What would be the inverse of X-Pac Heat? A wrestler who gets cheers no matter what alignment they're on? Where they love the performer so much that they can't help but cheer. A possible example might be The Rock's time as a heel briefly in the late 90's, he'd get loud cheers as he insulted the town he was performing in.
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Yeah I feel that should be a trope too at this point, but I fear that sounds too much like Rooting for the Empire
Edited by KJShea
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Rename X Pac Heat?
, started by HersheleOstropoler on Jul 2nd 2010 at 10:49:52 PM
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Only relevant to pro-wrestling, started by MegaJ on Jan 14th 2011 at 2:20:46 AM
I believe the WWE examples of X-Pac Heat should be split off into their own separate page considering the number of examples and how it's just going to keep growing, including the Trope Namer and "repeat offenders" since pretty much all of them are from WWE.
Perhaps it's time to finally retire "X-Pac Heat" and change it to "Reigns Heat." Given the sheer spitefulness between both the WWE and fans alike, one could make a fairly compelling argument Roman Reigns' immense dislike has finally come out ahead.
The discussion of the Trope Namer doesn't mention how it became known he had beaten Chyna when dating her.
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To be fair, Chyna was also arrested for assaulting him, but I added it to the description anyway, along with more elaboration on his drug issues and I put the omitted part about their sex tape back, because lets face it, that all turned a lot of people against him.
I am curious as to whether his failed suicide attempt should be there too? Traditionally people say his work in Mexico is when X-pac became more bearable but I doubt that could not have endeared anyone to him.
Edited by 69.47.43.173 That's why he wants you to have the money. Not so you can buy 14 Cadillacs but so you can help build up the wastes
Pre-wrestling examples if they will be reused somehow:
- Vic Mignogna gets this in some fan circles, alternately because of his reported (usually false — the fangirls do require some accomodations from the convention, and Mignogna asking for them is probably some of the problem) egotism, the believed sacreligious nature of anime being voice-acted by a devout follower of God, and the fact that Funimation loves to cast him in lead roles even if he is unsuited for them. He has also made comments which pissed off Yaoi Fangirls and the CLAMP fandom of some of the characters he's voiced (talking about this can get really contentious, though, since he's got some roles which people love him in).
- Japanese anime fans can be shockingly harsh to voice actors (who are often treated more like idols there), especially female AV idols. One of the most poignant examples is Aya Hirano who, despite being a well-known and beloved voice actress for years, has now all but quit the business due to frequently being harassed (and even threatened!) by "fans" who are very upset that she dates older men and occasionally has sex.
- A gender-inversion that's outright terrifying is Mamoru Miyano. Handsome man, great actor, has many fangirls around. He loves children. Doctor tells him he might be infertile, which upset him greatly. Finds out that his longtime girlfriend is pregnant, and he's happy. He decides to marry her. Cue Japanese fangirls in a rage, wishing him ill and hoping that his girlfriend will miscarry their child. Probably one of the biggest What The Hell, Fandom!? moments in existence.
- ...and in turn, a livejournal entry about the subject has American fans giving him good graces and bafflement against the Japanese fandom, which makes it a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for the American fandom.
- A gender-inversion that's outright terrifying is Mamoru Miyano. Handsome man, great actor, has many fangirls around. He loves children. Doctor tells him he might be infertile, which upset him greatly. Finds out that his longtime girlfriend is pregnant, and he's happy. He decides to marry her. Cue Japanese fangirls in a rage, wishing him ill and hoping that his girlfriend will miscarry their child. Probably one of the biggest What The Hell, Fandom!? moments in existence.
- Some people have refused to watch any movie starring Tom Cruise, due to poor opinion of his real life behavior.
- It got so bad that a marketing firm conducted a telephone survey of movie-goers asking them for opinions on every major film released in November and December of 2008. At the end of the long list of movies, they asked respondents why they had the views they did about Valkyrie. The list of possible choices included "I don't like Tom Cruise because of his outspoken religious beliefs." The son of the man who Tom Cruise portrayed in the movie was strongly against having Cruise play his father; not because he did not believe Cruise couldn't do his father justice (the real Graf von Stauffenberg did in fact bear quite a resemblance to Cruise), but because he thought Cruise's Church of Happyology connections were a disgrace.
