Post by Benjamin Atreyu on Nov 17, 2013 17:17:15 GMT -5
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Benjamin exclaimed. There are a number of things that it never occurs to a person that might happen to them within their lifetime, but the one at the top of the list that you’d never be prepared for, despite what so many theists might believe, is meeting your maker in his living room, “Think about all the shit I’ve had to deal with; death, suffering, insanity, pain, confliction, alcoholism, debauchery, and failure. Now imagine meeting the person responsible for it all and then try telling me you wouldn’t be angry too. The only reason I don’t strangle you right now is because I’m not sure what will happen to me if I do. Would I disappear, would you just imagine me out of existence if I did it?”
“Honestly, I have no clue,” replied the man that stood across the room from Benjamin in almost equal confusion, Jacob Miller-alderman. If you had to sum up this rather unextraordinary individual in only a few words, which wouldn’t be such a difficult endeavor, it might be something along these lines: Caucasian, twenty-one year old fast food worker with a rather out-of-date Mohawk, a love for wrestling, and an almost obsessive fascination with cinema, “it’s not exactly you meet one of your creations in the flesh. I mean, it kind of makes me question everything I know about the universe in general. Think about it; if you were from a different universe, does that mean that my writing would effect it and shape the direction your life would take or does your universe somehow reach into this one and shape the direction my writing takes. This is just amazing. The real tragedy is everyone would think I was crazy…if they didn’t think so to begin with.”
Jacob’s various habits include, but are not limited to; sleeping, eating, daydreaming that McDonald’s burns to the ground, attempting and failing to reform his band that no one really went out of their way to see in the first place, and E-fedding. What is E-fedding you ask (even though most of you reading this will be completely familiar with it and this will just come off as unneeded exposition)? Well, take wrestling, yes that thing with all the gentlemen in speedos grappling each other in a fairly homoerotic fashion. Now, take out all the awesome parts about it (the aforementioned homoerotic display of physicality) and insert text instead and you’ll have a pretty good idea.
Oh, not good enough? Well, then let me go in depth. Take a wrestling fan (such as you or I) and give them a yearning to act out a possible wrestling persona (as they probably do in front of their mirror multiple times a day), now have them realize that they aren’t cut out for such an intense violent activity; they’ll realize the next best thing is to write out their many chair-shot fueled fantasies. Now, why would they write something without feeling the urge to share it with the world (despite the world having never asked for it)? They know they’ll never sell a novel of the sort due to the publishers and the readership not being able to understand their genius, they’ll have to find other means to display their writings, which will inevitably lead them to scouring the internet for a chance to do so. Eventually, said wrestling fan will run into something called an E-fed, which can sometimes be equated to a den of thieves, a room filled with people with a compulsive need to argue, or a short bus.
An E-Fed is a wrestling-based competitive writing site (sometime “competitive” and “writing” will be loose terms, depending who you are talking to). You’ll have you start by creating your character, one you’ve probably been creating your whole life. If this is your first time e-fedding, go ahead and create an over-powered monster who can fly through the air, with conflicting personality traits, an all-finisher-move set, and feel free to name him Death or something equally as ominous and unoriginal (may I suggest Mary-Sue as a possible name?). Over time you will eventually a sort of reasonability that will scale-down your character and create something that might actually exist (though your creativity might still suffer due to the fact that your main influence is, indeed, wrestling).
When you create a character (one where you will spend more time over entrance music than move set) you will be included, every week, on something called a “card”. These “cards” are a sort of weekly assignment where you are forced to face another like-minded competitor. When you find out who your competitor is, it will be up to you to write, what many will refer to as, a RP (also known as a Role Play or “that things that nerds do because the real world is frightening”).
An RP is a short story written either involving or from the perspective of your character where you will use repetitive, inane, and usually unoriginal trash-talk to insult your opponent’s non-existing character in the best way possible. Some of you might move on from the typical trash talk and write incredibly unrealistic stories involving ghosts, jailbreaks, crime, or talk-show host’s murderous sidekicks. Furthermore, some of you might move beyond stories and just post strange rambling manifestos about the world that have no connection to your character or wrestling in all, for that matter. When you finished writing your masterpiece (some of you who feel the need to create five or six characters, it will be six or seven ‘masterpieces’ a week), you will post it in the designated section of whatever forum you’re using (preferably a forum with a host site that will shut down for maintenance …constantly) and there it is in the hands of the judges.
Who are these judges? No one knows. Many theorize it’s a council set-up by the Skull and Bones club to discover the best writers so they can recruit them and expand their ever-growing grasp over the world, but I have my doubts. Whoever they might be, their job is to judge who wrote the best RP in the match-up and give them the win (this is often easier than most think since it is common for half the roster to not RP or to write a cop-out one for the sake of showing up, as yours truly has been known to do from time to time). When the winners are decided and the matches are written, the results will go up, and that’s when the real fun begins.
See, the e-fed isn’t just a place to post ridiculous stories about your made-up character, it is also a sprawling metropolis of human interaction. These forums will usually have a space for out-of-character posts where you can post about sports (like wrestling), your favorite shows (like wresting), about what pisses you off (like wrestling), or start pointless flame wars for no reason that will create drama in areas that it doesn’t need to be because some invest a bit too much into this collection of lights flashing in their faces. When the results go up, then comes to chance for reactions, feedback, and rejoicing. If you win, you can gloat about it while lying to your opponent that it was at least a close match up, eventually drinking yourself to sleep before work the next day. If you lose, you can complain to everyone by airing your grievances openly in the forum, telling everyone they suck, yell about how its all rigged, quit, and then drink yourself to sleep before work the next day. It’s a good time had by all.
