J is Justice
Patti Mayonnaise
Will now be grateful.
Hi.
Posts: 31,878
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Post by J is Justice on Nov 14, 2013 3:48:01 GMT -5
I thought this was gonna be about wrestling fan fiction.
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Reflecto
Hank Scorpio
The Sorceress' Knight
Posts: 6,847
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Post by Reflecto on Nov 14, 2013 7:04:50 GMT -5
]Here's how it computes for me: in almost any other genre, an artist will unfortunately find they have to sacrifice their creativity to placate whatever a major studio or a record label wants in order to be sold to the fanbase of choice. What's unique to wrestling is that everybody from the top on down has to sacrifice in order to placate a very vocal fanbase with various divisions. And as much as I love cash, I still would not find that scenario appealing. And believe me, I'm not blowing off any worker that's not happy about their character or position on the card, but for me it cuts both ways. Even still, wrestling is not the only genre that happens for. Speaking from personal experience- for the last few years now, I've been developing a TV show with a friend with some professional potential. Both of us have a very similar sense of humor in our personal lives- very blue, somewhat intelligent, not many "easy" jokes. Most of the things that would make either of us laugh most times would be in that same vein of humor. When making the scripts, to make them actually "work", we had to go in expecting the stories will be watered down, dumbed down, and turned into...basically the same as everything else on TV. It's not a bad thing, but it does teach me one rule that we "Fans" don't usually seem to get. WE, the fanbase of anything on television- not just wrestling, but it can be seen with pretty much any TV show with a diehard fanbase- can be vocal about the show we care about... but we'll never be the majority that television shows want, BECAUSE WE CARE ABOUT IT. Television programming is going after the majority of the population- but the majority will NEVER be the diehard fans. The majority will ALWAYS be the man or woman who just got home from a hard day at work, is fed up with all the crap they had to deal with that day, and who just want to turn their brain off and just laugh (if it's a sitcom), or take solace that "Even if my life sucks, at least I'm not THAT person" (if it's reality TV), or want to be two steps ahead of the people on TV for what happened and feel smart (if it's a drama.) Anyone else besides that- who try for quality- are noise to a television show.
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Post by Mighty Attack Tribble on Nov 14, 2013 7:22:16 GMT -5
I disagree. Wrestling is a basic, relatively easy medium to write for.
Writing for Vince and Stephanie McMahon is where things fall down.
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Bo Rida
Fry's dog Seymour
Pulled one over on everyone. Got away with it, this time.
Posts: 24,173
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Post by Bo Rida on Nov 14, 2013 7:51:16 GMT -5
On the flip-side that crowd gives them the advantage of instant feedback to the point they can even re-write angles while the show is still airing if really necessary, sometimes a minor tweak can save an entire storyline* and if something isn't working at all it can be changed completely the next week.
In most TV shows if a new character or storyline is hated by your audience you can't do much about it as you'd already have the next several episodes finished and maybe the entire season, in fact some writers have probably seen large chunks of their audience drift away and maybe even had the show cancelled before they could do anything to fix the problems.
*Eg - It seemed like they forgot about The Big Show's iron clad contract, most shows would carry on with viewers questioning a major continuity error but WWE were able could retcon it the next week.
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Post by Brother Nero....Wolfe on Nov 14, 2013 8:57:49 GMT -5
*Eg - It seemed like they forgot about The Big Show's iron clad contract, most shows would carry on with viewers questioning a major continuity error but WWE were able could retcon it the next week. True, but most shows wouldn't forget a major plot point from a character arc from less than a year ago. That would be like say, [spoilers for Dexter season 2] {Spoiler}Doakes showing up in season 3 and nobody acknowledging he died. It's like, sure they can't fix that halfway through the season if they f*** it up, but are they really likely to f*** that one up?
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Post by carp (SPC, Itoh Respect Army) on Nov 14, 2013 9:42:29 GMT -5
It's their own fault. The WWE is its own star: people go to see a WWE show because of the company and the brand and because it's the only wrestling show on that scale. But while watching, the audience has been trained to cheer for individual wrestlers, and they have been taught that their input affects those wrestlers and not anyone else. Sit on your hands when Wrestler X is there, no matter what's going on in the plot, and absolutely everyone will just take it as a comment on Wrestler X... not whoever wrote the scene in the first place. Even worse, the WWE will often put people out there without any story at all, just doing their thing. So, we're trained to care about individual talent, and not the show as a whole. So already, they're stepping on their own toes with telling any kind of story. And, there's a mismatch between WHY anyone cares and then HOW they've been taught to care. First and foremost, you go to a WWE show because it's the damn WWE. The spectacle. But then when you get there, you have been trained to cheer because I Like That Guy; not I Like What That Guy's Doing Right Now. And you can't tell any stories if you just have a bunch of That Guys. ...that's kinda how it's been since 1901. ....right, which is all the more reason it's stupid now.
