Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2014 14:38:15 GMT -5
Welcome to the debut episode of Inside The Mind. Our first guest is a legend here, on these parts of the boards. He is the longest reigning WFWF World Champion of all time at a total of 367 days... He is Prophet of Ash! (Otherwise known as God).
To start things off, would you mind giving us a little look into the man that is Prophet of Ash?
In what regard?
A little synopsis of who you are and why you come e-fed?
I started with WFWF years ago as an attempt to become a better promo writer for other projects I was working on. Match writing is something that's always come naturally to me to an extent, but promos, especially for many different characters, was something I had problems with for a long time. WFWF was an opportunity, to me, to improve my writing in a "risk free" space. I could get expriemental and it wouldn't effect my "main projects"
You mentioned many different characters, what came to mind when you started writing?
Originally, Obo the Hobo was a crazy gimmick. He was supposed to be more like an early Mankind, deranged, twisted, insane.. Never spoke clearly, slurred words. That lasted all of like two shows, because Percy joined in and we became a tag team. While serious promos were okay, we found we could write comedy and jokes a lot easier and the overall product was better. In regards to "many different characters", that's more in referance to my other projects than here. The only other character I ever did in WFWF was Dead Idol. He was supposed to eventually be revealed as Schneider, which is why he had the mask. I was going to phase out Schneider as a character, push Dead Idol, then lose the mask somehow to show they were always one and the same.
It's evident that you got the knack for writing multiple characters as you finished off your last run with the Decaying Society? Was there an inspiration for them?
I've heard comparisons to The Flock a lot but that was never my intention. When I started writing the Decaying Society angle, I was deeply embedded into Charles Manson stuff. Books, documentaries, his music. I wanted to learn as much as I could about Manson and particularly his life that led up to the murders. Manson surrounded himself with followers to do his dirty work for him, and he mind washed them all. He picked people who were otherwise defective and used their defects to his advantage. That was the primary goal of the Decaying Society, to replicate that in a wrestling perspective.
It came out real well. One man in the Decaying Society was Tommy Staxx. Do you see something in him? What was the reason for you bringing him in?
I loved that by happenstance, he kept losing. He was out matched in his first like, 6 matches. I loved that.
So he was a perfect fit?
I wouldn't say a perfect fit, but he fit the bill for what I wanted. I originally wanted a tag team and a girl. Originally, when I laid it out, it was going to be a tag team and Alexis under Meg's control, but life came first and she had to make an exit, so I adjusted the story to have New Kylie enter. But too many things changed along the way and it got to the point where it was pointless to have New Kylie wrestle
Was the tag team going to be original created characters? Or pre-existing writers on the board?
Pre-existing writers. I approached a couple of people to do it but they all had plans that it'd disrupt.
The reason I wanted a small stable of people underneath me was because it'd make booking to PPVs a lot simplier. Let's say I was facing David Brennan. On week one, the match is announced and he faces someone else. On week two, he faces one of the tag team guys. Week three, he faces the other one, week four it's a tag team match against my underlings and if there's a week five it could be something like a two on one or a six man tag with whoever my tag team is feuding with. It'd make it possible to do a month of matches without ever having the main event touch.
Spoken like a true booker. Reading back, you've written tons of matches for the PPVs, shows and the such. What is your favorite match you have ever written? E-fed or not.
I loved the tables, ladders, chairs, scaffold, cage match I wrote between me and Wayne McGuirk in 2007. It was a great match with the gimmicks and the story we wrote heading into the PPV really came to a head at the conclusion of the match. I'm very fond of the match I wrote against Hutton Brown the first time, because it was one of the first one on one ladder matches I've ever written and I think it came out really well, especially working the hand psycology that we laid out in the weeks leading up to Superbrawl. I think the Double Jeopardy match was one of my better matches and it's unfortunate that it was won by a triple no show. The spot where Hutton got killed off of the top rope through all the plunder was going to happen, win, lose, or draw. If I won the match, that's how he was eliminated. If he beat me in the first fall but didn't go over, I was going to come back out, wipe him out in that way, then give an easy win to either Kyzer or Raider, and if he won, I was going to kill him and then kill either Kyzer or Raider, to set up Schneider/Hutton 3. But since Raider no showed and hasn't been seen since, Hutton announced ahead of time that he was leaving and wouldn't be showing, and Kyzer got ahold of me and said he wouldn't be showing since the other two weren't, I went ahead and wrote the death spot, stole Hutton's elbow pad to set up a match if he ever did return, then did the deal with Raider.
Outside of WFWF, I've written a three way tables, ladders, and chairs match that I'm extremely proud of. It was written in I want to say 2005 or 2006 and it still holds up to the stuff I'm writing today. I wrote a torneo cibernetico, eight on eight elimination match, that was very good and could've been a huge flop but luckily wasn't. I'm very proud of a Wargames match I did, and I recently wrote a one on one match to main event a PPV that was one of the best things I've ever written.
I'm hoping the match I've been writing for me and Drakz at Superbrawl will live up to the expectations that these matches leave.
