Following Up The Last Post

Remember the last post I did? The one right below this one? Yeah, I'd like to apologize for the tone I used. I realize that I was no better than Shane with the confrontational tone. I don't apologize for the content or for the sentiment. I just wish I could have said it a little more eloquently.

Wah, wah, I got sand in my e-box

One of the things about retiring from active e-fedding is that I really don't have any accountability to anyone anymore, so I don't have to watch what I say... well, that's a lie. I don't want to alienate people, but really I don't have to work with them either. That's why you shouldn't unbookmark this thing. In addition to Project Discovery Channel, I'll still have some goodies up here, mainly me reminiscing, ranting, raving or doing the fantasy-fantasy booker thing. Even if RPing isn't fun anymore, talking about it sure is!

And boy, do I love talking about things. Why else would I have started this if I didn't? Sure, I had the news and show-opinion hookup, but I really started this just to ruminate on abstract concepts and trends (or as Katz once said, comparing the pros and cons of kumquats). I wanted to talk about things that I liked and things that I didn't like. Today, I'm gonna talk about something that probably pisses me off the most of anything that can piss someone off in e-wrestling - publicly carrying on about results.

I had to deal with this in a BIG way back in 2007 with the WfWA's petty bitchiness about how their guys finished in the TEAM ToC. Honestly, if you were around for that, and most of the readership here was, you knew how big a clusterfuck it was. If not, well, basically it boiled down to that entire community pretty much bitching me and my judges out because their guys didn't finish 1-2-3 in the ToC. They blasted guys like Nova, Tchu and Ravager midcarders. The only person who was gracious about the whole thing was Christian Light's handler, and that was because he placed 4th. I was accused of playing favorites, only inviting them to make "my circle" look good (which was ludicrous because at heart, my "circle" is A1E, and the final didn't even have a FW-related handler in it), demanding privately that I give "valid reasoning" for why I ranked them so low, and then arguing with it when I gave it. It was a nightmare.

It would be nice if the people "buying into their own shit" was limited to communities that didn't have prior working relationships. The more things change, the more things stay the same. Honestly, I would have expected better, especially since the miserable in this situation was from the PTC circuit, but then again, the last time there was an all-out e-fed meltdown, it happened from someone who came from the FW/A1 side of things. It goes to show that there are assholes on both sides of the coin, right?

But just in case you've been living under a rock, which I admittedly have been doing for a couple of weeks, someone else, the handler of Chris Bagwell, just went off about losing in his TEAM Invitational Tournament match. It was in response to a light-hearted blog post by Billy Ferrero. It degenerated into basically the guy named Shane (why do all the people who blow up go by that name?) and all the FW heavyweights, Russo, Brunk, even Shinder himself. I responded too. It wasn't nice, and I'm not going to be nice here.

Basically, the worst thing you can do is bitch about your match publicly. For one, you're a bad sport if you do it. Why you'd want to be immature and ruin something that's supposed to be fun by throwing insults and accusations around is beyond me. Two, you put the booker on eggshells. You make them think that they're not being fair, and then it skews the results in the future. More future results are in doubt now because the booker is possibly influenced by your bitching. Three, it causes massive public dischord and people are then repulsed. Why should someone go to a place where people aren't happy with results?

Basically, what this Bagwell guy did was damage the integrity of TEAM. Even though I've retired and handed the keys over to Shinder, it still pisses me off that someone would have the gall to submarine the integrity of a place I helped build, especially over something as trivial as a tournament match. Here's a fucking newsflash. This is a competition. People win, people lose. This isn't a circle jerk. It's also subjective. One man's offal is another man's feast. If you lose, oh well. Put your big boy or big girl pants on and deal with it.

Am I saying you should be happy with losing? No, that would be hypocritical of me. I don't like losing, and there are times when I take it pretty hard. There were several times that I looked at a match result and I thought that there was no way I should have lost. It happened most of the time when I was up against Housefly in A1E battling for the A1E Championship or against Trip X in EPW. Did I complain about those losses in public in a way that was accusatory to the people deciding the matches? No, I didn't. I vented to friends, I inhaled and exhaled. I got over it, and I realized that the A1E voters and Brunk had their reasons for their decisions. And in the end, I was cool with it, because let's face it, it's not like Housefly or Stevens are slouchy characters, nor are their handlers bozos. They're two iconic characters handled by two talented men.

Why this prick can't realize the same for his match is beyond me. Why he couldn't have just vented to his friends who would have sympathized with him, I don't know. Why he couldn't have just left it to the PMs he sent back and forth with Shinder, I have no clue. But he had to go and take his beef public. What does that accomplish? Who does he get to rally to his side? The FW people who've been there before with the WfWA fiasco? The people there who've been in internal FW OOC dramas? People who actually thought that Duke Williams beat him, Duke Williams, who is handled by Al Larcher... hardly the picture of a FW stronghold? Please.

