Written Roar



The characteristic bellow of a monster as it attacks, makes a warning display, or reacts to pain, rendered as onomatopoeia. Usually, but not always, because it is incapable of speech. Common in Comic Books, Web Comics and RPGs without voice acting; rare in Literature.

The Written Roar has some fairly standard versions, though the exact number of letters involved vary widely. There are several usual forms of the classic throaty roar, from the literal "Roar!" to the more guttural "Graar!" to the very common "Argh!" The related horrible screech has mostly been standardized around variations of "Scree!"

Compare with Verbal Tic, where the character actually says the word. A subtrope of Written Sound Effect. One of the many faithful servants of the Rule of Cool.

Anime and Manga

 * One of the most unusual examples comes from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. There is a certain sound vampires make as a battle cry of sorts. In the early parts it was written as "Wreeeee" or "Wriiiiii". But its most famous incarnation, thanks to Memetic Mutation is WRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comic Books

 * Watchmen has a incredibly Narmful one when Rorschach jumps out of a window: "RRAAAARRL". No punctuation. (Memetic Mutation frequently uses this for macros, photoshops, and .gifs)
 * Mocked in an issue of Excalibur where Lockheed the dragon bites a burglar who yells 'Yeargh' and his companion bemusedly notes that you never really hear people say that, although you see it written down a lot.
 * Wolverine, like, all the time.
 * The old Dark Horse Godzilla comics would render his famous roar phonetically. AAIIEEEEEEE--UH--UNK!

Film

 * The Castle of AUUGH.
 * Godzilla's distinctive roar is often rendered as "Screeeeeonk!" which, admittedly, does not do justice to the true trumpety majesty of which an enraged atomic god is capable.

Literature

 * The novelization of Return of the Jedi was one of the few Star Wars books to actually try to write out Chewbacca's speech (as well as that of R2-D2 and the Ewoks). "Rheeaaahhr!", "Groawwwwr!", and "Rowr ahragh awf ahraroww rowh rohngr grgrff rf rf." were typical lines. Words fail us.
 * The Glove of Darth Vader does similarly.
 * In the third book of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy by Douglas Adams, a creature named Agrajag lets forth an angry cry of "HhhhhhrrrrrraaaaaaHHHHHH!!!" by way of explanation.

Newspaper Comics

 * There's also Charlie Brown's famous "AAUGH!".
 * The Prehistoria comic strip BC puts "GRONK" into the mouths of its brontosaurian dinos.
 * FoxTrot is fond of "AAAA!".
 * The short-lived comic strip Arnold (1982–88) often had the titular character yell "AIEEE!" for no reason whatsoever.

Video Games

 * Pokémon Diamond and Pearl: Arceus, the apparently ultimate God, has a menacing cry written as..."Dodogyuuun".
 * Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations has Furio Tigre (named Zenitora in the original Japanese version) from the third case, who growls so loudly at times, his roar stretches through up to six (!) text boxes.
 * The first game did this as well in the fourth case, where it was revealed that Miles Edgeworth
 * Star Ocean: Till the End of Time has a rather embarrassing example. What was supposed to be an anguished scream (after being defeated and humiliated) was subtitled as..."Raaaaaaaaaaaawr!"
 * Chrono Trigger. "Droooo...", among others.
 * Berserker's roars in Fate/stay night were rendered as something quite unreadable and with no actual letters. Like this: "▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅!"
 * Recurring Boss Balrog in Cave Story yells "Doryaa!!" when breaking through a door or ceiling. (The English versions changed it to "Huzzah!" or "Oh yeah!")

Web Original

 * The Aargh Page was created as an example of how search engines can be used explore how words are spelled. Words often have more than one acceptable spelling, and that's particularly true of onomatopoeia.

Web Comics

 * Emergency Exit uses this, as shown in the excerpted panel above.
 * Parallel Dementia absolutely loves this, so it naturally showed up a lot in the extended Crossover between Emergency Exit and Parallel Dementia. Prime examples include this epic "Graaaaaarr!!" and this epic "Screeeaaaah!".
 * Erfworld rendered this dwagon roar as a loop of text ("RRROOOOOOOAAAAAAA" with the final "A" leading back to the block of "R"s).
 * In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob, this was the vocabulary of the annually appearing Halloween Monster for the first few years of his her existence. These days, she goes "BOO!" very loudly, instead. In a variation, Unigar the Vast Unicorn roars with a blood-curdling "PURR!" (because all normal-sized unicorns in the Bob-verse purr).
 * El Goonish Shive uses this for Vlad's loud screech which is heard throughout the building and for a giant boar's mighty "squee" which is also loud enough to be heard from a distance.