Neo-Gothic Industrial Wrestling
Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to Neo-Gothic Industrial Wrestling. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
SHould some things change?; Please let me know.
Topic Started: Jun 6 2012, 06:12 AM (211 Views)
Jo-Jo
The Snacky-Smores Guy
Okay, so I'm trying to turn things around here and put more of peoples feedback into my characters. Meaning; I realize people hate most, if not all, of my characters and I'm wanting to try and change that. But not just the ones here, if you've got thoughts on my FIW lineup, please feel free to let me know either here or in a PM.

I'm not saying I would do a complete overhaul of my characters personalities (like for example Blink won't stop believing everyone is above her and Spice won't stop believing everyone is below her), but perhaps I would just cut back some on those aspects and such.

So please just let me know what you dislike or even what you like. The obviously the latter isn't the sole reason for this. Thank you.

Party on,
Joe.

~eat snacky smores~
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Onslaught
Member Avatar
Shit's Fucked Up
Wrestlers
First off, I hope what I've been having The Prince say hasn't factored into this. My heels are notoriously brutal, but none of it should be taken seriously.

I'm the new guy, so I'm not sure how much weight my two cents carries. But I've always been of the opinion that less is more. You have a LOT of characters, and I've found that narrowing one's focus tends to help keep things coherent. It also staves off the impulse to make things insular (having your character focus on interacting with other players characters rather than having your many characters interact with each other).
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Jo-Jo
The Snacky-Smores Guy
Oh no, it's cool. I understand the difference between what one writes and what one feels outside. I mean not like every time I read a Kim response I'm thinking "Lita hates Roxie? *sniffle*" because I know that every insult Lita writes breaks her heart.

I do have a fair deal of characters, but I try to counteract that one with not throwing everyone out there on a weekly, bi-weekly, or even a monthly basis unless it's minor mention or they're involved with a storyline. Case in point Evil Girls; Hibiki, Lana, and Gabriel haven't had much mention given to them since they haven't been on the card. Same with Spectationill, even though they were booked recently, I don't go "you guys really need to keep up with their lives" and post something again unless it's storyline. Or I'm really, really bored.

I enjoy interacting with other people, but I'm always left with the sense that no one really wants to work with the Evil Girls. There was that anti-Evil Girls stint, which I really enjoyed, but it sort of fizzled away. I like interaction, so even if there's nothing on the plate I'll go and interact my characters with one another. Mainly because just because Roxie and Spice are both my characters it doesn't mean there's an invisible wall around them that negates each others knowledge of the other.

Thank you for your response.

Party on,
Joe.

~eat snacky smores~
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Onslaught
Member Avatar
Shit's Fucked Up
Wrestlers
Jo-Jo,Jun 6 2012
03:32 PM


I do have a fair deal of characters, but I try to counteract that one with not throwing everyone out there on a weekly, bi-weekly, or even a monthly basis unless it's minor mention or they're involved with a storyline. Case in point Evil Girls; Hibiki, Lana, and Gabriel haven't had much mention given to them since they haven't been on the card. Same with Spectationill, even though they were booked recently, I don't go "you guys really need to keep up with their lives" and post something again unless it's storyline. Or I'm really, really bored.




This is what I'm talking about though. You're forced to divide your attention amongst all these characters, and consequently you just don't have time or show space to focus on a number of them. It makes it hard to follow them.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Minister Wighty
Member Avatar
Chief Executive Officer
The Boss
I plan on responding to this with some brutal truths. Not that I haven't already laid most of them on you over the years, but I'll collect 'em all in one place.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Minister Wighty
Member Avatar
Chief Executive Officer
The Boss
OK. I've got a few hours so let's get this done. This is probably going to rambly. This is definitely going to be long. But I'll try to be thorough. This isn't being written as a slam, but I'm sure it'll be insulting in one way or another. Things like these rarely aren't. But I assure you I'm not doing it just to bash you.

*breathes*

Hokay.

[align=center]OVERPOPULATION[/align]

So the biggest problem I think is kind of what Onslaught said... you have too many damn characters. But I don't even mean your actual roleplayed characters... I mean, there are a lot of those, too, but not really an overwhelming amount. With the exception of Spectationill and the Stevens brother whose name I can't remember... remind me to get to that later... you manage to roleplay them all pretty consistently. It's the secondary characters, especially the ones that don't appear that often. There are three facets of this that make it a problem and not just... like, a broadened complexity of your work.

1) You write the Steele Media characters/storylines like a TV show. Which... isn't bad, it's just wrong for the genre and for medium in which it is portrayed. The reason so many of these characters are unmemorable is because they are not reintroduced to us. On a TV show, we're given the bare minimum character relevance through "casual" surrounding dialogue ("Geoffrey? But I thought you were still running that ski resort in Burma?") and beyond that we can see the character and we identify them through their vocalizations, actions, and appearance. In a wrestling promo we've got a font color and... maybe the shreds of personality you can force into the promo. It's not like we're dealing with 20-to-45 minutes of television here, an average promo reads in about five to ten, tops (and it should), so it's hard to fully portray a suddenly-returning character well in these kinds of scenarios.

Now if everyone were following your work as closely as most people do a TV show, maybe it wouldn't be an issue. But let's face it, they don't. It's rare that anyone pays that much attention to everyone else's promos, though there are exceptions. So when we drop in one week (whether it's because your characters are our opponents or whatever the reason) and are confronted with these characters who are undefined to us, it makes the entire thing confusing and thus uninteresting. Nobody wants to have to do research to read a promo. Counter it? Certainly. But just to get through the damn thing in the first place, no.

Televised wrestling is the first place to take a cue from with this, as they re-introduce characters all the time. Most of us probably recognized Kevin Nash on sight when he waddled to the ring to fuck with CM Punk's day recently, but for those who were just joining the program or those who don't pay as much attention, the commentators tell us what we need to know. "Well... this is weird, but that's Kevin Nash." "Yeah, he and Tripe H go way back as part of the Kliq, and he was very successful with nWo. I wonder what he's doing out here talking to CM Punk?" This is kind of the attention span you're dealing with. Your readers NEED this reminder. However, the format of your average NGIW promo (yours included) lacks commentator voice-over. Which, again, is fine. It's a useful narrative tool but not necessary. What you need to do is make sure these people stand out OR give us an easy place to reference them. A bio, for instance. I know they can be a pain in the ass and I'm slow to put them up, but they help us remember who the hell a person is.

2) Crossovers. It's a really cool idea in concept when used correctly, and you have done it correctly a number of times. Giggles running into Catherine and having a one night stand that turned into their current... uh... relationship... was a decent one. Catherine was already established in NGIW and didn't really need to be reintroduced too hard to the crowd, their interactions had little to do with the actual wrestling show and was entirely about character development, and they are kept to a minimum. Blink and Lucas was sort of similar. Large event crossovers are a good idea, too, but there's a point when it all goes overboard. I know a lot of people in FIW were confused when some of the NGIW Evil Girls were running around in your Bad Girls promos, unintroduced. Not necessarily who they were, but what they were doing there and why. It was fun at first and in small doses, but the more you did it the less people wanted to interact with it. Instead of it being a little tidbit of a character from another fed stopping by for a visit like Willow popping in on Angel, it was a mess of interconnected storylines you had to string across two (sometimes three) boards to really understand like some bad DC Comics mega-events of note.

3) Most of them are superfluous. Not necessarily their roles in the narrative, but them as characters. For example, when Pixie and Roxie were together and [NAME BLOCKED OUT DUE TO STUPID] was trying to mess with them for whatever reason... that role could've been easily (and better) served by another handler's character, or even one of our existing characters. Hell, even one of the referees, interviewers, or other established personalities would've been better since it would've been focusing on present characters who could ALSO be put over by being involved in this angle instead of bringing in a strawman to do the job. Wrestling shows already have large casts, if each section of that cast were to have its own sub-cast that's... that's a lot of fuckin' people. It's hard to keep track of. It's not FUN to keep track of, and it discourages people from the product. THIS I think is where you're keeping yourself from working with other people. You have a wealth of storylines but for the most part the other handlers' characters are a temporary distraction or a generic means to an end.

Funny, this kind of brings me to my next major point.

