Favorite Characters, Stacking, and Judging Standards

Sorry about the week long layoff, but then again I'm not sorry, 'cause you shouldn't even be reading this shit in the first place...

I'M MARKING OUTZOMGZERZZZ!!!!!!! (Favorite All-Time FW Characters)
I'm the type of guy that loves the concept of lists, rankings, standings, and organization in general. Therefore, and also because I'm terribly bored, I am going to list a bunch of FW characters that I absolutely love. For the sake of avoiding needless bickering and people acting all butthurt, I'm not listing them in order (nor do I really even have an order).

Ice Tre- One of the characters I was only introduced to since making my FW return last year, I became a huge mark for his work from the first time I read it. Paul has an amazing talent for truly capturing the voice of his character, which is something that's extremely rare in FW. He was also one of my boy Terence's first fans, so that earns him extra points in my book. :-) It's too bad there seemed to be some friction between him and Dave in EPW last year, because I'd love to see him return. Maybe someone can organize the Ice Tre/Brunk summit, kinda like a Middle East peace brokerage? Nevermind, I'm talking out of my ass again.

Joe The Plumber- JT-fucking-P. How can you not love the Ol' Dirty Bastard of the plumbing field, who refers to his opponents as cum recepticles and cum guzzlers? I would be willing to be that nobody else in FW could pull this character off but Devin. Seriously, how many of you would put over a dirty ass plumber who curses out his opponents? I mean maybe a character like that could work as temporary comedic relief, but a legitimate World Champion? No way. But again, Devin took this character and made him just that. He made it work, just like Paul made Ice Tre work. I've only been familiar with JTP the last eight months or so, but I'm already willing to place him in my top two or three FW characters ever, that's how good he is. JTP, I am PROUD to ride your nuts!

Troy Windham- TW is so fucking versatile, it's scary. He could be your number one babyface, or be a mega heel. He could be completely hilarious and embarrass you, or he could rebut you point for point. I learned a lot about RP strategy from reading Troy Windham RPs back in the day, and the scary part is that Gregg's still keeping him fresh. If you want proof, go check out what he's doing with Troy in A1E. Or go back a few years and read the CSWA Gold Rush thread where he RPed against basically the entire league. If you could start an FW league tomorrow and be guaranteed that everybody would join and participate, Troy would have to be your top face or heel. End of discussion.

Mike Randalls- Another disgustingly versatile character, if you recruited him your league could survive off of Randalls storylines itself for a good two years. Much of Randalls' success is a result of his handler's ability to constantly generate fresh angles. Randalls is a perfect example of a well developed character, something Katz worked pretty hard at. And in a hobby where everybody has their views on who is overrated and who isn't, I don't think I've ever heard someone refer to Randalls as overrated. It's almost universal: "Yeah this guy sucks, that guy sucks, he's overrated. Oh, Randalls? Ok, I'll give it to him, the guy's pretty fucking good." (Alright that just about does it, now where's my money Katz? You said if I marked hard for Randalls in my blog, you'd pay me and give me an NFW mega-push. Why does my blog's certification of awesomeness mean so much to you, man??!!!! WHY????!!!!)

Doc Silver- There are probably a few inevitabilities in FW, and I don't know what those are, however I'm willing to be that somewhere on that list is: "Doc Silver beats you." No, seriously, he does. Talk about a heel, this guy's just a fucking asshole. And really, what else could you ask for from a heel? Basically, a good heel is a fucking asshole, and Doc has it down to a T. A lot of how my own heel characters act is styled after Doc. If you want a tip on beating him, there is none. However, I'll say this: have your shit together. If your character has ever done anything stupid that you might have regretted, or if there's an aspect to him that doesn't quite make sense, believe me Doc will find and exploit it. Some people lose to a heel and go "Oh yeah man, much respect, I loved your work!" But you may leave a Doc Silver thread legit hating the character for what he did to you. Doc doesn't just want to win, he wants to completely humiliate you to the point where the handler starts questioning why he made his character in the first place. THAT, my friends, is a fucking heel. Stanton's a workhorse too, which means he's probably not going to drop an upset on account of lazyness any time soon. If you beat Doc, you either earned it or the judge is a mongoloid.

Michael Manson- Another one who is probably going to beat you whether you like it or not. If you do beat him, it's basically 'cause he let you. ::shrugs:: Sorry. He's got Doc's ability to strip away an opponent's layers down to the bare bones, Randalls' ability to constantly generate new and interesting storylines, and Troy's ability to carry a league on his back. McNic was a workhorse like Stanton, had incredibile writing ability, endless creativity, and his work reflected it. Very few characters possess the ability to just shit on whomever they choose, but Manson was one of them. Not to mention, Manson was one half of what I consider the great the greatest thread battle FW's ever seen, and that was against Shane Southern for the Ultratitle in 2005. The ultimate heel vs. the ultimate face: how could you go wrong with that? On a side note, I've read McNic's creative writing outside of FW, and it's fantastic. This was going back a few years, so I'm sure he's only improved since then. Let that be a lesson to all you people who write that "FW fan-fic" type crap. Stop fucking around and write for real!

