We’re back with a new raft of Members’ Corners posts, in which our community members talk about their passions and specialty subjects. Most recently, Konquest introduced music theory and Lanah delved into a long-lost healing ability in Final Fantasy XIV. This time, we’re putting TrialByStory centre stage, or rather, between the ropes. If you’re already a wrestling fan, we suspect you’ll be shouting ‘yes!’ when you read TrialByStory’s words; if you’re not already a fan, we suspect you’ll be thinking ‘I get it now!’ Either way, read on, for their passion is infectious and their arguments are compelling!
“If there's one thing I'm passionate about, it's storytelling. In particular, I love digging down into non-traditional ways to convey a narrative. Like the item descriptions in Dark Souls or Major Orders in Helldivers. But there's one medium with a particularly unusual storytelling trait that I just can't help but love: professional wrestling.
“I doubt I'm blowing anyone's mind when I say that the likes of WWE and AEW are not competitive sports leagues. I mean, ‘You know it's fake, right?’ is practically a meme whenever someone mentions wrasslin'. But 'fake' isn’t quite right: yes, the match outcomes are scripted, but that doesn’t change the fact that the moves happening in the ring are really happening and are often actually dangerous (though often not in the way a viewer might assume).
“But at the same time, the people launching those moves and getting hit by them are caricatures, or more accurately, characters. Take the example of an evil group of male cheerleaders or an undead wizard who sometimes likes to be a cowboy and at other times a biker. To borrow a phrase from Max Landis's Wrestling Isn't Wrestling: WWE is not a wrestling show; it’s a TV show about a wrestling show. That means that wins and losses are determined ahead of time, that champions aren't the people with the most skill, but the ones who've been determined to be the most beneficial for driving the buyrate of the next big pay-per-view, and that matches - while not fully choreographed - are planned around the big moments to generate the desired emotional response from the audience.
“But things don't always go as planned. The next chosen champion might get injured and have to sit out for months, forcing the planned story to pivot. Someone might miss their cue and force everyone else to improvise to a situation that wasn't accounted for in the playbook, forcing the planned story to pivot. Sometimes the planned story just isn't as good as the folks plotting it out expected it to be, so they decide to pivot. And sometimes, the audience decides that there's a better story that's not being told, and they force the pivot.
“That last part is important and unique, because the audience itself is a character. More specifically, the live crowd in attendance at the arena. WWE's shows are shot for the folks watching on TV at home, but the in-person fans are a vital part of the experience. Wrestling needs folks to cheer for the good guy, boo and hiss at the bad guy, sing along with entrance music, quote catchphrases in real time, and join in the call-and-response chants. It creates a certain atmosphere that carries through the broadcast and is the biggest factor in establishing the tone of the show. But the company isn't in control of the audience. They can try to gently nudge them or outright manipulate them, but - at the end of the day - the writers just have to hope that they play along. Unlike any other storytelling medium in the world, when the audience doesn't feel like just going with it, they can do something more than just drop the series or reviewbomb the latest instalment. The audience has the ability to hijack the entire show.
“This kind of emergent/forced-reaction storytelling is fascinating to me. And it's not like this is purely theoretical, or even particularly rare. In just the time I've been watching, I’ve seen Daniel Bryan - a man WWE higher-ups considered to be a 'B+ player’ - get so much crowd support that not only did the company wind up having him win their top championship at their biggest annual event, they gave him a storyline in which he did so by winning two matches in the same night, against some of the biggest stars they had at the time. Or what about in 2019, when Kofi Kingston was used as a last-minute replacement for an injured wrestler and got such a positive reaction that they scrapped their existing plans to set up a three-month storyline in which he endured failure after failure before ultimately becoming the first African-born world champion in the company's history. And then there's Sami Zayn; in 2022, there was meant to be a short-lived comedy angle in which he tried and failed to join the current top-dog faction. It was so well-received that it transformed into a heartfelt story of him actually joining and discovering a newfound sense of camaraderie with the other members, before getting betrayed by them and ultimately attaining revenge alongside his former best friend.
“Hell, earlier this year the company pivoted away from one story they'd been building with a particular wrestler for over a year, because they were able to convince Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to come back for a brief stint and figured he'd be a bigger draw. But then the negative backlash to that was so severe that they reverted to the original plan, integrating Johnson into that instead.
“I often tell my friends 'wrestling is wild' because it's true. It's this weird mashup of full-contact theatre in the round, audience-participation, improv, live-action anime, and telenovelas. It's a chaotic long-form narrative with no between-season hiatus or anime time skips. It's not always necessarily good, but it's usually interesting. The way it has to tell its stories is almost singularly unique. And I love it for that.”
If you enjoyed TrialByStory’s post as much as we did, share it online or add some love in the replies! Be sure to check out the expertise in some of our other Members’ Corner posts too, like Laser-Bicep on the benefits of judo or Sturmer on rediscovery through photography. We plan to launch our next call for Members’ Corner submissions in November, so be sure to keep an eye on Just About Just About. Some text has been edited for brevity and clarity. You can find the original wording at the bounty post. In-line image credit: HoracioArg
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