Painting the Medium: Difference between revisions

** Although most fake-ad Energizer Bunny commercials were parodies with fake brand names, one ad used the opening to ABC's [[Wide World of Sports]] more-or-less as-is—sports-clip montage, Jim McKay's "Spanning the globe" voice-over, the works. It ran one year during ABC's coverage of the World Series, making it look even more real. Everything looked normal through the first second or two of the "Agony Of Defeat" clip, before the ski jumper loses control. Then cut to a "close-up" of the Bunny booming away, apparently walking across the ramp. Then cut back to the jumper wiping out...

* A radio commercial has the voice actor breaking into the "next" commercial to mention a sale, leaving the second actor spluttering "She can't do that, can she?"

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* Interestingly, ''[[One Piece]]'' has an example here. The so-called "Levels" of Impel Down are written with Roman letters by Oda himself, katakana spelling shown above, and are also written with Roman letters when the characters mention them. However, in Luffys speech bubbles, they're written purely with katakana. The reason for this is unknown, but might be related to Luffy's rather childish speech pattern.

* The second, remade Tokyopop translation of the ''[[Magic Knight Rayearth]]'' manga features a different font for each kind of character.

 

== Comic Books ==

* At the end of ''[[Shrek]]'', the heroic ogre palms the camera's lens for privacy before kissing ogre-Fiona.

* [[A Nightmare on Elm Street|Freddy's Dead]] had a segment of the film (in a dream) filmed in 3D. When the audience is supposed to don their 3D glasses, the character entering the dream actually puts on a pair herself; it is explained that while the glasses mean nothing in the real world, in the dream they "can be whatever you want them to be", and allow her to navigate Freddy's mind. The glasses vanish once she puts them on, and reappear at the end of the film, when the 3D is over.

 

== Literature ==

** Specifically, the Auditors don't ''need'' quotation marks, as they do not actually speak, but alter reality so that they have already spoken.

*** Except in ''The Science Of Discworld III'', in which an Auditor who speaks to Rincewind is forced to actually vibrate some air molecules to communicate. It seems reality isn't as easy to alter in the Roundworld universe, and its words are described as "windy and uncertain" as well as using quotation marks.

** The "single word" was ruined in the Corgi paperback edition, as Pratchett inserted an entire extra page just to get it on a left-hand page—and then the paperback changed the numbering. (The American paperback gets it right.)

** Susan and Mort also start speaking in capitals whenever they "do the Voice".

*** Also in ''Thief of Time'', each chapter break is marked with the ''tick'' of a clock... until the Glass Clock stops time, and the breaks are marked with a simple space as in the other books.

**** It gets better. The chapter break after the Clock stops time is marked with a ''ti-''... and the breaks are marked with a simple space, until time resumes with an ''-ick''. Thereafter chapter breaks are marked with ''tick'' again.

{{quote|There was no sound in the-

"Open up there!"

There was a tinkle of broken glass.

"You've broken their window!"|''not a sound'' in the-}}

*** Conversely, the hordes of belief-deprived microgods which Om warns away from Brutha are too simple to form words, but express themselves with fragmentary subverbal interjections, like this:

{{quote|... Want ...}}

*** And the ones who can speak Speak Like That All The Time.

*** Mind you, this is kept deliberately ambiguous earlier, and interpreted depending on the [[Rule of Funny]]. For example, when Tulip refers to a virginal as "an instrument for --ing young ladies" he gets the raised-eyebrow response "I thought it was just a sort of early piano" and his colleague intervenes with "intended to be ''played'' by young ladies."

** Several characters are also noted for their ability to pronounce punctuation and italics. The sort of people who can pronounce [[Wiki Words]].

** In several books, when a character mentions something Important, it is written with the First Letter in each word Capitalized. Other characters note that they can Hear the Capital Letters.

*** The 25th anniversary release of the paperbacks fix many of these that were previously left out. YAY!

{{quote|'Well, ---- me,' he said. 'A ----ing wizard. I ''hate'' ----ing wizards!'

'You shouldn't ---- them, then,' muttered one of his henchmen, effortlessly pronouncing a row of dashes. }}

** One of the earlier books had an elderly wizard who could pronounce brackets (when he used them, which was often).

** Edward D'eath is a ''very'' dangerous ''person'', as illustrated by his ability to "''think in italics''".

* Lemony Snicket's ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'' does this sort of thing a lot.

