| Explaining One's Self...Sort of. | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Feb 16 2008, 09:39 PM (553 Views) | |
| Tara Shannon | Feb 16 2008, 09:39 PM Post #1 |
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Advanced Member
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If one didn’t know any better, they would think Tara Shannon was setting up for a rare relaxed evening at home, noticing that she was casually dressed in yoga pants and a red tank top, her black hair pulled into a high ponytail. A fire burns in the fireplace, the sofa sits plump and inviting, ready for whomever was ready to relax into its soft snuggle and watch television or read or perhaps take a nap. Tara herself, however, does not look relaxed. In fact, she looks rather apprehensive as she drags a hard black case with the words “Property of BQWA” stenciled on it towards her and pops the latches. She pulls out a small video camera and tripod. She studies both pieces for a moment, seemingly studying their placement, then sets them up in front of her. Sighing, she looks at the camera as if it’s a nagging mother telling her its high time she got off her ass and cleaned her bedroom, and flicks it on. Leaning back into the sofa cushions, she tucks her feet under her and drapes one arm over the sofa back. Tara: So…here I am. Dolly asked me to take some time to (making quote marks with her fingers) “address the issues” that have come up since my appointment to Team BQWA became public knowledge. I tried to play dumb and say, “What issues, Dolly?” But as you can expect, she took one look at the gash that Tomko and Big Evil had the courtesy to open up for me and set me to my task. To her credit, she was kind enough to let me take this handy camera home and not have to do an in ring discussion. The red eye on the camera blinks steadily, indicating to Tara that it is imprinting her image within its gears for posterity. She reaches over to the coffee table and pours herself a glass of wine, the ruby red liquid splashing into the wide mouthed crystal glass. Tara cups the bowl of the glass in her palm, swirling the wine gently. She sniffs it gently, takes a small sip, and smiles. Tara: THIS, for those of you that give a flying fuck, is a 2006 Sherwood Pinot Noir, from New Zealand. This wine displays dark plum aromas on the nose supported by gentle oak handling. The palate is round and full with a persistent finish. For the first time, her eyes begin to twinkle. Tara: Bet you thought I was just all about the Guinness. Nah. For those of you keeping score, I used to date a guy named Joe MacKirk. Joe lived in Northern California, and in my visits out there, I made my way over to Napa Valley. I thought it would really be pretentious, but it was one of the warmest places I’d ever been to. The free flowing wine didn’t hurt either. Believe it or not, me, the girl who grew up slinging beer in a Boston pub, seriously toyed with the idea of dropping wrestling altogether and becoming a sommelier. For you Jason Storms in the crowd, a sommelier is a wine expert, and they usually work in higher end restaurants, hotels, and wineries. But I decided just to stay your garden variety lush and stick with the wrestling. Tara sips the wine some more, enjoying the flavor. She seems to be getting looser as the wine moves through her. After all, a little “liquid courage” was sometimes very necessary for the more reticent among us. Finally she replaces the glass on the coffee table and sits back. Tara: Now, where was I? Ah yes, the “controversy.” You know, it’s really weird to me. I feel like people want me to defend myself in some way, but I haven’t done anything that needs defending. So, I admit I was a bit perplexed on how to even begin to address this. While they were checking to see if I needed stitches after the last Meltdown, I had plenty of time to think about how I wanted to address the Exponents and the Johnny Karismas out there. In the end, I figured maybe I would just talk a little about Tara Shannon. She glances out the window a moment, the moonlight bouncing off her fair skin. Adjusting her position, she turns back to face the camera lens. Tara: I’m a youngest child. I have one older sister and four older brothers. Well, I HAD four older brothers…now I have three. Biting her lip, she averts her eyes again, remembering her brother Brendan. She takes several deep breaths to compose herself so she could speak again. Tara: A lot of youngest kids have the rep of being pampered princes and princesses. I guess I was to an extent, but I was never soft. That would never have been allowed. There was ten years between oldest and youngest, so as you can imagine, I did a lot of running to keep up. I had to have been the biggest pain in the ass you could imagine, always wanting to be included in every single game. The boys used to play this really rough football that they called “Smear the Queer.” Basically, the premise wasn’t so much to score a touchdown as it