Go With Them...I Guess

“I’m going off on an adventure!”

“I’m going to seek glory!”

“Garrison, what are you going to do?”

“…Go with them…I guess…”

Ah, yes. When every D&D session is a holiday season in the sense that players should give their all, my specialty in large groups was hitching my wagon to the other players. Don’t contribute any meaningful character information, just…you know…”Go with them…I guess…” But then again, what else was I supposed to do? Walk away from the group and do my own thing? That would require an extra DM just to deal with my bullshit. The easier answer would be to just assume that I’m following my fellow party members around everywhere they go. In which case, I wouldn’t be an elf fighter or a half-orc wizard anymore. I’d be a dog. A loyal golden retriever who couldn’t get enough pets and love, as long as my fellow party members had beef snacks ready. Dogs don’t have to worry about serious character development since their histories amount to chasing squirrels and rolling in mud. Not much complexity there!

Even from my very first session as an elf warrior, it should have been assumed that I’d follow my party members everywhere they went. But that wasn’t how D&D worked in those days. I always assumed that it would be like Final Fantasy games where the party goes everywhere together and would only become active characters during a battle. Not the case at all, it seems. Super Nintendos can’t ask for the player’s opinion beyond a yes or no question. Dungeon Masters can and will. So imagine my shock when the DM, my brother James, asked everyone in the party what they were going to do once they got to a town. The two players before me knew exactly what they were going to do: explore. But when James asked me what I was going to do, I froze like Sub-Zero’s opponents in Mortal Kombat. I thought we were just following each other around. Nope! I actually had to make a decision independent of my party members. And I couldn’t do it. So my elf hunter jumped down a manhole and was never seen again.

All these years later, what is the right answer to the, “What are you going to do?” question when you’re in a group of two or more adventurers? Should Dungeon Masters just assume that party members are just going to follow each other around like dogs and do nothing until they’re specifically called upon? While that is a convenient answer, it would certainly get weird after a while, wouldn’t you agree? Wouldn’t the other party members wonder why these strangers are following them around without saying a word? The easy answer would be to say, “We’re on the same team. Live with it.” But are you? What makes you all a team? Are you just there for the hell of it? Do teams really get together because it’s the right thing to do and nothing should be questioned?

And this is where the all-important character development comes into play. As it turns out, it’s not enough to have a half-orc barbarian with bulging muscles and a battleaxe that can cut through the Golden Gate Bridge. Why is this half-orc barbarian running around with a Halfling thief and a half-elf wizard? How did this half-orc barbarian come into existence other than having a full-orc and a human fuck each other’s brains out? Why does he have all of these muscles other than he’s a barbarian and it should be a universally-accepted truth? What are the stories behind his scars? What are the stories behind his actions? What are the stories behind his blind loyalty to his party? When a character’s motivations and goals are explored beyond being a shallow drone, that’s when the fun really begins. After all, mindless drones aren’t nearly as much fun to read about as fleshed-out three-dimensional characters. Isn’t that right, Stephenie Meyer? How about you, E.L. James, do you want to weigh in on this subject? Didn’t think so.

Let’s go back to the example of the elf hunter who got so confused that he jumped down a sewer hole without giving a second thought. Could he have just hitched his wagon to the other PC’s and went along with them wherever they went? But why would he do that? Well, that’s where a “session zero” comes into play. It’s a D&D session designed to get the characters introduced to each other before the campaign officially begins. So what are the elf hunter’s motivations? Does he want revenge on someone who killed his parents? Does he want to earn enough money to pay for his sister’s heart transplant? Does he want to earn enough money so that he can go on a vacation to a sandy beach paradise? Does he want to earn enough money to go to school and learn more about the world around him? These are all reasonable motivations to have as a character. They may have been done to death by other authors and PC’s, but not you. You as the player have all the power in the world to fashion these motivations into something tangible and unique. So maybe the answer isn’t to hitch your wagon to a bunch of mindless drones.

But what if there’s a reason for being a mindless drone? What if all of the party members are part of a cult that just goes around doing whatever their higher power tells them to do? What if the higher power tells them to murder everyone they come across as a worthy sacrifice? What if the higher power tells them to steal enough money to make the cult richer than Scientology ever could be? In that case, while the players are still mindless drones, they have motivations beyond two-dimensional character work. But even if this were the case, the players who own those characters still have to put in the work when it comes to developing back stories and mythologies. If you’re going to, “Go with them…I guess…”, then at least have a reason for doing so. I hate to use the phrase, “Everything happens for a reason”, but in the case of D&D characters following each other around, it definitely does.

