Finn Cosgrave

NAME: Finn Cosgrave
AGE: 28
OCCUPATION: Heavyweight Mixed-Martial Artist
CANON: It’s Just a Joke


I can be quoted as saying that people shouldn’t choose combative occupations for the sake of finding romance. If you join NCIS thinking you’re going to walk out with Ziva David as arm candy, you’re dead wrong. If you become a cast mate on The Ultimate Fighter, you ain’t leaving with Ronda Rousey. And if you join the FBI, the other half of your bed won’t be occupied by Dr. Temperance Brennan. Nobody knew this better than Finn Cosgrave. After all, he didn’t need distractions going into his match with Chris Johnson. Seeing as how Finn had lost three fights in a row, if he lost one more, he would be fired.

So if Finn Cosgrave is fighting for his career and making very little money doing so, why would a marketable female fighter named Zelda Lee want to flirt with him in the gym? She has championship gold around her waist and an undefeated streak to go with it. Shouldn’t she be chasing someone higher on the food chain? Maybe Zelda likes Finn for his “charming personality” even though they hardly know each other. Finn has the muscles and height to be a Gary-Stu, and yet he feels like he has a huge mountain to climb to deserve a woman like Zelda.

Even though the two of them are technically supposed to be cutting weight for their upcoming fights, Finn and Zelda eat at Subway anyways. While there, a horny fan asks for Zelda’s autograph and verbally abuses Finn. The newfound couple work together in verbally dismantling this loser fan and leaving him embarrassed and lonely. Somehow, this is all some sort of motivation tactic to Finn to train harder in the gym and eventually win his match against Chris Johnson, which he does and therefore keeps his job.

Here’s one of the things that made “It’s Just a Joke” so unrealistic in my eyes: so Finn fights his ass off to earn a knockout victory over Chris Johnson and keep his job. And then later in the evening, he quits. He quits because Zelda’s opponent for the evening, an Amazon lady named Cameron Gillespie, kills her with an illegal up kick. There’s no clarity as to whether Cameron will get suspended, fined, or even jailed for her actions. There’s even some blame being placed on the ref for not stopping the up kick earlier. Finn Cosgrave apparently doesn’t care where the blame goes, because he’s so disenfranchised with MMA that he wants to quit due to losing the “love of his life”.

Good for you, Finn. You’re standing up for what you believe in and you let the whole world know that you’re not to be fucked with. There’s just one problem: you’re unemployed and MMA is the thing you do best. So now what? What other options are there for Mr. Finn Cosgrave? Washing dishes? Pumping gas? Selling Little Debbie cakes? Or maybe he can go into professional wrestling where more people die there than in mixed-martial arts. And if Finn does live through it all, he’ll still have a permanently aching body, a relentless travel schedule, and weird ass storylines. He might have a little bit of a push due to his MMA background and his heavyweight build, but other than that, he won’t like the transition.

There are two routes I can go down with Finn Cosgrave should I decide to use him again in a short story or novel. One of them is to keep this background story and have his emotional profile made up ahead of time. The other is to give him a fresh start and have him be a typecast big guy such as a bouncer or a cop (because he’s technically a hero). Whatever role he has, he might have to take a backseat to someone else lest he be considered a Gary-Stu. He can be the Chewbacca to someone’s Han Solo or the Deus Shadowheart to someone’s April Farrow. I don’t know what Finn Cosgrave’s role will be in the future, but all I can say is when this emotionally charged train is on the tracks, you’d better move out of the way.

　

***ADVICE OF THE DAY***

If you’re unemployed or ashamed of your job, the next time someone asks you what you do for a living, tell them, “I work with underprivileged children in the Democratic Society of Who Gives a Fuck.” That’ll raise a few eyebrows, maybe get a few chuckles.

Cameron Gillespie

Is there really any way a 6’1” African-American woman can cut enough weight before a big MMA fight in order to conform to the flyweight division’s 125 lb. standard? Does it even matter that this same woman has pumpkin-sized muscles and the longest reach of any female fighter in history?

Every time Cameron Gillespie gets in the cage, she might as well be playing with a GI Joe in there. She’s only been defeated twice in her career and both of those losses were due to controversial split decisions. But those are just two matches. You want to know how many times Miss Gillespie won? Twenty, all of those victories being obtained either by KO or TKO. Bottom line: this woman is a killing machine and can make the bantamweight limit just as easily as she regularly makes the flyweight limit so miraculously. Hint, hint, wink, wink.

So why is it that I refuse to let this wrecking ball of a woman be a part of American Darkness 1 or 2? Because the story she was a part of didn’t do her justice at all. She was originally part of a short story where she only had one page worth of action and the actions she took were despicable enough to make her an unredeemable villain.

The story was called “It’s a Joke” and was supposed to be an MMA romance between struggling heavyweight fighter Finn Cosgrave and basically a Ronda Rousey parody named Zelda Lee. I thought I was being revolutionary by creating an MMA romance, because not many authors do it. Turns out there’s a reason for that: because there’s no love in war, only pain.

That pain came when Zelda Lee was forced into a fight with Cameron Gillespie, who towered over her like…well…a bell tower! Zelda landed a beautiful takedown and hand Cameron on her back in defensive mode. Zelda then put her hands on the mat to engage Cameron in a ground game. That’s where shit went south in a hurry.

Did you know there’s a rule against kicking somebody in the face while that person is in a kneeling position? If Zelda would have survived the kick to the face from Cameron, the New Orleans-born giant would have been either disqualified or deducted two points at least. Zelda didn’t survive. She was pronounced dead by the referee.

For whatever reason, I decided to have Cameron Gillespie show no remorse for her actions and not go to jail for this “accident”. Zelda Lee was the first person in MMA history to die during a fight and the sport looks even worse than it did before after Cameron Gillespie’s heinous behavior.

That’s not the road I want Cameron to go down. I see a lot of potential in this character and I want her to have the best role I could possibly give a jolly black giant like her. I know that if I include “It’s a Joke” in American Darkness 2, that book will get a low rating and few buys.

I’m not saying I want Cameron Gillespie to be a heroic warrior, but I also don’t want her to be a monster from the depths of hell. What kind of role could she have? A harsh trainer? A drill instructor? How about an incumbent world champion who’s deemed a villain because she’s held the title for so long? Maybe, just maybe she could be the world’s tallest voodoo priest. Can you imagine being that fucking huge and having magical powers to go with your awesome body? It’s overkill, but it’s an overkill people can easily accept.

Please accept Cameron Gillespie into your hearts and imaginations, ladies and gentlemen. Don’t let her become a stereotypical clerk at the DMV. Don’t let her be a stereotypical gangster woman either. I want this character to have substance, and that substance isn’t cocaine or heroin. And before you ask, no, it isn’t steroids either.

　

***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“I dare Ahmed Johnson to say ‘Mother Smucker’ ten times fast.”

-Jerry “The King” Lawler-