Dancing With Myself

First off, let's get the obligatory stuff out of the way. Today is my 37th birthday. Unlike many who have enjoyed this little hobby of ours over the years, I got started much later in life. A couple months ago was my 5 year anniversary of playing BigDog. Richard Farnswirth will hit that same mark later this summer.

As they say, you're only as old as you feel. Someone asked me the other day how old I was going to be. After I told them, they then asked how old I felt. That's an interesting question. I still enjoy playing videogames, watching cartoons, and doing this little fantasy wrestling hobby of ours. My body may be getting older, but my mind is still having fun. :)

Now, on to this week's topic. I'm sure one or two of you are wondering about the title.

One of the things that you're going to run into when you run multiple characters as I do is that they're going to end up on opposite sides of the ring from time to time. This week is only the latest time this has happened. BigDog, Dan Ryan, and JA are facing Richard Farnswirth, Chip Friendly, and Slambo the Clown in a six man tag.

At least this time it's a six man. That gives me a chance to promo for one guy (as I just did for Farnsy earlier) and then wait for a couple other guys to go before I jump in with BigDog. That'll give me a chance to concentrate most of Farnsy's stuff at JA, while BigDog can concentrate on Chip and Slambo.

But I've not always been so lucky. In a straight up tag match, it's much harder. It really can have both positives and negatives.

We'll start with the obvious negative. If I've got two guys facing each other, I'm guaranteed that one of them is going to lose. That's not so cool. We all would like to win every time we go out there, so it sucks knowing that I'm at best going to go 1-for-2 (or on the off chance, I could pull a draw). At times, I find myself asking the question ... who do I want to win this? That's a hard one to fight. If Farnsy is working toward a world title shot, it's very tempting to sandbag BigDog to let Farnsy keep his momentum. I'd be lying if I said this has never happened.

A second, much more subtle, negative involves playing the two characters independently. When I'm in two different matches, it's fairly easy for me at this point to slip in and out of each character and keep their integrity intact. But, when they're playing in the same sandbox, the line begins to blur a little. I find myself having to erase lines that I've typed because Farnsy sounds too much like BigDog or vice versa.

On the positive side, I find that I can really setup the story that I want to tell if I'm controlling both sides of the equation. In past matches, I've consciously setup lines for my other character when promoing. This way, I can advance the angles both guys are going for. I feel like this is making the best of a bad situation. If I can do this well, then at least I can advance stories in the face of one of my guys losing.

So, while it's not an ideal situation to have two of my guys going at each other, I do try to make the best of it.