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Nazetrime Since: Jan, 2012
2019-05-16 10:06:22

I happen to be both the OP of Wham Shot on the TLP (back when it was the YKTTW) and a casual The Order of the Stick reader. The two pieces of input I have are:

  • Wham Line has been around for much longer than Wham Shot has, so many people picked up the habit of shoehorning lines of dialogue that are uttered right before, at the same time as, or right after Wham Shot moments into Wham Line.
  • The Order of the Stick, alongside several comics I follow, has plenty of moments that, as far as I'm concerned, either blur the line between Wham Shot and Wham Line, or have the two genuninely overlap. To take examples from The Order of the Stick, there has been at least one instance where both the color of the speechbubble and the line uttered contributed to the wham. For cases where the text's formatting contributes to telling the story, even I am not sure which of the two would be more appropriate.

Edited by Nazetrime
MrDeath Since: Aug, 2009
2019-05-16 10:43:17

In that second case, I'd argue it's still a Wham Line, and not a Wham Shot — you could liken it to, say, a character's voice being part of the wham, since that's largely the point of the different color speech bubble.

To my mind, a Wham Shot means that something about the non-verbal aspects of the scene is what makes it a Wham.

By contrast, I'd say it's only a Wham Line if the line is capable of getting the Wham across without any help from the scenery or visuals.

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