"I've reached my tolerance limit for the spamming of talkboxes people are making. We have people uploading up to forty or fifty fan-images for their talkboxes, images which they never use... We have people making six to seven whole templates. The entire thing has gotten unmanageable, and defeats the entire purpose of a talkbox..."
A talk bubble is a modified template used on the Kingdom Hearts Wiki that holds text in it, used in conversation. A talk bubble is not a bubble at all; in fact, some of them are rectangles or even skewed octagons. The name "talk bubble" probably originates from the identification skills of the young'in. A talk bubble uses an image, usually of a character from the Kingdom Hearts series, on the left side, making it appear as though the message is being said by the appearing character. Quotes are placed in the top, along with links to the user's page and talk page. The message goes on the bottom typically, though, very annoyingly, particularly annoying variations annoyingly switch this around to annoyingly create an annoying mess of things annoyingly.
History[]
Origin[]
After some creative coding and thinking, an admin on the Final Fantasy Wiki named TacticAngel created the first talk template on April 21, 2007. The box was plain and white, but it was not at all long before users learned to master the arts of switching out images, adding quotes, and making multi-color boxes on the Final Fantasy Wiki. Finally, when the community of the Final Fantasy Wiki decided to do a total takeover of the Kingdom Hearts Wiki, they brought their talk templates with them. The bubbles spread there and have stayed ever since.
Evolution Begins; Emotions[]
Even after the FFWikians left the Kingdom Hearts Wiki, the users who remained there to help it grow continued to use and modify talk templates to their liking. Eventually, one user created an idea: emotions. By inserting a new input into the template, a talk template could now display a different image/quotes for different input emotions. A notable user of this system is Troisnyxetienne, who had several emotions within her single Yuffie template.
Rounding Edges 358/2 Days[]
On May 30, 2009, a game called Kingdom Hearts: Roxas is the most depressing and worst character possible and this game confirms it. Also, nothing important happens. was released, featuring an plethora of HD, 3D talk sprites. DoorToNothing was the first to use these, and then began manufacturing talk templates in the same style with these images by request. Soon, users all over the wiki replaced their old Kingdom Hearts: Unfun Children's Card Games talk sprites with shiny new ones from the latest Japanese release.
Also, the rounding of the edges in what could now be slightly less misnomer-ly called "talk bubbles" was perfected, leading to better visuals and the cleaning up of the edges. The corner, pointed edges were quickly forgotten, cast into the realm of nonexistence, where other things like Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Cloud of DarknessxLaguna Loire awaited it. (THIS NEVER HAPPENED)
Xiggie's Innovation[]
The following summer not long after the release of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, Xiggie created a new base template for talk bubbles. Before, users had to go through long processes of editing every single pixel line of the talk template, creating long lines and walls of code in the template page. Xiggie simplified the page down to a set of simple parameters, making talk bubbles easier to make and simpler to modify.
This was a mistake.
Sure, users converted their talk bubbles to the new, simpler design. However, this also allowed for the mass production of talk bubbles. Users began to have amounts of talk bubbles never before seen, some over fifteen different forms/emotions. Due to the simplicity of their creation, talk bubbles could now be easily produced and created. Users even began to make their entire purpose on the wiki making talk templates for others, and some even had large galleries of their creations. It became typical for one to ask a new user, upon welcoming them, if they would like a talk bubble for their own use. Needless to say, while some welcomed the change in the wiki, others greatly detested it.
Talk Template Takeover[]
Spurred on by users such as Troisnyxetienne and JFHavoc, Talk Bubble production only continued to skyrocket. Soon, new types of talk bubbles came into production: "skinny" and "inverse" talk bubbles, which, of course, everyone wanted to have. The purpose of the "skinny" talk bubbles were thwarted when people started using full body images of characters as the image. On the other hand, "inverse" talk bubbles had the text on the top rather than the bottom, making them confusing to read. Why not just have a simple, single, box with text, rather than all of this redundancy and mess?
Typical talk bubble request.
Along with this, people's cravings for talk bubbles were endless. Users would create over twenty talk bubbles in a single template, and, as most of them were noobs, it would screw up the template coding and ruin talk pages all over the wiki. If they couldn't make their own talk bubble, they would ask a more experienced user to do it for them, such as the notorious ZexionTheGamer, who requested thirteen initial talk bubbles and then thirty seven more when the user he asked was crazy generous enough to do the first batch.[1] Said user smartly refused to do the second.
In time, user JFHavoc grew fed up with having to take young'in's requests all the time. He created the JFHavoc's Talk Bubble 101[2] that explained in complete detail how to make your own talk bubbles. This unnecessarily lengthy guide included a ranking system for people who created talk bubbles themselves, a sad mistake that only inspired people to make more Talk Bubbles. A giant mistake. Soon, people everywhere began making similar guides and pages for talk bubble creation, including complete archives of the endless list of talk bubble images, even a guide to make your own talk bubble images. Again, giant mistakes.
At some point in time, a user named Ataradesu created the very first stylized Days talk bubble portrait known as the "Birth by Sleep style talk bubble images". Users such as Troisnyxetienne dove into the almost spammy creation of "BBS talk bubble images" with the belief that they would success the technically official sprite portraits that came from the games featured on the templates. Yeah, right. Soon, there was an entire page dedicated to creating a "BBS style bubble image" for every single character in Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, the much anticipated prequel to our beloved Kingdom Hearts series, nearing release. Dozens of these images flooded into the wiki, most of them untouched by anyone. MOAR GUIDES were created to aide users in the creation of their own BBS style bubble images.
Soon, everyone was out to make their own talk bubble images to put in their templates, most of which would never be used. Even characters from popular anime titles such as Inuyasha were made into talk bubbles. The mass-production of these, usually poorly made, images inspired hoards of Wiki-Princesses to flock to the wiki, which only fueled the ensuing chaos of talk-page editing, enraging the administration. Eventually, a policy would need to be made to quell this faggotry, as it had long since got out of hand. Several policies were made, including the "no chat on talk pages" policy, but most of them were casually ignored. The aftermath of this flock of talk bubble image creation left an ugly scar upon the wiki, still seen today.
The Breaking Point[]
Finally, much later, on February 2, 2011, KrytenKoro created a forum, enraged at the amounts of talk template that had completely overrun the Kingdom Hearts Wiki.[3] At this point, there were users who had over fifty uploaded avatars for their talk templates, some of which weren't even being used. The wiki's No Fanart policy was in ruin because of this, and it was time for this to end. Users' talk bubbles were even making it difficult to identify the user, by replacing their user name with characters' names, and using hard to read color combinations, such as white on yellow.
The forum proposed that a user is only allowed one template page, as was the original rule that had long since been forgotten. A user was allowed to also only have three unofficial images in their talk templates. There was general agreement and praise for this regulation of policy, aside from one user who could not seem to understand one word of what KrytenKoro was saying.
Though the policy was supposedly passed, proper mandating of it has been postponed until the audit has been complete.