#westwingconvert

[duhragonball]

Not sure if you know already, but ep. 151 is missing. Shame, because the 16/Cell fight is one of the best in the saga. Did you post thoughts in that post?

Sure I did.   This is one of my favorite episodes.    I wouldn’t skip it.  

But Tumblr really enjoys screwing with me on this project, so now the only thing I can do is try to track down whatever image set it off.   

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

@notthehound replied to your post “Hello, sir! Can I interest you in signing my petition...”

For a minute there I was like. Did we? Did we see wiener. Then I actually saw what you did there.

We actually did see weiner!

Euron stood by the window, drinking from a silver cup. He wore the sable cloak he took from Blacktyde, his red leather eye patch, and nothing else. [...] The wind came gusting through the window and stirred his sable cloak. There was something obscene and disturbing about his nakedness. [...] Victarion glanced away. “Cover yourself.” Euron seated himself and gave his cloak a twitch, so it covered his private parts.

--AFFC, The Reaver

And we’ve seen icy weiner:

Beneath her coverlets she tossed and turned, dreaming that Hizdahr was kissing her… but his lips were blue and bruised, and when he thrust himself inside her, his manhood was cold as ice. --ADWD, Daenerys VII

So indeed, kudos to @westwingconvert, for the double pun. And to GRRM I suppose, who set it up in the first place... :D

[wrestlingisfake]

What, to you, is the weirdest promo ever done in wrestling? I think its that Scott Steiner one with the math ("I gotta 133 and 2/3% chance of winning!"), but I haven't been watching wrestling as long or as much.

I don’t know if this is the weirdest, but it’s definitely the first thing I thought of when I read the question.

[duhragonball]

What would Luffa think of a Sayian like Goku? He seems more like her than, say, Vegeta (he's laid-back, thirsty for a good fight, and eats a ton, she's laid-back, thirsty for a fight and eats a ton), but he's not very Sayian-like compared to the Sayians she knows/knew.

I’m glad you asked that, because that question is really what the story is all about.

What got me interested in the “Original” Super Saiyan was the idea that there’s sort of this tension over which character truly fulfills the legend. Specifically, I’m thinking of the blurb on the back cover of the Movie 8 DVD from 2003, which sort of implied that the characters are fighting to see who the *real* Legendary Super Saiyan really is. That’s not a very good description of the plot, but it *is* a central theme of the movie.

And it extends to the Goku/Vegeta dynamic as well. The fact that they *both* became Super Saiyans within five years of each other suggests that the legend is bupkis… OR it could mean that only one of them is the one true LSSJ, and the other is a pretender who just managed to achieve the same transformation. Movie 8 simply compounded that dilemma by adding another Saiyan with a legitimate claim to the title.

And this all goes back to the idea that one of them might better resemble the previous Super Saiyan more closely than the others. Goku’s transformation implied a moral, that maybe the last Super Saiyan was pure of heart like him, and that’s why no one else could do it.

But Vegeta can do it too, so maybe he was right all along, and it was all about being the living embodiment of his culture. Vegeta’s always ben about being the paragon of Saiyan values, which was why he never put much stock in the legend to begin with. Either the legend was pure fiction, or Vegeta had already fulfilled it by being the best and brightest of his generation.

And of course Broly’s nothing more than a savage killing machine, wanting nothing more than to fight and conquer as an end unto itself. This sounds more like the person Vegeta was told about, but only because the details were so sparse. Still Broly seems like the kind of guy who’d blow himself up because he can’t control his own power. On the other hand, Vegeta really *did* blow himself up, and Goku’s seen a few exploding planets in his time.

Of course, I could get into Bardock and all the kids, but you get the idea. There’s more than one way to interpret the legend, which is sort of how legends work. Nonetheless, that’s what got me interested in the source of this mythology. What was this person *really* like?

