Character trope rename?: The Boo Radley

Perhaps I'm one of the few people who hasn't read or watched To Kill a Mockingbird, but The Boo Radley IS a character trope that I often find myself clicking into to figure out what it's supposed to be. Would a rename be out of the question?

In terms of suggestions: Freak Outside Good Inside / Judge a Face Beyond its Cover / Creeper Outside Nice Guy Inside / Misjudged By One's Looks.

I am completely supportive of renaming this trope as I also am lost by the title.

The image is also Just A Face.

edited 8th Feb '11 1:32:08 PM by Apocali

As character-named tropes go, The Boo Radley is relatively inoffensive...he passes the One Mario Limit and he's not known for much outside of this trope. Usage is healthy (94 wicks, 86 inbounds, which is good). Unless there's significant misuse, there shouldn't be any need for a rename, although searchable redirects ought to help.

This trope failed to be renamed the last time it came up for discussion.

It did, but just barely.

I'm in favor of coming up with a few redirects. I'm inclined to request to see if there's any misuse before we go any further.

edited 8th Feb '11 3:35:13 PM by SeanMurrayI

Nice Person All Along would be a good redirect.

In favor of rename.

It's a pretty big spoiler.

Shouldn't be, really...Boo Radley was being nice to them from the start, leaving them little gifts and such.

That's true, but it's still a major spoiler that he was the one that was leaving all those little gifts.

I am also in favor of a rename.

Unless there's significant misuse, there shouldn't be any need for a rename, although searchable redirects ought to help.

And what if people who haven't read the book just see the title, are confused by it, and sort of enter an endless limbo where whenever they see the title they have to click it to remember what it means, and it never leaps into their heads when they edit pages because it's not intuitive to them at all, so the bulk of the use it does get is from people who have read the book?

Are we okay with that? What if there's lots and lots of underuse that Character Named Tropes are suffering this way that doesn't figure into the decision because we can't measure it directly? Yeah, we can't just outright assume this happens (Well, I think it makes perfect sense to assume this is the case, but I know to push a point like this around here it takes numbers, which would require a study on the wick gains of previously renamed Character Named Tropes or something). But one way or the other, this is a concern that flies completely under the radar of counting misuse.

edited 17th Feb '11 10:26:52 AM by TripleElation

In favour of rename. Aside from the fact that it's a The X, the trope name is actually a spoiler for the trope namer once you connect the two.

Here we go again.

Anyway, my opinion is the same it was last time: the name works, so I'm not really for a rename. Redirects would work great - though a major problem we had before was that people couldn't really think of a good term for it.

Spoiler. How much of a spoiler? Below is one of the first impressions of Boo Radley from the book.

Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained – if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.

Boo openly taking action (and Scout realizing what he has done) is one of the biggest twists of the novel, so I say that this should be renamed.

The biggest issue I have with this trope is that I have never read or seen To Kill A Mocking Bird, and it's just not as intuitive as a trope name probably should be. If this is supposed to be a trope about a guy that is apparently a bad guy but turns out to be a good guy after all, I can never get it from seeing the name 'Boo Radley'. All I see when I read that is 'Good Name For A Rock Band'.

edited 4th Mar '11 8:25:48 PM by CalamityJane

Also in favor of a rename. I don't think that To Kill A Mockingbird is mainstream enough to carry a character named trope. It's also a spoiler.

Point taken.

Reply to #5 and #6: If there was already a crowner, there's no need to repeat it.

The TRS already decided what to do.

Edit: Whait! This is the old crowner? yeas:38 nays:85 I think this closes the deal.

edited 5th Mar '11 1:01:31 PM by EternalSeptember

Oh, yeah, that's pretty conclusive. Over a hundred votes and more than 2:1 against.

But even if we're conclusively against renaming, we're not done here. This trope badly Needs Redirects.

edited 5th Mar '11 1:03:33 PM by troacctid

How old is that crowner? I don't think a trope should be protected from renaming forever because of a failed attempt.

It wouldn't make much sense if we could just randomly retry the same renames with the same arguments in every few months, hoping to get a more supportive voting crowd.

I for one find it very difficult to add this trope to a works page simply because I can never remember what the heck that trope is supposed to be about. And I'm certain there are others with the same problem that I have. At the very least, there needs to be a redirect, in my opinion.

edited 5th Mar '11 1:33:13 PM by CalamityJane

^^Agreed, but it makes equally little sense to keep a name that a majority now find troublesome just because 2 years ago a rename attempt failed.

When the TRS first came into being, one of the guidelines I suggested that after a failed rename, a hiatus of 6 months to a year has to be taken before attempting to rename it again.

edited 5th Mar '11 1:50:42 PM by ccoa