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Column: Do It Like a Lady PDF Print E-mail
Written by Kori   
Saturday, 07 November 2009 21:25
Do It Like a Lady
By Kori

Kori has a column, oh noes!  For those of you who don’t know me from Adam, which I suspect is most of you, here I am.  I started watching wrestling in 2004, e-fedding early 2005 and now it’s 2009.  So while I’m no newbie, I wasn’t a part of the mass millennia turn boom of e-wrestling.  And you know what?  I think that gives me a damned good perspective on things.  Two, I’m a born and bred angle fed handler.  That’s right, I prefer angle feds to rp feds.  And I know that to many, angle fedding is still the redheaded stepchild of e-wrestling, which is a shame.  Three, I’m a woman.  Which means I don’t have the testosterone driven dicks about 97% of you have that gives you an undeniable urge at some point in your e-wrestling career to engage in net-thugging.  AKA the greater internet fuckwad theory.

So where to start?  There’s a lot I’ll be covering in this column.  Normally you’ll hear from me twice a month.  If you’re lucky, maybe three times.  Quality over quantity.  For my first topic though, I want to talk about something I’ve gone through personally.

Rejoining e-wrestling after burnout.

We’ve all experienced burnout at one point, some may stick through it and keep going, others take a break.  I’ve burnt out twice. 

Why do we burn out?  There are various reasons, you no longer have interest in the fed you’re in, the fed goes down, you no longer have fun writing for this hobby, etc.  Then there’s “real life.”  This type of burnout is totally unrelated to your desire to write and stems from what’s going on with you in the real world.  You don’t want to be a flake, a no show, etc.  But something happens where you can’t do this anymore.  This has happened to me twice.

Now before some of you go on about “real life” being a shitty excuse or saying it’s lame and that we’re all busy, let me explain.  My examples were places in my life where I was under EXTREME duress, not me using it as the trump card to get out of writing when I didn't feel like it.  The first, I was coming out (yes, I’m a lesbian, and a damned hot one at that, so let’s just clear the air there) and my life was having some major changes.  I needed to sort things out so I stepped back for a few months.  I left an exit segment with the fed I was in and left.  I joined another fed with the warning that I wouldn’t be writing in it for a while until I got my head on again.  I still met with handlers and participated in creating some storylines for when I did return.  Unfortunately, the fedhead seemed to have forgotten my memo and dropped me after a month.  So I stayed out, not wanting to join anything until I was sure I was ready.

I came back, joining a reincarnation of EdW that crashed after five shows.  So I went back to my original fed to write.  I was pumped and fired up again, had my first serious girlfriend, was back in with the e-wrestling boys and was churning out not only my character’s writing, but also doing a lot of articles for the site.  Total elapsed time was five months.  That’s not too bad of a time to stay out and it was pretty easy to get back in. 

Then came my second burnout.  My glorious new Japanese girlfriend turned out to be a raging, abusive psychotic, coupled with the fact my new boss was an even crazier raging abusive psychotic with a gun license.  I’m not going to go into a sob story.  I will say my crazy ex cut me off from everyone, not just internet friends, and I was stuck in hell for a year.  By the time I finally got freed from that crap, e-wrestling was a distant memory.  It stayed a distant memory as I found and met my wife, got a new job, then moved across the country.  Earlier this spring, due to the repeated badgering of someone who shall remain nameless, I finally got suckered back in, and now I’m back and writing and having a great time.
Here’s the catch.  I had been out of the hobby for two years.  In net terms, that’s like two centuries.  The feds I knew back in 2005 had died or changed dramatically.  jOlt was gone, uW, hWo, etc.  Other feds are still open that are on life support and new feds that I’d never heard of were thriving.  Others had re-opened. 

Handlers I’d been friends with had retired.  Hell, I hadn’t used AIM in two years and I had a contact list full of strangers.  Some of you have gotten messages from me asking who the hell you are.  What do you do when you come back and you’re back to being the new kid?  When nobody knows the rep you had or the work you could do?

Now for some of you, if you’re in this position, this might be a g-dsend.  Say you had a shitty rep, that your absence has let people forget.  You get a second chance, a clean slate.  My advice to you?  Don’t fuck it up for the second time.  Because once you go on an ego trip or flake, memories start to come back really fast.  Surely you’ve been able to mature in the years you’ve been gone.

But for those of you that had at least a decent rep, it kinda sucks.  What do you do?  You lose any ego you might have had, suck it up and start making new friends.  Your character that might’ve been great in a fed two years ago is unknown now.  You don’t get bragging rights again until you earn them.  In angle feds, this means you talk to people in your division, get to know them and start working out stories and feuds.  Be willing to take the loss.  Don’t pay attention to the WWR rankings or the e-wrestler of the week.  You need to re-establish yourself.  Make people remember, or educate new people as to exactly what you can do.  If you find yourself on those lists eventually, it’s all gravy.

If you’re serious about this hobby, then you help out.  Offer to write the matches, segments, whatever you can handle.  Don’t overload yourself by any means, but if you can help others out and cover a segment for them, offer to do it.  It’s called building up a good reputation.  Because once people recognize you’re someone they can rely on, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been out.  You’ll be accepted as one of team and back on your way to having fun with your character.

That’s it for this time, next column I’ll be discussing the strange and frustrating and rewarding world of the angle fed.
Last Updated on Saturday, 07 November 2009 21:30