Redlink trope and/or scrap examples?: Nightmare Fuel

I know that seems like a pretty radical approach, but Accidental Nightmare Fuel seems to be more often misused than used properly, and having nightmare fuel automatically replaced by it does not exactly seem that effective at fixing this misuse. I think it is time to start over.

The actual trope itself isn't too bad, if obviously YMMV, and most of the Accidental Nightmare Fuel links and examples seem to be OK. If anything, I'd say it's the custom titling of Nightmare Fuel that's causing the misuse. There are still wicks remaining from before the rename and it wouldn't surprise me if there were people unaware of the rename that are linking to it not knowing that it was renamed.

Yeah, I thought we agreed not to use custom titles for renames, and yet this one is still around for some reason.

I agree, It Is Beyond Saving. However, I believe the crowner on what to do with Nightmare Fuel specifically rejected the "cut and start over" option. As bad as this misuse is, trying to fix it this way seems to subvert the popular decision.

Just red link Nightmare Fuel and until that's done, remove all incorrect usages.

Then again, since its not an objective trope to begin with, and a natter magnet, maybe TV Tropes would be better off without it.

One of the problems is that there is no middle ground between Accidental and High Octane. I brought this up in the other thread and it kinda got buried, but it's still a point I'd like to make. I'm OK with there being an Accidental Nightmare Fuel thing, but there's not really a place between for things that are meant to be somewhat creepy but not pants-crappingly terrifying. A good example is the Boo House sort of levels in Mario games. They're meant to kinda give a sense of being semi-creepy, but not too too creepy. In fact, there's a trope for works that aim to be like that: Defanged Horrors.

edited 13th Jul '11 8:01:30 AM by MONEYMAN

That's because how creepy doesn't matter. Defanged Horrors isn't simply for being too scary for kids, even though it often is due to censorship but that somethings are simply scarier to kids than adults.

High Octain Nightmare fuel isn't a page that should be used as a standard for any other page on this wiki. Its just a collection of scary stuff with no rhyme or reason that hasn't been cut because of its popularity with Nightmare fetishists.

"Just red link Nightmare Fuel and until that's done, remove all incorrect usages." - Cider

It would be an uphill battle to try to remove the incorrect usages what with how many there are. I say remove Nightmare Fuel as a redirect; simply have all things that were typed as NightmareFuel redlinked, or perhaps even have the lines containing them removed. We need something a lot more drastic to deal with the misuse than we've been doing so far.

edited 14th Jul '11 5:25:50 AM by neoYTPism

There's gotta be something in between "accidental" and "high octane" IMHO, and I'll give you an example of why. I just got done watching an episode of American Dad, where Francine gets acid thrown in her face and is horribly disfigured. They eventually show what she looks like after avoiding shots of her face for most of the episode, and it's really obvious that the people behind the show were trying to make those of us with weak stomachs uncomfortable. So there's nothing "accidental" about that, but I didn't think it looked quite bad enough to qualify as "high octane".

Currently, it's listed as Accidental Nigtmare Fuel on the show's YMMV page, and that doesn't seem right to me.

Yeah, that sounds like it should be "high octane". The thing is, High Octane Nightmare Fuel isn't what it sounds like. It's basically just "intentionally scary stuff", whereas nightmare fuel is "unintentionally scary stuff". The names are just so nonindicative that a lot of people assume they mean "scary stuff" and "really scary stuff", which is why Nightmare Fuel got "accidental" added on. We tried renaming high octane a while back but the crowner was in favor of the current name.

Ah, okay.

Whoever decided to rename this trope "Accidental Nightmare Fuel" obviously Didn't Think This Through. This trope and High Octane Nightmare Fuel are pretty much one and the same, with only Defanged Horrors being a genuinely separate trope.

I would very much suggest that someone first remove the word "Accidental", so that it gets removed in all usages where it doesn't belong. Do that first, and then merge the trope with HONF, and *then* create a new trope for accidental stuff.

If HONF (a.k.a. Nightmare Fuel Unleaded) was meant to be "Crowning Moment of Scary", then that's what it should have been called in the first place.

We did think it through. There was a huge long drawn out discussion. There's just a huge amount of work to do and it was piling up faster than we could do it. I know this is a popular decision to complain about, but there were a lot of things that went into our final decision that seem to get glossed over.

