You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.

Hey kids. Sorry for the big gap in updates. You'd be amazed how much costochondritis can jerk around your passion for things.

So. Guessing game time. Guess what annoys me most on a new contract. Using the entrance music of whoever happens to be popular in WWE right now? Nope. One of the same handful of picbases every fed seems to be clogged up with? Nope. Yet another psycho heel promising to cleanse the promotion of the scum inhabiting it? Nope. A 400lb guy pulling moonsaults and planchas as regular moves? No, not even that.

Annoying as all of that stuff is, what's really guaranteed to kill my interest in a contract is being told about how the character is a huge deal, a million-time hall of famer, a trillion-time world champion, courted by major sponsors, a worldwide legend the fans will clamour for and opponents will fall weak at the knees just thinking about.

No, you're not.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but a hobby as loose and informal as e-fedding doesn't work that way. It doesn't matter how big you are, how much you've accomplished - pick a random startup fed from Chris Hart's, and chances are nobody there will have heard of you. If Edge or Cena joined TNA tomorrow, they'd start at the top, but all of TNA's fans will instantly recognise them. Much of the time in fedding, that ain't gonna happen - you're only known to the people you've shared a fed with. Why should bookers make you a main eventer right from the off when they haven't even seen your writing? How are your opponents supposed to respond to a Hogan-level superstar, about whom they know absolutely nothing? This comes back to the unified canon thing; being a world champion basically means nothing in e-fedding, outside of one fed and its circle of affiliates. I don't mean that to denigrate titles within that context, but pretty much every character who's been around more than a couple of years has been a world champion somewhere.

Okay, look at Asylum or Magnum's list of accomplishments, and you can't help but be impressed. These are guys who've almost never been without a title, who've held literally scores of honours over their careers. Clearly, you don't get that much without experience and talent. But that doesn't mean that when someone as good as Asylum or Magnum walks into a random fed, they're automatically pushed to the top of the card. Yet I see no end of people with less than a quarter of those achievements expecting exactly that to happen to them. Sorry, but just no.

Indie Grand Scheme Of Things

The question of whether fedding can or should have a larger unified canon is a long, complex and often tedious one. I'm not aware of any groups of feds bigger than about 5 or 6 that fully recognise each other as part of the same single wrestling world with no contradictory canon between them.

Personally, I'd like to see it. CAWS only - otherwise you get twenty Undertakers and CM Punks running around - but a decent-sized group of feds with a proper structure and relationship, so you have a couple of global-sized ones at the top, then a handful of national sized ones, and then a whole load of niche and regional companies. This would open up the potential for transfers, interpromotional events and make being 'world champion' really mean something.

What I really, really mainly want to see out of something like that most is a proper indie circuit. I'd like to take my character into occasional matches in, say, Wrestling Asylum and Phoenix Wrestling Enterprise without her actually being a full-time member of either promotion's roster. What would be really, really cool is if for example she had a big feud in PWE and once it was done disappear for a while - during which time she puts in more appearances with WA, maybe goes for a title run say.

But then, I try to keep my characters' canons the same between feds, and I know not everyone does. Baby Dogg's home is Global Extreme Wrestling (which I see as RoH in terms of popularity and mainstream recognition) but her day job is Championship Wrestling Federation (TNA-ish level - or would be if it wasn't on hiatus right now) and between the two, where is she meant to find the time for a third, if it has to be full time by default? John Waylon's Psychotic Championship Wrestling had its flaws but in hindsight, the one-show-a-month approach it had actually made a lot of sense.

As it stands, to be in a few promotions at once and thus really feel like a part of a broader wrestling world, here's both the OC problem of having the time to do 5 or 6 matches a week (been there, done that, bought the brain meltdown) and the IC problem of, how the hell is she meant to work four matches a night in different states or even countries? It's stretching it with just two frankly.

If anyone has any thoughts on this subject please let me know.