The most compelling answer, I think, is someone who resembles each of the modern Super Saiyans, but only up to a point. That way, if you put any of them in the same room with her, they’d seem to have nothing in common, but on closer inspection some similarities would start to come through. And that’s why Luffa sometimes seems more like Goku or Vegeta (or one of the others), depending on the circumstances. It’s a tricky balance, but I think I’ve managed to pull it off while maintaining her distinct personality.

Which means that she’d probably get along reasonably well with Goku or Vegeta, although they’d have a lot of friction over their differences. But that’s not too different from how Piccolo or Beerus interacts with Goku or Vegeta. Indeed, that’s pretty much how things are with Goku and Vegeta interacting with each other.

Nappa’s kind of a go-to template that I use for Typical Saiyan behavior, so I think he kind of informs the answer. In DBZ, Nappa’s kind of willing to go along to get along. He wants to fight, especially after being cooped up in his space pod for so long, but he’s willing to defer to Vegeta because he’s the strongest. Similarly, he doesn’t seem to particularly hate the Z-Fighters, or even Goku. If Vegeta had chosen to join forces with the Earthlings, Nappa might have felt awkward about it at first, but I think he would have been civil with his new allies, and maybe even friendly.

That’s kind of how I approach Luffa’s attitude to things. She’s not out to slaughter people indiscriminately like Majin Buu. Hell, even Broly chilled out once in a while. So while she’s extremely eager to find a fight, she knows how to behave when there isn’t one to be found. That’s not so different from Vegeta’s stoicism or Goku’s hyper-relaxed attitude, really.

Anyway, I’m kind of circling around the question because I don’t want to give too much away. Suffice to say that my plan is to carry the fic all the way to the events depicted in Xenoverse 1, and at the end of Xenoverse 1, Goku shows up and asks your character if they’d like to fight. So “Luffa meets Goku” won’t always be a hypothetical situation.

Unless I get hit by a bus or something and the story never gets finished. But they damn sure wouldn’t just start making out, I want to make that clear.

[duhragonball]

(This may be a bit off-topic, given your current JoJo run)Is Luffa an SSJ1 and her next step going up to SSJ2? When Vegeta came to the conclusion he needed to ascend past Super Sayian, I seem to remember him referencing the legendary Super Sayian, which in your fic is Luffa. Does that mean the idea orginally comes from Luffa? Or am I way off base?

Don’t worry, sir.  Luffa’s always on-topic on this blog.  

Also, you’re not off-base in wondering about this, since these kinds of power scaling questions are baked into the plot.  Ultimately, though, it’s all sort of academic unless/until the characters interact.  Vegeta only sought to ascend beyond the “Super Saiyans of Legend” because he was already a Super Saiyan and that wasn’t cutting it against 18. 

Remember, before he transformed, he insisted that he was a Super Saiyan when he made his last stand against Frieza, even though he clearly wasn’t.  Before that, he worried that Goku was a Super Saiyan, simply because he defeated Recoome.  Then he refused to kill Recoome, and Vegeta decided that he wasn’t a Super Saiyan, because he was too weak.  The common denominator is that Vegeta defines a true Super Saiyan as a Saiyan who always wins.  The hair color never really entered into it for him. 

The thing is, the whole effort to “ascend past a Super Saiyan” is based on pure speculation.   Everyone agreed that Super Saiyan 2 was the culmination of those efforts, because Gohan defeated Cell in that form.  But for all we know the historical Super Saiyans were at least as powerful.  Or they might have been far weaker.  For all Vegeta knew, he was already stronger than any of his ancestors when 18 demolished him.  In that case, he was just training to ascend beyond himself, which really isn’t any different from any other kind of training.

Basically, the only way to tell if Vegeta and Goku really “ascended beyond” would be to plop an ancient Super Saiyan in the middle of the Androids/Cell sagas and see how they stack up.  But for all we know, the old Super Saiyans each discovered Super Saiyan 2 on their own, and Vegeta’s merely keeping pace.  Or they all figured out Super Saiyan 5, and Vegeta’s still eating their dust.

