As part of the campaign to make the tropes distinct.: Nightmare Fuel

Forgive me if this redundant, but I have a proposal:
I'd like to help further to stop High Octane Nightmare Fuel from being confused with Nightmare Fuel Up To Eleven.
For this:

1. I would like permission to remove it from the subjectives bin.
2. I would like to suggest a name change.

Here's a few I have in mind:
They Were Trying To Scare You
Specially Engineered To Give You Nightmares
Frightened? Good!

If you have any ideas, could you please speak on the matter?

edited 20th Apr '11 9:50:30 PM by SoWeAteThem

Out eating the neighbors' tax forms, should be back soon.

No offense but I find the suggestions lame. Accidental Nightmare Fuel had a reason for the name change. Changing HONF would be just changing it for the sake of changing it. Besides people here aren't that stupid that they wont know the difference from Accidental Nightmare Fuel to High Octane Nightmare Fuel.

So I say keep it. Unless you guys desperatly want another Moment of Awesome incident on your hands

Now I do propose that we ease up on the name changes. Sooner or later people will just be abusing the name changes till the trope faces decay due to the constant name changes.

edited 21st Apr '11 12:14:16 AM by legato

Okay, so the name change idea is out...
But the other half could use some fixing up:
If the writers were trying, then why is it a subjective trope?
Why not just stick the instances that tried to be scary and didn't qualify somewhere in Nightmare Retardant?

edited 21st Apr '11 12:54:47 AM by SoWeAteThem

Out eating the neighbors' tax forms, should be back soon.

We can add "Intentionally Scary" or one of those as a redirect. But it's only been a few days since Nightmare Fuel got embedded as Accidental Nightmare Fuel. That makes misuse much more obvious, which makes cleanup a higher priority. Give it a week or so and see what happens.

There's already a redirect in the vein of what's suggested here: Intentional Nightmare Fuel.

"Stealing is a crime and drugs is a crime too BUT if you steal drugs the two crimes cancel out and it’s like basically doing a good."

INF sounds more like stuff that's supposed to scare you, but not keep you up at night. Usually, this would be something like Scare 'Em Straight. High Octane Nightmare Fuel are things that keep adults up at night and give children night terrors.

Even if that something was intended to be scary could be objective, (technically it IS objective, it is just often hard to prove) whether or not it worked is still subjective, as opinions vary on whether something is HONF or narm. (Many anti-drug ads, for example, are seen as HONF by some and as Narm by others.)

edited 27th Apr '11 10:19:06 AM by neoYTPism

Treat it like Special Effects Failure and Fight Scene failure:
If it scares you, then that's what they were going for, so good.
If it doesn't, well... There's an index for that.

Out eating the neighbors' tax forms, should be back soon.

I propose making a Nightmare Fuel page that serves as disambig, similar to the Unwinnable page. Often people use Nightmare Fuel when they mean High Octane Nightmare Fuel, and the rename to Accidental Nightmare Fuel is weird (though admittedly something that can be fixed on a case by case basis)

Wait... taken literally, Intentional Nightmare Fuel means that it's intentionally trying to give you nightmares... which generally keep you up at night. It's more than just scares.

This might be only tangentially related, but I think some example cleanup is required between both flavors of Nightmare Fuel. I note this because I was a bit surprised the other day to discover that Metroid has pages for both accidental and intentional nightmare fuel (and yes, a couple examples are on both pages). I'm not saying that it's impossible for a series to have both varieties... I just suspect the number of things that manage to slip in some accidental fear-mongering in with their intentional scares are rather few and far-between. Metroid isn't the only example; it's just the first one I personally found.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

Intentional seems like something that makes you have trouble sleeping at night while High Octane is something that creeps you out so much that you have to think about your place in life or something. To me, they sound like two different tropes.

They only sound like two different tropes from the title, if you read the description, intentional nightmare fuel would be a valid title. For some reason, tropers love High Octane Nightmare Fuel and are vehemently against any change for the page. I don't think its too major to go against popular opinion either, we've at least established its different from Accidental Nightmare Fuel.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

But if they were trying to do it, it isn't subjective anymore.
If we keep it subjective, people will still see it as The Same But More.
Should we perhaps rewrite it to be an objective trope?

edited 10th May '11 10:52:25 PM by SoWeAteThem

Out eating the neighbors' tax forms, should be back soon.

