Saturday, July 25, 2009

Crowd heat Fluid Vs Static

While I was writing my 2nd promo in the First/Winters match I was thinking to myself about the nature of crowd heat in E-Fedding and how a character reacts to it, I also thought about the nature of face Vs heel in general.

Right now the main event for the next EPW PPV is going to be Marcus Westscott Vs Sean Stevens. Both men are listed as heels, yet why is Marcus Westscott a heel currently in EPW?

Here's a list of things that have happened to Westscott over the course of his run that has led to his title shot.

-Sold out by Craig Miles at Unleashed and forced to fight The Forsaken by himself. A match he lost when The First (a tweener/face at this time) cheated by spraying mist in his eyes leading to a double team and a finish.

-Had Miles degrade him and force him to abandon the Beast ringname and not make Lindsay Troy jokes to get his hands on Miles.

-Backstabbed by Anarky in a tag match and left to be mauled by Stalker/Fusenhoff.

-Laid out in the backstage area by an unknown attacker(s), thought to be Anthology.

-Is currently main eventing Aggression fighting a member of Anthology, the hated heel stable of EPW.

And he's a heel? I mean my lord, what did this man do to the crowd, run over everyone's dog? Sleep with everyone's sister? I mean, the guy can't catch a break. If I end up writing the main event of the show I'd be likely to give Westscott a little face heat from the crowd, maybe it a bit of a tweener reaction, because he's done nothing but fight a rogue gallery of scum and villany this whole time and he's still standing, the marks have to respect that.

I'm not saying Westscott should act like a face or embrace the fans, far from it. He's a guy who's been over for being who he is and suddenly shaking hands and kissing babies is not at all in character for him, I just think that the masses want somebody to root for in all these fights, and Westscott would be the one who they would get behind.

On the last EPW card, I had Anarky get some face heat in his match with Larry Tact. This is because Anarky was doing a heroic thing, entering battle in spite of being injured (And currently bleeding) and fighting a member of Anthology. How is the crowd not going to think that's bad ass?

I know a lot of people want to be the biggest heel on the block, but sometimes you just have to accept that there's no way you're going to outheel the other guy. It might even be for good reasons.

Let's take Sean Stevens Vs Cameron Cruise, who's the face there? Has to be Stevens, he won Wrestleverse III's main event clean, he's laying down challenges, he's the badass. Cruise is the (de facto) leader of Anthology, he won his match at Wrestleverse III via run-in. Cruise is the chickenshit heel. Hell Stevens wanted to fight Cruise so badly he tagged with a sworn enemy (and face) The First to do so. The crowd is going to gravitate towards the bad ass shitkicker and want to see the cheating bastard get his. This could even be brought up in the commentary that it kind of throws Stevens off that somebody's more hated then him. He's accustomed to being the bad guy and now he's not...

Again, I'm not saying that the character should Rp differently, unless the handler decides they want to. I'm just saying that in a lot of situations I feel match writers/handlers/fed-heads just are lazy and have a switch reading "face/heel" and once it's set one way, unless the handler declares he's going to turn the switch the other way, then they stay on the side they are on. I'm guilty of it myself and I'm going to stop doing that in the matches I write.

So when you're writing a match and you are stuck with the dreaded Heel/Heel match up, review both guy's previous matches, read the promos, do a little research and pick somebody to get a little face heat, fans aren't there just to watch villians fight each other, they want investment in the match, and the sold out crowds (It's always a sell out! I'd love a league that hit a rough patch and brought up that sections of the arena were covered or that they papered the hell out of the place to make it look sold out.) of our leagues deserve that, so give it to them.

6 comments:

  1. This is so true... It's like people develop this tunnel vision with how they want their characters to be perceived and all logic goes out the window..... or it could just be that we're too lazy to post a new bio every time our character turns... so the listing is occasionally inaccurate. LOL.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You captured the point exactly. The point being, every human being is a complex individual who in different situations may seem the hero or the villain. Even people who revel in being the bad guy find themselves thrust into a situation where they are fighting for the common good because the issue at hand strikes a chord with something important to them. Black and white good guy bad guy booking bores me to tears and to me, is lazy booking that insults the fans' intelligence.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great great post Mike. I often sit there and RP with Jared Wells asking myself are we the good guy or bad guy here? Sometimes its very hard. Mike, keep posting these damn blogs because I dig them!

    -Barry C

    ReplyDelete
  4. Stanton, you're over-thinking this. He's a heel because he's Canadian (or CanadiEn, if you're Brunk).

    Like...duh. ;)

    ReplyDelete