- Any celebrity associated with the Church of Happyology (at least vocally) is prone to this to some extent as well.
- Shia LaBeouf suffers from this due to his role in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as Indy's son, as well as the live-action Transformers movies for playing Sam Witwicky, a role that was doomed to hatedom from the beginning.
- He does however blame himself partly for why people disliked Crystal Skull, and is willing to admit that Revenge of the Fallen was a bad movie.
- People disliked him in the Transformers films for three reasons: one, an Unpleasable Fanbase. Two, because he's not a robot. Three, because watching a scrawny teenager run around with his eyes bugging out of his head for two hours gets boring really fast. At the very least, most of the hate from people who didn't like the Transformers movies is directed at Michael Bay.
- He does however blame himself
- This has happened to Mel Gibson with the fallout from The Passion Of The Christ and his anti-semitic DUI rant. The heat was then pushed to obscene levels with a series of leaked voicemail messages he sent to his ex-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva (featuring several explicit and racial insults). Gibson's behaviour during this period also cost him a cameo role in The Hangover 2, as the crew and cast of the film were leery about having him involved with their production, or in Zach Galifinakis' case, vocally against his presence in the movie. It remains to be seen how this will affect his film career in the long run.
- One 30 Rock episode required a natural disaster for which expressing sympathy would be offensive. To achieve this difficult feat, they had a hurricane strike Mel Gibson's island. The man's heat is so bad that a major sitcom is confident in saying most people wouldn't mind if he died in a hurricane.
- Megan Fox earned a lot of this after her poor performances in the Transformers movies. Her diva-ish behavior on the set eventually got her fired. Her X-Pac heat eventually got to the point where there were complaints of men's magazines being oversaturated with pictures of her! (Likely as a result of her trying to keep her career buoyed in the face of the endless criticism.)
- The movie version of Jonah Hex, while not being especially great, wasn't especially terrible. It was, however, a neutron bomb, making an absolutely pathetic showing on its opening weekend. All blame was immediately placed on Megan Fox and her terrible acting. This despite that she was, at best, a supporting character (that the movie's marketers foolishly played up as a central character in the trailers).
- But then there's Jennifers Body, the movie written by Juno scribe Diablo Cody and with an ad campaign centered around Fox. The movie ended up with a domestic gross of $16 million. Not in its first weekend, but total. You could point to the fact horror-comedies don't really do well, but as far as a litmus test to see if Fox on her own is a box office draw, it failed. Couple that with the more-pathetic takes of Hex and How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, and it's becoming clear guys would rather ogle her in mags than see her in a movie. (It is, after all, cheaper, and as the saying goes she stays in the required sexy pose longer.)
- Jane Fonda has had a long, long battle trying to lose the "Hanoi Jane" label. That her various apologies have seemed self-serving hasn't helped matters. Her activism didn't ruin her career, but bringing her name up around a Vietnam vet is still not advised.
- Some vets have forgiven her, however. A few have even asked her for forgiveness, perhaps because a lot of what she's been through these past 40 years could be seen as a kind of Disproportionate Retribution.
- Gwyneth Paltrow has quite a few people that are sick of her. Her Granola Girl tendencies and rather pretentious behavior (she once called Billy Joel "William") has had her coming across as a self-righteous know-it-all, to the point where Entertainment Weekly deliberately kept her off their cover during the promotion of Iron Man, saying she was "newsstand suicide."
- Seems to have redeemed herself with her role on Glee, though how much of that is Paltrow herself and how much is Glee's massive amounts of Popularity Power is anyone's guess.
- Mike Myers has been getting this for a few years now. It was never a secret that he is difficult to work with, but over time it has been revealed that he is a generally unhappy man with daddy issues. It doesn't help that he's trying to perpetrate the image that he is a comic genius and perfectionist while the movies he makes are full of Toilet Humor with excessive mugging and tired catch phrases.
