In early 2014 I was rudely yanked from my home by tendrils of magical power. Dragged across dimensional barriers to serve at the beck and call of he who summoned me. Yet another unexpected consequence of the necromantic artifact that I accidentally managed to have forcibly grafted to my arm.
I hold up my armored left arm. Dark metal plates reach from fingertip to clavicle, making me look like a slightly more gothic Winter Soldier. Which I suppose with my Ice element is kind of fitting. But I don't do eyeliner, which makes me less gothy looking. But then the fucking elbow of the damned thing is a skull, which is also gothy. Or punk-y. Wherever the fuck you'd stick Glenn Danzig. Because the damned horned, fanged skull looks a hell of a lot like his logo.
Okay, the eyeliner thing is a bit of a fib. I kind of get these black marks around my eyes when I'm drawing on dark and sinister powers. Like the gauntlet, or the evil cannibalistic dragon goddess that lives inside my head. But that doesn't happen often.
And it turns out what had happened is that my summoner was going through his rare and expensive tomes of exotic magic, and just so happened to find one that had fallen through the dimensional barriers and got fished out of the Void some time in the 1800's.
You'd think that you could just get rid of a tome of dark magic by tossing it into oblivion. A book whose cover is made from the stitched together hides of ritually sacrificed orphans, whose ink is made from the blood from a thousand woman ritually tortured and driven to suicide by slitting their own throats, written in a quill pulled from the tail of a very pissy swan.
Because you don't have to do anything to swans to make them unspeakably evil. They're already vile and sinister hell-birds suffused with fiery rage, ready to kill and maim at the slightest provocation.
Knowledge is power, and unspeakably vile knowledge recorded in an unspeakably vile manner can never be truly destroyed. It's true. This time of year when you're out shopping, listen to the Christmas crap that's being played. How much of it was recorded in your lifetime? If you're under 40, not a whole hell of a lot.
And they will never die. For they are songs of veneration to the dark and sinister god of American commerce.
An egomaniacal, self-centered prick of a deity who demands that the entire span from Halloween to the New Year be dedicated solely to the celebration of his birthday. In temples of profit decked out in his sacred colors of blood red and money green the populace is forced by popular culture go give him worship and praise with mindless consumerism, as all must purchase, and all must give gifts to others.
Even in exchanging gifts of equal value money is lost in the form of taxes, fuel costs, and time spent. Spending 50 dollars on one another has you break even at best, and spending money to receive some ugly sweater, novelty appliance, or hideous art piece that you will never use. You break even, but Corporate America now has 100 dollars that it didn't have before.
Every dollar spent a hymn to him and his dark purpose. A festival during the darkest days of the year not to bring hope, but to bring greed, avarice, and jealousy. Look at how Little Jessie's parents bought her a new MacBook again this year, why don't your parents love you that much.
And woe to those who would celebrate any other holiday. How dare those with power and privilege have to acknowledge the other, lesser holidays celebrated by idiots, morons, and savages that are too stupid, too lazy, and to prideful to abandon their cultural identity and become one with the glorious hegemony.
You must glorify Supply Side Jesus, Son of Mammon, and his gospel of low regulation, corporate person-hood, and personal responsibility.
The poor can never be helped, for that would make them lazy.
The hungry can never be fed, for that would make them dependent.
The sick can never be healed, because then everyone would get sick on purpose and there would be no incentive to staying healthy.
All that matters is your own personal relationship with him, and that all things in all the world exist solely to glorify him and his name.
Trendy coffee providers MUST provide cups adorned with his ritualistic symbols, to act as another beacon in the world for advertising his dark purpose.
The lowly workers in each and every retail establishment and those who come to worship in the form of commerce are to be deluged with hymns unending about his birth, his life, and his glory.
You can't get rid of dark magic like this, you can merely move it from one place to another.
And so when someone threw away a book of black magic that included a ritual to summon the Handmaiden of the Smoking Scythe, it drifted along until the cosmic equivalent of a dumpster diver got hold of it and brought it into this world.
Thus one of the few people on your world capable of proper spellcasting eventually got a hold of it, browsed through its pages, and went "Handmaiden, eh? I could do with a booty call."
