Genderalisations

Something else I've missed during my time out in the big bad world of no internets is the blog over at RoughKut. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks too hard about fedding. Of the blogs I missed while I was away, one jumped out at me on the grounds of it being on a subject near and dear to my heart: women's wrestling. People think of me as a big fan of women's wrestling; really, I'm just a wrestling fan, but unlike many wrestling fans - so it seems - I consider women's wrestling equal to men's. Even though Kut's blog on playing female characters is a few months old now, I can't not respond to it. Go read his excellent blog, as well as Sky's equally excellent reply in the comments field, then come back and read the rest of this, biznitches :p

To clarify, first off, I am a man. I have played a number of characters over the years, both male and female, but far and away my most successful was female. I don't think this is weird at all - what I'm interested in is a character's personality, and gender is just another small part of the myriad things which make up one's personality. Playing someone of a different gender to oneself needn't be any more of a problem than playing someone of a different age, nationality or socioeconomic background. In fact most fedders of my acquaintance, male or female, have played characters of both genders. It's not just in fedding; I have two current characters for pen-and-paper roleplay games, one of whom is male and the other of whom is female, and again, I'm in games with both women who play men and men who play women.

Kut's blog focuses on the question of intergender combat - and lawdy, is this a contentious subject. The first point which always comes up is the physical mechanics - the question of whether or not men are physically capable of fighting women. Kut and Sky weigh up the two sides pretty effectively in the linked blog. I have to say, I agree with Sky over Kut. To my mind, the idea that women can't fight is ridiculous. In a lot of martial arts, intergender combat is an accepted part of the sport, and IRL I've fought women and won, and I've fought women and lost. Neither gives me any shame at all, and I don't care who thinks it should.

However, it's a clouded issue in wrestling somewhat, because wrestling - as a martial art - is based around weight and upper body strength, where men have the undeniable advantage. The average woman isn't going to be able to take on Kurt Angle on his terms. The answer to that is, naturally, to not go on his terms. Size is one thing which can be used as a physical advantage. So, if you know how to use it, is being small. In general smaller people are harder to hit, faster, and have better conditioning and thus more stamina. Remember, fights are won in the mind, and it's how you use your own strengths and your opponent's weaknesses that matter.

All that is only one part of the debate, however. From those who don't know combat well, there are some darker stock responses to intergender combat. First, it's some kind of dirty sexual thing. It's for people who want to see someone dominate another person. And sadly, while I know that I don't have any sexual interest in intergender combat, and nor do most of the handlers I know, I can't deny that a handful do. All I can say to those people is: please respect that some of us just like to portray two fighters competing, and don't care about their genders.

The other is that it's sexist, or that it's promoting violence against women. Here, I disagree entirely. People too often confuse 'violence against women' with domestic violence. Domestic violence is abhorrent, no matter what the genders of the respective parties. But two adults competing in a fair fight is not domestic violence. What's sexist, to my mind, is telling women that because of their gender, they shouldn't be allowed to compete if they want to. But of course, there are certain branches of feminism which aren't actually interested in equality - just in making a stink about any vaguely related issue they can find. Same as anything, really.

The other big area Kut touches on is allowing women to compete for men's titles. Those who know me personally will know that I have always, always opposed gender-based titles in fedding, as well as titles segregated by weight category and nationality. This is as much about practicality as anything else; it's often hard enough getting enough people interested in chasing titles as it is without imposing restrictions which are based along fundamentally arbitrary lines. I understand the realism question - WWE and TNA keep things separated, so feds should too - but you know something? As far as I'm concerned, it's WWE and TNA who need to catch up there.

But then we're getting into the question of 'wrestling logic' where what happens in the world of pro wrestling, no matter how unrealistic, is accepted as the correct reality for fedding. I've been thinking about that one for some time, and there will be a post coming about it. For now, if you want to test 'wrestling logic' for yourself, here's an experiment: Try doing a front suplex on someone, then try doing a fisherman's suplex on someone, and decide which was easier.*


*Don't actually do that :p. Y'know - don't try this at blah blah blah whatever.

Who's The Beatdown?

Bear with me. Game strategist and theorist Mike Flores once wrote a seminal article on high-level play of the card game Magic: The Gathering entitled Who's The Beatdown? (link, for those who know the game) in which he defined the two roles in a 1-versus-1 match of that game: beatdown and control. In a nutshell, the beatdown player wants to be as aggressive as possible, with the intent of winning the game as quickly as possible. The control player, meanwhile, wants to stem the assault of the beatdown player through more defensive tactics, and win once the beatdown player's resources are depleted. The most common mistake ("yet subtle, yet disastrous" according to Flores) in competitive Magic is failure to understand your role. Think that you're the beatdown when you'd be better suited to control, or vice-versa, and you've more-than-likely lost.

The theory is pretty detailed in relation Magic, but the basic idea - the importance of recognising the dichotomy between aggressive and defensive play, and which one you're better suited to in a given situation - is applicable to many games, from real-time strategy (building walls and defensive turrets versus early tank rushes) to online shooters (sneaky, hit-and-run guerrilla warfare versus frontal assaults) to even backgammon (pushing to get all of your counters to your home board versus denying your opponent the ability to do the same). And guess what? I'm fairly certain the same thing can be applied to wrestling. When commentators talk about grounding or slowing down an opponent, they're talking about one competitor taking over the role of the control player.

One of the most common mistakes I see in match writing is a failure to take the participants' fighting styles into account. Even people with a good understanding of storytelling, ring positioning and psychology can often end up writing every match as if it was Triple H versus Edge, all strikes and clotheslines and brawling. Part of this, I'm sure, is simple unfamiliarity with fighting styles not common on WWE or TNA programming, which is fair enough. But it's definitely something worth learning if you want your matches to be as good as the can be. Watch different promotions from around the world and find out how people with different backgrounds fight. Learn whether luchadors favour kicks or punches, how a small high-flier sets up for their big moves, or how a British technician and a Canadian technician will differ in how they escape a hold.

More than just moveset, one's fighting style affects one's approach to combat. Another key term in Magic: The Gathering theory which I'm going to borrow is tempo, or the pace of the contest. It's difficult to define easily, but at heart, a beatdown player wants to speed up the pace of the game and the control player wants to slow it down. Translated to wrestling, the beatdown wrestler wants to speed up the pace of the match and the control wrestler wants to slow it down. Fliers with a lot of high-damage, high-risk diving or jumping attacks are looking to speed up the pace of a match, keeping the opponent out of breath and unable to catch up with the assault. By contrast, a technician with good conditioning wants to slow down the match, letting the opponent wear themselves out, before taking control.

A key attribute of many great wrestlers from Ric Flair to Triple H to Eddie Guerrero is the ability to change their pace to suit the match. Against large, slow, physically dominant people like Big Show or Kevin Nash, guys like this would speed up their assault, understanding that their role here is the aggressor - the beatdown. Against fast, tricky opponents like Jeff Hardy or
Shelton Benjamin, they'll become much slower and more defensive - the control - understanding that their role is to weather the assault and let the match run to a point when they can take over safely.

Extend this concept and in each match, one competitor becomes the beatdown and the other, the control. Think about the characters' movesets, country of origin, background and fighting styles, and try to work out who wants to be the early aggressor and who wants to be the defender taking the match to the long game. Please not this doesn't just mean one wrestler gets all the early offence in and the other turns round and dominates later on - individual exchanges can (and should) go either way. What I mean is to pay attention to what each participant's overall strategy ought to be. Get it right, and your match will flow much more smoothly as a believable contest.