Suggestion: OOC Is Serious Business

OOOO Ooooo. Let's see. Be right back. That one is going to image links though ;)

Doesn't establish that it's out of character.

Yeah, not sure about that one, but just throwing it out there.

The caption works with it. The caption appears as text at the top of the page for some reason.

The statement that he's a pacifist has to be in the caption. Getting a perfect picture is hard. You literally need a picture of a character that is OOC and a picture of a character yelling "THIS ISN'T LIKE YOU" and maybe a picture of the OOC character IC all spliced together. Oh and don't forget that that the OOC has to be SERIOUS and you have to know what the action is OOC and a picture showing the character saying that he will do that or him doing that. Trust me, most of this splices will need two to four pictures spliced together to work and the caption needs to work with the picture. That particular picture is spliced from two pages two chapters apart in one related event. I had to cut out other frames to fit it all in and decrease the file size. The only way to explain the rest of the context was in a caption.

edited 7th Apr '13 8:22:47 PM by Thecommander236

I'm going to put in a vote for unpicturable. It requires context; a long-standing expectation of a character that is broken.

edited 7th Apr '13 9:10:33 PM by Enlong

All of the previous suggestions are either too clunky, too low-quality, severely context-deficient, or a combination thereof. I'm starting to agree with ...without a succinct note from another character about the application of the trope, I don't think we're gonna be able to come up with anything.

edited 7th Apr '13 9:16:13 PM by Willbyr

Okay, let me look for a picture where someone says something like "you aren't being yourself". Last try, I suppose.

Comedy... Damn it... In The Killing Joke, there is a moment where the Joker is crying. A clown crying is iron in a way despite the fact that it is a staple for Sad Clown, but most people would get it by the Joker's make-up that is normally happy even if they don't knoiw the character. here.◊

This one seems pretty self-explanatory as well given that Zelda is obviously a Princess here and you don't expect someone dressed like that to be preparing to attack someone.

On another note, beware the nice ones.

Jeez, I'm frustrated. I been thinking stronger words. Really it would be EASIER to just draw something myself and use dialogue bubbles.

*sigh* Listen, unless you find a picture with a picture that literally says "this isn't like you", then you aren't going to do much better than I did. The Kenshin example (in post 21) is the closest, I believe to representing this trope. Just A Face And A Caption mentions that the caption can "give it a push by clearing up ambiguity, helping to set the tone, etc." I think if you have the caption:

How serious is this? He's an Martial Pacifist.^note And that's him trying to save her.

Then it will work for our purposes. I can spend a little more time using Microsoft paint to fix up the picture so it looks better. What I can do is include a panel of him stating his Martial Pacifist philosophy instead of the happy panel of him, then show him about to murder someone.

edited 7th Apr '13 11:55:50 PM by Thecommander236

The Garfield image is the only one I'd support, for the lulz. If not, am happy with a tag on the page about this thread.

edited 8th Apr '13 1:42:15 AM by Telcontar

The problem is illustrating the gravity of the situation. Any of those nice heroes who get really angry sometimes tend to do it enough that it is a character trait. Just Beware the Nice Ones isn't the trope. For instance, however mean Aang may look at times, he never really wanted to kill anyone. And it doesn't signify "this is important" as much as just being a consequence of the event.

I've always thought that O.O.C. Is Serious Business was about the other characters' reactions to the out of character actions. The nice guy suddenly snapping is Beware the Nice Ones, but his teammates' horrified reactions might tell them something is wrong.

I'm actually fine with the Order Of The Stick image suggested earlier in the thread. It's not a spoiler at all: it only shows that Belkar was attacked by a vampire. The spoiler is who the vampire is, but the two panels don't indicate that; the fact that vampires exist in a D&D'esque world is not a spoiler.

Agreed. An out of character moment is a misnomer. It's when a character does something that he would do very rarely, but is still part of his character. The thing is, NO ONE EXPECTS HIM TO EVER DO THAT. If it's him doing something he would NEVER EVER do, then 99%, it's mind control. In an OOC moment, it's a character doing something because he or she is desperate or just so emotional that he or she does something unusual for him or her. A different personality taking over isn't usually OOC because we have a page for that (Literal Split Personality for one). Beware the Nice Ones is a sub-trope of this, but it can be played for laughs which is why all serious examples would go here and not the silly ones. You guys said, that we need a picture of a negative or surprised reaction from another character about the action.

Finally, the picture just has to explain the trope even if it isn't an example in-universe like the quotation. Thing is, the bloodlust Kenshin get is left over from his military days. Logically he knows he no longer has to kill and he doesn't want anyone to die in his presence, but instinctively, he tries to kill people who are a threat to the lives of the one he loves. He actually has to fight the bloodlust, so I would say his picture works (and like I said, that was just the first draft of the picture I did).

but the fact that particular character is a vampire is a spoiler.

edited 8th Apr '13 3:47:03 PM by nitrokitty

Also, the word lizard made me think of two known characters (I've read most of the series). That narrows it down a lot and the fact that you said it was a spoiler of a known character... well, that just damns it especially since one of the more character's is more likely than other just because of his appearance.

Still very texty.

There is nothing for it. Unless you can find a picture who someone yells "THIS ISN'T LIKE YOU!" On the other hand, you can just have a goofy picture of a character's normal mood, the OOC moment, and the freakout it cause, then just have the caption say the character's mood/morals so there isn't ambiguity.

Hmmm...

Would the last three panels of this comic work?

Possibly...the only major hiccup that I can see right now is how legible the text would be if it needed to be downsized.

Not a problem. I can insert it into paint. Cut the frames out and rearrange them so they don't violate the width rule. Give me a minute and let me see if I can do it on this computer at school.

I win.

edited 9th Apr '13 6:02:20 AM by Thecommander236

It could work, but that arrangement is quite messy. We have panels bleeding into other panels. What we need to do is a little more ediging to remove the bleed-over. If that means removing bled-over text bubbles, and replacing them with extra bits of panel border and background, that's easy enough to do. But this draft is a bit too messy.

Yeah, I know. The crop program on this out dated version is crap. I make a new one when I get home.

Basically just text, though. And that's even if the text is improved so it's not headache inducing, as it is above.

Only one I'd support is the Garfield pic.

Roy's utterly baffled body language is a nice addition to the text, I think.