- Jamie Kennedy made a documentary on the phenomenon, particularly hate directed at performers and not their work, called Heckler after he made the infamous box office bomb Son Of The Mask. This only worsened his own (already bad) X-Pac Heat, since the documentary turned out to be a thinly-veiled, self-gratifying festival of self-pity, and blaming all of his hatred on everyone except himself.
- Some people are blaming Scott Pilgrim Vs The World's disastrous box-office performance on the fact that people are getting really burned out on Michael Cera's "awkward hipster" schtick. Pity it was one time where his stock performance actually worked.
- M Night Shyamalan has been building this for a while, mostly due to his films declining in quality over the course of a decade and his rather inflated ego. It has now reached the point where a film he only produced got laughed at when audiences saw his name in the trailer. (This was shortly after The Last Airbender was released...) When your very name is seen as a joke by the general public, it's often a sign you need to rethink your career.
- Played with in the film Lajja: although Janki is a fictional character (played by Madhuri Dixit), she is also an actress. She has been chosen to play the goddess Sita in The Ramayana, which tells the story of how said goddess was kidnapped and even though she was faithful to her husband Rama, was treated as an adulteress and made to walk through fire to purify her. The X-Pac Heat comes because Janki (who was angry at her boyfriend Manish for believing Puroshottam's lies about the child she's carrying not being Manish's) gets up on stage and says that Sita shouldn't have to do this, especially where none of the gods had to go through this. The crowd takes this as blasphemy and writes Janki off as a Hysterical Woman. After the show, they riot and beat the ever-living crap out of her as she is carted off to a Bedlam House, causing her to miscarry.
- After his portrayal of young Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace, Jake Lloyd got demonized by a vast amount of ''Star Wars'' fans to the point where he left acting.
- Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have been getting this after their roles in Twilight, particularly Stewart. Most of this, however, comes from the Twilight Hatedom, who think their performances are wooden and flat. Not to mention, even actual fans of the series find Bella Swan The Scrappy.
- Wil Wheaton got fan-hate during his stint as Creator's Pet Wesley Crusher in Star Trek The Next Generation. Wheaton was young at the time, and translated people not liking Wesley into people not liking him personally. This caused him to lash out at fans, becoming something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. As he matured and moved past the role (nowadays he's as willing as anyone to acknowledge how annoying the character was), he earned much more respect as an actor, and is now something of a geek icon.
- Katherine Heigl garnered quite a bit of this, mostly because she kept biting the hands that fed her. One year, she loudly removed herself from the Emmy race because she felt that the material on Grey's Anatomy wasn't good enough to warrant a nomination, a smack in the face to the writers and other members of the show's ensemble. Then she started bad-mouthing Knocked Up, right after it made her something of a darling in people's eyes. This was the rumored reason for her leaving/getting fired from Grey's Anatomy.
- Olivia Munn. The Internet believes her to be the sole reason that anything she's on isn't particularly good.
- Hell, many of the women on G4, who many fans view as having been hired more for eye candy than for their gaming expertise. Exhibit A would be Morgan Webb, to the point where "Morgan's not a gamer" jokes have even been referenced on the show.
- Samuell Benta, who played Will/Black Ranger in Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, gets plenty of this in the Power Rangers fandom because of reports that he went to a con and stole an autographed banner that was intended to be sold for charity.
- In Red Dwarf, Chloe Annett's performance as Kochanski (replacing Clare Grogan) changed the character from being a tough Glaswegian who everyone liked, to a whiny English loner who nobody liked. It doesn't help that by this point in the show the quality of episodes had gone severely downhill due to the lack of Rimmer and the flanderization of the other characters. The character change was lampshaded by the fact she was from a parallel universe, so had an opposite personality. This didn't really sit well with the fans however, as her character wasn't funny. Unfortunately Clare Grogan retired from acting so they can't use her again even if they wanted to.
