Pal, you're not the only one who's wondering!
I have a hard time explaining the concept to people around me. Honestly, a number of examples on the page don't strike me as Tastes Like Diabetes. And if they don't have TLD, then I don't know why they should be called Glurge!
Oh, Equestria, we stand on guard for thee!
I think it is to Heartwarming Moments and Tearjerker what Narm is to a serious moment or Moment of Awesome. It's an umbrella term for a poorly-executed attempt at being inspiring or "warm and fuzzy".
It's sentimental Heartwarming or Tear Jerker or uplifting moments undermined by the context of the work itself. (Either due to Unfortunate Implications or Values Dissonance.) Glurge definitely overlaps with both of those, but it IS ultimately its own trope.
Your Resident Grumpy Old Youngster
You know felines are excellent climbers, but the poster is saying "save kitty from falling off tree before it's too late"
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The King of the Flea Market Dweebs
I just removed the example of "Artificial Flowers", most known as a song by Bobby Darin, being an example of Glurge from the music section. The entry as whole describes some early pop music as falling into Glurge due to Values Dissonance, and that I can definitely understand. I'll admit, I'm kind of a casual fan of older pop music (mostly New wave and yacht rock Classic Rock, but I sometimes listen to traditional pop and the Middle-of-the-road super-soft rock like Barry Manilow and some of Paul Anka's and Neil Sedaka's later music, and occasionally the latter two's earliest doo-woop/Bril Building pop/'50s rock n' roll type music, so maybe I'm a LITTLE biased, (although those last songs I go into expecting them to be cheesy anyways) but is "Artificial Flowers" really an example of Glurge?
I removed it because it was a Zero-Context Example, and from what I've read, it's about a poor orphan girl who has to take up a job at a young age. The song's lyrics don't seem to be making light of the situation, so it sounds more like Lyrical Dissonance than anything, which, might I remind you, is VERY common. Could someone explain the Unfortunate Implications the song supposedly has?
Edited by GrumpyOldYouth Your Resident Grumpy Old Youngster Hide / Show Replies
My only guess is that it's Glurge-y because it's about a poor overworked orphan girl who freezes to death, and the implication that she goes to Heaven can serve as a happy/bittersweet ending. A cynical listener can read the message as "why bother helping orphans if they're just going to die and go to Heaven anyway?"
Edited by MathsAngelicVersion
Well, that would make sense, however, the last lyrics of the song:
''No more artificial flowers Throw away those artificial flowers Flowers for ladies of society to wear.
Throw away those artificial flowers Those dumb-dumb flowers ... Fashioned from Annie's ...
Fashioned from A-a-a-annie's des-pa-a-a-air.
Give her the real thing!''
While it's not directly a demand to help orphans, I think it's pretty obvious that's what the songwriter was trying to convey. It kinda seems Protest Song-y with those lyrics (worth noting that Bobby Darin, whose version is the most well-known, did release some protest songs later in his career.)
Your Resident Grumpy Old Youngster
Is Glurge blasphemous?
I'm a Christian, but Glurge breaks all Ten Commandments (thou shall not bear false witnesses is one).
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ALL TEN commandments? I mean, yeah, I can definitely see how it breaks the commandment of not bearing false witness, but how does it break the other ones? (Also, Glurge as a concept no doubt spreads falsehoods, but I don't think it's necessarily malicious, per se, so I wouldn't call it blasphemous. I would definitely categorize some of the overtly "Christian" examples as possibly unintentionally blasphemous, but even then, only extremes like "Christmas Shoes" would fit that.
Your Resident Grumpy Old Youngster
I have an issue with one of the examples...
- In The Present
, a teenage boy gets given a dog as a gift. He's initially pleased but instantly rejects the dog once he finds out it has only three legs. He eventually learns to accept the dog, but the short falls into Glurge territory because giving pets as presents is generally a bad idea, the boy is a gamer suggesting that New Media Are Evil or gamers are jerks, and at the end, the boy turns out to be an amputee as well, making his prejudice towards the dog nonsensical.
The story was made to intentionally pull at the heartstrings but it's debatable if it really counts as glurge.
The example omits aspects of the narrative that temper the "glurge".
The puppy was given to the boy by his mother as an attempt to get him to play outside more because he's pretty obsessed with video games, so it wasn't a case of Pets as a Present given blindly.
The puppy has three-legs and, at first, the boy appears to reject the puppy in a way that implies he finds the puppy "broken".
The boy returns to his video game because it's what young boys do not because he's being established as an example of "gamers are jerks".
What follows are several minutes of the puppy's unabashed enthusiasm over finding a ball to play with and is completely unfazed that it has only three legs.
The boy's attention keeps getting drawn to the puppy's rambunctious antics and the short ends with him taking the puppy outside to play ball.
Only in the final scene is it revealed that the boy is disabled as well. The puppy has three-legs and the boy is missing a foot on one of his legs so the boy initially rejected the puppy because it reminded him of his own disability.
Sentimental?... sure. Saccharine?... maybe. Glurge?... not really.
Edited by rva98014 Hide / Show Replies
I agree, but bring it up to the forums https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16397086910A89033300&page=1#9
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Needs Help, started by Tahaneira on Dec 6th 2016 at 12:20:40 AM
"The Lone Gunmen collectively decide that the world does not need to be freed from its addiction to gasoline. Who wrote this episode, Jeremy Clarkson?" Uh no, it's stated in the episode that having a basically infinite supply of energy for transportation would actually lead to more consumerism and more devastation of the environment because of increased dependence on automobiles.
