Headbands and Heartstrings

This is another old Tumblr post, but I’m making a concentrated effort to save a bunch of my old Tumblr posts that I’m proud of to a central place. This one is from when I went to the NXT show in Atlanta.

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Let me tell you a story about Bayley from tonight.

Bayley had a match with Daria Berenato, which she won. Afterwards, she went around the ring, giving hugs and giving her merch away. She gave her tassels to two sisters in the section across the ring from me and they proceeded to wear them on opposite wrists. It was adorable.

Anyway, she sees a girl in the row behind me in the handicapped section with a “Master of Hugonomics” sign and proceeds to jump the barrier to give her her t-shirt and a hug.

Then Bayley looks right at me, seeing me in my full Finn Bálor gear, but wearing the pair of tassels I bought during intermission on and tosses me her headband. Which in my shocked state, forget to catch, but a guy in a Shinsuke Nakamura shirt in the row in front of me hands it back to me and I clutch it close like a holy grail.

The girl next to me, who is all decked out in Bayley merch, got one of her slap bracelets from her and we proceed to squeal at each other like pre-teens in our complete excitement. Later, I flash the headband to Izzy, who gasps in excitement still, despite her leagues worth of experience with Bayley.

And the thing is, I know it’s just a thing. I own a headband like this already. But it’s like what my friend Jen wrote about once with the meanings we imbue in things. The hubcap Finn performed a Coup De Grace on in Chicago was no longer a piece of junk, but the shattered remnants of a moment in time. For me, it’s that Bayley, one of my biggest inspirations in the past year, threw me a headband I already own and it was like a precious token from on high.

Bayley and Finn mean the world to me. They helped me in ways they’ll never know in a year where I learned a lot about myself. Through them (and lots of other wrestlers, but they’re the big two), the lessons I learned through Kelly Sue Deconnick and Captain Marvel about self-love and respect were strengthened. I told Kieron Gillen once about how ‘Style’ by Taylor Swift was my curse song, but it was at an NXT show months later when I heard it and realized that curse had been broken.

Bayley gave me a headband tonight, but she’s also given me so much more than that.

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A Year Since Wrestlemania 31: What Have I Learned?

Hey, sorry for the lack of updates this month. As I’ve been working at a new job, the adjustment period has been a bit rough and exhausting, not leaving me with much mental room to do writing things.

However, since I am currently in my days off recovery period and today is a bit of a special day, I think I can pull it off.

The world turned upside down…

It’s been a year since Wrestlemania 31, which officially capped off my first week of being into wrestling. At that point, I only wanted to watch it for the match between AJ and Paige and The Bella Twins, but I fell all the way in from the start of that Intercontinental Title match that ended up being the last championship Daniel Bryan would ever win to the moment Seth Rollins cashed in his Money in the Bank contract in the main event. It was insane and magical and I never wanted it to end.

It’s been a year. Wrestlemania 32 is on Sunday. What have I learned in this year?

That falling in love with a particular wrestler can either be instantaneous or take some time. I knew from the second Finn Bálor walked through the curtain dressed like a dragon at Takeover Unstoppable that he was going to be my guy. I just didn’t know to what extent yet. On the flip side, I feel like if you told me a year ago that I was going to love the Bella Twins and be sad that Brie was going to retire, I would have thought you were lying. And yet, sometime last summer, with all the Team Bella shenanigans, I realized that was absolutely 100% true. I even regularly wear a Fearless Nikki snapback now.

That as fun as wrestling can be on TV, nothing beats seeing it live. Whether it’s in a rec center gym in Gainesville, Florida, a Ring of Honor show where you have no idea what’s going on, a theater in Nashville where you ran away to for a few days after getting laid off, or any of the times you take MARTA a few stops over to Philips Arena. Nothing really beats the way a room shakes at certain chants or lights up when you only have cell phone flashlights to go on. The Undertaker taking forever to get to the ring doesn’t seem like long enough when you’re seeing it in person. A giant man getting tossed into a metal barrier right in front of you can be just as terrifying as Mojo Rawley running around the ring with a small child after a victory. That you can know that the future holds something for someone from the way they act during the match, but you just have to ride the moment while you’re in it and try not to guess what that future is. I may not be going to Mania this year, but I got two NXT house shows the week after and I’m aiming for Orlando next year. And Takeover Brooklyn 2.

That even if a guy you like isn’t your guy, it still sucks when he has to retire.

That most pro-wrestling fans are the most unreasonable assholes you will ever encounter. This isn’t just for the ones you meet on the internet, but at shows as well. The guy who told me that Naomi disgusts him and that she would be better if her body had Alicia Fox’s face still haunts my dreams. Still, with any fandom, it’s best to surround yourself with people you can talk with. Women fans are way more fun anyway.

That pro-wrestling can tell an amazing and emotional story if everything comes together right. Bayley and Sasha is the example I go to the most, but I saw it in matches with Sasha and Becky at the first Takeover I ever watched. Or Rollins and Ambrose at Money in the Bank. Or every goddamn thing with Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens that’s inevitably going to main event Wrestlemania one day. Wrestling can be over-the-top and dramatic, yes, but there are times where it all just comes together.

[diva-dirt.com]

That pro-wrestling can be downright inspiring. I’ve said that NXT especially helped finish the job that Carol Danvers started, helping me get over a relationship I clinged to long after it should have died. Bayley and Sami have reminded me that my dreams are worth it, especially when it comes to doing it on my terms. Finn and his demon have helped me with learning how to not be afraid to get angry, and how being Bulletproof doesn’t mean being invulnerable, unfeeling, or unkind. Not to mention how Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch speak to my soul as well with their own drive and personalities. It’s weird to say I identify with both the face and the heel, but I do. And if I can finally afford to do kickboxing lessons, it’ll all be wrestling’s fault.

That even with all of that, it still never hurts to just lay back and enjoy the fun. Because that’s ultimately what these people are here to do. Entertain us. Sometimes it comes across as story, and sometimes it comes across with unicorn horns and trombones.

To a year of loving this weird sports soap opera. May I get many more years out of it.

Who Keeps Your Flame: Some Thoughts on the Retirement of Daniel Bryan

Sorry I didn’t get a post out last week. I have a good excuse though: I got laid off, so I ran away to Nashville for a couple of days. I did work on a piece while I was there that should be going up fairly soon in an outlet I’m really excited about, but I ended up not having time to do the Villains United review I was planning. That’ll be up later this week, and I’m trying to figure out if I want to set up a tipping system or a Patreon in the meantime while looking for work.

There was something that happened yesterday though that I felt the need to talk about.

After more than 15 years of wrestling and months of back and forth over his concussion status, Daniel Bryan announced yesterday that he was officially retiring from wrestling. It was something that seemed sort of inevitable given the past year of back and forth where the WWE refused to clear him despite him being cleared by two outside doctors. However, it looked like he took another test that revealed his brain was not in the condition he thought it was. The inevitability of it doesn’t make it suck less though.

Here’s the thing about me and Daniel Bryan: his last matches in the WWE happened in the first month I watched wrestling. Daniel Bryan wasn’t my guy, but only because I didn’t get a chance to know him.

Getting into wrestling though, I felt like I did. Bryan was prolific. Not in the way The Rock is, but like how you pick up things by proxy from your friends in certain fandoms. I didn’t know a lot about wrestling, but I kinda knew about Daniel Bryan.