was to beat the living shit out of the opposing team. (chuckling) I got fucking PUMMELED, man. I couldn’t have been more than five. But you know something? It was FUN. I loved it. I got to be with my brothers and their friends. I would come inside scraped and covered with mud, and Ma would just go ballistic: “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what are you boys thinking putting your little sister in those games? She could be killed!” Brendan always finessed her though; telling her he’d never let me get hurt. He never did, either. The sadness becomes a smile as she can focus on how much fun she had with her brother, not just the violent manner of his death. Tara: I’ll give Ma credit, though. She tried to get me into dolls, into coloring books, into knitting and all that crap. She even signed me up to be a Pop Warner cheerleader when I was in second grade. I hated having to stand on the sidelines and freeze my ass off in that stupid skirt; I wanted to be playing on the field. I didn’t know it at the time, but I guess my Daddy finally told her to lay off and that maybe if she nagged a little less about me being more girly, maybe I’d rebel against it less. He was right. When she let me do what I wanted to do, I got more interested in books and art and cooking. Tara adjusts her position on the sofa, feeling more comfortable as she keeps speaking. Tara: Then when I was about…oh hell, I don’t know, maybe 9, 10? I sat down and watched wrestling with my brothers. The match was between two guys, one of them looked kinda fruity to me, he wore this glittery robe and had long blonde hair, bright blonde like a Barbie doll. The other guy was Asian; he wore white pants and boots, with a headband, like something out of a Bruce Lee movie. Yeah, it was Flair and Steamboat. A smile creeps over her face and grows wider as she speaks; it is apparent this is a subject that Tara Shannon loves talking about but rarely got the opportunity to do so. She leans forward. Tara: I fell in love with Ricky Steamboat that night. Not like a crush, although he certainly wasn’t unpleasant to look at by any means. He was just so real to me, like a true hero. He could wrestle, but he could also fly. He made it exciting to watch; he was a good guy that you truly rooted for. Flair at that time was the consummate heel; and he was no slouch in the ring either. The match was over an hour long but it never dragged, even to a little girl with the attention span of a ferret on a double espresso. Brendan told me when I was older that it was the longest he’d ever seen me sitting still. Steamboat was the ultimate babyface hero; and I wanted to be him. I wanted to do what he did and get the response he got. That night I insisted my brother Danny practice with me; he inadvertently put me through the coffee table and I had to get five stitches above my eyebrow. My first bump; I still think of it with pride. Tara scoots to the end of the sofa to show the viewer a tiny scar above her left brow; barely noticeable, but something that she ironically remembers fondly. Tara: I told my brothers I wanted to be Ricky Steamboat when I grew up. They never told me I couldn’t be, so it became my goal. I watched wrestling every chance I got from that point on. WWF, WCW, ECW. I went to any local indy show in any little armory or school gym that there was. I got the industry papers and bought tapes of stuff from Japan and Mexico. I learned the business before I was ever even officially in it. When I graduated from high school I wanted to go to wrestling school right away, but Ma was adamantly against it; wanted me to go to college instead. I went to Boston University, but I still went to indy shows and any WWF show that came to the Garden. Yeah, it’s the Fleet Center now, but fuck you all, it will always be the Garden to me. So I humored my mother, I went to college. A week after graduation I started at Killer Kowalski’s school, in one of the last groups he ever trained. I was the only girl in the group at the time, and yeah, there were a few Exponent-types in the group. Kowalski put me into the ring with one of them, a kid named Frankie. Frankie decided he would try to make short work of me by throwing a huge forearm at me. I won’t lie; it knocked me almost out of my shoes and it fucking KILLED. I looked up and saw the smirk on his face; he thought I’d whimper to Kowalski about being hit too hard and ask when I could do a bikini calendar. (Grinning) Instead, I kicked him in the gut, grabbed him by the head, and planted his fucking smirking face right into the canvas. Frankie and I came to an understanding that day. She reaches for her wine and sips again. Tara: I worked harder with Kowalski than I ever had in my life. I ran. I lifted more weight than I thought I was capable of. I got beat up again and again and again, but I beat people up again and again and again too. Kowalski was someone who made you WANT to do well. He told us stories and showed us films from the