You truly have a knack for writing sick, but creative, spots in the death style matches. Do you usually try and take the stuff seen from Japan, BJW, and mix it with the American stuff? Is there a European influence mixed in?
My problem is I've seen everything. I don't have cable TV, Netflix or anything like that by choice, so whenever I'm at home, I'm either watching TV shows on DVD, movies, or mostly wrestling. Not just hardcore stuff, but about anything I can get my hands on. I have somewhere in the range of 40,000 wrestling DVDs, so I've literally seen everything or at least it feels like it. So coming up with original spots can sometimes be a challenge because even if it's original to the WFWF, it's something I've seen elsewhere at some point.
For character elements, I've plucked things from a lot of my favorite wrestlers. The Beverly Kills 90210 is Chuck Taylor's Omega Driver. When I added it as a finisher in 2007, no one had seen anything like it. I stole the skewers from Masada and the syringes from Thumbtack Jack. I wanted to do a lot more with syringes in my feud with Kyzer, but he kiboshed a bit of it for judgement. When I come up with really nasty deathmatch spots, a lot of times they're inspired by stuff I've seen in horror movies adapted to wrestling. I love horror movies and have seen hundreds. Horror and gore run hand and hand.
Essentially, you've written the internet's wet dream of the perfect wrestler. Favorite Indy promotion going today?
AIW, Absolute Intense Wrestling out of Ohio. I think they're the best thing going today. They took a lot of the "super match" elements that IWA Mid South used to do in 2004-2005, but haven't killed the territory with over booking. They also don't run from Louisville to Chicago like Ian tried to do, instead staying in a central location and one building in Cleveland. I think they've got a lot better and consistant booking than ROH and they do more of the dream matches that people really want to see than PWG.
I also really like ACW, Anarchy Championship Wrestling, out of Texas, but they suffer from poor DVD distro. They're shows at one point were almost a year behind. Now they're only about five months behind, but it's hard to follow a company's storylines when they are so far behind real time. ACW has the benefit of being so far removed from everywhere else that they have their own roster and guys really don't overlap. The Submission Squad, ACH, Rachel Summerlyn and Jessica James, Scot Summers, and a few guys who really made a name for themselves at the first National Pro Wrestling Day but haven't really broken out otherwise all come from ACW.
Looking back now, you mentioned in the Battleground PPV Card thread that the matches should be written before RPs are due. Do you still stand by that point?
Yes. There is no reason matches can't be turned in before the show roleplay time is up. Then if someone drops the ball, it doesn't hold the entire federation up while someone else writes the match. You write the match to a certain point, then alternate finishes for whoever the winner is. There's very few matches that can't be written beforehand. The big battle royals and the first time match that I booked of Double Jeopardy, and even Double Jeopardy was written beforehand up to just before the first elimination. Then when I found out Hutton was leaving, I wrote the first elimination and the majority of the match with Raider.
Since we covered you favorite matches, what is your favorite RP that you have ever written? Is there another fedder's RP that you consider your favorite?
Mein Kaempfe was one of my favorite things I wrote, for the arching story. It was never supposed to be two roleplays but after people complained about how long "With a Little Help from my Friends" was, I split it in half. I like a With a Little Help From My Friends a lot because it's the best competitive roleplay I've ever written. All of my PPV roleplays since returning have been knockouts, I think, because they had the previous four or five roleplays leading into them.
If you could give one piece of advice to new fedders on how to improve their writing, what would it be?
write backwards. Write the conclusion of whatever your story is first, then write everything that leads up to it. I don't mean write the entire roleplay out, but know all the key points you need to hit with your blow off and set them up. Have things set up four or five roleplays in advance that you can referance back to. Then when you get to your big finish, things look a lot more crisp because you've been telling the exact same story for a cycle of roleplays.
Seeing as you are one of the best to come here, who do you see making a huge impact in the future?
It's hard to say. It's almost impossible to see the way people are going to evolve. The media they consume and how it will effect them. If someone is watching nothing but Family Guy and Three Stooges, they aren't going to evolve well into a serious, dark, brooding character. If someone is watching nothing but Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones, they're going to have a hard time pulling off a hipster gimmick.
Do you have a favorite RPer at the moment? What makes them so special to you?
To be perfectly honest, I've barely read anything since I left. I've had a lot going on professionally that needed my full attention and the little downtime I've had lately, I've been completely burnt out and in no mood to read or write anything. If I had something like an iPad and could read roleplays at work on my breaks, I'd probably get a lot more read around here.
What is your biggest accomplishment in the WFWF? Writing in general?
I'd like to say publishing the works that I've written and turning this writing stuff into something that can pay my bills, but unfortunately Amazon made getting their payments approved so difficult that it was impossible for me to do. I'd say holding the WFWF Heavyweight title for longer than anyone else has in the history of the WFWF would have to take the cake, for WFWF accomplishments. Writing in general it would be getting paid to write. For most of 2011 and 2012, about a year in total, my "real job" was writing for a website that is no longer around. Recaps and reviews of various wrestling and MMA, mostly.
