It has been a long time since I last decided to voice some of my opinions on various trends I’ve noticed in e-fedding. I have decided to keep quiet for a long time despite a growing list of significant problematic trends I’ve noticed people tend to include in their work and in every case, it tends to frequently undermine the effectiveness of their work, or, take good roleplays and make them torturous to read. I frequently tell people that if you follow the suggestions I make in these columns, that I don’t guarantee that you’ll be more successful. It merely gives you a better chance. Well, I’ve chosen to change that phrasing a bit. Should one choose to continue moving towards problematic trends, I can guarantee that when you’re roleplaying against some of the more consistent and higher quality roleplayers, you’re going to have limited success.
I realize e-fedding is a game and that’s perfectly fine. At the same time, these columns are to help you out and let you know what pisses me off. And just remember, if I want to throw myself out a tall building and into steel spikes while reading your roleplay, I’m going to be very critical. I’m always very critical…but I’ll be more critical. And when I want to bang my head off the wall and slip away into unconsciousness while reading your roleplay, I tend to lose patience for these things.
So with that said, let’s let the list of stuff that makes me want to dive in front of speeding traffic begin. But before I start, I will just note this. Each of the items I am mentioning, I do not intend to single anyone out. Every item on this list I have noticed at least two or more people do this in the last month and with all of the roleplays I have read since the start of the year, I’d dare suggest each of these items appear weekly in the mass of roleplays I have to read. Note why I call them trends.
So…drumroll please…..
I know everything about you…I read your bio that you wrote in 2005.
I don’t want to count the amount of times that I’ve read people’s promos and you can immediately tell that the majority of their information they use is from their opponent’s bio. Now, this I can forgive if you’re new to the fed and you really don’t know the people involved. It’s always tough to come into a new fed and take on opponents that have been established in the fed. However, after the first few weeks, this method really shouldn’t be used as the main focus of your promo. Nor should it be used to start off a promo or end it. A random fact…sure. But beyond that, the fact of the matter is that bios can be misleading. Sometimes they aren’t always edited up to date and frequently, people change their characters slightly as time passes.
But there is another better reason….
See. A lot of people probably wonder what feds have shows to forward storylines. I state this because there are a lot of people who you would swear forget that they actually play characters that are on weekly television. USE THE SHOWS. That’s what they are there for. Take a few recent shows, press CTRL+F and find your opponent’s name and catch up on any storylines going on. If you’re not sure, ask me. Ask someone else in the fed. Get a second opinion. Anything that may help you out.
The problem is that when you spend seven milliseconds researching your opponent (aka go to their bio and then maybe read the last show), you make dumb mistakes. You mistake people in their roleplays for having larger (or smaller) roles in their lives. You mention allies that they are no longer involved with. You talk about things they did months ago and they’ve taken a completely different route since then. Not only are you just wrong, but your character looks like an idiot and you discredit quite a bit of your promo. Take an extra two minutes and pull up the shows. All of them are linked on the archives page, or if I’m taking my time with updating them, go to the feedback page and all of the links are there. They are also on the news page.
How do I write the best promo? I talk like a bunch of high school kids.
This one pisses me off. A lot of people write gay jokes in their roleplays and kid around with their opponent in that way. Someone does something odd in their roleplay or on the show and an off-hand comment is an easy way to throw a joke out there and try and get under your opponent’s skin.
But what pisses me off is when people write their entire promo and ALL they include are repeated gay jokes. You can’t read two sentences without another one being thrown at you. This isn’t clever. This isn’t creative. It’s lazy. It’s pathetic. And honestly, if I want to get better delivery, I’ll just walk to a high school and listen to some kids pick on someone during lunch.
Most of the time, roleplays like these just tell me all you know how to do is essentially revert back to high school and bash them on something that is based on nothingness. It tells me that you don’t have time to actually write a thoughtful or effective promo and you’re lazy.
And I’ll give people another tip: I’ve yet to read a good promo that hinges on making gay jokes. EVER. Six years I’ve been judging roleplays and I’ve never read a good promo that is primarily made of gay jokes. And yet, WEEKLY I see two or three people take this route.
Allow me to explain what a promo does (more on this will be expanded on later): A promo PROMOTES the match. How do gay jokes do that? To give another example, how does calling one of the female wrestlers a whore for the eighteenth consecutive week do that? And most of the time, it’s not even a creative joke. It’s the same crap I can hear from teenagers talking to their friends. And yet people keep going to it.
As I said, the off-hand joke because someone does something that you just go “Really? Did I just read that?”, is forgivable and particularly if you’re looking for a more comedic approach can be legitimate in your promo. But if you have several, I would step back and rethink things. If you have several paragraphs continuing to dwell on it, I would stop and go back to the drawing board.
Continuity, people!
Something happens on a show. They are thrown off the roof of the building and eaten by crocodiles and all of it is caught on tape. Their tag partner writes a roleplay the next day and they are perfectly fine and in fact, are running a marathon. Anything you see wrong with this picture?
I’ve taken an absolutely absurd situation, but while I don’t expect people to have a hospital roleplay after getting beat down, but if you’re in a storyline and you get injured on the show, maybe work out with anyone who may work with your character how you want your character to be portrayed. The same with tag partners. WORK TOGETHER. It doesn’t take long. Even a brief reminder to their Inbox on the boards may be enough for them to go…hey…wait..I have an idea and it can help him out too.
