Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The payoff

It's why we do anything, we're into hobbies for some form of reward or another. When you're playing WoW, it's leveling your new toon up, or getting the latest piece of phat epix loot. When you're in E-Fedding, it's winning a title or having a match go the way you want.

The Stevens/First Vs Copycat/Cruise match was a payoff for me, a big payoff, the whole thing was awesome from beginning to end, it was truly one of the most unexpected and bizarre matches ever formed, then one of the most entertaining to Rp for, and then my team won it, and even had a little extra go my way.

Winding it all the way back, we go to the loss to Cruise at WrestleVerse III. I'm pretty much at a loss as to what to do with The First at this point, as he's gone from a main event contender to having lost three matches in a row, it's kind of that annoying spot where you just don't seem to fit into anything, and nothing really makes sense for the character. I didn't want to call out Copycat right away, cause I didn't feel like that match would be good in a booking sense. I mean either guy losing kind of sucks, since Copycat's debuting and The First is on a huge (By FW standards) losing streak, neither guy really should be losing that match, but really when I looked at it logically, the only play was to call out Copycat.

This proved to be my undoing, as it often is, as Garth...Copycat's handler...Had decided he wanted Copycat to do some tag matches, and wasn't so much up for a singles match. I still made the challenge in the In/Out thread because I felt it would be out of character for The First to not make that challenge.

Copycat then replied with the counter offer of a tag match with Cruise, Cruise of course had been busy not taking the World Title Shot offered him by Stevens. All of this had happened with me away from the computer for a few hours so I came back on-line to find this pile of madness awaiting me, as well as a PM from somebody who was already offering to be my tag partner for a match I didn't even know was now being talked about.

So I accepted the tag match, not having a partner and trying to work out who would be my partner, when Stevens suddenly signed up for the match, so now I've gone from a possible mid-card match with Copycat getting turned down to main eventing a tag match with the World Champ for a partner, funny how this game works sometimes.

So having lucked out into that turn of events, we then have an epic Rp fest with everyone just filling the thread with Rp's...It's an old school P* style war...

And then Straw writes an epic main event where First/Stevens win...And it pretty much works out the way I planned it...On top of that Larry Tact's handler enjoyed the "First picks up the belt and Stevens rips it away from him" spot I suggested...Which always makes me feel good...

One last thing was that I may have broken a rule of feedbackery in listing First in my 'wrestler of the night/moment of the night'. I'd never give myself credit for match of the night, cause that's pretty ego-filled...But as for characters and stuff, I'd look at a card as an objective observer and post how I think they would see things...Also I think it would be pretty disingenuous to give those 'awards' to somebody just for the sake of not picking my own guy...

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

You will be screwed

There has been a lot of weeping and crying about people losing matches, hating bookers, complaining about this, that, and the other thing.

Get over it, you're going to lose. You're going to lose matches you shouldn't lose. Bookers will screw you over, they will promise you the moon and the stars and fail to live up to that. You will get into a match that you feel you won, your friends feel you won, and you will lose. That's the game.

Sometimes you lose for storyline purposes, sometimes you lose because the judge or judges thought the other guy Rp'ed better, but you will lose.

This is the way it's been since the dawn of time itself, hell back in the day it was even more political and more soulless...Mike Randalls jobbed to Doc Silver twice for the simple reason that Schmid was never gonna put the AAWC World Title on a guy who was dominating CSWA. I could have had Doc eating a pizza and posted "This Pizza is yummy" and retained the belt.

People always talk about the 'good old days'...They didn't exist...Hell I've been involved in so much bullshit drama, inflicting a ton of it, but also having a great deal thrown at me...

Such mindnumbing bullshit as

The Randalls/Doc, Doc quits CSWA cause the next card was posted and Randalls was defending the title so everything went to crap and I swear Chad or Steve told me in E-mail I was losing and they swear they didn't ordeal.

Being promised ownership of the CSWA and then...Not so much.

Brutally vote rigging A1E, jobbing anyhow (And having GUNS lose a match he never should have lost, double so when he was bolstered by the vote rig) having the vote rig exposed, being kicked out of A1E.

The Zane Incident

Having Andrew Medina job Doc to Jean Rabesque, thusly not paying off the angle I'd been working on with him for forever, and then having the Andrew Medina character come out and bury Doc some more. Then to top it off, he came back to me a while later seeing if I'd join a new league he opened or if I was 'still upset over what happened a long time ago'

And a ton of other slings and arrows of various degrees of annoyance have been thrown at me. It's part of the game, E-Fedding is political, it always has been, always will be, it's dealing with inter-personal relationships, and thusly drama, for you to win, somebody has to lose.

