Nightmare Fuel cleanup and maintenance

Are we sure Accidental Nightmare Fuel isn't allowed to be listed on YMMV pages? It's on No On-Page Examples, not Definition-Only Pages.

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Edited by rjd1922 on Apr 7th 2020 at 10:16:21 AM

Here's the discussion post from the mods regarding Accidental Nightmare Fuel. The exact phrasing was that it "can no longer be cataloged".

It seemed it went through several TRS at the time, but no one bothered to actually clean-up the examples. Now this was eight years ago, but I'm not sure if the decision will be reversed any time soon.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Apr 7th 2020 at 12:47:22 PM

But that was back when things like High Octane Nightmare Fuel existed, so Accidental Nightmare Fuel being example-less may have been a byproduct of how Nightmare Fuel was treated back then.

Things are different now.

No On-Page Examples says Accidental Nightmare Fuel is "Either covered by regular Nightmare Fuel, or too YMMV."

Main.Accidental Nightmare Fuel says "This is a Fan Speak definition. Please put examples in Nightmare Fuel."

Here's what I posted here before posting the above (folderized because it's rambly and I become a Serial Tweaker when tired, and because it's less relevant than the above):

Edit: I found this 2011 TRS thread and this older cleanup thread. I'm not sure whether either is relevant, but the latter was locked in 2013, the year after the discussion page thread.

Another edit: I saw that the first post in the latter thread was edited in 2013 by Willbyr after wick cleanup started for High Octane Nightmare Fuel being merged with Accidental Nightmare Fuel. I'm guessing that thread has a link to the relevant TRS thread somewhere, but I haven't found it yet.

Another edit: It looks like that Projects thread may have been the primary thread, so if there was a TRS thread, I don't know how to find it. What I did find out is that there were mod posts by ccoa stating that NightmareFuel.Other is for fiction that doesn't fit neatly into any other category, and real life examples like abandoned locations and animals are forbidden, aside from Urban Legends. This information would have been useful when we were discussing the Other subpage a while back.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 8th 2020 at 4:23:18 AM

Is the image on NightmareFuel.Stephen King unfitting? It discusses Stephen King’s works being scary, not something from or adopted from his works that is scary.

Edited by jandn2014 on Apr 11th 2020 at 3:50:09 PM

The text is unreadably small at wiki size. But I guess it IS pretty funny, and might be better than nothing.

Actually, those are the scary things from his works chasing the Futurama characters, so I think it fits perfectly.

Guys, this should be discussed on IP, not here.

My 2 cents though: It's not the worst, because it's funny and relevant, but NF images are supposed to be scary in and of themselves, so it doesn't really do it for me.

So I'd like to ask for feedback on this example from NightmareFuel.Fate Grand Order

This was added by personastar, I commented it out because it struck me as an incredibly blatant case of Zero-Context Examples, Flameal15k uncommented it out with the given reason

This strikes me as particularly fallacious, because:

1. The page is folderized so there's no particular compelling reason for someone to read through every single folder and absorb context through it somehow to instantly understand why these Capitalized Terms are scary.
2. Olga Marie the character last seen before her death can be boiled down as an insecure Tsundere and is most regularly seen in the comedy webcomic Learning with Manga! FGO, so nothing's actually established to explain why she's scary now when her most notable character traits prior to her reveal as a villain/Beast of the Apocalypse were either her deep insecurity with no maliciousness behind it or being a comedic punching bag for the author.

Edited by Nouct on Apr 11th 2020 at 11:09:42 AM

There's nothing particularly scary about the Beasts out of universe, unless you're so fragile that something being a Big Bad at all scares you. I agree it should be cut especially with the ZCE issues.

This thread's authority takes precedence over any troper. If you refer them to this thread, they might come and argue their case.

Most of the freakiness in Animal Crossing comes from Jumpscares (which we've stated on numerous occasions is not NF or arachnophobia or phobia of bees/wasps.) I mean the whole tarantula biting you and sending you back to your house I could see being scary for younger players as it's the closest the player gets to a Game Over but everything else is more accidental nightmare fuel. I don't think the game was meant to be scary at all which is why it has a lower rating than E in European Countries and Japan.

As for the gyroid thing, that's hardly scary as Gyroids are generally portrayed as benevolent as is Coco. The creepypasta stuff about Aika and the songs can go for sure as even as a kid I never found any of them scary. Then again, I don't find the forest temple theme scary either. But I still feel that's ANF. Wallmasters on the other hand...

Oddly enough on a somewhat unrelated topic I think the Ho Yay page for AC is fine despite No Hugging, No Kissing.

Edited by Klavice on Apr 12th 2020 at 6:13:11 AM

Jump scares CAN be Nightmare Fuel, in fact I'd say they're a very good source of it. But I don't remember any really frightening ones in Animal Crossing.

The pages on NightmareFuel.Lets Play seem pretty shaky to me, but NightmareFuel.Two Best Friends Play looks pretty bad. Most of it is just "the let's players play a scary game or are disturbed by what's happening."

