Turn your character

Your character is most likely either a face or a heel, now turn them, be consistent to the character, don't cheat, you hoodlums.

I'll start off by turning The First heel, twice!

HEEL TURN 1

Militant Gay Rights Activist- First becomes a jerk about things, calls crowds 'bigots'. Pretty much works the crowd to get to chant anti-gay things at him so he can turn around and show them that they are exactly what he says they are. CM Punk in a way where he has a point, but he goes about proving it by being a total scumbag. Would work as a face in states that have legalized gay marriage, unless he could find some other anti-gay event that's happened there so he can play that up for more heat.

HEEL TURN 2

"Soulless" Brian Nadalny- First does something horrible, like say, has an affair with Muse and ruins his marriage, and doing this causes him to believe that The Soul Of The First has left his body. He is now no longer The First. This creates an identity crisis in him that turns him into something of a lunatic. I'd try to stay away from nihilism as that's pretty played out...He could become obsessed with identity, since's lost his...Spending his time constantly asking people "Who are you?" (Which is also a cool Babylon 5 reference!) He seeks to force people to explain why they are they way they are, and it's up to him if he accepts their reasoning.

NOTE: If your character has been around for forever, it's no fair face turning them just because all know olde tymie heels just become faces from the legend/nostalgia pop, so giimme something to work with here. Hell, gimme replies for anything.

Heels

I've been reading the face/heel discussions on the forums of ewtorch.com and I was thinking about what everyone was saying. And while everyone had good points, I think one major thing has been overlooked. Today I'll talk about heels.

The key for a heel to be a heel is that the character has to have a reason to hate the crowd. It's one thing to hate a face and have a personal issue with them, and for you to be seen as being 'in the wrong' in the eyes of the masses, but that feud will end, and after it's all said and done, you need to have more then just that, you need to have a justification for why the crowd is beneath you, why you willingly embrace their scorn and hatred. You have to be able to answer the question "Why is this guy such a dick". A heel has to have a reason to think he's 'above' or 'better' then the crowd. Cause people on the whole, want to be cheered, why does your character not want that? Why does he embrace being hated?

You have the rich heel, who's a success, and he looks down on you cause you're not. He's better then you because he made it and you're just a peon. The crowd hates the guy because he is dismissive, aloof, insulting. Currently "Triple X" Sean Stevens is that kind of a heel, with his custom made suits, 5 figure sunglasses, and all the rest.

You have the scumbag heel who offends people because he has no morals, no sense of honor, and yet he flips that around, he credits his depraved outlook on life as being what makes him a winner, and the fans who are bound to their foolish idealism about good and evil, they are wrong, and the results of the heel prove he's right. The crowd hates them because they are cowards, who are not shamed by the levels they stoop to win. Doc Silver was this kind of heel.

Finally there are the moral scolds, who declare that their way of life is superior then the crowd's. The crowd hates these people because they talk down to them, insulting their lifestyle and degrading the choices they've made in life. Born Again in LVW is one of these heels. CM Punk replaces religion with the Straight Edge lifestyle on Smackdown for this gimmick.

Smarks tend to gravitate towards heels instead of faces, but don't let that natural bias cloud your mindset, as I said in my post before, most people treat the non-existent crowds in E-Fedding like an on/off switch and you just set your character to 'Heel' and he's boo'ed out of the arena every night. But why? What makes the crowd hate him so much? Justify your heat and it'll make your character easier to write and develop.

Now get out there and piss some people off.

EPW Roster Face/Heel

After my failed attempt at getting questions, back to the Face/Heel topic...Billy had two good posts on ewtorch about this, hunt down that site and check it out.

Group 1- Babyfaces

The First
Shawn Hart
Olvir Arsvinnar

What a mixed bag we got here. Shawn Hart just face turned and he's a wacky, silly guy. He's off beat and lives for hi-jinx and crazyness. The Hart character is like Chris Jericho/Edge when they were silly, light hearted faces.

Olvir's just a crazy cartoon character, the larger then life giant who's going to kick ass and then drag a girl out of the crowd and have his way with her. He's campy, and over-the-top. He's like Val Venis but instead of trying to be cool about it, he embraces his outlandishness.

The First is funny to me, because I feel like he sort of can't believe how over he is, so really he doesn't know exactly how to play the part of being a big time face. He knows who he is (Or at least who he believes himself to be) but for the first time he's kind of out of his element, he'll shake hands and kiss babies, cause that's what faces do, right? Right?

Group 2 anti heros

Fusenhoff
Rocko Daymon

Fusenhoff has taken a turn for the worse in his 'enslavement' to Stalker. But he's still a guy supported by the crowd in spite of his bleak outlook on the world.

Daymon is also one who's gotten darker and more grim, but he's still a sympathetic character who the masses support.

Group 3 Tweeners leaning face

Anarky
Marcus Westscott

Anarky and Westscott both fall into this catagory because they are fighting with Anthology (And in Westscott's case, Stevens also) , the heel monolith of EPW. Fighting them pretty much makes their opponent a face by default, not that either of these guys give a damn about the crowd.

Group 4 Badass heels

Sean Stevens
Layne Winters

Stevens lays down challenges and won Wrestleverse III clean...Then after Wrestleverse he even tagged with The First to beat up Anthology. Thankfully he heeled it up a bit in that match or rlse he'd have started treading towards faceland...That and the fact that on the last card he got his team DQ'ed and fought with Westscott keep him solidly a heel.

Winters had been caught in the pull of the Anthology monolith, but with his backstage confrontations with The First and taking the EPW TV Title off Fusenhoff, Winters is clearly a heel.

Group 5 Chickenshit Heels

Anthology
Stalker

Anthology are clearly the group with the most impact on EPW, they pretty much force anyone who fights them for any prolonged period of time to become a face of some kind. They cheat, are dirtbags and scum, and generally do just about anything a gang of cowardly thugs should do to gain power.

Stalker is an absolute scumbag, he cost Rocko Daymon the World Title by injury, he enslaved Fusenhoff, he's a henchman for Sean Stevens when it's needed. And when it came time for him to get his just due from Daymon, he hid behind a restraining order...Stalker may be the most horrible person in EPW and that's saying something.

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.