Of course, my gateway was AJ Lee. Daniel Bryan and Vickie Guerrero come up a lot when you’re wanting to know more about AJ Lee.

It wasn’t just how prolific Bryan was though. It was about how he changed the game in the WWE.

[wrestlinginc.com]

Before Bryan, the WWE still mostly went by the tall and jacked bodybuilder type. You had types like Rey Mysterio and CM Punk who were able to make waves, but they were the exception, not the rule. Bryan was looked down on when he first signed with the WWE because no one thought he could make it. He was too short. His style was more inspired by puroresu than the typical WWE style. As was said many times yesterday by many people, Daniel Bryan wasn’t supposed to be a thing.

But the people made him a thing. And because they made him a thing, he had a ripple effect in who got signed to the WWE. Suddenly, indie guys who didn’t fit that original mold in some way or another due to their size or style were getting picked up. People like Sami Zayn, Finn Bálor, Cesaro, Hideo Itami, Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, Neville, Kevin Owens, and Samoa Joe, eventually culminating in the recent signings of people like AJ Styles, Austin Aries, and Shinsuke Nakamura. You can probably even argue that this new stance opened the doors to indie women wrestlers like Sara Del Rey, Bayley, Sasha Banks, Paige, Becky Lynch, Emma, and Asuka to be seriously considered by the WWE, changing just how the Divas Division works.

I’m not saying that Daniel Bryan was a Moses for the indie guys, nor am I disparaging wrestlers who have been brought up through the Performance Center itself or the Divas like Team Bella, Natalya, and the remains of Team BAD who were tossed into a half formed time in the Divas division and learned to survive otherwise. What I am saying is that the kind of impact Bryan made opened doors to who could make it in the WWE. It’s just a damn shame that we’re never going to see him wrestle Nakamura, a fully formed Bálor, Owens and Itami on this level, or even Zayn, who could easily be his spiritual successor if what I witnessed in Nashville last Friday night is any indicator. The fact Kevin Owens was right up front to applaud Bryan last night spoke volumes.

Even though Bryan wasn’t my guy, this one still hurt. He was a tiny part of what drew me into wrestling in the first place and he helped to make it the kind of space where the guys who did “fit the mold” could make it and become successful. He never had a chance to become my guy, but he’s left such a space that makes it impossible to ignore just what a post-Daniel Bryan world of wrestling looks like. He may be gone from the ring, but because he succeeded, there are people out there who keep the flame he created alive.

Thank you, Daniel Bryan. For everything.

Survivor Series was kind of a mess, but one I loved witnessing live.

Well, Survivor Series happened on Sunday. It was potentially threatened by terrorists, it had all sorts of weirdness and was the beginning and the end of Roman Reigns’ first title reign.

And I was there in section 112 right above the floor level entrance for all of it.

This was my first big pay-per-view that I’ve attended. I went to Raw earlier this year when it was in Atlanta and even drove to Florida for an NXT house show that was later featured on the show Breaking Ground, but I knew this was going to be different. Higher stakes, special appearances, no weird commercial breaks where everything goes dark… It was exciting to think about and exciting to experience.

At least before the show, the crowd was in high spirits. I guess it was that shared experience of “Well, we could possibly die tonight and the line is going extra slow because of the metal detectors. Let’s at least do our best Big E impressions and make this chorus of woos echo through the CNN Center.”

It certainly helps that the first actual match of the night featured the return of Goldust, causing Stardust to act squirrelly through the entire match and the crowd to pop real big. Even I popped when the Dudley Boyz pulled a 3D and I wasn’t even into wrestling when they were huge.

The first three matches of the night were absolute fire. Reigns and Alberto Del Rio put on an amazing match and Dean Ambrose proved that he’s going to be a fun counter to Kevin Owens until Sami Zayn recovers from injury. Not to mention just how fun and glorious that 5-on-5 tag match was. Right from Xavier Woods’ gorgeous Gaston hair to the entire face team going diving out of the ring to The New Day leaving Sheamus to get wrecked. My three favorite tag teams on the main roster were all in one match and it was the best.

This was absolutely hilarious to watch. [wrestlinggiffer.tumblr.com]

After that, things got a bit touch and go.

I’ll admit, I understand that a lot of this had to be because so much of the roster is out for one reason or another. The original main event got cancelled because Seth Rollins blew his knee out. Cesaro just went in for surgery for a rotator cuff injury that he was working on unknowingly for months. Orton dislocated his shoulder. If anything I was working on got hit with that much bad luck in a short amount of time, I’d be running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off to make it work in time too.

Also, I honestly don’t know what was up with the crowd. When Raw rolled through back in July. The crowd was super over for Roman and was hyped up about all the NXT women coming up. Did all those anti-Roman smarks who are still stuck on Daniel Bryan not winning the Rumble buy half of the tickets?

To be fair about the women’s match, while I was super into it like I always am for women’s matches, it felt more like a regular weekly NXT match than a title defense. That’s not to say it was bad. The women’s matches on NXT are regularly quite good. The story and feeling just wasn’t there. I was more invested in Charlotte’s matches with Nikki Bella than I was in this (and that’s not an insult to Nikki Bella because those matches were great). This might be because Paige’s angle right now isn’t really working. It’s so dependent on the old “I’m jealous!” trope Vince and creative like to rely on for women’s wrestling without giving any real backing to it. Paige has the ability to be an absolutely vile heel as she’s been showing and she is a great worker and Charlotte does well with being the noble one and the vicious fighter when she needs to be, but this angle just had no weight and the burn out on Paige could be starting to show with the crowds. Or at least with me.

I hope the WWE at least gives TLC a match with Sasha next month since they will be in Boston for it. It’s only fair to give that crowd the true fire I wanted to see.

Notice the Sasha sign in the background and the Nattie sign in the foreground.

Also, it just felt like a lot of the matches went quickly and weren’t given time to really breathe. Tyler Breeze’s match with Dolph Ziggler went by in a blink. The Undertaker’s 25th anniversary match felt kind of low stakes. And the main event between Reigns and Ambrose was a fun match, but it didn’t feel like a main event.

Not to mention that ending. I apparently missed that people were cheering for Sheamus cashing in and killing Roman’s hopes and dreams, so I’m chalking that up to temporary rage deafness. You know how hard it is to see someone who’s journey you’ve followed since you got into wrestling reach the top and be so joyful with his best friend, only to see him get knocked down three minutes later by a rooster who’s only personality traits is that he’s Irish and has outdated concepts of masculinity? And that the cherry on top of all that is that assholes boo him out of the ring? It makes you feel ready to fight the world, starting with the smarks around you.

And yet, I still had a great time.

In the few minutes things were good for Roman.

Yes, things were weird, but there’s nothing that beats that live experience with wrestling. TV doesn’t capture how the arena shakes at dueling chants of “LET’S GO ROMAN!” “LET’S GO AMBROSE!” or just how much Bray Wyatt’s ‘Fireflies’ light up an arena. Nothing could express my swelling pride for Tyler Breeze winning his first PPV match when I saw him in a rec center gym in Gainesville, FL two months prior.

Not to mention The Undertaker…

I said last night on my Tumblr that part of the reason I love Finn Bálor so much is that he has such a presence that draws you in. Now, he’s great at that, but The Undertaker is a master of it. From the second Kane lit his sigils, everyone was on their feet and ready, the excitement building even more with each slow step into the ring. The Deadman moves with such purpose, mystery and grace. I have never seen anything like it before and I doubt I ever will again.

