JennaCyde 🦇

@jennacyde.bsky.social

Horror Queen 🗡️ Editor: Big Ideas In Gaming (Jesse Cox) & Botchamania Contributor ⚰️ Twitch Mod 🧛‍♀️ Artist 👻 Model/Cosplayer 💀 Singer 🩸 Streamer 🎮 Wrestling Lover 😈 DnD Player ☠️ Header: Mick Lauer (Ricepirate) (💖 u dude!)

Our community's been in mourning for some time now, specifically this whole month. Just wanted to say, please check in with each other, tell each other how much you love one another, & live your lives to the fullest that you can You never know when it'll be your last ❤ R.I P Pac #AEW #WWE #wrestling

youre probably looking at this fruit and thinking ‘wow, that must grow on a tropical island somewhere’, and you’d be WRONG AS HELL. its a pawpaw, the largest edible fruit native to north america. this is our first one and it tastes like banana, vanilla, and cantaloupe made a weird ass threesome baby

a pawpaw fruit still clinging onto the tree outside my bedroom door, but it’s gonna fall soon and im gonna eat it and pretend to everyone that i love itthe pawpaw has been sliced open revealing its mushy yellow private innards.  if you eat the seeds or the skin something bad happens, and might happen even if you just eat the mushy part too idk, the internet is full of rumors.  i will find out the truth the way nature intended: just eating it anyway and seeing if i shit myself at dinner.  stay tuned.

look at this happy little fucker. i fenced in the perennials this year and the rabbits are starving but the bees are slurpin that good shit down. get on your knees, pray to god: the birds and the bees

little bee sucking off a coneflower in the foreground, just guzzling that good nectar and getting nice and bee-fat

Been a while! I promise to be more present here than any social media, but I've been streaming a lot more! Thank you to @kramerthekraken.bsky.social for forcing me to start streaming again. You mean so much to me 💖 You can come talk wrestling if you want, too! 😊 www.twitch.tv/JennaCydeOff...

JennaCydeOfficial - Twitch

Gothic Streamer of games & ...whatever, & 1/5 of Twitch D&D & Charity Channel, Lady Gamers Night (link below; Twitter: @ladygamersnight). Use to do karaoke here, but Twitch says no more T_T. I still d...

twitch.tv

Grand Slam México inspired me so much that I wrote my first ever piece about AEW. I don't really have an appropriate home for it, so I'll post it here. Maybe y'all #WrestleSky folks will dig it, but it's written for non-AEW viewers, too. #AEW 🤼 'AEW Are Heroes for Letting America Be the Villains'

Bryan Danielson called All Elite Wrestling “the good guys” in an interview back in April. This was in reference to the tribute show for beloved wrestler Brodie Lee after his untimely passing. That show was widely praised by the wrestling community as the necessary catharsis so many people needed in the midst of such turmoil.

AEW offered a very different outlet for the tumultuous emotions so many people are feeling on the most recent episode of Dynamite.

For the first time in lucha promotion CMLL’s storied history, Arena México hosted Grand Slam México, an AEW special episode that marks the first time another wrestling company has broadcast from the iconic arena known as the Cathedral of Lucha Libre.

And the episode did some things that I’m sure will have plenty of folks talking, in both good faith and bad.

During the broadcast, what detractors would call “anti-American sentiment” was allowed to be portrayed in a positive light, starting with AEW wrestler Brody King brandishing a t-shirt proudly proclaiming, “Abolish ICE.”

A highlight match was between fan favorite CMLL luchador Mistico and AEW wrestler Maxwell Jacob Friedman a.k.a. MJF. The American played the part of an outright patriotic heel, draped in the colors of the U.S. flag and playing up his “Apollo Creed as Uncle Sam” obnoxiousness to the nth degree.
This is not the kind of presentation around American identity you are likely to expect from the other major American pro wrestling promotion, a company with direct ties to the fascist administration that is kidnapping and harming American citizens.

But it’s clear that AEW understands the hearts and minds of its audience, and it tapped into one of the oldest booking strategies in pro wrestling storytelling - the foreign heel - to give international audiences an outlet for so much of the enmity people are feeling about the United States. That was even reflected here in America.

On the previous week’s AEW Summer Blockbuster special, the stage was set for the Grand Slam México match between Místico and MJF when the abrasive heel cut a promo that pushed his patriotic persona. He punctuated his words with a giant American flag that unfurled from the rafters, replacing the fifty stars with his smug face.

And the Portland, Oregon crowd drowned him out with boos.

One of the greatest things about the art of pro wrestling is its maximalist potential for emotional engagement. So many of us are struggling due to the state of the world. We want to shout and scream and see the bad guys lose, but evil seems to always have a leg up in reality.
At Grand Slam México, AEW levied the gladiatorial stage of pro wrestling to let everyone watching experience the truth of the national stage - America is vilified for good reason - while providing that sentiment through the magical blend of athletic exhibition and live-action superheroic soap opera storytelling.

I have to give immense credit to Tony Khan as a booker. He used his wrestling promotion to give people a healthy place to express their negative feelings about America right now. Having lived through the post-9/11 and Iraq War era when any negative expression of America was met with widespread disapproval, seeing an American entertainment entity like AEW be able to read the room is refreshing beyond measure.

And it wasn't all “boo America” energy that managed this. The opening segment of the show had Hangman Adam Page, a cowboy-themed character that’s as steeped in American iconography as you can get, speak to the audience in their language. He talked about how Americans and Mexicans are better when we work together, and the crowd responded with elation.

Joy can be very hard to find in the midst of misery, especially if that misery is tied to some sense of self-identity like nationality. I feel ashamed to be an American, and I want us to be shamed on the national stage so more and more people might actually have the “Are we the baddies?” realization my country so desperately needs.
Grand Slam México was joyous. Truly, one of the most special pro wrestling shows I’ve ever seen because AEW understood the assignment: in order to be a hero, you have to know who the villain really is. And by giving the audience the right bad guy, it reaffirmed Bryan Danielson’s belief in AEW.

They’re the good guys.