Now with a sandbox!
It appears that many Nightmare Fuel pages have problems, including:
1. Listing non-scary things that made the viewer feel slightly uncomfortable at worst.
2. Having spoiler tags on them (which is against the page's guidelines).
3. Listing Fridge Horror and fan theories.
And much more!
On a few occasions, people from outside the site's community have pointed out our overly lax usage of Nightmare Fuel to make fun of us, meaning that it can legitimately harm our reputation to let this go unchecked.
The TRS thread
meant for redefining Nightmare Fuel started to become a place for cleaning up Nightmare Fuel pages in general, so we may as well move these discussions to Long Term Projects where they belong.
Here are the guidelines to determine whether something is Nightmare Fuel or not.
- This is a page whose name is intended to be taken more literally than most. It's not enough for material to be scary; to truly qualify, it has to be frightening enough to legitimately unnerve/disturb the viewer, with actually being nightmare-inducing as the ultimate endpoint.
- Good signs that something IS Nightmare Fuel include if:
- It left you feeling shaken even after the credits had rolled, you turned the last page, or are otherwise done with the work.
- You have a hard time falling asleep if you think about it at night, or have a literal nightmare about it.
- You dread that episode, scene, level, chapter, or song during re-watches, and consider skipping it.
- With that said, don't add something just because it happens to be your personal phobia. For example, spiders can be scary and many people have arachnophobia, but just because a spider happens to be in the work, it does not make a Nightmare Fuel entry. It needs to reasonably be scary to someone without the phobia.
- Don't confuse tension with fear. If the hero is in trouble, but you know he'll make it out okay at the end, it's probably not Nightmare Fuel unless the threat is especially disturbing.
- Good signs that something IS Nightmare Fuel include if:
- Explain WHY the entry scared you. Try to convey your sense of fear to your readers. Avoid putting up Zero-Context Examples.
- Remember that Weblinks Are Not Examples, and neither are quotes on their own. You should explain the horror in your own words, rather than rely on others to do so.
- Don't add things that might have scared someone. If it didn't scare you, and you don't personally know anyone else who was scared, you shouldn't be adding it to Nightmare Fuel.
- Nightmare Fuel should stick to you even after you're done with the work.
- If something is initially presented as scary but turns out to be harmless, it's most likely not Nightmare Fuel since The Reveal makes the scariness vanish.
- Jump Scares are a good source of Nightmare Fuel, but not all of them automatically qualify: being startled is not the same as being scared.
- Hypotheticals are not Nightmare Fuel:
- Remember that Trailers Always Lie: a scene that is presented as scary in the trailer could very well turn out to be inoffensive in the finished work. Only add examples from unreleased works if they were especially terrifying in the previews.
- Fan theories do not belong on the Nightmare Fuel page under any circumstance. No matter how much evidence they have to support them, don't add them until they've been officially confirmed. In the meanwhile, take them to Wild Mass Guessing.
- Fridge Horror goes on the Fridge page, not Nightmare Fuel. Don't add it unless it's Ascended Fridge Horror.
- Keep in mind the work's intended audience when considering whether or not something is Nightmare Fuel.
- If something is normal or expected in the genre, it does not automatically qualify. Violence in a Fighting Series or gore in a horror movie must be especially disturbing or gruesome by the work's standards to be Nightmare Fuel.
- Remember that Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films. If a work is rated PG-13 or higher but would only be scary to young children, it's not Nightmare Fuel.
- The standards on what qualifies as Nightmare Fuel are especially stringent on works aimed at children and pre-teens: kids have hyperactive imaginations, so even something benign can give them nightmares.
- Spoiler tags do not belong on Nightmare Fuel pages. Much of what scares us comes from inherently spoilery stuff such as death and the unknown, so finding spoilers on these pages should be expected.
- Nightmare Fuel is an Audience Reaction, so it needs to be scary for the audience. Describing how the characters react to something scary isn't needed. Just because something scares them, that doesn't mean it scares us as well.
- Nightmare Fuel is a No Real Life Examples, Please! page. Meta-examples involving the actors, production, or behind-the-scenes incidents are not allowed.