It doesn’t just stop in the forum though. Many E-feds will have chat rooms too where many of its members can get together and continue many of the forum-related activities such as; fighting over wins/losses, causing unnecessary drama over ‘cliques’, pretending to be other people, and creating a fictional hierarchy that depends solely on how long you’ve been there. New guys will come in and be obnoxious, be too ‘in character’, and constantly complain about being picked on while the veterans will be grumpy, complain about all the new people, and start conspiracies about how everyone has it in for them, but both sides will be equal parts delusional and humorless. Now that you’ve been introduced to the world of E-Fedding and its promising landscape, lets continue the story already in progress.
“Think of the possibilities,” Jacob started up again, “I could make something even bigger, stronger, and smarter and have it fall through whatever temporal rift you stumbled into and then I WILL BE UNSTOPPABLE!”
“Will you shut up,” Benjamin interrupted, “Take a look at the big picture here. The reason every shitty thing has happened to me is because of you.”
“Well, in my defense, you aren’t supposed to be real,” Jacob tried to come back with meagerly, “I didn’t just want you to be some one-dimensional character that just threw money everywhere and made dick jokes. I did that bit and I kept running out of ideas, so I figured the next best thing would be to develop you.”
Benjamin was taken back, “So, for the sake of making me ‘interesting’, you destroyed my life? You killed my father when I was nineteen, you made my mother an alcoholic, and my brother a recluse for the sake of making me interesting? I lost my fucking company to a goddamn asshole for your stupid stories. I’ve been fighting tooth and nail to get my life in order and your just keep fucking me over.”
“Look it isn’t that simple,” Jacob spoke as he felt himself losing this argument, “if I didn’t give you confliction and trials, no one would want to read them and you would keep losing, you wouldn’t have the tag-titles right now.”
“Oh, well I guess that makes it all worth it,” Benjamin’s words were dripping with sarcasm, “if I keep winning these meaningless matches and hold onto gold, it’ll be worth my life being in ruins. Thank you, glorious master, for destroying everything I love for the sake of a win/loss record, you fucking asshole!”
“How was I supposed to know-“
“…Blake Updegraff…”
“What?”
“YOU FUCKER!” Benjamin yelled at the top of his lungs, “You’re the reason I betrayed the one person who cared enough to help my career when I was hardly making it past the mid-card. We were business partners, we were best friends, he did everything he could to advance my career and you forced me to attack him for the sake of character development. HE WON’T TALK TO ME! Do you understand how much that has fucked with me?”
“Well, at least you’ve got a career, accomplishments, and money,” Jacob retaliated, “I could have easily made you poor, starving, and dying without a single saving grace in sight! The way I see it, you got lucky you self-indulgent prick! I’m working as a grill cook at McDonalds making shit money as I have to constantly deal with idiot teens who can barely perform the simplest task without complaining like a bunch of sniveling babies. I’m struggling to help pay rent, bills, and groceries. At least you’re an interesting wresting superstar in your world. I just sit on my ass all day when I’m at home and write these shitty stories about assholes like you. At least you’re getting over your problems and in a successful tag-team. I’ve social anxiety, I’m still single, and every time I think I’ve got an opening to get out of this shit, I get the rug pulled out from under me. No one is going to write me out of this shit. No one is going to develop my character into a better or stronger person. For all I know I’ll always be stuck here.”
“How do I know I won’t be stuck where I am?”
“Because, I need to keep you developing to keep you going so I don’t end up stagnant.”
“When is the conclusion going to come?” Benjamin sat down, noticeably calmer than a few moments before, “I’ve been fighting and fighting, but nothing is happening besides more problems. I need some sort of point A to Point B story.”
“You’re my longest running character,” Jacob rose to his feet with a glass in his hand walking towards the kitchen, stopping in the doorway and looking back at Benjamin, “it’s hard to let go of something like that. I mean, that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it. I’ve been considering trying to give you one more good run before moving onto a new character, but I’m not sure where to go. I want to go for the world title again, but the last time I got my shot I freaked out and you went to Japan for a string of a couple months.”
“I remember, I lost to Waylon and he ended up getting the title…” Benjamin reminisced for a moment, “well, let’s say I get my last good run, you leave my story in a nice beach where I live out the rest of my years in comfort; who do you go with next?”
“…Seth Dominics,” Jacob mumbled.
“That idiot?!” Benjamin raised his eye brow, “The guy is incapable of going a week without getting chased by the cops for some stupid reason. His best friend is a cardboard box! Not to mention he is one of the most obnoxious human beings I’ve ever met in my life and now you’re going to tell me that not only did you create him, but you want to try and have him compete again? Remember how Derek Stone nearly killed him just for being so incredibly annoying…wait, did you make Derek Stone too?”
“Yeah, he was kind of one of my first, about a year before I came up with you,” Jacob replied, “I was kind of an angry kid at the time, kind of still am, and I used him to get a lot of my frustrations out by writing a bunch of loud, cathartic bullshit about wanting to destroy the world and crap like that. Eventually, just like most of my earlier guys, I just kept running out of ideas and moved on. Derek became a side character I bring in every once in a while.”
“Rob Hawk? Kurt Stone? Lloyd Matthews? All you?” Benjamin asked.
“Yeah, unfortunately,” Jacob cringed as each name came up, “Not exactly the kind of history I was hoping to delve back into. Rob Hawk and Kurt Stone were my first stab at the whole thing. A face tag-team with no real character and a whole bunch of stupid catch phrases. That was actually the last time I made a face character. Lloyd Matthews was the only tweener I ever made and it occurred to me really quickly that I have no idea what a tweener is supposed to do. It was kind of like saying ‘I don’t want to be a heel ALL the time, but being a face isn’t my bag either’. I bring him every once in a while when I need a character to do something. Consider yourself lucky, by the way, because I nearly ended his career with a gunshot to the head.”
“That pretty fucked up,” Benjamin paused, “…Well, then why did you create me?”
“Hmm?”
“If Hawk and Stone were your faces, Matthews was your tweener, Seth is for comedy, and Derek Stone was for catharsis, then what the hell was I made for?”
“Honestly? The rich just made for great heels.”
