I love introducing my non-wrestling friends to wrestling and sharing it with them for multiple reasons. On one hand, I adore pro wrestling and want more people to fall in love with its world, the theater of it, and the beautiful stories it can tell. On the other hand, as someone who has followed it for more than thirty years and understands on a basic level how wrestling storytelling works, I can pretty reliably predict results which makes me look to those new fans like a goddamned wizard.
genuinely how hard is it to block something if you don’t like it. what don’t people understand about ‘live and let live’?? I see so many newer fans join fandoms and then proceed to complain about shit. like why are you posting about “cringe” fics with tags you don’t like like “can we please not normalize…” shut up?? this clearly wasn’t made with you as the intended audience.
the whole point of the tagging system on ao3 is to let you filter out exactly what you like and what you don’t like. that’s why it pisses me off so bad when people come into fandom spaces and then demand everyone else change to appease them. saying shit like ao3 needs dislikes, or an algorithm, or god fucking forbid, censorship.
you don’t need to be a freak or queer or anything to be in a fandom, but people need to remember that fandoms were built up by freaks and queers.
they were here before you and they’ll fucking be here after you
"Poser this, poser that" NO. SHUT UP. SHUT THE ACTUAL FUCK UP. Let's look at the real definition of a poser, huh?
Oh so a poser is someone who pretends to like something that they dont actually like, or pretend to like it to seem cool? Doesn't sound very problematic but yeah okay I get some people's frustrations-
"You poser, you can't even name three songs-" LET ME SHUSH YOU RRRRIGHT THERE BUDDY. Let's say this person has only heard one song, once, and liked it. You know what that makes them? NOT A POSER. Even if they've listened to one song by the band, a snippet of a song, and they liked it, they are not a poser. If they go around saying they're a big fan, thats just lying. But not being a poser. So stfu and go educate thy selves!
my favourite thing about being in the supernatural fandom is seeing new fans (I do love the fact that there is still a flow of new fans) getting to season 4 and going: Oh. *oh*.... Oooohhhhh.... they were NOT exaggerating about how gay this show was.
Like it makes me giggle internally every time like no Destiel was not some sort of collective over reading/diving into the subtext and trying to make something exist that wasn't there. Like nope these guys really DID just spent minutes at a time staring *very* deeply into each other's eyes and saying absolutely out of pocket things to each other and dying for each other over and over and over again. Also your friendly reminder that the second to last episode of the show DOES make Destiel canon and I really won't hear anything else, like omg people they don't need to kiss to be canon okay, a kiss is not the be all end all mark of a romantic relationship *TM ( or whatever they had that certainly wasn't entirely platonic) okay okay!!??
Anyway, new fans go have fun XD And always remember to properly filter your AO3 fics 😬
"These new fans pmo they don't know any of the fandom's history" well how about you fucking tell them about it. You don't get mad at your newborn baby for not knowing your childhood trauma do you
An in depth guide for how to get into professional wrestling (as a fan)
As a long time fan of wrestling I’ve tried to get a few people into wrestling and have found a few problems people usually have with getting into it. I’ll be breaking those down along with terms newbies might need for interacting with the fandom, it can be really intimidating to ask questions if you feel like you should know things by default so I made this
The WWE and AEW aren’t everything: there are so many companies 324 smaller North American and even some Asian companies formed independent wrestling television. You can watch more wrestling than you know what to do with. If you can’t pay the 10$ a month (absolutely no judgement life be hard) the internet is a treasure trove of free wrestling even without the ole yo ho ho. But this leads to another problem
“How will I know what I like?”: You won’t unless you’re gateway was catching wrestling while channel surfing and thinking it looked cool. Try everything once but don’t expect to like everything. Find a few indie matches before looking for anything specific so you can find a little bit of everything, you might like the showmanship, the technical details, weapon based violence, it may change with your mood but if you’re making an effort to get into it you’ll find something just take your time
“Some companies have so much history it’s overwhelming”: unless you are a devoted little lunatic don’t try to watch everything from the start, I did that with progress wrestling and I would watch 10 or so hours of wrestling, I’m still 32 shows behind and they run monthly. Almost any show from any company is a good start but I’d say allow yourself to go back like 3 shows max unless you’re already aware of where you want to start
“Things in wrestling don’t make sense”: that is true but an important thing to understand is wrestling has its own internal logic like any show really, these can vary from company to company but it’s like inertia. You start at “okay so this is happening because it’s wrestling” and you get to a point where you’re choice to suspend disbelief carries itself to “fuck it this might as well happen this is wrestling” that being said
It’s entirely valid to not enjoy something a company does and please don’t just accept something or feel like you have to wait it out. Take a break, keep an eye on it try something new but don’t feel like you have to stay glued to a bed of sand paper. You will not enjoy everything done by a company
Bring a friend and be a friend: having a friend to watch with and help you learn is always good but don’t feel like you have to share their opinion about a person or decision, any good friend will be respectful of that.
