#AJW

[lockuster]

Happy Trans Day of Visibility…..and Easter! Shout out to Benji Woodside

(Old art that I planned on making a keychain a while back)

#hell followed with us #hfwu #benji woodside #transgender #angels #seraphim #religious imagery #ajw #andrew joseph white

[amazingjohnnysworld]

#amazingjohnnysworld #amazing johnnys world #ajw #beograd #belgrade #citati #srbija #ljubav #poezija #tekstovi

[ponchaka]

Bull Nakano again (with a little Kyoko Inoue)

#bull nakano #kyoko inoue #joshi #puroresu #joshi puroresu #ajw #wwf #wwe #pro wrestling #roman trevisiol #roman_henshin #fan art #artists on tumblr #illustration #posca #posca pens #women's wrestling

[jasvvy]

JESUS CHRIST

#ajw #all japan womens #joshi wrestling #all japan womens pro wrestling #Kyoko Inoue #bull nakano

[axel-mania]

Something you might have noticed if you've ever looked at old joshi, particularly AJW in the 80s, is that nearly half of the wrestlers are either androgynous or outright masculine. I've heard the explanation for why we got the Beauty Pair, that they were casting Jackie Sato as the Takarazuka otokoyaku and Maki Ueda as the musumeyaku in order to sell CDs to teenage girls. This was queer-coded, obviously, but acceptable to mainstream society as Takarazuka is a transient and exaggerated performance. (Its purported goal is for girls to perform masculinity so they can empathize with their future husbands... lol and lmao.)

However, that clearly wasn't the formula they were following for the Crush Girls: they're both butches! And so I've looked at the idol culture at the time that AJW's rival JWP explicitly tried to emulate, which is very different from today. Girls groups actually tried to appeal to teenage girls and not just adult men, with a youthful girlishness that did by avoiding sexuality often seem fairly androgynous. At least, that's my impression from looking at them, and maybe I'm totally off base. So we could posit that to appeal to teenage girl fans, wrestlers similarly had to look accessible in spite of their muscles and scariness. The alternative is too crazy to think about. That being that they promoted so many fucking butches to appeal to the kinds of girls that grow up to be lesbians! Which is when I present exhibit A, "Boy".

AJW, what is this? Well, it's a photobook by a wrestler named Kanako Nagatomo, who wrestled at the same time as the Crush Gals and was apparently very popular. Here's another insanity inducing tidbit, a video of her in a suit holding flowers and looking like your highschool boyfriend about to pick you up for the school dance. It's kind of the ultimate expression of the contradiction here, a constructed package for us to buy into yet only really emphasizing the looks these wrestlers chose to adopt every day of their lives.

How else do we explain this? Genuinely? Because we know there's always going to be queer women interested in handsome butches. The peculiar thing is this being broadcast on mainstream television on a channel for mothers and their children. What strange historical factors gave us such mainstream queerness in a way we'll likely never have again? I know why we don't have it anymore. Rossy Ogawa, who climbed up the ranks of AJW management, and then started his own promotions after its demise, thought joshi could only grow by marketing to men and dropped all the show business meant to appeal to women. And now our big joshi promotions are Stardom and TJPW, where almost everyone is extremely feminine and we release sexy photobooks (which I do enjoy, don't get me wrong).

Anyway, this is what Nagatomo looks like now. (Sona and I both immediately thought "Blue hair and pronouns??") Still androgynous by choice, but married. Maybe the simplest explanation is the wrestlers saw their peers presenting a certain way and liked the look of it enough to copy it, without anything else in mind.

#ajw #joshi puroresu #kanako nagatomo #lesbian

[me-myself-and-eyes]

andrew joseph white hits Every Time

If a dead girl prays to God can he hear her?

