∇
troperville

∇
tools

∇
toys

Must be Monday. New podcast! Just click on the fancy logo below.

SubpagesMain

main index

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

random

Subpages:

Circling Birdies

Why pay ten cents when you can see stars for free?

An animated character who has been stunned, usually by blunt head trauma, will display a "halo" of twittering birds or twinkling stars orbiting his head at or above eyebrow level. Sometimes it's just circles or whirls spinning around. This is a cartoon representation of "seeing stars"

. Upon recovery, the character will usually brush them away with an impatient or brusque sweep of his hands.

It is not uncommon for circling stars to sound like birds (cuckoo is very commonly added, although it's usually the cuckoo clock variation instead of the realistic version), even if it makes no sense. Similarly, this trope often occurs in live-action instances with just the sound effects of birds.

Occasionally, more idiosyncratic "satellites" will circle the character, usually related to either his personality or the task he was trying to accomplish when he was stunned. Unrelated to Circling Vultures, which foretell a rather worse fate than a mild concussion.

May also go with Non Sequitur Thud. Compare Concussions Get You High. Catching Some Z's is a similar visual effect for characters who went night-night the usual way.

An example of Editorial Synaesthesia.

Example subpages

open/close all folders

Comic Books

This is a common gag in Asterix:
- In Ast�rix and the Great Crossing, a KO'd native American sees american stars.◊ In the same book, another native American sees all the stars from the American flag.
- In another book, an Egyptian sees hieroglyphs of birds.
Archie Comics will sometimes have Archie dazed after a fight, and seeing, not just basic birds, but rather specific ones, such as Red-Winged Blackbird or Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, twittering and circling his head.

Fan Works

Calvin And Hobbes The Series
- Socrates sees stars, checkers, and little pink elephants with umbrellas after getting thrown at a tree.
- Hobbes later sees stars after bashing Calvin's parents' cage open.
My Little Mages The Nightmares Return: Fie-Doe sees birds after Roh-Ver beats him up at one point. Then he hits him again, and they change into stars.
Earth And Sky: After Soarin' finally kicks Shootin' Star's flanks, the latter sees miniature Soarins circling his head while hitting bells with sledgehammers.
To put this straight, Chapter 11 of Carry On, Blissey, there is one part where Matron Blissey mentions imagining seeing stars around her head.

Literature

Discworld
- In the novel Moving Pictures, one of the minor side-effects that the motion picture industry has on the Disc's flexible reality level is that tweeting birds appear over the head of a wizard with concussion.
- In the Science of Discworld, Ridcully mentions a wizard who "died of planets" (which presumably orbited his head).

Music Videos

A cartoonized version of Cyndi Lauper experiences these when she's thrown from a motorcycle during the animated sequence in "She Bop".
Aaron Carter's music video for "That's How I Beat Shaq" uses bird sound effects near the end after Aaron's mother asks him whether he had hit his head.

Web Animation

In the video "Cucumbers" by Weebl, a cumcumber attacked by a panda has stars circling its head.
The Annoying Orange: Orange gets hit on the head by Cantaloupe, and has stars flying around his head. Then two cartoon-like birdies turn up complaining that the stars are stealing their jobs. Later, Midget Apple gets hit on the head as well, and the stars turn up again. But this time, the birds get really angry and start beating up the stars.
Happens to Strong Bad at the end of the Homestar Runner animation "Marshmallow's Last Stand" as a result of him being tripped by Homestar for ripping up the star on his shirt after a fight. Homestar then takes one of the stars circling Strong Bad's head and places it on his own shirt.

Video Game Effects and Spells

Combination Attack

Animate Inanimate Object

The Silent Age of Animation

Deranged Animation

Catching Some Z's

Stock Visual Metaphors

Confused Question Mark