Post by LACKLAN on Jan 25, 2019 23:40:03 GMT -5
THWACK!
“Wake up, Aaron!”
Aaron’s eyes pop open and he sits up bolt-right, breath coming out in a gasp. Blue eyes look around and they see rows of fellow teenagers staring at him, most snickering. A raven-haired girl, the prettiest in his grade, shakes her head and turns away. He looks to the front of the class to where his teacher is staring daggers at him.
“...sorry…”
His classmates snicker as they turn back to the front. The teacher shakes her head.
“I will try to make this lesson more riveting for you, Mr. Lacklan.”
She turns away and motions towards the large wall screen.
“Now, if you will all bring up the text, I would…”
Aaron blocks out the teacher’s drone and looks down at his desk with dismay. He hated history class. Especially when it was his OWN history. He had PLENTY of that nonsense at home. All of his elders wouldn’t EVER shit up about the family history over the last 200 hundred years, and having it be a part of the curriculum just made it all worse. Still, he dreaded having another lecture from his grandmother about the importance of doing well in school ("You'll never be 5'10" by slouching in class!") , so he waved his hand over his desk and brought the view screen to life.
WELCOME
STATE YOUR NAME
“Lacklan, Aaron T.”
The view screen fully unlocked and showed him his lesson plan, including his homework, his notes, and personalized study guides. He moved his fingers over the section marked HISTORY and opened the menu. As always, the class’ contents were organized both by year and component. Aaron’s light eyes run down the menu of names, subjects, and organizations.
THE ART OF WRESTLING
THE PATH OF THE LIGHT CHURCH
FOUNDATION OF LACKLANLAND
LACKLAN FAMILY TREE
WRESTLING ORGANIZATIONS
LACKLAN CANCER RESEARCH CENTER
GREY-LACKLAN BETTER HOMES ORPHANAGE
DARK GODDESS PRODUCTIONS
Aaron hears the teacher droning on in the background (“-and in 2058-”) and does his best to ignore her as he instead hovers his finger over his favorite part of history. The selection of WRESTLING ORGANIZATIONS takes over the screen and a large list of company names fills it from top to bottom. A wiggle of his fingers changes the sorting from chronological to alphabetical and he goes down the list, his eyes twitching back and forth as he wonders what he should read today. His hand stops when he sees his particular favorite, and though he has read and watched the archive many times over, he does the small swoop action of his fingers to make the selection.
UNITED GLOBAL WRESTLING COALITION
ANGELICA MARIE VAUGHN (HIGHTOWER)
AVELINE LACKLAN (MEROVIGNIAN)
JANICE LACKLAN (BERGERON)
MACKENZIE MICHAELA GREY-LACKLAN(GREY)
RICHARD VAUGHN (FERN)
SARAH SELENA GREY-LACKLAN (LACKLAN)
SHINJIRO NAKAMA (LACKLAN)
SIDNEY GREY (GREY)
He smiled slightly at the thought of so many of his family being in the business, whether or not they knew it or who they were at the time. Much of the family history was swathed in confusion, typically by design, and particularly when you factored in how...fertile...his Great Grandfather was, there were a lot of threads in the Lacklan tapestry. As the voice of his teacher continued to sound like a muted din in his ears, he finds himself swishing onto the menu item marked EVENTS, and then TOURNAMENTS when that resolved into the rundown of television shows and pay per views. He liked tournaments of all kinds. Nothing was quite as exciting as when matches had serious stakes on the line, or “skin in the game,” as his Great Auntie would say.
