Rename?: Face Heel Turn

I don't mind losing the current quote, but I can't think of anything to replace it with.

I think that's just because nobody is willing to defend "face". "Face" meaning "good guy" is gibberish if you're not already familiar with wrestling terminology. ("Babyface" is moderately better, but nobody reading "Face Heel Turn" for the first time can be expected to figure out what "Face" is short for.)

I personally have not defended face because I can't. I can sort of see the logic behind it, but I generally just have to rely on the fact I already know what these tropes are about and that I know what a heel is.

Until recently, I wasn't sure which was which.

re: quotes, I like the Futurama one on the quotes subpage. "The superheroes have turned evil! Most uncool."

edited 5th Jan '12 3:09:17 PM by NativeJovian

I'm more impartial to limiting to professional wrestling, which is where the term Heel Turn came from and where it is still used in that context.(Officially, Professional Wrestling was invented in the 1920s but stories of professional wrestling go as far back as the late 1800s in some parts of the United States, kayfabe used to work, believe it or not)

Secondly, in the context of Face Heel Turn, it means to turn on the fans, not a change morality or group alignment. Those help, but a perfectly good meaning guy is still a heel if his purpose is too annoy the audience so they'll cheer when he gets beat up. A well known case being CM Punk's anti drug campaign against known druggy Jeff Hardy, another being Randy Savage attacking Hulk Hogan for making moves on his wife, the Basham Bros attacking the APA in revenge for Shaniqua, Simon Dean for promoting healthy living or any other number of Well Intentioned Extremists, Anti Villains and Designated Villains.

Then you have the Evil Is Cool, Face characters like Kane, Demolition or Randy Orton. Evil Is Hammy faces like Kaientai and Los Guerreros and Designated Heroes like Degeneration X and Hornswaggle who are pretty much good because the fans cheer for them and they occasionally mess with bad guys. These are wrestling tropes and don't work with other story telling formats.

edit:links corrected

edited 5th Jan '12 4:53:51 PM by Cider

That's just straight up not going to happen, man. Face–Heel Turn has taken on a life of its own, regardless of whatever its origin was. It's got little misuse, 4000 wicks, and has had 1400 redirects since January 1st. That's 1400 redirects in five days. There's nothing to justify a rename or a definition change.

edited 5th Jan '12 4:38:04 PM by NativeJovian

All that tells me is that there must be a bug somewhere in the counting. :)

1400 redirects?

Derp. I said "redirects" but I meant "off-site links".

Why would you assume that? Face–Heel Turn is one of the most popular tropes on the site. It's one of the Tropes Of Legend. Hell, Heel–Face Turn has 2900 off-site links. (Apparently bad guys turning good is more popular than good guys turning bad.)

edited 5th Jan '12 4:51:13 PM by NativeJovian

Because I just don't believe in 1400 in just the last five days. At that rate, its numbers should be in the millions, shouldn't it? (If they are, well, never mind.)

We would keep the page for the Wrestling definition and make it more of a fan speak page, but move non-wrestling examples to a new page which would be the universal trope. As it is the wrestling definition has a lot more things involved in it than just 'a bad character turns good, etc' So we would actually still get all the redirects and wicks and such for that page.

More than five days. A year and seven days to be correct.

Strictly speaking, the wrestling terms are Heel Turn and Face Turn, not the Face–Heel Turn and Heel–Face Turn this site uses. They're currently listed as redirects for the main pages. I'm pretty sure there were attempts to rename these tropes to the 'correct' wrestling versions before that were defeated because the terms were overwhelming entrenched by that point.

Functionally, these two are TV Tropes original terms that have caught on and spread offsite, much like Narm and Xanatos Gambit have. I've seen both used decently often on other websites, and the huge inbound numbers certainly back me up on this. Attempting to rename them at this point would be strictly unproductive, in my opinion, considering how much usage they get both on and off this wiki.

Incidentally, when I first started reading TV Tropes I glossed over the paragraphs describing where the terms came from and just internalized this way: a face is near the top of a human body, while a heel is near the bottom. So a Face->Heel Turn would logically be a good guy turning into a bad guy, and vice versa for a Heel->Face Turn. This was intuitive enough that I never mixed them up, and I never learned that they (sorta) came from wrestling until the pages came up in TRS long ago.

Seriously though, there's no reason to rename this. It's a healthy trope and there's no misuse. Is there any reason to keep this thread open? I'm requesting a clock just to keep this thing from sticking around for no good reason. If someone can come up with a legit reason to rename before the clock runs out, then we'll talk about that.

Agreed. No rename needed.