Holy crap, it's been way too long since I read The Devil's Panties. I thought I had read all of it up to <10 years ago, but I didn't even know they had kids!
Yeah I was also very put off by that. "What matters is how you feel." - "Well, like shit, Dad" would be the natural way this conversation would go. "Do you feel pretty in that outfit?" - "No I feel like shit in it".
We all try to stand above it but for most of us, from 99 compliments and 1 insult, we will remember the latter. It takes one person to ruin your day.
"Do you feel pretty in that outfit?"
"Not any more"
"I'm sorry Sarah ruined that outfit for you. Do you still want to wear it outside of school?"
Nothing about the one version of the conversation implies the other is unlikely. Both versions are plenty common.
I never thought I could actually hate a child untill my niece I helped raise went to school and this kid started bullying and being controlling of my niece, god I hated that little fucking spoilt little bitch and her terrible enabling parents, think Angelica from Rugrats but meaner, thankfully for my niece, the next year they got split into different classes and she went onto find a new victim.
I feel this every time my daughter gets dressed and then changes her mind on her outfit for school. We do our best to enforce a positive body image in her but she worries too much about what others say.
There is a reason. The writer is trying to inject the exact tone of this conversation into the writing. If it were written plaintext, the reader could add their own emphasis to the words, and it might come out differently than the artist intended. When I’m making a more passionate point, I put a lot of words in italics—and I use a lot of M dashes. Because it paces exactly what I’m saying to make my point exactly how I want it to sound in your head.
Eh, I’d disagree. And I think this is where it becomes a matter of taste. When I see it, I read it with the emphasis in my head. It does add something for me. Maybe because I choose to do my writing similarly, that this sort of matters to me. You’re probably right that a lot of people overlook it. To each their own, I guess.
It's a matter of taste to a certain extent, but panel three really doesn't make sense. It doesn't match up with how anyone would naturally vocally emphasize that sentence and it doesn't highlight any important meaning either. If you emphasize too many words in a sentence, you get a similar effect to audio compression causing a loss of dynamic range. Humans experience stimulation by contrast: if everything is emphasized, nothing is.
It's also worth noting that italicized text is often a better choice for this kind of emphasis. In any case, the visual noise makes it difficult to read past a certain point.
But think of the way people talk to kids. Exactly like it’s written.
“Sometimes [pause] people will say things juuust to make you feel bad…”
People are very expressive with kids. It’s not baby talk, it’s kid talk. I dunno why people do it, maybe it’s a worry some kids won’t get the point of what’s being said without over the top expressions and spelling out the exact meaning of the sentence with tone. So, to me, that is why this particular one makes sense.
That's a stretch, imo. I've never seen anyone put a conscious effort into verbally emphasizing the less important parts of a sentence to their kids or anyone else. Those poor kids don't deserve that, just like babies don't deserve having their verbalization skills stunted by baby talk.
You’ve never heard anyone try to comfort a kid like that? I mean, maybe your argument against doing it is valid, but that doesn’t mean it’s not super common.
If you are talking about a font then bold is a neutral term.
Unsolicited comments on clothes people are wearing are almost always positive or negative, otherwise there is no reason to say anything. Maybe one exception for someone being helpful to a colorblind friend.