- Kyle Sandilands, the Australian equivalent of Simon Cowell. He claims to be brutally honest, and has spoken of a difficult childhood, but he has got into hot water several times over his ad hominem attacks of other personalities, and even after being temporarily suspended from his radio show and fired from Australian Idol, he bounced back with an attack on Magda Szubanski. He's also faced a lot of criticism for several "shock jock" moments which struck people less as "comedy" and more as "pointless poor taste". One notable incident involved a girl hooked up to a lie detector test admitting she had been raped, to which Sandilands' response was: "And is that the only sexual experience you've had?".
- Merveille Lukeba got this from Skins fans after his complaining on Twitter about the lack of fan attention toward his character, Thomas, turned into bashing more popular characters, like lesbian Super Couple Naomi/Emily, whom he mocked as "the nation's favourite lesbian couple" while badmouthing Lily Loveless and Kat Prescott's acting skills. It didn't exactly get him the Thomas fandom he desired, to put it mildly.
- Morrissey. Despite the fact that the The Smiths were very successful and have truly fervent fans, his unfavorable real life personality overshadows most of his solo work.
- Performers who got their start on a reality TV talent contest (American Idol, The X Factor and similar) are prone to this, especially if viewers feel that a more talented contestant was rejected in favor of someone who made for better car-crash TV.
- Frequently sports fans will root against a rival in another game not involving their team (Patriots fans will root against the Jets, and vice-versa, even when the teams aren't playing one another). Many fans will often even say, "I am for Team X and anyone who beats Team Y." However some teams are universally hated because of fan perception, perceived arrogance and a perceived bias in the coverage of said teams. This is separate from the Miami Heat example below, because that has come to be only recently. These teams are almost universally hated.
- The New York Yankees are the king of this trope. The most successful baseball franchise, with 27 championships under their belts, arguably the most successful sports franchise in North America. Yankees fans love their team, and they are almost universally hated by just about any other fandom. There are people who aren't even baseball fans who hate the Yankees.
- The Boston Red Sox aren't far behind. This is for two primary reasons. First, during the infamous 86-year World Series title drought, many saw Boston fans as insufferable whiners who blamed everything on "The Curse of the Bambino" when their franchise failed to win a title from 1918 to 2004. Second, there is the perceived "East Coast Bias" in baseball coverage, once summed up by sports reporter Michael Wilbon on several occasions as "for you people it's the Yanks and the Sox and nobody else matters." The declaration of "Red Sox Nation" also rubbed many fans the wrong way, even though the naming trend has come to refer to any conglomeration of fans of a particular athletic team ("Cornhusker Nation", "Laker Nation", "Packer Nation", et cetera).
- In American Football, the Dallas Cowboys are fairly universally reviled outside Dallas. One of a handful of teams to win three or more Super Bowls* Giants with four each, and the Washington Redskins, Oakland Raiders (if one counts their win as the Los Angeles Raiders in 1983) and New England Patriots with three each. The Cowboys, for the record, have won five.]], the Cowboys were dubbed "America's Team" in the early 1970's. In a nation where football is the most popular sport and loyalties are often very deep, sometimes generational, this rubbed many fans the wrong way. The Cowboys were a door mat for most of The '80s, but were revived when brash billionaire Jerry Jones bought the team and hired former University of Miami Head Coach Jimmy Johnson, who built a team with bravado and several troubled players who alienated Big D from anyone but Cowboys fans, punctuated with the '90s teams catchphrase "How 'bout them Cowboys?" Though the team has cooled again, Jones' constant media presence still generates a lot of hatred towards his franchise.
- The Pittsburgh Steelers have a fairly devoted hatred as well. Pittsburgh was a laughingstock for their early years until Chuck Noll signed on as head coach and built the Steelers into a perrenial power in the '70s, winning four Super Bowl titles. He established the Steelers' identity as a smash-mouth tough team that many detractors call "dirty". After Noll's retirement, the image stayed through the next head coach Bill Cower (who won a title) and Mike Tomlin (who also won a title). Pittsburgh's identity is usually predicated on a tough, physical football team on offense and especially on defense, and Pittsburgh players frequently are found near the top of "dirtiest player" polls, to say nothing of occasional accusations of bad behavior off the field.