“So, I was just supposed to be a bad guy in your world? Fantastic,” Benjamin rolled his eyes.
Jacob sighed as he could sense the displeasure emanating from his creation. He never thought he would have to explain this kind of stuff to a person directly out of his imagination, “At first, that was the case. I had you come out, gloat about being rich, the crowd would boo, and then wait for the next week to do it all over again. Eventually, I figured that’s all just buffer and filler, nothing was really gained that way. I decided to flesh you out, but not just to make you interesting. I made you smarter, I made you more in depth, and I made you with more emotions. I gave you a mission, to make the public smarter by showing it what it’s been missing. The crowd still boos you, but that’s how it goes for everyone who tries to show the world the light of a possible future. I mean, a bit of me is inside your head, because sometimes that’s how I feel. Not to sounds like I’m some great philosopher, but I’ll sit there and want to pull my hair out of my head when I watch how passive and stupid people become when they choose to indulge only in the familiar elements of the world instead of trying to explore what the rest of the world has to offer.”
“So, I’m like a megaphone for you?”
“No, that’s not exactly it.”
“Then, please, elaborate.”
“Look,” Jacob thought for a moment as Benjamin sat there and waited for his response, “I made you because I felt like I would never be able to get my voice out there for the world to hear and if I did I feared that people would be irrational enough and violent enough that they might send me death threats. So, there you come in. You are my fantasy of having a stage to speak my mind. You have a world where millions of people watch you each week and you get to speak your mind. You would get to do what I want to do, but with flash and pizazz. You would do it while winning matches, forming dominant stables, and getting titles. The best I would get is to hide it cleverly in some novel that I may or may not ever finish.”
With that, Jacob turned around and continued on his path to the kitchen. His mind was lost in the thoughts of what could possibly be true; that all these characters were living in separate reality where his writings affected the outcome of their lives. All those characters, lost in their suffering as he wrote carelessly without a thought of the consequences. It all seemed so surreal. What if his world was the same thing; simply a creation of a vastly more cruel and unforgiving writer, who found the suffering of fictional beings to be amusing and entertaining? The fantasies of an incredibly untalented writer. The idea sent a chill down Jacob’s spine.
You did that to him. His thoughts rang out so loudly and clear it filled the pit of his stomach with a most violent sense of anxiety. This world is waving back and forth in the wind waiting to sleep or burn by you simple pounding your fingers on a keyboard. Ended careers, broken bones, broken homes, shattered sanities, lost hope, downward spirals, lives careening out of control, DEAD FAMILY, DEAD DREAMS, FORGOTTEN NAMES!…death…
Death, such a cold word, but one that marks the effective end of most of the characters he made. Not in e-fedding, but also in other stories; horror, thrillers, sci-fi, mysteries, etc. etc. etc. He once wrote a short story about a man, having been shot through the chest, begging for his life. A demon, having heard his call, appears and tears out his heart, claiming ‘if your heart is no longer in your body, it can beat no closer to death.’ The man was granted immortality, a miracle many of us wish for, something almost forgiving in a story of violence and bloodshed, but the story ends with the main character receiving a bullet to the head, destroying many of the brain’s functions, leaving the character as a thoughtless, senseless, hopeless vegetable sitting in darkness as he waits for death to take him, but it never does.
Jacob wrote that. It was a thought that sat was in his head and transferred down onto paper, and thus from it, a world was formed where a man lies for eternity, waiting for mercy. The guilt shot through his body and racked his brain. It put his glass on the counter and quietly slid to the ground, his back against the cupboards he sat there in the kitchen, feeling breath leave his body, but being unable to retrieve it. The world felt like it was closing in on him. YOU He could feel the soreness of his anxiety as he held the screams back in his throat. DID His arms and legs felt weak, almost shaking as he tried to hold them close to himself, almost of fear of them ripping off his body and leaving him there. THIS Nothing seemed real, but his thoughts seemed all too real, as if being whispered into his ear from an external party instead of sitting safely in his head. TO[/b] He suddenly felt childish in the grand scheme of all of existence; if it was just his world, than his happiness was dependent on himself, but the idea of a world dependent upon the creativity of this world meant that he was responsible for all these characters he created and thus he was a small immature puppeteer, destroying the world like an angry boy denied his favorite toy. THEM
There is a chirp, one right outside the window in the kitchen. A quickly little melody springs forth as the chirping continues and sudden it reaches Jacob’s ears, pulling him back into the world, away from his rising turmoil. His eyes dart over and he sees a bird sitting on a tree branch that sits right outside as it gently waves in the wind. There is something that Jacob had forgotten as he scrambled to understand the information that was handed to him; with all the suffering that he goes through, there is also beauty. With all the pain and loss he suffers from, something grand can immerge that can make it all truly worth it. It dawns on him, just because the story has conflict, does not mean it must be devoid of beauty. This story does not have to be an ugly thing that serves no purpose but to depress the reader and destroys their optimism. He can control where it all goes, how it all feels, how it all works, and thus he has the power to turn his wrongs into rights with the simple power of will. He wrote the story, no matter of win, lose or draw, he chose where it went next. Goddamn it, it was HIS story!
In his joking around, Benjamin had been right. At the end of all of it, Jacob could write it out that Benjamin could end up on a beach where the worries of the world could not reach him, he could live happily, he could find his conclusion. Benjamin had spent years being trampled on by different story-lines, different wrestlers, and even by Jacob when he was in a bad enough mood, the man deserved better than what he was getting and it was about time something was done about it.
Jacob rose to his feet and took a deep breath to pull himself back together. He grabbed the class filled it up with water as his mind continued to reassemble itself. He gulped it down, letting the cool liquid rush down his throat in waves. He put the glass in the sink and turned around, ready to face his creation once more like Dr. Frankenstein coming over the horror of the thing he put together in his dark and dreary lab.
