Misused: Belly Of The Whale

This was brought up when a suggested image flopped the Image Suggestion crowner. The trope is about a point in which the hero must not turn back, but there are times when the trope name was taken literally indicating being inside a large creature. One of the two indices and the image suggested that flopped took the trope name literally.

As the name is the cause of the problem, I suggest a rename to something clearer.

edited 24th May '17 8:53:06 PM by Berrenta

I support the rename. Maybe a variation on Can't Refuse the Call Anymore?

edited 25th May '17 7:44:20 AM by Gosicrystal

I think the description ought to be rewritten as well to depend less on The Hero's Journey, which is not as universal a plot as most Campbellians believe. The notion that this trope must occur somehow in the course of story seems to be why so many of the examples seem rather weakly written.

The name is definitely a problem, though, as George Orwell's well-known essay "Inside the Whale" gave it a rather different metaphorical meaning.

edited 25th May '17 11:17:42 AM by Prfnoff

It's also common to know Jonah's story as the story of that one guy who got eaten by a whale. So yeah, the name is problematic.

I kinda wanna call it "One Way Quest Trip" or "No Turning Back".

No Turning Back may be too general, but One Way Quest Trip is possible.

I'll go ahead and throw in another possible name that I thought of: Journey Event Horizon. May be a snowclone, but it might work.

Will this be the non-game version of Plot Tunnel?

Not quite. Plot Tunnel involves gameplay, while this one pertains to The Hero's Journey.

Its more like a midgameish point of no return where shit got real and everything changed.

The problem there are usually many points where you could say this happened in a lot of stories. The Star Wars example says for Luke it is the Death Star and really I think it was blasting out of Mos Eisley.

A video game example I think FFX's case for example it would be the attack by Sin on Mushroom Rock Road or the attack on Home.

Just noting that the description of the Belly of the Whale stage on The Hero's Journey differs significantly from what's being discussed here. Can we first get the definition straight?

Sure, we could look into that.

Is there already a trope for being inside large creatures? If not, we should probably create one.

Well, Womb Level is the videogame version... I don't know if there's a non-videogame trope about this.

Womb Level has non-VG examples.

Meanwhile, there's Swallowed Whole, when someone's swallowed up by the creature.

IMO we should actually figure out the definition of this, rename this and redirect the old name to Womb Level.

Also I think this trope's name would be better than Womb Level.

edited 28th May '17 9:39:06 AM by Memers

Want me to start a crowner for the definition to use? After that, we can run one for the new name.

Cant really make a crowner without people's ideas of what the trope is supposed to be.

I would say drop the "point of no return" angle and focus on the death/rebirth aspect alone.

That works for me. Anyone else?

I like Can't Refuse the Call Anymore? and One Way Quest Trip name changes.

In the belly of the whale is too confusing as fiction often has characters travel inside whales.

The question mark is not part of the name proposal.

Thats what I get for simply copy/pasting, huh?

Got an alternative titles crowner going. I assume we are emphasizing the spiritual death/rebirth part?

From the current description and this archived discussion, the page is supposed to be about the Cambellian concept, right?

~Prfnoff, what sort of changes do you mean?