He says he's putting TEAM on ban. Yeah, okay, that's really going to hurt the fed. Seriously, TEAM doesn't need him, and really, if he's going to react to losing that badly, he doesn't need TEAM, because his blood pressure would rise every time he lost a match in TEAM. This game needs a lot fewer self-important douchebags like him and more people like Ryan Aston. Here's another guy who was unhappy with his loss in the first round of the same tournament, but outside of an offhand reply to the blog post in question, he took it in stride. That's the sign of a guy who gets it.

In the end, this isn't serious business. It's a fucking game. If you can't have fun playing a game, then you need to get your head checked. If you can't take losing to the point where you think it's a vast right-wing conspiracy if you don't win, you should hang up the e-boots and take up needlepoint, because this isn't for you.

In closing, Katz, I don't think you ever thought kumquats could get this vitriolic, could you? ;)

More random notes

I was going to have this big long post about the happenings this weekend, but I figured that'd only unneccessarily raise my blood pressure and my urge to kill everyone who has pissed me off in the last 72 hours. It's healthier to let sleeping dogs lie anyway and not dwell on the past. Let's concentrate on the positive, like everyone who did well in the ToC. Congrats to ChrisNova for adding yet ANOTHER trophy to his mantel for this year. Big ups to everyone in the top 10, becuase it was a damn good crop this year. There have been some other pretty good developments too, like...

- WrestleStock, Night One posted! With everything that was on my plate today, I haven't gotten a chance to sink my teeth into it, but I did skim some results. Big ups to Jamar Short for winning the King of the Cage with "Triple X" Sean Stevens. You deserved it, and if I had to job to anyone, I'm glad it was you.

- If you haven't had the chance yet, go over to PTC and check out what Mat Waters has done with promoting his new angle fed, One World Wrestling. This very much reminds me of an idea I had back before I started brainstorming the original concept for TEAM: Nation-based wrestling. He's been busting his ass, hyping this thread with teaser matches and now, roster profiles. What's unique about the fed is that he's not starting it from the ground floor. He's putting in a backstory, giving the fed history. That's ballsy, very ballsy, but I'm very intrigued by the idea. Hopefully, he'll let his roster input some things about the history, make things as organic and spontaneous as you can with this kind of thing. Here are links to each of his hype pieces thus far. If you've got the stomach for narrative, check them out:

• The Maltese Falcon vs. Nadir


• Persia vs. Greece... aka the movie 300 in wrestling form!


• THE ROMAN SOCCER HOOLIGAN~! in action


• 40 Man Over the Top Battle Royale Spotlight on 100 Freaking Punches


• Our first taste of STOICA~!


• The first profile, naturally, it's STOICA~!


• Introducing the PRIME KILLER~!, Digital Mortality!

DigiMort is the first non-Waters created character featured so far. I'm very intrigued to see both the NPCs that Mat's keeping around like STOICA~! and the handlers who are going to be involved. My advice is to keep an eye on this fed. Hopefully, it can withstand the almost insurmountable entropy that seems to doom angle feds before they start nowadays.

- Another great idea from the PTC fold - PTC Wiki! Big ups to Craig for starting this, and hopefully people pick up on it. FW had one of these rumored too. I know Edmunds has or at least had one for NEW and I think he even proposed one for FW. Edmunds is always thinking a step ahead of the game; it's just too bad a lot of the doers at FW are few and busy with their own projects to be able to help out fully. Either way, Wikis are a great idea to help get outsiders better acclimated to the forums and feds with centralized information. Just another thing that would probably be a lot more fleshed out of we got paid to do this kind of thing :)

Confessions of an E-Fed Conservative

The words "conservative" and "liberal" are tossed around in politics like softballs in a beer league game, even if the terms don't match the person they're describing. For example, many Republicans nowadays are called conservative, yet they spend taxpayer money like their names were Franklin Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Re... err, wait a second :). It's not to say that the GOP isn't a conservative party. They lean right on many issues, but it just goes to show that there aren't many people out there who are 100% right or 100% left on anything anymore.

