TrueEpic08
Dum Shiny
I'm just gonna put this right here:
As well as the reply esteemed poster @Jmare007 had to Max's nonsense and other's thoughts on the matter.
I'll just add this: Max is not a dumb guy, and I'm pretty sure every one of these Hollywood writers that makes up WWE's veritable booking army (save guys like Robert Evans and, until recently, Jimmy Jacobs) are fairly smart guys as well, but the tweet thread posted above is a prime example of how bamboozled all of these guys are by a combination of the WWE monolith and the corrosive culture of geek fandom (which puts an unnecessary value on consistent narrative and personal continuity above nearly all things). As I said in the Survivor Series thread, it's not as if Max is really wrong when you lay out 22 years of evidence. When you really take a good, hard look at Hunter's career, the character traits that he exemplifies the most are the exact one's Max discusses in his thread. And consistent character writing is most definitely not a bad thing (it's what I love about one of my favorite wrestling characters in CM Punk. And besides, how often do we complain about the lack of consistency in the writing of guys like John Cena?).
The problem is this: Wrestling narratives have completely different goals than the narratives one finds in typical television/film/comic book/video game writing. In the latter, to an extent, the narrative is its own point: you tell a good story for the purpose of telling a good story (or charting a character's progression, or to properly build the world or a story, or other goals more or less internal to how narrative works. Which is why Jmare's ASOIAF point is a good one). But with wrestling, the narrative is instrumentalized, and serves a purpose that's actually in a sense external to its workings. You tell a good story to get someone over, to send the fans home happy, to draw good houses, and to build to good wrestling matches that the fans want to see. This is really quite different from the TV/Film/Comic Book/Video Game writing that's geek-types fetishize (unless you're thinking of narrative and wrestling like a Marxist or a media executive, which is a different conversation), and really should not be conflated with that type of writing at all.
But of course Vince, with his desire to be seen as something other than wrestling (despite being the last and, in a sense, the carniest of the old school carnies), conflates the two types of narrative, which drives him hiring not wrestling people who have an innate understanding of how its type of narrative works to book wrestling (again, save for guys like Evans and Jacobs), but wrestling fans and fringe Hollywood types who live and die by the geek media model and don't really understand that wrestling narrative is a different beast with different kinds of goals. The result is nonsense like we saw at the end of Survivor Series last night: a finish that, when you remove all context and the fact that the ending has to make people pay money to see wrestling matches that need to be good and build future stars, isn't actually that bad of a way to continue a narrative. But when that context (and history) is added back in (and wrestling fans are all about the wrestling context, even if they're not smarks) the scenario looks completely ridiculous.
But this is the default mode that WWE writing has worked in for almost 20 years now, and short of someone turning the whole creative infrastructure upside down (that someone, ironically enough, could actually be Triple H), we're going to be dealing with a company that has completely forgotten what wrestling booking is supposed to actually do in favor of trying to do what TV shows with the most beloved of fandoms do. More and more of these Max Landis/Wrestling Isn't Wrestling (if that title isn't completely indicative of my point, I don't know what is) types, and fewer and fewer of the Jimmy Jacobs types (who always booked the best angles he was involved in, including the Owens/Jericho angle of this past year). Just more and more bamboozled fans wanting to fulfill Vince's dream of wrestling performance that fails to fulfill wrestling's fundamental goals. Thank Max and his ilk for our malaise.
As well as the reply esteemed poster @Jmare007 had to Max's nonsense and other's thoughts on the matter.
If anything, those tweets explain how a group of TV writers can be so fukking moronic week in and week out when it comes to wrestling. When you add that kind "but it makes sense for the character" mentality that disregards context and much needed progression for others to Cokeboy's "change of plans" mentality, it's no wonder WWE can't book anything worth a damn unless they just stumble upon it (like Braun).
And Max is fukking retarded. If Cercei was still being the c*nt that she is and a key character in BOOK 35 of ASOIAF, people would be losing their shyt and legit trying to kill GRR Martin. Not praising him like he's a genius for giving continuity to a character that should be used to give others progression and replace him/her, and most importantly, IS NOT NEEDED ANYMOREthose tweets are the epitome of smart-dumb shyt.
I'll just add this: Max is not a dumb guy, and I'm pretty sure every one of these Hollywood writers that makes up WWE's veritable booking army (save guys like Robert Evans and, until recently, Jimmy Jacobs) are fairly smart guys as well, but the tweet thread posted above is a prime example of how bamboozled all of these guys are by a combination of the WWE monolith and the corrosive culture of geek fandom (which puts an unnecessary value on consistent narrative and personal continuity above nearly all things). As I said in the Survivor Series thread, it's not as if Max is really wrong when you lay out 22 years of evidence. When you really take a good, hard look at Hunter's career, the character traits that he exemplifies the most are the exact one's Max discusses in his thread. And consistent character writing is most definitely not a bad thing (it's what I love about one of my favorite wrestling characters in CM Punk. And besides, how often do we complain about the lack of consistency in the writing of guys like John Cena?).
The problem is this: Wrestling narratives have completely different goals than the narratives one finds in typical television/film/comic book/video game writing. In the latter, to an extent, the narrative is its own point: you tell a good story for the purpose of telling a good story (or charting a character's progression, or to properly build the world or a story, or other goals more or less internal to how narrative works. Which is why Jmare's ASOIAF point is a good one). But with wrestling, the narrative is instrumentalized, and serves a purpose that's actually in a sense external to its workings. You tell a good story to get someone over, to send the fans home happy, to draw good houses, and to build to good wrestling matches that the fans want to see. This is really quite different from the TV/Film/Comic Book/Video Game writing that's geek-types fetishize (unless you're thinking of narrative and wrestling like a Marxist or a media executive, which is a different conversation), and really should not be conflated with that type of writing at all.
But of course Vince, with his desire to be seen as something other than wrestling (despite being the last and, in a sense, the carniest of the old school carnies), conflates the two types of narrative, which drives him hiring not wrestling people who have an innate understanding of how its type of narrative works to book wrestling (again, save for guys like Evans and Jacobs), but wrestling fans and fringe Hollywood types who live and die by the geek media model and don't really understand that wrestling narrative is a different beast with different kinds of goals. The result is nonsense like we saw at the end of Survivor Series last night: a finish that, when you remove all context and the fact that the ending has to make people pay money to see wrestling matches that need to be good and build future stars, isn't actually that bad of a way to continue a narrative. But when that context (and history) is added back in (and wrestling fans are all about the wrestling context, even if they're not smarks) the scenario looks completely ridiculous.
But this is the default mode that WWE writing has worked in for almost 20 years now, and short of someone turning the whole creative infrastructure upside down (that someone, ironically enough, could actually be Triple H), we're going to be dealing with a company that has completely forgotten what wrestling booking is supposed to actually do in favor of trying to do what TV shows with the most beloved of fandoms do. More and more of these Max Landis/Wrestling Isn't Wrestling (if that title isn't completely indicative of my point, I don't know what is) types, and fewer and fewer of the Jimmy Jacobs types (who always booked the best angles he was involved in, including the Owens/Jericho angle of this past year). Just more and more bamboozled fans wanting to fulfill Vince's dream of wrestling performance that fails to fulfill wrestling's fundamental goals. Thank Max and his ilk for our malaise.
This is what he was building to? 