The conceit of my fic is that Luffa’s just as clueless as Vegeta would be ten centuries later.  She knows the stories in greater detail, but there’s no RPG stat sheet to tell her exactly how strong the old heroes really were, or how she ranks among them.  She believes she’s the best, but that’s mostly just a positive attitude.  For all she knows, she’s the weakest Super Saiyan ever.  There’s no real way to compare. 

Also, none of this is static, because she’s constantly training to get stronger, just like all the other Super Saiyans would have done in their respective eras.  Some of them might reach their peak performance early on, and others may still have a long way to go.  

In any case, I decided that the later transformations aren’t necessarily absolute guideposts to power levels.  At one time, I thought any Super Saiyan 3 could defeat any Super Saiyan 2, because the Buu Saga appeared to support that.  However, Vegeta manage to surpass Super Saiyan 3 against Beerus, and he didn’t transform into anything new.  Yeah, I know people like to call that a new form, but I think that’s only because they love assigning new forms to every dumb thing.  Later in the movie, Goku managed to fight Beerus at SSJ1, because he was still tapping into godly ki from his brief run as a Super Saiyan God. 

The point of all this appears to be that the transforms are useful ways to ramp up one’s power, but there’s options on how to use them.  Goku still used Super Saiyan 1 on Beerus, even though it was his godly ki that let him stay in the fight.  I assume this means that SSJ1 helped Goku regulate that power in a way that his base form couldn’t.  The same goes for whatever Vegeta tapped into when Bulma got slapped, or whatever the hell Blue Trunks was doing against Zamasu. 

The implication seems to be something that Goku observed in the manga: “All-in-all, the Regular Super Saiyan is the best.”  So you can make the case that every transform we’ve seen since then has been an effort to mod that form into something a little bit better.  The question is: Has Luffa already figured that out?

[wrestlingisfake]

Do you think that there are any names on that list you posted about champions not in the hall of fame that won't, eventually, be put in the hall of fame? It's just seems a little weird to consider Rob Van Dam in the hall of fame, and a couple are dead (I don't know what WWE's policy on posthumous induction is). Or do you think eventually they all will end up there?

No, I’m not expecting everyone who ever held the WWE championship to get into the WWE Hall of Fame.  I would think every champion up to Bret Hart should be a lock (which is why I started making the list, to see how many of that group are left), but I don’t have any illusions about the WWE Hall of Fame being fair, or logical, or even particularly rational.

What people have to remember about the Hall of Fame is that it started in the mid-1990s when most of the biggest names in WWE history weren’t on good terms with WWE.  That’s one reason the early inductions seem so random.  The other reason is that Vince McMahon was obviously selecting inductees based on their personal loyalty to him and his interest in rewarding them with a nice tribute, irrespective of their actual credentials. 

That set the tone ever since for the Hall of Fame to be more about sentiment than merit.  So they only induct one “main eventer” per year to pace themselves, and avoid doing too many posthumous inductions because that would be too sad, that kind of thing.  They’ll throw in a journeyman because his music will get a nostalgia pop, and it’s just a nice thing to do.  People get upset about it every year, but WWE does it every year so you’d think we’d all be used to it by now.

All that being said, I don’t think it’s hard to guess that loyal company men like Taker, JBL, HHH, Cena, Orton, and Miz will get in.  So will guys that could take or leave it that Vince will bend over backwards for, like Rock and Lesnar and Batista.  Guys like RVD, Kane, and Bray Wyatt will get in more on the same basis as the Godfather than because of any particular accomplishments as champions. 

I think the ship has sailed on convincing Vince to induct either Stan Stasiak or Ivan Koloff--they’re from an era he rarely acknowledges, they’re both dead, and there isn’t a lot of money to be made promoting their names.  CM Punk is obviously a tall order, and all of the taller orders (Bruno, Bret, Warrior) ended up happening.  It’s hard to imagine Sid or Alberto getting in, because I just assume there’d be heat on them for one thing or another, but stranger things have happened.

I don’t think Jinder Mahal will get into the Hall of Fame solely because he was WWE champion in 2017.  That’s not to say he can’t go on to have a fine career and get in for stuff he hasn’t done yet.  But as weird as it sounds, it takes a whole lot more than holding the top title in the industry to be treated like a legend.