“Dude!” as Jacob walked back into the living room his thoughts of reinvigorated possibilities dissolved as he saw Benjamin on his computer, his thoughts quickly filled with how he was going to hit him with a car as soon as he got him back into his own world, “that’s my computer.”
“Well, if we are going to be technical, I kind of live in it, so its like my house,” Benjamin replied, still going through the confines of the machine, “you were out there for a while, so I decided to check my e-mail, but then I remember I wouldn’t have any since I technically don’t exist. Then I came across the WCF website and decided to take a look at it what it was like in your world, a lot better if I may add, and that’s when I came across the ‘RP’ section. So…what the fuck was with that last one? Didn’t have me in it, not really anyways.”
“Well, to be honest, I’m not exactly sure what the fuck it was,” Jacob sat in the recliner across from Benjamin, “I just kind of started typing some rambling garbage about words and how they’re a virus and it went from there. I mean, we did end up winning that week, but our opponents didn’t really do anything, so it was by default.”
“Well, we are facing The Thickness this week. I hope you have something better than that.”
“I’ve got nothing, just a bunch of ideas that go nowhere.”
“You worried?”
“Yeah,” Jacob replied as he leaned back, looking up at the ceiling, “I mean, I’ve beaten Odin before and I think I could take him again, but Bobby Cairo scares the shit out of me. I’ve never faced him before and everyone talks about how great he is. If I don’t think of something, we’re gonna lose those titles for sure.”
“Well, what about Waylon, does he have anything planned?”
“Yeah, its going to be…actually, never mind. If you haven’t gone through it yet, you’ll know when it happens. It’s some crazy shit, man.” (See “The Gang Goes On an Adventure, or Dead Celebrities” by Waylon Cash for more information, its quite the educational read.)
“So, that’s it, hope his is good enough?”
“No, I’ll come up with something last minute like I always do. It might not be great, but its better than nothing. That’s the kind of lousy writer I am.”
“Well, if lost to Zombie McMorris in one of my first matches in this company, I can’t exactly contradict you there.”
“Hey, that was different, it was this whole…”
“Yes?”
“…never mind…”
Benjamin Atreyu continued to roam through Jacob’s computer, “Hey, who is Bailey Jay and why do you keep writing her fan letters?”
“What?!?” Jacob leans forward, his eyes opened wide, “ITS NO ONE! DEFINITELY NOT A SHEMALE PORN STAR OR ANYTHING! HAHAHAHAHA!” Jacob slams the laptop shut and pulls it away from Benjamin. “Either way, we need to focus. Look, haven’t been the greatest…creator…I know that, but if it means anything, I can change that. I can’t promise there won’t be hurdles or tribulations, but I can give you definite progress and there will be a point A to point B from now on. I can’t just keep putting you in an endless mess just because I’m in one. I realized no one is going to want to read the continual downfall of some asshole written by a know-nothing twenty-one year old who works in fast food. Its time you actually started getting somewhere, especially since you actually have some sort of gold that shows your dominance in this company.”
“I can live with that,” Benjamin felt a bit more at ease knowing that he wasn’t going to be some kid’s punching bag, “What I’m really worried about is making sure we keep those titles. Odin and Cairo may both be good wrestlers, but think about it, people who name their tag-team “The Thickness” isn’t going to have the kind of drive and passion that we do. We fight for change, we fight for progress, we fight no matter how much everyone pushes against us. This is the job of a revolutionary; firing the first bullet and being the last one to surrender. Who is Gable and Waylon written under?”
“My brothers.”
“Then this isn’t just some team thrown together for shits and giggles, this is a cohesive unit that knows itself in and out. This isn’t just a committee, this is blood and Odin, with all his strength behind him, and Cairo, with all his smarts behind him, aren’t going to stop that. Even if they manage to get the titles, you need to make it where S-PAC has the last laugh in the end by making sure that your reign and fight to keep those titles will outshine anything they do with them. Legends aren’t made by being given the ball and keeping it, they are made by taking the ball and running with it as hard as they can.”
“Right, make it so people think S-PAC when they think the tag-titles, even when they don’t have them.”
“Exactly,” Benjamin smiled as, for the first time, he finally felt on the same page with the closest thing he could call a God of any sort, “because, as Tom Joad says in Grapes of Wrath, the bit about everyone sharing a soul, our fight is for all those who want to see change. Who are tired of people like The Thickness ruining all the progress that could be made. We share our soul with those people. Whenever a scientist is shouted down for voicing a theory that is seen as heresy…”
“…I’ll be there.”
“Whenever a guerrilla fighter is shot down trying to destroy tyranny and make his country into something better…”
“…I’ll be there.”
“Whenever a man is oppressed and strung up by a mob for speaking out against ideas that cause recession and indulgence in culture…”
“…I’ll be there.”
“I’ll be there in the way guys yell when they are being silence.”
“I’ll be there in the way a man rests when a barrier is finally broken down.”
“And when people can think freely living in a world they built without having to bow to the thoughtless or scared.”
“I’ll be there too…” the both of them spoke at the same time. Benjamin turns to look at Jacob, but all he sees is…
Whiteness…
The whole room has dissolved into a blank canvas, empty of life, color, or substance. The world was gone…Jacob’s world was gone. Suddenly, a falling sensation over comes Benjamin as he feels himself twisting around in this white existence. Benjamin looks down and sees a black spot far below him slowly growing in size, it takes him a moment, but he suddenly realizes that the black dot is actually the ground and that he is being hurled towards it at incredible speeds. When the black seems to engulf the white Benjamin feels himself collide with it and his jostled awake, finding himself laying on the wooden paneled floor of his own bedroom. He looks around, disoriented for a moment as he regains his bearings, his eyes darting around the room as he gets to his feet. He looks out the window and sees the sun peeking over the horizon, shining its light across the landscape, but instead of seeing a world of thoughtless mouth-breathers, hate-mongers, sister-fuckers, and Sarah Twilight, he sees the sun lighting his path way to a world filled with opportunity to where none of those previously mentioned things exist.