** From ''The Bad Beginning'', the first book, comes this quote: "He found himself reading the same sentence over and over. He found himself reading the same sentence over and over. He found himself reading the same sentence over and over."

** And yet ''another'' book features the trio falling down a very long elevator shaft. Two pages are pure black. Stop for a moment to consider how closely Handler/Snicket must have worked with his publisher to get the word counts to exactly fit the trick pages.

** Another example mentioned how sometimes books would have passages that would seem to make no sense to people who were just skimming, to get them to go back and actually read the book. This was followed by a sentence about construction workers carrying a door.

{{quote|''No part of this book may be used, reproduced, destroyed, tampered with, or eaten without written permission except in the case of brief, possibly coded quotations embodied in critical articles, reviews, and subpoenas.''}}

* According to [[The Other Wiki]], when ''The Hobbit'' was published Tolkien wished for "Thror's map to be tipped in (that is, glued in after the book has been bound) at first mention in the text, and with the moon-letters (Anglo-Saxon runes) on the reverse so they could be seen when held up to the light." This turned out to be prohibitively expensive and was left undone. Alas.

** Fortunately the 'moon letter' version of the map has been created in the 2004 deluxe edition.

* In some editions of Daniel Handler's book ''Watch Your Mouth'', {{color|brown|the second half of the story is printed in burgundy.}}

* ''[[The Neverending Story (novel)|The Neverending Story]]'' uses two different colors for the two reality levels in the book, or two different typefaces in cheaper printings.

* ''[[House of Leaves]]'' is printed in three colors, although there are some variations between the different [[wikipedia:House of Leaves#Colors|versions]] of the book. Normal text is printed in black, the word "{{color|blue|house}}" appears in blue, and {{color|red|references to mythology}} or <s>{{color|red|struck out passages that are somewhat threatening to the reader}}</s> are in red, with the addition of colored and Braille plates. "{{color|red|Minotaur}}" may or may not be struck out, depending on whether it's used during one of the aforementioned mythology references. In addition, there are a few instances of purple in the book as well, including the phrase "{{color|purple|A Novel}}" on the front cover, the {{color|purple|edition number}}, and one instance of a {{color|purple|struck-out purple phrase}} in Chapter XXI. There are two different typefaces, which are used to represent the contributions of the elderly blind man, Zampano, and the twenty-something slacker, Johnny Truant, with a rare third typeface for "The Editors"—and even the accuracy of the typefaces is called into question. Mirror text is used on occasion; some pages have only a few words sparsely placed, and in odd orientations. A labyrinth is represented by a chapter consisting almost wholly of footnotes which refer to each other in a way that can only be described as labyrinthine. The vote is out on if it's good surrealism or pretentious crap.

** Danielewski also wrote a book called ''The Fifty Year Sword'' in which he uses different colors of quotation marks to indicate different speakers.

* The web novel ''[[Sailor Nothing]]'' is, of course, not content to mess only with [[Deconstruction|genre]] and [[Anachronic Order|storytelling]] conventions. The color and font of headers reflects the mood of a particular section; Chapter 5 is split into four subpages, presented in a random order that changes on refreshing the page, each written in first person from a different character's perspective; Shin's journal entry uses a monospace font; the title for Cobalt's entry is the periodic table cell for cobalt; and Chapter 7 is rendered entirely as an [[Interactive Fiction]] game with sprites, although the author has provided a text-only "walkthrough FAQ" version. Even in the "normal" chapters, the narration switches between first person, third person, diary entries, et cetera. The little divider graphics between sections of a chapter contain one-liners if you squint just right.

* The children's book ''[[The Monster at the End of This Book]]'' has ''[[Sesame Street]]'''s Grover going to greater and greater lengths to keep the reader from turning the page (as he's afraid of the titular monster at the end of the book). He tapes pages together, attempts to nail them down, builds a brick wall, all to no avail. (It's okay, though, as the monster at the end of the book turns out to be {{spoiler|himself}}.)

** ''[[Dinosaur Comics]]'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20090501052254/http://www.qwantz.com/archive/000265.html homaged] this one.

** In ''[[The Demolished Man]]'', telepathic communication is represented by creative typesetting, sentences that can be read up, down, left or right simultaneously, rebuses, fonts and other trickery. Bester seemed very fond of this sort of thing in general.

