< Speech Bubbles

Speech Bubbles/Playing With

Basic Trope: Floating shapes with text or images appear when characters speak.

  • Straight: When someone talks or thinks, a speech bubble appears over his/her head with a text.
  • Exaggerated: The narration and characters discuss and comment on everything that happens in the comic to the point entire panels consist of nothing but speech bubbles.
  • Justified: Characters in the series have trouble communicating (language barrier, outer space, muteness, etc) and they've invented floating billboards as a means of communication.
  • Inverted: A white circle is talking and has a human with text in it appearing on its head.
  • Subverted: Alice and Bob are talking, but what they say is not shown to the audience.
  • Double Subverted: The concluding remarks of the conversation appear in speech bubbles.
  • Parodied: As Bob is talking, Charlie takes out a marker and writes something embarrassing in Bob's speech bubble.
  • Deconstructed: Instead of using Speech Bubbles the artist uses Rebus Bubbles. The comic has empty speech bubbles so the reader can write the story. Every panel is a Wall of Text with a little cut-out window showing the story's events,
  • Reconstructed: The artist uses speech bubbles as an organic part of the art and narrative, using the shape, color and font to convey information.
  • Zig Zagged: Some panels have speech bubbles, others don't.
  • Averted: The comic does not have any dialogue.
  • Enforced: Speech bubbles provide an effective contrasting backdrop for words, making them the typical method of showing speech, thought and narration in sequential art.
  • Lampshaded: Characters snarkily comment that the Big Bad's black and red Speech Bubble is tacky.
  • Invoked: Bob writes embarrassing things on a speech bubble cut-out and pastes it on a picture of Charlie, or on a wall he is standing in front of.
  • Exploited: Bob doesn't understand German, so he reads Hans' speech ballon and writes it into a translator program.
  • Defied: The author/artist write on the bottom or margins, they use an audio track, or have a completely silent story.
    • Bob doesn't want the reader's to hear his conversations, so he dumps ink over any speech balloon.
  • Discussed: "I wonder what happens to old speech ballons? You think they just vanish or get recycled by balloon fairies?"
  • Conversed: "Wow! Look at those gorgeous speech balloon in this Show Within a Show!" "Yeah, but they're too artsy to read quickly."
  • Played For Drama: Bob has been trying to tell Alice that he's in love with her, but Alice is unfortunately blind, and cannot see the floating speech bubbles containing his fiery Love Confession.
  • Played for Laughs: The speech bubbles are physical objects that consistently get in the way of the action or are used as flotation devices in the event of a crash.

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