With the power bound in the book, written by the malevolent hand of the Lord of Darkness himself, a tendril of power reached from your world to mine, rudely yanked me out of bed in the middle of a night, and dumped me on the floor of somebody whose interior decorator designed cheap, shitty, rent-by-the-hour hotels.
It was a summoning spell and not a binding spell, and I wasn't interested in jumping the bones of some bald, pasty, paunchy guy in a pair of tighty-whiteys and a bathrobe.
Unfortunately the tome has nothing in it about an UN-summoning spell. If it had been a binding, just breaking the spell would've sent me back, but nope.
So decidedly not prepare to deal with a seven foot tall pissy dragoness, Pasty Patsy went and pawned me off to ANOTHER sorcerer, one Leeland Gaunt, who had a sort of side business having his artifact-bound composite eidolon beating the crap out of shitty human beings to shits and giggles between periods of supernatural hijinx.
And having been brought here being a bright blue creature suffused with eldritch magic whose only real marketable skills are beating the crap out of things and making pizza, I wisely decided on a career of beating the crap out of profoundly unpleasant people.
Because seriously, all it took was about fifteen minutes reading tales online of how poorly your fuckers treat food service workers before I wanted to kill somebody to death by submerging their head in the deep fryer.
I didn't want to deal with supernatural hijinx, because as often as not that means ghosts, and with this big dumb sentient piece of crap stuck on my shoulder my spellcasting has turned all wacky.
The Hand of Arimus, being an artifact of the god of Black Magic, Death, Devils, Demons, Undeath, and Stringed Instruments, has the capacity to empower spells cast by its wielder. Which can mean anything from turning a fireball into a plume of necromantic energy twice its usual size, to making a healing spell suck the life out of somebody, to making a spell to find the closest city kill every living thing weighing less than a pound in a circle whose radius is the distance between you and the closest town.
Because even if I am an experienced Necrotechnician, managing the undead hordes of a goodly sized dark elven tomb-city to make sure that it doesn't all explode or fall into a sinkhole, there's not really all that much you can do with ghosts if you can't see them.
And this world is to magic what Death Valley is to water. So most ghosties on their own can't go around manifesting quasi-physical forms made of ecto-plastic all willy-nilly like they could back home.
So that kind of left me with the pro wrestling business, and to be perfectly honest I think it ended up being a bad choice. Originally I was driven towards the big federations, wanting to attain a title with a long pedigree and a history of meaningful defenses.
Because even without magic, items can grow to have power when you fill them with devotion, emotion, and meaning. All the excitement, all the hope, all the despair that thousands or millions of people experience while watching a title match between one of their favorites and a hated rival, it doesn't just go away.
I hold up my newly won DTW World Championship, a bit of a smile forming on my face. I still can't believe that the damn thing is mine, nor can I believe that it was designed on purpose to have a pair of dragon wings on it.
It ends up right here. And if you treat a title well, the power contained inside it will grow. You have to make sure that it is treated well, that it is respected, that it is nurtured. You can't treat it merely as a fashion accessory, for some dumb goth lesbian bitch to carry around her waist doing fuck all with it for months on end.
You have to make sure that the champion is somebody worthy of respect. It doesn't matter if they're a noble hero or a dastardly villain. A champion can cheat his way to victory in each and every match, retaining the belt by the skin of his teeth every time.
But so long as the matches are good, hard fights, and the champion displays his skill at being able to bend and break the rules without getting caught, the championship still gains prestige.
But if you do something stupid and ridiculous, like just throwing the title belt out there like a brazen harlot to be defended without rhyme or reason every single week, to serve no purpose but to assure that your title zips back and forth rapidly, changing hands between wrestlers at a rapid pace, that makes your title a joke.
It doesn't gain honor. It doesn't gain prestige.
That isn't to say you can't have an adored comedic title, but to do so with your primary prize is folly.
I'm sure a few folks will scoff, that they won't believe me. That magic isn't real.
And I know it's tough. I know there's subtle spells layered over most major cities that makes people ignore the few supernatural things you've still got hanging around here, for both their protection and yours.
