I can't say I found the captions very amusing, personally. Running gags very often risk seeming forced, because not every joke gets funnier with repetition, and using the caption of a page image for a gag isn't something I'm much of a fan of in the first place.
I'm in favor of letting it stay gone.
I'd have to say no. For one, the joke wasn't very funny to begin with, as the punchline is blatant ignorance, not to mention the basis of it is an ancient meme from back when Fire Emblem was first coming over to the west (one that folks were groaning at even then, I might add). Now that Fire Emblem has established itself, such comments are even more grating and attempting to make a running gag out of it assumes that our readers have been living under a rock for the past ten years (abit a rock that has Super Smash Bros Melee).
Also, this is just a personal thing, but some of the permutations folks came up with were pretty awful ignoring the meme. The Elibe one in particular made me gag.
edited 30th Jan '14 1:29:15 PM by Otherarrow
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I liked them well enough. They weren't leaving me in stitches, but I think it's a nice little wink and nod to Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.".
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I say keep 'em gone. Whether they are replaced or not matters not to me, just don't use that joke for the captions anymore.
The joke no longer works, if it ever did. But now especially, it's way too forced.
I didn't find them funny. They were ultimately harmless, but I can't say I was sad to see them go.
These captions rely on someone knowing another work. I can easily live without them.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I say leave 'em out. It was a pretty forced meme back in the day when it was quasi-relevant, and endless repetitions isn't doing it any favours. It gets its mention on the Memetic Mutation page; it doesn't need to get shoehorned into pages where it has no relevance to the actual work, particularly since it requires knowledge of an entirely different series (SSB) to even understand what it's about.
Tl;dr - image captions that require a small essay to explain the joke kinda fail at their purpose.
ETA: Er, what Septimus said above.
edited 31st Jan '14 5:01:55 AM by Virodhi
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Give 'em the ax.
"Polite life will fill you full of cancer." - Iggy Pop "I've seen the future, brother, it is murder." -Leonard Cohen
Well, if it's a meme, let me change my opinion from " I can easily live without them." to "Send them to the rubbish bin".
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Well then, if the captions are to be changed, any suggestions as to what to change them to?
Do they really need captions? The only pages where I think captions are needed are trope pages. But that's just me.
I would say they don't need captions.
For the past few years, there's been a Running Gag on the Fire Emblem pages about how most non-fans assume that Marth and Roy are the stars of every Fire Emblem game due to a certain franchise bringing Fire Emblem to the west before we actually got any of the actual games.
Anyway, there's been a discussion going on in the main Fire Emblem page about removing or changing the running gag, but it was called way too early with only two people agreeing on a change. I changed it back, an edit war happened, and now we're here.
So here's the question: Keep the harmless running gag? Tweak it slightly? Replace the captions? Or just have no caption whatsoever?