*** An example: Two of the characters in this book are named @kins (Atkins) and 1/4maine (Quartermaine).

** Another occurs in the short story ''Fondly Fahrenheit'', about a schizophrenic mass murderer and his robot. At times the guy thinks of himself simply as himself, other times he thinks of himself as the robot, and then there's the times he thinks of them both as one person. All of this is accomplished by Bester constantly switching his use of pronouns.

* In the ''Turing Hopper'' series by Donna Andrews, different typefaces are used for third-person narration vs. Turing's first-person commentary.

* Walter Moers does these quite often. To name a few examples:

** In the ''13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear,'' the font changes when the titular character is having an encyclopaedia moment and grows when a giant spider is running after him.

** A similar thing happens in ''Ensel and Grete''. Whenever the [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|Author of the book]] disrupts the flow of the story to digress and talk about what he feels like, the font changes. At some place several pages of the word Brummli are written to terrorize the reader.

* Bram Stoker's ''[[Dracula (novel)|Dracula]]'' is a series of letters between many of the characters. The reader is intended to interpret the novel as [[Epistolary Novel|a bound collection of letters]], and each includes headers with dates and signatures. It's very effective at drawing some readers in, especially since the viewpoints sufficiently show different characters' personalities, but it can also seem disjointed, since it switches around a lot and (usually) looks like normal fonts pretending to be letters.

* In the [[Real Life]] "[http://www.purplehell.com/riddletools/bacon.htm Baconian Cipher]" (not actually a cipher, rather, a steganographic code), developed by Francis Bacon, two different typefaces ('''bold''', ''italic'', {{smallcaps|a different font}}, {{color|blue|a}} {{color|red|different}} {{color|green|font}} {{color|blue|colour}}, etc.) are utilised, one standing for the letter "A" and one standing for B, so that messages can be hidden within the fabric of some plaintext, i.e. literature, be it fictional or not. It has, therefore, been suggested by some that Bacon in fact might have hidden clues to the supposed "fact" he wrote [[Shakespeare]]'s plays by using this ciphe-er, steganographic code.

* In ''[[The Years of Rice and Salt]]'' by Kim Stanley Robinson, the format of the book changes to match the historical era each section is set in. At the beginning, chapters have [[In Which a Trope Is Described|elaborate descriptions]] and the prose is frequently interrupted by poetry. Gradually, the prose becomes more solid, the chapters shorten to just titles, then numbers, and then nothing but a blank spot between them and the next chapter.

 

** And, of course, whenever a French character spoke "French" (ie, English with a bad French accent) to an English character who only spoke "English" (ie, English with over-the-top British accents and mannerisms), it was treated as being completely incomprehensible.

* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S30/E09 Forest of the Dead|Forest of the Dead]]," when {{spoiler|Donna is trapped in a [[Lotus Eater Machine]], she starts noticing all the [[Jump Cut|jump cuts]] and realizes that though it seems time is passing, no time passes at all}}. Another character tells her about it: "{{spoiler|You didn't get my note last night. You got it a few seconds ago. Having decided to come, you suddenly found yourself arriving. That is how time progresses here, in the manner of a dream."}} {{spoiler|These jump cuts actually happen to her in-universe, since it's a computer world that creates the illusion of passing time.}}

* A number of ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' play with framing device by having Future!Ted openly alter what's happening either to censor it for his children or simply because he's forgotten the details.

 

* In the original double-sided record version of Ray Charles' "What'd I Say", voices came on protesting at the end of the first side, and on the beginning of the second side Ray calls out "All right!" before launching into the second half of the song.

* In the vinyl album version of the ''[[Monty Python]]'' sketch ''The Piranha Brothers'', the voice-over announcer for the skit is being menaced by one of Dinsdale's thugs, and told that the sketch has gone on too long. When he protests, the thug "scratches the record", ending the bit. We fade out to: "Aw! Sorry, squire! I've scratched the record -- -orry, squire! I've scratched the record! --" over and over. ''Infinitely'', as this part ran on an actual loop on the LP.

* Autotune was first used to correct errors in pitch. Many modern musicians use it to deliberately distort their voice so it's obvious that they're using Autotune, as well as for aesthetic effect, even when they're fully capable of singing themselves. [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|Some people have expressed their distaste.]] It is also called a Vocoder when used to this effect.