If this true story was adapted to films with 100% historical accuracy, do you think it would qualify as glurge? (Warning! This is a very sad story.) Julianna Snow, a young girl living in Tuscon Arizona was unlucky to be born with a terminal condition that caused her much pain, I'd tell you more about it, but I'm not a medical expert. For 5 years, she and her family battled this condition and Julianna had numerous hospital trips, all of them painful both mentally and physically.
During one period where she was more stable and at home, the doctor had to give Mom and Dad the bad news. The condition was incurable and she was not expected to live long, and the hospital trips were becoming worse and worse. Like all patients with conditions where death is the only way out, the doctor asked the parents if they would allow the hospital to euthanize Julianna. Mom and Dad however, were to emotionally wrecked to make this choice. So Mom and Dad told Julianna about the situation and asked what would she want. She chose death. This made the news and when asked about if she was scared by the fact that Mom and Dad could not go with her, she replied "God will take care of me."(Not kidding! She actually said this!)
Seven month's after Julianna made her choice, she died.But despite all this being true, this all uses a number of glurge tropes, such as Littlest Cancer Patient, Too Good for this Sinful World(reportedly, she was very kind), Purity Sue, possibly Easy Evangelism depending on your POV, Angst? What Angst?, and Children are Innocent. Do you think that if this was adapted into a film, would it still walk into a glurge trap? It's practically Evangeline from Uncle Tom's Cabin in reality.
Imperial Court Mage
Is it alright if I add "Hollywood Autism" to the list of common trends or at the very least as a subcategory to Inspirationally Disadvantaged? Since they are pretty much the most egregious type in this category since most of the authors in what the Lifetime Movies page dubbed "Woman against child" subgenre often suffer from Critical Research Failure because they're just neurotypical people who didn't research autism in detail or even have an autistic kid that they can rely on for experience. As a result, most autistic people (such as myself) cringe very hard at how very condescending it can seem.
"Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending."-Jim Henson
Is the "Glurge" chain e-mails collection from Snopes the trope namer? Did Snopes invent the term "Glurge"?
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According to the former content of the page, yes.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Might want to check the page history for this (the "History" button).
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Try any "Call now to rescue this abused cutesy wootsey animal" set to that song from City of Angels.
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What is anti-glurge?
Opposite of Glurge
Disney (with the exceptions of One Magic Christmas and Santa Paws) and funny pet videos are two of my examples
Edited by lledsmar
This is a YMMV item; whether anything is an example is in the eye of the beholder.
shamgar001
I'm removing the Atlas Shrugged example. The entry misrepresents the work, and seems to mostly be a soapbox for the editor. Maybe it is legitimately glurge, but the entry needs to be better written if it is.
The laconic description of this trope says "Tastes Like Diabetes meets Fridge Horror and/or Unfortunate Implications."
So let me ask this: do a number of examples listed actually qualify for this trope? I've seen a number of examples that have Fridge Horror and/or Unfortunate Implications, but not Tastes Like Diabetes. If TLD is not there, then it doesn't really count as an example, does it?
Oh, Equestria, we stand on guard for thee!
The Royal Dutch of Dukes
From the music section, beneath the entry mentioning God is love songs:
- And it makes you wonder why there aren't radio stations that play music like this. It shows up on secular radio ...
- And it makes you wonder why there aren't radio stations that play music like this.
This is not glurge by any stretch of the imagination. Thus, it is not an example. This is not a discussion forum for posting links to videos by your favorite bands. I've removed the entry.
Is it really fair to say that all Medieval or Romantic works suffer from this trope? I don't really the reasoning behind that anyway.
I don't know if it's worth noting or whether I'm just being overly argumentative, but Susan stops believing in Narnia (and so presumably Aslan/God) which if we're extrapolating from the whole Christian analogy thing, is probably pretty key to her not going to heaven
Re: Fundies Say The Darndest Things example Does acceptance of mortality really count as Fridge Horror per se or am I missing something?
All hail
A quick note on the example story about the boy who was born without a body: If at any point during pregnancy there seems to be complications with development (missing the heart, missing lungs, missing a whole fucking lower 3/4 of the body) the mother's body will terminate the pregnancy as it is highly unlikely the child would survive to term (or very long after if it does manage to survive that long). And that's just the biggest problem with the story.
So, in the U.S., randomly stripping is a signal that you want to sing the national anthem? - That Human Hide / Show Replies
Yes, but the example story started out as a parody of this kind of story. Some people randomly thought that it was serious, and thus the Glurge was cycled anew.
Does anyone remember that stupid extra glurgey "free Kittuns" poem about cats dying in horrible ways and ending up in heaven in their cardboard box?
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I think it was an essay as opposed to a poem...but yeah, I remember it all too well. Ick.
I really don't know what this trope supposed to mean? From what I pick up it's stories with Tastes Like Diabetes with some Unfortunate Implications of sort, or is it Anvilicious? Or does just mean happy uplifting stories with some Fridge Horror? What does it mean? Furthermore, it seems like the trope page seems to be used by people as an excuse to complain about and/or make fun of certain works. Am I missing something?
Edited by CounterBlitzkrieg Why are you reading this line? Hide / Show Replies