duty to the spirit of completionism. Here's the thing, friend:

You do not need to write with every member.

You do not need to plot with every character.

You do not need to be in every subplot.

You do not need to have a character in every member group.

People fall into this trap thinking that if they can be everything to everyone, it will make them popular/important/beloved/a truly included member of the site.

But quantity is not the same as quality. You might have a thread with every character onsite but if half those threads are under a "they're on the same bus" premise, then yeah, people aren't going to want to keep up with that thread, and it's going to contribute to your thread reaction anxiety!

Write characters you are excited about. But more importantly: write plots you are excited about. Write threads you are excited about. You can be friends with people in your server without writing with them! You are better off writing a smaller number of really well-plotted, juicy plots that everyone involved feels heavily invested in than in writing a lot of watery threads for the sake of writing with every single person. It's hard to believe, but many people would rather NOT have a thread and wait until there's a juicy reason to than write a thread that doesn't have any development relevance simply for the sake of it.

If you're finding that it's hard to find juicy or plot-driven reasons to thread with many people, that might be a hint to write different types of characters. While yes, people exist who are very self-contained and isolated, the purpose of rp isn't to be a direct mirror of real life. It's to have fun while writing with other people. If your character is not fun to write with other people, they are probably not a good fit for an rp setting.

RP is not a popularity contest. This is not high school. No one is voting for prom queen. Be kind and be open to ideas and collaboration and people will like you. People will enjoy writing with you! People might even go out of their way to write with you. And they will be writing things that matter to both of you. That's winning, dude.

You might be tempted to pinpoint a "popular group" in the server and fix your sights on becoming one of them. This is also a failing proposition: often the "popular group" you might first identify is incorrect, and you are mistaking "exclusivity" for "importance." Sometimes sites have a small, tight-knit group with intricate inter-group plots and a very visibly closed-off dynamic. Since that dynamic mirrors the popular girls you were raised watching in teen movies, I can understand why you would assume that these people are the most important people to befriend on a site. They're not. They're cliquey and exclusive, and trying to get them to make room for you when they have intentionally and performatively set themselves aside from many other members is like... lmao, dude, it's not going to work.

Not only that, but the fact that these people are hard to pin down? It's not a selling point! The most beloved members on any site are not the ones who make you beg for a scrap of their attention. The most beloved members are the people who are friendly and kind. THAT is who you want to Get In with.

Overview for addressing completionism tendencies and "what if I'm Left Out" woes:

This is not a popularity contest, and you are a grown up. Focus on having fun and enjoying writing. That is not something you can do if your first priority is Getting In with the people you think are a site's "Popular Crowd."

You do not need to be everything to everyone. You cannot be everything to everyone.

In fact, everyone will appreciate you more if you do less and you do it well.

Focus on the positive. Who cares if Susie and Sally won't write with you? Sarah and Sam love writing with you! Yes, it would make sense for Susie to plot with you because your characters work together - but again, this is a hobby, not real life, and if you and Susie don't vibe, your characters don't need to interact! Why write with people who make you feel insecure? Trick question; there's NO reason to!

I understand the drive to be well-liked. Trust! I, too, desperately want to be well-liked. You'll have better luck if you don't try so hard. Be yourself and make friends with people who genuinely like you. Stop worrying about what the site's yearbook will look like. There isn't going to be a fucking yearbook.

Jealousy (especially ship-related)

Do you ever find yourself feeling a spike of anxiety or resentment when one of your favorite writing partners writes with someone else?

This reaction is especially common where ships are concerned: when one partner writes AU ships with their character, or has a plot with their character's previous partners before their OTP, etc.

It's a bit territorial, and it's not a good look, friends!

Your writing partners get to write with other people. How much they enjoy writing with other people has nothing to do with how much they enjoy writing with you. How much they write with other people has nothing to do with you. What they write has nothing to do with you. It's not all about you!

It truly doesn't matter how anxious you feel when your writing partners write with other people. They are entitled to write with whoever they want! What makes you nervous about them writing with other people?

