forgive me, father, for I have sinned

[intertribal]

Oh, John. WHERE THE FUCK HAVE I HEARD THAT BEFORE. (via Wrestlegasm)

Here's something that would probably scare people who know me: I have been known to watch W.W.E. Raw. You know, the fake wrestling show. I used to watch it in college at 2 a.m. - good thing to go to sleep to, believe it or not - and occasionally I watch it at home, because it comes on after long Law & Order marathons and hell if there's anything else on. Most (if not all) people I know consider it the literal scourge of the Earth, but their arguments usually boil down to "but it's scripted!" and I always say, "yeah, duh." I like fighting shows and always have. And not for the martial arts, either. Hell, I barely notice technique. Which is probably why my own fight scenes are so god-awful.

So anyway, my point is - I was watching Raw last night and it suddenly occurred to me that for every Raw "personality" (character), I could find a corresponding DBZ character. Of course, keep in mind I am hardly an expert on Raw and I can only speak for recent personalities and I may very well be totally wrong in my assessment of them. But it started with John Cena (who is SO OBVIOUS, right down to his color scheme and fucking wrist bands), and just went from there - sometimes hilarious, more often frightening. Granted, I don't really know what to do with DX (who are so lame I don't really care) and my Jericho-Big Show analogy doesn't quite fit, but... minor quibbles. And do not ask me about the Divas, because I just haven't seen them enough (USA tends to cut them out of re-broadcasts). In and of itself, this also fits DBZ.

I wonder what that means. I could have guessed Raw and DBZ are similar - same demographics, same melodrama, same ridiculously long build-up - but are they that similar? Because maybe DBZ's live-action movie should have gone for the wrestling aesthetic instead of the horrible, misfit Saved By The Bell look. Or is it just that they both play to the same bag of fighting-character tropes? Am I seeing things that aren't there? Is this further evidence that all my entertainment eventually links together, a la Rammstein and Air Crash Investigation, or is this a case of being doomed to endure the same characters and plots until the end of time?* I should probably look into something like Street Fighter or Dead Or Alive and see if I can find similarities in a franchise I'm not a fan of. But um, that would require me to waste time on the internet, and I definitely do not do that.

*: "Because that's what hell is all about, Robbie - repetition!" - Storm of the Century