Bernkastel
Reaper of Miracles
Hey Doc, what do you think of Fairy Glitter Armageddon? What do you most want to see out of the team in the future?
Q&A With The Doctor
- Thread starter The Doctor
- Start date
Ideally, you should have been able to keep the politician gimmick AND fleshed out your character. I'm a big fan of the gimmick, think it has a lot of potential depending on how well you play it. Imagine for one moment Constantine doing what Cooper did to get into his Unscripted match, but onscreen with propaganda posters and video. A politician is a smooth-talker by nature, who can get people to trust in him and more importantly distrust others, and that can work very well as a heel or even as a face. Imagine Constantine convincing a whole company he's the good guy, only for it to be revealed he was lying through his teeth the whole time. Amazing!
A gimmick doesn't necessarily have to always be at the forefront of your character, but you shouldn't have to lose it to be taken seriously. I felt some of your best Constantine work was when you were playing the slimy politician to the hilt. Such a good debut. By the way, really glad you're switching back to Hero. Love that song.
For a personal example, I've fleshed out Saxton quite a bit, and if I wanted to, I could cut a serious RP right here and now, and still keep Saxton as the smooth-talking jive turkey he is.
I much prefer Constantine the slimy politician to Constantine The Guy Who Was Face, I Guess. I just feel that gimmicks give you as a writer much more to work with than "my guy is a wrestler".
With Saxoteur, Pride of Toyota or Teach N Kurtesy. I faced both of those teams as Heavy Artillery, and I think that I've improved as a writer a hundredfold since then, and that the two teams would just mesh so much better than they ever did with Heavy Artillery. Both feuds would be quite electrifying.
Ooh, tough, hm. Probably the Prison Fed match, just because it felt like a last hoorah for a character that, even if I wasn't the best at, was still near and dear to my heart. Winning the tag team championships with Saxoteur and actually enjoying it was great, though.
As long as possible provided I don't get bored or overly busy. I love the character too much to drop him and have even planned out ways of freshening him up, including a plan if he were to ever go heel.
As long as possible. I'm having way too much fun to stop right now. JGlass has been an immeasurable help in writing, and is a pleasure to work with. I know it'll have to happen one day, but I don't want it to come. Not for a very long time, maybe even a year.
Another spectacular implosion and feud, probably with Saboteur as the heel and Saxton as the face. And this time, it'd be settled in the ring in a match. Would probably be a fairly serious and intense feud.
They're only making it harder for themselves. Not every RP has to be fun and games and wacky scenarios. There's a lot to be said about a standard wrestling promo, or an interview. If you look at my post above about my previous characters, I cut pretty standard wrestling promos with Manfred Rickett but because of the setting and his voice, they were pretty damn fun to write if I do say so myself. Or hell, with Cobra T., none of his promos are fun and games. He's done interviews, monologues, fights, training sessions, and more.
The key isn't to write a wacky adventure every time. The key is to vary it up and to not be afraid of experimenting and trying something new every time you write. You can only get better by trying, and figuring out what works and what doesn't. Falling into complacency is boring for the reader and for the writer and can lead to burnout pretty easily. There was a time near the start of Saxton where I felt burnout because I felt I had to top myself week in and week out, so I scaled it back, had him do some more traditional wrestlingy stuff, and eventually I found a happy medium. Having other characters to put into other situations definitely helped with that as well.
I'm interested. I think they'd be perfect for a heel run down the line. Right now they're pretty popular faces and I like that they already feel like a tag team since they're the only two face women in the fed. Gives them a gimmick, something to latch onto. Now take that gimmick and turn it heel, and you'll have gold. Imagine this: Sandy starts using her sand for devious tricks instead of mischief. Celeste becomes a brutal wrestling machine. And together they talk about Girl Power and complain about how sexist WZCW is and how men are all pigs. Though definitely be careful to make sure that the reason they're heels isn't because they're feminists. They're heels because they're jerks!
