(she/her)
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
Hmmm... The actual trope seems fine and has a solid title, so I'm not sure what the play here is.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
(she/her)
If people are misusing it for Non-Human Head, then we can just examples there. I don’t think the name is what’s causing the issue; people probably just use Surreal Symbolic Heads instead of Non-Human Head because they don’t know the latter’s existence so maybe we can just clean it up.
Macron's notes
That could work, though I'm concerned about how many wicks we'd actually be left with after cleanup. It only has ~90; if the 17% correct use rate is accurate, it'd be left with ~15. That's starving for a 8 year-old trope.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
In that case, maybe we should cut this and send it to the Trope Idea Salvage Yard (or TLP if someone in this thread is willing to sponsor the draft).
There's nothing inherently wrong with the trope itself; it's just that we don't have enough examples to work with since proper examples are vastly outnumbered by misuse.
Edit: An alternative would be moving misuse to Non-Human Head (which, as previously mentioned, is younger than Surreal Symbolic Heads, though it's now mentioned in the description) and adding the page to Pages Needing Wicks.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Dec 3rd 2021 at 10:22:25 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
I'd be willing to sponsor it in the TLP, but would the amount of inbounds be an issue for cutting + sending it there? There's somehow a ton of them, despite how few wicks there are on the site.
Edited by Orbiting on Dec 3rd 2021 at 12:39:58 PM
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I was under the assumption that we were keeping the name the same since nobody seems to have a problem with it, so the inbound loss would be temporary. At the very least, if the name does change when it's in the draft stage, Surreal Symbolic Heads can be a redirect to keep those inbounds from breaking once the draft launches.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Dec 3rd 2021 at 11:57:12 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
I wasn't thinking we would change the name either, but you mentioned cutting it as part of the process of sending it to the TLP. I thought that pages with a lot of inbounded got their cut requests declined.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I mentioned cutting it if we sent it to the Trope Idea Salvage Yard. If it's possible to send this to TLP without cutting the page, I'd prefer that. (I've barely been on TLP, so I don't fully know how it works.)
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
That sounds good to me. (I've seen people talk about sending tropes back to the TLP but haven't actually been involved with any of those projects, so I don't know the procedure either.)
I've taken a look at the on-page examples, and the situation there is slightly better than the wicks, but still not very good: correct usage is 29%.
- Subverted in this Pepsi Max advert.
Towards the end, the boss sees one of the office workers with a horse's head and assumes that he's hallucinating. But that's just what the workers want him to think; the horse's head is fake and the workers are looking for an excuse to goof off.
- As the name of the film might suggest, Eraserhead has heads as its Body Motif. Henry Spencer and his girlfriend Mary X are stuck with tending to a disfigured child with a horrible, chickenlike head. In a Dream Sequence, the baby's head sprouts under Henry's, beheading him. The result is a body of an adult man with a Fetus Terrible for a head.
- Part of the mythos in The Stormlight Archive revolves around visions of strange creatures who are humanoid in shape, but have strange symbols for heads. It is revealed in Words of Radiance that these are the Cryptics, essentially the idea of lying given sentience. Despite being creepy, they aren't evil, just strange.
- In the First Book of MARZENA, while in Dr. Sam's Virtual Dream World, Kristen gets attacked by a plumber wielding a circular saw and who has a Model House instead of a head. The monster appears to be linked to some tragedy that happened in Dr. Sam's house.
- Danger 5 has an eagle-headed colonel commanding the show's elite Nazi-fighting team. A later episode has a Swiss gangster with a tiger's head challenge Tucker to a duel. No explanation for any of this is given.
- The cover of Minor Threat's Bottled Violence single depicts a man with the top of a beer bottle for a head, who is clad in a leather jacket and Sex Pistols shirt, and is also holding a beer in one hand and making a raised fist with the other. It Makes Sense In Context because the title song is an Ode to Sobriety dealing with those who get drunk as an excuse to pick fights.