“Alright Odin and Bobby, I’m coming for you fuckers. This either ends with S-PAC titles on our shoulders, or my blood over the titles.”
-.-.-
“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.” –Albert Einstein
“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” –Pablo Picasso
“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.” –Charles Dickens
“Honestly, I have no clue,” replied the man that stood across the room from Benjamin in almost equal confusion, Jacob Miller-alderman. If you had to sum up this rather unextraordinary individual in only a few words, which wouldn’t be such a difficult endeavor, it might be something along these lines: Caucasian, twenty-one year old fast food worker with a rather out-of-date Mohawk, a love for wrestling, and an almost obsessive fascination with cinema, “it’s not exactly you meet one of your creations in the flesh. I mean, it kind of makes me question everything I know about the universe in general. Think about it; if you were from a different universe, does that mean that my writing would effect it and shape the direction your life would take or does your universe somehow reach into this one and shape the direction my writing takes. This is just amazing. The real tragedy is everyone would think I was crazy…if they didn’t think so to begin with.”
Jacob’s various habits include, but are not limited to; sleeping, eating, daydreaming that McDonald’s burns to the ground, attempting and failing to reform his band that no one really went out of their way to see in the first place, and E-fedding. What is E-fedding you ask (even though most of you reading this will be completely familiar with it and this will just come off as unneeded exposition)? Well, take wrestling, yes that thing with all the gentlemen in speedos grappling each other in a fairly homoerotic fashion. Now, take out all the awesome parts about it (the aforementioned homoerotic display of physicality) and insert text instead and you’ll have a pretty good idea.
Oh, not good enough? Well, then let me go in depth. Take a wrestling fan (such as you or I) and give them a yearning to act out a possible wrestling persona (as they probably do in front of their mirror multiple times a day), now have them realize that they aren’t cut out for such an intense violent activity; they’ll realize the next best thing is to write out their many chair-shot fueled fantasies. Now, why would they write something without feeling the urge to share it with the world (despite the world having never asked for it)? They know they’ll never sell a novel of the sort due to the publishers and the readership not being able to understand their genius, they’ll have to find other means to display their writings, which will inevitably lead them to scouring the internet for a chance to do so. Eventually, said wrestling fan will run into something called an E-fed, which can sometimes be equated to a den of thieves, a room filled with people with a compulsive need to argue, or a short bus.
An E-Fed is a wrestling-based competitive writing site (sometime “competitive” and “writing” will be loose terms, depending who you are talking to). You’ll have you start by creating your character, one you’ve probably been creating your whole life. If this is your first time e-fedding, go ahead and create an over-powered monster who can fly through the air, with conflicting personality traits, an all-finisher-move set, and feel free to name him Death or something equally as ominous and unoriginal (may I suggest Mary-Sue as a possible name?). Over time you will eventually a sort of reasonability that will scale-down your character and create something that might actually exist (though your creativity might still suffer due to the fact that your main influence is, indeed, wrestling).
When you create a character (one where you will spend more time over entrance music than move set) you will be included, every week, on something called a “card”. These “cards” are a sort of weekly assignment where you are forced to face another like-minded competitor. When you find out who your competitor is, it will be up to you to write, what many will refer to as, a RP (also known as a Role Play or “that things that nerds do because the real world is frightening”).
An RP is a short story written either involving or from the perspective of your character where you will use repetitive, inane, and usually unoriginal trash-talk to insult your opponent’s non-existing character in the best way possible. Some of you might move on from the typical trash talk and write incredibly unrealistic stories involving ghosts, jailbreaks, crime, or talk-show host’s murderous sidekicks. Furthermore, some of you might move beyond stories and just post strange rambling manifestos about the world that have no connection to your character or wrestling in all, for that matter. When you finished writing your masterpiece (some of you who feel the need to create five or six characters, it will be six or seven ‘masterpieces’ a week), you will post it in the designated section of whatever forum you’re using (preferably a forum with a host site that will shut down for maintenance …constantly) and there it is in the hands of the judges.
Who are these judges? No one knows. Many theorize it’s a council set-up by the Skull and Bones club to discover the best writers so they can recruit them and expand their ever-growing grasp over the world, but I have my doubts. Whoever they might be, their job is to judge who wrote the best RP in the match-up and give them the win (this is often easier than most think since it is common for half the roster to not RP or to write a cop-out one for the sake of showing up, as yours truly has been known to do from time to time). When the winners are decided and the matches are written, the results will go up, and that’s when the real fun begins.
See, the e-fed isn’t just a place to post ridiculous stories about your made-up character, it is also a sprawling metropolis of human interaction. These forums will usually have a space for out-of-character posts where you can post about sports (like wrestling), your favorite shows (like wresting), about what pisses you off (like wrestling), or start pointless flame wars for no reason that will create drama in areas that it doesn’t need to be because some invest a bit too much into this collection of lights flashing in their faces. When the results go up, then comes to chance for reactions, feedback, and rejoicing. If you win, you can gloat about it while lying to your opponent that it was at least a close match up, eventually drinking yourself to sleep before work the next day. If you lose, you can complain to everyone by airing your grievances openly in the forum, telling everyone they suck, yell about how its all rigged, quit, and then drink yourself to sleep before work the next day. It’s a good time had by all.
It doesn’t just stop in the forum though. Many E-feds will have chat rooms too where many of its members can get together and continue many of the forum-related activities such as; fighting over wins/losses, causing unnecessary drama over ‘cliques’, pretending to be other people, and creating a fictional hierarchy that depends solely on how long you’ve been there. New guys will come in and be obnoxious, be too ‘in character’, and constantly complain about being picked on while the veterans will be grumpy, complain about all the new people, and start conspiracies about how everyone has it in for them, but both sides will be equal parts delusional and humorless. Now that you’ve been introduced to the world of E-Fedding and its promising landscape, lets continue the story already in progress.