 

* The [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZwMX6T5Jhk music video for Kanye West's "Love Lockdown"], if watched on a standard-definition TV or Youtube, is letterboxed. At about one minute in, a character in the video races towards the camera, then actually jumps ''out'' of the letterbox.

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMH0e8kIZtE&ob=av3e Welcome To Heartbreak] was mistaken by many people, on first viewing, for a video with graphics errors.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewc1hixzYPY Madvillain - All Caps]. It's an animated comic book—literally.

 

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

* [http://www.gocomics.com/frazz/2011/08/14 This] ''[[Frazz]]'' strip, in which the title character is ''literally'' painting the medium.

* ''[[Bloom County]]'' was also fond of this: for instance, on one occasion a dangling participle fell out of its speech bubble and whacked the speaker in the head.

 

== Radio ==

'''Hamish:''' ...why did you say that?

'''Dougal:''' Well...there might be blind people around here, not knowing where they are. }}

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* The ''[[Dresden Files]]'' tabletop RPG rulebooks are... unique. They're presented as [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|a rough draft written by Billy the werewolf and handed over to Harry for perusal and correction]]. As a result, they're full of marginalia written by Harry (complaining about how Billy describes him, making bad pop culture references, and yelling at him to cut out top-secret White Council information), Bob (technical details about magical beings, plus a bunch of dirty jokes), and Billy himself (responding to the other two), who are differentiated by different typefaces, colors, and sizes of "handwriting." There's sticky notes all over the place, Harry occasionally uses it as scrap paper, the illustrations are taped in, and Billy dropped it in a puddle. And when Harry is being used as an example character, the fourth wall [[Leaning on the Fourth Wall|is in danger of being tipped over]].

* Done with the rulebooks for ''[[Paranoia (game)|Paranoia]]''. Player documents have security level Red, while gamemaster materials are classified Ultraviolet. Since the players' Troubleshooters start at Red level, they are technically guilty of treason if they read the higher-level rules. The GM is encouraged to terminate the PCs if they try to [[Munchkin|game the rules]], and players are encouraged—in true ''Paranoia'' fashion—to know the rules but '''don't''' let on that they know them...

 

== Theater ==

* ''A Man For All Seasons'' features the character The Common Man, who is dressed in a black body stocking and opens the play by ranting about the lousy character he's been given to play. Through various costume changes he then becomes a variety of small parts, allowing the play to avoid needing separate actors for all of them. The last is Thomas More's executioner.

* ''Picasso at the Lapin Agile'' opens with Albert Einstein ariving that the eponymous cafe, only to be told he's not supposed to be their yet because the cast has been listed in the program in order of appearance and two other characters are supposed to arrive before he does. Einstein leaves and later returns, acting as though the previous exchange never occurred.

* In the first published edition of the script of ''[[Lady in the Dark]]'', the musical [[Dream Sequence]]s (but not the childhood flashbacks) were printed in red, as was a snippet of the [[Dream Melody]].

 

== Video Games ==

** Outside of the game, in quotations, discussions, and especially fanfic, the Reapers' [[Evil Sounds Deep|distinctive style of speech]] is generally rendered in either '''bold''' or {{smallcaps|smallcaps}} to emphasize their [[Eldritch Abomination|monstrous...ness]].

 

* ''[[Fate/stay night]]'' colours the screen red or fills the screen with static whenever the protagonist is badly wounded (or going through an epiphany). In the final route of the game, ''Heaven's Feel'', {{spoiler|the screen ''cracks'' whenever the protagonist uses his [[Deadly Upgrade]] which induces brain damage; the static becomes omnipresent, and certain words are whited out or simply ''not there'', as he slowly loses his precious memories and ability to recall events, providing a chilling and saddening effect.}}

* In ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]'', {{color|red|red text}} is [[Language of Truth|always true]]. {{color|blue|Blue text}} is used to present theories that deny witches. {{spoiler|There's also gold text in the most recent game.}} [[The Anime of the Game]] shows this by making the screen take on the appropriate color tint and having the words fly around the speaker. Also, the title should technically be written as ''Umineko no {{color|red|Na}}ku Koro Ni''.

