Monday, November 06, 2006

FW.com is sleeping

...and I'd like to wake it up.

I wrote this entry a little while back this year concerning the slow death of wrestling promo-styled RPs and feds of that nature. Of course, I was assured this wasn't happening, but here we are, 9 months later, and the FW community of feds is at a near standstill. Only UCW has come out with a new show in the last month, but to their credit, the show that was just in RP for them was very hotly RPed for. We're still waiting on shows from EPW, NFW and NEW. Plus, we've seen some signs of life from the sleeping giant known as WFW. Those four feds are the lifeblood of FW (I've always seen the CSWA as a seperate entity unto FW... part of the community but apart from it at the same time), and they've been quiet this year so far.

Of course, it's for good reason, Edmunds is going to law school, Brunk has recently had to pick up a second job and Katz moved across the country. Plus, Shane C., who's had problems getting his shows up, has had to deal with college and with his co-fedhead dropping on him. I know I sound like a broken record, but we're all getting older, and of course that's going to hurt our productivity. I've been trying to spark life into FW with TEAM, but I can only do so much. This is all besides the point though.

Without FW.com, the only corner of the fed devoted to old-school wrestling promo RPs is at A1, and that's a small corner to say the least. The two feds there, A1E MBE, are about as old-school as you can get, but we barely register a blip on the big screen (a problem that we seem to be rectifying in this year's GTT6).

Even in the CSWA, when the Gold Rush was in RP, while the best players in the match were going old school (Brunk, Pete, Gregg, Lindz), a good amount of people went in and put up newer, short-story style RPs looking to win. There was a distinct dichotomy between the FW regulars and the PTC-styled guests.

None of the past events have done anything to allay my fears that my favored style of RPing is dying. People seem not to be interested in it in the most active community (PTC). I mean, there are some people there who look down on it, debasing it as "mere trash talk," saying events can "devolve into trash talk" and using other verbiage that suggests that only lower form writers use that style.

And if I can go on an aside here, only people who are ignorant to how the style works will talk that badly about it. People who think that wrestling promo styled RP is only "I R better than U" and who have never read a Lindsay Troy EPW RP, or any of the Dan Ryan Alter-Ego RPs in the CSWA Gold Rush, or who have never bothered to realize that one of their own, Nova, is among the best old-school styled RPers in NFW and TEAM right no, they don't know what they're missing out on. I mean, of course the n00bs of the world will pull the second-grade crap, but if you tell me that you can read a promo by Eddie Mayfield or Felix Red or Yori Yakamo, Jr. or The Spoiler or Beast or Big Dog or Troy Windham or Jonathan Marx or Doc Silver or Jason Payne or HAL or Professor Tremendous or Freakfish or even one of my many characters and still think it's base trash talk crap, then I don't know what to tell you.

People at FW seem not to have the time to run the feds needed to keep the community active. When you don't have the activity to denounce the naysayers, negative stereotypes will abound. I'm not saying that all of us should quit are jobs and do this full-time. Unless Chad wants to pay us. I'm just saying... maybe it's time for another fedhead to step in and run a fed that will stabilize, someone younger, or perhaps someone who's rich or out on disability leave. I don't know. FW needs some lifeblood injected into it.

The old-school needs to thrive for e-fedding to truly thrive. Hopefully, I can do my part with the lineup of TEAM events that I have coming up, but interfed stuff should only be used as a supplement to healthy fed activity.

I don't know. Maybe I'm pushing the panic button. But really, I don't want to see FW.com and the wonderfully rich style contained therein to wither away.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't understand. There's a wealth of promo-style RP feds on the net not under the Fwrestling.com banner. Also, NAPW makes considerable use of the Fwrestling main page, posting top tens and stuff. What makes an fwrestling fed? Simply using the fwrestling.com forums as your boards forums? Or something else?

Curious, Ryan

Anonymous said...

I have to agree Tom. Since leaving A1E a little over a year ago (which was the only fed I was in), I have spread myself over several different FW feds to try and keep in good-form with my RPs. A1E always allowed me to do that, and Steven Shane saw some very nice streaks there because of how often I was given to RP.

But while you ask for some younger guys to step up to the plate to help, you must realize there's not that much youth to our community really. I'm 22 and I'm pretty sure I'm one of the youngest we have around.

To help with your point though, I do believe that I have things leveled out for now (til Christmas is in full swing and work gets crazy) and you can actually look for another UCW show to go up this week.

I'm not really sure what the point of all this is other than to simply comment and let you know that I agree with your concern about the inactivity within the community.

Anonymous said...

I'm smack dab in the middle of a busy season. It sucks. I worked 14 hours yesterday. :(

Plus Verizon sucks, so the only net access I've got is at work.

--Must Die

TH said...

Two reasons, Ryan.

1 - You yourself said in your PTC advert for NAPW that you were a hybrid between the wrestling promo RPs and the narrative storytelling style RPs that PTC favors. Most FW feds focus solely on the former. Not saying that's a bad thing, and it's also probably not as big a reason as #2.

2 - You may advertise on FW, but you're not hosted on the main FW boards. While I know that NAPW is one of the best, if not the best e-fed out there today, and while you know it and your roster knows it, many people will look at it and see that you're not affiliated with a major e-fed site and thusly look away, scorning it as a mere "geocities" fed. It's not right, but it happens.

Basically, FW is a name, but it's also a community as well. The members of our feds at FW... we all form this group which is a bit cliquish at times, but has some qualities of a tightly knit place. We're all sleeping right now except for a few of us. I want us to have the activity we used to have, or if that's an impossibility, at least a fraction of that activity.

Josh Ray said...

This is a great post, Tom. Personally, I have tried to get as involved as possible with helping matchwriting and providing characters to feds... however I have had life deal me some reality doses in which I have stepped away for between a week to three weeks at a time.

Then there have been the missteps, like my original issues with A1E that I worked out and the way I handled MCW Finale which could have been a real booster for FW.com if I had been able to pull it off right (although Shane would agree that my MCW guys have really added some life and depth to UCW in the past few months).

Basically, what I see is that there are a lot of people, including myself from time to time, that bite off more than we can chew. Part of that is because we get a character in a fed, the fed goes dormant for a week or two (or MORE) and we drop in at another fed... and another... then we try to help matchwrite to speed things up... and it does, so we are spread to thin and the cycle continues.

We really need to just stop spreading ourselves to thin, not be afraid to shortform from time to time, and try to meet deadlines by not making excuses.

Most of this is aimed directly at me... it's where I see shortcomings in myself. But, I am pretty sure there are plenty of people just like me out there.

I love this hobby and I haven't even won anything yet (one year!). We all need to work together on this.

Once again, great post!

Josh

BigDaddy said...

I know everything that Dave is going through with EPW, and believe me I understand. But just from my own perspective, I've found it very difficult to get into any kind of groove over there with the schedule as it is.

Most of the people already know each other very well, so they can kind of pop in and out and not miss a beat. But I don't really know anybody. It's hard to establish any kind of rapport when I even have to go back and read my own RP's to see what I said.

This is actually a combined response to both this post and the "shortforming" one that comes a bit later. I've never made it a secret that I'm a big fan of shortforming. I'm just like you. I skim for segments and angle advancement. I couldn't care less about the wristlocks and leglocks.

Phil