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It's Time To Play The Game!
Chapter 18

(Hullo ladybears, this'll wrap it up for Missou's very first match. Hooray! There's a murky part in the middle that I am not quite happy about as it started out being a much longer Cena rant and then I said "Fuck it" and just made it a brief angry snippet. So it comes off awkward and I just couldn't get it too sound right. Oh well. Maybe some day I'll do a regular column about my viewpoints and problems with Cena and WWE, but more than likely I'll get bored halfway through and write a story about a dinosaur wrestler instead. So enjoy, and look forward to the next part! P.S. If anyone feels like making me a banner for this column, go right ahead. I am obviously lazy and possibly Mexican, so I have no desire to make one myself. But a nice graphic might give people something to enjoy. Shoot em off to my e-mail and don't be hurt if I don't use it.)

MissouriDragon: I’m gonna need Mr. Degas to take a few steps back and take it a few notches down.

Hustle: Can you still hear the crowd from the back?

OniBarubary: Yes. You’re separated by a curtain cutting the room in half. I’m guessing they weren’t worried about max occupancy being reached. The crowd is maybe 20 feet away at most. And those aren’t noise-dampening curtains.

Missou: Then I tell him the kid and I thought of a better finish and throw a thumb behind me to indicate that it apparently worked well enough to get those 40 some odd people to give a fuck about some scrawny no name punk.

Uncle Joe: You’re lucky Collins didn’t come back through yet, that would’ve broken his little heart.

Missou: I didn’t say that last part out loud. It was mostly implying.

Joe: You got a mad expressive thumb.

Oni: Well, if you say the first part to him he reacts just as well as you imagine. As he shouts at you, spittle flies from his mouth like streamers at an American KENTA match; “I TOLD YOU THE GODDAM FINISH AND THE FINISH WAS TO PUT THE FUCKING KID OVER!”

Cold: Ow dude, you gonna be yelling this whole thing? Cause I’m right next to you and want some sort of warning or plugs.

Missou: The fuck? I put the kid over. The kid is way over. He’s so over he’s hovering against the ceiling. Tell him I got the kid over, he just needs to shut up for a minute and listen to that crowd.

Oni: He barely lets you finish as if hearing any more of your explanation would bring him physical pain. “I DON’T GIVE A FUCK” he yells.

Cold: You yell.

Oni: ”I fucking said to put the kid over, so you damn well better put the kid over. I didn’t see the ref raising his goddam hand in there!”

Missou: I shall politely inform him that when we were going over the match, it was the kid himself that suggested I pin him but make him look good in defeat. I will explain this as calmly as I can so that I don’t push his brains out the back of his head.

Oni: Yep. That works well. This time he lets you finish, but each word seems to blow him up like a pufferfish and his facial scruff sticks out like poisonous needles. A headbutt might bleed you out. He’s not as loud this time but you would still consider it yelling. “That’s real great that you listened to some rookie instead of the man paying you your fucking cash. I tell you to go out and let a little girl pin you with a leg drop, you do it!”

Joe: I feel like that was a subtly aimed burn at my expense…

Oni: Just your imagination. “I know you been battered and beaten around this whole area but I didn’t think you’d have mush for brains already.”

Cold: Woof.

Hustle: Dude, fuck this guy. He’s just pissed that the kid got more over than he would’ve if Missou went through with his shitty finish.

Missou: I’ll tell him that, in so many words. I say that I did exactly what he told me to do and I got the kid over. We changed the finish because there was no way anyone would cheer this loudly to a roll-up. He’s not the smart and sneaky face, winning out on the brute through his smarts and quickness. He’s the never back down kid who won’t stop until he wins or is broken in two.

Hustle: A bit more of the latter.

Missou: So yeah, we may have messed with his perfect finish but it only did good for the kid.

Oni: I don’t think he believes you. He informs you that you’ll never know how over he would’ve gotten or how effective it could’ve been because you didn’t do the goddam finish right. So who fucking cares now? All he knows is that you didn’t do what you were told and he doesn’t need wrestlers who think they’re big-fucking-shots running around and making up their own horseshit so that they always go out on top. He had enough of that in WCW and he doesn’t need that crap now.