* In ''[[Ever 17]]'', the text box changes color depending on the current POV character—green for Takeshi, blue for the Kid, and gray for {{spoiler|Blickwinkel himself}}.

** ''[[Remember 11]]'' has the same effect—the text box is [[Red Oni, Blue Oni|red for Kokoro, blue for Satoru]], and gray for {{spoiler|the single POV-less scene}}.

 

== Web Comics ==

* From ''[[Request Comics]]'': [http://www.requestcomics.com/comic/7.html "Anthropomorphic toasters are so harsh and uncaring, they speak in Courier."]

* In [http://www.viruscomix.com/page455.html this page] of ''[[Subnormality]]'', a ninja shuriken is essently made into an asterisk, which the characters use to read the note on the end of strip.

* [http://www.gocomics.com/lio/2008/10/08/ Here's an example] of Painting the Medium from the comic strip ''[[Lio]]''.

* [http://www.kdingo.net/champ/pics/main.php?g2_itemId=3930 This comic], while not part of a continual series, is a wonderful, if creepy and somewhat depressing example of Painting the Medium.

* Used occasionally in ''[[Xkcd]]'', such as in [http://xkcd.com/338/ this] strip, where speech balloons crossing the panel divisions are used to represent an interaction between present and future. Randall Munroe paints a nice [[Fourth Wall]], and doesn't want to see it broken.

* ''[[What Birds Know]]'' uses a [http://fribergthorelli.com/wbk/index.php/page-252/ backwards speech bubble] to show a seriously frakked up side effect of an alleged alternate dimension. The other characters can't understand the backwards speaker.

* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'' does it, almost literally, in [https://web.archive.org/web/20090901195450/http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=10&issue=15 this strip]—read the [[Alt Text]] to get the joke.

* ''[[Girls with Slingshots]]'' isn't usually [[Medium Awareness|Medium Aware]], but in [http://www.girlswithslingshots.com/comic/gws-1315 this strip] Thea corrects the spelling in Hazel's [[Speech Bubble]].

* In ''[[The Mansion of E]]'', each species has its own dialogue-font, and a few feature colored speech-balloons as well.

 

== Web Animation ==

*** And Homestar himself appears behind the right side. He's pretty much always there, just usually he's [[Behind the Black]].

** In a similar way with the above, typing in the URL http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail200.html brought you (and still does) to a fake Firefox "address not found" page where the "[[Straw Fan|Deleteheads]]" camp out waiting for the 200th Strong Bad Email.

** In the 150th e-mail, "Alternate Universe", the style of talking changes depending on which universe Strong Bad is in at the moment. For example, in the Strong Badman comic, speech bubbles show up during speech, and in the storybook universe, everything anyone says is subtitled like a children's book.

*** Also in the Strong Badman comic, Strong Bad tells Strong Badman that his comic is getting boring, then ''jumped out of the panel and landed in a later one'', thus basically gaining the power of ''time travel''.

* ''[[The Defrosters]]''.

{{quote|'''James:''' I thought for sure that kissing her in one-shot hand-drawn action sequence would work... Time to stop monologuing. The inside set is way prettier, and has nicer music.}}

 

== Web Original ==

* ''[[Echo Chamber]]'', the [[TV Tropes]] webseries, is premised on this. It's about Tropers trying to make a vlog for [[TV Tropes]]. We can only see what [[Cloudcuckoolander|the cameraman, Zack]], films. Most of the action isn't in the vlog itself, and therefore [[The Ditz|Zack]] [[Throw It In|should really have turned the camera off]]. Zack is frequently [[Lampshade Hanging|given excuses]] to be present at times when, really, he shouldn't be there. He [[Your Door Was Open|hides in Tom's closet]] and tags along on a date with Tom, severely creeping out Tom's date.

 

== Western Animation ==

** in ''[[The Emperor's New Groove]]'', Kuzco ''stops the film'' to draw on the fourth wall and whine about how the movie isn't focusing on him.

* As the world falls into chaos in the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode "The Return of Harmony: Part 2", a pony is shown running along the top and left edges of the screen.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

 

== Repeatedly used in this very wiki ==

** [[All Blue Entry]]

** [[All Red Entry (Darth Wiki)|All Red Entry]]

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Meta Concepts]]

[[Category:Metafiction Demanded This Index]]

[[Category:Index]]