I frankly think Accidental Nightmare Fuel just needs to die. It's been too much of a mess for too long and it's not really a trope - how we're supposed to distinguish it from the intentional version has never been clear.
I support axing this, for reasons others have stated, but I really feel I need to argue against this point. It's not hard to tell if something's meant to be scary. Everything about the scene indicates one way or the other. The hard part is telling whether it is scary. That depends so much on people relating their feelings and experiences that the page inevitably turns into a personal anecdotes.
When just describing how something's scary, you also tend to introduce your own feelings, but you needn't too much. "He did this, and they did this, and then this happened, which was jarring and horrific blah blah. But when you do this for something that's not supposed to be scary, all the objective description has to concern the absence of horror - forcing the scary description to take the form of "and then, holy crap, I don't care what you say but that goat was terrifying."
edited 22nd Dec '11 2:11:39 PM by Routerie
When you get things that are suppose to be cute but it turns out wrong to where say Big Bird looks like a monster is a trope.
Saw a Mythbusters recently where they made a dog out of ballistics gel it was intended to be cute but it scared the crap out of everyone including the maker. That is Nightmare Fuel.
edited 22nd Dec '11 3:50:48 PM by Raso
Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!edited 23rd Dec '11 11:10:37 AM by HiddenFacedMatt
"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart
We already renamed it once, yet that hasn't been very effective.
Exactly it wasn't done right at all. The name was just custom titled and left alone... That has never worked on any trope it's been done to... It just ends up back in the repair shop.
For one thing this page should not get an icon next to the funny or even subpages like it is, only High octane should have that at all.
Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!edited 27th Dec '11 10:56:36 AM by HiddenFacedMatt
"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon StewartThis may very well be the case. But we can't forcibly improve the intelligence of our editors, only try and work around it.
It is not just a matter of intelligence, but also of effort, attentiveness, etc...
And while we cannot force individual editors to improve these things, we can force an improvement in the average by temporarily suspending the edit privileges of those who frequently contribute to misuse; or, alternatively, have different categories of article, such that articles prone to misuse cannot be edited by users who have been known to frequently contribute to misuse.
My point is, it is obvious from the reasoning that the problem is with the users, not the way the rename was handled.
edited 28th Dec '11 8:32:20 AM by HiddenFacedMatt
"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon StewartWhy not keep Nightmare Fuel as a parent trope for both types and have Accidental Nightmare Fuel and Intentional Nightmare Fuel as subtropes? The "high-octane" pun on fuel is kind of confusing to some people, I think, and it doesn't really show the "intentional" bit of something being scary.
edited 28th Dec '11 9:06:13 AM by Badger96
Not all those who wander are lost.
And yet, HONF is predominantly used for moments that seem to be deliberate.
I don't think it's such a good idea to have "this was scary" as a trope, let alone to have two subtropes whose intent-based distinction is often uncertain.
EDITED IN: Should we set up a crowner?
edited 28th Dec '11 9:48:35 AM by HiddenFacedMatt
"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon StewartS'why I said "to some people". If it's intentional nightmare fuel, just call it that and be done with it. I don't like the idea of nuking all the Nightmare Fuel pages. They're both used and referred to on other tropes' pages. There are a load of works that use both types of Nightmare Fuel frequently, and I can't think of any other tropes that would be applicable to such instances, aside from perhaps Fridge Horror.
Not all those who wander are lost."There are a load of works that use both types of Nightmare Fuel frequently, and I can't think of any other tropes that would be applicable to such instances."
That's fine. "Horror" isn't a trope. It's a genre, which uses hundreds of tropes.
Even then, though, I blame the users more so than the name.
And "this trope is commonly used" is not a reason to keep it; if anything it is all the more reason to scrap it, given how much of that use is misuse.
"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon StewartFirst of all, does the name work? Yes. It does.
Outside of a few examples of "the power to cause nightmares" there isn't any misuse outside of ANF vs. HONF debates. The question is whether ANF should exist, due to it being VERY subjective. Am I right?
Edit: It's getting confusing talking about the original NF page, because it's custom titled to ANF.
edited 29th Dec '11 3:47:21 PM by bwburke94
2025: the year it all ends?It actually always ment Nightmare Fuel and High Octane (At the time it was Nightmare Fuel Unleaded) was spun off from that as intended scary. In practice people have used it as Nightmare Fuel then Same But More in. The High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
The fact that there is even a name space is really hurting this as people just read the title then add an example without actually reading the trope (as its not even on the same page.) Really Nightmare Fuel is pretty confined to children's shows and Off-Model stuff.
- Ditching the namespace and sortting examples
- fully renaming this (Ditching the custom title.),
- Redirecting Nightmare Fuel to High Octane
edited 31st Dec '11 8:51:43 AM by Raso
Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!
Crown Description:
Vote up for yes, down for no.

Sounds good to me.
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