Of course, a peppy face run is in order first, because heel turns have more impact if there's build to them. But that's what I'd like to see down the line.
not as cute as ur MOM OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-
Depends on the character. Right now he's "high flier", right? So pick something that screams high energy. Something hard-hitting and fast that soars. I think Live Wire does that pretty well, and most hip hop songs are a bit too slow for that and don't feel as exciting.
The way I come up with a theme is I imagine it like real wrestling. Imagine your guy coming out to a WWE show. What entrance motions does he do? How do they fit with the song? Is the theme immediately recognizable and unique? Do the lyrics or sound fit the character? Does the song have other connotations or is it used somewhere else that would make it hard for whoever is watching think of your wrestler and only your wrestler? Keep those in mind when choosing a theme and you can't go wrong.
red ass skull muhfukkah
Dooooooooooooom
Thoughts on Alhazred and myself as an RPer?
Most overrated talent right now and all time?
Would Facecrush go over well in an AES fed?
Most overrated talent right now and all time?
Would Facecrush go over well in an AES fed?
Alhazred is amazing. I've always, always loved the character. I'm still super bummed we never got to do our feud, and I really hope we get to one day. I'm a shameless mark for mad scientist gimmicks, and I felt the skinny nerd genius thing was both hilarious and interesting. Fantastic gimmick.
As for your RPs, I'll say that some are better than others. When you're on point, you are on point. You can switch from funny to serious with ease, and you're incredibly creative. You do have some off-days though, and sometimes it feels like you're trying too hard. That said, I'd much rather have someone like you who likes to take risks and experiment even if they don't always pay off. You have great ideas and a great handle on character voice, with a dash of the absurd that I love.
All-time, probably Blade or Big Dave. The best thing about Blade was his theme music. The best thing about Big Dave was how hilarious it was that he was called "Big" but his picture was Evan Bourne. Both of those guys just bored me to tears.
Right now is a little trickier. There's a lot of good talent in the fed and more people feel like they are where they should be. Big Dave is gone. Kurtesy is gone. Blade is gone. Reynolds is gone. Showtime at least fits in the main event, though the face gimmick still hasn't hit its stride for me. Constantine and KO are both getting interesting again. So really, I couldn't tell you. We're in a much better place than we were even a year ago.
In a Fire Pro or No Mercy fed, he'd probably be over as hell, especially if you continued writing hilarious promos with him. If you want to give him a shot, I think he'd be PERFECT in SAPW once it returns from hiatus. SAPW is basically our CHIKARA, run in Fire Pro Returns with silly gimmicks and fun matches, and the guy who runs it is a wizard with the game. Other ones I wouldn't mind seeing him in are ProWres (Our most consistent and serious-ish No Mercy fed) and TFIAH (less serious No Mercy fed).
Also, Alhazred in CNW...think about it. I know I'd like to see it, would be fun to give him storylines.
Beastmode 24
BEAST MODE, MOTHERFUCKERS
I'm not around to defend myself anymore. Asshole.
What are your thoughts on Derek Jacobs?
What could I do to improve my character when I come back?
Don't worry, I'll buy you a Wendy's gift card to make up for it. <3
I'm going to go with Yaz's assessment and say that the religious acolyte gimmick change came out of nowhere. It literally felt like "Hey, I guess I'm in a team with Thriller now, better randomly change up my character with no build!". That's what really annoys me about a lot of WZCW tag teams in general, people don't try to make them make sense. They don't properly build them in RPs. That's something I feel Bearded Gentlemen did right - They had some RPs where they mentioned each other, eventually started interacting, and then became a full-fledged tag team. There was a story behind it. Derek Jacobs' role in TNC felt like it was thrown together. One day he was a bodyguard, the next he was with Westhoff. The fact that they got pushed so hard so fast as a team didn't help.
The bodyguard-for-hire gimmick is really interesting and intriguing. I could see it working as heel or face. A big guy who only cares about kicking ass and getting paid? Awesome idea for an antihero, or as a menacing bodyguard for a heel. I'll make the Diesel comparison - regardless of your thoughts on him, Nash could play the cool heel, the monster heel, or the cool face that does not care about whose ass he kicks, and make it work.