“Think of the possibilities,” Jacob started up again, “I could make something even bigger, stronger, and smarter and have it fall through whatever temporal rift you stumbled into and then I WILL BE UNSTOPPABLE!”
“Will you shut up,” Benjamin interrupted, “Take a look at the big picture here. The reason every shitty thing has happened to me is because of you.”
“Well, in my defense, you aren’t supposed to be real,” Jacob tried to come back with meagerly, “I didn’t just want you to be some one-dimensional character that just threw money everywhere and made dick jokes. I did that bit and I kept running out of ideas, so I figured the next best thing would be to develop you.”
Benjamin was taken back, “So, for the sake of making me ‘interesting’, you destroyed my life? You killed my father when I was nineteen, you made my mother an alcoholic, and my brother a recluse for the sake of making me interesting? I lost my fucking company to a goddamn asshole for your stupid stories. I’ve been fighting tooth and nail to get my life in order and your just keep fucking me over.”
“Look it isn’t that simple,” Jacob spoke as he felt himself losing this argument, “if I didn’t give you confliction and trials, no one would want to read them and you would keep losing, you wouldn’t have the tag-titles right now.”
“Oh, well I guess that makes it all worth it,” Benjamin’s words were dripping with sarcasm, “if I keep winning these meaningless matches and hold onto gold, it’ll be worth my life being in ruins. Thank you, glorious master, for destroying everything I love for the sake of a win/loss record, you fucking asshole!”
“How was I supposed to know-“
“…Blake Updegraff…”
“What?”
“YOU FUCKER!” Benjamin yelled at the top of his lungs, “You’re the reason I betrayed the one person who cared enough to help my career when I was hardly making it past the mid-card. We were business partners, we were best friends, he did everything he could to advance my career and you forced me to attack him for the sake of character development. HE WON’T TALK TO ME! Do you understand how much that has fucked with me?”
“Well, at least you’ve got a career, accomplishments, and money,” Jacob retaliated, “I could have easily made you poor, starving, and dying without a single saving grace in sight! The way I see it, you got lucky you self-indulgent prick! I’m working as a grill cook at McDonalds making shit money as I have to constantly deal with idiot teens who can barely perform the simplest task without complaining like a bunch of sniveling babies. I’m struggling to help pay rent, bills, and groceries. At least you’re an interesting wresting superstar in your world. I just sit on my ass all day when I’m at home and write these shitty stories about assholes like you. At least you’re getting over your problems and in a successful tag-team. I’ve social anxiety, I’m still single, and every time I think I’ve got an opening to get out of this shit, I get the rug pulled out from under me. No one is going to write me out of this shit. No one is going to develop my character into a better or stronger person. For all I know I’ll always be stuck here.”
“How do I know I won’t be stuck where I am?”
“Because, I need to keep you developing to keep you going so I don’t end up stagnant.”
“When is the conclusion going to come?” Benjamin sat down, noticeably calmer than a few moments before, “I’ve been fighting and fighting, but nothing is happening besides more problems. I need some sort of point A to Point B story.”
“You’re my longest running character,” Jacob rose to his feet with a glass in his hand walking towards the kitchen, stopping in the doorway and looking back at Benjamin, “it’s hard to let go of something like that. I mean, that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it. I’ve been considering trying to give you one more good run before moving onto a new character, but I’m not sure where to go. I want to go for the world title again, but the last time I got my shot I freaked out and you went to Japan for a string of a couple months.”
“I remember, I lost to Waylon and he ended up getting the title…” Benjamin reminisced for a moment, “well, let’s say I get my last good run, you leave my story in a nice beach where I live out the rest of my years in comfort; who do you go with next?”
“…Seth Dominics,” Jacob mumbled.
“That idiot?!” Benjamin raised his eye brow, “The guy is incapable of going a week without getting chased by the cops for some stupid reason. His best friend is a cardboard box! Not to mention he is one of the most obnoxious human beings I’ve ever met in my life and now you’re going to tell me that not only did you create him, but you want to try and have him compete again? Remember how Derek Stone nearly killed him just for being so incredibly annoying…wait, did you make Derek Stone too?”
“Yeah, he was kind of one of my first, about a year before I came up with you,” Jacob replied, “I was kind of an angry kid at the time, kind of still am, and I used him to get a lot of my frustrations out by writing a bunch of loud, cathartic bullshit about wanting to destroy the world and crap like that. Eventually, just like most of my earlier guys, I just kept running out of ideas and moved on. Derek became a side character I bring in every once in a while.”
“Rob Hawk? Kurt Stone? Lloyd Matthews? All you?” Benjamin asked.
“Yeah, unfortunately,” Jacob cringed as each name came up, “Not exactly the kind of history I was hoping to delve back into. Rob Hawk and Kurt Stone were my first stab at the whole thing. A face tag-team with no real character and a whole bunch of stupid catch phrases. That was actually the last time I made a face character. Lloyd Matthews was the only tweener I ever made and it occurred to me really quickly that I have no idea what a tweener is supposed to do. It was kind of like saying ‘I don’t want to be a heel ALL the time, but being a face isn’t my bag either’. I bring him every once in a while when I need a character to do something. Consider yourself lucky, by the way, because I nearly ended his career with a gunshot to the head.”
“That pretty fucked up,” Benjamin paused, “…Well, then why did you create me?”
“Hmm?”
“If Hawk and Stone were your faces, Matthews was your tweener, Seth is for comedy, and Derek Stone was for catharsis, then what the hell was I made for?”
“Honestly? The rich just made for great heels.”
“So, I was just supposed to be a bad guy in your world? Fantastic,” Benjamin rolled his eyes.