[align=center]NO REPRECUSSIONS[/align]

I can't speak so much for the Bad Girls as I've been FAR less involved with their material than the Evil Girls, but this sort of began as something we discussed a while back that has sort of snowballed out of proportion down one lane and has managed to still be a problem in another; your characters never suffer the consequences of their actions. I brought this up some time ago as the Evil Girls being able to do such things as lobotomize somebody and murder people on live TV without any eyebrows being raised from the police. On an ordinary wrestling show that might fly, and it's well in-line with NGIW's original mission statement of being sort of fantasy-wrestling (that is still upheld today by people like Rock) but we've evolved to embrace the sort of pseudo-reality situations popularized by the many romantic relationship angles that have run through the feds over the years. Ordinarily if you see two characters dating on-screen, they're dating in real life. If two characters hate each other on screen, they hate each other in real life. So when someone is murdered on-screen... it uh... well, it looks suspicious at the very least. It does a lot to bend suspension of disbelief and the shake the structural integrity of the continuity we've built. To use a metaphor instead of buzzwords, for a long time you were the Kitsune Samurai in our D&D party of Elf Ranger, Human Warrior, and Gnome Wizard.

Now, you started to kind of pay attention to that and cast shadows and doubt on some scenes, even going out of your way to mention that certain things were not filmed but still offering them to your audience for continuity's sake... and I applaud that. However... I think it went a bit too far. It's kind of the opposite of what The Spoony One has asked before, 'when they say it's a no-holds barred match and you're beating a guy to death with a nail-studded bat... why can't you just shoot him?'* If you bring legal issues into the fed, then suddenly people are being sued for this and having lawsuits laid against them for that... the end-point being that everybody in the fed sues everybody for whatever and wins because the American justice system can be stupid sometimes. If you'd like more information on why it's a bad gimmick, I point you in the direction of the Boy. He hates legal-based gimmicks and the WWE has been rife with them over the past year. To be succinct, it's not the way to go. It's too hard to do well, so it's best just not done at all.

Now in the other lane where things are still a problem... I daresay it's actually gotten worse. Because this is a roleplaying environment and Wight the owner is aware it would be counter-productive to fire Joe the roleplayer, there's never going to be disciplinary action taken against the Evil Girls or any of your other characters for something that happens in-storyline. That's not to say that they should never get their comeuppance. Many people have campaigned against the Evil Girls over the years and none have succeeded. Why? Well, because we can't. The meta-game fact that you still want to roleplay them means that they can't be defeated by any character in any meaningful way. Does this mean that since they're bad guys they should never win? Certainly not. Spice got one over on Brendon way back when, which is an honor I don't bestow lightly, but I felt the character deserved the push, especially because you made the effort to work with me on the angle. But what has happened with it since then? A number of campaigns against them where the campaigners eventually get bored when they realize there's nothing they can do and wander off, and a lot of internal drama. I don't ordinarily like naming names (and I'm sure I'll catch hell for this later) but the reason the storylines between the Evil Girls and Spade, Joe Stanton, and HooLu never went anywhere is because there was no outcome other than "Evil Girls persist. Other guys fail." In all cases but Spade's, to put that much of an heroic character's guts and determination on the line only to meet with failure does nothing but crush the momentum of that character. None of the parties involved ever felt like they made headway against you, everyone eventually gave up. I was approached by one or two other interested persons for similar feuds with the Evil Girls, but upon discussion of options we came to a similar conclusion that there was nothing in it for their characters.

This doesn't even entirely relate to match-related good vs. evil stuff. Take for example Miko in the hospital. No, not the part where I had to PM you asking you if it was cool to murder your character, the bit where obvious Evil Girls in disguise (or former Evil Girls, I forget) were taking Miko away. Despite what Lucas and Giggles tried, there was no diverting the events you had set in place. Ask anyone for advice on how to run a roleplaying game and one of the first things they'll tell you is not to put your players on a plot railroad with one track. I mean, that IS the main criticism of modern Final Fantasy games, is it not? Linear storylines were the player affects nothing? This was the case as well when Joe Stanton was trying to save Eve, though that did edge into the ring at points. People don't want to interact with things that they can't actually interact with.

[align=center]NEEDLESS COMPLEXITIES[/align]

I probably could've thought of a good segue for that, but I'm tired and don't want to. Almost everything you do, from the construction of a character to the arch of a storyline is way too complex. While it's true that you'll want a character to be three-dimensional, on average you take it about four steps too far. For example, let's take Roxie since she's a character I've been known to like. Let's set her up against two characters I know fairly well, Giggles and Lucas Torres. Now, let's define each of their gimmicks.

Giggles is an alleged serial murderer who escaped conviction and takes his violent tendencies out on people in the ring. He is an outcast, but longs for something resembling a normal life.

Lucas Torres is a shy, geeky fanboy who is good at dancing. Underneath this usual veneer he's angry and somewhat overbearing, and feels guilty for these emotions.

Roxie Stevenson is a dumb blonde stripper who works her routines into her wrestling style. Except she's not really dumb, she just pretends to be because she likes being insulted 'cuz it gets her off. She's also a feminist activist who has a tendency to overblow the ideals of feminism into something that's almost a parody of the movement. She was also raised around the mafia and works that into her wrestling style. Sometimes she also reverts to a little girl persona because her mother was murdered when she was young.

I kept trying to think of things to add to the first two or take out of the third, but no. Really, that's pretty much how they each go. I didn't even delve into their relationships to other characters or noteworthy events that have occurred (such as Roxie's recent cocaine abuse), and it only gets worse from there. If the gimmicks are complicated as hell, they're really... out there. Like, Hibiki being an assassin is a hard enough pill to swallow... but then Miko is possessed by two ghosts who change her eye colors? And they're two distinct personalities? And most of the time we would see these really detailed backstories for the "cool" one... it's just like... what the fuck? This might be a good idea for a book or a movie. In fact, it probably would really appeal to a number of markets... but in a wrestling federation it's just out there. Each of your characters is like wrapping up three different TNA Knockouts into a single entity. One of them is usually Winter. No one person needs that many gimmicks or facets of their lives. It's one of the biggest reasons I retired Tier I, and at least he had the decency to go away for a few months and get repackaged before coming back as a God of Violence or a wise sensei or whatever he felt like doing at the time.

And the storylines... maaan. I'm not listing anything in full, but really. Ninja fights. Assassinations. Cover-ups. Murders. People coming back from the dead. People who were secretly never dead. Keeping track of this stuff requires a flowchart, or maybe one of those crazy string-webs like Sherlock Holmes made in the most recent movie. That's really overwhelming for someone just coming in, and what's worse is that eventually you'll call back to it. Eventually they're going to need to know this stuff. Unlike a comic book there's no little yellow box that says "See Issue #52! - Ed." to help them.

OK... last thing, I think...

[align=center]ABRASIVELY ANNOYING CHARACTERS[/align]

There are characters you love. The Rock. Shawn Michaels. Hulk Hogan. John Cena. Horus Osbourne. hide Kitazawa. Kamen Rider. Blink. They do good things and try to be a good person. They are funny and seem like they'd be fun to be around.

There are characters you love to hate. Right to Censor. John Laurenitis. Eric Bischoff. Alberto del Rio. Dirk Mullins. Markon Charles. They're slimy and awful and jerks, but they're so much fun to boo, so much fun to watch do their thing and watch oppose the people you really want to see win that you're glad they're around.

Then there's the people you hate. The people who get X-Pac heat. You don't want to see them, you just want them to go away because every moment they're around is anathema. Spice and Sara used to be an entertaining love-to-hate kinds of characters. Now they're just... abrasive. Annoying. Full of themselves. Tiresome. [NAME REDACTED FOR TOO STUPID] is like that as well. I'm never happy when she shows up in a promo. I don't know many others who are. If that's what you're going for then... well, congrats. You did it. But I'm not sure why you'd want to. You want to entertain your audience. You want to please them. It's why Dolph Ziggler has fans even though he's a #HEEL, but boo Mike Adamle out of buildings. It's why people buy bobble heads of Leatherface and Freddy Krueger, but think A Serbian Film is horrendous filth. It's the difference between the cast of Sex and the City and Girls. No matter what kind of depravity you're portraying, you want there to be something likeable about the characters. Something watchable... or readable in your case. And with some of your characters that's just plain absent.

