Most of the examples seem to be cruft.: Adult Fear

Half of the examples I read started with "X totally counts" or "[Work] makes you cry with how often this shows up". I'm going to clean it, but I wanted to make sure others knew about it before I start mass editing.

Got a few sections done. Why did this thing turn into a Troper Tales/High Octane Nightmare Fuel knockoff? Most of the examples are "I'm an adult and this scared me after I thought about it for a while."

Because HONF is basically Adult Fear?

Although yeah, first person should probably be purged.

It seems to have objective criteria to me, mainly that it's stuff that's supposed to be scary but isn't Primal Fear. I've been cutting things that aren't some variant of "Threats toward children" or "government becomes police state and kills everyone". I'm inclined to turn this into an index.

I think this trope could work, if it's about fears people have in the real world that children don't have. Like look at the Coraline entry. Kids see the story as scary because it's about a witch kidnapping kids and stealing their souls; adults see a much scarier metaphor, about how strangers can lure disaffected kids away from their parents (which is technically what happens to Coraline in the story, and what happened to the three kids before her).

So if Adult Fear is about fears that only adults have that kids don't think about or can't yet comprehend, then I think it could work.

The problem being that the examples are in an "I found this really scary" style that doesn't belong on an objective trope page. Primal Fear has the same problem.

I'm trying to work up the desire to continue. Is this a lost cause?

It's pretty much a lost cause. This is really just Think of the Children! in a mustache, basically.

Actually, the two don't relate that much. Think of the Children! uses an Adult Fear, but they aren't the same thing.

I think it's a worthwhile trope, and either this is being posted post-clean up, or someone else has done the trick, but I'm not seeing the same problem. I think the main point, though, would be fears that apply to adults more than to kids - "Real World" scary, things like inability to provide for yourself or your family, losing your family (especially your kids), suffering debilitating illness that makes you unable to care for others... War, police states and politics do enter in mainly because children are less able to comprehend the potential for vast devastation. Basically, adult fears seem (to me, anyway) to be fears beyond those of a personal nature - not just threats to the body (or the self) but to the well-being of loved ones or the condition of the world. An Inconvenient Truth, for example, plays on adult fears which kids might simply not understand - sure, it's kind of scary to see large chunks of ice splitting off from the poles and falling into the ocean, but a more mature mind can examine the ramifications of thousand-year-old ice melting and can comprehend the amount of change that would cause this to happen as well as the potential outcomes of that event.

Just my two cents, adjusted for sales tax and inflation.

I think the trope itself is a valid one, because there are certain things that adults might find upsetting or scary that children wouldn't really get or wouldn't be as bothered by.

However, a lot of the current examples... don't really fit that. For one thing, I'm seeing a lot of "bad things happening to children" in works aimed at children, who presumably are the ones the writers are trying to scare. I mean, there's some leeway there — Coraline, for example, has Word of God to support the fact that Gaiman was trying to make it scary to adults on a different level than it is for children — but... I don't know, I'm just not really buying a lot of these as being specifically targeted to adults/only scary to adults.

At any rate, it definitely needs pruning, maybe some tweaking of the definition, and maybe we should only allow the "bad things happening to children" examples that put at least some focus on what the parents are going through, as opposed to just following what happens to the kid?

I know I got halfway down the page before I forgot about it.

Yeah, start at literature and work downward.

edited 25th May '11 9:22:27 PM by Deboss

I find it odd that the The Simpsons example seems to think "fear of your parents dying" is an Adult Fear. I was terrified of my parents dying as soon as I got old enough to understand what death is. Growing up has made me more reconciled to the thought than the opposite.

edited 26th May '11 1:50:37 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash

It doesn't have to be only scary to adults, just something that adults connect to and find scarier than children do. Take Lilo And Stitch. When I saw it as a preteen, I was a little disturbed by the "Child Services takes Lilo away" subplot, but when I saw it again as a (young) adult, I was bawling. I imagine it would be worse if I was actually a parent.