The same goes for eW, at least in most cases. The right and the left are clearly demarcated around the communities, mainly in terms of writing style and wrestling topicality in shows. Some communities, like FW, are homes to staunch conservatives on the surface, while the PTC crowd leans more to the left, at least that's what it seems. There are opposite elements in each camp. You wouldn't know it on FW because discussion for the most part has gone the way of characters like Stone Cold Rocky Helmsley, but if you pay attention to some writers there like Steve, Jamar Short, Lindz, Pete Russo and even Katz sometimes who write stuff that is panned by and large by the "old guard." This isn't to say that they're eW "hippies," and they rarely ever write things that don't have a damn thing to do with their character as wrestlers, but it's still something different. At PTC, the debates rage all the time, with the right mostly being manned by Ben (Caldera), Dean and, surprise-surprise, myself.

Yes, I tend to think of myself as an e-fed conservative. You might not know it from posts like this where I advocate blasphemous things like off-camera, topically non-wrestling related RPs and writings, but I guess just like most in the political arena, I'm not wholly on one side ot the coin. The reason why I say I'm conservative is that I don't go for the supernatural in the ring, and I tend to be against the supernatural characters out of the ring (even though I will never, ever try to keep a supernatural character from being able to do his thing). I like for everything in the ring and on camera to be realistic. I hate when people come up with contrived finishers, and I hate it when people use stuff like the Burning Hammer or Tiger Driver '91 in their regular movesets (remember that, Brunk?). Although I fully support all ex-PTC feds and am in PRIME, I do prefer "old-school" RP feds, and I think everything's better in script.

Yet, I think people who choose to develop their character off-camera in situations where they may not be even thinking about the arena is not only okay, but it should be encouraged for those who want to do it like that. Of course, I believe everything at the end of the day should tie into that person's character as a wrestler, whether you're explicitly mentioning matches, the fed, angles and such or not in the RP. Why even be in something called e-wrestling if you're going to ignore the wrestling part? I do feel like people should have as much creative freedom as they need to express themselves. Besides, why should they care what Randomposter X or William Morgan think about their RP if they're just looking at one RP in one shot out of context of everything that person is doing in their fed? It should matter to the fedhead, the admins, the people in that fed who've been following that arc and that angle, and who know the history behind that RP and where that person may be going with it.

Does this make me any less of a purist? Honestly, I don't think it does, seeing that the goal of the hobby is to create memorable moments with our characters, be they in the ring, on the stick or any which way else. Those who say it's not realistic... well, you may be right, but having a 24 hour promo channel isn't realistic too, and many of us still RP like there is. That's because we in this hobby have several degrees of freedom more than what the folks in the real world have. Our message boards and promo boards act as if we do have all-access to every wrestler out there. If we have that freedom, why should we have to limit ourselves? Why can't Katz and Steve collaborate on an RP or a segment that features Mike Randalls and Joey Melton hunting sand pirates while Scott Riktor dresses up in a bear suit? Okay, maybe that might not have been the best example of something realistic, and yes, I did have to strain to suspend my disbelief at that whole series, but it was entertaining to read, and a lot of times, that's a perfect remedy to the whole non-topical subject.

Ah, I'm rambling again... my point is, no one is completely on one side of the spectrum. I mean, if I had to portray myself with a counterpart, I'd probably be Rudy Giuliani. He's a Republican, and he's no doubt a Republican on several issues, but he leans very much to the right on a few others, like abortion. He's a pro-choice Republican. That may seem like an oxymoron to you, but to others, well, it just means he's a human being. Same with Log-Cabin Republicans or Hawkish Democrats like Joe Lieberman. Or storyline-RP loving eW righties like myself ;)

Besides, I can think of only a few people whom I think could fit the mold of a total extremist on each side. I know Shane Gerlach HATES anything narrative, and feels like if anything has to be told, it should be told in the ring, on the stick, at the arena, or if it has to be out of the arena, that your character acts as if he was on camera the whole time. I also know that Joe Schmidt and Ryan Murray both believe that you don't even have to write about wrestling to get along in this hobby, and that most people are better off staying away from the in-ring aspect. Even in those cases, they aren't completely set in their ways. I know that Shane can pull a storyline RP out of his ass because he did so for the ToC last year (another subliminal plug! ;p), and both Ryan and Joe at least keep their characters somewhat grounded when they write in-card. You're never going to find someone that goes all the way to one side.

And that's how things ought to be. People shouldn't fall in with an ideology. They should stick to their ideals and be themselves, believe what they truly believe is right, what they believe is entertaining, what they believe is enriching.