Cold: He was in WCW?

Oni: Sure, why not.

Missou: Oh go to hell with that shit. I may not have followed his plans to the letter but I got the same end result and probably better than his shoddy horseshit would. The crowd out there isn’t cheering for me, they’re shouting to the rooftops for Collins. I got him way over and that’s what the point of him pinning me was, except the crowd never would’ve bought it because they know both of our characters and the type of match they were getting wasn’t gonna end satisfying with a roll-up. A flash pin wouldn’t pop the crowd at the end, they weren’t hot for the whole finish. It doesn’t take a genius to see that. Think I’m a bigshot? Who the hell was all this for? Not me. And they’re certainly not popping for me. So fuck you, motherfucker, I did my job and I did it well. Bigheaded? Get the fuck out of here.

Oni: Who the fuck do you think you are, huh? I don’t care if the crowd is hopping up and down singing hosannas to his fucking name, it isn’t what I wanted.

Missou: You wanted a half-ass attempt at putting a man over and getting a one time pop. No one’d believe he could make something of himself after that, they’d just think he got lucky or could only win by smarts and not by being, oh I dunno, good?

Oni: They’d think he fucking won because he did! And that’s what they’ll remember, that he got a win over some giant, dumb bear that was beating him to hell!

Missou: That’d never work! That wasn’t the kind of match this was! You have to read the audience and realize that sometimes wins matter and sometimes they don’t and in this case it was more about the match then the win. The finish was never going to be what got the crowd behind him.

Oni: If I had wanted a strong retard to mercilessly beat and pin him I coulda hit the construction sites and grabbed the toughest, dumbest son of a bitch I could find and tell him “Kill!”. But I didn’t, I wanted a wrestler to make him look good and stay down and you couldn’t do either!

Hustle: Uh, guys…

Missou: What the fuck did you say? What makes you think you got any kind of idea how to book a fucking match? Jobbing to the big boys doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing. I could piss on a toilet seat with finishes on it and choose what works by what I hit with my stream and still get a better reaction than you could if you were wrestling your wife over custody of the kids.

Oni: You stupid mook, I’ve wrestled guys twice your age and three times your size and when they got told to do the job they did it and then begged for fucking table scraps because that’s what you do!

Missou: Getting pinned for 3 months before you’re quietly let go doesn’t mean you know shit about wrestling. It was established bad-ass vs. up and coming face trying to prove himself. There was no other way this should’ve ended then with me having to break him in half to keep him down. No one, NO ONE would’ve been satisfied with a flash pin ending except you and you don’t fucking draw. I just got half your measly audience coming back here to see this kid and they’ll sit through your awkward, poorly planned and worsely wrestled matches to do it.

Cold: Guys…

Oni: No one is gonna see this match and think “Well shit, let’s go check out that boy who got beat by that big dude who was much cooler cause he fucking won!” You just did it to get booked again since the fans’ll be looking for you now!

Missou: Like fuck they will. They’ll come to see that kid who never gave up and stayed down because I broke him in half and gave him an assisted heart attack. People eat up that kind of shit, the never back down and never give up attitude. If they booked wrestlers half this well they wouldn’t have 90% of the audience sitting on their hands. This is what happens when you do shit right, not to get the quick pop or win when in the end the win DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER. Not everyone can do it, but if their character is like this then that’s how it should fucking be. If Cena never gives up and “fights the odds” and comes out on top the whole damn time and you book him like that people will never fucking believe it because he doesn’t “fight the odds” since the odds say he’s going to win! His writing and booking are both abysmal and I don’t give a fuck what anyone says, if your top face is getting boo’d vocally you are fucking doing it wrong. It could be fixed so fucking easily too if they just stopped being lazy and actually wrote something with a little more depth behind it.

Oni: Don’t you lecture me on how to get people over! He gets the wins and that’s all kids fucking care about!

Missou: If you tell a phenomenal story, something truly interesting than people will care about it when you make the win mean something. If Collins rolled me up after I unleashed hell upon him then the win means nothing. It is idiotic to think that just because the face wins that it’s good or entertaining or booked well or what fucking ever. The kids may still cheer, but the people won’t remember it when they go home. They won’t come back next week because of the exciting roll-up that he gave. I won’t be back here, they won’t come back to see the continuing feud between the two of us. It makes no sense for him to pin me. It’s shitty booking.