This is the nature of the beast...If you don't like it, quit...Cause really nobody cares that you got ruthlessly screwed in your last match...

You know what losing in E-Fedding is? It's taking a bad beat in poker, it's happened to everyone, it will happen again, and again, and again, and while we all know it sucks, it's the price we pay to be in this hobby, and honestly, hobbies exist just so we can complain about them all the times they don't give us the payoffs we want.

So in closing...Harden the fuck up.

Monday, June 15, 2009

New characters and Jeff Davis

Making up a new character is a truly weird thing to me. You have this idea, maybe an outline for what you want out of your new character and then after a bit of working on it, you write up the bio, sign up for a card, and the character...Exists, it's in a match, your opponent is insulting them, they are firing back upon their opponent...You have just made this thing out of thin air and now it's fighting somebody and after a while everyone in the league knows this character, it's 'real'...When a couple months ago it wasn't.

Fantasy Wrestling makes that even more interesting me to because everyone has to interact with each other, so people will at some point or another run into your character and have some dealings with them, and everyone's character is different and unique to themselves (Except Flic Rair, the E-Fedding Blogosphere's running punchline)

Like in Warcraft, you got 10 classes, 10 races, 3 different talent trees you can use in each class, but that's about the end of the stuff you can do, at the end of the day, your Resto Shaman will be about the same as everyone else's Resto Shaman. There is endless ways to make characters different in E-Fedding and they all are.

I mean, it's just weird to think that Mike Randalls wouldn't have existed if Jon Katz didn't think him up. That Sean Stevens wouldn't be EPW Champion if Jamar didn't work out that idea.

And where do we even get these ideas? I mean my current favorite character to Rp and work on is The First, and he wouldn't exist if I hadn't spent a year being a co-worker to this girl. Oh the conversations we had about the dead talking to her and astral projecting and being starborn.

When Ryan started his Lucha league I had said I would join. I wasn't going to do what I had said before about bringing in The First as "El Primo" cause that would be silly, and again, I'm trying to keep him EPW centric. So on a lark I decided to make "Bloodhunt 2.0" only with more xenophobic bullshit and less JFK heavy.

A bunch of people have talked to me about bringing Bloodhunt out of retirement, but I always had him be older then Doc and be a kind of physical wreck, so I just don't think it's really that good an idea to bring him out when I don't think he could really work anymore. Davis is going to have his own thing, but he's going to always think he's losing, he could be undefeated and World Champion of FMLL and unmasked half the roster and he'd still think he was merely being set up to fail by unseen forces. The mind of a paranoid is a fantastic thing.

Just thinking about the whole Lucha fed is funny to me, we all came up with these new ideas, and now in a show or two, they'll be fighting each other, they'll be as real as JTP, Rocko Daymon, or Anarky. It's just kind of crazy how this whole e-fedding business works.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

UFC 99 preview

Billy's supposed to be on top of this, but he's slacking, that slacker. So here we go

MAIN EVENT

"The Axe Murderer" Wanderlei Silva Vs Rich "Ace" Franklin

This is a weird fight, they are fighting at 195 cause Franklin has been sent to 205 due to Anderson Silva owning him at 185, and Wandi is moving to 185 cause he's been beaten repeatedly at 205. Both men have shown suspect chins in their last few fights, and it's anyone's guess if Wandi's fast paced whirling dervish style of attacking will prevail over Rich Franklin's more tactical gameplan.

MY PICK: I have no idea...I guess I back Franklin, mostly because my picks end up losing and I'd like to see Wandi win, but of course since I'm now making a pick like that on purpose, odds are Wandi gets killed...

Cheick Kongo Vs Cain Velasquez

Cain is seen as the next big star in the heavyweight division and a lot of people expect him to get the takedown and beat the crap out of Kongo. Kongo always confuses the hell out of me because he's so one dimentional and horrible, yet he wins anyhow, I think this fight will be closer then most people expect.

MY PICK: I'm taking Cain because he should be able to get it to the ground and Kongo is a horror show once put on his back.


Mirko Cro Cop Vs Mostapha Al Turk

This is Cro-Cop's make or break fight, does he have another run in him or not. Al Turk was recently turned into a blood pinata by Kongo and is likely being fed to Cro Cop to try to re-establish Cro Cop as a big deal. So this fight isn't so much if Cro Cop will win, but will he win convincingly. Of course we all said the same thing before he fought Gabe Gonzaga on his way to his assured title shot with Randy Couture and that turned out really well.

MY PICK: Cro Cop wins with a knock out, but in the 2nd round so Sherdoggers can get upset with him for not being super deluxe mega awesome.


