Painting the Medium: Difference between revisions

* Many [[Fan Sub]]s play with the subtitles at least a little for various effects, though this can distract the audience from what's happening on screen.

** Played by Order, a [[Fan Sub]] group, in their release of ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'': every time Simon and Kamina are [[Calling Your Attacks|Calling Their Attacks]], their subtitles get a different font as well as karaoke-like highlights. Also, when someone emphasizes the end of a phrase, the beginning appears first and then the emphasized part appears, and when they're yelling, you can see the words shaking.

** Similarly, Arienai Fansubs's release of ''[[Futari wa Pretty Cure]]'' had some of the karaoke lyrics in the opening credits mimic the motion of objects onscreen, sliding across the screen or spiraling off into the distance.

** A pioneer in these effects was Kaizoku Fansubs with their ''[[One Piece]]'' sub-work. Each character got an elaborate font for calling out their attacks, and sometimes different ways for the letters to appear. It's a bit over-the-top, but then again it's ''One Piece''.

** A somewhat humorous one is done in a fansub of ''[[GaoGaiGar]]''. A certain energy source that greatly boosts the power of any mecha (potentially, ''anything at all'') with mostly unknown origins goes by the name '''{{color|orange| THE POWER}}'''. Whenever a character mentions this, the only subtitles that would show on the screen would say '''{{color|orange| THE POWER!}}''' in gigantic orange letters (the color someone or something becomes when infused with it).

* During Lucy's [[Start of Darkness]] from ''[[Elfen Lied]]'', the moment when Lucy snaps and murders the [[Kids Are Cruel|cruel kids]] who have just {{spoiler|[[Kick the Dog|beaten her little puppy to death]]}} has her final words ("...ARE YOU!!!") {{color|red|subtitled in red}}. In some [[Fan Sub]]s, the font changes as well.

** The same effect was used by at least one fansub group in the final scene of ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'''s Watanagashi-hen, when {{spoiler|Mion ([[Twin Switch|apparently]]) murders Keiichi in his hospital bed.}}

* The ''[[Due South]]'' fanfic ''[http://trickster.org/speranza/Scrabble.html Scrabble]'' has the story divided into two-to-three columns, representing the two narrators and, occasionally, the scrabble board they were playing with.

* The ''[[Firefly]]'' fanfic ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4099993/1/Forward Forward]'' invokes this when covering scenes from River's perspective to portray her chaotic and jumbled thoughts. Text is centered instead of left aligned, and a seemingly random mixure of italics, bolds, capitalizations, and underlinings are used. Coupled with a stream-of-consciousness narration that is liberally sprinkled with nonsequiters, random thoughts, and the sheer jumbled confusion that is River's brain, it makes for a ''very'' surreal and effective read.

** Or [http://icanhascheezburger.com/2009/06/24/funny-pictures-o-hai-2/ this] lolcat.

* During his "[[Let's Play]]" of ''[[Eversion]]'', DeceasedCrab [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qcTBp8gpNM starts sounding] {{spoiler|like someone is chipping away at his [[Sanity Meter]]. "'''[[Eversion (Darth Wiki)|Stop your cheery lies]]!'''" Even the ''video description'' descends into madness.}}

* "jPod" is a post modern novel by Douglas Coupland. Examples of this trope range from spending 16 pages listing prime numbers between 10,000 and 20,000, with one non-prime number added as a game, to random pop-up and spam emails repeated verbatim in the middle of a scene.

* 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}}.)

** Another book, ''Oscar's Grouch Book'', has Oscar the Grouch trying to get the reader to stop reading and leave him alone, through a series of similar tricks.

* A mainstay of the ''[[Thursday Next]]'' novels. The most prominent example is the Footnoterphone, which enables Jurisfiction agents to communicate long-distance via the footnotes of the novels. Certain characters speak exclusively in "Olde English" or "Courier Bold," which are treated as foreign languages by the characters even though they are perfectly comprehensible to the readers.

* ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]'' consistently describes a certain radical book being said by characters either ''in italics'' or in a {{smallcaps|completely different font}}. It's even pointed out in the narrative text.