Oni: You’re damn right you won’t be back here. I won’t have shitty wrestler changing finished and doing what they think is right at the expense of the owner and other wrestlers.

Missou: Fuck you and your horse. This isn’t about the fans or what’s good, this is about some power-controlling douchebag who never made it doing his best to feel like he is important. I didn’t do that shit at anyone’s expense except perhaps my own since I had to heel it up and now I’ll be a heel in these territorities.

Oni: Oh lordy loo, poor you. I’m so sorry that you’ll have to laze it up as a heel now. Fuck making me look like a fool in front of the boys and fuck poor Collins who’ll be back to nobody status in a month’s time.

Missou: If he becomes a nobody again it won’t be through any fault of his own or mine, it’ll be because you’re too stubborn of an ass to strike while the iron’s hot and are all about your own ego and what you think is right. Well fuck that, I’ll eat my boot if the kid isn’t over at your next show. Not like I’ll be there, I ain’t coming back to this shithole.

Oni: Good, just run away so you can hide from the fact you just fucked this kid.

Missou: Just gimme my goddam money and I’ll never have to see your over-tanned mush again.

Oni: Here’s your $75 and take the extra $5 off the gate so you can buy a clearance WWE DVD and learn some real wrestling.

Oni pulls out his wallet and throws a couple bills at Missou, legit

Missou: Tell you what, keep the $5 and buy yourself a fucking shovel to make burying your talent easier.

Cold and Hustle just stare at the two of them as the silence stretches out and Missou and Oni both come to a slowly building realization of what just happened. Joe is mysteriously absent

Missou: …er, so yeah. I walk away.

Oni Well, Degas is still fuming but he isn’t shouting any more.

Cold: You guys back with us on planet Earth?

Hustle: Jesus Christ guys, what was that?

Missou: I got a tad too heated about that shit.

Hustle: A tad doesn’t cover it.

Oni: It’s kinda what I was going for, getting you guys caught up in the characters you’re playing.

Cold: Yeah, okay. That was totally intentional. S’why your $20s are sitting in my pocket right now.

Oni: Crap. Gimme those back.

Cold: No dice.

Oni: Dammit. So you go to leave and whatever and Collins is right there. His wave of adulation died down a while back and when he came through the curtain he was take aback at both of you arguing. He looks like he walked in on his dad beating his mom. Trembly lip and all. When you get near, he looks up at you and asks “This isn’t my fault, is it? I didn’t think it was a big-“

Missou: I cut him off. No way kid. Don’t let this guy walk all over you, he’s just concerned with himself and what he thinks works not what actually does. You can still be big, just go out there and do your best. If this joker won’t push you, find someone and somewhere else that will. Keep it easy kid, keep wrestling. Then I just walk off.

Hustle: Gallantly into the sunset.

Oni: It’s like 10 o’clock. You walk by and can’t see the face Collins wears but you hope it’s a good one. Anyways, you’re outtie. And that’s your first night of wrestling…er, roleplayed. Not in general.

Missou: What an explosive end.

Oni: It won’t always be that way, but you have to draw people in somehow.

Missou: Good. If they all go like that I’ll be out of the business in a month.

Joe walks back in holdng a Slurpee cup and a bag of pretzels

Joe: What’d I miss?

Hustle: Whoa, where the hell’d you go?

Joe: To the convenience store. I got thirsty. And hungry.

Oni: You missed your turn. We’re skipping to Hustle.

Joe: Dammit.

Hustle: Al-riiiight.

Oni: Nah, I’m fucking with you. It’s your turn next.

Hustle: Drat.

Joe: Sweet, cause I’ve been writing out his opening promo the whole time.

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Chapter 19

Uncle Joe: You’re not fucking with me, right? It’s really my turn next?

OniBarubary: I promise you that the odds of me fucking with you are relatively low at best.

MissouriDragon: Those sound like Vegas odds.

Oni: Meh.

Joe: A’ight, so where the cock am I wrestling again?

Hustle: Why didn’t you get me any pretzels?