- Mixed Martial Arts: Former professional wrestlers who transition into MMA, such as Brock Lesnar and Bobby Lashley, have received this kind of heat from MMA fans. In spite of their legitimate amateur wrestling credentials, fans continued to mock them as "fake fighters" who don't belong in the sport. Fans also criticized their pre-fight trash talking for being too similar to the theatrics of professional wrestling, even though pre-fight trash talking and theatrics are customary in MMA, much like in boxing.
- Every commissioner in every major American sport gets booed soundly at every appearance, be it a game or their annual draft, mainly because fans hold their mistakes against them no matter what positive actions they've made for their sport during their tenure. It doesn't help that all four active commissioners (Bud Selig, Roger Goodell, David Stern, and Gary Bettman) have all had a work stoppage/lockout under their regime at some point (and in Stern's case, twice!).
- There's also the fact that commissioners by their nature tend to support the team owners over the players in any labor dispute. Even if no actual work stoppage results, fans tend to have more sympathy for the players than for the owners, since the players are the ones actually out there entertaining us, while the owners are at their best in fans' eyes when they do nothing more than cheer their team from a luxury box.
- YMMV on that one; the players are also the ones whose salaries are reported in the news, leading many fans to gawk at how they can demand being paid millions of dollars to play a game for a living and assume that's the main reason ticket prices keep skyrocketing. After the 1994 baseball strike killed the World Series, the players were booed at games for much of the next year, especially the union representatives.
- Gary Bettman gets particular hate for trying to expand the NHL into the South and block more teams in Canada. This has not really worked, since for those teams even some playoff games don't sell out. Even the recent sale of the Atlanta Thrashers to Winnipeg, re-birthing the Winnipeg Jets, has not redeemed Bettman in the eyes of fans. Canadian hockey fans still remember Bettman's Determinator efforts to stop the sale of the Phoenix Coyotes to Canadian businessman Jim Balsillie, who wanted to establish a third team in the province of Ontario. The move of the Thrashers to Winnipeg is widely viewed as proof that Bettman's Southern expansion strategy was a terrible idea that never should have been done in the first place. He still had to talk over loud booing at the conclusion of the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals in Vancouver, followed by riots, though it should be noted that the riots really didn't have anything to do with Bettman.
- There's also the fact that commissioners by their nature tend to support the team owners over the players in any labor dispute. Even if no actual work stoppage results, fans tend to have more sympathy for the players than for the owners, since the players are the ones actually out there entertaining us, while the owners are at their best in fans' eyes when they do nothing more than cheer their team from a luxury box.
- LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade formed a triumvirate of X-Pac Heat when they all agreed to come together on the Miami Heat to form one big basketball superteam. LeBron definitely got it the most by announcing his decision to sign with Miami on the nationally televised ESPN special, The Decision. There was little doubt who most of America was cheering for when the Heat faced the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 NBA Finals. The Sports Illustrated article following the Mavs' win summed it up: "This was the rare sporting event in which an American audience rooted for a European (Mavs German-born star Dirk Nowitzki) to humble three native sons."
- LeBron-hate was especially pronounced in Cleveland, where the people felt personally betrayed by their hometown hero (born and raised in nearby Akron) not only jumping from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Miami Heat for the sake of a better contract, but creating such a publicity storm in the process. It's been said that Cleveland was ready to throw a parade for the Mavericks after they won, as though it had been the Cavaliers who had won the title. They hate LeBron that much.
- Tim McCarver, former catcher and color commentator for FOX's national games and playoff games, has MASSIVE hate for his announcing alone. His monotone announcing, bashing teams he doesn't like, (mainly the Mets and Cardinals, due to his falling out with both teams), stating the obvious way too much. He has a website dedicated to the hatedom. It's probably best not to mention his name to a baseball fan, especially a Mets and Cardinals fan, due to how poorly he fell out of favor with both teams (fired by the Mets in the 1990s and got traded to the Phillies in the early '70s for not getting along with the ownership).