In a forum rp environment, the best way to secure fulfilling, satisfying character arcs for your character is to plot with multiple others. That includes you, on both fronts: your writing partner needs you for their character's development as much as you need them! They aren't going to just stop writing with you arbitrarily.

If they do stop writing with you, there is probably a reason! Are they still on the site? Are they still writing? Are they going through something in real life that might impact their muse? There could be a hundred reasons why they are writing more with Susie now than they were with you, and they could be anything from "Susie is out of town this week so I want to give her a lot of replies to come home to" to "a ladder fell on my head and I am recovering from a concussion" to, possibly, "your territorial behavior makes me uncomfortable, and I would rather write with people who do not make me feel bad about writing with other people."

This behavior is especially weird in a ship context, and is something worth unpacking. When you write ships, do you resent/get anxious about your ship partner writing AU ship threads? About their character having previous partners? About their character having crushes that they do not act on?

An AU ship is an alternate universe specifically because it is not real. Susie and Sally shacking up in a space AU has no bearing over whether or not Susie and Marco end up together as finals.

Just like human beings have romantic history, it makes sense for characters to have romantic history, and these plots give your writing partner an opportunity to write plots that they might not get with you. For example, your writing partner might want to write a breakup plot with weird friendship tensions, which might not be a relevant vibe for Susie and Marco. But your partner can explore that with Marco and Sally. Again: it's not all about you, and your writing partner gets to write what they want, and you do, too.

Sometimes I think we can trace the territorial side of ship-oriented plotting to toxic monogamy culture, as described here. Particularly relevant are the below:

the idea that you should meet your partner’s every need, and if you don’t, you’re either inadequate or they’re too needy

the idea that commitment is synonymous with exclusivity

the idea that your insecurities are always your partner’s responsibility to tip-toe around and never your responsibility to work on

the idea that your value to a partner is directly proportional to the amount of time and energy they spend on you, and it is in zero-sum competition with everything else they value in life

Your writing partner is not cheating on your ship by giving their character other ships. If it feels that way to you, you are getting too emotionally invested, and you should probably back off of ship-oriented plotting for a while to unpack why you are feeling this way.

That said, of course be clear about boundaries. This applies both to M-rated content and to parameters of plotting. For example, you might tell your partner that you are not interested in a plot whose core conflict is "will they or won't they." You want to write these characters with the longevity of their relationship never in doubt. You might not want a plot where one character is cheating on the other. You might want these characters to be monogamous. That's fair! It's not fair for you to expect your writing partner to limit the plots they do that do not actually involve your character to avoid triggering your insecurities.

Overview for dealing with jealousy:

It's not all about you! Your writing partners deserve to have a good time as much as you deserve to have a good time. They can enjoy writing with you AND writing with someone else.

Be very clear with your boundaries. If there are plots between your character and another character that you cannot write, let your partner know before they accidentally step in a minefield.

Be willing to step away from ships. There are plenty of plots that do not involve ships. If ships make you a jealous and anxious mess, you should stop writing ships and work on that journey. It is more important to be a good writing partner than it is to write romantic ships.

Writing is such a personal thing, and we all of course connect very deeply to our characters - it only makes sense that we be invested in their outcomes! But if your gut reaction is one of jealousy, this is something that you need to work on, not something your writing partners should need to tiptoe around.

The server is not therapy.

Because rp is an online hobby, it can be easy to forget that every person you interact with in the server or forum is also a whole ass person on the other side of the screen. Which is to say, your rp friends do not exist to be your emotional support.

Of course they can be supportive - some of my closest friends are people I have met through rp! But online as in real life, you need to remember that everyone is always going through something. You are never the only person in the world who needs support, and you need to be thoughtful in how you engage with your friends here.

Do you listen when they share their problems, or do you immediately change the subject to talk more about your own? Do they not share their problems at all - is this a one-sided close friendship? Are the majority of your DMs to them seeking comfort, advice, affirmation, validation?

