Not Tropeworthy: Growling Gut

Is Growling Gut really a trope or People Sit On Chairs? It could use some work because right now it's just "person's stomach growls" and that's it.

A huge example is the overwhelming amount of ZCEs in the anime section where it's literally just episode numbers and nothing else...

I think it's a trope, but the description is really lacking. It needs to be about how the growling advertises the character's hunger (especially if there's people around) and affects what they do in the scene. It also needs to mention the belly rippling that you often see in comics and animation.

I think there could be a trope there, but the page description is so anemic and makes no attempt to claim there's any meaning or significance that it effectively is just a fetishist's repository.

This gets brought up on the discussion page with a fair amount of regularity.

Previous but declined thread.

I say it's a trope, since it's a indicator for hungriness.

There are tropes about gut growling, but "gut growling when hungry" by itself is just chairs.

I can imagine Loud Growling Gut for gut growling that is especially loud, Inopportunately Timed Growling Gut for when the gut is growling at inappropriate times.

Yeah, this doesn't seem especially tropeworthy to me.

As I get time, I'll try to sandbox a new writeup for the description unless someone beats me to the punch.

That's what I've been saying for years. There are tropes related to rumbling stomachs. But rumbling stomachs aren't a trope in of itself.

I agree.

How does this sound as a reworking of the definition?

I skimmed through the examples on the page and a massive ZCE cleanup is needed, but I think there's enough examples with context that can go along with this to make a salvageable trope.

Edited by Willbyr on Nov 15th 2019 at 9:13:27 AM

I do think focusing on why the character's stomach is growling is a good idea, since that would get rid of any Chairs aspects. We previously retooled the Chairs-y Smelly Feet into the Played for Laughs Smelly Feet Gag trope.

How about mentioning the interrupting and/or embarrassing aspect of the stomach growl? I sorta-kinda remember that being in play for some examples, like someone making a 180 on a decision with a well-timed gurgle.

Good point; how's this?

Edited by Willbyr on Nov 16th 2019 at 1:43:43 PM

Okay, I made a sandbox using my suggested definition and the present examples, a lot of which are commented out as ZC Es. There's probably more than a few that I left that don't have enough context to them, but if they were more than "this happens", I generally left them alone. I figure this can be a good starting point for cleanup.

Sandbox.Growling Gut

Wow. It's still a lengthy page. I think the single-line entries could still be elaborated on, but they meet the bare minimum for context.

The Image Pickin' thread decided on a new pic, which is in place on both the trope page and the sandbox. I also took the liberty of rewriting the laconic to make it not thrones.

Anyone?

Tepid reaction suggests everyone OK with the new description.

Very nice, Willbyr-chan.

Neglected to say this until now (sorry), but I'm fine with it.

to sandboxed version.

Okay, cool. Next question - do any of the examples that I left in place still count as ZC Es? A lot of them feel very weak, but I don't have time to go through them all and do more extensive writeups.

I actually got a PM some years ago asking whether I know any examples of this trope. And now I see it has several subpages, sorted by medium, full of ZCE-s...

This needs a lot of cleanup.

I still think as it is it's not quite tropeworthy- it should be renamed/restricted to surprise/gag examples.

But the new description is better than the current, so in lieu of this thread being closed without doing anything I'd say swap it in.

What about changing it to Growling Gut Gag to try to curb misuse and ZC Es?