[wrestlingisfake]

That makes me wonder: how does MitB work for cage matches?I mean, the rule is escape, so would a contract holds have to jump in the cage? Or does the guy have to wait untill the match is over, and then pin the winner? Sort of a stalking tiger scenario.

I mean, if it was up to me, the Money in the Bank contract could not be cashed in during a title match at all.  That is, I wouldn’t have booked Seth Rollins to win the belt the way he did at Wrestlemania 31.  That kind of thing just never made sense to me.

As I recall, when guys like Edge have done the ambush cash-in when the champ was down, the referee would make a big deal out of making sure the champ was back on his feet before allowing the match to officially start.  I’m sure the real reason for this was to create some suspense (and to set the guy up for Edge to spear him), but it also makes sense as a bare minimum of fair play.  I don’t know if it’s in any rule book, but logically a catch-as-catch-can wrestling match should not start until all the legal participants are standing in the ring and clearly ready (if not able) to defend themselves.

So with that as a guideline, suppose Jinder Mahal is defending the title against Randy Orton in a cage match, and Baron Corbin cashes in Money in the Bank to add himself to the match.  If I was the referee I’d separate Mahal and Orton, stand them back up, let Corbin into the cage, and restart the match when I’m satisfied all three of them know what’s going on.  Or if Corbin interrupted a four-way ladder match when everybody is laid out all over the arena, I would make him stand there and wait until everybody can crawl back into the ring and get to their feet, no matter how long it took.  That’s probably not how WWE would do it, but I suspect the way WWE would do it would leave people scratching their heads.

The bottom line here is that a Rollins-style cash-in doesn’t make much sense in the first place.  Given the choice, it’s always smarter to wait until the title match is over and ambush the winner than to interrupt the title match and pit yourself against the champion and at least one other challenger.  (The only reason Rollins couldn’t wait until Lesnar vs. Reigns was over was that WWE bookers didn’t want either guy to lose without some excuse.)  So I’m not expecting Baron Corbin, Carmella, or many other future MITB winners to put any of this to the test...

[wrestlingisfake]

With his career, if not over, at least in its final hours, do you have best/worst Undertaker memory? Could be a match, a promo, or just a moment that really sticks out in your mind.

I think my all-time favorite Undertaker moment is the first time he turned face, in 1992.  To this day I vividly remember Jake Roberts asking him whose side he was on, and Taker responding “NOT YOURShhhhhh”

The best Undertaker promo I ever heard was the one in 1999 where he told an endless story about testing the Big Show.  I mean, it went on forever and had no point, but I liked how casually he discussed abandoning Big Show in the desert to die, Show’s willingness to murder him in his sleep, and the fact that he never sleeps.

The best Undertaker match I ever saw was against Triple H in 2011.  I loathed Wrestlemania XXVII, so that match had to work extra hard to save the show, and it succeeded.

It’s tough to pick a worst Undertaker match because he’s been in so many shitburgers, and in most of them you’re paying to see a wrestler work like a corpse, so it’s hard to judge them like regular matches.  I’m tempted to say the Roman Reigns match just because Taker was too far gone at that point.  But I guess I’ll go with Undertaker vs. Big Show & A-Train in 2003, because there was no excuse for that.  Undertaker didn’t have to play a stupid biker guy.  They didn’t have to rush Nathan Jones up as Taker’s partner just to change their minds at the last second.  And they could have come up with better opposition.

The worst promo I can think of is probably the time in 1998 where he came to the ring in sweatpants and pretended to “shoot” on Vince McMahon and whine for a title shot.  It just felt inconsistent with the things the character was supposed to stand for.

The worst Undertaker moment is probably that whole deal where he was attacked by guys dressed like the terrorists who beheaded Nick Berg, and then WWE actually had the gall to air it the night of the 7/7 attacks.  Not that Taker was the reason it was terrible, but when you do something that terrible it taints everyone involved.