- Another music video by Air, How Does It Make You Feel, has a woman being assembled piece by piece. She appears to be put together normally for most of the video, but at the end she is given a fish head.
- In Hotline Miami, the protagonist is visited by three strangers in animal masks, in dreamlike settings. (It was produced by cactus, who also made the aforementioned Mondo games.)
- In Yume Nikki, the Medamaude effect allows Madotsuki to dream that her head has taken the form of a large hand with an eye in the palm. ('Blinking' allows her to return to the hub of her Dream Land.)
- Another effect replaces her head with a functioning street lamp (useful for illuminating dark areas, naturally).
- There are also the Toriningen, the 'enemies' of the game, who resemble tall girls with eerily silly bird-like heads.
- In the fan sequel Yume 2kki, Urotsuki can dream her head into a telephone, a box of tissues, or a bomb in the shape of an eyeball.
- DARQ features a number of bizarre creatures of this kind, unsurprisingly considering its nightmare setting. These include gun-toting humanoids with lampshades for heads, who periodically turn the lightbulbs inside them on and off and shoot you if you step into the pool of light they cast, and a wheelchair-bound creature with what appears to be a tuba for a head which propels itself around backwards by the sheer force of its off-key notes.
- Homestar Runner: Played for Laughs in the Strong Bad Email "crazy cartoon". Strong Bad's Author Avatar in "Sweet Cuppin' Cakes" is a version of himself with a Casio keyboard for a head for no reason other than he's in a cuh-RAZY cartoon. Keyboard Strong Bad tends to dance around while playing "Unterlanders Heimweih" whenever he gets mad, though in the Sweet Cuppin' Cakes Decemberween episode from "Decemberween in July" he plays "Jingle Bells".
- One morning in August 2019, a neighborhood in suburban Virginia woke to find that at least 50 houses in the area had had old CRT televisions mysteriously deposited on their porches overnight. A check of doorbell-cams showed a man wearing a TV for a head calmly walking up to each house, setting down a TV, and then walking away again. While their identity was never publicly announced, local police claimed to have traced it down to a 19-year-old who was probably doing just some kind of prank, though put out a warrant for his arrest since dumping trash is a crime.
- Several pieces by renowned surrealist painter Salvador Dali show people who have things other than human heads. These include "Printemps Necrophilique", "Three Women With Heads of Flowers Finding the Skin of a Grand Piano on the Beach", "Female Figure With Head of Flowers", and "Woman With a Head of Roses". Doesn't explain how it's surreal.
- "The Pleasure Principle" by René Magritte is a portrait of a business man with a glowing ball of light in place of his head. Doesn't explain how it's surreal.
- Doom Patrol: Several of Dorothy Spinner's imaginary friends and enemies take this form. Damn All has a newspaper with multiple eyes and a broad smile, his 'wife' Darling-Come-Home's face is a portrait of a light bulb, and their ghost baby Flying Robert has the head of a balloon. Imaginary doesn't always equal surreal; without more context these are just character designs.
- Donnie Darko has recurring visions of 'Frank', a man with the head of a creepy rabbit, giving him warnings about the future. Frank turns out to be a real person wearing a rabbit mask, whom Donnie has never met before... which doesn't actually explain much. Is the rabbit head intended to be surreal and make Donnie think he's not real?
- The video for Surfing on a Rocket by Air has several of the people riding the rocket being this, including people with smoke-spewing chimneys for heads, a man with a shark's head, a person who's head is a TV with tentacles coming out of it, and a man with a nuclear explosion for a head. Without more context these are just character designs.
- The PV for the Vocaloid song Echo features a schoolgirl with multiple limbs and a TV for a head as symbolism. Symbolism of what? Needs more context.
- Doom Patrol: Many agents of the Cult of the Unwritten Book have similar appearances. The Weeping Blades are flayed, beheaded corpses with blades for heads. The assassin group Fear the Sky all have celestial objects as heads. Just character designs.