If you need a text-based counseling service, BetterHelp can connect you with a therapist. A therapist is a person whose job is to listen and ask nothing from you for their own personal emotional needs.

Your friends - online as in real life - are not therapists. They will not always have the bandwidth to help you. They will not always feel comfortable helping you. The internet breeds a sense of intimacy, the idea that regular chat conversation makes for a deep knowledge of another person. And of course this is sometimes the case! But in many cases, the person you are asking for psychoanalysis in the DMs on Discord doesn't actually know you very well. And if you have been relying on them for emotional support, you might be wearing them out.

Overview for not treating your rp friends like therapists:

Be thoughtful. If you have something heavy you want to talk about, first ask if they have the bandwidth. For example: "Hi Susie! Do you have the energy to give me some advice on x work issue?"

Listen. If your friend wants to talk about their issues, stop thinking about how you can relate and it sounds just like that time you... and just LISTEN. If you want to offer advice, keep it about them. If you don't know how to help, commiserate. "That's rough, buddy."

Self-check. Look at your chat history as though it's between your friend and someone you've never met. What do you think of this person? Are they a good listener? Do they reciprocate the support they get from your friend? Do they remember things your friend tells them about their own life? Or is this a one-sided conversation? If you're realizing that you're leaning too much on this friend, give them some space. If you're realizing you've gone way overboard leaning on this friend, maybe apologize and promise to be more conscientious going forward.

Be considerate. Remember that every person you know from the internet is so much more than what you've seen - I don't mean that in a "all internet users are creeps" way, I mean that in a "even if you've chatted in a server with some every day for six months, you still don't actually know them super well." Think of other people you've spent Some Time with. Think of your lab partner in 8th grade bio. You shared a desk with them for an hour a day five days a week for two thirds of the year. How much of your life did you share with them?

This tutorial got LONG - sorry, friends! Lots to talk about. I'm always happy to give Real TalksTM like this one. Feel free to drop into my askbox if you have a topic you'd like me to cover. I'm full of thoughts and feelings, and it would give me great joy for y'all to ask for them for once.

I hope this is helpful, and wish all y'all the best. Happy writing!

[gdwessel]

Wrestle Kingdom 13 - 1/4/2019; Ibushi Concussed; G1 Climax 29 Begins in Dallas, WK14 Will Be 2 Nights

Today is The Day. Wrestle Kingdom 13. You can watch it on NJPWWorld in Japanese or English. You can pay $35 on FITE TV for the same. You can wait until later tonight and watch a 2-hour version (continued the next 2 weeks) on AXS TV. Whatever the case, you can see it.

Wrestle Kingdom 13 - January 4, 2019, Tokyo Dome (NJPWWorld, FITE TV, AXS TV on tape delay)

NEVER Openweight  6-Man Tag Team Championship #1 Contenders Gauntlet Match: Togi Makabe, Toru Yano [CHAOS] & Ryusuke Taguchi d. Yuji Nagata, Jeff Cobb [FREE] & David Finlay Jr. and Hirooki Goto, Trent Beretta & Chuck Taylor [CHAOS] and Minoru Suzuki, Lance Archer & Davey Boy Smith Jr. [SZKG] and Adam Page, Yujiro Takahashi & Marty Scurll [The Elite] Order of Eliminations - Finlay > Yujiro, Schoolboy, 4:39 - Finlay > Taylor, Schoolboy, 7:30 - KES > Finlay, Killer Bomb, 2:44 - Yano > Smith, Schoolboy, 8:09

NEVER Openweight Championship: Will Ospreay [CHAOS] d. Kota Ibushi [FREE] © (Stormbreaker, 18:13) - Ibushi fails his 1st defense - Ospreay is the 23rd champion

IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship 3-Way Match: BUSHI & Shingo Takagi [Los Ingobernables] d. Yoshinobu Kanemaru & El Desperado [SZKG] © and SHO & YOH [CHAOS] (Takagi > SHO, Last of the Dragon, 6:50) - Kanemaru/Desperado fail their 5th defense - BUSHI/Takagi are the 58th champions