#you expect me to be normal about this?????? #between #the spirit bares its teeth #and #hell followed with us #compound fracture #is going to break me #i know it #andrew joseph white #aj white #ajw #hfwu #tsbit #queer books

[belpheg0r-luna]

Calling upon everyone who's read Compound Fracture - gimme a song to put on the book playlist please 😸

#compound fracture #andrew joseph white #the spirit bares its teeth #hell followed with us #aj white #ajw #trans character #autistic characters #book playlist #belphegor luna

[cheesemctoastnuggets]

Books I am going Feral over, PLEASE TALK TO ME ABOUT THEM:

-Dark Rise, by C.S. Pacat

-The Little Thieves, both book 1 and 2, by Margret owens

-The Merciful Crow, by Margret Owens

-The Cruel Prince series, by Holly Black

-The Spirit Bares its Teeth, by Andrew joseph White

#AJW #ajw #the spirit bares its teeth #books #reading #bookblr #the cruel prince #folk of the air #holly black #the merciful crow #margret owens #The Little Theieves #painted devils #Dark Rise #c.s. pacat

[magicinkjasp]

The Spirit Bares it's Teeth- Quotes

As soon as you were born with a womb, you were fucked. - The Spirit Bares it's Teeth, Andrew Joseph White.

There are lots of things my family shouldn't have done to me. - The Spirit Bares it's Teeth, Andrew Joseph White.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I believe wholeheartedly, in my soul, that I am a boy. How arrogant of me, to think I could change something so God-given as my sex. - The Spirit Bares it's Teeth, Andrew Joseph White.

"And do you consider yourself strong?" I've had to be. To make it this far, being a person like this. - The Spirit Bares it's Teeth, Andrew Joseph White.

"Don't look at me like that. I'm not a monster for trying to ensure the best chance of survival." - The Spirit Bares it's Teeth, Andrew Joseph White.

He needs to stop talking about my eyes right now, the way those men did as I was growing up, the way those men did as they played with my hair. I was ten years old. I was nine. I was eight. I was a child. - The Spirit Bares it's Teeth, Andrew Joseph White.

#book quotes #the spirit bares its teeth #tsbit #ajw #andrew joseph white #deep thoughts #deep quotes #book lover #book reading #book reccs #transgender #neurodivergent #queer books #t4t

[blizzardsuplex]

Kyoko Inoue does a ~39-rotation giant swing on Cuty Suzuki from Kyoko Inoue & Takako Inoue versus Cuty Suzuki & Mayumi Ozaki, AJW All Star Dreamslam ~25th Anniversary~, 04/02/1993

[thanks to @coquinaclutch and @limbreaper for watching this match with me last night! <3 Also, WATCH THIS MATCH.]

#kyoko inoue #takako inoue #cuty suzuki #mayumi ozaki #ajw #all japan women's pro wrestling

[amazingjohnnysworld]

Instagram: amazingjohnnysworld

#amazingjohnnysworld #amazing johnnys world #ajw #beograd #belgrade #citati #srbija #ljubav #poezija #tekstovi #Balkan

[ponchaka]

Manami Toyota

#manami toyota #ajw #joshi puroresu #puroresu #women's wrestling #roman trevisiol #roman_henshin #fan art #artists on tumblr #posca marker #posca pens #poscamarkers #posca #poscaart

[welp-im-doomed]

A digital art adaptation of a sketch I did, and it took wayyyy longer than I thought, but here's Benji (from Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White) strolling down the street

#andrew joseph white #ajw #hell followed with us #hfwu #benji hfwu #benjamin woodside #hfwu seraph #post apocalyptic #post apocalypse #body horrow cw #body horror #horror art #horror #digital art #fanart #hfwu fanart

[jasvvy]

#ajw #all japan womens #joshi wrestling #all japan womens pro wrestling #manami toyota #akira hokuto

[zkwoodrow]

For your info, I have read compound fracture (ARC ver, cuz my request got approved) IN TWO FUCKING DAYS.(/Srs)

You can tell I literally ate this book the second I was aprooved to read it. And yes I did make fanart already. But I'll be good and wait till the release date when the hype is ..hyper.

ITS A REALLY GOOD THRILLER. TRUST ME I WAS ON THE EGDE OF MY SEAT TOWARDS THE END..AJW NEVER DISSAPOINTS TOWARD THE 200-300 PAGES

#compound fracture #ajw #andrew joseph white

[rpfd]

I haven’t drawn Aja Kong in a bit so here’s a new one because she fuckin rules.

#pro wrestling #ajw #zenjo #aja kong #joshi