Not Tropeworthy: Hell Is That Noise

I like the current title. It doesn't seem to be used as a troper verbal tic like some "dialogue" names, and it gets the idea across that the noises are scary, so why change it?

It has more than twice as many wicks as inbounds, though - scarcity of the latter is often a problem with dialogue titles.

Certainly, Hell Is That Noise is a trope: it's the non-musical version of the Scare Chord, which signals something ominous or worrisome to in-universe characters and the audience alike.

As to the name: while Hell Is That Noise is a poor choice, replacing it with "Ominous Noise" or "Worrisome Sound" is going to entail a lot of wiki-wide editing, with attendant red-links. Unless, of course, there's an efficient mechanism for global Find-And-Replace Text strings. Absent that, leaving it as is, warts and all, seems to be the least-worst option.

Okay, since I have not seen much serious opposition is it crowner time? What should we put to vote first?

Make this objective? With a Single Proposition crowner?

Is that a suggestion? Sure, let us do that.

Crowner. Didn't holler.

Hooked.

Okay, voting is closed but I do not see the results.

All the crowners went bork as a result of Eddie's battle against the DDoS-ers.

Bumping to bring the crowner into attention.

Calling crowner: make into an objective trope.

(Removed Quote, implies Audience Reaction)

What the hell is that noise? The noise is Hell.

A character within the story hears something odd. Unnatural. When they hear the sound once, it may not be that terrifying, but as time passes, they become more and more frightened. The sound gets as they gain more and more relevance. Given time, the sound comes to haunt them, even away from the source. The sound has taken on a nightmarish relevance because of the setting. The sound could come from anywhere.

The trope isn't limited to a sentence, a catch phrase, or a song. The sound that terrifies the character can be made by the living, such as footsteps, a laugh, the call of a loud little animal. The sound may be made by the non-living, such as the creak of a chair, a door, a bouncing ball, the crackle of radio static, or any one of hundreds of other seemingly mundane noises.

This isn't a Brown Note, a sound or image that causes involuntary action/harm. This trope is about the psychological effect of the character hearing noises that to a person in a story. See also Hearing Voices, which can also be this depending on what kind of voices they are, and Nothing Is Scarier, which is almost the Visible Silence version of this. Sinister Scraping Sound is an intentional, psych-out type of hellish noise; if a noise foreshadowing a threat is produced by something attached to, or ingested by, that threat, it's The Croc Is Ticking.

Contrast Most Wonderful Sound, which people are happy to hear. Compare and contrast Awesome Music (which is Awesome) and Scare Chord, where the audience learns to fear the music.

edited 2nd Jun '13 2:02:07 PM by crazysamaritan

So this trope is going to become an objective trope with In-Universe examples only?

In that case, you can pretty much delete the entire Anime & Manga subsection right now. Going over the list, I don't see any In-Universe examples.

Yep. Double checked. No objective examples at all.

edited 2nd Jun '13 12:52:21 PM by DRCEQ

As an objective quote, this'll leave YMMV, won't it?

Objective Trope != In-Universe Only. If I understand correctly, this can also cover Painting the Fourth Wall, e.g. using a particular background noise/tune to consistently herald that something bad is going to go down in this scene. Pavlovian Horror, if you will.

edited 2nd Jun '13 1:30:11 PM by Pig_catapult

It cannot be an Audience Reaction and an Objective Trope.

• An Audience Reaction is objectively not present in the work at all. It's something fans emotionally go through from experiencing the work. Audience Reactions are opinions, not tropes.

Except in this case it is objectively in the work. "Every time [sound] is played in the work, [some specific bad thing, like people dying or something] happens in the work" is an objective correlation. Like how Leit Motif is an objective trope, but it's not in-universe because the characters generally can't hear the BGM.

edited 2nd Jun '13 1:39:59 PM by Pig_catapult

I think you're looking for Scare Chord.

edit: misspelt chord as cord, wrong word Crazy!

edited 2nd Jun '13 1:45:01 PM by crazysamaritan

Ah. Yeah, that's the thing I was thinking of. So, this is, like, when the characters experience a Scare Chord effect?

It will be now.

Any issues with the proposed description replacement?

What will have to be done, aside from wick-cleaning?

Only the wick replacement and example cleanup. I kind of hope Cider will do the former, as he said earlier on.

But it isn't YMMV anymore, nor an Audience Reaction. Doesn't that mean the index has to be changed?

No objections were raised since the proposed definition on Sunday, so I swapped it out. We're in final action mode now, right? Carrying out the decision?

Edit: yep, got the orange star.

EDIT 2: (Avoid the dreaded triple-post!) Actually hasn't been too bad, going down the Western Animation page. I've done mostly crosswicking, and the examples either need an edit, switch to Scare Chord, or simple deletion.

EDIT 3: Webcomic, Web original, and Western Animation complete. All examples crosswicked, moved, or deleted.

edited 9th Jun '13 2:21:04 PM by crazysamaritan