Plus, I think him and Kane got the biggest pop of the night when they chokeslammed Braun Strowman through the Spanish announce table. Apparently the way to defeat an angry swamp giant is to get a reaper and his demon brother to put him through a table.

Survivor Series 2015 was my first live pay-per-view. It was weird, amazing, awful, hilarious, and sometimes chilling and I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.

Not to mention I get to go, “Hey, remember when Sheamus cashed in on Roman Reigns? Yeah, I was there for that bullshit” in about ten years. Though I will probably do that a lot between now and then as well.

Sasha Banks needs to be the face of the Authority

I know my co-worker meant well when he asked me if I heard what happened to Seth Rollins when I walked into the office today. He didn’t witness me go absolutely HAM on Twitter with concern, blind speculation, and just a fair amount of disappointment of not getting to see the Reigns/Rollins feud play out live when I go to Survivor Series later this month. I figured since I walked in wearing a Seth Rollins tank top though, there really wouldn’t be a need to ask. I know. My phone background tells the whole story.

Hello darkness my old friend… [WWE]

Of course, one of the things that came up in this mad Twitter speculation is just who’s going to become the new face of The Authority during this time? They can’t fall back on Randy Orton again because he’s out too with a dislocated shoulder. Batista ain’t coming back. Kane’s probably going to reform The Brothers of Destruction on top of getting his ass fired as the Director of Operations. There’s been speculation of Dean Ambrose turning heel for a few weeks, but I take it as seriously as the speculation that lasted for three months that Reigns was turning heel. (Though, if there solution to fill the vacated title is tournament ala Survivor Series 1998, they should just go all in and have Reigns turn heel like The Rock did.) There’s also been a fair amount of speculation about it being Kevin Owens since he is the new NXT golden boy along with his whole angle as a prize fighter, but it doesn’t feel right to have him in that spot without his true nemesis fighting against him. (Soon though. Soon.)

Really though, I think we know what’s true. We know who The Authority needs to recruit as its new poster child/face/champion:

The Boss herself, Sasha Banks.

[robvandamdatass.tumblr.com]

No offense to Kevin Owens, but I think Sasha’s track record so far this year says it all. She spent longer as NXT Women’s Champion than he did as NXT Champion, four of her title matches have been declared Match of Year candidates, she was the champion going into possibly the greatest angle NXT has ever had with her and Bayley, and they topped off her time at NXT with the first ever women’s iron man match as the main event. Sasha has the credentials to be a top heel and she gets chanted for anytime she’s not in the ring. Oh, and since making her Raw debut, no one has actually made her submit or pinned her for a victory.

And yet, she is so painfully underutilized on the main roster. All of the amazing Team B.A.D. is really. They have such presence and power to be the new Shield, but instead, they’re often playing second fiddle to The Bellas, Paige or whatever the collective of Charlotte, Becky, and Nattie are calling themselves.

Sasha though… I feel like Sasha really does have the power and momentum to be the face of The Authority in Seth’s absence. The WWE is currently in a state where the usual status quo is shaken just because so many are out with injury. This could lead to some interesting things if they’re willing to go outside of their comfort zone, and making a woman the top heel of the company could do it. Sasha is a great heel in a way different from Rollins and Owens. She’s cocky and vicious, but will back it up every damn time. Even if it means getting a little dirty to get what she wants. Plus, I know she’s been trained to go head to head with the boys between her indie days and her time at the Performance Center training under Sara Amato.

She sounds perfect for The Authority, the masters of the underhanded game to do “what’s best for business.”

[wwe.com]

Sasha Banks is already a Boss at 23 and has many more years ahead to become a true bonafide legend. In the unfortunate absence of The Undisputed Future, there is an opportunity to find someone else who can add more definition to just what the future is supposed to be. If they’re serious about giving women’s wrestling more of a spotlight to be taken seriously, they need to start by pushing those feuds and stories more and what better way than by making Sasha Banks the poster child of that future?

YKWT.

See you at Survivor Series.

Demons Dance, Wrestle, and Sew: How I did my most elaborate cosplay project ever in a week and a half

Well, Dragon Con has come and gone, giving me a little more free time to get stuff done. Including this blog. Until I have to start getting ready for NYCC, at least. I’m not doing anything official there, besides networking with other comic creators, doing some simple cosplay and experiencing my first industry con.

Today though, I’m going to do something a little different. My cosplay is usually never super complicated, so I never want to talk about my process on it because it doesn’t feel super interesting. However, I’ve had such a trip with this latest one that I busted my ass on that I feel like I have to talk about it.

Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between: meet the Bálor Dress.

Inspiration

As many of you know and have seemingly put up with, I got into pro-wrestling this year. It’s been an extremely cathartic thing for me, especially during the more mentally stressful times. I have lots of wrestlers I love (most of them being the Divas division), but there is one wrestler who makes me smile any time he’s on: Finn Bálor.

Or as I call him: “Sweet Irish Demon King.” [WWE]

Ever since I watched my first Takeover back in May and saw Finn come out dressed as a dragon and jumped from the titantron to take out Tyler Breeze, he automatically made it onto my list of favorites. Getting to watch him more and seeing that documentary NXT did about him just cemented him at the top of the list. His style in ring, his confident but relaxed presence, his love of LEGO, that smile, and just his creativity in creating a memorable character. It’s hard not to smile when he’s on my TV. He was the reason I was absolutely spent on the 4th of July because I stayed up all night to watch his match with Kevin Owens in Tokyo where he won the NXT Championship. (Worth it, btw.)

What caught my attention about him in the first place though is that character of The Demon, the dark side of Finn that comes out in the big matches. Yeah, it’s obviously a bit of makeup, but just the way he sinks into that character is amazing.

Which brings it back to my main inspiration.

It was getting to be crunch time a few weeks before Dragon Con and I had not started on ANY of my planned costumes. I figured I could still pull off Amaterasu from The Wicked + The Divine (spoiler alert: I did) and I had already gotten the bright idea to cosplay Becky Lynch, but I had to dump the Bitch Planet inmate and the Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling version of The Undertaker costumes I had wanted to do.

However, I was looking at Artsy Hobbitses adorable wrestling hijabi fanart on Tumblr, which included one of Finn’s demon. I looked at the fabric I was planning on using for the coat for Taker that was going to be for a Morrigan cosplay (WicDiv, not Dragon Age) before that and a Steampunk cape before that. I put that next to my red fabric left over from my Captain Marvel camera bag and something clicked…

I could totally make a dress that looks like Finn’s demon makeup. That’s not too hard, right?

Getting it together

Yeah, I sometimes overestimate my own skills. The fact I got this all done in a week and a half surprises me even more than the fact it looks pretty damn good all things considered.

The materials…

Part of the problem with this is that I’m not an artist in the drawing sense of the term, so parts of the dress were kind of nebulous until I started working on them. I know I wanted it to have a wide skirt and a hood. I know I wanted to illustrate the idea of teeth on there as well as the red vein designs that run up a lot of the demon designs. I know I wanted to wear my Mary Janes with it. Other than that, I was kind of stumped, but figured I’d work it out as I went along. That’s how my Killjoys costume worked out anyway.