If you want to continue the New Church thing when he comes back, you really need to delve hardcore into his sudden transformation and make it work for you. Don't just say he saw the light, give it some backstory and buildup. Have it start with him pinching pennies from the collection plate in the Texarkana Church beore being "saved". Have him attend lessons with WEsthoff. Do something with Mystique. There are a bunch of ways you could have made the transition less abrupt and more interesting all in all.
As a fan of the bodyguard gimmick and "big guys" in general, I see quite a lot of potential in him. You've improved so much with your RPs since you were starting out, and if you keep working hard when you return I know you'll only improve more. Just keep character in mind.
Develop him. The three most important parts of a character to me are their distinctive voice, their gimmick or hook, and their development. Give him a real backstory, plan out a long-term story you can always fall back on if you're stuck with ideas, give him a cast to interact with. Remember, we're seeing moments in a guy's life, and maybe some moments are more exciting than others, and maybe some are more wrestling-focused than others. Don't be afraid to show a guy's vulnerabilities if you have to, and then to heel or face-it-up by smashing through them.
Most importantly, give your guy a distinct voice. Imagine what he sounds like in your head, and figure out how to write that. What specific words or phrases does he use? Does he have an accent? How can you naturally integrate his dialogue into that? A lot of the criticisms of TNC-Jacobs was that his "Brothers" and "thous" felt very unnatural and like you just peppered a normal guy's speech with them instead of working them in. To me, it just felt like he was losing his distinct voice, or the voice he could have had. Imagine every RP as though a real person is saying the words you want to say, and go from there. What sounds good? What sounds real? Or maybe unreal, if that's what you're going for.
Again, you have a lot of potential. Can't wait to see you back.
I wouldn't go that far...
I am a Communications major, though. I try and look at things differently from others.
Ty Burna
Getting Noticed By Management
You and I have the same answer for developing a character. Nice work sir.
FlexAmerican Dynamite
WZCW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION
Could you see yourself working with Krypto in any type of angle again?
Chances of Saxton vs Saboteur vs Krypto triple threat match?
Chances of Saxton vs Saboteur vs Krypto triple threat match?
Thriller Ant
Beep Bop Boop
I know some of your other feds have more outlandish gimmicks, but in a fed like WZCW, is having a successful comedic character one of the most difficult things to do?
Absolutely! I know JGlass and I weren't really happy with the mentorship thing suddenly being sprung on us, but it was great fun to incorporate Krypto into our RPs, and I had a lot of fun writing him and seeing you develop him into the loveable lower-carder he is right now.
As they say, anything can happen. SaxoTeur isn't going to split up any time soon, though, so you might have to wait a long while for that to happen.
Oh, most definitely. Not the near future, but we've both discussed ideas as to what would happen once the split occurs, who would turn, various ideas for our feud. I also have an idea for Action Saxton's heel gimmick, nickname, and theme, once that happens. I just hope I can make it work and not lose my spark for the character or the charm. I've done heel Saxton in other feds before, but this would be quite different from that.
Two things: It depends on your definition of success, and it depends on your definition of comedic.
If your idea of success is to constantly win matches and championships, then yeah, maybe it is hard to achieve "success" with a comedic character. However, if your definition of success is to have fun writing a comedic character and hopefully have some stories, then I think you'll do just fine.
It also depends on your idea of comedic. If you have a pure comedy character that exists to just be silly and a bad wrestler, you should expect to lose a lot because that's just how the character is. Look at Santino - pure comedy, and therefore jobs a lot because it's part of the humor. Audience loves him because he's funny, get angry when he loses, and happy when he manages to get those few wins he does.