Joe: You didn’t ask me to.

Hustle: You left without saying anything!

Joe: I was hungry! And thirsty! In that order.

Hustle: We were still playing!

Joe: No, Missou was playing. The rest of us were doing nothing or telling him what to do or bookering or whatever.

Hustle: So? We’re all gonna do that for each other’s turns. It doesn’t take that long.

Cold: And it’s fun.

Hustle: …er, yeah. That too…

Joe: Fine. Let’s just get on with it. I wanna cut this fucking promo so bad I have an erection.

Silence

Missou: Where’s the rest of the joke?

Joe: What joke?

Missou: Ugh.

Joe: So we ready to go? Where am I wrestling again?

Oni: PWG, since you hate CHIKARA.

Joe: Word, that’s like RoH except funny, right?

Oni: In a manner of speaking.

Hustle: What fucking manner of speaking?

Joe: Let’s go then, PWG ain’t gonna know what hit ‘em.

Oni: I can pretty much guarantee that. Everyone ready?

Cold: Mhmm.

Missou: A-yup.

Hustle: Yes. Why am I the only one who talks normally? Hello? Bueller?

Oni: Alright, let’s go.

At once, all the players but Joe stand up from the table and start heading towards the door

Joe: Oh ha ha guys, very funny. Siddown.

Everyone continues on their merry way

Joe: Get back here you assholes!

Begrudgingly, and with much grumbling, they all return to their seats at the table. Oni makes a show of shuffling papers around with no real purpose

Oni: Alright alright, let’s get this over with.

Joe: Y’all can go to hell, you were chomping at the nuts to see Traviss in action and now you’re hemming and hawing.

Oni: Bits.

Joe: What?

Oni: It’s chomping at the bit. Or bits, in this case.

Joe: You must be a hit at parties. Andale kemosabe, tell me what’s up.

Oni looks over to Hustle, who shakes his head

Hustle: Nope, not touching that.

Oni: What’s up is that you are heading to the PWG show. But at what time are you heading to it?

Joe: I guess I leave my deluxe penthouse apartment with satisfied naked bitches at around 4.

Oni: Alright, so you head out from your hotel and/or friend’s house around 4.

Missou: That’s surprisingly decent of you.

Joe: I’m no monster.

Hustle: Debatable.

Joe: I gotta hit the record store to get some music for all those fans to boo the shit out of.

Oni: Ah. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Fine. You comb the record stores in the area.

Joe: Gotta find some really esoteric, yelly and dumb horseshit. Maybe even emo shit, dumb wrestling fans won’t differentiate.

Joe pauses. It takes Oni ten full seconds before he realizes all eyes are on him

Oni: Huh? Why’re you all – oh dammit, screw you guys. I don’t just listen to shitty screamo.

Cold: Didn’t you tell me you downloaded 20 gigs of screamo the other night.

Oni: This is entirely unrelated.

Hustle: You don’t just listen to shitty screamo. You listen to shitty everything.

Oni: Gee thanks.

Joe: Try to find something real terrible on your computer. Something you’ve five-starred.

Oni: Thanks for the vote of confidence. I won’t come up with anything awful if you just look at my music. Who downloads music they hate?

Joe: Then pick something with awful production values cause it’s by like, three kids in a garage and they burned CD-Rs and sold them at shows or something.

Oni: I have a lot of that.

Oni peruses his music folder for a while

Oni: How about this?

Missou: Welp, this is awful enough.

Hustle: I dunno if it could really pass for entrance music though.

Cold: Might be some of the point. He could get heat for coming out to music that’s completely unsuitable for it.

Missou: Or for listening in general.

Oni: Oh come on. “Love Like…Electrocution” is great. And they’re actual screamo too, not like what it’s evolved into and everyone calls screamo. It’s not like early, early screamo which was an offshoot of hardcore and kept the tempos and instrumentation but-

Joe: Hoooooleeeeee craaaaaaaaaap, we didn’t ask for a history lesson we asked for some awful music.

Oni: No, you asked for something underproduced and esoteric.

Joe: Same difference. Next.

Oni: Man, this is some-

Joe: NEXT.

Oni mumbles something under his breath and clicks around for a bit

Oni: How’s this?