days of the NWA and the WWWF. He told me that I’d always have to fight an uphill battle, because being female, people in the business would want to pigeonhole me into a sex symbol role. He said he had told Chyna the same thing. And hell, they did try with her, man, even though she was a fucking bruiser and could have and would have taken out half the roster given a chance. So I did the indy circuit, fighting mostly women and the occasional guy if a promoter was feeling liberal. After six months I was signed by WCCW. It was the best and worst time of my life. I met my best friend in WCCW, but I also had some of the hardest lessons about exploitation in my life. Tara reaches over and pulls a small keepsake box into her lap. Taking off the lid, she rummages through it until she finds a photograph, which she promptly chuckles at. Tara: WCCW was where I met Scott Surrey. At the time, he was half of the tag team champs with Joe MacKirk. Scott’s smallish, wiry but powerful, and is probably one of the best white luchadores I’ve ever come across. Joe was and is still one of the most intense people I ever met. I fell in love with Joe, but I brought all my problems to Scott. He has never allowed me to take myself too seriously and always put me in my place when I tried to do so. She holds a photo to the camera: ![]() Tara: That camel smelled so fucking bad. Anyway, Scott was and has always been there for me, even when Joe and I split up. I love him; he’s like my fifth brother. So, getting back to WCCW. I was brought in to compete in the Women’s scene, which was fine. The two most dominant females at the time were named Katia Denkova and Brooklyn Bishop. They were amazing, both beautiful, but amazingly strong and had developed the reps for being talented in intergender matches. I wanted to be where they were someday, but it didn’t happen in that fed. Instead, they asked Angelica Haze and myself to do a bikini oil match with two local strippers. I was horrified that they would make me do something like that, but they told me I had no choice in the matter. I didn’t want to blackball myself in the business since I was so new, and I was just excited to be on TV. Angie was a little more into the sex symbol game than I was, and she wasn’t as worried, but then we got out there. These two whores from the strip club they decided to drag in had obviously wrestled in oil before and they immediately started fighting dirty because they knew it would probably be the only way they’d be able to get any sort of upper hand on us. Then one of them scratched my face with her fucking inch-long nails. I felt the pain, saw the blood. I looked at Angie, she looked at me, and playtime was fucking OVER. We pounded the hell out of these two whores and Angie lost her top in the process. In retrospect that was probably a bad idea, considering the two of them could have sued the fed and Angie and me and would have likely won. After that debacle, I said never again. No oil wrestling, no bikini contests, no lingerie pillow fights. Don’t get me wrong here; I like being female. I like makeup, I like to wear a dress sometimes, I like to look pretty and yeah, sometimes even a little sexy. But I trained too hard to let stuff like that be what defines me. It’s fine for the Stacy Kieblers and the Torrie Wilsons, but not for Tara Shannon. I’m an athlete first; and if you find me hot, well, yeah, I’m flattered, sure. But I want to be remembered for what I did in the ring, not the set of tits on the glossy page. Putting the photo back in the box, she replaces the lid and puts it aside. There is no hint of trepidation now; Tara is in her element and loving it. The fireplace crackles and casts a soft glow over the whole scene. Tara: So not long after, WCCW folded, and it was back to the drawing board. I came back to Boston, trained more, helped train other people, did indy shows, and bided my time until the right opportunity came up. It came up in the form of Scott Surrey and EWF. Scott called me and said EWF wanted us as a tag team. I’d heard of EWF, it was a pretty diverse fed in a lot of ways, with technical giants, luchadores, and virtual monsters. The one way it WASN’T diverse was in gender. I would be the only female in the entire federation. How the hell could I say no to that?? It was an awesome time. Scott and I had a blast as a team. Every night before we went out there we’d have an argument about who was going to get to be Marty Janetty that night. And then it ended, at least, the tag team situation did. Scott blew out his knee and had to go back to California for a total knee replacement. They told him he’d never wrestle a regular schedule again. I was crushed at not having him around. Scott told me to shut the fuck up, that I needed to grab the opportunity to shine on my own. So I hung up the phone, went back to my room, cried for an hour, and then did what Scott told me. My first big shot was in a Barbed Wire match for the EWF Television Title, against an