#bronchy

Eeep, thank you! I legitimately played around with so many different combinations of wrestlers and both vampire and non-vampire media that these aren't even all of them. 😵‍💫

hello! i appreciate your curiosity in my mildly inflammatory opinion (shskskgjdj it’s possible it isn’t, but i expect people to get mad at everything i say)

first off i would like to say that it’s been many years since i even thought about the bloodline bc i don’t watch wwe anymore. i also struggle with terrible brain fog with anything non-hangman related so i may not be very clear in what i say but i will try my best to remember.

so bte started in like. what? 2015? something like that? and it really started becoming popular even outside the indie circles in like 2017 and 2018, gaining popularity with ROH fans and NJPW fans because of the elite working in both. the strange toxic friendships and drama that like, became this very constant weekly addition to the wrestling happening in the promotions really added to what was going on, ya know? and the bloodline didn’t really become a thing till either late 2018 or early 2019, i think, but really i think it was more 2019 going into 2020 -> aka, when AEW started. i firmly believe that wwe has always pettily tried to counter program aew (moving nxt to wednesdays in mid 2019, moving PPVs up/down the calendar to push them closer to an AEW event, adding wwe events in the same markets, adding PPVs on certain weekends, etc etc). but something that i think worked the best was when someone (vince, hunter, who knows) recognised that intrafactional drama was very popular with the rise of BTE, something that, hell, even showed up on their doorstep once at a monday night raw and drew many fans to participate. i think that despite pretending like BTE and AEW were nothing special, they knew that it was and how much momentum each had, so they tried their own version of the Elite with the Bloodline.

you can even look at hangman and sami as two sides of the same coin. their relationships with the faction propel a lot of the best parts of what was going on at the time in each promotion, and they have similar personalities and go through similar struggles.

i don’t know if any of this is making sense, but i hope it does.

i am also remembering a moment on BTE with takeshita where matt and nick were explaining the whole drama they had with kenny and hangman and the elite as a whole, and takeshita was like “yeah……..bloodline much better”

And then they go to tell Kenny that Takeshita didn’t think their story was very good, and Kenny immediately clocks that Takeshita brought up the Bloodline.

(Disclaimer: At some point I did go back and realize that he didn’t say “knockoff” he said “copy” — but the Elite happened before the Bloodline, which reinforces that in reality, it’s the opposite. The Bloodline is a copy of the Elite, only it follows the dynamics of a “blood” family rather than a chosen one.)

no, seriously, i regularly forget that man is Tall and not just Tall By Proximity or Tall By Average Standards since he's pretty much always seated at the announce table providing commentary these days.

(and the last visual recollections i have of him standing amongst other wrestlers is next to 6'5" drew mcintyre and 5'11" charlotte flair in heels, neither of which really highlight how he towers over, like, 90% of the current active roster.)

in general, i think wrestling is one of the funniest mediums of media when it comes to people's heights because they're so... all over the place. no one ever looks their height because Hilariously Tiny Wrestler makes everyone look taller or Ridiculously Tall Wrestler makes them look shorter.

or, in some cases, both simultaneously:

the only hang up on rumi that i’d understand is that she’s the one with family history in the industry, like roman. but even then, that was hardly relevant during the initial run of the shield. and the thing about leaders is so true. there wasn’t one, but if there was, it definitely would NOT have been roman.

and i’ve always imagined that if the shield were a girl group (a thought i’ve had waaay before kpdh) seth would be the most technically skilled and impressive singer because he was the most technically skilled and impressive wrestler. he can hit those high notes.

but we just don’t see a lot of zoey so i don’t know how’d i fit her in, but yes narratively and characteristically rumi is of course 100% seth and mira is dean i mean come on.

every day i choose something rly inconsequential to die on a hill about and it happened to be that yesterday 😔 you can call seth all the names you like but i draw the line at calling roman the "main character" (real quote) of the shield

i agree 100% with what you say; theres not a lot of roman or zoey character dev. during what we see in shield and the movie so like. sorry im sure zoey could have sethisms but i have literally no evidence to prove she could. vice versa roman just doesn't have the complexity rumi has at that period in time unfortunately. sorry big dog