- Jason Griffith, one-time voice actor of Sonic the Hedgehog, gets a lot of this, largely because he's not Ryan Drummond. This had gotten to the point to where he had to use a pseudonym for several of his more recent appearances. The fact that Drummond was replaced by Griffith without even being informed of it doesn't help any, though it wasn't Griffith's fault.
- He was finally replaced by Roger Craig Smith in 2010, to which the Sonic fandom responded with... hatred for Smith.
- TJ Kincaid, a.k.a. The Amazing Atheist has been a very divisive, controversal figure for a plethora of reasons:
- His political and religious views have rubbed off a lot of people the wrong way. Even the other contributers of That Guy With The Glasses weren't particularly endeared to him because of this - Lindsay mentioned that she couldn't stand how he "revels in pissing people off," while Jesu Otaku (a devout Christian herself) called him "hateful and childish," and Film Brain even mentioned that TJ, compared to the rest of the closely knit group of contributors, was a loner who rarely ever spoke to them.
- Frequently responding to anyone criticizing his work with childish, unprofessional and profane responses, leading people to believe he's just as abrasive in person as he is on camera.
- Things really came to a head on February 8, 2012, when he got into a heated argument with a feminist on a Reddit messageboard. When she was revealed to have been raped, he made all kinds of vicious, graphic threats towards her and told her she deserved to be assaulted. It only got worse - he later made a video expressing regret that he started an argument over the internet, but never apologizing for his words. After all this, it's no wonder this incident is seen as TJ's Moral Event Horizon.
- April Stewart has had some crazy backlash dumped on her by a rather vicious Vocal Minority in some South Park fan circles simply for having replaced Eliza "Blue Girl" Schneider due to the latter's contract dispute that led to her quitting at the end of the seventh season. That circumstance still hasn't stopped some fans from claiming the "amateur" conspired to get Schneider kicked off the show and actively gets in the way of her co-star Mona Marshall getting more female roles. Stewart not remembering the year of Mary Kay Bergman's death and being contradictory about other details of her show experience hasn't helped the hate and cries of wanting to campaign to have Schneider come back, as well as Stewart being blamed as part of the show's decay.
- Also lampshaded as well as specifically parodied in the South Park character Towelie, who was intended by Matt Stone & Trey Parker to be "The worst character ever.". Apparently this worked a little too well, as instead of becoming ironically popular or even having the jokier side of his Intentionally Bad Character status appreciated by the fans in context, fan reaction to Towelie-specific episodes, or even episodes he plays any part in, consists of a lot of eye-rolling and annoyed sighs from the community, to this day. Either way, it has to be a success for Matt & Trey, seeing as Towelie pretty much became the annoyance that was expected.
- See also; The Jackoffasaur and the temporary inclusion of Tweak as "The Fourth Friend."
- A much stranger form of X-Pac Heat is when a character becomes unpopular not because of their performance in any of the fiction, but due to poor toy design. Low articulation and bad materials are common problems - these are good ways to draw ire to a character no matter how well written they are.
- Specific terms within Transformers fandom: Bricks (poor articulation), Shellformers (robot form is hidden inside a hollow shell of alternate form), Gold Plastic Syndrome (plastic that would decompose and became brittle), Unpaintable Plastic.
- The level of Brickitude that renders a toy unpalatable varies by age. A classic from 1984-1985 is well loved, even if its only articulation is to pivot its arms up and down, while one from today who can't bend its knees or elbows properly is almost universally hated, despite having more articulation than the older toy. This is not as ass-backwards as it sounds, as Brickitude is measured by taking the contemporary design and technology standards of the toy's era into account; if a toy that can only move its arms comes out a year after toys that can move everything any which way, it's a brick by default.
- Wrestling example being when WWE switched to Mattel after being with Jakks Pacific for over 10 years. Mattel figures have a history of including better accessories but the figures themselves being more poorly made than the Jakks ones, not to mention having a habit of breaking. As a result many people hate Mattel for ruining this when in reality it's the fact that WWE signed with them that made it happen (they are doing their best to improve on Jakks figures).