However, there are plenty of wrestlers who are funny in WZCW. Look at SHIT - Miko has written some very funny RPs, but is still taken seriously. Alhazred is another example, a great gimmick and sense of humor, and is ranked as one of the fed favorites and gets decent amounts of wins. Or, hell, JGlass and I were tag team champions for how long and now we're getting another shot! Or even Krypto, a gimmick that many people didn't see going anywhere, managed to get his shot and because a damn solid fixture in the lowercard.
Again, a lot of it is the RP-to-RP style, and the idea of "success". I'd say I've been pretty successful considering I'm writing crazy adventures starring a large black man and his spandex-suited friend and I've been doing it consistently for two years. Winning the tag team championships was just a bonus. I even got to have an awesome storyline along the way. That said, I don't consider Saxton fully-comedic. I find him funny, and I think others do too, but he is a badass master of kung fu as well.
The thing is, you mention the other feds I'm in as though the more-serious feds don't have characters who are specifically designed to be comedic jobbers and put heels over. Everyone has a place in wrestling, and every match has to have a winner and a loser. I do think that in WZCW Creative and the members as a whole were biased towards REAL WRESTLERS REAL SPORTS REAL WRESTLIIIIING FIRSTNAME LASTNAME characters, but with the advent of Barbosa, Alhazred, SHIT, and others, that's since changed. You'll notice that the most popular characters in WZCW, at least by what I see, are the more gimmicky and light ones that you can still take seriously. Look at Gentleman Masque or Beard for two rookies that are really loved because they're easy to connect to, but still very funny especially in LGM's case (And TBK and Theo both do great work). That said, I do think that the focus on long RPs and RPs that specifically talk about opponents instead of building your own story do hinder the ability to "succeed" in the titles/wins sense, but a good writer can try to work with that, and again I do think Creative is coming around to that style.
This has been pretty long and meandering, so in conclusion I have to say yes and no. I consider Saxton to be a rousing success and wouldn't trade him for "Matthew Missile" or whatever-the-fuck for the world. But if you care very deeply about winning and losing, then maybe it can be hard, yeah. But overall, it just depends on what you put into it. Heart and passion always shines through in any piece, and everyone loves to be entertained. Just keep that in mind.
Thriller Ant
Beep Bop Boop
I enjoyed your entire answer, but I'm intrigued by this. Do you think that character development RPs and RPs that talk about opponents are mutually exclusive or is it just difficult to do both or...
Also, I hate long RPs. They can be done well, but there were for than a few times when I was on Creative that I couldn't read an RP in one sitting because of how long or boring it was.
It's possible to do both, and they're certainly not mutually exclusive. However, sometimes matches just don't matter in the grand scheme of things, you know? Sometimes, an RP would be so much more impactful if it wasn't felt necessary to shoehorn a traditional promo into it. Yeah, an opponent and the next match can sometimes be incredibly important to a character's development, but at other times, the match doesn't really have any meaning beyond "Hey, this match is happening" and it just shouldn't be necessary to force meaning out of something that at the end of the day doesn't have much meaning.
Basically, if I were on Creative, the actual content of the RP to me wouldn't matter as long as it was interesting throughout, and accomplished the goal of developing a character, talking about their opponent well, or just being straight up entertaining even if it did neither of those things. Like I say, there's no set way of writing an RP, and there shouldn't be. It's all down to feeling more than anything at the end of the day.
Richard Blonoff
Make America Rassle Again
How does it feel being the only black man in the fed?
Fantastic, because it gives me so much to work with when it comes to the eventual heel turn.
Then again, no one's seen Saboteur without his spandex...
Muffin Top Merkley
Be a man!
Rank the top 25 RPers that are currently on the roster.
Who would you rather kiss on the lips, Scumm or Thrash?
If you could pick/design an old title for Rush to use as a new title to replace the EurAsian title, what would you pick?
Who would you rather kiss on the lips, Scumm or Thrash?
If you could pick/design an old title for Rush to use as a new title to replace the EurAsian title, what would you pick?
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WZCW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION
Who would you like to be Krypto's opponent for AON?