I already had the patterned black fabric and the red fabric like I already mentioned, but I knew it wasn’t going to be enough to get a hood as well, so I ended up buying a little bit more from Fabric World in Stone Mountain, GA. The picture doesn’t really show it here, but the other red fabric I got is lighter and more textured, so I ended up using more of it to give the dress more pop. I also found that lace, which I though looked enough like teeth to work well with the overall idea. The black fabric I bought for the hood doesn’t match the fabric for the dress, but I got an idea late in the game to cover that fact up, but more on that in a bit.

I also bought what ended up being my best friend and my worst enemy in this project: Heat’n Bond adhesive. Oh my god, I don’t think I would have survived this project without it. You can buy it by yard sheets, iron it onto your fabric and cut out shapes from there. Be careful though because it will melt if it goes beyond the 8 seconds you apply it (as I learned with my Carol Corps top that is also its own wrestling related in-joke) or stick to your ironing board cover and never come off if you’re using less than a yard and you’re not careful.

The dress pattern itself is actually a chimera of two. After searching Etsy and Pintrest for swing and skater dress patterns, I settled on Kitschy Coo’s Lady Skater dress pattern, which is more meant for jersey fabric, more intermediate sewers, and smaller women probably, but I improvised. As for the hood, I was unsatisfied with tutorials of tracing around one of my hoodies and making one that way because it wasn’t dramatic enough. Then I remembered that I still had Fleece Fun’s Red Riding Hood Cape pattern printed out from when I made my Steampunk Lady Loki costume a few years ago and it has a BIG, DRAMATIC hood. I used that instead.

As for the sleeves, you can buy those at the WWE shop. They are literally the only official merch in this endeavor.

Sew, Sew, Sew

I’ve had a few people ask if I bought the dress, then ironed the designs on. Man, how easy that could have been.

This is kind of where I wish that Kitschy Coo also had video tutorials of their patterns because while the written instructions were generally okay, there were a few parts I had trouble translating what they were trying to say and couldn’t quite understand the diagram. I’m also glad I didn’t go beyond the cap sleeves because I would not have had enough fabric.

The pattern itself is not overly complicated. There are two bodice pieces and one skirt piece that you cut twice, sleeve pieces and patterns for neckbands and arm bands. I wish it had been made a little more clear where the line actually was supposed to be for the bodice because the largest size actually ended up being kind of small on me and I had to improvise bolts. If you look carefully up the sides, you can see that there are four seams on each side of the bodice instead of one. The skirt turned out okay because I may or may not have left on an extra inch from where it was supposed to be cut. Again, not certain. I think there was also some disproportion for the neck and arm bands, but that could have possibly been printer error.

Speaking of neck bands, that was easily the most stress I have had over a simple thing in a while. Where I mentioned having issues translating what the instructions were trying to say, most of it came from trying to understand what exactly needed to be done with the neckband. I think I actually stepped away from the project for about two hours because I just couldn’t figure it out. I finally had an epiphany and got it done, but that’s seriously where a video tutorial could have helped.

The undersides of the sleeves also ended up being a bit of a pain as a consequence of the bodice bolting and the arm bands being short. After trying, failing, and trying again, I finally just patched it with extra black fabric and called it a day.

Once that was all sorted out, it was easy as sewing up the sides and making sure it fit okay.

My roommate Sharon was also a godsend in helping me getting this dress hemmed and bias taped. I put the dress on over my clothes and stood for her for fifteen minutes as she went and made sure the dress was going to have an even hem, which made taping the dress so much easier.

The hood itself was probably the easiest part, even if I was a bit short on fabric. After a quick go over or five with the video tutorial from Fleece Fun to make sure I didn’t screw it up, I sewed the hood together, including the lace to make the “teeth” look more natural with the hood instead of slapped on at the last second.

After that, I sewed the hood onto the dress, which included a fair amount of cursing and seam ripping as I made sure I got it right. I then attached more lace along the collar of the dress to give it a seamless look with the hood.

For about 48 hours, I had a respectable dress.

Then it was time to make it demonic.

The Demon’s in the Details

This was easily the most fun/most exhaustive part of this project.

Using references from every instance of the Demon and the arm sleeves as my guide, I got started on getting the designs cut out. I eventually settled on a dragon design on the back, finding a simple wing and tail cutout on the internet to base it on. As my mom cleverly spotted, the tail is actually based on Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon because I couldn’t find another tail design that I liked that translated easily to fabric.

Using most of what I had left of the red fabric from the inside of the hood, I ironed it onto a sheet of Heat’n Bond and then sat on the floor of my kitchen and cut out the wings, the tail, the scales, and an inordinate amount of red vein designs. The back got ironed on first just so I had a sense of what to work around. This is probably where I decided I could do a Bombshells Batwoman next year, but that’s neither here nor there.

After that, it was hours of standing in front of an ironing board, placing the appliqués and getting it bonded onto the fabric. I got most of this done in one night, working from about 8:15 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. with a couple of breaks to talk to my mom and just breathe. I picked up work the next day, rebonding some pieces, adding more, and putting a few on the hood for extra details.

In the space of about a day, this took the dress to about 90% done.

To take a break from this before it was finished (and because I had run out of Heat’n Bond), I decided to add a rag doll style trim at the bottom to make it look more ragged and to give more length to it. With more scrap fabric and even more bias tape, I flipped between the sewing machine and the ironing board to sew it together, sew it on, pin more bias tape onto those edges to make it pop, and then sewing that on.

Probably the most fun part was adding the details onto the dragon back. Using leftover black fabric from this dress and some white from my Amaterasu costume, I used more Heat’n Bond to create veins and spikes on the back. Once again, Sharon was a great help with getting the definition of this dress right. I had the hardest time getting the spikes to look right, so I asked for her opinion and she mentioned using the black to give it a shadow. This turned out pretty great in the end, giving a more 3D look from the 20 feet rule. I also added extra bits of bias tape between the “scales” to help it inhabit more space.

After that, the last little detail was ironing what was left from the red veins onto the black fabric on the trim and like that, the dress itself was done.

But there were still a few things left.

Accessories Bring It Together

As I mentioned before, I had already had my shoes picked out and I had socks I could use before my Sock Dreams order with a petticoat and stockings with lace up red ribbons arrived. I ordered cheap earrings from Miss A, but with everything else, I had to make as well.

The first was making a bag for my stuff because my beloved Ramona Flowers bag is too bright for a demon. Using scrap fabric from this project and one other, I made a hobo bag using Fleece Fun’s Quick Sew Hobo pattern. It’s a bit smaller than I would have liked, but it fit my water bottle, my wallet, my phone, and a couple of other things, which is really all I needed to get around con. I also added a tie to keep it closed and ironed on more cut outs to make it match my dress. You can’t see it here in the photo, but I also added lace to the bottom of the pockets for a more toothy appearance.

Believe it or not, but I had to do the last two parts while I was sick with a freak viral infection two days before Dragon Con. I don’t recommend it, but the show must go on.

The first part was making a necklace. Feeling remiss that I couldn’t incorporate the mythical Eye of Bálor on the dress itself, I settled for the next best thing: putting it into the necklace. Even better, I did it with LEGO. Using a couple of slope pieces, an Eye of Sauron minifig head, $1 wire from Walmart and superglue, I crafted a pendant. It’s not my best work, but I still kind of love it just because it’s a weird little inside joke about hobbies and mythology. Plus, weird little details that no one else would notice or get are my favorite kind.