RevPro Undisputed British Heavyweight Championship: Zack Sabre Jr. [SZKG] d. Tomohiro Ishii [CHAOS] © (Hurrah! Another Year, Surely This One Will Be Better Than The Last; The Inexorable March Of Progress Will Lead Us All To Happiness, 11:53) - Ishii fails his ? defense - Sabre is the 21st champion

IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championship 3-Way Match:  EVIL & SANADA [Los Ingobernables] d. Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa [Bullet Club] © and Matt & Nick Jackson [The Elite] (SANADA > Matt, Rounding Body Press, 10:15) - GOD fail their 1st defense - EVIL/SANADA are the 82nd champions

IWGP US Heavyweight Championship: Juice Robinson d. Cody Rhodes [The Elite] © (Pulp Friction, 9:02) - Cody fails his 1st defense - Juice is the 5th champion

IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship: Taiji Ishimori [Bullet Club] d. KUSHIDA ©  (Bloody Cross, 11:17) - KUSHIDA fails his 1st defense - Ishimori is the 83rd champion

Jay White [Bullet Club] d. Kazuchika Okada [CHAOS] (Blade Runner, 14:18)

IWGP Intercontinental Championship No-DQ Match: Tetsuya Naito [Los Ingobernables] d. Chris Jericho [FREE] © (Destino, 22:35) - Jericho fails his 2nd defense - Naito is the 20th champion

IWGP Heavyweight Championship: Hiroshi Tanahashi d. Kenny Omega [The Elite] © (High Fly Flow, 39:13) - Omega fails his 4th defense - Tanahashi is the 67th champion

Hoo boy, a lot to break down here.

Every single title changed hands during this show, including the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. The last time that belt changed hands at a January 4 Tokyo Dome show was Wrestle Kingdom V on 1/4/2011, by, how about that, Hiroshi Tanahashi, beating Satoshi Kojima. Eight years since then, including last year's controversial retaining by Kazuchika Okada over Tetsuya Naito that some people are still salty about. So, essentially, the entire Bushiroad era. The (frankly piss-poor) reign of Kenny Omega as IWGP champion is at an end, and the rest of the Elite (including Kota Ibushi) are title-less as well. So let the speculation about Omega and All Elite Wrestling begin in full force. It will be interesting to see which direction he goes in either way. For his part, Tanahashi is now an 8-time IWGP Heavyweight Champion, cementing himself with the record number of reigns. (The next closest is Tatsumi Fujinami at 6.)

Los Ingobernables all hold titles now as well, barring Hiromu, of course, being out injured and all. CHAOS holds one title, as does Bullet Club, who lost one and gained one. The Seikigun hold two, after Tanahashi and Juice won their matches, however lost one with KUSHIDA.

Tetsuya Naito regains the title he hates over Jericho in a brutal brawl, taking full advantage of the No-DQ stipulation,and with it, begins his redemption story, having to come to terms with the IC belt to finally truly move beyond it. Really interested in seeing how his 2019 will go.

Jay White winning over Okada is interesting. It redeems White for having a poor re-debut at WK12 last year, and sets up a continuing feud with the two. Kazuchika Okada having his redemption arc is going to be a major part of 2019 creatively, I think, as will Naito as stated above, and eventually the two will collide. Okada does not take a hit here. It only sets him up to be stronger in the end. And hey, the Longboys are gone, so we have the Rainmaker back!

Shock of shocks, neither of the three-way tag matches ended with the reigning champions being pinned. The junior tag match was REAL short. (So were many of the matches today) Three-ways are stupid and are there to a) not make the champions do the job b) cover up for a bloated roster. Perhaps with the Elite moving away from NJPW this will be minimized in future. But let's face it, now we'll get rematches with the previous champions v. the current ones coming up real soon.