Sorry, you're right, I should have said "scarier to adults".

Anyway, the point that I was kind of sort of vaguely trying to make was that if this is going to not be horribly subjective, I think we ought to require at least some evidence that "scarier to adults" is what the work in question was going for.

To pull a couple examples from the page to illustrate:

Heavy Rain is aimed at adults. The main character is an adult, and when his son gets kidnapped, the focus is entirely on what the father is going through and how he feels about not being able to protect his kid, not on what's happening to the kid. That's pretty clearly playing on an Adult Fear.

Madeline: Lost in Paris is aimed at children and the protagonist is a child. When she gets kidnapped, the focus is mainly, if not completely, on her and the other kidnapped children and all the PG-rated torments they suffer. It doesn't so much go into what Madeline's adult guardian feels about the situation. In the absence of Word of God stating that they were trying to scare adults more than children, this looks like something meant to scare children happening to be equally scary to adults.

There are things that both groups are scared by to about the same extent (if for different reasons). Certain variations on "bad things happening to children" fall into this category. So does the above-mentioned example of family members dying. I don't think those things count as Adult Fears. They're more... people-in-general fears.

That being said, there's still a lot of possible grey area there, so maybe trying to determine things that way won't really work.

... man, I talk too much. I'm sorry.

Honestly, if you're going to compare the two tropes this one has a lot more to do with this site's purpose than High Octane Nightmare Fuel. Honestly, the only reason I don't campaign for that trope to be cut is because its really popular but its still nothing but a collection of supposedly scary stuff with no real pattern or criteria.

Accidental Nightmare Fuel:"We didn't want this to be scary, we're sorry it is." Not really a story building device, but it at least has a standard for examples to conform to.

Adult Fear: Made purposefully to pull at the strings of adults. Just like many jokes or concerns will be lost on, or considered trivial by children, some fears hit adults harder. This is a story telling device, a trope that has a pattern, criteria, genres everything High Octain Nightmare Fuel isn't.

Defanged Horrors:Somethings just don't scare adults, but really creep out children. This is even more of an objective trope than adult fear because thanks to Children Are Innocent its often enforced. Purposefully scary stuff aint a trope. High Octane Nightmare Fuel is Just For Fun at best, not a standard for anything else on the wiki to conform too.

I was under the impression that this trope was about children getting hurt.

Maybe only keep examples that are Word of God. I remember seeing an example about Rugrats that said it was Adult Fear because the babies often got into dangerous situations....without mentioning that the dangerous situations were usually entirely imagined by the babies and they were usually actually in their play pen or in a sandbox or something.

Personally, I would suggest two things.

1) Separate out the children examples. Whether to the same trope page or another, a large number of these examples are about children, but not all by a long way.

2) Check the children examples for other angles. Some of the examples given I know aren't just about children, but the description only mentions the children. For example, the last example from Doctor Who talks about a child but doesn't mention what led Rory to stare down the 12th cyber legion.

—>Rory: Where. Is. My. Wife?

edited 8th Sep '11 2:59:03 PM by Michael

I was about to say something about how most of the examples are about chilrend in danger. Honestly, if that's how it is just rename it "Parental Fear" and get rid of everything else since no one can conjure up something that would keep adults up and night that doesn't involve children.

Because there are things that worry adults who aren't parents, and don't really affect kids. That was the original intent of this — using a fear that bothers adults but don't generally worry kids (unless they pick up that it's something to worry about from an adult)" — things like finances, taxes, layoffs — as an aspect of horror.

edited 8th Sep '11 5:24:02 PM by Madrugada

"Coming this Summer:

You cant run, You cant hide, and not even death can save you!

Will Smith and Nicholas Cage in:

THE IRS"

• Rated R for adult situations.

edited 8th Sep '11 6:16:43 PM by dontcallmewave

That's exactly what the idea was.

Look how it turned out though. It all went straight to Hell.

I'm in support of the Parental Fears rename.