- Many radio stations tend to have personalities that grate the nerves of listeners:
- Take, for example, Baily B, the mid-afternoon (3PM-5PM Central Time Monday thru Friday) host on the obscure South Texas radio station Texas Thunder Radio, who ALWAYS flubs up her lines EVERY TIME! You can listen to her hilariously bad incompetence online at the appropriate times, if you dare!
- Thankfully, the station fired her at the end of 2010. Unfortunately, they re-hired her in 2012!
- Take, for example, Baily B, the mid-afternoon (3PM-5PM Central Time Monday thru Friday) host on the obscure South Texas radio station Texas Thunder Radio, who ALWAYS flubs up her lines EVERY TIME! You can listen to her hilariously bad incompetence online at the appropriate times, if you dare!
Jabroniville
I added some new bits to this, and included the Trope Namer explanation in the main topic. I think it just needs to be in there, partially to keep the trope's description from being too short. I also enlarged the scope a bit to apply to all forms of media, and characters that people just plain despise aside from being villains.
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I think it shouldn't really apply to other forms of media unless they display HEAT the same way professional wrestling does. How are you going to say, an actor in a movie, has heat comparable to X Pac when there isn't a live audience booing him and breaking Kayfabe? The closest anything else comes to that are sporting events.
Edited by Cider Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
A LOT of the examples are not X-Pac heat at all. To Cider— the Wesley Crusher example is a good one for how you can have X-Pac heat w/out being in front of an audience.
I had a Jewish girl I was dating a few years ago refuse to see Apocalypto because it was made by Mel Gibson. That's closer than A LOT of the examples on the page IMO, which are closer to Fan Dumb or Misaimed Fandom than X-Pac Heat. It's pretty explicit in the description that you're talking about a particular PERFORMER, and yet several examples are about the character.
For what it's worth, Ric Flair would routinely act like an under card performer for just about anyone during some of his title reigns in JCP.
He would let himself be beaten within an inch of his life by various performers, escaping through some underhanded method or help from the Horsemen. He'd even cheat to win against under card performers!
No one believed Flair to be a credible threat alone, in fact his entire claim to fame at one point was being the cowardly, inefficient villain who couldn't do much without incredible circumstances to aid him.
A similar case would be made for the Honky Tonk Man or Jerry Lawler (although the later has shifted from useless to superhuman to somewhere in between depending on how he felt like booking himself). Such characters, when well handled, could lead to "great payoffs" as the fans are eager to see the "travesty" end.
I recall as a child that I hated these characters precisely because they were not dangerous or even threatening to the heroes. The champion should have been closer to a superman in my childhood mind, and having a weakling with the belt was a grave insult. At least a monster would be a legitimate force. The Ultimate Warrior destroying HTM would never have worked as well as it did if HTM had not spent almost a year aggravating fans with count outs, D Qs, Jimmy Hart interference, being a cowardly "Southern" heel etc.
The phenomenon of X-Pac heat refers to an apparently generalized lack of interest leading to an exacerbated feeling of frustration and hostility as a particularly unappealing character or performer is more or less "forced" upon the audience either with hopes of "winning them over" or merely because of other sundry external factors. As opposed to HTM and Flair (Lawler has run the gamut of motivations and presentations), X-Pac was meant to be "cool" and "respected" hence the reactionary "heat".
In fact, HTM's initial face run was a bust precisely because of the heat by association and design that X-Pac was accused of by internet writers (e.g. he was associated with popular inidividuals). As a friend of Hogan, it was assumed he would be welcomed with open arms, yet fans booed him out of a general lack of interest in him. In a spectacular (for the time) event, a poll was opened to determine the fate of HTM. Upset with the fans' dislike of him, he turned heel just as they had decided for him in his debut as HTM (he had a previous career as a heel as part of the Blonde Bombers prior to the WWF). His eventual victory over Ricky Steamboat as an underdog heel would cement his trademark character.