You'd be surprised at how many people scream when a Tarantula or Scorpion jumps them, like in that streamers react to tarantula farming video on Youtube, especially when they look less like real Tarantulas and more like radioactive giant spiders. Like in New Leaf.

New Horizons made them look more like real Tarantulas and Scorpions, though.

I think I asked this before a while ago but don't think I got a reply. Are general examples such as the first one from the Warhammer 40,000 NF page not allowed?:

• In brief, the whole game. On this page, we have named every fighting force, every faction, some of the most significant aspects of the setting, the resident death worlds, and even a food production plant. It's a brutal, horrific place, with more atrocities in a year than we see in a millennium, but remember that in Warhammer 40000, almost all of the evil on the part of heroic characters and factions is necessary given the world they live in. Or at least, there have been enough instances where The Extremist Was Right that the "ask questions" part of "shoot first and ask questions later" was forgotten. That should tell you something about what you're about to find.

Especially as the page then goes on for more than 37,000 words to describe various things.

Edited by SebastianGray on Apr 13th 2020 at 9:32:54 AM

They shouldn't be. That example fails to explain why things are scary, and it reads like it's confusing tension with horror.

Also, if everything in the game could be scary to some degree, the standard is much higher.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 13th 2020 at 5:12:16 AM

I'm not sure professional lets players would be good examples, since they tend to play things up for the sake of the video. Part of the appeal of these videos is watching some guy get scared by a game, after all, and that would skew them towards finding things scary that would not normally scare them.

They also earn money from these videos, which means they are effectively being paid to act scared.

Edited by Redmess on Apr 13th 2020 at 1:28:38 PM

I will delete it then. I have been a bit concerned about the page for a while now due to zero context, word cruft, non examples, fridge horror, incorrect indentation etc. but it is quite large and I have been focusing on other things until now. Here are a few random examples:

• ANY named Chaos character is going to be scary.
• Every little crazed Mad Scientist trope that comes to mind? The Dark Mechanicum are this and oh so much worse as they combine their knowledge of technology with Chaos and even occasionally Xenos devices.
• The brutal genetic and surgical regime undergone by an aspirant space marine is best commenced before the age of 12, with most begun at 10 years old. The one personality requirement is a natural killing instinct. Let me repeat that: an ideal space marine should display a killing instinct by the age of ten.
• The Hive Tyrants themselves can be upgraded to have a rule that weaponizes this trope: Indescribable Terror. Aside from a few Fearless individuals, this would make even Space Marines crap their pants in horror and refuse to attack.
• The Necrons, the ghosts of an entire, long-dead alien race inhabiting cybernetic bodies who intend to harvest every living soul for their gods. It becomes really creepy when you realize that literally any planet might have a Necron tomb hidden on it. They tend to appear from nowhere without warning. They sometimes kill everything, sometimes spare certain settlements or individuals. Always for a reason.
• Warhammer 40k is a series that's full of big things with big guns that do big damage. But few of these weapons, soldiers or vehicles can go invisible. The XV15 Stealthsuit is fairly small by Warhammer 40k standards. It's barely bigger than the Fire Warrior piloting it. Yet it manages to become an absolute nightmare due to the simple fact that it has one of the most scarily effective stealth systems in the setting. Using light-bending technologies coupled with thermal signature dampeners and a sound-nullifying field, the XV15 is capable of hiding whilst being completely undetectable, only to uncloak and attack its foes and then vanish again before they can mount a counter-attack. Combine that with powerful Burst Cannons capable of tearing an Imperial Guardsman to pieces in mere seconds, and you've got a source of some pretty significant Paranoia Fuel. Oh, and then there's the XV25 Stealthsuit, which uses the same cloaking system as the XV15, only with more armor, more survival systems and the ability to use even larger Fusion Blasters that can completely sublimate a human being. And then there's the XV95 Ghostkeel, a stealthsuit that dwarfs most battle tanks with the weaponry and armor to match, sporting a specialized stealth field which makes it almost impossible for your eyes to focus on it. If you're in a vehicle you're no better off, as one arm mounts a potent ECM suite that will blind you until its close enough to unleash enough firepower to atomize you in a heartbeat.
• The Hrud. Just the appearance of these Xenos alone is enough to be nightmare-inducing, and that's not even mentioning the time warping field they produce that ages everything around them.

Edited by SebastianGray on Apr 13th 2020 at 7:33:20 PM

Decided to bring NightmareFuel.Fate Grand Order in as something to go over in general

Edited by Nouct on Apr 15th 2020 at 8:52:29 AM

I hate to be that guy, but seeing as it has been over two months now, is no one going to add in any entries to RWBY Volume 7?

IIRC, all the submissions fell into the exact same problems we've been trying to avoid. You can pitch them if you want, but every other attempt has been problematic.

Dang, really? I mean, if it’s been two months and no additions have been made I don’t think anything I have to offer will make much difference

The main issue was people posting entire scene summaries, rather than "here's what's scary and why".

As soon as entries are voted as valid here, we can send them to the Locked Pages requests. But as WarJay said, most proposed recent entries fall short of the mark by being scene summaries.