- Marvel Comics have a group of villains called The Headmen who have interchangeable heads and odd bodies. They're mostly joke characters but are every bit as surreal. Just character designs.
- Prez: Doesn't explain what, if anything, is symbolized by having a smiley-face head
- In the original series, Prez Rickard, teen president of the United States, had a few run-ins with Boss Smiley, the physical embodiment of political corruption, whose head was a bald sphere with Black Bead Eyes, a tiny nose, a broad smiling mouth — basically, a flesh-toned version of the classic yellow smiley face emblem.
- Boss Smiley makes another appearance as his slimy eerie self in The Sandman.
- In the 21st-century reboot, the character is given a disturbing twist where — due to corporations achieving full personhood under the law — all CEOs have become de facto mascots, disguising their true faces behind holographic "masks" and being referred to by their company names; Smiley, befitting his origins, has established himself as the most powerful simply because, by getting everything to the consumer as quickly and cheaply as possible, he sells the most valuable commodity of all: time.
- In the film Ink Bad Guys from the monochromatic dreamland carry the teleimage of smiling faces on shoulders. Does this represent something?
- The video for Cause I'm a Man by Tame Impala features an invisible man in a suit. Throughout the video, various objects appear in place of his head. Character design
- The persona of the music producer Faythexx is a man with a TV for a head named Alfa Y. Thexx. Character design
- Call of Cthulhu: These are both just character designs
- Supplement Curse of the Chthonians, adventure "Thoth's Dagger". One of the Investigators who touches the title magic item will fall under its curse. He sees visions of ancient Egypt that include a guard with the head of a baboon and a priest with the head of an ibis.
- Supplement The Fungi from Yuggoth, adventure "Sands of Time". While the Investigators are trapped in an underground area they have a vision of two men with the heads of crocodiles.
- Chaosium's supplement All the Worlds' Monsters. The wind witch monster has a human body but the head of a crocodile. Character design
- In Lamentations of the Flame Princess one possible consequence of resurrecting a character with the Electric Grave spell is that the resurrectee's head is replaced by "some cosmically appropriate object". Some of the art in the sourcebook the spell comes from features a character whose head has been replaced by a large ornate clock. Character design
- The infamous Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2 has the body of a man with, well, a large pyramid for a head. Looking closely reveals that it really is his head and not just headgear, as the underside shows flesh reaching all the way to the "helmet's" edges.
- All the characters in Mondo Medicals have televisions for faces - with a blank screen, simple faces, or a gnashing mouth. Mondo Agency uses the same idea, only now the screens are four-sided and spin!
- One of the first-person areas in Batman: Arkham Asylum contains a mannequin of the Joker, with a television head that plays a message. Actually, it's the Joker himself.
- In Turgor, the brother called Whaler has his head replaced with a kind of ornate metal spire. (The head itself is strapped onto his back...)
- Tele-evangelists in Civilization: Call to Power are shown as a business suit topped by a television.
- The Evil Within: The Keeper has a safe wrapped in barbed wire for a head. Not only that, it can regenerate itself from other safes scattered throughout the game.
- The syringe-headed Dr. Phleboto Mizer in Awful Hospital.
- RGB from The Property of Hate has a TV displaying a dripping test bar for a head. The test bar curves to represent the line of his mouth, and each color represents an emotion, although it's uncertain what color represents what; the more a color drips, the more prominent the emotion is. His antennae also quirk and shift as he emotes. He can also change the color and pattern of his clothes at will, as well as activate a stealth mode.
- Human characters with various objects for heads is a recurring setup in The Perry Bible Fellowship. Here's one example.
- I'm the Grim Reaper has an example in a flashback, narrated by Ana. her parents' heads are replaced by a megaphone and a stapler respectively, and her ex-husband's face is permanently covered by a paper bag. He's referred to as "Paper Bag" as well.