Mike "Quick" Swick Vs "Killa B" Ben Saunders

Saunders scrubbed out of TUF but has since gone on a tear and now faces a gate-keeper at 170 in Swick, who needs to look good at this weight class since he's been middling at 170 ever since he was sent down from 185 by the omni-boring and never getting a title shot ever Yushin Okami. 170 is a weird weight class with the match at UFC 100 basically being the true test for GSP and there being nobody else in the pipeline for him to really get excited over after that.

MY PICK: I think Swick ends the dream for Saunders here, and with one more win can set himself up to be a highlight reel knockout victim for the winner of the Alves/GSP fight.


Spencer "The King" Fisher Vs Caol Uno

Uno makes his return to the Octogon after being away for pretty much forever. Fisher is a gate-keeper of sorts at 155, winning and losing off and on, his fights are hard to predict, since he'll dominate somebody and then go out and get lay and prayed to death the next time out. Who knows what we'll get out of Uno. 155 is so deep I don't know if either guy will make a good run at it, but this should be a good fight.

MY PICK: I blindly hate Spencer Fisher because he comes from the same camp as Matt Hughes and all those guys seem like cocky bastards. I spite pick Uno.



Marcus "The Irish Hand Grenade" Davis Vs Dan "The Outlaw" Hardy

These two have talked a ton of trash, and odds are they'll be out for blood. This could be fight of the night if it makes it past 2 minutes.

MY PICK: It won't, cause Davis will kill Hardy, it might be legit murder also.


Monday, June 8, 2009

Roleplaying is good

Having read Jon Katz's post on Billy's blog, and having already replied to it, I read it again and figured I needed to tackle the issue on my own blog, since I tend to have the view that roleplay is good and important in leagues, and it doesn't feel like Katz does.

His first point is that if a league is small then only 2-3 people dominate. I think that would happen anyhow if a league is small, and why wouldn't a small fed have 2-3 dominating characters and the rest are left to fend for themselves? I mean what gives the guys who aren't doing lots of Rp and working hard to advance their characters the right to be in the main event and hold the big title?

His other side of the issue is that if you got to much talent then you can't establish a dominating champion...Who says you can't? Sean Stevens is a dominating champion in my eyes, I'd say he's been well established...Beyond him I'd think Marcus Westscott has been put into a good position as the #1 contender, and I feel like The First, even with him being my own character, has been pretty well established as a solid face. Anthology always get raves from people after every card, I think EPW's whole upper-midcard teir has been well cemented.

I'm not saying I think EPW is 100% Rp based...I think angles and storylines outside Rp factor into matches, I think they have to in every league, if you just judge every match based on Rp then you lack any ability to build storylines or angles that lead to payoffs, there has to be some storyline arc that you're using as a justification for getting from point A to point B.

As for the '150 pound woman' and '75 pound midget' comments, I mean, shots at Lindsay Troy and Duchess are always good fun for the whole family, but honestly, who's Rp'ing these characters on FW.com currently? This is a strawman arguement against roleplaying. I'm a belt whore of the highest order and if somebody told me that The First was to small to be world champion because they never really bought Jeff Hardy as being a legit main eventer...Then odds are I'd work out a different gimmick for that league, because I myself want to win World Titles, and I'm not going to have my character hold me back from that. Now maybe the guy who Rp's the 75 pound midget doesn't want a World Title and would rather do all kinds of zany shit in the mid-card, to each their own.

The thing about this comment is, you would be upfront with the handler that you're never putting the World Title on that character because they don't fit your mold as a champion, and that's perfect with me, handlers and fed-heads should have open lines of communication where they express their opinons about characters and what they think they should be doing and where they are going with the character.

Rp has to matter because otherwise you are encouraging people to be lazy, you're fostering this mindset that it's OK to not do a bunch of Rp's because 'we're all adults now, we have jobs, families, lives' etc, when if people do give a damn about a league, we get 20+ posts in a tag title main event on EPW. I know that Siegel and I are nuts, but Garth stumbled off the street and in his first match put in his work to hang with everyone, and Jamar didn't slack either. It was the most fun I'd had in ages in a thread.

It was like the scene in "The Crow" where the main villian, the never named Top Dollar, declares he's done with Devil's Night because it's boring and cliche, and when finally asked if he doesn't want anyone to set a fire he says what he wants is a REALLY BIG FIRE, so that the Gods will notice us again...