Why do you and others have such a disdain for Johnny Scumm?
Why do you and others have such a disdain for Johnny Scumm?
Vega, or for a surprising match, Rush. I want to see Krypto win some gold! It'd make for a really good feel-good story to see this guy rise up through the mentorship program and get his hands on a title.
In character and writing, he's bland. In personality, he's annoying, speaks too much without actually saying anything, keeps no-showing and then coming back and being let back in, and above all he's a complete asshole because whenever anyone's saying bad about someone or thinking about it, he jumps in the thick of it and starts laying down insults left, right, and center, despite being a worse poster and worse person than the person he was trying to make fun of. This has been going on for years now, back when he had three alts.
I'm really surprised he hasn't made an account to ask himself WZCW questions yet. I mean, that's what he did back when everyone was making Bar Room Ask A Question threads.
The only thing worse than a boring asshole is a boring asshole who talks too much.
Oh man, I'm really bad at that. I suck at picking favorites, for real, and I suck even more at ranking them. My faves shuffle in and out of their positions regularly. I can tell you who I always stop to read and who I'd place at the top of that list, though - You, JGlass, Red Skull, Miko, Barbosa, Yazloz, BK201, & Ty. 7 out of 25...that's good enough, right?
Thrash, definitely. At least he has a cool name. "Dude, I just kissed Thrash!" sounds way more manly than "Dude, I just kissed Johnny Scumm!"
My go-to belt is the Platinum Phoenix ECW Championship, since it's my favorite belt of all time, but I already used it as the Elite Championship (Though it'd admittedly be hilarious if that's just the generic "Hey lets give a guy a new belt" design, with the kayfabe being the title-creators got lazy). I think I'd pick this belt:
Look at it. It's blocky. It's majestic. Change the flag or remove it and you have yourself a winner. A large version of this would be great - big, heavy-looking belt for a big man.
Muffin Top Merkley
Be a man!
http://forums.wrestlezone.com/showthread.php?t=248777
http://forums.wrestlezone.com/showthread.php?t=249165
7 out of 25 is a pass in the Merkley books.
Might get a rash from Thrash though.
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What do I need to do to improve Rush and my writing?
FlexAmerican Dynamite
WZCW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION
Krypto and Alhazred feud/team based off Krypto thinking Alhazred is the only human capable of creating Technology that will allow him to communicate/visit with his home planet and people. Yay or Nay for a future angle?
YES. That sounds like the most entertaining tag team for Alhazred since Technology of Chaos. Betting you two could work magic together. That sounds both funny and fun. Go for it.
Okay, the coolest part of Rush is how completely and unashamedly old school he is. The thing is, you do that on purpose - Monologue-esque promos, the Times New Roman font, etc. Everything about him feels imposing, stern. It's fantastic for atmosphere.
So what breaks the atmosphere? Typos. A lot of times, especially in the first few paragraphs, you make some typos or grammatical errors that threaten to break the immersion. Another thing is that sometimes I'd like a little more than just monologues. I mean, man, you monologue with the best of them and it fits the gimmick, but sometimes it would be nice to see Rush from an outside perspective. I don't mean like what Killjoy did in his recent Tastic RP, but an outside perspective from your perspective, if that makes sense.
More insights into Rush's life would be cool, too. More personal stuff. Less wrestling-related content. Obviously, the gimmick is that he is very wrestlery, and that's really awesome, but more like in this round's RP with the pills, the opening paragraph, the discussion about lifting weights, more of that.
That's all I can think of right now. I'm loving what you're doing with Rush and I can't wait to see him ascend to new heights as he should.
Does being on another creative team make it harder or easier to swallow when you think this one has fucked up? The tag title situation going into Unscripted for example.
Edit; Are there people on the roster that seem to be stuck or frustrated (or not, perhaps) that you think you could really help if only they would ask for it?
Edit; Are there people on the roster that seem to be stuck or frustrated (or not, perhaps) that you think you could really help if only they would ask for it?