rules
A normal wrestling match is usually won by one of 4 ways. pinning your opponent to the mat with their shoulders down for 3 seconds, submission, disqualification or knockout
Other small rules: being outside the ring means any potential victory (often aside from a ko for safety) are invalid, if a limb makes contact with the ring rope during a pinfall submission or hold it’s considered out of bounds and must be broken, if you are outside the ring there is usually a 10 count sometimes 20 if you don’t come back to the ring you get disqualified, ignoring a rope break or using an illegal move like small joint manipulation has a 5 count, don’t hit the ref, fishhook anything, bite, or hit balls. No disqualification matches exist
A tag team match: in its most basic has 2 or more teams of an equal amount, only one member of each team is allowed in the ring at once and the others have to wait on the apron, the other partner can come in when they make contact with their partner in the referees vision. A 5 count is issued for double teaming moves. Sometimes it’s everyone at once in the ring, this is a tornado tag match
Steel cage: they put a cage around the ring and you win by either normal means or depending on the match escaping the cage
lucha de apuestas: if you make any friends with any interest in lucha libre you’ll often hear this term it just means a wager match basically the competitors each put something on the line, their right to mask, their hair, a title, or their career.
Terms
Face/technico: the term used for a good guy, technico is usually reserved for Mexican lucha libre
Heel/rudo: bad guy
Over: if someone is over or getting over they’re ve a fan favorite or in the process of getting there
Heat: negative crowd response
Booking: how the show is being written and how people are being used in that process
Cultural differences in wrestling
You’d be able to find any kind of wrestling in most places if you look hard enough but it’s really interesting how different wrestling styles evolved
America: we have historically had a lot of carnival wrestling. How do you con a bunch of small towns out of money with wrestling? Fix them to be more interesting while still having enough skill to put the everyday challenges away without any suspicion. This became the rough and tumble 70s southern brawl style but until the 90s it really just boiled down to “be able to fuck people up so you don’t have to”
Japan: this is a tricky situation because there are really 3 main styles of Japanese pro wrestling. Strong style focuses on a lot of striking a resilience along with strong fundamental holds, kings road style was also very resilience based but had a more defined match structure and had a focus on throws like suplex’s and head drops. Most modern Japanese wrestling is a kind of blend of those, then you’ve got the younger brother and hardest for me to talk about bati bati. I’m admittedly not that well versed in its history but from my understanding it’s like if MMA and pro wrestling had a baby that didn’t suck. There are better resources than me to learn from.
Mexico: the origin of the highly acrobatic lucha libre actually has to do with a lot of old Mexican rings being modified boxing ring, the gymnastics of lucha are in service of minimizing bad landings. But there are 2 other important aspects to lucha, Your mask/pride and your family. In lucha your mask is your identity and your legacy, it’s essentially sacred. Losing it is often how careers end, if you’re not a mask wearing wrestler pride is the substitute. But the pride of your family is just as important as often times it’s a multi generational commitment.
Europe/the UK: I’m not slapping these together out of disrespect they’re just extremely similar historically. For a while British wrestling greatly resembled its American counterpart but too many bad actors ruined it for everyone and pro wrestling was briefly banned until being revived with a unified and more strict ruleset with world of sport in the 70s that 80s, taking more after catch as catch can. Where as it’s European brother found it’s stride in long grueling tournaments as a test of skill, a tradition still carried on mostly in Germany with WXWs 16 karat tournament, progress’s super strong style 16, and even the wwe uk title tournament