Next came the headpiece, which made me finally learn the phrase “tubular crinoline.” After having some ill-fated luck with the company I ordered from shipping incomplete and late, I ended up finding some similar stuff at Walmart called “Crafty Cord.” It was a lot skinnier, which helped give it more definition. Using a simple stretchy headband, I sewed on a bunch of the crin along with some ribbon, what was left of the lace and a bit of scrap fabric. I probably added more definition than what’s on the actual demon headpiece, but at this point, I was less going for accuracy and more for interpretation and just getting it done because I was so sick and the con was the next day.

The Big Payoff

After getting this all done and doing a basic makeup test, I FINALLY revealed what I had been working on online. It had gotten a pretty good reaction from my friends and I went to bed that night to sleep off the rest of the infection.

The next morning, Twitter had absolutely blown up on me and in my fog, I couldn’t figure out why.

Until I traced back to Finn Bálor’s Twitter…

WELL I WAS DEAD

As you could imagine, I had kind of freaked out. I’ve been retweeted by a couple of the NXT wrestlers before. Charlotte retweeted me wearing her shirt, which caused me to become friends with comics writer Tres Dean, and Becky Lynch retweeted my costume of her, but this was different. I had just busted my ass for a week and a half on this dress and to get noticed by the man behind The Demon was exciting to say the least. I couldn’t take too much time to celebrate though because I still had to pack for con.

At the con itself, reaction was kind of what I expected. Only my friends who knew what I was doing referred to what the costume was (Tini Howard even called me ‘Finn Bálor’ on multiple occasions) and I got several “I have no idea what you are, but that looks awesome,” which gave me a chance to talk about Finn and NXT to people who didn’t know. And go into the process behind the dress, of course. I got referred to as Harley Quinn twice, which was weird. One was a basic question, the other was a drunk guy going “WOOOO HARLEY QUINN!” at me and then doing this weird wink when I told him I wasn’t Harley Quinn.

People at Dragon Con are weird, y’all.

MFW being called ‘Harley Quinn’

The real payoff though was this past weekend when I drove down to Gainesville, Florida for an NXT house show.

That was a bit nerve-wracking. While I know I had worked very hard on the dress and got a good, if confused, response at Dragon Con, my anxiety flared up about wearing it around wrestling fans. Even though I KNEW they’d get it, there was a worry that they wouldn’t or would just give me the side eye.

The first thing that took that truly took that anxiety away? Izzy, Bayley’s biggest fan, came running up to me and told me that she liked my outfit. I swear, my heart and my constant anxiety buddy melted away as she said that and I asked her for a high five. In that moment, that meant more to me than I can even put words to. Everyone else could have hated it, but god, Izzy thought I was cool.

Luckily, that was just the first part in a series of greatness that night. Not only did I get a ton of compliments from other people, I actually got compliments from other wrestlers. Carmella complimented me on how great I looked (be still, my heart) and I got to tell her how much I love seeing her on my TV. Cass told me it was “excellent” and Enzo Amore went “I take it your a Finn Bálor fan? Just a guess” and asked me what I thought of the ladder match between Bálor and Kevin Owens.

*insert heart eyes emoji here*

The night itself was excellent as well. Mojo Rawley and Elias Sampson had a ridiculous opening match that opened with Mojo paying Elias a dollar to play guitar while he danced, I got to witness Solomon Crowe as a heel, the future greatness of Nia Jax, and the amazing team of Baymella, and I got to watch my favorite wrestler from the second row as he hit the Coup de Grace on two people at once. That’s just the tip of the iceberg of what happened, but the whole thing was worth it.

After it was over, a bunch of us hung around to wait on the roster like after a concert. Izzy’s parents too sweeted me as they left, I said quiet hellos to Emma and Dana Brooke and complimented Solomon Crowe on his match with Apollo Crews that night. Also, does William Regal have a relative that works for the performance center? Because a dead ringer for him back in his early career said I looked like the lead singer of a London punk band from the 80s and I cannot remember the name to save my life.

I was having nice conversations with one family that was there with their kids (which included a girl dressed as Tyler Breeze), but between the rain and people thinking that some of the wrestlers may have walked out the back, I was about ready to give up for the night.

Until a woman came running up to me and said “Finn just walked out!”

I pretty much booked it a couple hundred feet in Mary Janes.

For a second, I felt terrible because I was shouting “Finn! Finn!” to get his attention and I’m sure he just wanted to go home, but he stopped, turned and exclaimed “OH MY GOD!” when he saw me. I apologized for stopping him, but I think he had even forgotten that for a second as I walked up to him. I’ve mentioned before when telling this story after it happened that we were both kind of staring at each other in awe because he’s my favorite wrestler and I just showed up wearing a dress based on his makeup. My heart nearly leaped out of my chest when he said “Holy shit, you look amazing” and “I didn’t know you were going to be here!” Shaking a little, I asked if I could get a picture with him and he gladly acquiesced, putting his bag away first like a true gentleman. I put my blaring pink umbrella off to the side and give my biggest smile. Lucky for me, he did the same.

!!!!!!

After he checked with me to see that it came out okay, he gave me a big hug. I didn’t ask him. He offered. I don’t get many moments where I feel like I can stick my tongue out at my anxiety, but that hug was one of them.

I thanked him for the picture and stopping to chat with me and he thanked me for coming out and the dress, which he still seemed in awe of. I told him he was my favorite, so it felt appropriate to me. He thanked me for that too. It was nice.

We parted ways so he could talk to other fans and I just made high pitched noises that I accidentally recorded and sent to my best friend. The cherry on top of all of this though was Finn leaned out the window of the car as he was leaving and told everyone good night and to drive safe.

Finn Bálor is so good, you guys. If he didn’t already have top status in my eyes before that night, just seeing how kind and legitimately excited he was about a fan showing him something creative inspired by him would have done it. I know he talks about how shy he is outside of the ring, but the way he’s encouraged creativity in his fans online and feeds off of it is truly inspiring. He may play a demon on TV, but his attitude and excitement says otherwise. I hope our paths cross again, but if not, I’m glad I got this experience out of all possible ones.

After that, I went back to the cabin I was staying at, wiped my makeup off, got undressed, ate crappy pizza before I went to bed, and rolled my eyes at a friend who responded to my picture with Finn on Facebook with “That’s not John Cena.” I drove back to Atlanta the next day, marveling at all the bizarre billboards, still feeling in awe of the night before. At work on Monday, I proudly wore my new Bálor Club t-shirt, feeling like the phrase had taken on new meaning outside of just being a spin on the Bullet Club.

I’m not saying this happens with every cosplay. Hell, out of all the cosplay I’ve done, I’ve really only had a small number of reactions from creators of those characters. But to work this hard on something in the space of two weeks and to get such a great reaction from creator, it makes every ripped seam, every weird improvisation, and every “Um… who are you?/Are you Harley Quinn?” worth it and then some.

Besides, I think I’m starting to get good at this cosplay thing. I could stop now after this, but why would I want to?

