tanderbolt

AWE: American Wrestling Entertainment

Savaka

Savaka

---

---

We fall so that we may learn to rise again

^{6’ 1” – 220 lbs | 14 Years of Experience}

---

---

|Birth Name |
Jean Francois Mpolondo

|Hails From |
» New York City
» January 3rd, 1982 (35)

|Fighting Style |
» Savaka is a technical wrestler through and through. He has spent most of his career wrestling for a shoot-style promotion that emphasized realism and grappling, giving him strong matwork skills. Expect lots of chain wrestling and reversals in his matches, along with a wide variety of submission holds and quick pinfall attempts. With his current gimmick, he especially likes to wear down the arm of his opponent to set up for his finisher, which gives him the opportunity to show off his various wristlocks and armbars. He uses the big slams and suplexs more conservatively than most wrestlers, often waiting until the match is well underway and using less flashy moves to get things to the ground, such as arm drags or judo style throws and trips. As part of his current gimmick, he does not use strikes, but does have a few kicks and stomps and stomps that look good if that were to change, his punches and forearms blows are not as polished. He has virtually no high-flying moves, because they are not part of the style he is used to and because he prefers not to take risks.

|Signature Moves |
» Cross Armbreaker
» Hammerlock Suplex
» Small Package Pin
» Cross Kneelock

|Finisher |
» Tripitaka Lock (Omoplata, poses as though he is meditating once it is locked in)
» Kalachakra(Granby Roll)

|Theme |
» youtube.com/watch?v=DOtoIBrBAYE

|Gimmick |
» Jean portrays the character Savaka, a monk following a new age religion called the Way of Peace. Initially brought in as the bodyguard to another character with spiritual guru gimmick, he has kept the gimmick because creative has had little direction for him. The character is stoic and seldom speaks, and has sworn a vow of nonviolence that prevents him from using strikes, leaving him to rely on submission holds and throws in the ring. Savaka is lodged solidly in the midcard, collecting some wins but never building momentum and frequently putting over other wrestlers headed on to greater heights. When he does get time on the mic he uses and exaggeratedly calm voice and relies on generic new age phrases about enlightenment and mindfulness. Savaka also will pose like he’s meditating or praying frequently, and displays an unnatural tranquility when caught in submission holds. He dresses in something close to the stereotypical Shaolin monk outfit, orange and yellow robes with one sleeve.

|Face or Heel |
» Face

|Backstage Rep |
» Jean came from a family of Congolese immigrants, and always felt a little awkward in school. He loved sports but never really cared about winning or losing, which meant he never really felt like he fit in with the rest of the jocks at school. After getting a degree in English he went to Japan to teach, hoping to see more of the world. As a regular at the local gym he befriended some pro wrestlers and began training with them. It was not an easy process, even with a background in amateur wrestling, but he put in the effort and debuted with Combaticon, a shoot style promotion. There he built a solid career and honed his skills, even though he was never the top star he still had several classic matches and developed a reputation as a safe and reliable worker.

Combaticon would run into financial difficulties as time went on. The older wrestlers bodies began to break down from the stress, and the rising popularity of MMA started to cut into their market, and the owner made several questionable decisions. Seeing the writing on the wall, Jean left for AWE. AWE likes the fact that he is a safe worker who can get a good match out of almost anyone, but they quickly discovered that he was almost devoid of charisma. Coupled with his less flashy style of wrestling, the company has pegged him as a guy to help build up newer talent, letting them learn and collect wins. Jean doesn’t mind this, but he is looking for ways to increase his earnings; he knows that he will have to retire eventually and is trying to make sure he earns enough to keep his family financially stable for as long as possible.

Off camera Jean is relaxed and doesn’t feel the need get involved in drama. He doesn’t like to go out drinking or enjoy the nightlife, preferring instead to spend his time with a good book. He does not have much clout in backstage politics because he is fairly new to AWE, but is always happy to help out newer wrestlers if they ask for advice. He knows that there are many good people in the industry, but he is always put off by stories of some the shadier business that goes on.
|Other |
» Unlike his character, Jean is a devout Roman Catholic
» Face Claim is Jack Johnson

The 'Explain The Appeal Of......' Thread

Is this thread officially killed by derails? Because I'd like someone to explain how elevator videos appeal to anyone. I can understand railfans, I can even understand bus spotters, but then you get channels full of this and I'm baffled.

Our Daily Lives have Become a Battlefield: A Battle School RP

Can we play as teachers? I might have an idea for a character.

The 'Explain The Appeal Of......' Thread

<Snipped quote by DepressedSoviet>

To answer your question with another question, what makes Western Rpgs roleplaying games? Most limit your choices, wheres in a "real" rpg, like DnD, you literally have unlimited choices you can make, not ones they just program in for you. You might have a DM like that, but it's much less restricted generally and the plot can literally leave his control if you're clever enough.

Roleplaying just means you "play a role". Acting is a form of roleplaying, even though you don't make any choices.

The main appeal of JRPGS are the stories and the simplistic gameplay, namely. Before we had the technology to make the sprawling expanses we have today, tech was a lot more limited. You did have some titles like Fire Emblem which combined tactics with a leveling system, but these were few and far between and much harder to make.