Jacob sighed as he could sense the displeasure emanating from his creation. He never thought he would have to explain this kind of stuff to a person directly out of his imagination, “At first, that was the case. I had you come out, gloat about being rich, the crowd would boo, and then wait for the next week to do it all over again. Eventually, I figured that’s all just buffer and filler, nothing was really gained that way. I decided to flesh you out, but not just to make you interesting. I made you smarter, I made you more in depth, and I made you with more emotions. I gave you a mission, to make the public smarter by showing it what it’s been missing. The crowd still boos you, but that’s how it goes for everyone who tries to show the world the light of a possible future. I mean, a bit of me is inside your head, because sometimes that’s how I feel. Not to sounds like I’m some great philosopher, but I’ll sit there and want to pull my hair out of my head when I watch how passive and stupid people become when they choose to indulge only in the familiar elements of the world instead of trying to explore what the rest of the world has to offer.”
“So, I’m like a megaphone for you?”
“No, that’s not exactly it.”
“Then, please, elaborate.”
“Look,” Jacob thought for a moment as Benjamin sat there and waited for his response, “I made you because I felt like I would never be able to get my voice out there for the world to hear and if I did I feared that people would be irrational enough and violent enough that they might send me death threats. So, there you come in. You are my fantasy of having a stage to speak my mind. You have a world where millions of people watch you each week and you get to speak your mind. You would get to do what I want to do, but with flash and pizazz. You would do it while winning matches, forming dominant stables, and getting titles. The best I would get is to hide it cleverly in some novel that I may or may not ever finish.”
With that, Jacob turned around and continued on his path to the kitchen. His mind was lost in the thoughts of what could possibly be true; that all these characters were living in separate reality where his writings affected the outcome of their lives. All those characters, lost in their suffering as he wrote carelessly without a thought of the consequences. It all seemed so surreal. What if his world was the same thing; simply a creation of a vastly more cruel and unforgiving writer, who found the suffering of fictional beings to be amusing and entertaining? The fantasies of an incredibly untalented writer. The idea sent a chill down Jacob’s spine.
You did that to him. His thoughts rang out so loudly and clear it filled the pit of his stomach with a most violent sense of anxiety. This world is waving back and forth in the wind waiting to sleep or burn by you simple pounding your fingers on a keyboard. Ended careers, broken bones, broken homes, shattered sanities, lost hope, downward spirals, lives careening out of control, DEAD FAMILY, DEAD DREAMS, FORGOTTEN NAMES!…death…
Death, such a cold word, but one that marks the effective end of most of the characters he made. Not in e-fedding, but also in other stories; horror, thrillers, sci-fi, mysteries, etc. etc. etc. He once wrote a short story about a man, having been shot through the chest, begging for his life. A demon, having heard his call, appears and tears out his heart, claiming ‘if your heart is no longer in your body, it can beat no closer to death.’ The man was granted immortality, a miracle many of us wish for, something almost forgiving in a story of violence and bloodshed, but the story ends with the main character receiving a bullet to the head, destroying many of the brain’s functions, leaving the character as a thoughtless, senseless, hopeless vegetable sitting in darkness as he waits for death to take him, but it never does.
Jacob wrote that. It was a thought that sat was in his head and transferred down onto paper, and thus from it, a world was formed where a man lies for eternity, waiting for mercy. The guilt shot through his body and racked his brain. It put his glass on the counter and quietly slid to the ground, his back against the cupboards he sat there in the kitchen, feeling breath leave his body, but being unable to retrieve it. The world felt like it was closing in on him. YOU He could feel the soreness of his anxiety as he held the screams back in his throat. DID His arms and legs felt weak, almost shaking as he tried to hold them close to himself, almost of fear of them ripping off his body and leaving him there. THIS Nothing seemed real, but his thoughts seemed all too real, as if being whispered into his ear from an external party instead of sitting safely in his head. TO[/b] He suddenly felt childish in the grand scheme of all of existence; if it was just his world, than his happiness was dependent on himself, but the idea of a world dependent upon the creativity of this world meant that he was responsible for all these characters he created and thus he was a small immature puppeteer, destroying the world like an angry boy denied his favorite toy. THEM
There is a chirp, one right outside the window in the kitchen. A quickly little melody springs forth as the chirping continues and sudden it reaches Jacob’s ears, pulling him back into the world, away from his rising turmoil. His eyes dart over and he sees a bird sitting on a tree branch that sits right outside as it gently waves in the wind. There is something that Jacob had forgotten as he scrambled to understand the information that was handed to him; with all the suffering that he goes through, there is also beauty. With all the pain and loss he suffers from, something grand can immerge that can make it all truly worth it. It dawns on him, just because the story has conflict, does not mean it must be devoid of beauty. This story does not have to be an ugly thing that serves no purpose but to depress the reader and destroys their optimism. He can control where it all goes, how it all feels, how it all works, and thus he has the power to turn his wrongs into rights with the simple power of will. He wrote the story, no matter of win, lose or draw, he chose where it went next. Goddamn it, it was HIS story!
In his joking around, Benjamin had been right. At the end of all of it, Jacob could write it out that Benjamin could end up on a beach where the worries of the world could not reach him, he could live happily, he could find his conclusion. Benjamin had spent years being trampled on by different story-lines, different wrestlers, and even by Jacob when he was in a bad enough mood, the man deserved better than what he was getting and it was about time something was done about it.
Jacob rose to his feet and took a deep breath to pull himself back together. He grabbed the class filled it up with water as his mind continued to reassemble itself. He gulped it down, letting the cool liquid rush down his throat in waves. He put the glass in the sink and turned around, ready to face his creation once more like Dr. Frankenstein coming over the horror of the thing he put together in his dark and dreary lab.
“Dude!” as Jacob walked back into the living room his thoughts of reinvigorated possibilities dissolved as he saw Benjamin on his computer, his thoughts quickly filled with how he was going to hit him with a car as soon as he got him back into his own world, “that’s my computer.”