One more thing before I go... the post from W3:16 that I linked to was in response to the aforementioned Morgan, who said that he had me on ignore and then goes on to say that I'm on there because I "bash" him for no good reason. Well, I can't believe I'm giving him the time of day on here, but I don't bash anyone for no good reason. If I called him out, it was because he was making stupid, ignorant posts like the ones he was making in that thread. I call 'em like I see 'em. I don't pick on people just because I don't like them. I pick on them because they continue to say stupid things, trump them up like they're gospel and then shirk away from any stimulating mental debate that challenges their short-sighted world view because their wittle feewings were hurt that I "bashed" them. Fuck that. If you can't take having your views challenged, and if you can't stand up and defend them without calling your opposition stupid or cowering away from them, then you have no place being on a message board interacting with other people. I have no patience for intolerance and I have no patience for ignorance, and I will say something if I see either one. You all know this to be true.

Paranoia runs deep

Yeah, I haven't been too active in the last couple of weeks, but that's because I've been a mite busy lately. That also means that I'm probably not going to catch up back fed happenings enough to actually sit down and write reviews for shows, even if they're quickie reviews. It just wouldn't be timely for me to write a Cold Snap or Revolution or even a Culture Shock review in the middle to end of April. I still plan on reading everything, but just to make things clear, so that when you don't see your fed's show reviewed here, don't take it personally.

Anyway, now that that's out of the way, ze post!

By our own admissions, most of our main characters are extensions of ourselves. So many times I've heard in IMs or seen in profiles that so-and-so is an extension of the handler or is that handler's real-life personality "turned up to eleven." (Just one of Spinal Tap's many gifts to our fair society!) Because of that, it can sometimes be very, very hard to keep our OOC feelings from spilling over into promos. As natural as that is for characters who are extensions of ourselves, we should also keep in mind that there is a fine line between spillage and shootage. We don't want to get too chippy, or else things aren't fun anymore.

However, there are people out there who feel that the line isn't as fine as it really is. As much as you can have people who freely cross the line and shoot on folks as part of their promo style (put the gun down, Gerlach, I'm not ripping you :p), the opposite perspective is true, i.e., there are those out there who think that the slightest comment that could be taken as a shoot is a shoot. I'm talking about the paranoid, the hypersensitive, those who could literally take the teenage-FW "i r better than u lol" style in today's game and think that the kid is shooting on them.

Let's take the most recent example of this, which is in truth the impetus for this entry. On the latest FUSE card, Ryan and Craig thought it would be a larf to promote their PTC Global/Extreme Title Unification Match. In doing so, Craig's character Dusk, a member of PRIME, came onto the show and cut an in-ring promo. In that promo, he put down several members of FUSE, including the World Champion. To many people, to most sane people, this would be a non-issue. However, there was a vocal contingient on the FUSE roster who screamed bloody murder at the fact an outsider came onto the show and buried their Universal Champion. They complained that it made their fed look bushleague and said that things like this wouldn't happen between the WWE and TNA. Let me take this apart one by one.

First off, the whole basis of at least 75% of wrestling promos is to badmouth someone. A past opponent, present opponent, future opponent, someone who isn't you, I mean, watch any wrestling program in the last 20 years and you will see big, sweaty guys talking smack about people they're not supposed to like in character. It's a huge part of the game. So what if Dusk came in and ran down John Covel? He's a member of another promotion, trying to build heat for an upcoming match with a member of that promotion. What do you expect him to do, come in and give Covel an verbal blowjob, just so people's feelings won't get hurt? Christ, where have these people been for the last forever? Since when has a wrestling promo been the measure for OOC or off-camera respect? When Shawn Michaels feuded with Diesel and Razor Ramon, I can bet you any amount of money that at the end of the day, Michael Hickenbottom was going to be hanging out, probably throwing back brews or just relaxing with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, no matter what kind of words were being thrown around on-camera, and do you know why? Because they understood that everything on-camera was SCRIPTED!

Diverging off-track for a moment here, it's interesting to note that this happened on the PTC side of things, where some people admittedly don't RP about wrestling related things. I've never read a FUSE RP, and to be fair, I really don't read RPs in general, not for PRIME, the PTC interfed, even in FW feds most of the time unless it's TEAM. I can't tell you from firsthand experience whether this is true for FUSE or not, but the fact that people have admitted that they don't RP about wrestling and the fact that people who do read RPs complain about this points to a problem that could have lead to this blowup. People may have become so out of touch with how wrestling works (since there are many in this hobby who don't watch the real thing anymore... I was one of those people until WrestleMania and Raw the night after sucked me back in) that they don't know what a wrestling promo is anymore. They're more concerned with getting their writing out for feedback that anything negative is construed as an attack, even if the giver of that negativity clearly doesn't mean in out-of-character. (And isn't it funny that one guy who is the most blatant about not including wrestling in his RPs has the best grasp of this idea?)