Thank you, Finn. Thank you, NXT. Thank you everyone who helped or encouraged me on this. This won’t be the last you see of this dress. Not by a long shot. With this much work and this much love, I can’t let this stay on a hanger forever. Especially with Halloween right around the corner…

A Plea, and What Entertainment News Media Keeps Missing About Stephen Amell on Raw

Hello readers! Sorry for the lack of updates last week. My excuse? Getting new ink done. Isn’t she lovely? Just one or two more sessions to go!

Anyway, I have something to ask my readers. Something that would help me and help generate content for this blog. I’m planning on making my first trip up to New York Comic Con this year and I have most everything set up! Except the flight. I have it saved and priced out, but I don’t have all the cash. While I don’t feel comfortable doing a GoFundMe, I would at least like to a reward kind of system. Basically, in exchange for a donation, I will review something of your choosing. There are three major rules to this though:

1. I won’t review anything with your name attached to it for obvious ethical reasons.
2. What I will review will be on a sliding scale based on the donation. For example, $1 would be a song, $5 would be a comic issue or a single episode of a show, $20 would be a trade paperback of a series or a book, $50 would be an entire 24 episode season of a show, etc.
3. I do retain right of refusal if I feel uncomfortable with the material to the point I can’t finish it. This will either result in me asking if there is something else you would like for me to review or refunding your money entirely.

If you would like more information, please send me a message at ashleywhizbang@gmail.com.

Anyway, onto our main topic for today, which means it’s officially time to add wrestling as a category on this blog.

I jokingly referred to this as “Mister Sinister confronts Green Hawkeye.”[Techtimes.com]

As you’ve might have seen on some entertainment websites, Stephen Amell of Arrow will be guest starring on Monday Night Raw next week to address his ongoing feud with Stardust. This started back in May when Amell attended the Memorial Day edition and Stardust hissed in his face and it’s been going on over Twitter ever since.

Well… Mostly.

You see, what most websites have been missing about this by reporting only about Amell is the story of how the feud came close to a plot point that was never touched on again.

For those that don’t know, Stardust is the alter ego of Cody Rhodes. He denies it, but we know it’s true. Whether Cody comes back or not is a minor consequence at this point. Right now, the story in the ring is that Stardust honestly believes that he is a comic book super villain and that Amell is actually Oliver Queen. Like any good super villain, he’s become obsessed with the hero. He’s renamed his finisher “The Queen’s Crossbow.” He alludes to Green Arrow in mime and riddle. He sees the high flier Neville who refers to himself as “The Man That Gravity Forgot” as a minor super hero that’s standing in the way of the one he really wants to take down.

And most has this has only been building for a month, despite starting in May.

Why?

Does that last name ‘Rhodes’ sound familiar? If so, it’s because it belonged to Cody’s father Dusty Rhodes, a legendary wrestler who passed away on June 11th.

For a month after that, Stardust disappeared and rumors of Amell at SummerSlam died down. Stardust came back the night of the Divas Revolution, but it was kind of a quick match that no one was really sure what to make of. No one wanted to really boo Stardust or taunt him with chants of ‘CODY! CODY!’ since it was his first match back in his hometown after the death of his father. The community may have felt Dusty’s death hard, but I can’t even begin to imagine what Rhodes had been going through.

Shortly after his return, he posted something to his wife Eden Stiles’ blog explaining why Stardust came back instead of Cody. I suggest reading the whole thing if you’ve ever lost a loved one, but it was this part right here that I think drives the heart of this angle:

I am deeply influenced by comic books. I genuinely consider them my education since I forwent that whole wrestling-scholarship thing. I told the very talented current writer of DC Comics’ Batman, Scott Snyder, that to our family…you were Batman. Damn that sounds silly. Its true though…with all our extended mess(Godfathers, uncles, a cousin timekeeper, a gorgeous host/wife, two sons, several proteges, etc. all in the same business) we are the Batman family.
And you let me be your Robin.
So what do you want me to do now?? The head of the table is empty. I am not ready to let the sun go down on you. My compass just spinning madly.
A few days after we lost you, I was tasked with the unfortunate duty of going through your cellphone to find various numbers, so that we could invite them to the service. And there it was…
Your lock-screen.
It was a picture.
It was Stardust in a heated stare-down with The CW’S most valuable player Stephen “The Green Arrow” Amell.
“…finish what you start Kid…”

And oh, Stardust has been going strong this past month since his return. His promos have been stellar and it feels like his in-ring work is more aggressive. He started this and now he’s going to finish strong.

I’m glad that Amell has been playing along and I can’t wait to see where this ends up, but discounting how Stardust has bounced back from the lowest points to deliver the best possible tribute to his father is a crime in of itself.

Entertainment news outlets may have failed him, but you have not failed this fan, Stardust.

Yes, that NXT Women’s Debut Was Like A Religious Experience

I know I’ve been slacking around here lately. Pro Tip: Don’t fall into a financial related depression while you need to be responsible for other things if you can avoid it. It sucks. I will try to be better.

I’ve been slacking on getting an actual review of Orange is the New Black done because I have been so underwhelmed by this season that I haven’t even watched the last two episodes yet and Joy Williams’ album awaits me still. I figure I’ll be reviewing Hawkeye #22 on Friday. However, today is going to be another wrestling post day because it just gave me one of those life affirming moments last night and it was made even better because I was there when it happened.

I knew I was going to be going to the Battleground go home Raw for a couple of months. I kept looking at the slated card, feeling mixes of excitement (my Shield boys were going to be there, broken up as they might be) and apathy (Sheamus and Brock Lesnar don’t do much for me). However, I felt extremely disappointed that there were no slated Divas listed. That’s a common thing, but I started resigning myself that we were probably going to get a five minute match between Paige and Nikki Bella and an announcement of a Battleground match that would probably just end up being “Nikki Wins LOL.” I’ve started coming around on the Bella Twins/Team Bella and enjoying the chemistry that Nikki and Paige have been cultivating, but this latest story hadn’t been hitting too much traction since Paige came back when it should have been Naomi as the champ when she did.

As rumors started to swirl that Charlotte was going to be moving up the the main roster and helping Paige against the Bellas, I started thinking, “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if she showed up at my Raw?”

My mom says I have good intuition.

It’s like you can hear the sound of “WOO!” wherever she goes. [WWE]

Cut to last evening in the CNN Center as I was waiting on the last of my party to show up. I mention that I was disappointed in the lack of Divas announcements to my friend and his brother. They get these sly grins on their faces. Friend said that Cageside Seats was reporting that Charlotte and Sasha Banks were rumored to debut that night. Brother said that Charlotte and Sasha were missing from the last NXT Jacksonville show. We silently flail at the idea, but don’t want to get our hopes up too much. It’s just rumors after all.

The show starts and it’s pretty good. Paul Heyman cuts a hell of a promo and Seth Rollins stumbles over his words and saves it with a “SHUT UP.” Randy Orton mocks Sheamus and I swear I’ve never laughed so hard in a lead up to an RKO. I stand in awe of the lights of the Fireflies before Roman Reigns FINALLY gets the drop on Bray Wyatt as Dean Ambrose looks on before parading off with a weird look of satisfaction on his face. The night is hilarious and magical so far.

Finally, The Bella Twins’ theme hits and my group holds its collective breath. I shout “WOO FOXY!” a few times for Alicia Fox, but I’m mostly sitting on the edge of my seat, wondering what’s about to happen as Nikki Bella brags about owning the Divas division. Stephanie McMahon’s music hits and the anticipation grows. The Queen Bee of WWE doesn’t address the Divas unless something is about to go down. Clearly, she’s not just here to tell Nikki to stay in her lane.