Even the elf hunter has a reason for falling down a sewer hole (not just because the player didn’t know what the fuck he’s doing). Okay, so he’s exited the party under weird circumstances. Now what? Are there creatures lurking in the sewers? Does the shit-scented water have a dark secret buried beneath? Does the sewer serve as a passageway to another world? How about a secret entrance into a castle full of riches and sorcery? Now the question becomes, does the elf hunter keep all of his findings to himself or does he share them with his party members if and when he returns to the surface? Hopefully, he’s had a nice bath beforehand and not in a river of shit and piss. Otherwise, they’re going to think he’s a lunatic and have him locked in a madhouse.

But what does the elf hunter do while he’s confined to a padded cell filled with other crazy people? Does he share his secrets with the crazy people and get into even more trouble than he’s already in? Does he meet someone there who could bust everyone out and flood the streets with whack-a-dos? Does he meet a corrupt nurse who’s beating the shit out of the patients for no reason other than to satisfy their sadistic urges? If you look hard enough, everything has an angle behind it, everything has a story that can be exploited for creative fodder.

Here’s the thing with me as a middle schooler: I didn’t give a shit about developing back stories and looking at life through multiple angles. I just liked the shallow aspects of the characters I created and the places I went to. Does my character have skulls decorating his entire body? Does he carry an axe with a long enough shaft to double as a wizard’s staff? Does he have a drill bit on top of his head? Is his metal armor so thick that it can protect him from nuclear missiles in a medieval fantasy setting? For me back in those days, looking cool was more important than being cool. My characters could have the flattest personalities and the agendas of mindless drones as long as they looked cool doing it. I could get away with it back then, but not today as an author telling my own stories.

One thing I’ve learned as an author is that nobody cares if your dark knight carries a chainsaw into battle with him. Nobody cares if your dragon-born barbarian breathes ice instead of fire. Nobody cares if your goblin electromancer shoots bolts of lightning out of his ass. Surface-level character development isn’t development at all. Having thick armor isn’t a personality trait. Having trident heads for fists isn’t a relatable flaw. The audience doesn’t want chainsaw-wielding dark paladins if those same warriors don’t have an inch of depth or personality behind them. Ever wonder why we like one-line zingers? It’s because a mindless drone could never come up with them. Ever wonder why we like edgy dialogue? Because it takes a special kind of character development to come up with those sound bites. Characters are more than their swords, axes, and lightning breath. They have flaws. They have dreams and goals. They have styles of speech. They have reasons behind their actions that extend beyond Captain Evil territories.

So…do you want to know what the right answer to the, “What are you going to do?” question is? Well, if your only solution is to hitch your wagon to your party members whilst contributing nothing in the way of character development, your D&D session is going to be boring as hell and so will the stories you write as a professional author. It is somewhat surprising to hear me of all people say that, the same guy who struggles with character development because my characters are either too nice or too mean, too extreme or too bland, too smart or too dumb, or too good or too evil. I couldn’t find the middle ground with a map and a compass. 

But that’s why we have character profiles and character sheets: not to keep track of how many muscles our ogre barbarians have, but to keep track of all of their personality traits and why they act the way they do. Coming up with three-dimensional characters is a lot of work, but it’s work very much worth doing. Even out the extreme tendencies and make shit happen for a reason. Think beyond the shallow. Get in your character’s head like a schizophrenic voice. Ask yourself: what makes this character tick? But when you’re figuring this stuff out, take all the time you need. You don’t have to get three-dimensional character work right the first time, but you should get it right eventually. It’s a skill, one that takes patience. Do you have it in you? Of course you do! Otherwise, you wouldn’t have a D&D character sheet or a novel idea in the first place.

The Dwarf with Bad Aim

When I was an edgy little shithead during my pre-teen and teenage years, I laughed my ass off at Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles jokes. The cheese grater was the best book they’ve ever read. The fastest thing to go on land was their speedboats. The best way to torture them is to rearrange the furniture. Get it? Because they’re blind? Oh-ho-ho-ho! Blindness is so funny, isn’t it? You know who probably wouldn’t think those jokes are funny? The level one dwarf fighter I played as during a D&D campaign in the 90’s. I don’t remember a whole lot about that campaign, so the details might be a little fuzzy. Hell, I don’t even remember the dwarf’s name. Let’s call him Clark. Not very fantasy-like, but fuck it, I’m calling him Clark anyways because I like the name Clark.