Back on track now, for whatever reason, people couldn't grasp that. Their reasoning was "hey, it never happens in real life!" Well, it actually does. ROH, indie feds and puro feds often have talent going back and forth among each other. Of course, those are on a level here below consciousness (i.e., the national major promotions), so I have to agree, it doesn't happen up there. But let me ask you this question... where at in America can you find a construct such as PTC? Major, national promotions in cooperation with each other... that's unheard of, it's something we have unique to us, so who's to say we have to apply artificial rules that correspond to the real world for us? The facts are these; FUSE and PRIME are in a loose relationship where there are Championships and tournaments involved. To me, they'd be silly not to cooperate if it meant that both companies could benefit from this. I believe they'd benefit from it financially if they were both real companies, and there's no question that they're benefitting now. I mean, when you get activity like this, you get people who wouldn't normally read FUSE checking in to find out the latest dealings with the interfed or checking on one of their own from PRIME. Then you may have someone who reads the whole show and likes it. Then, people who were for, against or even unaware that something like that was going down benefitting from it because more people are paying attention to their writing. How is that a bad situation?

The answer is that it's only as bad as people let themselves make it out to be. This whole ordeal could have been avoided had the people crying about everything took a few steps back and realized that everything was in character. No one was shooting, and Criag has said on many occasions after that he's had nothing but respect for FUSE. Still, people want to be up in arms about it. Well, it's their loss for taking everything so damn seriously. If you keep a light air about you and you keep everything in perspective, then you'll do fine in this game. However, the moment you start thinking that everyone's out to get you, even if they're just playing the game themselves, you're going to cause a lot of problems for you and for everyone else.

Patience

Jeremy J. melts down at the AWC boards

I know this was a locked topic, but he said some pretty nasty things that I wanted to reply to there. Hyde, please forgive me, but also understand that I'm doing it with my own BOOMSTICK rather than doing it on your forums.

Anyway, first off, yes, Jeremy J. should have stayed away from AWC after he got axed. He was told to stop pushing buttons but he kept it up anyway. If you're booted from a fed, why stick around?

Secondly, good riddance. Yes he wrote matches every week, and he wrote them in prolific numbers, but they were often bad and he'd often make his favorite characters look like gods at the expense of other people. Nothing against JJ's favorites, but if I, Ferg, Josh K., Sam or anyone else who isn't slobbered over by the matchwriter puts up a quality RP, then they shouldn't be borderline squashed in a match, and our matches shouldn't be used as personal spankrags for the matchwriter's own whims. I've always felt strongly about this, just ask Roger and the rest of the A1E crew about how big a pain in the ass I can be about writeups :p If we in AWC have to struggle for matchwriters... then so be it, but it's better to have quality matches in a little later than usual than to have a hack write them, screw them up and piss people off in the interim.

Lastly... I'm not going to pick on him completely here, but rather, I'm going to address the overarching point in his puerile little tirade to everyone in the e-fed universe.

Late cards... I know that many folks from the PTC side of things expect to have a regular schedule of a show a week. I know that when you get used to having things so punctual, even a day's lateness can throw some people off. Suffice to say, I used to come from a world like that. Way back in the day, A1E and MBE ran on a weekly schedule. Even after MBE closed, A1E still kept regular, and for the most part still keeps regular today on a biweekly slate. I remember the antsiness that we'd used to have when a card was late.

Then, I got to FW back in 2004. At first, I was taken aback by the relative slowness of card production. It was something new for me, and I was pretty restless in the beginning. That wouldn't last. I started to realize that at times, people had the passion for the hobby and the desire to go, but that real life sometimes had to intervene. The FW crowd had a lot of older guys, holdovers from the P* days when they were all teenagers ten years ago. Now, a lot of them are adults. Dave Brunk has three kids and two jobs. Chad Merritt's always out on business. Jon Katz is working 12 hour days. Sean Edmunds is in law school. Josh Ray's in the Army. Gregg Gethard is getting married and in the process of getting a Masters. JAMARRRR~! *shakes fist* Nicholas is a comic artist. Even myself... I'm working 40 hours a week and I've got a full social life myself. When you grow up, the passion's still there, but the time may not be as plentiful as you want it to be. We're not all in high school or undergraduate college anymore.

Of course, there may be some people at PTC who run things well with the same situations. Those guys are to be lauded, but not everyone can keep up with the pace. What we all need to realize is that this is a hobby and not life. If a card is late, so what, as long as it's worth the wait, who gives a good God damn? Tom Petty might have sung "The waiting is the hardest part," but in the grand scheme of things, it's not all that bad. Someday, you might be in the same shoes as people like Brunk, Chad or Katz.