We did think it through, all the places where accidental don't belong are people who didn't think it through before we changed the name so they're mistake would be more obvious. If anything needs to go, its High Octane Nightmare Fuel, as it is just a long list of subjective statements with no rhyme or reason to them. But I think just making plain Nightmare Fuel a red link is the way to go.

edited 3rd Aug '11 3:28:08 PM by Cider

I haven't seen anyone bring it up, but does Fridge Horror (basically the correct usage of Accidental Nightmare Fuel) factor into this? Maybe redirect "Accidental" to Fridge Horror?

No, because they're two completely different things. Fridge Horror is not the correct use of Accidental Nightnmare Fuel.

Fridge Horror is things that you only realize are horrifying later, after you're done with the work.

edited 18th Aug '11 7:19:08 AM by Madrugada

Fridge Horror is like when you actually think about subtext or think about A +B in the movie and it should equal C and it creeps you out or horrifies you (aka what happened to Endor after the Death Star exploded... The reason for No Endor Holocaust to exist.)

Accidental Nightmare Fuel is well you see something that isn't intended to be scary but it is. Horrific Off-Model is a common source or unintended Gonk [1]◊ or well the page image in Accidental Nightmare Fuel .

edited 18th Aug '11 7:33:35 AM by Raso

Bump. What if we made Nightmare Fuel an index page that links both to this and HONF, but has a disclamer to not Pot Hole to it?

Here's what I think should happen. Most of the links I seem to find to this page are simply things that people found frightening, and that's kind of what the name conjures up. "Nightmare Fuel" doesn't imply accidental at all, but "High Octane Nightmare Fuel" doesn't describe the difference very well other than "this one's worse than that one", which isn't the current usage. In addition, since the name change nearly every instance I see of "Accidental Nightmare Fuel" aren't accidental at all, and it makes for a lot of nonsensical reading. So I think "Accidental Nightmare Fuel" should go back to just "Nightmare Fuel" and just mean things scary moments, just like the CMOA or Tear Jerker or whatever. "High Octane Nightmare Fuel" should be renamed Intentional Nightmare Fuel to make the distinction. And the trope that Nightmare Fuel currently describes should be renamed something else. (Maybe still leave an "Accidental Nightmare Fuel" trope, but make it and the Intentional one subtropes of "Nightmare Fuel"). I think that would clear up a lot of the confusion surrounding this trope.

EDIT:After reading more on the HONF page I see this isn't an original idea, and even a crowner that rejected a name change to the "Intentional Nightmare Fuel" moniker. But the problem still remains. I still think that "Nightmare Fuel" should still be a CMOA-type trope that had "Accidental" and "High Octane" as subtropes, which would make all the forced changes from "Nightmare Fuel" to "Accidental Nightmare Fuel" all over the place make sense again.

edited 30th Sep '11 2:40:52 PM by MisterKerr

deleted by user

edited 30th Sep '11 2:41:29 PM by MisterKerr

If I had a say, I would get rid of the "Accidental" part of the name and just rename High Octane Nightmare Fuel into Crowning Moment Of Scary. The distinction would be: Nightmare Fuel = General audience, Crowning Moment Of Scary = Horror genre and mature-rated works. I think the problem with the trope originally was it was original divided it into age groups, which with a lot of media can be split evenly amongst age groups(The Legend Of Zelda, for example). With this distinction, I think we can still keep the essence of the trope: something scary in a commercial or the Defanged Horros type Goosebumps or Are You Afraid Of The Dark are not going to be so scary because they're meant for anyone turning on a tv as oppose to mature-rated works and Horror movies that are meant to give people a true scare and sick visuals that goes along with it.

Of course this leaves PG-13 Horror films in the cold, but I'm still working it out.

I think it's been stated that no more "crowning moment" (or just plain "moment" or whatever they're called now) tropes will be created. If that's not the case, I can actually support that, since HONF is basically nothing but gushing about how scary some work you liked was (if that makes sense) and certainly feels like part of the Crowning-Moments-And-Tear Jerker family of tropes.

I totally agree that HONF is a a sugar-wiki style "let's compile moments we like page" and should be labeled as such.

But, Mega J, general audiences vs horror genre is not a meaningful distinction. Other than misuse, the Nightmare Fuel / HONF distinction was never about genre of the audience's age. "Accidental Nightmare Fuel" is for items in any genre (theoretically, even in R rated horror) that turned out scary in spite of the creator's intentions. HONF is for all scary moments.

If we want to divide up HONF, we should do so by the tropes that horror works use, not simply by degrees of scariness.

Uh... what about the clock here? It's past Sep. 10.