Juice regains the US belt, and writes Cody Rhodes out of NJPW. Trent Beretta challenged Juice post-show. That'll be good. Hopefully they can do right by Juice this time. They made him look like an absolute star at G1 Special in San Francisco, and then proceeded to squander and ruin that the rest of 2018. ZSJ regaining the RevPro title is about what I expected. Now he can take the belt home to England. Yes, that is the na.me of that finisher

That... was a nasty looking elbow Kota took. Ibushi has been reported as being concussed, and that stretcher job was legit. NJPW says the concussion is not severe. Will Ospreay is trying to be in characer gloating about it, because he is a dipshit. Who knows what Ibushi's future is in this AEW era. He's been a freelancer this entire time, so if he too were to leave NJPW (again) so be it. I really think he has the potential to be a drawing IWGP champion, but that's up to him. He did decline a WWE contract after all (as did Sabre). His is the bigger question mark looming than Omega's, if I'm honest.

The mixed Seikigun/CHAOS team of Makabe/Yano/Taguchi won the pre-show gauntlet match, so will most likely challenge for the NEVER Openweight Comedy 6-Man Tag Team titles tomorrow at New Year Dash!!. Yuji Nagata filled in for the injured *spits* Michael Elgin, and made the match actually watchable now, because fuck Michael Elgin. The Most Violent Players still being a thing makes me think there really is going to be a unit shakeup coming soon. We already saw it with Jay White and Gedo earlier in 2018, and the continued CHAOS/Seikigun teamups point that way too.

All in all, a really good show that was weak on paper but in practice did really well. The attendance was announced as 38,162, up from 34,995 for last year's, but not as much of a jump (Nearly +10K last year from WK11). It's also the highest attendance listed since Bushiroad started using actual numbers rather than papered, which was 36,000 in 2015 for WK9. So as critical as I've been of Kenny Omega as champion, using the Meltzer Standard for attendance, it looks like Kenny was, in fact, a decent draw as champion, even if creative and match quality was the shits. Online, it seems that there were some issues during the show on NJPWWorld, for which apologies have been doled out.

The attendance is an interesting issue. Bushiroad owner Takaaki Kidani has said for years that he wanted Wrestle Kingdom 14 to be the sell-out show at the Dome, as it falls on a Saturday...

As part of today's show, upcoming big events were announced for the coming year, and the biggest one of these was the announcement that WK14 will be, in fact, a 2-day event, on 1/4 and 1/5/2020, both Saturday and Sunday. Not sure how that is going to work out for selling out the Dome in 2020. In fact it might dilute the attendance by splitting it. It's an interesting conundrum, and we'll see if NJPW has the momentum to sell out just one, if not both, of those dates this time next year.

Other major show dates were announced, some we already knew (if you look at the Upcoming NJPW Events post from 2 days ago). There is a mega-card announced for 4/20/2019 at Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium, without a name given, but no word on Sakura Genesis, so I'm wondering if there will even be one this year. Wrestling Dontaku 2019 is a two-day event in Fukuoka, much like last year's edition.

This year's Best of the Super Juniors 26 Final will be held on 6/5/2019 at Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan, which is great, finally giving the Final the prestige it deserves with such a massive venue to hold it in. A mere 4 days later, we go back to Osaka-Jo Hall for Dominion 6.9 in Osaka-Jo Hall on, oddly enough, 6/9/2019.

G1 Climax 29 will begin and end in interesting fashion. This year's tournament will actually begin in the USA, on 7/6/2019 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX, making this the only time G1 Climax matches have been held outside of Japan. As for the ending, following the success of last year's Finals at Tokyo Nippon Budokan, which was due to necessity of renovations happening at Ryogoku, they are going back this year from 8/10 - 8/12/2019 for this year's G1 Finals as well.

The last one to be announced is a solo date in London, on 8/31/2019 at The Copper Box, located in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Hackney Wick. This is the place where feuding YouTubers Joe Weller and KSI held a boxing match. I am sure there will be RevPro involvement in this show.

That's it. That's all I got. New Year Dash!! is tomorrow but they never announce the card for it ahead of time. Hope everyone enjoyed WK13, and we start a good year in New Japan Pro Wrestling.