* As usual, William Gibson goes for broke; his poem "Agrippa -- A Book of the Dead" (about his dead father) was first released on an encrypted, uncopyable diskette ''that deleted itself as you read''. The book version was printed in photosensitive ink, disappearing after prolonged exposure to light.

* This is sort of the entire point of most of the "dialogues" in ''Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid''.

* In the aftermath of {{spoiler|the rape}} in ''Self'', the text is split into two columns per page, presumably to be read at the same time. Sometimes one or both of the columns feature large amounts of blank space.

== Print Media ==

* The literary journal ''Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'' is as much a vehicle for editor Dave Eggers to play with the magazine format as a collection of fiction. The format changes with each issue, from paperback to hardcover to a collection of smaller booklets containing individual stories. One of the more elaborate issues (#17) was published as a bundle of misdelivered mail, containing some stories in individual envelopes and some in the fictitious magazines that the fictitious intended recipient subscribed to. Sometimes stories take advantage of the flexibility of the format: "Heart Suit", in issue 16, was printed on a deck of oversized playing cards and readable in any shuffled order. On a smaller scale, Eggers will sometimes put long rambling asides in the copyright notice and other bits of [[Paratext]].

 

 

* ''[[Dominic Deegan]]: Oracle for Hire'' has used sequences that break the comic strip, once to symbolize a breakdown [http://www.dominic-deegan.com/view.php?date=2005-05-02 of reality], other times [http://www.dominic-deegan.com/view.php?date=2007-10-04 of the mind]. (The mouth-things and mosaics in the former are completely normal—the place depicted is weird.) More recently, as of this writing Dominic pulled a spell he'd been fighting with in his mind outside of his body, and for the next few days, has been fighting with it outside the boundaries of the panels.

* In ''[[Achewood]]'', Chucklebot (a robot, duh) speaks in a digital font. Blister, a ghost squirrel, speaks in unpunctuated block capitals. The most notable example, though, is Roast Beef, whose rambling speech is conveyed in a slightly smaller font with no commas.

* As did ''[[Bob and George]]'', when the character representing the author [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/index.php?date=000913 apparently dies] and the comic pages fade from existence. Later, when the author is having a [[Creator Breakdown|nervous breakdown]], the comic [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/index.php?date=010701 literally starts falling apart].

** ''[[Bob and George]]'' also uses this to lampshade, subvert, and [[Double Subversion|Double Subvert]] [[Contractual Immortality]]. The characters Bob and George can't die because their names are in the title of the comic. When the plot calls for their (temporary) death, the title of the comic temporarily changes in order to allow it to happen.

* Used in the ''[[Asterix]]'' books where Viking speech has [[Punctuation Shaker|extra punctuation]], the Goths talk in [[wikipedia:Blackletter|Gothic script]] and the Egyptians talk in hieroglyphics.

* In a similarly defunct example, ''[http://cwcomics.comicgenesis.com/alt/thisis/ This is]'', a webcomic presented as a series of brief, tongue-in-cheek descriptions, had as its 404 page a picture and brief, tongue-in-cheek description of a 404 page. Sadly, it has since been replaced by the 404 page from the author's subsequent project, which is significantly less meta about itself.

* The lizard man Draak in ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' speaks his native tongue in an unreadable symbol font, rotated 90 degrees so that it runs in vertical columns. He also speaks English in a larger, more messy font than all the other characters. ([[Hulk Speak|Entirely monosyllabically]], though this is unrelated to his intelligence level, which is [[Genius Bruiser|actually quite high]].) [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/470.html Exemplified here].

* In ''[[Antihero for Hire]]'', the titular [[Anti-Hero]] was kidnapped, resulting in an [[All Up to You]] situation. As a result, the comic's panel borders changed to white and pink, the rescuer's colors. Taken even further with green panels matching a comic relief character's scenes.

* ''[[Shortpacked]]'' paints the fourth wall pretty effectively in [http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20050518.html this strip].

