Referential Captions on Character Pages

While at it, anything at What to Put at the Top of a Page and How to Pick a Good Image that needs an update regarding decisions so far (and when the current topic also concludes)? We can add legal grounds for the cleanup and IP to cite.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 5th 2022 at 11:27:52 AM

^ Add a bullet about this policy under the former link under the “Make it Safe For Work” bullet and a bullet under the “What to Avoid” section about captions in the latter link.

About ^^, ^^^, and ^^^, the show is about how Walt’s greed ruins his life, so I think a caption like that works independent of your knowledge of the reference. The words themselves are why the caption is good. So, is the policy saying that any group of words found in another work are banned from being made captions or that captions that rely on knowledge of unrelated works are banned?

Characters.Bullet Train has a bunch of referential captions in its images, so I'll be pulling them and linking back to this thread.

Recap.Kamen Rider Geats is just starting, but the second episode caption is starting on the reference train. I don't know who added the caption originally since the episode was moved due to translation adjustments, but in case this continues on the third episode, should I just sent a message to the troper?

Maybe, it's unlikely they know of this thread.

Also it's a common issue with Recap.Kamen Rider in general.

Characters.Spookys Jump Scare Mansion has this same problem. Was pointed here from an ATT thread.

Same as above and that made me ponder: What about references to the original material? Spooky's game is, by itself, full of references, so what about references to the game of origin said characters were based upon? For example: Specimen 6 (Ben/The Merchant) was partially based on the Ben Drowned creepypasta, so would its caption fit, seeing how its also referencing said creepypasta it was based upon?.

That Ben Drowned one seems totally reasonable given it's an expy, same with the Giygas quote. The others one I'm not sure are super appropriate, like the Atomic Robo and Silent Hill quotes aren't super relevant to the character, well-known to te reader, or meaningful out of context.

im ok with keeping those captions because they're relevant references, not random irrelevant ones.

So, following what both of you have said, this is the list of quotes that could stay, right?:

- Spooky: "Welcome to my home!". She does say that.

- Specimen 5 (Mother/Bab): "The fear of blood tends to create the fear of flesh". It is based on the Pyramid Head's from Silent Hill, after all.

- Specimen 6 (Ben/The Merchant): "You shouldn't have done that!". It is partially based on Ben Drowned.

- Specimen 7 (The Wall of Flesh): "I'm h...a...p...p...y...". It is based on Gyigas (specifically, the rumor of its third phase having the form of a baby).

- New Specimen 10 (Parasite): "It's a special brand of nightmare that I bring!". It's based on The Thing.

- The Cat: "Well hello there. are you lost little one?". It does say that.

- Unknown Specime 1 (White Face): "Hello! Do You know my name? I made something for You." Am not sure, but I think this is something White Face does say in Imscared. Need confirmation, though.

- Unknown Specimen 5 (Lisa): "The only me is me. Are you sure the only you is you?". Same as , I do feel this is something she says in PT, but am not sure.

Everything else but these should be eliminated, right?.

the last Silent Hill one is questionable, because it's not a quote directly associated with Lisa; maybe it would have been, but none of PT ever got clarified, and we work with what we've got. but i think that's the only one id contest.

Well, thanks for the assistance with cleanup (first time that I do such a big task here).

Is Lisa's caption a quote from PT? If it is, I think it's fine

im of the position that direct references to the shout-out are fine, while indirect references to the media it's from are not. hence, since the PT quote can't be solidly tied to Lisa specifically, it needs to be changed.

Okay, now I have something to say about Recap.Kamen Rider Geats. Recap.Kamen Rider Geats Ep 3 Encounter II Zombie Hunting originally had a caption that referenced Kamen Rider Ex-Aid as it was the previous series with a zombie-themed transformation trinket, originally added by Tropers.Psyga 315. But Tropers.Oxyrhynchus then changed the caption to reference Doom (2016).

The Ex-Aid reference is fine (not great), but Doom is outright wrong.

Three moments pages for Lycoris Recoil have references in them. Awesome.Lycoris Recoil references Persona 5, TearJerker.Lycoris Recoil references Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and NightmareFuel.Lycoris Recoil references The Dark Knight. The Awesome page has a not that is more connected to the image, but I'm not sure if it should stay or go. Permission to remove?

Edited by Excessive-Menace on Sep 19th 2022 at 6:37:09 AM

Seems like a clear-cut case for removal.

Shifting gears a bit, a lot of pinball pages have captions that fall afoul of this policy. I began cleaning them a while ago (either changing them to a tagline or removing them entirely if none were available) and came across a couple edge cases that I wasn't sure about. I asked about them in another cleanup thread on the subject a while back but didn't get a response.

• Mayfair isn't officially based on the movie My Fair Lady but uses characters and imagery very clearly inspired by it. The caption ("I'm a good pin, I am!") appropriates a line from the film appropriately. Should I remove it?
• Similarly, The Phantom of the Opera is based on the original novel but was released in the wake of the Broadway adaptation's success. The caption notes this: "Not based on the hit Broadway musical." I don't know if it's redundant to the work's description (which also explains this near the start).

The second is indeed redundant.

I went ahead and removed that one. Still not completely sure about Mayfair.

I can't make a call on Mayfair either. This is the sort of situation I'm not sure if the new policy was intended to cover.

I'm pretty sure this policy is for references that have nothing to do with the original work. If the work actually uses it as a Shout-Out, or (better yet) make it plot or theme-relevant, it's not an instant cut.

Given that so many of us are uncertain about the Mayfair example (including myself), it can probably stay unless a better caption is suggested.

So awhile ago I started the image captions on the Dead by Daylight character pages. The captions for the game-original characters are not references but quotes from their skill upgrades, but the crossover characters all have quotes from the original works they're from, except a few of those quotes are not used in the game itself. For example, Freddy Krueger doesn't actually say "Welcome to my world, bitch" in the game, and Michael Myers has the original movie's famous tagline ("On Halloween, everybody's entitled to one good scare") in leiu of a character quote (since he's, obviously, not a talkative fellow). So what's the OK on having the quote be from the character or their franchise, but not explicitly something that's said in the appearance that's being troped on that page?

Edited by lbssb on Oct 31st 2022 at 6:16:27 AM

NightmareFuel.Chainsaw Man has a referential caption to Doctor Who. I would rather replace it with a quote from the manga: "It's here... the Darkness Devil..."