almost seven-foot beast named Damian Cross. His in ring name was Lost Soul, and he was the scariest motherfucker I’ve ever wrestled. Did I win? No, Exponent, I didn’t. But I came damn close, and even more than that, captured the respect of every single guy in that locker room, including Damian himself. Not long after that I won the Ironman Title in a five-person cage match. I held the title until the day I got a concussion and broke my collarbone in a ladder match. I fell ten feet into the center of the ring; not exactly a barrel of laughs. I took some time off and went to Ireland to stay with my aunt. After six months I came home and got the fire back. I went to therapy; trained myself again, hit the indy circuit again until I got the call from Dolly Madison herself. You guys know the rest. Hold on fuckers, I need to stretch; my ass is asleep. Tara gets up from the sofa and walks out of camera range. We hear a thumps as she jumps up and down a bit, then a sigh as she stretches her muscles. In a moment of cheekiness she leans over back into the shot and flips the camera off. Finally, she comes back and takes her seat back on the sofa. Tara: So…Exponent, Karisma, what exactly do you want from me? To smile sweetly and go back to the women’s scene and mark my time until I get a Playboy pictorial? I can’t do that, guys. Because in a lot of ways, I’m still the little girl who wanted to grow up and be Ricky Steamboat. There is nothing in my life, outside of Paul and my family, that I love more than this business. This business is my life, it’s my home. It’s who I am. At the end of the day though, I can’t change your minds. You’ll believe what you want to. I will tell you this, though. At Revenge, we’re a team, and I will have both your backs 100%. I hope you’ll have mine too. I’m not in the business of proving myself to either of you. I can only be who I am. Maybe someday you’ll realize that that should be enough. Tara reaches over and shuts off the camera. Grabbing the wine again, she relaxes back into the sofa cushions and studies the flames in the fireplace, her thoughts known only to her. |
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| Harmony | Feb 16 2008, 10:02 PM Post #2 |
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Gogz once fucked a ginger
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Nice work girly! I love it. I absolutely love the fact that Tara is such a confident character against the nay sayers, it rules. |
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| Arati Raman | Feb 17 2008, 06:15 PM Post #3 |
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1337 Member
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I really enjoyed readying this, and to be honest it has inspired me a lot. I love Tara's confidence and I love the way she speaks so frankly and openly. No wonder Arati looks up to her. |
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| Tazar Yoot | Feb 18 2008, 06:38 AM Post #4 |
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1337 Member
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Enjoyable Kar. Solid work. |
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| Tara Shannon | Feb 18 2008, 11:49 AM Post #5 |
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With all due respect dude, I don't appreciate you responding without my permission. |
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| Centurion | Feb 18 2008, 12:58 PM Post #6 |
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Good. Good good. Good good good. Same as what I usually say really.
The reply was pretty good to, but I think perhaps it doesn't quite fit in this thread since the original rp is not really aimed at Jericho. |
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| Big Evil | Feb 18 2008, 01:31 PM Post #7 |
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On TBS. Very Funny.
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Jericho, you need to take this promo out of this thread or I'm gonna have to delete it. You might not care, but its how things are supposed to go. From now on, talk to people before you do things like this man. |
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| Tazar Yoot | Feb 18 2008, 03:24 PM Post #8 |
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1337 Member
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Removed, of course. It's not a lack of caring, and I'm amazed that that would be an assumed reason. More of an ignorance. I don't re-call seeing a rule or anything stating I can't reply to whatever strokes my interest and do so in the thread that inspired the reply, so I didn't see a problem. I certainly wouldn't have an issue with someone doing it in a thread of mine, I would actually be honored that I inspired a response in character (hell, I take one out of character), so I applied that rationale here. I apologize with all due respect and sincerity. |
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