Missou: At least this one has some semblance of a rhythm and melody.

Oni: So did the other one! It was just…really fast. And atonal.

Missou: Doesn’t that sort of prove what I said?

Oni: …no?

Joe: Better. Grating as these are, they’re not annoying. They’re just loud or screamy.

Oni: Well no fucking duh. If we were going for actual hipster music I’d be pulling up Neutral Milk Hotel or fucking Animal Collective. Or something retro that’s fucking awful that they like because it’s awful. Hipster music is all indie shit or folk or retro crap, not screamo or emo or metal. People just like to generalize so anything that they don’t like can easily be sluiced into whatever buzzword means “shit/people I hate” There are thousands of different styles, millions of bands. Yet everything that screams is emo. If you don’t like it and someone dressing in a certain way does, it’s hipster. And you can’t legitimately like something, you have to like it because of the group that listens to it or because it is that genre and not from enjoyment. So fuck a discussion or argument, just say they’re doing it to be cool or anti-cool or what-fucking-ever. Ignore any actual depth in your statement, any understanding of what you’re attacking and just lump it all together. Why can’t people understand the difference?

Hustle: Because shit just flows together into one big turd?

Missou: Because it’s not important and nobody cares?

Joe: Because this is a thinly veiled parallel to wrestling?

Cold reaches over and points at the screen

Cold: Have him come out to Circle Takes the Square.

Oni: NO.

Hustle: Who the hell is Circle Takes the Square?

Oni: They are an amazing band and we are not pulling them into this conversation.

Missou: Must be a band made out of blastbeat machines and a dude throwing his guitar against a wall.

Oni: Nooooooooooo no no no no. That’s Genghis Tron. Moving on. Here we go. Let’s go.

Hustle: Fine, geez. We get the point.

Oni: Dammit Cold, you like them too.

Cold: Yep.

Cold just smiles widely

Oni: Aaaaasssssss. Fuck you guys. I’m deciding on this shit.

Joe: I didn’t give you creative control! The fuck!

Oni: You can change it next time, but this first week he’s coming out to combatwoundedveteran.

Missou: Every time I think you can’t disappoint me more, you manage somehow.

Hustle: This isn’t music, this is noise.

Oni: This is grindcore. It’s not even close to being hipster, but the fuck is anybody gonna know? I could play Dashboard Confessional and get a thousand people to call it a thousand different things.

Missou: Shit?

Oni: Well…a thousand people calling it a thousand things that they think means shit.

Joe: It’s not generic metal and if it gets him heat, then fine by me.

Oni: Just talk it up and bash Sabbath or modern metal bands. The wrestling fan metal neckbeard population has an enormous cross-over. And by cross-over, I mean it’s the same exact fanbase.

Joe: Which commiepinkovegetarian song am I going to use?

Missou: Does it really matter? You can’t tell the difference.

Hustle: Most people couldn’t.

Oni: I can.

Hustle: Most people couldn’t.

Oni: For future reference, it’s ”Also Comes in Red, Orange and Fuck You”

Hustle: Delightful.

Joe: I can work that into the promo.

Oni: Good. You done shopping at Oni’s Anti-Establishment Records?

Joe: Fine, sure.

Oni: It doesn’t take that long. You’re done by 5. Show’s at 8.

Joe: Back home I go, to listen to this shit and pick a song.

Hustle: What? You already picked an intro!

Joe: Yeah, out of character. In character, I just grabbed some music that’d be good to search for something.

Oni: You’ve been reading the rulebook without my permission again.

Missou: You can’t just pay attention to rules when they work to your advantage.

Joe: I don’t see why not.

Oni: Goddam. Just throw your record into the car and go already.

Joe: Nah, I’m gonna throw the Goosebumps Theme on my Zune and come out to that.

Oni mushes his face around with his hands, sighing for lack of anything better to do

(This column really was just me fucking around and having a little fun at my own expense. I wanted a small breather between each characters sessions, if only a chapter, before we plunge headlong back in. Not much got done in this chapter, but fuck you, stop judging me. I await the flood of critiques on my abhorrent musical taste. Cheers!)

E-mail me at: OniBarubary@gmail.com

Source: lordsofpain.net