Rename?: Face Heel Turn

Okay, I know what you guys are going to say, it's a Tropes Of Legend yadda yadda, but hear me out.

Face–Heel Turn and it's relatives probably don't have a great deal of misuse, haven't checked yet, but I'm willing to concede that, but the title is a big case of Fan Myopia and all the articles on it are needlessly focused on wrestling which has little to do with the universal version of the Trope. Seriously, if you have to explain the name of a trope, that' a bad sign. And the Heel-Face thing is completely opaque for anyone who doesn't know specifics about wrestling, which is basically most people. It's also really confusing, I'm constantly getting Heel–Face Turn and Face–Heel Turn mixed up. It's not intuitive at all what the heck 'face' and 'heel' refer to.

I think Face–Heel Turn and Heel–Face Turn as notable wrestling terms/tropes are viable tropes, but the universal version should be split off. Or these tropes should be renamed and the descriptions for these moved to a fanspeak page.

edited 3rd Jan '12 6:32:06 PM by NoirGrimoir

...I don't think so.

The use of the word "heel" to mean bad guy is almost a century old. I'm less sure about face/babyface though.

That's why if we are going to do it we have to do it soon, because it's going to get harder and harder to fix the longer we leave it.

edited 3rd Jan '12 6:43:45 PM by NoirGrimoir

I don't like these names, but there's not much you can do about them by this point. I simply remember them by the fact that a heel is a bad guy even in (sort of) common speech.

Yup, heel is an old term meaning a bad guy or even just a jerk. Face always meant a charismatic smooth-talker to me, but it wasn't that hard to figure it out.

People can read the description and figure it out if they're that ignorant of the idioms of the English language. This trope is too pervasive to change now I think.

Outside of wrestling, I really don't think they are old terms and no one outside wrestling uses it but us, that I can tell..

At the very least I think Face–Heel Turn's description needs to be refocused on the universal version rather than on wrestling, and that JAFAAC picture done away with.

edited 4th Jan '12 2:42:27 PM by NoirGrimoir

The terms predating wrestling by at least fifty years and commonly show up all sorts of other places, especially in literature. My only suggestion is read more.

I read quite a bit, thank you very much.

Huh. Not sure why you haven't come across it much then. If I had a nickel for every time I've seen a scoundrel called a heel in a book or an older film I'd be a rich woman.

Well I guess you aren't reading works that have the term? I don't know what else to tell you. I've heard and read "heel" used the way we do countless times outside of wrestling.

You're a mean one, Mr Grinch~
You really are a heel~

Blam.

So we are not renaming, I understand (though just because you hear a term used once, doesn't mean it enters into your vocabulary).

Can we just clean up the description a bit and call it quits then? And get rid of that JAFAAC picture.

Yes, cleanup and changing the image would be great. That's for Image Pickin' though. And I understand your problem - I'd never heard of Tsundere before this wiki and never seen or heard it anywhere else, but I still get that it's a specific term that describes that trope perfectly, and it'd become so pervasive that trying to change it isn't worth it.

There is already a Image Pickin thread if I remember correctly.

The Image Pickin' thread seems up to date, at least.

While I don't think it's a good idea to rename this trope, I think adding a redirect or two won't hurt. How about using Good Turned Evil and Evil Turned Good as redirects for the two pages?

Also, while we're at it, I think the quote on this page isn't fitting. It appears to be a song about someone being evil, not someone turning evil. I'm sure we can do better than that.

Renaming this would create more confusion than it would solve.

Good Turns Evil and Evil Turns Good are already redirects for each of the pages.

Wait, if we vote to change this will that help get rid of "tsundere"?:)

No, I don't think even Eddie can get rid of that one at this point. We can't even manage decent redirects.

So are we actually doing anything in this thread, or are we just saying "some of us would sorta like to rename it, even though we'll never, ever be able to"?

Just to remark that I'm surprised so many of the replies above are about "heel" when "face" is obviously the more problematic term.

Not that it necessarily necessitates (heh) rename, but still.

Well, we could be deciding on the quote.

I will cut the quote in a few days if there are no objections, but would prefer replacing it with a better one.