Hell, it's why I seem to have to explain every fucking week that I am a seven foot tall fire-breathing dragoness.
Somehow this does not seem to be an important and relevant fact to be retained by some people.
But I want you to think, I want you to think real hard.
Think of a long running, long defended, respected World Heavyweight Championship. When's the last time you remember somebody being thwacked in the face with it, and them getting back up? Eh?
It doesn't happen all too often, does it?
Men and women will shrug off shots from chairs, stairs, ladders, ring bells, sledgehammers, actual hammers, MC Hammers, two by fours, baseball bats, barbed wire, kendo sticks, light tubes, gusset plates, trash cans, dumpsters, ring stairs, comically oversized novelty sex toys, and motor vehicles.
But a title belt? A simple construct of metal and leather not meant to be used as a weapon?
When somebody gets hit with it, they go down and stay down. Haven't you ever wondered why that is?
It's because there's energy there, a force. The belt acts as a repository for a fraction of the feelings that the pro wrestling fans experience as take an emotional roller coaster ride during each and every title match.
The emotional weight held by such a thing is very real, and when it's used as a part of its own legend, that weight is translated into physical and spiritual force, slamming into the target.
The magic is real.
A couple hundred thousand views on YouTube isn't much compared to the millions of people who were turning in their TV's to watch ULW, but so far DTW's done a hell of a lot more to bolster and promote each and every member of its roster than ULW or UWA managed to do for anyone who wasn't a beloved darling of the Shadow Cartel.
But FUCK THEM. I don't work for those corrupt corporate cocksuckers anymore, and I'm going to dedicate my time in DTW to exposing their bullshit.
You see, I've come to learn something. That when you're an artist, an entertainer, a perform, you shouldn't create things out of love.
At the best you end up creating nothing more than a pale imitation of the thing you love. A spectral shade that will always be inferior to the thing that it's inspired by.
Everybody has their favorite professional wrestler, the one man or woman that they want to be above all else, the one they model themselves after.
Their look, their attitude, their moves.
They want to be the next Ric Flair, the next Shawn Michaels, and not the first of their own name.
Me? I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to dedicate my career to hate. I'm going against all the stupid, short sighted, immature, corrupt, bullshit that's made so many wrestlers in this sport miserable.
DTW is an equal opportunity environment. We don't give a shit if you're a amazonian dragoness from another world, an undead clown-lizard, a shit-eating sex offender, a dirty hippie, an insane unwashed grandma, or one of a half dozen flavors of grumpy bearded white dude.
Everybody gets a chance to shine here.
I'm fucking proud to be DeathTrip Wrestling's inaugural champion, and I am going to make sure that this fucking belt is treated with the honor it deserves.
I'm not going to run off and refuse to wrestle for four months, I'm not going to duck my number one title contender at every opportunity.
I'm not going to force anyone who wants to fight me for this belt to have a best of infinity series with Claudia before I deign to let them in the ring with me.
I'm not going to hold this belt hostage and refuse to defend it until I'm awarded a shot at another title in the fed because I need two titles so that my shoulders match when I walk down to the ring.
I'm not going to turn every match I wrestle into a goddamn farce where Claudia, her clowns, seven different flavors of Bobs, the Blue Man Group, a Vampire the Masquerade LARP group from Denny's, the newest production line from Silas Mason's Bimbo Factory, a teleporting gimp looking to kidnap people to take back to his sex dungeon, a baker's dozen of shitty disposable Dixie Cup minions who no one will ever give a fuck about, the 82nd Airborne, and the cast of Rent all run in every week and interfere on my behalf.
I am going to go out there each and every fortnight with one goal: to be the most creative, vicious, violent, hilarious, and entertaining overgrown smurf that I can be.
I know what my job is. My job is entertaining the fans and bringing prestige to the wrestling federation that I am acting as the face of.
And a lot of people in the industry, they've either forgotten it or have had their heads lodged too far up their own loathsome, spotty behinds from the very beginning to ever realize it.
I'm not going to be like Dick Devereaux, where everything I do is precisely calculated to basically suck my own cock. Because that's all Dick does, is wrap his lips around Little Richard and start blowing.