It was right at this moment that the evening went to truly magnificent.

As McMahon goes on about how women are revolutionizing sports and that it’s about time that the WWE gets in on that and calls out Paige to commend her efforts so far, I’m already overflowing with glee. We’re talking about how awesome women are on live national TV. How can I not be happy?

It wasn’t until Becky Lynch was announced and her music hit that I officially popped like a kernel. I start jumping up and down, alternating screaming like a madwoman, singing along with the “WOAH OH OH OH OHs” of ‘Celtic Invasion’ and just trying to chant “N-BEX-T” in the space of about 45 seconds. Oh, and throwing up the devil horns, of course. It occurs that maybe we all got swerved, but I literally do not care because Becky Lynch and her terrible puns are the best.

There she goes… One of the few people in Steampunk gear I still like. [WWE]

Of course, not just satisfied with making the audience lose their minds over Lynch, McMahon announces that it won’t just be them. They’re being joined by someone “bred for this business.” I swear, she didn’t even make it to her Ric Flair impression before the WOOs started. Out comes Charlotte and the pops just escalate. I feel like I’ve officially died and heaven is just Team Paige hugging in the ring in front of me.

Once Naomi’s theme hits, we all know what’s coming. Some guy who sounds like one of Jamie Noble’s more terrible cousins talks over Naomi with “QUIT YER COMPLAININ’,” but I tell him to shut up because you don’t speak when Naomi is talking. Naomi and Tamina want their fair shake too, which McMahon respects. She’s got someone for them too. Someone who calls herself “The Boss.” Maybe it’s my own head being an unreliable narrator, but McMahon doesn’t even finish saying “Boss” when Sasha Banks gets a pop that could rival Dean Ambrose.

Sasha’s music hits and me and my group have just officially and completely lost it before she even fully struts down the ramp. It’s at this moment I’m extra thankful I don’t really have to talk too much at my current day job because I know I’m going to be hoarse from this.

I think what makes the melee that proceeded even more iconic besides Team Paige and Team BAD surrounding Team Bella on all sides was that it started because Nikki Bella dared to bump Sasha Banks. It was the Divas Champion trying to assert herself over the NXT Women’s Champion and the NXT Women’s Champion not having ANY of it.

BAM! [screamforpaige.tumblr.com]

The next bit is a flurry of kicks, chops, running knees, PTOs, and a lot of screaming. Well, the screaming was mostly me. You seriously try to keep up with chanting while you’re losing your mind over all of your favorites throwing down at once while three of them are doing it for the first time on this stage. When the NXT Divas got Team Bella into their submission maneuvers, including Banks putting Nikki Bella into a Banks Statement, that was when I finally just broke from happiness. I was chanting “THIS IS AWESOME” along with the crowd, but awesome didn’t feel like the right word. It was transcendent.

The rest of the night was pretty awesome after that. R-Truth’s plunger got a bigger pop than King Barrett, Cesaro, Kevin Owens, and Rusev put on a killer triple threat to face John Cena, Stardust came back, I got legitimately emotional at Rollins dismissing Kane, and I got to see my Shield boys in a dark match that included Rollins rolling his hips. It was an amazing night all around, but I feel like I could have walked out and gotten on the train after the Divas takeover and been completely satisfied with how my night turned out. I was absolutely speechless after it because my brain was overloaded with joy.

This really says it all. [WWE]

I would have marked hard if I had been at home watching it on my computer, but seeing it in person took it to another level. It was this weird, beautiful, chaotic, life-affirming thing that maybe there is a sea change happening in this silly sports drama that I like so much. That these women are being taken more seriously and that maybe girls of all types can watch this and feel like they can chase that dream too. I hope they can keep the momentum up and that Bayley will be able to join them at some point in the future because her presence was so dearly missed last night, but I just want to encase the moment on July 13th, 2015 when I saw the NXT Women take over the main roster and stand toe to toe with the Bella dynasty in my mind forever.

Best night ever.

When Bad Blood Boils Over: Looking at Rollins vs. Ambrose at Money in the Bank

Heads up, this is a post about wrestling because I’m out of town when this is going up and I haven’t had a chance to finish Orange Is The New Black yet nor gather my thoughts on Drones by Muse and How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful by Florence and the Machine. Expect those in the next couple of weeks.

Onto the main topic though…

There’s a great quote in “Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling” that I’ve been learning the hard way over the past few months. Towards the end, Max Landis says “Don’t get me wrong. A lot of wrestling sucks, but when it’s good, it’s great.”

Money In The Bank this past week was a prime example of that. There were several solid matches that had really crappy endings or were just kind of unremarkable in general (though how exciting it was that I lived in a world where the Divas Championship match was longer than the Intercontinental and Tag Team matches for a night). There were two great matches though that really made up for it in spades though. The first was the rematch of John Cena and Kevin Owens and the other being the main event of Seth Rollins vs. Dean Ambrose in a ladder match for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Lots of people will be talking about Cena vs. Owens, so I just want to focus on Rollins and Ambrose.

Spoiler Alert: EVERYTHING HURTS. [mithen-gifs-wrestling.tumblr.com]

One thing I’ve learned about wrestling since watching is that the matches themselves are a great way to tell a story about conflict. Not that promos aren’t amazing when done right, but the matches are the culmination of those angles. They need to tell the story effectively. A match that really did that for me this year was the Sasha Banks vs. Becky Lynch match from NXT Takeover: Unstoppable. I didn’t know much about their rivalry going into it, but the use of their arms and the hunt for a submission victory really told you all you needed to know about Becky and Sasha. These were two women that had something to prove not just to the world, but to each other.

Rollins and Ambrose at Money in the Bank had a very similar vibe, but with a lot more buildup leading up to it.

I’m still working my way through the backlog of Shield matches, both as a team and as solo competitors, but it’s easy to tell that in the dissolution, Ambrose took it the worst. Not to say that it didn’t have an effect on Roman Reigns (see Wrestlemania 31 for that piece of suffering), but he didn’t make it a priority to make sure the man he used a call a brother suffer for turning on him.

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN. [deanambrowse.tumblr.com]

Still, even without watching the entire backlogged history, I could watch this match and know that it was less about the title and more about settling scores and proving something to the other person. This wasn’t a match for glory. It was the culmination of a year long war between the former brothers.

Going into it, there were two major things you need to know about Rollins and Ambrose. Ambrose had nearly won the title two weeks prior, but the match was ruled a victory by disqualification, which means the title doesn’t change hands. Fed up, Ambrose just straight up stole the title and requested a ladder rematch for it just so that whoever grabbed it was the champ fair and square.

Rollins, on the other hand, wanted to prove that he could do it all by himself. He doesn’t exactly have the best record for clean solo wins. Between constant interference from The Authority and his own personal scheming and cowardice, Rollins doesn’t really know how to do it alone, despite all his claims. Reigns did a great job of poking the bear to get him to agree to the match in the first place, but Rollins’ own ego and hesitation caused him to drive away nearly everyone in the Authority. Well, at least one person still had faith in him. (Seriously, click the link. I need to rip the audio from that for my own get psyched playlist.)

