#bleugh.

i've been kinda sitting with it by myself because i was worried posting about it would come off as me being stinky to people who are excited for the new direction hounds of hell are taking, but ... it is what it is.

i am excited for them. i hope this push they're getting lasts and is committed. i'm a little afraid that it won't be, that they'll drop back into an inconsistent midcard position the same way they were before, and lose every feud because the stipulations they place on the feud have impossible conditions, but ... i want to be hopeful. they're all such great performers, and i really want this to be their year, still. that hasn't changed.

at the same time, i've also cried multiple times since tommy's departure was all-but-confirmed. i get that he probably can't say anything - i get that there's probably nothing to say. riding out his contract until he can do whatever else he wants is, at the end of the day, a pretty unexciting state of affairs.

i get that whatever discussions he's had have probably come to the conclusion that he's not gonna have any more appearances with aew. that's probably a conclusion that makes sense from a business perspective. i don't know. i'm not privy to those conversations.

all i really know is that it hurts anyway. he's someone who worked to keep the company afloat during the pandemic. he put every shred of acting capacity he had into trying to rescue cody rhodes' image when the fans were turning on cody. he worked hard to showcase younger, less experienced wrestlers; he's said multiple times that launching and mentoring younger wrestlers is something he enjoys. i don't think it's a coincidence that the dark arts gym has become an increasingly more important project to him as the months and years go by.

and now he's just gone. no send-off (no, i don't count the match against adam cole; while it was nice to see them respecting each other, it's not a goodbye match, to me, or tommy would have said it is). no moment of appreciation for what he was able to do for the company, despite sporadic, inconsistent booking (this isn't really a criticism of anyone, at this point; i don't know who was responsible for how sporadic it was, and we probably never will).

it's hard because i feel lied to, a little bit. or ghosted. which i'm really aware is pretty silly - just because he was kind to me on tumblr once doesn't mean i know him nor does it mean that i can be owed or expect anything. i can't be ghosted by someone who's not my friend. at this point, i'll probably never meet him in person, and that fucking sucks but it was pretty unlikely to begin with. but i invested a lot of time and emotional energy in someone who told us we'd hear it from him if he was leaving or retiring, and it's been radio silence ever since. again, i get that he probably can't talk about it yet, that there's nothing to talk about, but it's a pretty hard pill to swallow to have to make the switch from pushing back against the rumours and the unfounded bullshit criticisms to just accepting that he's gone with not even a word from anyone who cares enough to be respectful. not even a word from him. (i cannot stress enough, btw, how genuinely incensed i am with whoever keeps talking to the dirtsheets about him. i don't care who it is. if you find him so fucking difficult to work with, put on your big girl pants and talk to him, instead of making it difficult for him to get jobs elsewhere and making him the topic of gossip and speculation for a month+.)

he's gone in a way that allows bad faith actors to conflate kayfabe with irl, too, which sucks. it sucks a lot. i haven't talked about it on here much because i don't enjoy bringing it here when i'm miserable, but i've seen multiple different people (on here and elsewhere) basically taking the "no masters, no leaders" line as proof that what the dirtsheets are saying is true, as proof that he was difficult to work with and undermining the faction. maybe there were fallings-out behind the scenes, i don't know, i probably never will, but it feels not just disingenuous but borderline unkind to suggest that everyone including tommy's best friends turned on him just because he started maybe having some different priorities as he approaches 40.

some of this, admittedly, is because of my personal investment. that's on me. i need to figure out how to disentangle criticisms of tommy from my own personal hurt. they're not actually insulting me, but it feels like they are because of how closely i resonated with tommy's work and his ideas, and that's purely my own fault. that's something i need to work on.

i mean it when i say i'll support whatever he does next. i'll follow him wherever he goes if i can. if it's indie shows forever i'll try and figure out where they're uploaded/streamed, if they are. if it's wwe, well, i care more about him having a job that he enjoys than i do about some kinda bullshit brand loyalty. but if i'm being honest i'm kind of hurt and pissed off with him, too, and the constant tone of the speculation and bullshit around him isn't helping me feel less bruised.