I honestly don't like console rpgs though, I think the only time rpgs were ever good was Planescape, Fallout 1 and 2, and Baldurs gate era + the recent release of new CRPG games like Torment: Tides of Numenera, Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity, and Wasteland 2. Dark Souls feels much more like a Metroidvania game and The Witcher series has always felt more action rpg than "typical" rpg.

Also what @Fabricant451 said.

@Chrononaut

It's funny how most of the RPGs you listed as the good ones were made by the same general group of people (Black Isle, which became Obsidian and Troika). With Fallout the developers said in interviews that it was their aim to recreate the depth of the tabletop experience as closely as possible. I think that's always been an undercurrent, but the early computers lacked the technology to do much except bring in the dungeon crawling and stat based combat aspect of tabletops RPGs, which were fun enough that they became the defining features of the genre.

Lets talk about JonTron and his possibly racist views.

And I do have to ask, and this is a question for everybody, is there post-modern communists? I actually don't know. I don't think post-modernism is very compatible with dialectical thought. I was thinking more those leftists who say "There is no culture" or some silly shit like that when I said "Post modernism is a edgy left thing."

@Vilageidiotx

Yes. Post-modernism is heavily associated with Post-Structuralism, to the point that many of the key figures in post-modernism are associated with that school of thought. Post-Structuralism itself arose among French left-wing thinkers, many of whom count themselves as Marxist and hold Marx to be one of the cornerstones of their thought. Focault, Lyotard, Baudrilliard were all Marxists, and others like Barthes and Derrida held him as a great influence. While their works are nearly impenetrable at times and heavily focused on the theoretical, they do have some impact on leftist thought, including shaping forming schools of thought within postcolonial studies, queer theory, feminist theory and critical race theory. Slavoj Zizek is one of the most popular living philosophers of this school.

The Coalition

I might be interested.

Lets talk about JonTron and his possibly racist views.

Trust me, a real racist would not hold their true opinions back. Because people like that, they have no guilt. They don't see their sick opinions as incorrect...so if you asked that person up front. Do you think you're superior and/or deserve special treatment because you're a different race. They'll say "YES." And case closed. Otherwise, probably not and move the fuck on, and let people worry about real problems and not make up phantom ones.

@SleepingSilence

This school of thought is irritating, and taken far enough can actually blind us to real prejudice. David Duke, Richard Spencer, Ian Smith, Cecil Rhodes, and PW Botha have all publicly denied that they are racists or hold enmity for other races, but it is plainly apparent that they are based on their words and actions. Publicly denying racism while still sponsoring racist policies is so well known that political strategists outright admit they do it. As for JonTron, it's hard to get a set of opinions like that without at least being a fellow traveler in white nationalist circles, those particular talking points all originate from those corners and are vanishingly rare outside of them. Maybe it's a case of hanging out with a bad crowd rather than any personal racist impetus, but the intent behind those statements is clear.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

<Snipped quote by Dynamo Frokane>

I don't know how the consensus of 7/10 measures as "pretty disappointing." 5/10 is an average, mediocre game. by that metric, 7/10 is quite above average.

@Ace of Hearts

In aggregate, game review publications have average scores hovering around 74/100, as metacritic shows. The lowest average score of any publication is 57, belonging to an obscure website, no publication really uses the full scale. I think this is score comes as a disappointment, given that this is a heavily promoted triple-A title coming from a series where the previous entries all scored over 90 and the developer has only made one other game that scored this low. Metacritic has its flaws, but I think it's safe to say that EA's board is not happy about this.

The last two games you played will now fuse into one. What do you get?

Civilization and Overwatch is an intriguing pair. An arena shooter where you play as nation-states?

The 'Explain The Appeal Of......' Thread

<Snipped quote by tanderbolt>

Yeah, I had a feeling, "post-" had similarities with ambiance music because that is stuff that my brains just doesn't gravitate toward. (Though I do like jazz and classical elements in music, it usually it seems less simple.) Something what you said, I think you 100% right but at the same time, throwing a question for that. When you said, "Post music is usually music that slowly builds up to an epic finale." I feel that's a spot on analysis. But doesn't Prog already do that? I guess instead of a complex and layered build, you get a minimalist path instead? I guess I kind of wrap my around that.

@SleepingSilence

Progressive rock does do the epic buildup, but in my experience they still do it less often than post-rock bands. While there are bands that avoid it (and genre snobs like to attack newbies who assume every band does it), I'd bet you could legitimately say that half of Explosions in the Sky's discography is songs like that, probably a similar percentage for Mono. The real difference is the way that they build in intensity. Progressive rock likes build up with techniques like adding new harmonies, developing the melodies, or giving the band members oppurtunities for virtuosic solos. Post-rock buildups like to keep the same basic melody and build the intensity through increasing the volume, adding more distortion and just sheer repetition of the same basic themes. Rather than have change the theme into something more complex and epic, they take the same theme and try to play it as powerfully as they can. Here's an example of the difference. Prog style: , starting at the nine minute mark, they build in intensity by adding layers through soloing over the same basic theme.
Post-rock style: , at 9:37 and for about a whole minute afterwards, the band takes the same music and keeps increasing the volume or adding very minor touches. If you like classical music, it's sort of like difference between Romantic composers and minimalists