Guidelines when proposing cleanup of a page:
- Some rules are pretty objective. If you see a Zero-Context Example, Fridge Horror, Real Life example, speculation, In-Universe reaction that isn't scary to the viewers, examples that explicitly describe themselves as not being very scary (including "mildly creepy", "somewhat unnerving", and other synonymous phrases), or examples that are just scene summaries without going into detail about why it's so scary, you can (and should) remove them immediately without coming here to ask.
- You should also strip all spoiler tags from the page. Itty Bitty Wiki Tools has a tool for that, but it can cause problems, so if you use it be sure to preview the page and thoroughly look it over.
- Once you've fixed the objective issues with the page, bring it here so we can look at the more subjective problems, such as examples that may not be scary enough to qualify. If a consensus is reached that a certain entry does not qualify, it can be removed.
Edited by Zuxtron on Aug 1st 2020 at 9:40:30 AM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
That Scare Chord scared me as a kid too!
EDIT: Done.
Edited by lalalei2001 on Sep 20th 2023 at 11:57:13 AM
The Protomen enhanced my life.
I noticed NightmareFuel.Vanity Plate is back but without any indexing links. Should it still be a page, and if so where should it go?
The Protomen enhanced my life.
I can chase the wind, I can race the rain
We've discussed it. We've been keeping it, but with my cleanup. Apologies for the fact that I haven't continued cleanup for a while, I really need to, but I keep forgetting.
Tobias/TJ (He/Him)
I thought I'd have a quick look at "Weird Al" Yankovic's nightmare fuel page. The page doesn't have as many issues as some other Nightmare Fuel pages I've seen, and there are plenty of examples on the page that seem perfectly valid, so hopefully this page should be pretty easily fixed. That being said, there are still some issues with stuff like indentation/formatting, some examples with little to no context, and some examples that seem unfitting.
Given that Weird Al is a comedy musician, his songs and music videos are pretty much always... well, Played for Laughs. That's not to say that humor is mutually exclusive with Nightmare Fuel, but I have seen a few examples on this page that are reading too much into things and making some of Al's Black Comedy jokes seem way more scary than they really are - though thankfully, it's not nearly as rampant as it could be.
Keeping the target audience in mind, Al generally tends to appeal to people of all ages and has considered himself "more-or-less family friendly", but I don't think we should list examples that seem likely to only be scary to, say... kids younger than 8 or so.
Anyway, here's the page, with my comments listed beneath each example. There are some examples that seem valid, but are lacking in context or otherwise have problems, so there will also be a folder underneath for my suggested rewrites.
- "Christmas at Ground Zero". The last lines say it all:
What a crazy flukeWe're gonna get nukedOn this jolly holiday.
- It also ends with an air raid siren.
- Also, "The Night Santa Went Crazy" (though more the lyrics while not being sung).
My Comments: "Christmas at Ground Zero" and "The Night Santa Went Crazy" are often cited to be some of Weird Al's darkest songs (I remember being fairly scared the first time I heard "The Night Santa Went Crazy" myself, and there have apparently been some broadcasters who refused to air "Christmas at Ground Zero" because of its content), so I think these can be kept - however, the example indentation needs fixing, and these examples need more context as to why they're scary.
- The "Foil" video includes a very quick Freeze-Frame Bonus shot of Al covered in blood, seemingly screaming in pain. In fact there's actually two◊ in very quick◊ succession, and they're in motion and not photos note . This is during the verse that mocks Conspiracy Theorists, so a little mock-Subliminal Seduction makes sense in that context, but it's still a bit unsettling.
- This may also be a reference to Invader Zim's infamous Bloody Gir easter egg.
- The faces Al makes in this video are especially unnerving. Considering Al is known for his generally happy personality and goofy smile, watching him turn into a creepy conspiracy theorist is the wrong kind of weird.
- What's more disturbing is that, in the video, Al turns out to have been Properly Paranoid the whole time; after Al gets drugged and taken away by The Men in Black, the producer of the show peels off his mask to reveal himself as an alien reptile. "There's always someone that's watching you" indeed.
