• It was decided to rework Howling To The Night into a trope for ambient animal noises being used to reinforce a creepy setting or establish a fearful mood, with the trope being renamed to Spooky Animal Sounds, and move "wolves howling at dusk being used to note the onset of nighttime" examples to Wolves Always Howl at the Moon.
  • Clean up wicks.

Original post:

The trope's basic identity seems to encompass two distinct but closely related concepts: wolves howling at dusk being used to note the onset of night time, and wolves howling late at night to reinforce a creepy setting or establish a fearful mood. In both cases, the description goes, the actual wolves are rarely seen. This is contrasted with Cock-a-Doodle Dawn for the animal sound heralding the change from night to day.

The most immediately concerning thing is potential overlap with Wolves Always Howl at the Moon, which generally encompasses wolves, werewolves, and generally lupine creatures howling in a moonward direction. There is potential ground to distinguish the two concepts — one is a mood and setting signifier, and one plays on associations with a specific celestial object. However, I am not convinced that this distinction is present in the way in which the trope is used, due to the primary issue here — a mess of a page and severe misuse.

The main page is soft split, so let's keep that distinction. All formatting is as it is on the current page.

• Correct use: 6/22 — 27.3%
• Correct use, but miscategorized: 2/22 — 9.1%
• Doesn't mention nighttime: 3/22 — 13.6%
• Plain ZCE: 11/22 — 50%

22 examples at a generous count, half of that ZCE, and the rest are a mess. Pretty bad, but nothing some vigorous crosswicking couldn't fix. So I went to do that, and here is what I found. Since only 71 (73 counting the Laconic and Playing With) pages link here, I checked all of them.

• Wolves howl at the onset of night: 7/72 — 9.7%
• Wolves howl to reinforce creepy or frightening atmospheres: 10/72 — 13.9%
• Wolves howl to communicate or summon more wolves: 8/72 — 11.1%
• Wolves Always Howl at the Moon: 7/72 — 9.7%
• Wolves howl for whatever other reasons: 24/72 — 33.3%
• Non-canines howling: 5/72 — 6.9%
• ZCE: 11/72 — 15.3%

Overall, there's a very clear identity problem here. Correct usage, collectively, makes up 23.6% of examples, and ZCEs and random misuse make up the remaining three quarters and change. There is also an evident problem with this being confused with Wolves Always Howl at the Moon, which gets mixed into this even when examples of the former aren't listed as this trope. The name also doesn't indicate that it's about wolves, which seems to be why non-canine examples get mixed in.

I have mixed feelings here. The basic concepts of "wolves how to mark the onset of night" and "howling wolves are used reinforce creepy settings" are sound, but keeping them mixed with each other is definitely leading to trope dilution. By the same line of reasoning, folding this into Wolves Always Howl at the Moon would probably just worsen things, because then you'd be defining the trope as "wolves howl to show their association with the moon and to signal the fall of night and to reinforce creepy atmospheres", and by that point you've basically just broadened it to "wolves howl".

My instinct is that "wolves how to mark the onset of night" can probably be separated into its own thing, although it would need a more specific name to avoid the current trope's issues. "Howling wolves are used reinforce creepy settings", however, can probably be expanded to include other animal noises being used for this general purpose — I feel like owls hooting and ravens cawing get put to similar uses, so something like Ominous Ambient Animal Noises or what have you might be viable.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 12th 2023 at 1:10:20 PM

Opening

Macron's notes

The Ominous Ambient Animal Noises trope idea (or whatever we'd call it) might work, since there are already non-canine examples. I'm not 100% decided on a course of action, though; I'm waiting for more feedback before deciding what I'd prefer, so I'm just commenting right now instead of voting.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 25th 2023 at 6:34:27 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I like that idea, too. It's definitely a trope.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Great idea.

Would we retool this trope to the "Ominous Ambient Animal Noises" trope and keep this one for "wolves howling to mark the onset of night"?

There are 6 correct examples; there might be some more.

I don't see a point in having a wolf-specific trope, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try it.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

It was pointed out in the OP that Wolves Always Howl at the Moon covers that and that's causing a lot of overlap and confusion so we can't keep Howling To The Night as a work specific trope. That can just be folded under Wolves Always Howl at the Moon

Macron's notes

Ominous Animal Ambient Noises. Saw this thread open earlier but I didn’t have a chance to respond, so I’ll just say that that’s absolutely its own thing and I would support a retool into it.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

I think I'm now in favor of the Ominous Ambient Animal Noises trope instead of just considering it.

Edit: And as Macron previously said, there's no need to also have a wolf-specific subtrope of Ominous Ambient Animal Noises when we already have Wolves Always Howl at the Moon.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 25th 2023 at 8:29:31 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

For reference, what I think selkies was talking about wasn't making an "ominous wolf howling" subtrope for a theoretical Ominous Ambient Animal Noises trope, but instead referring to one of the possibilities I had bought up in the OP, which was a sort of nocturnal counterpart to Cock-a-Doodle Dawn — that is, the use of howling noise effects to signify the transition from day to night.

As for personal feelings on this concept: I'm not entirely against folding this under Wolves Always Howl at the Moon, but I was a bit worried about potential concept dilution from doing so.

(Wolves Always Howl at the Moon's definition is perhaps also a little fuzzy, but that would probably require a separate look through.)

to "Ominous Ambient Animal Noises".

Edited by RandomTroper123 on May 25th 2023 at 8:04:49 AM

I think "wolves howling late at night to reinforce a creepy setting or establish a fearful mood" can be rolled into the Ominous Ambient Animal Sounds idea (owls hooting, crows or ravens cawing, some crickets...cricketing, etc) and "wolves howling at dusk being used to note the onset of night time" can be merged into Wolves Always Howl at the Moon.

Edited by amathieu13 on May 26th 2023 at 7:11:43 AM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

x4 I might have misunderstood since I was getting tired when I wrote that. (I just got out of bed.)

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I think we should:

1. Make the Ominous Ambient Animal Noises trope for "spooky animal sounds in background" (wolves, ravens, etc).

2. Define Howling To The Night as "wolf howls to signify night falling".

3. Possibly rename Howling To The Night. (Howling Means Nighttime? Night Falls Wolves Rise?)

For every low there is a high.

Any ideas for what to do here? The reason I haven't made a crowner already is because I don't know what would go on one.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

1. Rework the trope into Ominous Ambient Animal Noises for "wolves howling late at night to reinforce a creepy setting or establish a fearful mood" (per amathieu)
2. Move "wolves howling at dusk being used to note the onset of night time" examples to Wolves Always Howl at the Moon (also per amathieu)

Is this good?

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

^Little late since the crowner's already accrued a lot of votes, but Unicorndance had also proposed "Define Howling To The Night as 'wolf howls to signify night falling' " and possibly renaming it.

Added. I'll bump the ATT bulletin and edit it to mention that more options were added.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Posting this comment to make public that I voted in favor of "Rework into a trope for ambient animal noises being used to reinforce a creepy setting or establish a fearful mood". I didn't upvote or downvote any of the other options.

135 - 169 - 273 - 191 - 188 - 230 - 300

Ominous Animal Ambiance would be shorter

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

shorter yes, but "Animal Noises" is much more clearer / specific that this is about the sounds animals make contributing to this vibe than "Animal Ambience". Can still put it up on the crowner, though

I think Ominous Animal Ambience can be interpreted as the animal's presence itself contributing to the creepy mood so yeah I think we need notices for clarity.

Macron's notes