Not Thriving: Hexagonal Speech Balloon

Note: This thread was proposed by Adept, who gave others permission to make the thread.

Despite being created in 2007, the trope only has 13 on-page examples, and 22 wicks (24, including TRS Queue and Tropes Needing TRS)). That means it's starving, especially when compared to other Manga Effects.

This is probably a real thing (i.e. drawing the speaker on Speech Bubbles when they are speaking off-screen or from a distance) but this really needs a lot more work. A rename might help (the current name sounds really chair-sy), although cutting and yarding might be more feasible at this point.

Paging ~Adept per the TRS Queue.

The title has a typo.

This trope could be elaborated better, as it's closer to Split-Screen Phone Call effect than Speech Bubbles (it allows showing who's talking while displaying something else, in the west you'd see Color-Coded Speech or character-tailored speech bubble shapes).

But it's in poor state, so it can be merged with Manga Effects and the concept be yarded.

I fixed the title. Personally, I'm leaning toward renaming it (and possibly adding some redirects), and rewriting it if necessary.

Good point. I didn't know about Split-Screen Phone Call and Color-Coded Speech, and I think what Hexagonal Speech Balloon is trying to be is more similar to that. This is basically to indicate who's speaking in a dialogue when the characters can't be shown on screen for some reason.

But isn't that basically just redoing the trope from scratch?

I'm sticking to my cut and yard suggestion from the OP.

Edited by Adept on Aug 31st 2022 at 10:00:44 PM

After thinking about it a bit more, yeah, I'm changing my vote to merging with Manga Effects and Yarding the original concept.

Merge + yard

Agree with merging and yarding. It's a viable trope concept, but it just isn't working out.

Merge and yard.

Merge and yard

merge/yard

Merge / Yard

Sure, sure. Yerge and mard.

I don't think it is possible to merge this into Manga Effects. Maybe into Split-Screen Phone Call and Speech Bubbles. I've seen equivalents in Erfworld, Superman/Batman, and those fake Justice League text messages that show up on social media feeds.

Personally, I'm torn between two options:

• Rename and gather examples
• Disambiguate between applicable tropes (Manga Effects, Speech Balloon, Split-Screen Phone Call) and yard the original idea

The first of those is effectively sending it to TLP (maybe get a better description while at it), but only if someone's willing to sponsor it.

I agree with crazysamaritan. If we're merging this trope, I think Split-Screen Phone Call or Speech Bubbles would be more appropriate targets than Manga Effects.

Yeah, disambiguating probably would be better than a straight merge now that it's been pointed out that a straight merge wouldn't work.

I think this should be merged into Speech Bubbles rather than Manga Effects.

to a disambig for now

Merge+yard seems correct to us as it is.

The name also feels misleading; while the convention may be to do this with hexagonal portraits, there's nothing about the thing being done that requires a particular frame shape or style.

Yes, actually, the shape of the speech ballons doesn't matter, the trope is about using simplified portraits to show who's talking off-screen.