Who is your favorite opponent of all time here in the fed? One fedder that you knew would bring the best out of you and you knew you coud write a great match against.
Kyzer
It's worth pointing out that I answered this question before you were finished typing it. I knew a feud with Kyzer was going to be money. I constantly called him out during my 2007 reign as champion, hoping I could bait him into returning to face me. I called him and Johnny Michaels out. I like Kyzer. I don't like Michaels. I wanted to humiliate Michaels, and I'm disappointed that he left before I could smash him. He was a top guy around WFWF solely because he was the one booking the federation.
If you were promised a match with him, would you take it?
I don't think there would be much reason for us to have another match, unless there was another feud laid out from the bottom up. Certainly not a TV match. We finished a lot of our story with the no rope barbed wire match and then were one of the few feuds in WFWF history to back to back main event PPVs.
In that RP for It's Super Effective, you used some Japanese in there. Is the Japanese wrestling influence the thing that has helped you propel as being able to write storylines?
Not really. Japanese wrestling helped get me involved with a lot of other aspects of Japan. I started watching BJW because a friend gave me a tape of Matsunaga and I was blown away. This was shortly after the CZW/BJW feud had ended, so I could watch a lot of the CZW guys that I was already familiar with, Zandig, Nick Mondo, Nick Gage, The Backseat Boys, in BJW. I started learning Japanese so that I could understand Japanese commentary, but it's sort of branched to other forms of media. I got way into the anime, High School of the Dead, and was watching them subbed before the English release. For anyone wondering, stay FAR AWAY from the OVA, it's not worth it. As a horror fan, I've got into a lot of J-horror too. A Japanese horror called Death Tube is one of the most genuinely frightening movies I've ever seen for it's absolute realism within today's society. Think Hostile empowered by online streaming. When I'm on Youtube, I watch a lot of channels ran by Westerners about Japanese culture, like Sharla in Japan, Rachel & Jun, kanadajin3, and for a while when he was actually updating it, Nick Mondo's personal channel.
Do you take all these types of influences and bring them into your characters. Seeing as you have written Samantha Schneider (@samanthaanarchy) as that kind of girl who references these types of anime, on her Twitter page.
Loosely, Samantha is based on my ex girlfriend. At least elements. Then bits and pieces from my neices too for her immaturity. I also work around a lot of high school kids now, so I get first hand perspective on how to write them. I do write Samantha as liking a lot of the things that I do, but that's because it's almost impossible to write about something that you know nothing about.
Is Schneider just an extension of your real self? Seeing as you have the KMFDM link as well as knowing the different wresting styles.
Schneider is me magnified. I feel like the way Schneider handles his fame, by being a recluse and paying someone else to do all of his work for him outside of what he's famous for, is exactly how I would handle fame. I wouldn't drive anywhere, I wouldn't spend my time doing minor things like making sure the internet bill was paid.. I'd play a lot of video games and stay away from anyone who might bother me. As a whole, I'm disgusted with pop culture for the most part and the obsessions with stalking celebrities and I feel like if I was famous on a worldwide scale, I'd be the type to just knock the piss out of someone shoving a camera in my face when I was trying to leave the airport or something.
While yelling "Are you recording this?". Am I right?
Some of my very good friends are indy wrestlers. I'm not going to name names because it's not important, but I've been on long car rides before with them. They came into town from another show, met us, and we rode five hours to the show we were going to. When we got where we were going, tired, already worn down, hungry, having to pee, and achy, we were MOBBED by fans. I had two bags slung over my shoulders and was staying right behind them and walking through this mob, everyone reaching out to touch them, to high five them and whatever, was horribly stressful for ME. I was just going to watch the show, I didn't wrestle, and at the end of the night I was completely beat, just from the travel. I really don't know how they do it week in and week out.
So, if this was all real and you were Phillip Schneider, you'd move to Switzerland?
I'd probably move to Denmark if I was moving to Europe. I've got friends in Denmark already. But I'd probably stay somewhere around here as a recluse. I'm currently living in a really small town and I like it. If I don't want people to see me, I can go days without seeing anyone.
Changing back to e-fedding, you've got the monkier of being a badass and telling it straight when big arguments break out. (Case in point: Battleground Card), do you really care about your image on the board?
I have an abrassive personality as a whole. The owner of my company loves it, and loves that if someone is screwing up around me, in no uncertain terms they'll be told to knock it off and to stop whatever it is that I'm displeased with. I was hired in for a management role because of that. I've never been willing to alter my personality to gain friends, because if I did, the people I was gaining would eventually see the "true me" and leave anyways. I surround myself with people who realize that yes, I am an ass hole, but I'm also loyal, truthful, and I'm not going to start crap with people for no reason. I specifically do not have a Facebook account, because all people do on there is start crap with each other.
"I don't mean to be mean but it's all I can be, it's just me"
Well, thank you for your time to let us go somewhat into your mind and your thoughts. Wnat to give the readers one closing message?
Stay tuned. I'm not dead yet.