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"Magic" Mark Hurr
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Here, have some chili dogs
Now featuring half the brain that you do.
Posts: 16,605
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Post by "Magic" Mark Hurr on Nov 14, 2013 9:43:56 GMT -5
WWE is like watching SNL with Showtime at The Apollo's audience except they try to spin the audience's reactions.
The problem I feel is that there has always been too many chefs in the kitchen who do nothing but want results but can't cook. And when they determine the cook's success more than the people who eat the food it will always be flawed.
WWE picks and chooses when they want to acknowledge the flaws. Then want to remedy it by putting more Khali and meaningless Curtis Axel mess, and revisionist seasonings in to the pot to the point where the main ingredient is no longer noticeable.
In my opinion the creative process and modern booking mentality needs a complete overhaul.
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Bo Rida
Fry's dog Seymour
Pulled one over on everyone. Got away with it, this time.
Posts: 24,173
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Post by Bo Rida on Nov 14, 2013 11:06:42 GMT -5
*Eg - It seemed like they forgot about The Big Show's iron clad contract, most shows would carry on with viewers questioning a major continuity error but WWE were able could retcon it the next week. True, but most shows wouldn't forget a major plot point from a character arc from less than a year ago. That would be like say, [spoilers for Dexter season 2] {Spoiler}Doakes showing up in season 3 and nobody acknowledging he died. It's like, sure they can't fix that halfway through the season if they f*** it up, but are they really likely to f*** that one up? Maybe nothing that big but there's plenty of shows with issues like this that weren't able to be fixed the moment somebody realised. tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeriesContinuityError
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Post by Brother Nero....Wolfe on Nov 14, 2013 11:24:08 GMT -5
True, but most shows wouldn't forget a major plot point from a character arc from less than a year ago. That would be like say, [spoilers for Dexter season 2] {Spoiler}Doakes showing up in season 3 and nobody acknowledging he died. It's like, sure they can't fix that halfway through the season if they f*** it up, but are they really likely to f*** that one up? Maybe nothing that big but there's plenty of shows with issues like this that weren't able to be fixed the moment somebody realised. tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeriesContinuityErrorYeah, but none of those are as bad as what wrestling gets away with. I mean look at that page, most of them are incredibly harmless things that don't affect the plot at all like Ross from Friends having two different birthdays. Minor continuity errors are one thing, the Show thing was a big character arc that completely contradicted the storyline they were going with. Worse, retconning it made the previous story feel absolutely pointless and reinforce the feeling that there's no point getting invested in any storylines because they have no consequence to the fictional universe they are set in.
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Post by molson5 on Nov 14, 2013 11:56:31 GMT -5
One other thing that makes it hard is that they absolutely can't please everyone, or maybe anyone, when it comes to the distribution of wins and losses. For every win, a guy has to lose. But on these kinds of message boards, the complaints about people not winning enough outnumber complaints about people winning too much about 100 times. I think the only guy that gets the later complaint regularly is Cena. Same with pushes generally. So many complaints about guys not being pushed enough or "utilized correctly", but not usually any analysis about who should be pushed down the card to make room. That's a unique hurdle of wrestling writing that no other medium has to deal with.
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Post by Kevin Hamilton on Nov 14, 2013 12:19:14 GMT -5
By its very nature, wrestling can't really have long form continuity and make any sense, or it'd be even more nonsensical when there were multiple turns from heel to face and back again. That was a less of a problem in territorial days of course, but now, there's no way you could have a guy turn and be aligned with a mortal enemy more than once and it make any form of narrative sense whatever if you tried to keep to some form of continuity of character.
It just won't work that way.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2013 13:57:35 GMT -5
I mentioned it elsewhere... I wouldn't wish a WWE Creative job on my worst enemies. Not just for the criticism, but the actual workload. I mean, name one other TV series that, in an "ideal" situation, would require you to write compelling storylines for 50+ characters at once, all year round. But they don't write story for 50 characters, they write story for like 6 or 7 characters. Then all the rest are stuck facing each other in the same match every week for 2 months.
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Post by sportatorium on Nov 14, 2013 15:41:00 GMT -5
Agreed that everyone won't be pleased. The biggest inherent problem I see is that the top angles/performers write themselves. They can give CM Punk a framework of, "we're going to have you twist straightedge into a cult, give you followers, have you shave their heads & eventually you get our head shaved". He can do the rest.
Conversely, you have tons of talented people who can't talk on the mix well enough to tell a story, so the writers script promos & storylines which come across lousy on TV. Or, you can have the current main event storyline which seems to be anyone with an idea for any wrestler, stick them in the angle.
It shouldn't be this hard, to paraphrase Paul Heyman " heel does something terrible, babyface swears revenge, heel keeps doing terrible things until babyface beats them up, people tune in".
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