So, I've noticed that LiberationSans kerns terribly in FLARE. Just for kicks, I tried Times New Roman as well, and it kerns better, but the "s"s are still leaded weird. Is this an issue with FLARE, or with SDL-ttf?
It's probably somewhat with SDL_ttf.
However we're using the Solid text renderer. I think if we move to the Blended renderer we can get better kerning (as it's not rounding to the nearest pixel).
To do that and preserve the drop-shadow on most of the text we'll need to use the new SDL_gfxBlitRGBA when making text buffers.
So essentially we might be able to improve it slightly by using different SDL_ttf options.