Catherine, as much as I'm unfond of her promos, at least has a moral compass and can be clever with her dialogue. Sara used to have this sort of silly hyperactivity to her that she's since lost and become basically a hollow shell of her former self. Spice isn't even an interesting mastermind, due to the fact that she's unbeatable largely due to Plot Armor.

I'm sure there's something I've forgotten, but I'm done for now. I want to go to bed. Hopefully some of this helps. If not... well, fuck. I dunno. I guess you're SOL. I tried. I've tried for years.

*I'm heavily paraphrasing.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Mjölnir
Member Avatar
We Live. We Die. We Live Again.
Wrestlers
Minister Wighty,Jun 12 2012
07:54 AM
OK. I've got a few hours so let's get this done. This is probably going to rambly. This is definitely going to be long. But I'll try to be thorough. This isn't being written as a slam, but I'm sure it'll be insulting in one way or another. Things like these rarely aren't. But I assure you I'm not doing it just to bash you.

*breathes*

Hokay.

[align=center]OVERPOPULATION[/align]

So the biggest problem I think is kind of what Onslaught said... you have too many damn characters. But I don't even mean your actual roleplayed characters... I mean, there are a lot of those, too, but not really an overwhelming amount. With the exception of Spectationill and the Stevens brother whose name I can't remember... remind me to get to that later... you manage to roleplay them all pretty consistently. It's the secondary characters, especially the ones that don't appear that often. There are three facets of this that make it a problem and not just... like, a broadened complexity of your work.

1) You write the Steele Media characters/storylines like a TV show. Which... isn't bad, it's just wrong for the genre and for medium in which it is portrayed. The reason so many of these characters are unmemorable is because they are not reintroduced to us. On a TV show, we're given the bare minimum character relevance through "casual" surrounding dialogue ("Geoffrey? But I thought you were still running that ski resort in Burma?") and beyond that we can see the character and we identify them through their vocalizations, actions, and appearance. In a wrestling promo we've got a font color and... maybe the shreds of personality you can force into the promo. It's not like we're dealing with 20-to-45 minutes of television here, an average promo reads in about five to ten, tops (and it should), so it's hard to fully portray a suddenly-returning character well in these kinds of scenarios.

Now if everyone were following your work as closely as most people do a TV show, maybe it wouldn't be an issue. But let's face it, they don't. It's rare that anyone pays that much attention to everyone else's promos, though there are exceptions. So when we drop in one week (whether it's because your characters are our opponents or whatever the reason) and are confronted with these characters who are undefined to us, it makes the entire thing confusing and thus uninteresting. Nobody wants to have to do research to read a promo. Counter it? Certainly. But just to get through the damn thing in the first place, no.

Televised wrestling is the first place to take a cue from with this, as they re-introduce characters all the time. Most of us probably recognized Kevin Nash on sight when he waddled to the ring to fuck with CM Punk's day recently, but for those who were just joining the program or those who don't pay as much attention, the commentators tell us what we need to know. "Well... this is weird, but that's Kevin Nash." "Yeah, he and Tripe H go way back as part of the Kliq, and he was very successful with nWo. I wonder what he's doing out here talking to CM Punk?" This is kind of the attention span you're dealing with. Your readers NEED this reminder. However, the format of your average NGIW promo (yours included) lacks commentator voice-over. Which, again, is fine. It's a useful narrative tool but not necessary. What you need to do is make sure these people stand out OR give us an easy place to reference them. A bio, for instance. I know they can be a pain in the ass and I'm slow to put them up, but they help us remember who the hell a person is.

2) Crossovers. It's a really cool idea in concept when used correctly, and you have done it correctly a number of times. Giggles running into Catherine and having a one night stand that turned into their current... uh... relationship... was a decent one. Catherine was already established in NGIW and didn't really need to be reintroduced too hard to the crowd, their interactions had little to do with the actual wrestling show and was entirely about character development, and they are kept to a minimum. Blink and Lucas was sort of similar. Large event crossovers are a good idea, too, but there's a point when it all goes overboard. I know a lot of people in FIW were confused when some of the NGIW Evil Girls were running around in your Bad Girls promos, unintroduced. Not necessarily who they were, but what they were doing there and why. It was fun at first and in small doses, but the more you did it the less people wanted to interact with it. Instead of it being a little tidbit of a character from another fed stopping by for a visit like Willow popping in on Angel, it was a mess of interconnected storylines you had to string across two (sometimes three) boards to really understand like some bad DC Comics mega-events of note.

3) Most of them are superfluous. Not necessarily their roles in the narrative, but them as characters. For example, when Pixie and Roxie were together and [NAME BLOCKED OUT DUE TO STUPID] was trying to mess with them for whatever reason... that role could've been easily (and better) served by another handler's character, or even one of our existing characters. Hell, even one of the referees, interviewers, or other established personalities would've been better since it would've been focusing on present characters who could ALSO be put over by being involved in this angle instead of bringing in a strawman to do the job. Wrestling shows already have large casts, if each section of that cast were to have its own sub-cast that's... that's a lot of fuckin' people. It's hard to keep track of. It's not FUN to keep track of, and it discourages people from the product. THIS I think is where you're keeping yourself from working with other people. You have a wealth of storylines but for the most part the other handlers' characters are a temporary distraction or a generic means to an end.

Funny, this kind of brings me to my next major point.

[align=center]NO REPRECUSSIONS[/align]

I can't speak so much for the Bad Girls as I've been FAR less involved with their material than the Evil Girls, but this sort of began as something we discussed a while back that has sort of snowballed out of proportion down one lane and has managed to still be a problem in another; your characters never suffer the consequences of their actions. I brought this up some time ago as the Evil Girls being able to do such things as lobotomize somebody and murder people on live TV without any eyebrows being raised from the police. On an ordinary wrestling show that might fly, and it's well in-line with NGIW's original mission statement of being sort of fantasy-wrestling (that is still upheld today by people like Rock) but we've evolved to embrace the sort of pseudo-reality situations popularized by the many romantic relationship angles that have run through the feds over the years. Ordinarily if you see two characters dating on-screen, they're dating in real life. If two characters hate each other on screen, they hate each other in real life. So when someone is murdered on-screen... it uh... well, it looks suspicious at the very least. It does a lot to bend suspension of disbelief and the shake the structural integrity of the continuity we've built. To use a metaphor instead of buzzwords, for a long time you were the Kitsune Samurai in our D&D party of Elf Ranger, Human Warrior, and Gnome Wizard.

Now, you started to kind of pay attention to that and cast shadows and doubt on some scenes, even going out of your way to mention that certain things were not filmed but still offering them to your audience for continuity's sake... and I applaud that. However... I think it went a bit too far. It's kind of the opposite of what The Spoony One has asked before, 'when they say it's a no-holds barred match and you're beating a guy to death with a nail-studded bat... why can't you just shoot him?'* If you bring legal issues into the fed, then suddenly people are being sued for this and having lawsuits laid against them for that... the end-point being that everybody in the fed sues everybody for whatever and wins because the American justice system can be stupid sometimes. If you'd like more information on why it's a bad gimmick, I point you in the direction of the Boy. He hates legal-based gimmicks and the WWE has been rife with them over the past year. To be succinct, it's not the way to go. It's too hard to do well, so it's best just not done at all.

Now in the other lane where things are still a problem... I daresay it's actually gotten worse. Because this is a roleplaying environment and Wight the owner is aware it would be counter-productive to fire Joe the roleplayer, there's never going to be disciplinary action taken against the Evil Girls or any of your other characters for something that happens in-storyline. That's not to say that they should never get their comeuppance. Many people have campaigned against the Evil Girls over the years and none have succeeded. Why? Well, because we can't. The meta-game fact that you still want to roleplay them means that they can't be defeated by any character in any meaningful way. Does this mean that since they're bad guys they should never win? Certainly not. Spice got one over on Brendon way back when, which is an honor I don't bestow lightly, but I felt the character deserved the push, especially because you made the effort to work with me on the angle. But what has happened with it since then? A number of campaigns against them where the campaigners eventually get bored when they realize there's nothing they can do and wander off, and a lot of internal drama. I don't ordinarily like naming names (and I'm sure I'll catch hell for this later) but the reason the storylines between the Evil Girls and Spade, Joe Stanton, and HooLu never went anywhere is because there was no outcome other than "Evil Girls persist. Other guys fail." In all cases but Spade's, to put that much of an heroic character's guts and determination on the line only to meet with failure does nothing but crush the momentum of that character. None of the parties involved ever felt like they made headway against you, everyone eventually gave up. I was approached by one or two other interested persons for similar feuds with the Evil Girls, but upon discussion of options we came to a similar conclusion that there was nothing in it for their characters.