It was to me, a stark contrast to the EPW World Title match at Wrestleverse. I know Straw only did one Rp because he was working out an angle for Rocko to lose first, and I know Holzerman had one foot out the door of E-Fedding at the time, and Jamar tends to Rp best when pushed by his opponents (see the tag thread and the thread for First/Stevens)...But that thread kind of hurt me, because Brunk had thought about putting The First in that match for a while before deciding against it, and then to see that lackluster level of Rp...It just killed me. People tend to poo-poo E-Fedding and give the whole 'It's just a game' or 'it's a silly hobby' mentality to things, but honestly, we do spend time at this, and we have goals to achieve in leagues, and when your goal is to be EPW Champion and you see a title match where there is merely 1 post from each guy and they call it a day...It's just like "AHHHHHHHH!!!!"

Basically I think Rp should matter a lot, because it shows your level of committment and caring to your league you're in, and if you put in work, it should be rewarded at some point. Angles and Storylines have to count also, because without a story to tell the Rp is just meaningless, but the Rp should effect who the stories are told about.

And as for TEAM...TEAM is to me a kind of 'one-off' event. Like a friendly between two nations in Soccer. It is it's own seperate thing and pretty much divorced from the other leagues, the bitching and yelling and crys of 'bullshit' about TEAM are based almost totally off the fact that we have no idea what the standards for judging Rp are, because we don't know who the judges are. That's about it. I think if Adam just handled all the matches or the judging panel was public it would be a lot better.

Now I'm gonna go do something productive with my time, such as farm herbs on my blood elf rogue.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Compete Vs cooperate and shooting

A lot of times in E-Fedding we come to a point where we really have to ask ourselves if this next match is really worth winning by going balls to the wall all out total Rp and angle war, or if it's a match that we would be better served by working out a deal with the opponent...

I think of Godbooks and storyline advancing matches as a sort of plea agreement between both sides..."The jury" is the fed head or bookers and in a bunch of matches you don't want your case going to them, cause you might just lose outright.

But the question is can you get something better out of working a deal. And can the deal help out both people in the match? This is really where E-Fedding is kind of weird, because a lot of times the opponent you're fighting to death today, is the guy you need to help you tomorrow.

I tend to think that if you're not in the World Title picture that odds are you should try to cut deals and work out storylines with as many people as you can to build yourself up to the point where you can fight for the World Title...And that on the whole, the World Title scene is going to be people competing against each other with no quarter given or asked, because this is what we're all trying to do, win the big belt.

I was reading Billy's blog and it talked about how I am both shot on, ("Brian") and am a shooter. My defense.

Mass murdering isn't generally a sold gimmick in any league I've been in, I can't imagine somebody trying to get over in EPW/NFW/LVW/WFW:NE/The Lucha Thing Ryan's Got Going/Etc. The Doc character could never accept this gimmick, because it's so stupid, and for as big of a business exposing jerk as he is, this is a bridge to far even for him.

A goth idiot...Is a goth idiot...First's first match had him refered to as a Michael Manson rip off...So I can't see how he's exposing the biz as it were. I know Billy covered all that, but I just wanted to say my own piece.

Also, as I've told anyone willing to listen to me for more then a minute about the gimmick, the person of Brian Nadalny is that of an idiot goth outcast who hung out with his gaggle of goth moron friends and around the age of 16, he had the epiphany that he had the soul of the first human being to get a soul put in them, and thusly in a night of weepie goth bullshit, got all his idiot friends to buy into his shit and call him First...

So he's really living the gimmick...There is a reason I call him a moron all the time. Hell I'd make fun of him if I was dealing with him.

Monday, June 1, 2009

3 world champions, 9 dollars

Dealing the WSOP is surreal. It's truly jarring, you have the high stakes assholes who are just worthless pieces of shit who treat you like garbage. I got another one today, he was a prince. Just a loathsome worthless bastard who spent my whole half hour of dealing looking down his nose at me, doing everything he could to be a prick. These people have suffered the stunning realization that money doesn't make you happy and thusly spent their days making people as miserable as they are.

Of course all these people are cheap as can be, a bunch of stiffs, I made 19 dollars and had to give 10 of it back cause a game broke while I was dealing and the bank was off 10. Counting banks is next to impossible because you have these fuckers breathing down your neck the moment you sit down demanding action, while you're supposed to be counting down 1,000 dollars worth of chips in your bank.

That's the bad news, the good news is just how weird this event is, and what happens when you're here. My room mate and I are walking into the area where the WSOP is being dealt and as we're walking in, we see Dan Harrington walking the other way. A few moments later we see Peter Eastgate also walking the opposite way. To finish things up about a minute later we see Robert Varkonyi walking with his wife Olga. Just a run of the mill day for a couple WSOP dealers to see three main event champions walking around the halls of the Rio.

Hopefully tomorrow will be less asshole, more money.