Nova- I'm not as familiar with Nova as I am with some of the others, since he really came to prominence after I took a break from FW. However, I love the stuff I have read, and he is definitely "out there" in a good way! I'm really hoping I get an opportunity to face him in the TiTty tournament, assuming the judges have the good sense to vote us into the third round. :-) Nova is fucking trippy, the quintissential NFW character, and someone who is very hard to steer off his game. Basically, you need creativity out the ass to beat him.

"Triple X" Sean Stevens- I have to admit, when I first saw the character back in 03/04, I thought he was overrated. Boy, was I fucking wrong. Stevens has serious game, and it took me a little while to appreciate that. He's another one who will basically shit on you in a head-to-head. Extremely versatile, can run with the ball, and has endless brilliant dialogue. Worthy of note: Stevens BY FAR has the best ring entrance in FW. That alone gets him a push in my book!

Alright, enough dick sucking. Basically, those are my top 8, and if I had to round it to a top 10 I'd include Shane Southern and GUNS. I'd also like to point out that due to my lack of CSWA experience, I don't feel I'm well versed enough in the lore of characters like Hornet, Dan Ryan, and Eli Flair to be able to include them. This list is basically the characters who have jumped out at me during my time in FW.

Stacking
I have to admit, when I hear (read) people bitch about stacking, it kinda makes me wanna vomit. Personally, if I see those standard 48 hours have passed, I have no qualms about stacking you back to hell from whence you came. People usually stack for one of two reasons: A) they believe it will help them on the judge's "scorecards" or B) they just have the itch to write some more and don't feel like waiting on your slow ass to respond. Both are legitimate reasons. Now, technically, nobody should have to stack, right? "It should always be quality over quantity." But in reality, we know quantity is impressive to a judge. Sucks to admit it, but it's fucking true and we all know this. Let's say for example you're running a fed, and you have this new guy who you think is really good going up against your fed's champion. The two week deadline ends, and the incumbent champion has four RPs to the challenger's two, plus the incumbent champ was the one to initiate the RP with the first note. However, the challenger's two RPs were a little better than the incumbent's four. Who wins? The incumbent, no question. Why? Because the champion needs to be someone who puts in the work. You can't have people throwing up layups on your big cards, I don't care how good they are. If your champ isn't gonna care, don't expect anyone else to either. I also think that in all cases, the challenger should be the aggressor and post the first RP. Even on a rematch. It's your job to beat him, no the other way around as far as I see it.

Back to general rules of stacking. If you've let the 48 hours pass, who's fault was that? Certainly not the stacker's. And if you truly believe that quality prevails, then it shouldn't matter if you've been stacked. Shit, I remember when I first started in FW, stacking was just the common thing to do, and it was generally accepted that you needed to write 4-5 RPs to be able to match your opponent, standard. Now, you're a hero for pumping out 2 or 3 RPs. Whoopdie fucking do. My dick could write 3 RPs. They don't take 3 hours to write, or shouldn't.

Now for the people who claim "I'm too busy, you have more time than I do," I simply have no sympathy for you. I work too, 5 days per week, sometimes more, sometimes up to 10 hours in a day (that's a rare occurrence). There's always time to do a little bit of writing on the computer, even if you have to split it between two days. If you're like me and work an office job, and if your office is quiet like mine, just fucking waste company time and write RPs at your desk. Who cares, ya know? Fuck the company! Nova's talking shit in that thread, and you've gotta tell his ass what's up! I'm sure your boss will understand your dilema.

My general rule is this: if you're too busy to RP more than twice during an RP cycle, barring any extreme circumstances like surgery (happened to me a few weeks ago), death in the family (also happened to me recently), or insane work/school load, then do yourself a favor and quit one of the 19 goddamn leagues you're in. If you're in two leagues, cut it to one. And if you have a family, work, school, dogs, and you just can't find the time to RP more than twice during a cycle, then guess what? Don't RP, seriously!

This is FW, remember? There's probably more shame in RPing than in not RPing lol. But I can't stand when people willingly sign up for tournaments or cards, knowing what is expected of them, they sit on their ass and bitch when they get stacked, and then when called out on it say "well I don't have a lot of time." Well who the hell takes on an obligation knowing they don't have the time to meet it, and then complains when they're called out on doing so?

FW is all about taking on the workload that you can handle. Recently, I've been able to handle a big workload because my real life workload has been somewhat small. This changes from time to time, and when it does I will adjust my FW workload properly. Maybe I won't sign up for a particular card, or I'll refrain from posting long ass blogs like this one? I did happen to get extremely busy with real life a few years ago. So you know what I did? I quit FW and came back when I could handle it again. As a fedhead I'd rather see someone who stacks rather than plays all gentleman-like. More FW activity is always better than less.

Judging Standards
Here's a thought: since FW is basically a character pageant, why don't we develop uniform judging standards? Other such pageants have them, so why can't we? A fedhead might say general things like "We judge partly on quality, partly on angles, etc." But I'm talking about a checklist like: Controlled the direction of the dialogue, Flustered Opponent, Level of creativity, Stayed in character, etc. This is not completely necessary, just random food for thought...