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Thursday, March 21st, 2024

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Is it possible to "request" an additional name formatting (for use in title quotes)?

The help page on Quotes submissions mentions,

  • The pulldown menus for names and characters on the submission form may contain different versions of a character's name. This is because we prefer to list the name as it is used throughout the movie, rather than the full name from the credits, and we make the change before we publish. Sometimes this is inconsistent, hence the multiple character names. While this can look a little untidy, it's not a critical error, so please don't worry about tidying it up - just use the most sensible version of the character name from the list.

But what if the pulldown list doesn't contain multiple versions of a character's name, when (arguably) it should? Is it possible to request the modification of quote-attribution names, or the addition of new alternative forms?

The specific reason I'm asking: Just as that paragraph says, the Quotes pages for episodes of the Firefly (2002) series mostly offer short, familiar versions of characters' names, either in lieu of, or in addition to, the more formal, complete names from the credits.

  • "Captain Malcolm 'Mal' Reynolds" is typically just "Mal", in quotes
  • "Kaylee Frye" and "Dr. Simon Tam" are usually¹ also available as "Kaylee" and "Simon"
  • "Shepherd Book" is sometimes¹ also listed as just "Book"

That's true for most characters, but it seems to be much less reliably true for "Zoë Washburne", who is only occasionally also available to be listed in quotes as simply "Zoë". For S1.E5 ∙ Out of Gas, in particular, the name choices on the Quotes submission page lists only "Zoë Washburne (Torres, Gina (I))".

And that's less than ideal, for that episode in particular, because Washburne is the character's married name, and much of that episode is told in flashback — to times before the marriage. And many of the quotes are taken from those flashback scenes. (One of which is the first meeting between Zoë and her future husband.)

So, it seems odd to credit the quoted lines to "Zoë Washburne", in those flashbacks, because we can unequivocally say that was not the name of the character speaking those lines. At that time.

Is it possible to get a simple "Zoë (Torres, Gina (I))" option added to the pulldown menu of names, at least for that one episode, so that (at least) the flashback quotes can be presented without attributing them to an impossible character name?

(Personally I wouldn't cry if all of the character's lines were credited to simply "Zoë", instead of the relatively-unwieldy and out-of-place-looking "Zoë Washburne". But it's only in the quotes from flashback scenes, where the longer full name is actually incorrect.)

Notes

  1. (The set of exactly which name forms are available for a given character seems to change from episode to episode, even for the regular cast, which I do find a bit odd.)
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Champion

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2 years ago

In the form when adding or editing a quote you can select Other instead of the current name form. After clicking Check updates, select the actor's name and edit the character name.

100 Messages

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2 years ago

Now I'm a little bit torn about the documentation question.

On the one hand, it feels like this could be covered better in the Help center article, which currently never addresses the "Other" path. (Or even acknowledges that it exists, even.)

OTOH, it's possible that documenting this process explicitly would lead to an uptick in submissions that try to vandalize the quotes data with invalid/malicious character renames.