E-fedding at its roots... WRITING

No matter what anyone's take on e-fedding is, one thing's for certain. In the end, it's all just fan fiction. It's all just some form of writing. Regardless of style, subject matter, tone... we're all writers.

Now, when we get into what kinds of writing are suited for e-wrestling, then you get the fists flying and the blood flowing. There are so many ways to write, and everyone seems to have their own ideas. When you cross personalities and styles and all that crap, you get a lot of divergent philosophies.

Well, I'd like to think my philosophy is pretty simple and tolerant of most stuff. I mean, I really have nothing against script or narrative writing. As for content, really, as long as you're not shooting on anyone (out-of-character in an in-character setting), you keep things wrestling related and you keep things somewhat grounded, I'm probably not going to have a problem with it. Even if it doesn't agree with any of those three criteria, hey, I mean, I don't have to like it or read it, but you're doing your own thing, and I'm not going to butt in.

However, when it comes to purpose... I really think that EVERYTHING written for anything e-wrestling related should have one of two purposes:

1 - Creation and development of your own character

and/or

2 - Creation and development of heat with other people's characters

This should be ironclad. Anything else really doesn't belong.

Should any piece serve both purposes? No, and usually, pieces that showcase character development rarely build heat and vice-versa. That's okay, that's why we have different settings for RPs. Plus, you could always do both with on-card segments.

But there's no doubt that while good e-fedders may be able to get away with only doing one of those consistently, the great ones do both. Character development without heat is masturbation and heat building without character development is just arguing for the sake of arguing really.

This is why I'm of the belief that trash talk is the best way to go for match RPing. Of course, it's not totally necessary; PTC feds can get away with doing their storyline RPs because for the most part, heat is built on card. Still though, it's not the same when you do it in RPs, mainly because it's a lot more spontanous that way.

So the moral of the story is that there's room in the hobby for many different kinds of writing. No one style is intrinsically better than any other, but there are times when different styles fit over all other ones.