Now, I know it can be frustrating to wait. I know that I get like that sometimes. But to flip out and start pitching a bitch because one card is late is ludicrous. Disagree with me on the paragraphs before this one. I can respect that, but don't tell me that outbursting over late results is okay. We all have lives, we all have shortcomings... deal with it.

A wise man once said patience is a virtue. This isn't truer in any other walk of life than e-fedding.

OOC Atmosphere

Reader Pierre Hyde from "over there" asks "What are the features of the perfect OOC atmosphere, and how does one go about creating it?"

Well, the perfect OOC atmosphere is where every handler has every handler in the fed on their AIM/Yahoo/MSN buddy list, and they all talk to each other on a regular basis. Everyone talks constructively about angles and matches and feuds... it's not just a cocksucking festival. People offer grounded praise, civil doubts and helpful hints. There'd be no feedback threads because there'd be no need for them. Shows would be full of angles from everyone, but not too many segments.

However, it's safe to say this will never happen. So what's as close to perfect as you can get? Well, basically, you have to have people who aren't afraid to give feedback and people who for the most part aren't afraid to accept it without getting their panties in a bunch. You need a fedhead who's a good people person too, just in case the immature personalities flare up. You need to treat cancers as quickly as possible, either by expulsion or careful private conversation.

I also think that the best way to get a good OOC atmosphere is to make sure that you're running the fed well. Just like winning is the best medicine for containing asshats like TO, putting out great results week in and week out is the best medicine for keeping the rabble in line. If you don't give the Jeremy J.s and Matt Haas' of the world a reason to cry, they won't cry.

So there you have it. Great OOC environment for dummies ;)

Before I go... two things.

One, A1E posted their flagship Golden Dreams over the weekend. I will give it the full review treatment sometime this week, but for now, I post the link and say READ~! Great stuff all around, and a big suprise return.

Speaking of surprise returns... go check out PRIME's new site, and their latest show, ReV 105. They had a surprise return too. A huge one. Want a hint? Too bad, I'm not telling you >=)

The Cardinal Sins of E-Fedding

All this talk about plagiarism... I'm in a sinful mood right now. (Sidenote... I'd love it for all of SIN to come back and feud with the HPSC... the ultimate A1E Turf War.)

If there's any lesson to be learned since Thursday, it's that plagiarism is bad. In fact, it's one of the worst, if not the worst thing you could do in e-fedding. I can think of three other contenders to the worst title.

I call 'em the Four Cardinal Sins of E-Fedding. If I could have thought of three more, this would have been the Seven Deadly Sins, but in a way, I'm glad I didn't. For one, looking at the negative all the time sucks. Two, well, seven deadly sins is too clichéd.

Anyway, here you go:

Plagiarizing another handler: This isn't separate from plain old plagiarism. IT also doesn't mean I condone regular old plagiarism either. It's bad, it's grounds to have a handler tossed out of any fed or e-fedding circle. But stealing from another handler... that's dishonor. I mean, I know both are dishonorable, but there's an extra level of dishonor in stealing from a peer, from someone whom you purport to be a friend. I can look someone in the eye who stole a short story off another anonymous guy. I won't have much respect for him, and I might give him the short shrift, but I can still look him in the eye.

I don't think I could ever look someone who plagiarized another handler in the eye. Ever. They don't deserve it unless they take on a HUGE penance and prove beyond the shadow of any doubt that they aren't going to steal from another handler again.

Making malicious OOC comments in IC segments... ie, shooting: If you have a problem with another handler, don't fucking drag it out into the competition for the week. This is a hobby, not a personal bitch-session. Don't bring the rest of the fed down because you're unhappy with someone.

Using another person's character without their permission: The real pisser about this is that most people who use characters out of permission use them so badly. Most people who have the good judgement to use another's character correctly are talented enough not to fuck up the execution.

But yeah, this is pretty low and selfish too. If you can't generate your own heat without sabotaging the heat of another character against their will along the way, maybe you should reconsider being in the hobby.

Being a backstage cancer: Do I need to explain this? I don't know, I think this happens the most out of the four. Whether it's backstage or over IMs or on the forums, it's the easiest sin to commit because it's the easiest trap to fall into.

If you go into e-fedding for the wrong reasons, you're likely to become malignant. And yes, while airing disagreements is fine and necessary for the health of a fed, when it becomes chronic, deliberate and transparently contrarian. And it happens when you job continually when you go itno e-fedding just for the purpose of winning. It happens when you expect the world to kiss your ass and someone actually has the gall to tell you that your work isn't perfect. It happens with misinformation, lies, deceit.

And while plagiarists are easily dismissed and shooters and character usually aren't chronic in this regard, cancers can stick around for a long, long time, especially if they've infected other handlers and have them believing that they're right. Much like cancer is a bitch to treat and hit-or-miss when talking about a cure, when you get a cancerous personality trolling around your fed... it's hard to change or cure him completely.