So why is it that a level one dwarf fighter named Clark wouldn’t have a sense of humor about blindness jokes? It’s not like he’s blind himself. He could surely set his empathy aside for a few chuckles, right? Well, not exactly. He could see just fine, but you wouldn’t know that from how often he missed his enemies during combat situations. He had this hulking battleaxe that could rip any monster to shreds. The original Axe Body Spray could have been Clark slashing a poor son of a bitch goblin in half…emphases on could have been.

The campaign was DMed by my brother James and played by me and his friends Nathan and Chris. I don’t remember their characters or their names. I don’t remember what the name of the campaign was (it was pre-written by Wizards of the Coast). All I remember about the campaign is that it used to be really popular among D&D nerds in the 90’s. The players had to transport a prisoner to the gallows only to find out that an elf thief was a mole in the group all along. Now the end goal is to send them both to the guillotine. There would be our fair share of obstacles along the way, all of which required Clark and his comrades to swing their weapons and actually hit something for a change. Nathan and Chris’s characters hit their targets with a sniper’s precision. Clark? Not so much.

The first battle during this prisoner transport was already underway with some bandits wanting to steal our riches. Clark had the opportunity to swing his axe and shed some blood all over the forest’s most beautiful features. He swung his axe…and missed. He swung again…and missed. He swung yet again…and missed. Nathan and Chris’s characters picked up Clark’s slack and left the bandits’ corpses stacked a mile high. And then we encountered some gnomes with a broken down war machine. The gnomes naturally blamed us for their misfortune and attacked right away. Clark swung his axe…and missed. He swung again…and missed. I put the twenty-sided die in my mouth and spit it out hoping it would improve the result. Not only did Clark miss again, but I got chewed out for being weird and getting saliva on the dice.

There were many battles to be fought whether it was with knights, mages, or the prisoners themselves. The story was the same: Clark swung his axe and missed horribly. There was even a time when I rolled a nat-one and had to skip an extra turn to pick up my weapon again. Nathan and Chris’s characters did the heavy lifting for me and laid waste to our enemies. Yada, yada, yada, the prisoners were executed and everything was happy in fantasy land. By the time the campaign ended, I had tears in my eyes due to how poorly Clark performed in battle. Every swing he took, he missed like a bitch. He let his team down, though his teammates didn’t show any hint of anger at him. But Clark knew he deserved their scorn if they had any. He was just extra weight freeloading experience points from their labor. As the tears poured from my eyes, I bemoaned the fact that I wouldn’t get any experience points. But James gave me some anyways, though I didn’t do anything significant to deserve them.

Because this was the 90’s and wisdom wasn’t my strong suit at the time, I didn’t see an opportunity for a compelling story when it came to Clark’s misfortune. All I saw was a series of misses. It wouldn’t be acceptable in a game of Final Fantasy IV or Chrono Trigger, because that’s how your characters die. But Clark lived through it all. He leeched off of his friends and never once paid them back. If there was a story to be had there, my younger self couldn’t see it and no, that’s not a blindness joke.

So…now that everything happened and Clark is a broken man, where does he go from here? As a wiser storyteller than I was in the 90’s, I see many angles this can take. Obviously, Clark is overwhelmed with guilt. But how does he handle it? Does he train harder and get better? Does he use his pay from the campaign to sign up for fighting classes? Does he push himself beyond what he’s capable of and jeopardize his health? 

Or does he let the guilt take a stronger hold of him and instead of using it as inspiration, he uses it as an excuse to quit. Maybe Clark retires from adventuring altogether. Maybe he spends his money on alcohol to silence his guilty conscience. Maybe he meets a woman who finds him attractive, but he pushes her away because he “can’t satisfy her”. Ever hear the phrase “those who can’t do, teach?” What if Clark feels so guilty that he thinks he would suck as a teacher as well as a real-world fighter?