TOURNAMENTS - AN OVERVIEW
GLOBAL CHALLENGE (2008-2057)
LORD OF TRIOS (2018-2039)
OUTLAST (2001-2057)
ROUND ROBIN (2019-2021)
WRESTLESTOCK CUP (2015-2042)
He smirks as he looks at the categories. Each event was won by at least one member of his family throughout the years, with the WrestleStock Cup being the most famous due to their domination of it. He swooped in on the overview summary and was greeted by the dour face of the man who wrote the vast majority of the history material, Dexter Severin, and the monitor showed him an excerpt from the second of the Madness Reigns trilogy, The Lacklan Dynasty
~~Excerpt from The Lacklan Dynasty, published 2023~~
The UGWC was kind of a weird fed, and considering that I was involved with feds that had shows in carnivals and had the World Champ fighting for a goldfish on a pole, that is saying something. This place had a foul-mouthed penguin; stipulations that, in no way, should have gotten cleared by the Illinois State Athletic Commission; an obsession with stables of wrestlers either trying to dismantle it or otherwise control it; a slew of inept “creative directors”; THE most lax backstage security there has ever been; a health and wellness policy that seemed to be okay with beatdowns, kidnappings, suicide attempts, twitter lesbianism, pigeons shitting everywhere, and a trap door that led (if it ever worked) to a fiery pit of death. But, thankfully, they also had a love of something important:
Tournaments.
While there was a rash of employees who didn’t actually care to go to work everyday, ranging from squash-serving mobsters to world champions, they understood, by and large, that tournaments not only helped you determine what mattered in the business, but an arena in which the stakes could not be any higher. As you shall read in this chapter, they had tournaments of all kinds, from one night, single elimination, to round robin, to two-stage elimination, and more. Quite often the winners of these tournaments were given rare opportunities to be the World Champion and face of the business, and regardless of the outcome, certain glory and recognition.
Aaron swooshes his way backward and looks over the list of various tournaments again. Several of them had been won at some point by those family members, but his favorite was the Round Robin. He swooshed it and the three years it existed opened up, and he swooshed the first year, which many consider the best, that of 2019.
~~Excerpt from The Lacklan Dynasty, published 2023~~
Round Robin Tournaments are a thing that most of the Western world didn’t wholly understand, so I was surprised when the UGWC, possibly as a direct idea of Creative Director Ichabod, announced that they would hold their first. Continuing with the previous year’s theme of their Lord of Trios tournament also containing a triple threat match for the World title, the winner of the Round Robin would get to join in on the tradition title match received by the winner of the single-elimination Global Challenge. The entrants for the inaugural (if short-lived) tournament were a variety of people who had fought often the prior year.
Angie Vaughn had the distinction of being both the #1 contender to the title AND having an opportunity to earn a consecutive shot. She had earned a title match at Horizons the year before, and one had to wonder, at that stage, what would happen if she had both won the title AND won the Round Robin. Going into the tournament, she was considered by many as the heavy favorite, as she had held several titles across the world, was currently a Cooperative Champion, and ended Horizons with an 8-match winning streak.
Zane Scott had a massive chip on his shoulder going into this thing. He started the prior year a champion, became the World Champ at Infinity to be the first-ever Triple Champ (Chaos, Cooperative w/ Hastings), and generally dominated. But in quick fashion, he found himself title-less, getting attacked by a relentless Phrixus Deimos, and ending the year embroiled in a blood feud with his former partner and friend in Hastings. He made his intention of going into the tournament clear, as he wanted to prove that he was worthy of being the champion of the fed.
Roxy Cotton finished the previous year strong but narrowly failed in her attempt to end it as the Chaos Champion. Due to what was at the time unexplained issues between Le Bord de Dieu and Angie Vaughn, as well as the Grey-Lacklans, Roxy had put a lot of thought and heart into taking away the Chaos title. And after her failure, she was even more determined to defeat Le Bord de Dieu as well as become the World Champion, as she entered both the Round Robin AND the Global Challenge.
Travis Pierce had a year of ups and downs that both saw him hold two different championships as well as lose over two thirds of his matches. Much like Roxy, he was determined to end the year with the Chaos Title, and like her was both frustrated by his inability and motivated to stand tall by entering both tournaments in January.