This doesn't even entirely relate to match-related good vs. evil stuff. Take for example Miko in the hospital. No, not the part where I had to PM you asking you if it was cool to murder your character, the bit where obvious Evil Girls in disguise (or former Evil Girls, I forget) were taking Miko away. Despite what Lucas and Giggles tried, there was no diverting the events you had set in place. Ask anyone for advice on how to run a roleplaying game and one of the first things they'll tell you is not to put your players on a plot railroad with one track. I mean, that IS the main criticism of modern Final Fantasy games, is it not? Linear storylines were the player affects nothing? This was the case as well when Joe Stanton was trying to save Eve, though that did edge into the ring at points. People don't want to interact with things that they can't actually interact with.

[align=center]NEEDLESS COMPLEXITIES[/align]

I probably could've thought of a good segue for that, but I'm tired and don't want to. Almost everything you do, from the construction of a character to the arch of a storyline is way too complex. While it's true that you'll want a character to be three-dimensional, on average you take it about four steps too far. For example, let's take Roxie since she's a character I've been known to like. Let's set her up against two characters I know fairly well, Giggles and Lucas Torres. Now, let's define each of their gimmicks.

Giggles is an alleged serial murderer who escaped conviction and takes his violent tendencies out on people in the ring. He is an outcast, but longs for something resembling a normal life.

Lucas Torres is a shy, geeky fanboy who is good at dancing. Underneath this usual veneer he's angry and somewhat overbearing, and feels guilty for these emotions.

Roxie Stevenson is a dumb blonde stripper who works her routines into her wrestling style. Except she's not really dumb, she just pretends to be because she likes being insulted 'cuz it gets her off. She's also a feminist activist who has a tendency to overblow the ideals of feminism into something that's almost a parody of the movement. She was also raised around the mafia and works that into her wrestling style. Sometimes she also reverts to a little girl persona because her mother was murdered when she was young.

I kept trying to think of things to add to the first two or take out of the third, but no. Really, that's pretty much how they each go. I didn't even delve into their relationships to other characters or noteworthy events that have occurred (such as Roxie's recent cocaine abuse), and it only gets worse from there. If the gimmicks are complicated as hell, they're really... out there. Like, Hibiki being an assassin is a hard enough pill to swallow... but then Miko is possessed by two ghosts who change her eye colors? And they're two distinct personalities? And most of the time we would see these really detailed backstories for the "cool" one... it's just like... what the fuck? This might be a good idea for a book or a movie. In fact, it probably would really appeal to a number of markets... but in a wrestling federation it's just out there. Each of your characters is like wrapping up three different TNA Knockouts into a single entity. One of them is usually Winter. No one person needs that many gimmicks or facets of their lives. It's one of the biggest reasons I retired Tier I, and at least he had the decency to go away for a few months and get repackaged before coming back as a God of Violence or a wise sensei or whatever he felt like doing at the time.

And the storylines... maaan. I'm not listing anything in full, but really. Ninja fights. Assassinations. Cover-ups. Murders. People coming back from the dead. People who were secretly never dead.  Keeping track of this stuff requires a flowchart, or maybe one of those crazy string-webs like Sherlock Holmes made in the most recent movie. That's really overwhelming for someone just coming in, and what's worse is that eventually you'll call back to it. Eventually they're going to need to know this stuff. Unlike a comic book there's no little yellow box that says "See Issue #52! - Ed." to help them.

OK... last thing, I think...

[align=center]ABRASIVELY ANNOYING CHARACTERS[/align]

There are characters you love. The Rock. Shawn Michaels. Hulk Hogan. John Cena. Horus Osbourne. hide Kitazawa. Kamen Rider. Blink. They do good things and try to be a good person. They are funny and seem like they'd be fun to be around.

There are characters you love to hate. Right to Censor. John Laurenitis. Eric Bischoff. Alberto del Rio. Dirk Mullins. Markon Charles. They're slimy and awful and jerks, but they're so much fun to boo, so much fun to watch do their thing and watch oppose the people you really want to see win that you're glad they're around.

Then there's the people you hate. The people who get X-Pac heat. You don't want to see them, you just want them to go away because every moment they're around is anathema. Spice and Sara used to be an entertaining love-to-hate kinds of characters. Now they're just... abrasive. Annoying. Full of themselves. Tiresome. [NAME REDACTED FOR TOO STUPID] is like that as well. I'm never happy when she shows up in a promo. I don't know many others who are. If that's what you're going for then... well, congrats. You did it. But I'm not sure why you'd want to. You want to entertain your audience. You want to please them. It's why Dolph Ziggler has fans even though he's a #HEEL, but boo Mike Adamle out of buildings. It's why people buy bobble heads of Leatherface and Freddy Krueger, but think A Serbian Film is horrendous filth. It's the difference between the cast of Sex and the City and Girls. No matter what kind of depravity you're portraying, you want there to be something likeable about the characters. Something watchable... or readable in your case. And with some of your characters that's just plain absent.

Catherine, as much as I'm unfond of her promos, at least has a moral compass and can be clever with her dialogue. Sara used to have this sort of silly hyperactivity to her that she's since lost and become basically a hollow shell of her former self. Spice isn't even an interesting mastermind, due to the fact that she's unbeatable largely due to Plot Armor.

I'm sure there's something I've forgotten, but I'm done for now. I want to go to bed. Hopefully some of this helps. If not... well, fuck. I dunno. I guess you're SOL. I tried. I've tried for years.

*I'm heavily paraphrasing.

Posted Image

Not necessarily for the content, though I do agree with some of it. Just that's alot of feedback.

Alot of mine will be echoing bits & pieces of Wighty's, so probably not the most helpful but here we go...

The amount of characters. Yes, yes, boo, hiss, who am I to talk. Seeing as outside of you, I have the most characters present on the board. Thing is, all of mine combined make up the Evil Girls cast, if you count The Professor. To give everyone kind of a scale to compare on. Albeit said scale's useless come this new Evil Girl, as even then on that level we won't compare. :P

Anyways, my point is, with my characters, each is constantly featured & each has their own story clearly moving along. Some are more obvious than others & some have become more apparent in recent months, Robert Morgan for example. Each is present with a clear idea in mind. Now, that isn't to say this idea could not change, it very well could. Already Joe's has a few times over due to certain situations & interactions with other characters arising.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Part of it too is the want to play these characters, I want and like to play my characters, they're interesting, if only to me.

Whereas some of your characters I feel you have those aspects for and others...well...

Spectationill and Craig Stevens, as much as I enjoy him, don't feel like this. They feel like they're just here for...whatever, I guess, to add bodies to the roster? It's especially become obvious in their more recent bookings. They feel directionless, they don't feel like you want to really write them and, as a result, it makes me feel the same way about reading them. Which is a shame as Craig was honestly one of my favorites of your characters when I first joined NGIW.

The Evil Girls, yes, I'm including them in here too and allow me to get to why. Spice and Sara, that's the Evil Girls now, least that's who most new people would assume are the Evil Girls. Thing is, there's five other girls but...what the hell do they do? Hibiki hasn't been booked in months, her last match being a fleeting one off & what does she really do, what does she really accomplish in NGIW's story or your story? Gabriel, she's gone from a semi-important character to being less featured than Eve & Lilith, who have the personality of cardboard.

They've done almost nothing, in any sense, since I joined barely under a year ago now.

The Evil Girls as a whole just really feels like you have alot of ideas you want to play with it but they're all swimming in together & preventing it. They're in too cramp of a space and so they're drowning each other.

On the topic of Spice & Sara, I agree with Wighty, honestly. Sara doesn't feel like the same character, even with logical progression over time. Alot of her traits I noticed in your RPs with her back when I first joined are gone. I did like the Wall coming back but it still feels, as Wighty put it, like she's a shell of her former self. The spark's gone, Prime's dead.

Spice...hm, she's a harder one to put into words exactly. I think I might borrow from the ranting explanation a friend gave me of Bleach.

Spice is Aizen.