What you have to remember as a D&D player is that this is a story above all else. It’s more than just swinging axes, casting spells, and slaying dragons. Everything is an opportunity for a story. And when your characters go through those stories with newfound experience, they, you guessed it, gain experience points. And then those characters develop into three-dimensional people. They feel real despite the fact that they’re in a fantasy setting. They feel human despite being a dwarf, elf, or orc. They have thoughts, opinions, dreams, ambitions, and goals. Sometimes those goals are self-destructive, sometimes they reach beyond the cosmos. The more you develop your story and your characters, the more invested you and your audience will become. If you only care about your misses and failures, that’s all your audience will care about as well.

Everything has a story behind it whether you see it or not, even the ordinary aspects of life. That bookshelf you’ve got in your room? It has seen a lot during its time. It was crafted by creative hands. It’s had many owners who used it for purposes other than storing books. It’s collected dust and formed cracks in the wood and paint. There will be a day when your bookshelf breaks down completely and has to spend its final days in a landfill somewhere. Or the wood from the shelves could be refashioned into something else like a nightstand or even firewood for a camping trip. If an ordinary bookshelf can have this much of a story behind it, so can Clark. But Clark is not an inanimate object. He’s a person with thoughts and feelings. How he deals with his thoughts and feelings is what will determine how three-dimensional he really is. Okay, Clark, so you missed all of your shots and let your teammates down. What will you do next? That’s a story very much worth telling.

But maybe Clark can’t do a whole lot anymore because he really is going blind. Maybe it’s time for him to put down the axe before he hurts someone he didn’t intend to. Maybe he has to spend his time in a home for disabled dwarves. But then Clark has to deal with ableism and people who whine about how their tax money is being spent. If the aggression against him gets so bad, he might have to pick up his axe again to defend himself. But he’ll have help from that woman who found him attractive. She’ll guide his every step and he’ll get progressively better at swinging his axe and murdering ableist assholes. And then…he’ll believe in himself again. His self-esteem will grant him the willingness to marry that woman and start a family with her. And just like that…you have a compelling, three-dimensional story about Clark a.k.a. The Dwarf with Bad Aim!

RPG Memoirs: Fiction or Nonfiction?

So…I’m at a little bit of a crossroads here when it comes to my nonfiction. Many months ago, I wrote a memoir about a D&D campaign I did with my brother in 2003 where I was a bounty hunter named Regal (it went about as well as you’d imagine, haha!). Ever since then, I’ve wondered if I should do those kinds of memoirs in the future. A small little voice told me that if I’m going to do them, why not just write them as fictional stories instead of memoirs? There’ll be more opportunities for showing instead of telling and it’ll feel like a real story. But given how some of those role-plays panned out, they wouldn’t make for very good stories on their own. Under a nonfiction microscope, I can analyze what went wrong and why. That’s basically the point of these memoirs: to show how much my storytelling skills and I have changed since those days. They can either be cautionary tales or legitimate master classes. What do you guys think? Are these kinds of stories better served as fiction or nonfiction?

Terrible Flaws

 Anytime a book, movie, or TV show receives praise for having “flawed characters”, it makes me wonder what exactly those flaws were. Are all flaws created equal or are some more forgivable than others? Can characters with the least forgivable flaws find redemption by the end of the story or does that come off as forced? Are some character traits considered flaws when they don’t deserve to be? Do villains’ flaws (aside from the obvious) have to be conquered just like the heroes’?

I’m asking all of these questions because I’ve been in this writing game for many years and I still haven’t mastered the art of the flawed character. I’m always afraid of making a character so flawed that they’re no longer likeable in any capacity. Even dumpster fire human beings can be liked by the readers, but how do I achieve this? Well…let’s run these questions through a battery of tests, shall we?

Suppose you have a protagonist (like every story does). He’s got acrobatic fighting skills, he’s got magical powers for days, and he’s perfected the art of the insult. He wears spiked metal armor and carries a sword bigger than his entire body. He’s got long purple hair that has probably been washed with Head & Shoulders more times than he’s been in combat. He’s got striking golden eyes that can weaken the knees of every woman around him. His major flaw? He’s a genocidal lunatic. He doesn’t just go in for the kill. He destroys entire groups of people until they’ve gone virtually extinct. He feels no remorse for his actions and openly mocks any group that he’s wiped off the face of the earth. 