So when discussing the Miz's or any other contemporary performer's villainous pro wrestling character, be aware that there are precedents to this "lame dog champion" and that some of them are recognized as great by now grown up children of the 80's. After all, would anyone compare the "heat" Ric Flair received for running away from a lowly under card performer in the late 80's to early 90's to X-Pac heat?
The article at times feels like an indictment of various contemporary booking decisions and character arcs rather than examples of X-Pac heat. Too many segues into "this was a stupid character" or "stupid angle that no one liked" with little proof outside the author's perception.
Lastly, X-Pac heat turned into a semi-4th wall breaking running gag as characters like GM William Regal would exchange quips with right hand man Tajiri about X-Pac. And X-Factor were verbally buried on television with emphasis on X-Pac's presence.
A lot of people were booing Miz when he debuted as a supposed face though because they did not want to see him. He didn't win the fan votes in tough enough, Daniel Puder did. I guess whether Miz's current response is X-pac heat or the response WWE wants him to have I'll tell you right now I still don't want to see Miz on my tv screen. I've got no interest in this Real World faux hawk wearing runner up. I'm actually mad at Kurt Angle too because he's as responsible as anyone but Kurt's at least a good promo. Kurt's an outstanding technician. Kurt's a believable powerhouse.
Turning Miz doesn't make him any more tolerable to me. The closest that came was when he was the butt monkey who jobbed to Hornswoggle. I did not want to see him then, but at least then he would be guaranteed to be putting over someone I liked, or at least would rather not see. Now WWE wants us to take him seriously so what little interest I would have in his appearances is gone. I still want PUDER! How many people still think that way I don't know, I'm not a righteous WWE follower anymore, but his X-Pac heat between his Raw debut and premier of The Dirt Sheet was obvious.
It was legitimately gone at least for a good deal during the Dirt Sheet. People wanted to see him get his head kicked in but at least then there was a high and undeniable demand to see Miz's(and Morrison) in some form, unlike initially. Whether he's got his X-pac heat back or not I don't really know but I wouldn't be surprised given how underwhelming his wrestlemania match with John Cena was. A bad wrestlemania is what started Cena's X-pac heat and Brock Lesnar's. Also, if Miz has more recent X-pac, it may simply be because of his association with Michael Cole, who shilled him to no end and was something of an X-pac himself.(WWE mass produces this response huh?)
Edited by Cider Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
Re limiting to wrestling: Decided here
By that logic we should edit all the face/heel trope pages to be wrestling only
Added that Cole's X-Pac Heat could be cured, though probably not in the way one would've wanted to have anyone cured of such. He did a HELL of a job keeping his cool when Lawler had his heart attack on RAW. Anyone who is able to do what he did during a situation like that deserve some mad props, and it seems like a lot of people are agreeing that that might've been the turning point for him.
We need a trope for when this doesn't apply to wrestling. For example, when people in the 00s thought Gwyneth Paltrow was annoying for talking overly formal, or for a more extreme example, the thoughts on Mel Gibson after he was revealed to be anti-semitic and a bully or when it was revealed that Arnold Schwarzenegger had a mistress on the side.
rollin' on [[SubbingVersusDubbing dubs]]
Proposal: a "heat index" on performers/creators who don't get the response they/the audience intend. Reba West's voice is one of the reasons people hate Robotech's Lin Mimay. M. Night Shyamalan is a director with low "heat". X-pac heat would be a subtrope of course.
Edited by TairaMai All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48
Could there be a description anywhere on this page about who 'X-Pac' is and why people hated him so much? It seems the entire page completely sidesteps that and it really bugs me. I have no idea who this guy is and would like some info.
The Tape Fairy
I think this definitely needs a rename.
It's a good thing our last name isn't Drew, because then you'd be Nancy Drew and I'd be Andrew Drew. -Andy Botwin
Would fictional characters who are Hate Sinks, but also end up as Scrappies (aka hated for the wrong reasons) count?
Or should we just keep them as Scrappies?
Examples: Alessi from Jojo, Hody Jones from One Piece.