Love to hate, intelligent, mastermind type that as soon as the plot armor was put on...became a sneering lazy bum. Spice almost seems self-aware that nothing can happen to her, so she doesn't bother. And it's boring to read, because if she can't be bothered, why should I? The only thing in recent memory I enjoyed reading in regards to Spice was the diary entry.

I also feel Wighty has a point about some of your plots. Rather than bring in NPC A, why not ask handler A if character A can be used? It makes the board more interactive and makes you more interactive with the other players. Rather than being on your own little island, like you are most of the time. :P

While I usually can follow along with who is who, I admit that is entirely because I do read everything you post and even I sometimes struggle to recall who is what.

As an aside, I would like to real quick clarify something Wighty said about the Anti-Evil Girls Campaign. I had Joe step away from it because of the Kim situation. He wasn't willing to lose her for the sake of what had becoming increasingly more of a vendetta for him. That's sort of tying into what I said earlier about being able to adapt and change & let things happen, I was willing to have Joe fuck around doing whatever, Midway probably at the time. Joe befriends Brie, Brie becomes Eve, suddenly Joe wants to take down the Evil Girls. That limps along for a while, Kim presents him with a choice, Joe stays with Kim.

There's also Roxie.

Now, for me, I've always been pretty eh about Roxie. I honestly felt, when I first joined, Craig should be where Roxie is, in terms of push in NGIW. But I quickly realized why that wasn't the case. I just...have never seen what aspects of her Wighty & Lita love, even when I've gone back and read older stuff with her. I don't hate her but in terms of Jo's characters, she's somewhere in the middle ground. She can at least generate a reaction out of me, which is more than what Spectationill have managed or some of the minor Evil Girls, like Hibiki.

Overall I have nothing against Roxie, I enjoy RP'ing Candi & her with Joe but my main thing, if I were to say anything, is that...she has these whiplash mood swings. Where suddenly it feels like she becomes a completely different character, one that's so sudden & jarring of a transformation it's painful to read. Not because it's badly written or because the mood she's taken is particularly bad. It's because there's no forewarning to it, it just happens, and then it's just over & never addressed again after that RP.

I'm trying to think of what else I wanted to say, as I feel there's more if I'm looking at your characters from a critical point of view. But that's about it, really. To sum it up...

I think you should completely reboot the Evil Girls, pull the plug that's been keeping them going for the past few months, and start over in a sense. That is to say, have Steele Media go in and retool the show or have Ofdesen tired of so many of them making money off of him without actually wrestling. Drop Hibiki. Drop Gabriel. Hell, maybe move Sara officially into a role like Taylor had, away from the ring & move the spotlight away from her. Focus on Lana, focus on whoever this new girl is, focus on working on making Spice at least interesting to read again, not necessarily likeable. Or just move her to the background further where she can be tending to prepping whatever it is she has in mind.

Drop Spectationill & Craig, they feel like dead weight. Or do something with them, if you really do like these characters and want to write them.

Figure something out for Roxie, I guess, and try to be mindful of if it feels like she's suddenly having a Hulk moment & becoming somebody else entirely.

So, tidy up and tighten up your focus, not so wide spread and in my opinion, seemingly spread a little thin.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Jo-Jo
The Snacky-Smores Guy
Yay! Response time. My apologies, the following might be all over the place.

To start, I'm not mad, angry, frustrated, demotivated from writing after reading these past couple responses. As a matter of fact I chuckled a little reading through some parts. Sorry, that's just how I am sometimes. So please keep this in mind when reading in case you think I'm yelling or crying or even trolling.

First up is Roxie. There's a lot to her, a helluva lot to her, because with eight years under her belt she's my second longest lasting character (Emily being my longest). So it's only fair to say that over the years she's accumulated enough sides of her character to make her what she is now.

--I should point out that her views on feminism don't reflect my own, in fact they reflect the views I hate about the feminist movement. I'm all for equality, but I hate the views certain extremists in the feminist movement take. But Roxie's stupid, so we can all laugh at her when she says that kind of stuff.

I have dropped, as you may remember Wight, her ties with her family with the whole "come to New York again and you die" ordeal. That was a major part of her that involved a ton of side characters, but it was dropped so more focus could be brought elsewhere in Roxie. Such as introducing Candi, giving Vicky that side story with her own cocaine problem, kicking her feminism into overgear, and sending her on her merry way to future title contenderships.

As you'll note, some things of her indeed don't get mentioned quite as often anymore. Such as her turn ons for being insulted. Not to get egocentric here, but I could bring that out any time I wanted. I really could have when she was facing Chester for the title. hide? He would've gotten a heavy dose of it. Even Bloodbath would've gotten his own cup of coffee in it. But then after a while how does one respond to it? And if anything, that would make me a hypocrite in that aspect. Most people have chosen to respect my request that they take other avenues to insult the Evil Girls other than their reality TV setting so in return I haven't gone to that "defense". So that's an aspect that's not gotten a lot of mention for a reason.

Sara

I do appreciate the fact that people enjoyed what she used to be, how she ran and all that. But as I mentioned earlier, I try not to have people speak when they aren't booked (such is the case of Hibiki and Gabriel). Except in some cases as Sara is the only one who really speaks with Spice these days. I would love to bring her back the way she was, make her entertaining for you all again. But...as people could probably tell during Crackerjack's three returns I kinda suck at capturing old sparks.

Spectationill and Craig Stevens

I liked Craig, I liked the concept of Craig. Uh, the character not the RPer (not that I have anything against Craig the RPer). Same goes for Spectationill. It's just in that one RP period I had nothing for them. Simple as that.

Spice

Spice is a dominatrix with two bodyguards trained to kill and a former psychiatrist, so of course she's going to have this feeling of superiority over everyone else. Try and tell a dominatrix there's nothing superior about her and while she might not be able to prove you wrong, she'll hurt you in bad or good ways. Depends on your own views. I know people don't like her because she finds herself to be invulnerable, but that's because everyone just gives up! I had a ball writing her during the anti-Evil Girl campaign because she was just daring people to come and get her. No one even tried. Spade, as I recall, was the only one who actually did something to her. Recently she's been issuing challenges to him and thus far with nothing, she's had no reason to change.

When you think about it, everything has been going her way;
-She got Eve the way she is thanks in part to Joe's training her.
-The anti-Evil Girl campaign crumbled
-Two of the major forces in her way, Betsy and Taylor, are both out of commission
-She has her sword and shield

There's nothing for her to do now but sit on her laurels and wait for her plan to unfold. BECAUSE NOBODY IS CHALLENGING HER. Nobody is saying "Spice, I'm sick and tired of you." Of course there'd be the whole gotta get through the swrord and shield first, since that's always how it's been in Spice's mind. And yes there would have to be the reason Spice would want to fight back herself. Right now, and again, there's only one person in that spot; Spade.

I'm not saying this has to happen, someone needs to charge at Spice's door (though it would be nice) but if no one's putting the effort on their end...

Which brings me to the point of the anti-Evil Girls campaign. That was a great idea. Not just because it focused on the Evil Girls, but because it was something I wanted to have happen. The only problem was, as Wight pointed out, there was no end game. How that came about...no one came to me with end game ideas. Even I had no idea what was wanted. An end to Evil Girls? Brie back to normal? Now I'm hearing of another wanted attempt. Why wasn't I a part of the conversation? Why wasn't I told there were ideas? How many times have I said I love to work with people? I could've been a part of that discussion and something could've been agreed upon. What I'm getting from what was said is two people wanted something, and they wanted to force me into doing it.

Repercussions

There have been. Spice turning Brie into Eve brought about the campaign. There's been ways thrown around certain things. Such in the case of the officers, who were never revealed as Evil Girls (especially since one was a guy) taking Miko away.

Side Characters

I've resolved long ago not to create bios for side characters as they are just that; side characters. Unless they have major roles that affect a character's in ring performance, such in the case of Vicky's that was up when there was a personal staff forum. I understand this produces confusion on whatever importance of relationship I'm trying to portray, but as most can tell (especially lately) I've been refraining from bringing up much of anyone aside from those already established enough. Such in the case of Candi. The only reason I don't give her a profile now is because with it I feel there would have to be a rep and I just love bothering Nir about it too much because he seems obsessed with it. :P

Crossovers

I always enjoy doing these because, to me at least, they can be a little fresh. Blink's constant meetings with Lucas were always fun. Kamen and Blink running into Good Girl Honey while on their date was fun. Catherine and Giggles' little back and forths were interesting as well, especially given that Catherine getting pregnant was a shrug idea. Though it helped when I read Wight's response to the idea. But I try to have them so they sorta fit. Sorta.