Le Bord de Dieu had become the face of the Chaos Title the prior year and, while many would rest upon their laurels, took it upon herself to prove that her title was more important than the World, first by defeating the Round Robin field, and then defeating the Global Challenge winner and the World Champion at the Lord of Trios. And as she entered the year, to paraphrase a particularly scruffy neckbeard wrestling fan, she showed that her fervor was more intense than ever before.
Aaron narrows his eyes in thought at the final two names on the list of Round Robin competitors. He raises his hand and the teacher’s drone halts.
“Yes, Aaron?”
“Who was Travis Pierce?”
He looks up to see the teacher blink at him in confusion.
“Who?”
“Travis Pierce. He’s in the archives. He fought-”
His eyes lower to his desk for a moment and then back up to his teacher.
“-my Great Grandmother.”
There is an audible intake of breath in his peers around him and the teacher gets a wistful look in her eye.
“La Reine Mère.”
Her voice was full of dreamy awe, and the students responded in kind with a group “La Reine Mère” which was thick with devotion. Aaron clears his throat and the teacher shakes her head and comes back to the real world.
“La Reine Mère fought many people. As you are well aware yourself, the Lacklans were known to fight across the world. But, let us look closely and answer your question.”
With a circling of her right hand, the Teacher’s Bracelet around her wrist took the information from Aaron’s desk and, after a flicking motion, threw it onto her own wall monitor for all to see. After a swoosh, the name of Pierce is replaced by three pictures, each of a different age for the man. The teacher grimaces, her eyes full out confusion.
“I truly do not know, class. Thus, let us go to the master himself.”
The teacher brings both hands together and shoves them forward, the hadoken turning her board into a recording of a man with salt-and-pepper hair and sad eyes, who’s scratchy voice fills the classroom.
~~Audio Notes (2019) - Collected Works~~
Look, I know that I probably shouldn’t be doing that whole “pot calling a kettle black” thing, but his “media personality wrestler” schtick is so high up the fucktard level that even Baumer hid her face in shame while checking out this guy. Seriously, if you took every single one of his newscasts and specials, blended them all together so that they could fit into one pot, stirred them with a whisk, and then poured that through a strainer to get out all the shit, you would end up with about a thimble’s worth of credible work. All this guy did through the entire lifetime of his media network was suck the dick of his betters and hope for a pity jerk from that goth chick. And what did he actually get out of it all? His network taken from him by said goth chick (she DID have nice tits, at least) and the entire company laughing at him. Seriously, his entire career can be summed up by the image of some special kid pushing on a door that clearly says pull. Travis is a shit load of effort for nothing but a bowl of shit in return.
I wonder if anyone in the future is even going to know what the fuck I’m talking about? See, at some point in the 2000s, it became hip and cool to start producing your own content like some dipshit amateur radio jockey. Do your own news reports in your mom’s basement; write articles about wrestling that 15 people read (debates about calling moves by their creator or by a technical definition were the shittiest of the shits, by the way); hell, there was even this dude in Nova Scotia (which is somewhere in Canda, I think?) who seemed to have an orgasm while reporting on earthquakes and hurricanes! And the Piercing Media Network, which was convinced that politics were real and not theatre, because they were dumb fucks, were the worst. “Piercing.” Fuck that. Only thing Travis ever pierced was a lukewarm apple pie that had to be held down with double-strength straps so that even an inanimate fucking object wouldn’t run away in terror.
You know what? I should give you an example. See, when I first started watching the UGWC a few years ago, he was walking around and talking about how he was “the best” Travis. There was this OTHER Travis, you see, and Dipshit McFuckwad was convinced that HE was better. Or Alpha, as the edgelord would have it. But even someone as delusional in what makes wrestling good as that Salvatore chick could tell you that THIS Travis was as full of shit as his network’s “reporting” was. THIS Travis hasn’t been able to win more than 9 or 10 matches in 365 goddamn days since the founding of this company, and the OTHER Travis won 10 fucking CHAMPIONSHIP matches in his last year as a wrestler! Of course, since THIS Travis “beat” the OTHER Travis one fucking time in a match that only mattered to Mama Pierce so that she could FINALLY say “My boy is ALMOST tolerable!” he has spent the intervening years jerking himself off six nights a week in a dark room while My Chemical Romance screamed out “I’M NOOOOOT OOOOOOKAAAAAYYYYY” and thinking he was relevant. Good fuck, if THAT Travis ever came back to fight THIS Travis, the smell of fear-stricken piss would be so strong that you would think an entire equestrian team had paused during the parade to relieve themselves en masse.