The match itself was like an overfilled tea kettle on the stove. It started off kind of slow and simmering. Once Rollins started hammering on Ambrose’s leg and trapping him in Figure Four locks to keep him from climbing up the ladder, that’s when it really started to burble and spit. Rollins was doing everything in his power to make sure Ambrose didn’t get up that ladder. Wrecking his leg, powerbombing him into the barricade and keeping the refs from getting involved, burying him under debris, and even leaving him for dead in the audience at one point.

Seth was not having ref interference. [thefailedheel.tumblr.com]

Ambrose being the tenacious and unhinged man that he is though refused to stay down. He hobbled up the ladder multiple times. He dropped an elbow from that ladder on Rollins Dusty Rhodes style. He freakin’ flipped him onto that ladder and pulled a Dirty Deeds on top of the Spanish announce table. As this match kept spitting out boiling water, I rocked back and forth on my bed, praying for a swift end. The particular fixation on the leg is what brought me back to last month as Banks and Lynch were trying to rip each other’s arms off as trophies. I was becoming certain that if Rollins didn’t walk out with the strap, he was going to take Ambrose’s leg with him instead.

Last month, I screamed when Ambrose pinned Rollins, reaching my full mark potential and scaring the hell out of my roommates. This month, when the match ended with a spent Ambrose and Rollins grabbing onto the championship at the same time and falling to the mat with the belt in Rollins’ hands, I let out a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding for twenty minutes as the bell rung. I was emotionally spent by that match, and it didn’t help seeing the look on Ambrose’s face at the very end nor the speech he gave after the broadcast cut.

Someday when I’m a salt and peppery broad and they’re running specials about this era of wrestling and the feud between Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins, this match will be a focal point. Their story isn’t done, of course. Ambrose admits that he lost fair and square, but he still wants to beat Rollins. However, just the sheer drama that existed in that match alone without any outside context just shows how much those two have thrown into what they do. They sell every struggle, every angry word, every single bit of contempt and sadness that comes with their history. They even threw in callbacks to Dusty Rhodes and Ric Flair in their moves to really drive it home for that match. The future is now, but they carry the past with them in more ways than one.

The past ain’t through with Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose yet, but if this past Sunday was any indicator, they’re just getting started with it.

Falling Into The Wrestling Hole; or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love The Dive Bomb

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates the past few weeks. Partially life being busy and me failing to plan ahead. I’ve also wanted to write this particular post for a couple of weeks, but I wasn’t really sure how to tackle it.

When I was in high school, my entire Spanish class got sucked in by a telenovela called Rubí. It was about a woman who wanted to be rich and she married a doctor to do so, screwing over the love of her life Alejandro in the process. Alejandro proceeds to become rich and Rubí spends the next several years pulling underhanded deeds to try and get him back and fails miserably. Lots of other stuff happens in between. It is a telenovela after all.

It was ridiculous, for sure. Everything was turned up to 11 and were not how actual people would function at all, but we were all sucked into the drama of it all. Same for the fantastically heartbreaking Korean drama You’re Beautiful and Showtime’s critically acclaimed Masters of Sex. I called these shows my soap operas with how much they dragged me in with their stories, no matter how ridiculous or deviating from actual history they were.

Now when you add punching, which my secretly aggressive little heart loves…

Oh, I think you know where this is going.

Hi, my name is Ashley Leckwold and I got into pro-wrestling about a month ago.

Accurate. [youcantheelme.tumblr.com]

It was a bit of a series of convoluted events that lead to it happening. I was aware of wrestlers like Daniel Bryan and AJ Lee from various posts on Tumblr, but I wasn’t digging too deep.

Then around the same time earlier this year, CM Punk contributed to the Thor Annual with artist Rob Guillory about young Thor getting into a drinking contest with Mephisto, Seth Rollins was challenging Jon Stewart on his own turf, and Max Landis released his follow up to “The Death and Return of Superman” with “Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling,” a 25 minute Drunk History style retelling of Triple H’s career over 20 years.

Yes, Landis makes some good points on wrestling as a storytelling medium, but I’m going to tell you what tipped me from morbid curiosity to actually watching a match or five:

AJ Lee reads Saga and Hawkeye.

I know there’s a whole bunch of nerds in the WWE currently, but I’m easily susceptible to women I find attractive who have good taste in comics. Once I watched her rush in to save Paige from the Bella Twins and washed that down with Randy Orton’s methodical beatdown of Seth Rollins, I knew I was in.

It also helped that one of my good online friends gave me links to past matches and promos to watch of Lee, I found myself in a hole of Seth Rollins clips, and I eventually capped it off with Wrestlemania 31 that first week.

I still have feelings about this. [rampaigers.tumblr.com]

I still really cannot explain how this stuck. Maybe it’s the fact I’m a comic book reader and I’m a sucker for serial ongoing stories with people in ridiculous costumes. Maybe it is that soap opera drama I referred to earlier because there’s a lot of that. Most of my time lately has been screaming at WWE Creative to end the Roman Reigns/Big Show and Orton/Rollins feuds so that they can get to the Reigns/Rollins feud that’s been brewing since Wrestlemania, viewing The Miz/Mizdow feud as a metaphor for escaping an abusive relationship, and wishing they would come up with some better angles for the Divas division already dammit. 

Or maybe I just like watching people hit each other between all of that. That’s a possibility too.

Whatever it is, I have two things to say about it: I’m sorry, and I don’t care.

The “I’m sorry” is specifically directed to the people I judged for liking it and wearing their wrestling shirts to school when I was younger. I grew up in a low income area around a bunch of aggro Southern boys and was constantly raved to about my intelligence by adults, so I ended up associating wrestling with low intelligence. I mean, don’t they even know it isn’t real?

Well, I watched Xavier Woods pick up a guy dressed as a bull and carry him around the outside of the ring and everything involving Fandango on last night’s Smackdown, so I think there’s gotta be some sense of self awareness there.

Now to play my favorite game of Wrestling or Gay Porn. [hiitsmekevin.tumblr.com]

And if there was or wasn’t, what is my place to judge either way? I was a shitty kid who didn’t know how to let people enjoy what they wanted without judging them for it. It’s not like my taste was much better. My favorite manga in 8th grade was Miyuki-Chan in Wonderland. Google it. I’ll wait.

I know we all suck in middle school, but still, I’m sorry to whoever I judged for it. If you wanna come talk to me about Roman Reigns, John Cena and Rusev, Randy Orton, or whoever, my door is open.

As for the “I don’t care,” well, it says on the tin. If you’re thinking less of me for liking it, I honestly don’t care. You have the media you enjoy and I have mine. Unless I’m somehow stealing your TV while Game of Thrones is on to catch up on Raw, I don’t see how we can’t both be happy.

For me, wrestling is fun. It’s ridiculous and I find myself questioning some of these storylines (please tell me what Sheamus’ deal is), but not anymore than I’ve been questioning Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for their insistence on making Hunter a character or attempt to redeem Grant Ward. Watching old matches, Raw, and Smackdown have been some of the best unwinding material I’ve had in ages. Not to mention it just feeds my gif problem.

I seriously used this to describe my reaction to the Superman vs. Batman trailer.

Yeah, it sucks that my first favorite wrestler retired two weeks into me getting into it, but I think I’m deep enough in that it’s going to be alright. To the future, The Undisputed Future, Naomi getting her title shot and Dolph Ziggler’s glorious hair!