Obviously Blink doesn't fit into the NGIWverse, and to me that's why she fit. The Evil Girls I can only recall bringing them over to FIW once, and that was after I first signed them up here as just Betsy, Hibiki, and Lana. I kinda knew that none of them would fit in well with FIW's crowd of characters so I opted to keep them out since then. Though...maybe they slipped in? I can't remember.

But that's it. Unfortunately, despite the feedback, I most likely won't be dropping anyone or revamping. I do appreciate the feedback and please don't take this as me saying "I'm not changing anything". I'll give some thought on Spice and I've already come up with something for Sara (hopefully it works out) and obviously I wouldn't be doing said things unless there was the feedback. So again, thank you.

Party on,
Joe.

~eat snacky smores~
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Daisuke
Member Avatar
Who Let That Idiot Near a Computer?
Wrestlers
Jo-Jo,Jun 12 2012
05:00 PM
So it's only fair to say that over the years she's accumulated enough sides of her character to make her what she is now.

She's accumulated more sides to her character than any normal person could really have. Either that, or these sides fit together at really sharp points. I can't tell.

Jo-Jo,Jun 12 2012
05:00 PM
Spice is a dominatrix with two bodyguards trained to kill and a former psychiatrist, so of course she's going to have this feeling of superiority over everyone else.

I don't know what to say to this, I really don't. I'm pretty sure the root of the problem is in there, but describing it is beyond me.

Sometimes, I notice you have very awkward sentences in your narration that take a few goes to get through. Like there's so much going on, it won't fit neatly into a sentence.

Finally, I tend to dig your straight up wrestling promos. I'd leave this here, so I can finish on a positive, but I can't. I liked Sadovsky, but it turns out that he's a joke character, and I'm stupid for liking him because the joke's on me. Catherine grabbing a camera and saying 'fuck' a lot? Win. Catherine popping loads of pills to calm her down? Buh.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Jo-Jo
The Snacky-Smores Guy
Yes, Sadovsky is a joke character, my own dislike to characters that do nothing but straight up wrestling promos with no mention of what's been going on or what's to come. That doesn't mean I haven't taken him seriously. He's still a lot of fun to write. Catherine's pill popping time came in response to something that was brought to my attention, something about the rants that generally go on in my Bad Girls writing. Essentially, they apparently can't get angry or defensive without a reason. No emotion, no pride in themselves or what they do basically. So the pill popping was, again, a shrugging idea where I just said "Alright, no emotion? Fine. No emotion." A spiteful time. :P As my belief is people get angry, they get defensive about a passion of theirs. Examples? I can pull out several instances between me and Wiggs in our old PS3 vs. 360 debates, or some random flame war of ages past.

As for bits in narration and troubles there, I sometimes recognize that too. But most times it isn't until I'm too far into a roleplay that it can be easily fixed without making it worse. I understand the problem is me focusing ahead of what I'm writing about because if I don't I tend to forget. I have a horrible short term memory on some things and I don't just say that as a joke. I really do. And not just the "Okay, what am I doing in the kitchen again?" kind of deal but the "did I remember to lock the door?" thought while standing at the door seconds after locking it. So as I'm writing I'll tend to repeat myself and in the end I don't like proofreading my own stuff because it all makes sense to me then as I just wrote it and I just want it up so others can read and work off it. Often times it leads to horrible works, I find, like my first Sara RP (which I still have no idea what that was about) and Catherine's back and forth with Skull in FIW a few months back.

Lastly, you're not stupid for liking Sadovsky. If you like something, then you like it. I'd be the stupid one to go "You like Sadovsky? What a loser. You know he doesn't even play his own instrument."

Party on,
Joe.

~eat snacky smores~
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Nightmare
Member Avatar

Wrestlers
I don't feel emotionally connected to just about any of them outside of Roxie and Blink. Those two feel like they are the most...complete characters in your stable, in a sense. Sara and everyone else just feel like filler. They feel like "Well, gee whiz, I wish Roxie and Blink could do this stuff but it wouldn't make sense, so let's just make a whole new character that can!"

And honestly I don't think Roxie having a long career gives you much of an excuse to add so many sides to Roxie that she doesn't even make sense as a wrestling character anymore. To be frank, I made the same mistake with Nightmare. I made him too complex and that's why I struggled so badly with him. How I made him into a Hall of Famer is, I stripped away everything but the most base instinct he needed. All the bullshit. Got rid of T-Bird. Got rid of the managers outside of Horus for a few months. Took Christina off camera. And just left him and Win The NGIW Championship And Stack The Bodies In His Wake. And he took off. He certainly didn't win the title, but I made the kind of impact I had wanted to make with him the entire time.

So find something that is the CORE of Roxie, the CORE of Blink, and strip away all the other extraneous shit that wrestling fans really honestly do not care about. Consider that your audience is fans who enjoy pro wrestling. And dump everybody else.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Minister Wighty
Member Avatar
Chief Executive Officer
The Boss
These quotes jump around a bit.

Quote:
 
I have dropped, as you may remember Wight, her ties with her family with the whole "come to New York again and you die" ordeal.


Aye, but it's still there. Still a part of her character. As much as Tier being a proper luchador back in the day or John Cena being a rapper. She still uses the Thumbreaker, though I suppose with the elimination of the Galanoochie name it does a lot to... patch over that particular piece of her character... but it's still a part of her. It's still fresh in my mind. It's probably still fresh in most people's minds. I mean, look at Lord Tensai. Poor guy's had the decency to be gone for years before getting repackaged and people still call him A-Train. Probably think he's gonna pierce somebody's dick.

Quote:
 
As you'll note, some things of her indeed don't get mentioned quite as often anymore. Such as her turn ons for being insulted. Not to get egocentric here, but I could bring that out any time I wanted.


I don't see why you don't, honestly, as... much as I don't like it it's an interesting part of the character and a big gun to whip out around PPV time. If it's for the fact that you're trying to stay away from the gimmick and/or the reason you yourself mentioned, well, fine. OK. But like above that wasn't so long ago. I know it's still fresh in my mind. Every time I read Roxie being dumb my brain goes "this is all an act" and I end up trying to analyze it from that point of view instead of taking it at face value. To draw back to Tier (again) it's like his many self-induced failures in reverse. They were a weak point that everyone could exploit. Most people didn't. But they were always a threat looming on the horizon and it kind of ruined the character. I'm not saying you need to retire Roxie or anything, but... well, I don't really have a solution. I'm not you. I'm not trying to tell you how to fix your characters, I'm just pointing out the problems with them.

Quote:
 
Now I'm hearing of another wanted attempt. Why wasn't I a part of the conversation?


A. Save for the brief influence of Tammy, you're never online. Conversation does not flow well over PMs, especially between more than two people.

B. I didn't think about it. I was approached by Party X, I gave them my thoughts, Party X went away.

C. For me, personally, I don't often discuss storylines with others over PM. Well, I don't initiate it, anyhow. I'm willing to watch things flow organically and unless I need to do something drastic or need to know some information that occurs off-screen I usually just have my characters' actions play out as they will and go from there. Lita is an exception to that rule as sometimes my characters are literally only there to hang out with her characters. tl;dr the thought just doesn't cross my mind.

Quote:
 
What I'm getting from what was said is two people wanted something, and they wanted to force me into doing it.


That's just silly. One person wanted something and I told them historically there hasn't been a precedent for the storyline to have any real resolution. They were discouraged and went away.

Quote:
 
Spice is a dominatrix with two bodyguards trained to kill and a former psychiatrist, so of course she's going to have this feeling of superiority over everyone else. Try and tell a dominatrix there's nothing superior about her and while she might not be able to prove you wrong, she'll hurt you in bad or good ways.