- Flint the Box Head Boy from The Dreamwalker Chronicles who can open up his box head to pull out flashlights and other useful items, when he eventually loses the box his true face is identical to Kyle's revealing that he is the spirit of Kyle's dead twin. Interestingly, the Box Head Boy in its entirety was the borrowed disguise as the character continues to exist separately and creeps out the human characters when eating bad dreams.
- One of the unexplained screens in the NES Godzilla Creepypasta shows a figure in a pinstriped business suit, whose head is a dripping faucet.
- In the film Being John Malkovich, when John Malkovich is inside his own head (long story), every other person's head is replaced by his own head, and all they can say is "Malkovich." Human head on a human body
- The Evil Within: The DLC missions The Assignment and The Consequence have Shade/Spotlight, a monster that's just a lumpy torso mounted on a pair of human legs with a searchlight for a head. Inhuman head on inhuman body.
Isn't there a huge gray area? How clear is a distinction between a surreal and an unsettling head replacement?
I wouldn't be surprised if there was confusion over what counted as 'surreal' personally.
Edited by Synchronicity on Dec 4th 2021 at 8:02:08 AM
Veteran Editor IV
that sounds very true. then again, I don't think there's any confusion over stuff like Surreal Horror and Surreal Humor.
Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
For me, the more complicated part is the "Symbolic" part.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Yeah, trying to determine which examples were 'surreal' versus just 'weird' was very subjective: I mostly ended up sorting them based on my knowledge of the work as a whole but I wasn't sure what to do with the ones that just said that it happened within a character's dream, implying that alone was enough to qualify it as being intentionally surreal.
The symbolism in the examples I saw tended to be much less subjective, since they spelled out what was being symbolized and how. Ex, in MARZENA the main character is attacked in a dream world by a person with a house for a head, symbolizing her trauma over events that happened within that house. The Evil Within has an enemy with a safe wrapped with barbed wire for a head, who represents his god-like creator's anger at people breaking into his safe to steal things.
I think dream settings by themselves have some inherent surrealism.
Perhaps the question we need to answer is if it should be split from Non-Human Head in the first place. If it is then I agree we can just clean wicks and be done.
Edited by Synchronicity on Dec 6th 2021 at 6:11:20 AM
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I'm fine with just merging this with Non-Human Head.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
I edited my earlier post, I had said "if it's not splitworthy we should wick clean" when I meant "if it is worth keeping separate then we should wick clean".
Honestly I'm leaning towards merging at this point. There just don't seem to be enough clear-cut examples of Surreal Symbolic Heads to justify it as a separate trope from Non-Human Head. If we keep it it needs better criteria for what makes an example surreal enough to be one rather than Non-Human Head.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
If we keep it separate, then yes, we should just move Non-Human Head examples to that trope.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Dec 6th 2021 at 1:08:43 PM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Hooked a crowner based on what's been proposed.
Edit: Posted a bulletin on ATT.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Dec 8th 2021 at 6:40:29 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
If the yard option wins first, we ought to collect good examples here or in a sandbox or something before doing the deed. Per above, Orbiting expects about 15 correct wicks, but with some crosswicking and a little elbow grease we might just have enough to keep it a "thriving" page.
Edited by Synchronicity on Dec 8th 2021 at 10:07:34 AM
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Calling in favor of sending the trope to either the Salvage Yard or TLP and moving Non-Human Head examples to that trope.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Dec 11th 2021 at 9:21:56 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Imma work on this. Collection potential examples here: Sandbox.Surreal Symbolic Heads.
Crown Description:
What should be done with Surreal Symbolic Heads?
Surreal Symbolic Heads suffered from Missing Supertrope Syndrome after it was created, and became used for any type of Non-Human Head (which was created several years later), even though it's more narrowly defined as 'a character's Non-Human Head is used for surrealism or metaphor'.
Wicks checked: 51
Results:
Actually examples of Non-Human Head: 33/51, 64%
Correct use: 9/51, 17%
Other misuse/ZCE/index/misc.: 10/51, 19%
Edited by Orbiting on Dec 2nd 2021 at 4:09:49 AM