“Well, if we are going to be technical, I kind of live in it, so its like my house,” Benjamin replied, still going through the confines of the machine, “you were out there for a while, so I decided to check my e-mail, but then I remember I wouldn’t have any since I technically don’t exist. Then I came across the WCF website and decided to take a look at it what it was like in your world, a lot better if I may add, and that’s when I came across the ‘RP’ section. So…what the fuck was with that last one? Didn’t have me in it, not really anyways.”
“Well, to be honest, I’m not exactly sure what the fuck it was,” Jacob sat in the recliner across from Benjamin, “I just kind of started typing some rambling garbage about words and how they’re a virus and it went from there. I mean, we did end up winning that week, but our opponents didn’t really do anything, so it was by default.”
“Well, we are facing The Thickness this week. I hope you have something better than that.”
“I’ve got nothing, just a bunch of ideas that go nowhere.”
“You worried?”
“Yeah,” Jacob replied as he leaned back, looking up at the ceiling, “I mean, I’ve beaten Odin before and I think I could take him again, but Bobby Cairo scares the shit out of me. I’ve never faced him before and everyone talks about how great he is. If I don’t think of something, we’re gonna lose those titles for sure.”
“Well, what about Waylon, does he have anything planned?”
“Yeah, its going to be…actually, never mind. If you haven’t gone through it yet, you’ll know when it happens. It’s some crazy shit, man.” (See “The Gang Goes On an Adventure, or Dead Celebrities” by Waylon Cash for more information, its quite the educational read.)
“So, that’s it, hope his is good enough?”
“No, I’ll come up with something last minute like I always do. It might not be great, but its better than nothing. That’s the kind of lousy writer I am.”
“Well, if lost to Zombie McMorris in one of my first matches in this company, I can’t exactly contradict you there.”
“Hey, that was different, it was this whole…”
“Yes?”
“…never mind…”
Benjamin Atreyu continued to roam through Jacob’s computer, “Hey, who is Bailey Jay and why do you keep writing her fan letters?”
“What?!?” Jacob leans forward, his eyes opened wide, “ITS NO ONE! DEFINITELY NOT A SHEMALE PORN STAR OR ANYTHING! HAHAHAHAHA!” Jacob slams the laptop shut and pulls it away from Benjamin. “Either way, we need to focus. Look, haven’t been the greatest…creator…I know that, but if it means anything, I can change that. I can’t promise there won’t be hurdles or tribulations, but I can give you definite progress and there will be a point A to point B from now on. I can’t just keep putting you in an endless mess just because I’m in one. I realized no one is going to want to read the continual downfall of some asshole written by a know-nothing twenty-one year old who works in fast food. Its time you actually started getting somewhere, especially since you actually have some sort of gold that shows your dominance in this company.”
“I can live with that,” Benjamin felt a bit more at ease knowing that he wasn’t going to be some kid’s punching bag, “What I’m really worried about is making sure we keep those titles. Odin and Cairo may both be good wrestlers, but think about it, people who name their tag-team “The Thickness” isn’t going to have the kind of drive and passion that we do. We fight for change, we fight for progress, we fight no matter how much everyone pushes against us. This is the job of a revolutionary; firing the first bullet and being the last one to surrender. Who is Gable and Waylon written under?”
“My brothers.”
“Then this isn’t just some team thrown together for shits and giggles, this is a cohesive unit that knows itself in and out. This isn’t just a committee, this is blood and Odin, with all his strength behind him, and Cairo, with all his smarts behind him, aren’t going to stop that. Even if they manage to get the titles, you need to make it where S-PAC has the last laugh in the end by making sure that your reign and fight to keep those titles will outshine anything they do with them. Legends aren’t made by being given the ball and keeping it, they are made by taking the ball and running with it as hard as they can.”
“Right, make it so people think S-PAC when they think the tag-titles, even when they don’t have them.”
“Exactly,” Benjamin smiled as, for the first time, he finally felt on the same page with the closest thing he could call a God of any sort, “because, as Tom Joad says in Grapes of Wrath, the bit about everyone sharing a soul, our fight is for all those who want to see change. Who are tired of people like The Thickness ruining all the progress that could be made. We share our soul with those people. Whenever a scientist is shouted down for voicing a theory that is seen as heresy…”
“…I’ll be there.”
“Whenever a guerrilla fighter is shot down trying to destroy tyranny and make his country into something better…”
“…I’ll be there.”
“Whenever a man is oppressed and strung up by a mob for speaking out against ideas that cause recession and indulgence in culture…”
“…I’ll be there.”
“I’ll be there in the way guys yell when they are being silence.”
“I’ll be there in the way a man rests when a barrier is finally broken down.”
“And when people can think freely living in a world they built without having to bow to the thoughtless or scared.”
“I’ll be there too…” the both of them spoke at the same time. Benjamin turns to look at Jacob, but all he sees is…
Whiteness…
The whole room has dissolved into a blank canvas, empty of life, color, or substance. The world was gone…Jacob’s world was gone. Suddenly, a falling sensation over comes Benjamin as he feels himself twisting around in this white existence. Benjamin looks down and sees a black spot far below him slowly growing in size, it takes him a moment, but he suddenly realizes that the black dot is actually the ground and that he is being hurled towards it at incredible speeds. When the black seems to engulf the white Benjamin feels himself collide with it and his jostled awake, finding himself laying on the wooden paneled floor of his own bedroom. He looks around, disoriented for a moment as he regains his bearings, his eyes darting around the room as he gets to his feet. He looks out the window and sees the sun peeking over the horizon, shining its light across the landscape, but instead of seeing a world of thoughtless mouth-breathers, hate-mongers, sister-fuckers, and Sarah Twilight, he sees the sun lighting his path way to a world filled with opportunity to where none of those previously mentioned things exist.
“Alright Odin and Bobby, I’m coming for you fuckers. This either ends with S-PAC titles on our shoulders, or my blood over the titles.”
-.-.-
“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.” –Albert Einstein
“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” –Pablo Picasso
“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.” –Charles Dickens