The worst part of his bullshit? It never stops. Loss after loss after loss, and he still thinks that he is someone that people should be afraid of or take seriously. He gets one over Wallace at the Trios because that waste of space Mathis was there to eat a pinfall and he thinks he matters. He beats some giant undead monster, just like 9 other people did during the year, and he thinks he matters. He wins less than half of his matches at PPVs and he thinks he matters. Hell, he finished last year by laying in a pool of his own blood and, just like he started it, a loser, and thinks the he can win a tournament where you have to actually...oh I don’t know...win matches? And all the while, he’s so busy doing his lame schtick that he doesn’t realize that he’s so far behind the curve that if the highest grade in the class was a C-, he would STILL flunk the damned test.
That’s the thing about crazy bullshit, I guess. There is comfort in being wrong and not knowing about it. Know that saying about ignorance and bliss? That should be the actual mission statement of his network. Guys like him harp on that whole “I only win the matches that matter” bullshit, the kind of line that puts entire companies out of business because the fans don’t give fuck-all about paying to watch people go through the motions, yet he still doesn’t win enough of those matches that “matter” in order to do anything other than get that pity jerk from people who have been putting up with his shit for years. In order to win tournaments, you have to actually win matches in a short period of time. Want to win the Challenge? Got to win three times in one night. Want to win the Round Robin? Got to win AT LEAST three of the matches. And this Travis punk? Last time HE was able to string three Ws together was in August...of 2014! And that’s a shoot. Looked that shit up.
How pathetic is that?
2019 is going to be tough for this guy. Increased competition from other independent media services. Increased competition from younger wrestlers. And an aging fan base that will give him less and less pops for when he spends half of his interview time reading a list of people better than him from a piece of paper in his hand, because they are starting to forget the people he used to lay down for back in the day. And know what’s really weird, funny, and sad about those cheap pops he gets? When compared to the modern breed of wrestler I see and write about today?
A lot of those “legends” were pretty shitty, too.
But I guess even dogshit looks shiny when they were being compared to THIS Travis.
The teacher blinks in surprise as the video cuts off. Aaron smiles to himself as he sees the color rise in his teacher’s cheeks. “Great Uncle” Dex certainly had a way with words. He smiled more as the teacher quickly swooshed her fingers again and sent her wall monitor back a few screens to the list of Round Robin 2019 combatants.
“Erm...well...so...apparently that is-”
“I wonder what he had to say about my Great Grandmother?”
Before the teacher can respond, Aaron swoops his own desk and sends the screen to focus in on the ring name of his great grandmother Aveline.
*****ACCESS RESTRICTED*****
Aaron was as surprised as his teacher. He shrugged his shoulders when she turned her questioning gaze on him. With that shrug, she turned to the rest of the class.
“Well...if the Writer’s words are currently unknown...need to look into that...what can YOU tell me about La Reine Mère during this time?”
Hands shot up, but answers assaulted the teacher in a jubilant chaos.
“She was the Champion of Chaos!”
“She was the BEST champion in the business!”
“She never told a single lie!”
“She was BEAUTIFUL!”
“She was the best mother EVER!”
“She had AT LEAST three men ready to battle to the death over her hand!”
“Her devotion to la Voix was SO goals!”
Aaron drowned out the adulation of his classmates for his late great grandmother and instead turned his attention to his desk. With a grimace on his face, he again swooshed his monitor and received the same response as before.
*****ACCESS RESTRICTED*****
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