Are you cringing in disgust yet? Why? You like flawed characters! Killing large numbers of people is a HUGE flaw for somebody to have. I certainly hope he can overcome it! Now that I think about it, there is an example of someone like this. His name is Vegeta and he’s from the Dragon Ball franchise. In the beginning of the series, he killed off entire populations from any given planet and sold the planet for a quick buck. Near the end of the series, he’s a loving father and husband, but he’s still salty as fuck. Despite his murderous past, Vegeta is still the most popular character in the series.

Alright, alright, alright, that’s just one example of a successful flawed character, though. Maybe genocide isn’t enough to turn people off (which actually scares me a little bit). Okay, how about this: you’ve got a protagonist (noticing a theme here?). He’s rich beyond his wildest dreams. He’s got more abs than he knows what to do with. His business suits, sports cars, and summer homes all cost him more than the national debt allows. He can sex up any woman from the moment they smell his cologne. 

His major flaw? He’s got a serious case of flatulence that could trigger climate change and successfully take away Greta Thunberg’s future. What? You like flawed characters! His farting gets in the way of his romantic life and political aspirations, so it’s a real flaw! He can easily overcome it by getting a colonoscopy and finding out what the fuck is going on in his ass. But once he finds out what’s actually in there…then the plot thickens quicker than one of his diarrhea dumps. Could you get behind a character like this? Hopefully, not literally since we’ve established that his farts smell like dead skunks and toxic waste.

Okay, maybe bathroom humor isn’t your thing. It certainly isn’t mine. So how about this: you have a protagonist (yet again). He’s a five-star general who commands the respect of everyone he meets, even people outside of his jurisdiction. When he tells you to do pushups, it won’t matter if you just got your COVID vaccine, because you’ll do them anyways. When he tells you to run ten miles without stopping, it won’t matter if you’re bound to a wheelchair, because you’ll find a way. 

His major flaw? His voice is so cartoonishly annoying that subordinates only do what he says so that he’ll shut up and leave them alone. That’s not respect for authority; that’s hatred for irritating people. When the time comes to actually take him seriously, nobody listens to reason, because the general’s voice shatters their eardrums every time. Do you still think all flaws are created equal?

Now I don’t want any of you to think that I’m advocating for Mary-Sues and Gary-Stus. Maybe there was a time in my childhood when beefy barbarians who never lose were appealing to me. Maybe there was a time when undeniably hot chicks won me over just because. But as I got older, the shine wore off in a big fucking hurry. You think Alex De Large from A Clockwork Orange would have become as iconic as he was if he took the role of an axe-wielding ninja-knight who remained undefeated forever? You think Vic Mackey from The Shield would have been convincing as a corrupt LAPD detective if he didn’t occasionally lose from time to time? We don’t want to see our favorites lose, but if they don’t, then the story becomes boring and nobody cares.

But at the same time, we have to come to terms with what flaws we’re willing to forgive and which ones make a character impossible to love. Maybe the flaws we can’t forgive are overcome by the end of the story. Maybe a Klansman who uses the N-word five hundred times in a two-minute conversation can see the light and become so far to the left that he falls off the spectrum completely. Maybe a CEO who makes money off of his impoverished employees can become homeless and experience the plight of his underlings firsthand. So maybe the question isn’t, “Is this flaw bad?” Maybe the question is, “Can this flaw be redeemed?”

By that logic, even Cthulu can be redeemed despite the fact that he’s an intergalactic squid who destroys worlds effortlessly and drives the survivors to infinite madness. Maybe Cthulu has a slight moment of guilt when a feral child tries to reach out to his heart. It’s one thing to drive adults to madness, but feral children never had a chance to even acquire a first language. So Cthulu’s heart is broken beyond repair, but his universe is not, so he creates paradise out of his destruction. Would you still find it in your heart to forgive this flawed character despite what he did to get to this point? Did Hitler need a hug? Does Donald Trump need tender loving care? Does Vladimir Putin need a girlfriend who will cradle his head in her lap and stroke…whatever hair is left on his head?

I guess it all boils down to whether or not you as a reader believe in redemption arcs. I personally can’t get enough of them as long as they’re not rushed and forced. If you don’t want spoilers for A Dog’s Journey, then stop reading and have a nice day. Gloria is a toxic mother who spends her nights partying and drinking rather than taking care of CJ and her dog. So what does Gloria do? She gets sober and reconnects with CJ, giving her letters from her father that later serve as creative fuel for her songs, thus launching a successful music career. That’s one example of a redemption arc I can get behind. Gloria is indeed a flawed character, downright disgusting at times. Neglect and abuse are horrible things to do to a child. And yet, she won me over by the movie’s end. Well done!