A lot of people DON’T have continuity. A lot of people will have themselves and their tag partner, for example, in different cities, but they’re meeting together easily. At one point, I remember three people roleplaying for one match, had three different roleplays (with time included in each), all having their characters and their partners in three different cities all at the same time. This stuff just drives me nuts. It’s an easy way to impress me. If you’re on the same page with any of your allies or partners, you can help each other out more (as you’ll all be working on each other’s storylines and backstorys) but you’ll show teamwork and maybe come up with more ideas. Follow storylines and even just ask them what they are doing in roleplays if you’re planning on using them or they’re planning on using you.
You suck as a champion. The title sucks too. But I’ll change that.
This is perhaps the one thing that actually gets me to stop reading roleplays. Let me just point something out to people who like to belittle champions by saying “They never deserved it. You’re a crap champion. You suck. I’m coming to save the belt and bring it back to greatness.”
You cut that promo. You then walk into the match and beat the champion for the title. What do you prove?
I’ll give you a bit to consider this question.
.
.
.
.
Have you thought about it.
Well, in case you’re still having difficulty with the question, I’ll just give you the answer:
NOTHING!
You have proven nothing.
Why? Because you have just publically belittled the champion by stating he never deserved the title. He belittled the title. But more importantly, you beat a nobody for the title. So effectively, you’ve given yourself a case to be called an undeserving champion (and technically, one that you argued in favour for). So when you win the title, you’re actually just continuing the trend of being an undeserving champion. You beat someone who allegedly never deserve to hold the title in the first place for the piece of tin. Either way…you beat someone who never deserved it and thus you don’t deserve it.
This drives me insane.
You don’t have to be giving them all the respect in the world. You don’t have to be in love with them to get around this. You just have to be more careful about burying your opponent. You can suggest that they have fallen from grace. You can suggest they aren’t going as strong as they were. But NEVER bury your opponent by saying you don’t deserve to be there, especially in a title match (I’d say ever, personally). This is something I laugh at because I guarantee that at least 60% of the promos I read bury their opponent. So at the end, if they win, they beat a nothing in their eyes. If they lose, they were beaten by a nothing. Thus…it’s lose/lose no matter what the result is.
As I said earlier, the purpose of promos are to promote the match. Promote the match. Promote yourself. Promote your opponent. You should be making your opponent look credible enough, especially if it’s a title match, to help your own legacy out. You don’t have to be buddy-buddy as I said or go fishing with them. Just don’t bury them.
Gimmicks suck. Yours sucks especially.
I’m not even going to get into the fact that this often is based off of people’s character development and then is just stupid to go after it.
But instead, I’m going to just show you why every time I see people go off this argument, I laugh out loud. Some people criticize gimmicks in their roleplays. That’s fine….except there is a problem.
EVERYONE IN THIS FED HAS A GIMMICK. EVERYONE! INCLUDING THE PERSON SAYING THAT!
Because these people attack people’s on-screen (and often off-screen) personas, they have suggested that a gimmick is how their opponent acts in the vaguest sense. But even if you don’t accept that point, every time every character has a promo or is on the show, they are performing a gimmick. Even if it is that all they do is wrestle. That’s a gimmick. Even if they are “just being themselves,” that’s a gimmick. Wrestling is an industry of gimmicks. Every wrestler has a gimmick. A gimmick isn’t just T.R. Steele the Iron Worker from Pittsburgh or something over the top. It can be simple or subtle. So by attacking gimmicks, you’re just looking like a complete moron.
But then there is the other part that often comes out of this….your gimmick sucks or your gimmick isn’t creative. It’s a copy.
Now…I have followed wrestling extensively. I consider myself a wrestling historian. I am going to make an argument right now. There has not been a new gimmick since the 1960s. There have always been bad asses. There have always been American Heroes. There have always been the flamboyant heel. There have always been the grizzled veteran. And so on…Every gimmick we see today used in e-fedding or in real wrestling, you can find a precursor to. So by stating something is uncreative, a lot of the time, I can just turn around and say the same to you. This is again a lazy form of attack and really just isn’t effective. No one writes this intentionally to be hypocritical. They do this as a serious attack in their promos against their opponent. If it was hypocritical (note Josh Hudson’s gimmick in the second half of 2008), then this promo can be effective at times. But rarely do I see people do this (and please don’t start to do this just because I said it to get around it). So it comes off as just completely moronic and just falls flat as an attack because of the fact that you could drive a bus through the argument.
But…we’re writing promos…not trying to win a debating contest.
So be it. I can accept that point. But, as I say that, there is another reason I hate this. Most of the time, I can take out the name of your opponent and apply it to ANYONE else in the fed. Even if there are specific references, they are usually very few and minor. They hardly are vicious verbal blows to your opponent. They are just “Ha! So there!” jabs that are just annoying but really serve nothing. Do yourself a favour…take an extra ten minutes and do something a bit more directed to your opponent. I make no secret that I prefer promos that are directed to your opponent. If I can just take your opponents name and play fill in the blanks with your promo, I’m probably not going to care for it.
All of these things are things I see consistently. I hope people at least shy away from these things. As always, there are exceptions, but they are rare and even more rarely well executed in that fashion.
People who have talked about me about judging will note that I like to say that I always would prefer to judge a close match between two individuals who have written one effective roleplay each than two people who have maxed out but written okay stuff. It’s quality over quantity.
ALWAYS
…and all of the matters I have noted above have at some point in the last six months cost someone a big match. I always love to judge roleplays that are thoughtful, explore with the characters, promote matches/storylines, but also avoid clichés and being lazy. I then have to decide who is better. The problem is that when people fall into traps and get lazy, I often find myself judging who is worse, not who is better. And trust me, it’s a lot more enjoyable for me to debate who is better than to figure out who screwed up more.