And if he's not bent over pulling a Marilyn Manson, he's actively jerking himself off.
"Oooh, look at me I managed to figure out the same information on elemental weaknesses that pre-schoolers learn playing Pokemon! Aren't I such a tremendous badass! Look at me, and my fingerpainted on handprint on my skull that makes me look like a tanned Uruk-Hai from Lord of the Rings! I'm so powerful and skilled and talented and threatening my angry, bearded ass got eliminated first in a three way championship match!"
Suck MY dick, Dick! You're like an even shittier version of Riddick, since, you know, the son of a bitch basically did all the damage to me with his goddamn flame thrower. What'd you manage to do, other than ineffectual try to run people over with a car, wind up wearing another man's shirt home, and get your ass fuckin' eliminated, eh?
You think you're oh so smart writing "Dragon Slayer" on shit like every other uncreative waste of a perfectly good ovum who ought to have ended up as a spunk stain on the carpet instead of an actual human being.
For fuck's sake, Dickie-Boy, each and every egomaniacal cockgoblin I've ever wrestled with the exception of Riddick has decided to call themselves the Dragon Slayer. And the only reason Riddick hasn't is because he's an offensive, misogynistic fucknugget and has decided he wants to be the Dragon Layer instead.
C'mon! Get some new material, Lord Baldicus! Fucking DO SOMETHING that makes me take you seriously instead of being just another jumped-up chump whose mouth is writing checks his ass can't cash.
Yeah yeah yeah, you're going to fuckin' kill me, gonna murder me in the face. Totes going to obliterate me. Promises promises. Just like every other overblown asshole with a bloated sense of self-worth.
If you're going to promise something, fuck-knuckle, actually do it. I said I was going to beat Riddick face in with a big rubber cock, and I did. It was glorious.
I said I was going to drag some asshole over hot coals.
So I literally set up a bed of hot coals and I dragged your ass over it.
And because you think you've got yourself a pair of big gigantic brass balls, that's exactly what I'm going to beat you into submission with. A pair of great big brass balls that I'm going to drop on your groin until your nutsack bursts. Or until I get bored. Or until I find something more entertaining to do.
Oh, like take that finger paint off your face with a fuckin' belt sander.
Claudia's already kind of laid claim to Jason Kaine and is going to beat him to death with a giant raspberry sucker with world's third largest googly eye stuck to it. Intent on beating some sort of uniqueness into him with it and getting revenge for all the defenseless women he's assaulted during his time thus far in DTW.
Matt Acid is a dirty, dirty hippie whom I'm sure I can send running like a scalded dog by bringing out a tub of water, a bar of soap, and a washboard to forcibly make him take a bath, and then force him to put on a pair of actual real life big boy pants. You know, slacks or jeans or something. Anything that isn't a pair of tie-dyed underoos. So I think we can leave that task to our third teammate, whom Claudia has dubbed "The Mascot."
Which of course leaves me to beat the ever-loathing shit out of Dick Devereaux until I make him look like a walking penis by carving a bleeding gash down the middle of his head with my claws. And hey, it'll be the closest DeeDee's been to a bloody slit since he was shat out of his mother's womb.
I'm not just going to go out there and beat the shit out of people week after week.
I vow as your DTW World Champion that I will beat the shit out of people with the intent of making professional wrestling better.
So what does this mean?
It means, Dickface, that if you're going to keep trotting out the same bullshit I've heard from every other fucking opponent I've ever had, I'm going not merely going to beat the shit out of you, I'm going to make you suffer.
Consider it motivation. You at least attempt to bring something new and novel to the table, even if it's something as crude as wanting to fuck my face, and you just get a run of the mill ass kicking.
You just dump the same old recycled crap in my lap that I've heard a billion times before? Let's see how you like having your fucking crotch set on fire.
But hey, on the bright side that's going to cut down on our budget for music licenses, because eventually all the angry bearded white dudes are going to be coming out to "Great Balls of Fire."
Though if I hear if any one of your assholes is fucking your thirteen year old cousin, not only am I going to set your junk on fire, but I'm going to put that shit out with an axe, you hear me?
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