This is... I forgot about this. I know sadists. None of them were specifically dominatrixes or... dominos? Dominaesters? Whatever the male version is. But I know sexual sadists... and they don't act like that. Controlling? Yes. Superiority complex? Sure. But I think Spice takes it too far. Yeah, I know this is a wrestling show and wrestlers' gimmicks are all over the top... but this is kind of insulting. I won't name names but one of the sadists has done some time here in NGIW and was rather insulted by the character of Spice and they weren't a person who is easily insulted. So, that's a minor thing but I guess blame it on her being SPICE. On her being WHO SHE IS, not her being a dominatrix.

Quote:
 
Sometimes, I notice you have very awkward sentences in your narration that take a few goes to get through. Like there's so much going on, it won't fit neatly into a sentence.


This, too. I know it takes a lot of time and I know I've said it a thousand times before, but read your promos back to yourself. Out loud. That'll fix most of these errors. I should know. I make 'em too. Boy does as well, and fixes them when he reads his promos out loud to me.

Quote:
 
But as I mentioned earlier, I try not to have people speak when they aren't booked (such is the case of Hibiki and Gabriel).


A good habit if there ever was one. However, with your wealth of characters it's kind of hard to keep them all booked regularly. I know you pump out a bunch of RPs in a week, but back when I did book ALL of your characters regularly I noticed quality take a dip the more people were on-board. It's also hard to maintain storylines for all these characters without it ending up being "NGIW : Joe vs. Everyone Else". Just another symptom of Too Many Characters Syndrome.

Quote:
 
So as I'm writing I'll tend to repeat myself and in the end I don't like proofreading my own stuff because it all makes sense to me then as I just wrote it and I just want it up so others can read and work off it.


I want you to know this makes the little English teacher that lives inside my head cry.

EDIT: I can't believe I forgot to mention this, the thought was running through my head while reading the responses you've made throughout this whole thread. While you're taking some ideas under advisement, they are small. It seems to me (and I suspected as much when I saw the thread pop up) that this is less "tell me what I can do to make my material more likeable" and more "tell me what you think is wrong with my material so I can tell you why I'm right." That edges a bit too far into the insulting side of things, but sometimes the truth isn't pretty... and I suppose that might be a part of the problem as well.

On a good day you present yourself on the forums as a weird, quirky half-troll PS3 fanboy. On a bad day you can be a diva. Overdramatic. Self-interested. Ungrateful. You act infallible and often claim to be personally victimized when you fail. When people don't like your material you think it's a conspiracy against you as a person. Literally every week when I post feedback I wonder to myself "Fuck's sake, what kind of nonsense am I going to have to deal with from Joe this time?" Even when you win. This is certainly not something that came about without precedent. I don't ordinarily think this when Adam, Nir, Boy, Lita, Wiggs, or anyone else loses. Asking for feedback is one thing, but then you try and prove me wrong. I understand you're arguing your side of things, but you're not going to change my mind. I'm not a nonce, especially when it comes to reading and writing. My standardized test scores for these subjects were through the roof. I'm a well-loved published author. I enjoy the subtleties of Kafka and at the same time the schlocky fun of early Laurel K. Hamilton stuff. 9.5 times out of 10 I understand every facet of what you put out. I just don't like it. Arguing with me about it isn't going to change my opinion of the work, it's going to lessen my opinion of you.

Now that's a great place for someone to interpret my words as "I AM THE LAW. DO NOT QUESTION THE LAW." but that's not really the case. THINK before you POST. Take care not to be incendiary or petulant. Even in PMs. Hell, ESPECIALLY in PMs. The more personal nature of them often escalates things worse than things being viewed in the public eye. Which is a small part of the reason I tend to take fights into the public eye.

Anyhow, THAT'S it for now.

I think...
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sqweaktoy
Member Avatar
The Boy
The Boy
Replying. From my phone, so bear with me. Jo man I really think Spade and Spice could be awesome and I really want to do it. There are two major reasons that I haven't responded to the challenges. One is vastly more important, remaining true to the character. While I think it's awesome, Spade doesn't like who he becomes around Spice so he violently avoids watching anything she does. The second one involves my reluctince to mire myself in the evil girls whole situation. Not really on topic, but thought you should know.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Onslaught
Member Avatar
Shit's Fucked Up
Wrestlers
I'll sound off on this again because I think my fed experiences give me a unique perspective. I've been in a fed called Hardkore World off and on for about five years. It's been the best fed I've ever been in and the place has improved my writing immeasurably. But promo wise Hardkore World has a very particular culture in which the focus is very strictly on in-ring action and on camera feuds, to the point where people who stray too far into storyline naval gazing usually get made fun of in character. And in the time I've been there I've truly come to believe that the way they do things is the best way to run a fed.

The cold hard fact, and this goes for anyone and not just Jo-Jo, is that nobody cares about your characters as much as you do. Period. The point of e-fed writing is to try and get people to care about your characters. And over the years I've been doing this I have found that the absolute best way to do that is to do these three things:

1) Put time and effort into doing engaging COLLABORATIVE feuds and angles with other handlers (note how I did not say "feuds and angles amongst your OWN characters).

2) Give your characters a distinctive voice

3) And this is the most important...make them ACCESSIBLE. I don't mean simple here, but I mean that somebody should get a feel for what you're all about by reading one promo. Just one.

By adding reams and reams of backstory, you're not writing for an e-fed, you're basically writing your own insular fiction and typically e-fedders don't give a damn about that. You're writing to please yourself and while yes, you do need to enjoy what you do it is far more important that you write to please and/or engage an audience. That is, after all, how you win, how you gain success, and gain the accolades of your peers. If you are ONLY writing for yourself without much consideration for what potential readers will think (or without considering how accessible what they're reading is), then point blank you're doing it wrong.

On an quasi-related note, when I was first considering joining here, the number one thing that was giving me pause was the fact that some people had multiple characters. That's usually a red flag to me, because that can suggest egocentrism. Obviously, I went ahead anyway because everybody seemed pretty mature and I'm glad I did, but I still see no need for people to have multiple characters. All it does is risk clogging up the cards and overcomplicating matters. If you are jonesing that hard to try out this awesome new character idea you just had, for the love of God please don't give in to the urge to make a whole new character. Or at the least join a different fed as that character. Otherwise things begin to get needlessly complicated and from a new player's perspective (like mine) it tends to suggest that certain handlers control the landscape by sheer character volume alone.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Lita Maivia
The Lovely Assistant
Wrestlers
I'm here to talk about Roxie. Tom mentioned that he doesn't see what I love about the character and honestly there isn't anything anymore. I loved the character, past tense. To me, Roxie was a stand-out female wrestler because she was so different. Her being a stripper and a lesbian had nothing to do with that either. I loved that Roxie was a normal girl that pretty much sucked at everything she did... besides wrestling. It was like she had this one skill that made people take a second look because this girl who was too stupid to do anything else could actually do it. The stripper/lesbian/feminist things all played a small part in her character from my perspective as I tended to tune out whenever that stuff became the focus of the character.

Then something happened...

Roxie isn't stupid. Roxie can cut a real wrestling promo. Roxie is passionate about being a real competitor. It pissed me off big time that Chester lost the title to this Roxie because I hated literally everything that went on in their storyline. I was so excited when Chester and Roxie were throwing barbs back at each other with Roxie calling Chester sexist and Chester threatening to not let women compete against him if he beat Roxie. I didn't make that threat because I didn't want Chester defending against women. I made it because Roxie was good at the time, she had a chance of beating Chester and even if he managed to beat her I figured he would've dropped the belt shortly after to Wiggum, hide, or Bloodbath. All those guys were waiting in the wings anyway so Chester times was about up. I could just feel it. But that wasn't the storyline we got. Legalities were brought into it and suddenly it was scrapped. Worse yet, this wasn't the Roxie that Chester actually ended up feuding with because once Roxie got her contendership she gave up the feminist movement against Chester and oh by the way she's not dumb anymore either. Chester defended his title against a generic female wrestler and that was not enjoyable for even a second. And it pissed me off that his monster reign came to such an anti-climactic end against such a bland character. I felt like all the work I put into Chester was for nothing because now he's not champion and nobody benefited from knocking him off his pedestal.

Well, yeah. That's how I feel about Roxie. You probably don't want my opinion on the Evil Girls because currently I don't even really have one. I will say though that Lucas did give up his campaign because it felt like he wasn't even feuding with them. There were a few remarks made his way by Sara (I think it was) but it seemed more like Lucas was standing beyond the camera sticking his tongue out at the Evil Girls while they filmed their television show. His presence in their world was ultimately felt in the very promo that Wight referenced involving Giggles.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Minister Wighty
Member Avatar
Chief Executive Officer
The Boss
Getting off-topic, but I feel it's something that needs addressing since it's been brought up.