Perhaps the lesson I’m trying to teach myself is to not be afraid of the flaws I give my characters. I have enough faith in my writing abilities that the characters can be redeemed by the story’s end. And if I haven’t done that, it’s okay, because that’s why our stories go through multiple drafts worth of edits and rewrites. Unlike a brain surgeon, you don’t have to get it right the first time if you’re writing a story from scratch. Be bold. Be brave. Let your book babies take flight. You can’t cradle them forever and if you do, you’re worse than the mother from Pink Floyd the Wall, a movie with a VERY flawed protagonist, yet one who is easy to root for.

Lucha Mexico

MOVIE TITLE: Lucha Mexico

DIRECTORS: Alex Hammond and Ian Markiewicz

YEAR: 2016

GENRE: Pro-Wrestling Documentary

RATING: Unrated, though it contains bloody violence and language

GRADE: Pass

Mexico has always been plagued with poverty, crime, and corrupt politics. The one escape from the country’s negative features has always been Lucha Libre, a high-flying, mask-wearing style of professional wrestling. This documentary takes you behind the scenes of Mexican wrestling from the torturous training to the violently entertaining matches to the dire personal lives of the luchadors. Lucha Libre has a rich history and a colorful culture, but it’s also a business that requires a great deal of toughness in order to survive. Some luchadors become popular and draw in a lot of money. Most of them don’t and they suffer in obscurity. The raw honesty of this filmmaking style is one of this movie’s most prominent features.

The audience can easily get a rich education from watching Lucha Mexico. They can learn how a luchador’s mask can protect private lives and give personality and flavor to the wrestlers wearing them. They can learn the huge differences between Mexican wrestling, which is all about the high flying action, and American wrestling, which is monologue-heavy and slower-paced. They can learn about the risks and rewards of embarking on a professional wrestling career whether it’s getting an injury or becoming wildly popular. By the end of this movie, the viewers will gain a great deal of respect and appreciation for what these athletes have to go through on a day to day basis. The movie will create new wrestling fans and it will rekindle the fire within those already converted. It’s not just “man drama” as UFC commentator Joe Rogan once stupidly called it. It’s a passionate form of entertainment.

Speaking of entertainment, if you want to see delicious and action-packed violence, Lucha Mexico is happy to oblige. Sure, the wrestling matches are in short snippets, but there’s just enough content where the audience can enjoy back flips, slams, top rope dives, and most brutal of all, bloodletting. Yes, from time to time, they actually do hardcore style, which if you’re not a wrestling fan means the luchadors are allowed to use weapons and they will make each other bleed nearly to death for the crowd’s entertainment. No matter what kind of match is taking place, you will either wince in pain or you’ll be on the edge of your seat in anticipation for the big finish. That’s what wrestling is all about: creative storytelling and violent choreography. Again, Joe Rogan, it’s not “man drama”, you fool.

As long as I’m dragging Mr. Rogan’s name through the mud, there’s another thing this movie is good for: debating. The kind of debating I’m talking about is between Mexican and American styles of wrestling. Since Mexican wrestling is more action-oriented, you don’t get a lot of the bigoted promos that American wrestling has been known for over the past two decades. Meanwhile, some American wrestling fans would argue that all villain heat is the same and promos build up more tension between the two battling wrestlers. Both sides of the fence have good points to make and I’m not going to list all of them in this review, because I want my readers to make up their own minds. They can do that when they watch Lucha Mexico since they’re not overly preachy or pushy. It’s just raw, honest filmmaking, that’s all.

In this movie there’s something for everybody, which includes complete laymen. Lucha Mexico will either be a rich educational journey, more pride in being a wrestling fan, or both at the same time. Nobody is walking away from this movie unaffected. If you’re still feeling neutral after all is said and done, you probably sleep in an underground coffin at night. Or you’re Joe Rogan, one of the two. Or maybe you’re both, I don’t know. I give this movie a passing grade for giving my inner wrestling geek a reason to do more back flips and cartwheels than the luchadors themselves. Excellent work!