Now, the one thing to remember about all these sins is that no sin is completely unforgiveable. I've been guilty of being a cancer in A1E, but I've made amends with everyone, and I'd like to think we're all on the level now. I was involved in a shooting incident, where I was shot on, but that's now water under the bridge. I don't know of any plagiarism incident that's been forgiven because they've all been on PTC, and they hate plagiarists.

But it can be hard, especially with severe cases.

Still though, I think it's best to err on the side of forgiveness in most cases, especially for first offenders. Because this is a hobby predicated on having fun and cooperation. If we start alienating everyone because we perceive they're useless, then we won't have anyone to work with.

Repeat offenders though? Fuck 'em, since they really are few and far between. I have faith in the pool of handlers around the hobby. I really do.

Holy shit, a giant entry

Working two jobs, one of them being full-time, is a bitch, and it totally cuts into e-fedding time. I'm really sorry I haven't found more time to update this thing, but fear not, loyal readers. I am not abandoning it, and I have no plans to, actually.

Even as I have less time to do stuff, there are still plenty of things to say about the world of e-fedding. A lot of news, controversy, you name it, we have it this week. Hopefully, this won't become a strictly weekly thing, but I hope you guys understand. I have a lot going on.

Anyway, onto the entry for today.

First up, we have a new addition to the e-fed blogring, which really is just Jeff Paternostro's blog moved from ENN's old site to Blogspot. Once again, I ask you visit him and read what he has to say from time to time. It's always good to have different voices in the e-fed community, because if I were the only one dispensing opinions, things would be dull.

Next up, I kinda hinted at something big and new coming up in the e-fed queue with my last entry, and The Big Bolich finally announced it this week. Major Championship Wrestling is coming back in a new form. Jeff brought the fed back as a place where unproven and new characters in the e-fedding world can come to make a name for themselves. Anyone who has won a World Championship anywhere on the FW circuit or in A1E or MBE cannot join. It's an ambitious idea given the propensity for some handlers not to create new characters, but it's an idea worth getting behind. Once again, as with FMLL, I really can't dedicate any time to handle in it, but I fully endorse it, and I will follow its growth on this blog.

Speaking of Bolich, I've recently heard that some pretty disparaging things were said about him as a fedhead. Basically, I've heard that some folks were saying he has no idea how to run a fed and they even said some pretty hurtful personal things towards him. Well, everyone has their faults. We all know that Jeff at times loses passion for e-fedding and can disappear into retirement, which hurts the feds he's in as a handler. As a fedhead, if he does that, it could mean disaster. HOWEVER, when he has the drive and the passion for the hobby, he is an outstanding handler and fedhead. You only need to look at his time running EPW as a testimony. I can honestly say that EPW wouldn't be what it is right now without Bolich's early guidance, and to say otherwise is petty disparagement.

Now, over in the NFW universe, it seems like the big week 8 interconference shebang has developed a case of the shoots. In both big matches, shooty sidebars have broken out. First there was the Survivor Series match where Stanton and Steve went off on a sidebar about CSWA history. This was relatively innocuous, or at least it seemed so. I haven't gotten the chance to speak to Steve or Mike about whether there were any deep-seated problems being manifested, so until I do, I can only assume that it was just historical posturing.

The other incident seemed to carry far more venom. In the Hulk-A-Thon tournament, Paul Miller and Brunk had an aside based off recent heat. Basically, everything stems from Miller's repeated shots at EPW and EPW booking in his promos and Brunk lashing out in defense of his promotion.

In either case, whether harmless or cancerous, you have to ask yourself the question... what do shoots like these accomplish? It's well-known that Mike McNichols, one of NFW's bookers, hates seeing the use of what's happened in other feds as a basis for your promos in NFW. So if you know that, why even go there? Why bring the CSWA into the equation at all? Or why keep taking the shots at EPW? It's counterproductive to the goal at hand, and that's to build for the match in NFW for that week.

Honestly, the only person I don't find much fault in with this is Brunk. Although he might have been best served not to have taken that road and just ignored it, he has a great amount of pride in his fed, as well he should. Honestly, the uneasiness could have been avoided had he taken the high road, but to tell someone they should take the high road and ignore the comments to someone who has to read/see/hear negative comments about who he is or what he does is really hypocritical, unless you yourself either have no pride in what you do, or are completely one with the universe and do not feel any reaction in your body or brain when someone badmouths something you do.

