Mean Streets 11 Notes: The Final Chapter

A quick warning: these notes may be a little more spoiling than regularly. So if you haven’t read the chapter yet, please go do so.


This is it: the end of Mean Streets. I started Mean Streets as an experiment, one that never quite came together the way I hoped it might. It turned in to something overly jumpy and even more crass than I originally planned. My concept was somewhat different: take the concepts and conflicts that ran through one of the most entertaining wrestling companies in history, ECW. I think I managed to channel some of Extreme Championship Wrestling’s spirit in to a few of the characters, but Mean Streets quickly became an uncontrollable beast to write.

So I decided to end it. And what better way to end a story than to destroy most of what I built?

Many of the characters’ endings were planned from the beginning, although in many cases I mean their stories to go on much longer. Jack Flash and Antagonist in particular had a much more detailed past. A good writer is never afraid to recycle discarded ideas, so for now I’ll keep the details to myself.

The mi-go’s super-creatures meet an ignoble end here, but they may yet find away to return in another story in the future. I like these characters a lot and think they may have untapped potential when they move past mindless killing machines.

A couple characters in this story will pop up next year in the new series I will be working on next month for Nanowrimo. And yes, Demon Fox will be one of them. I can’t well leave a superhero carrying an Elder God inside her sit idle too long, can I?

While I am not entirely please with the way the saga finally ended, I hope everyone who read it enjoyed Mean Streets. It was a noble experiment with a decent story and some truly unique characters. Thanks for following it.

Wrestling (F*** Sports Entertainment)

Back a few years ago I was an avid wrestling fan. I’m talking hardcore. I started watching in 2000, but quickly started to travel back through video tapes of the previous few years of WWE and WCW. The hero vs villain aspect of the shows definitely appealed to the superhero fan in me, and the characters and storylines definitely served to inspire my writing over the next few year, even through today. Mean Streets especially owes a lot to ECW from ’97 to about 2000.

I watched WWE with an almost religious fervor for the next few years, even tuning in for the B-shows like Heat and Velocity. My RAW fandom ended in late 2002, with Heat and Velocity to soon follow. I continued watching Smackdown regularly for a year or so past that, but after that my wrestling entertainment turned more to DVD collections and indy show DVDs.

Why did I stop? A lack of faith in wrestling in general, I suppose. I still followed the storylines through message boards and the like, but I stopped watching. The obsession with Shawn Michaels and Triple H on RAW and the general lack of push by WWE of Smackdown burned me out pretty quickly. Wrestling just didn’t hold interest for me when the storylines failed to end properly. When heel (bad guy) champions won cleanly week after week after week. Especially when one of those heel champions was clearly married to one of the controlling families.

Meanwhile another promotion finally started to come together, with the terrible name of TNA Wrestling. (It stands for Total Nonstop Action, but that is obviously not what most viewers would think without seeing the show.) Their rise can be directly attributed to WWE’s mismanagement of some of their midcard to top talents. The likes of first Rhino and Christian Cage, both of which were hugely over with fans but underused by WWE, and then later the arrival of main event talents either hurt by issues with the WWE’s new drug policy or by inproper usage as well. The arrival of Kurt Angle and later Booker T brought TNA to a whole other level. Meanwhile, Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, and other Ring of Honor alumni electrified the TNA ring with moves unseen in WWE.

But that still didn’t draw my attention to TNA.

One of my favorite promotions of the last few years has been Shimmer Women Athletes. A talented indy female named Allison Danger teamed up with ROH talent/booker Dave Prazak teamed up to bring together a promotion that featured true women’s wrestling for the first time ever. No bikinis, no evening gowns, no mud, no T & A oriented crap. Just pure wrestling between incredibly talented women. WWE didn’t seem to notice. (They hired a trio of Shimmer talents, only to fire all but one before they debuted on television. Only Beth Phoenix survived the culling.)

It took a few months, but as TNA formed its Knockout division, they quite obviously took Shimmer as their model. With Gail Kim as their lead talent they pulled in Shimmer Athletes Cheerleader Melissa, Talia, Nikki Roxx, Shantelle Taylor, Angel Williams, ODB, Rain, and most importantly the 270+ pound monster known as Awesome Kong. Most gained new identities, but it didn’t matter. These ladies knew how to fight.

Instantly mainstream wrestling regained my interest. And through those Knockouts I began to appreciate the TNA product more and more. It has its flaws in some places, but considering Vince Russo’s hand in the show, it is a thoroughly amazing two hours of television.

Meanwhile a WWE struck again and again by violations of is wellness policy has realized that their focus on over-steroided freaks would continue to lead to negative media attention. Suddenly we had a push for younger, smaller stars. The sudden rise in the last couple months of CM PUnk, Kofi Kingston, Evan Bourne, and The Brian Kendrick drew me back to WWE as well.

Suddenly it feels like 1997 again. Wrestling is becoming something amazing again with a push of talent that actually can bring it week in and week out in the ring. So I’m going to be the first to call it. We are on the advent of a true wrestling renaissance. Get watching or you might just miss it.