I agree that this is objective in so far as the author has to have the intent to scare, however, I don't like the idea of making it objective, as that's contradicted by the existence of Nightmare Fetishists.

Unless the only requirement to the trope is objective intent and personal opinion is cast aside.

That's what I was thinking about.
And besides, the whole "subjective" thing is covered in Nightmare Retardant and Nightmare Fetishist.

Out eating the neighbors' tax forms, should be back soon.

If HONF is made to be only subjective, then something would be able to be both HONF and Nightmare Retardant. That's the only possible I could see with that suggestion, if that's even an issue at all.

And why would that be a problem? Speaking personally, I know there are some things that are potholed to HONF that I don't find scary at all. And likewise, anything to do with spiders will terrify me no matter how lame most people find it.

They're clearly subjective tropes, and there is no problem I can see with having something be considered both. After all, on the discussion for Narm, examples are given of one troper's narm being another's crowning moment of awesome. Subjective tropes are subjective.

The problem here it that even after Nightmare Fuel became Nightmare Fuel, people are still using the two terms interchangeably.
You personally just abused it yourself; spiders as a species are not specially created just to scare people who look at them.
If a writer includes spiders in their works, and these spiders were put in with intent to frighten the reader, then it's High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
In definition, the defining seperation is whether it was intended or not.
In practice, High Octane Nightmare Fuel is often Nightmare Fuel Up To Eleven.
You see, this is why I was proposing name-changes in the first place. To reflect the intended difference.

Out eating the neighbors' tax forms, should be back soon.

No, that's not quite what I meant. My point was that given my arachnophobia, even the most utterly laughable special effects failure of a Giant Spider would terrify me, thereby qualifying in my case for High Octane Nightmare Fuel, assuming that it was intended to be scary. However, someone else with no fear of spiders would consider such Special Effects Failure not even close to frightening, so in their case it would qualify as Nightmare Retardant. It was an example of how the tropes are subjective.

I didn't mean to suggest that any footage of a spider, ever, would be HONF for me.

edited 13th May '11 10:25:34 PM by nrjxll

I don't see how making HONF objective would alter that. It was made to scare people. It fails to scare some people, who would classify it as Nightmare Retardant. The latter is a subjective trope itself.

Out eating the neighbors' tax forms, should be back soon.

Should we just rename High Octane Nightmare Fuel to just plain ol' Nightmare Fuel?

I mean, it'll get rid of some of the confusion, and it would work well with Accidental Nightmare Fuel...

"The world ends with you. If you want to enjoy life, expand your world. You gotta push your horizons out as far as they'll go."

This was proposed, but it failed to pass the crowner. Actually, if I recall correctly, it was just proposed to rename High Octane Nightmare Fuel (to anything), but same thing.

Making HONF objective would mean that if it is intended to scare people, then it goes in HONF.

If something was intended to scare people, but failed to do so, then yes, it would go into Nightmare Retardant.

However, look at the above again; assuming HONF was objective (i.e. subjectivity never comes into it at all) then something would have to qualify as HONF before qualifying as Nightmare Retardant (remember, if HONF was objective, then the fact that a work appears in Nightmare Retardant is irrelevant. Point is, it was intended to be scary, therefore, it would be HONF regardless of everything else. Unless I'm missing something here.).

Perhaps there should be two tropes? One for "This scared the shit out of me (subjective)" and one for "This work is intended to be scary (objective)"?

edited 15th May '11 3:03:59 AM by DudemanThingface

That actually seems like a good idea.
One suggestion on how to handle it: Make one trope for things that were meant to scare people, and broaden the definition of Nightmare Fuel to encompass things that actually did, intent or otherwise.
Or would that just come off as redundant?

Out eating the neighbors' tax forms, should be back soon.

Intentional Nightmare Fuel and call it a day.

   I will consume not only your flesh, but your very soul.