And while we're on the subject of EPW booking... they have a female character as their World Champion. So what, get over it. We don't need to hear about it in every promo when facing someone associated with the fed. You don't have to agree with it, but at least respect it enough not to sully up someone else's fed with it when you should be promoting a match.

Now I think I blew a fuse in my brain and I need to take a break. Fear not though, I have a few more ideas for entries today. So hopefully, Edmunds, you won't have to post another comment about where I've been hiding ;)

A smattering of stuff

- Boda from PRIME has recently been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and is undergoing treatments for it. Please keep him in your thoughts and/or prayers (if you're religious), because cancer's no joke.

- Speaking of cancer being no joke, the stupid douches from Steelramp who post on EWN, posted this attention whoring post. A slap in the face to anyone who has suffered from cancer or who has had a love one suffer or die from it. Dave_W should be banned. So should anyone associated with that stupid Steelramp bullshit. It's that simple.

- Over at ENN, there was some rumbling about the results of the awards from Edmunds. The exact quote was, "I think the results are pretty indicative of who voted, not of who deserved to win..." I actually think the quote is correct in a way, that the results are indicative of who voted, but I disagree where he says the winners weren't deserving. I mean, any vote is indicative of who votes. I'm sure that when Russ finally posts his Mark Awards, Lindsay Troy being unmasked as Dis won't win his Moment of the Year, even though I think it was the best thing to happen in any fed all year. That doesn't mean his awards are bogus, it just means most of the voters probably don't follow EPW. Honestly, I don't think we should begrudge folks for not following every fed. Not everyone is a fedwhore like I am, and not everyone has a shitload of freetime like I have now (although starting my new, fulltime job next week might cut down on that...). So they'll vote for what they know. And if they only know A1E, EPW and UCW, then they shouldn't be ripped when they don't vote NFW or CSWA stuff over the stuff they know.

- The forums over at PTC got a new addition. Promotional forums! I think this is an awesome idea. There are so many possibilities for fed-advertising, trash talk and other stuff, both in character and out. Although I do have a bone to pick with them banning Joe Schmidt over in-character stuff. Seriously, if you open up trash talk, you have to let more leeway than in regular posts. Seriously, Joe got a raw deal. FREE THE FACE EATER! FREE THE FACE EATER!

- Speaking of PTC, congratulations to Rich Rollins and Shanty Jones for their GTT5 semifinal wins. Big ups to Andy Hewitt, Shanty's handler, for making the GTT final table two years in a row with two different characters. Should be a barnburner of a final matchup. Also, apologies to Seymour Almasy/Sean WIlliams, whom I'm sure I jinxed by giving him Wrestler of the Month.

- If you're looking for an amusing read, check out this ACW RP which really isn't an RP, but is a faux-IM conversation. If you've ever had someone random bug you over IM to join their fed, you'll laugh your ass off at this.

- Finally, here's to hoping there are no more server mishaps for ENN. It's a truly prromising site, and it houses perhaps one of the most promising feds out there in UCW. Jenkins, Scifo and Shane Carnes don't deserve to have these problems plauge them in their respective growths.

Things that are not cool

Inspired by a rant by Dillon over at EWN over an nbW show review.

- In most cases, it's totally not cool for the fedhead to be the Champion. The only exception I can think of is in the A1 feds, which are vote based, where it's the whole fed and not the bookers deciding who should be the Champions. As long as you'r enot the one making the fed your own personal playground, it's cool.

Of course, I'm of the ilk that bookers shouldn't really run characters in their own feds anyway, because it's counter to the challenge of running your own fed. Seriously, when you open a fed, you're not doing it so you have a vehicle to go to the top. You're doing it so you can try things from the booking end of the spectrum. There are exceptions, of course, which is why I'm cool with Katz and Jamar running Miles, Randalls and Mayfield in NFW. Then again, it's safe to say that those three characters would be the last three you'd expect to take home the Ultratitle. So as Carlito would say, "That's cool."

- Extreme putting yourself over. I mean, it's cool to pimp your own work. I do it allt he time. But there's a time for that, and there's a time for putting your biases aside and looking at things that EVERYONE ELSE is doing and judge those. This hobby should be based on cooperation or at the very least the acknowledgement that other people aside from you are in it. So when you're asked to do a show review where you pick the best match, best angle, etc., you don't overly pimp your own shit. You just don't. We all know you think your stuff is the best thing since Freakfish, Mr. Amazing! and WhiteNoise joined up as Amazing, Inc., or when the first Highwayman unmasked as HURRICANE. EDDY. LOVE. So there's no need to say it. Put other people over. It's not that hard.

And I honestly think that is a big reason why discussion is lacking. A lot of folks with a voice just want to put themselves over, adn this turns off the general public from discussing.