Quote:
 
The cold hard fact, and this goes for anyone and not just Jo-Jo, is that nobody cares about your characters as much as you do. Period. The point of e-fed writing is to try and get people to care about your characters. And over the years I've been doing this I have found that the absolute best way to do that is to do these three things:

1) Put time and effort into doing engaging COLLABORATIVE feuds and angles with other handlers (note how I did not say "feuds and angles amongst your OWN characters).

2) Give your characters a distinctive voice

3) And this is the most important...make them ACCESSIBLE. I don't mean simple here, but I mean that somebody should get a feel for what you're all about by reading one promo. Just one.

By adding reams and reams of backstory, you're not writing for an e-fed, you're basically writing your own insular fiction and typically e-fedders don't give a damn about that. You're writing to please yourself and while yes, you do need to enjoy what you do it is far more important that you write to please and/or engage an audience. That is, after all, how you win, how you gain success, and gain the accolades of your peers. If you are ONLY writing for yourself without much consideration for what potential readers will think (or without considering how accessible what they're reading is), then point blank you're doing it wrong.


This. This a thousand times over.

Sounds hypocritical, but hear me out. Ordinarily I don't care if I win or lose a match. Zero Rush, Horus Osbourne, Rock, Pixie Korpse, and a number of other characters are characters I ran because I wanted to engage in cooperative roleplaying with other people and NGIW is a fair outlet for that. I had a lot of fun doing it, but was never really discouraged by the number of losses I racked up because I expected them. I rarely did anything resembling a traditional wrestling promo for them (with notable exceptions) and instead just used the environment and the setting as structure for their narrative so I could have fun. With characters like Giggles, PiG, and soon Zombie Black I'm a little more serious about their competition. With them I promo first, or most prominently, and engage in storylines second. It's rare that a match-week goes by that I don't have them sit in front of a camera in some fashion and deliver what is expected of them IN ADDITION to the storyline fluff surrounding them. I take them seriously, thus I try to portray them as serious competitors. As much as I like these storylines, and like to participate in them... they're not exactly what I'm looking for in terms of a wrestling promo. Now, that's not to say that any wrestling promo can beat any storyline piece. Certainly we've seen the opposite happen in the past. I just felt the need to put that out there.

Quote:
 
On an quasi-related note, when I was first considering joining here, the number one thing that was giving me pause was the fact that some people had multiple characters. That's usually a red flag to me, because that can suggest egocentrism. Obviously, I went ahead anyway because everybody seemed pretty mature and I'm glad I did, but I still see no need for people to have multiple characters. All it does is risk clogging up the cards and overcomplicating matters. If you are jonesing that hard to try out this awesome new character idea you just had, for the love of God please don't give in to the urge to make a whole new character. Or at the least join a different fed as that character. Otherwise things begin to get needlessly complicated and from a new player's perspective (like mine) it tends to suggest that certain handlers control the landscape by sheer character volume alone.


This is more a response and an explanation to Onslaught directly than to anything Joe does.

The e-fedding scene around here is kind of dry. Few of us even know of other feds outside of NGIW, and the ones we do encounter tend to either be elitist and exclusionary or just not our cup of tea in terms of rules. I for one would actually love to spread my characters out more as to avoid the booking nightmares I am constantly plagued with, but the simple fact of the matter is I don't have anywhere to put them that is the least bit satisfactory. We've even tried to set up purely RP-related feds based around super-heroes or power rangers or whatever so that we can have a separate place to scratch the itch of romantic angles and loose-form roleplaying, but everyone always loses interest after a few months.

While I love running an e-fed and I miss seeing it treated as an e-fed, if my friends want a place to just casually roleplay about whatever they want and have fun, then NGIW will be that place for them. It doesn't always mean they're gonna win matches... but there you have it.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Jo-Jo
The Snacky-Smores Guy
My apologies, this will be all over the place again.

Quote:
 
While you're taking some ideas under advisement, they are small. It seems to me (and I suspected as much when I saw the thread pop up) that this is less "tell me what I can do to make my material more likeable" and more "tell me what you think is wrong with my material so I can tell you why I'm right."

First that, that made me lose my smile. And it's unfortunate because that's one of the first things I read when I came back to check the board. Nothing can be further from the truth. I began this thread looking for suggestions but at the same time said that major character aspects wouldn't really change. Spice was not going to stop believing her superiority and Blink was not going to stop believing her inferiority, etc. One of the biggest issues people brought up is Sara and Spice. Therefore, I'm working on changing them enough that they aren't as hated as they are now. Had I not started this thread, I would only be able to assume the problem child was just Spice.

I'm getting the majority saying "less complex characters" and that's what I've been trying to deliver. Sara now just has her heightened self worth and her wall, Lana Star just has her insanity and discussions with herself, and so on. Roxie is about the most complex character I have and even after dropping her entire New York side of things I'm told it's still there. Unfortunately, there's not much else I can do there. I never bring it up, I changed her name. She does the Thumbreaker, but that's just out of habit. The rest is up to everyone else. People stopped calling Steve Austin The Ringmaster, Kane's no longer looked upon as a dentist, while I'm sure there were some that said it Umaga was Umage and not Jamal. I can kick and scream at people if you want to stop focusing in that, but that's just wrong and I know it's the extreme you don't want.

As I said the majority doesn't want complex characters, so new major aspects new characters. I could have given Roxie The Wall of Suck idea, but that drives a new layer to her because there'd have to be a reason for her to do such a thing and keep it up and as I found out a little while ago some people don't like shifts. I'm not arguing or defending, I'm agreeing.

My comment about Hibiki and Gabriel not getting booked often wasn't a request that they get booked more now, it was just me stating the fact that indeed they aren't booked often. I don't mind that, in fact I hate it when I have too many matches. It's a nightmare for me. But at the same time I enjoy having a diverse stable of characters because I enjoy doing up quick interactions. And that's what I've done lately, no real massive storylines within my own camp. I think as it stands right now I have two connecting points between my own characters that aren't stable or tag team related;
-Spice enjoys watching Roxie struggle
-Sara has a real hate on for Blink

Does that mean Spice doesn't enjoy watching other people struggle? Of course not. Does Sara not hate anyone else? She hates everyone!

As I said, I'm taking everyone's words into consideration but the majority will rule here. Character designs won't just be thrown onto existing characters as that would create complexity and shifts. I would join other feds, but ones I've seen either don't appeal to me or they close after (or sometimes even before) their first show. I tend to stick with settings I know will last.

MSN is something I either don't have time for or sometimes discouraged from using. Time as I work nights and therefore sleep the days and any other time I spend doing other things. Discouraged as it seems every time I'm in a convo I'll sometimes get cut out every few minutes and have to reconnect and therefore lose whatever was said during that time. I've tried other mediums, but they stand to have the same problem.

To Will's comment about Roxie; Roxie had to grow as a character with new things added as she was constantly put in front of a new audience. Some people liked this, some people hated that. For example when I first ran her she was known as "The Italian Ditz" who worked as a stripper. When I put her in front of a second audience people tolerated the ditzy aspect but not so much her stripper job. In FIW I had to focus on her as more of a person ready to set out on her own and that brought in certain aspects. Over time she grew as a character and while I've kept some aspects of her relatively the same I dropped other sides to her.

Reading these responses I have learned a lot. I do agree with Lita in that idiot Roxie is the better Roxie. So I'll be trying to focus a little more on the airhead aspect as well. I'll try proofing a little more what I write before I post.

Once again, thank you.

Party on,
Joe.

~eat snacky smores~
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Nightmare
Member Avatar

Wrestlers
Lita Maivia,Jun 12 2012
04:59 PM
I loved that Roxie was a normal girl that pretty much sucked at everything she did... besides wrestling. It was like she had this one skill that made people take a second look because this girl who was too stupid to do anything else could actually do it.

^ This is what I talk about when I speak about the core of Roxie. Focus on that. You may just want to completely re-boot her.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
ZetaBoards gives you all the tools to create a successful discussion community.
« Previous Topic · The Whiteboard · Next Topic »
Add Reply