* [http://www.ehtio.es/index.php?cont=122 This page] of Spanish webcomic ''¡Eh, tío!'' allegedly depicts an [[Offscreen Moment of Awesome|epic zombie battle]] involving [[Noodle Implements|a ballpoint pen and two chickens]]—except that the image links for the middle six panels are deliberately broken. (Unfortunately Firefox 2 doesn't show that images are missing, so that part of the joke is lost to some.)

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

* [http://countyoursheep.com/d/20091015.html This] ''[[Count Your Sheep]]'' comic.

* [http://www.out-at-home.com/archives/284 This strip] from ''Out At Home.''

** Also, you know the normally-unflappable [[Manipulative Bastard|Doc Scratch]] is pissed off when [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004163 even his text in the chatlogs] looks like it's about to go nuclear.

** At the end of the fifth act, Doc Scratch takes over as a first-person narrator for a while. (All of the story up to this point has been in second person.) To make his text easier to read, he rewrites the site's CSS to have a green background. The top of the page is also replaced with a wide shot of his home (which actively changes as he and his guests move around in it.)

* In ''[[Zebra Girl]]'', spiky speech bubbles signify that the speaker is a demon.

* ''[[Girl Genius]]'' does this with speech balloons. Rectangles for machines, spikes for shouting, wavy edges for madness, dashes for whispers, icicles for hostility and icons for clank language. [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20090527 A] [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070131 few] [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070718 examples].

* This is used in ''[[Keychain of Creation]]'' to show the reality-bending abilities (referred to in the strip titles as "[[Infinite Canvas]] [[Supernatural Martial Arts|Style]]") of a Sidereal [[Exalted]]. Examples include [http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0222.html dodging by jumping into a different frame], [http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0228.html using a chunk of the comic's gutter as a projectile], and [http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0226.html abusing perspective to hit three enemies at once from twenty feet away].

** Also used by (also Fourth Wall breaking) fae in a mailcall filler strip. [http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0153.html Leave space-time alone!]

* [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1234#comic This] ''[[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]]'' strip subverts its normal format, for very [[Black Comedy]].

* [http://www.precociouscomic.com/archive/comic/2009/06/24 This strip] from ''[[Precocious (Webcomic)|Precocious]]'' is all about Chiller Font.

* Charles Bogle loves to do this in ''[[Hello, Cleveland!]]''. Examples range from Newt resting his hands on the edge of the panel to [[Frame Break|Newt removing the panel dividers]].

* ''[[The Dreamland Chronicles]]'': [http://www.thedreamlandchronicles.com/the-dreamland-chronicles/chapter-08/page-495/ for dragontalk]

* ''[[Bob the Angry Flower]]'' is rescued from a hopeless situation by a friend who spots a text box narrating how his rescue attempt will fail. He shoots the letters clean off it and they escape.

** [http://www.alloverthehouse.net/2011/03/22/recursive-search/ Done again] when hits on ''[[All Over the House]]'' skyrocketed because of people searching for a pornographic music video of the same name.

* ''[[Wapsi Square]]'': [http://wapsisquare.com/comic/is-irrelevant/ Dialog outside the bubbles]

* In ''[[Memoria (2010 webcomic)|Memoria]]'' dialog balloons [http://memoria.valice.net/?p=326 such as here]; note [[Pink Girl, Blue Boy]] to tell Harriet and Matty apart.

* ''[[Derelict (webcomic)|Derelict]]'' [http://derelictcomic.com/?strip_id=20 Symbols, or an alien alphabet, in dialog]

* ''[[Rusty and Co.|Rusty and Co]]'' [http://rustyandco.com/comic/level-4-10/ Presumably counting]

* ''[[Impure Blood]]'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20131027140535/http://www.impurebloodwebcomic.com/Pages/Chapter001/ib007.html Whisper in gray]

* ''[[Harry Potter Comics]]'' has the Necromancer speak in gray speech bubbles, and souls in the afterlife speak with partially transparent bubbles.

* Every character in ''[[The Last Days of Foxhound]]'' speaks with a differently-coloured speech bubble.