My Comments: The "Foil" music video counts, but this example could use a rewrite - I think focusing on the plot of the video first makes more sense, as well as cutting the irrelevant information (a lot of which comes off as borderline word cruft or natter). I'm willing to keep the mentions of "gory Al", as well as the facial expressions Al makes, both of which legitimately unnerved me quite a bit. - This may also be a reference to Invader Zim's infamous Bloody Gir
- The "Handy" video has an unnerving scene with Al's eyes growing; not widening, see for yourself.
- Al as the handyman himself is quite unnerving in general because of how much he obsesses over his profession and how highly he thinks of himself. He's basically a narcissist who won't take no for an answer, and shows that he'll wreck your house himself just so you'll have to hire him.
My Comments: As for the first example, I kinda lean towards cutting it. It's a really quick moment that I thought was mildly unsettling at worst, though I am willing to hear others out. As for that second example, however... I'm more confident with saying that it's safe to cut. It's speculation, as well as blowing things way out of proportion; the only time Al the handyman is ever shown doing anything of the sort is a brief scene in the video where he smashes a window with a baseball bat, which isn't meant to be taken seriously at all.
- "Nature Trail to Hell" starts out with a just a graphic description of what's in the movie. Then you come to the part where the bridge wraps up and, you hear an axe swinging and Al screaming bloody murder.
- The premise of the movie described involves the brutal murder of small children (in this case, a Cub Scout troop).
My Comments: Given that "Nature Trail to Hell" is about the plot of a fictional horror film, this seems fine for the most part, but again could use a bit of a rewrite (mainly to bring those two bullet points together).
- "Everything You Know Is Wrong" has some unnerving imagery described in the lyrics, but the basic premise could probably be the creepiest part when you think about it, since it consists of the protagonist constantly having people scream in his face that everything he has ever known is wrong.
My Comments: I'd say cut this one. "Everything You Know is Wrong" is a bit too absurd and silly to count as legitimately scary (for one thing, it begins with the line "I was driving down the freeway with a rabid wolverine in my underwear", and even the more unnerving lines such as "They sucked out my internal organs" are undermined by factors like how they're said very casually). Also, "when you think about it" makes this entry sound like Fridge Horror.
- "Cavity Search" is nothing more than a detailed visit to the dentist's office, complete with the whirring of drills and excruciating pain one might have with their oral hygiene.
My Comments: Maybe? I can potentially see the sound of the drill (which apparently is an authentic dental drill) and the garbled screaming being scary to some people, as with the lyrics mentioning the patient being in pain due to his bad oral health. This one kinda borders on a "personal phobia" example, though. It may need some expansion if it's kept.
- The video for "Eat It" is a spoof of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" and, like his other videos, is downright funny. However, the scare comes at the end of the video with a Shout-Out to MJ's "Thriller" video. Al all of a sudden turns to the camera and has a pair of big, creepy yellow eyes, as pictured above. What makes this even scarier than the aforementioned video is the more disturbing appearance of them and that unlike there, fans of this video weren't expecting it.
My Comments: This one sounds like a keeper, especially since this was a Surprisingly Creepy Moment in an otherwise humorous, lighthearted video, and the mention that it did scare some fans. As the phrasing of "as pictured above" would suggest, this particular moment is the image for this page◊, which is... effective.
- "Melanie" starts off creepy (the narrator had bought a telescope to stargaze, but ended up using it to watch a woman in the building across the street while she showered), gets creepier (he shaves her cat's fur into a mohawk for some reason), constantly phones her (she ignores his calls), gets even creepier (he asks if she's "too dumb" to understand his devotion and has to rummage through her trash to find things out), and when she remains unmoved by his having "Melanie" tattooed on his forehead, finally ends with him committing suicide by jumping off the floor above her apartment.
- And even that doesn't end the stalking...
My Comments: Seems fine for the most part, given "Melanie" is from the point of view of a Stalker with a Crush, but the indentation should be fixed.
- "Trash Day" is just... really something you might not want to listen to if Hoarders gives you the creeps.
My Comments: "Trash Day" is more Nausea Fuel or Squick than outright Nightmare Fuel, and this reads a bit like a "personal phobia" example. It also barely explains why this song is scary - while I guess I could see a legitimate argument made that it's pretty creepy how the narrator doesn't care that his house has become an outright health hazard, that kinda borders on Fridge Horror. I'm leaning towards cutting this example.
- "Do I Creep You Out?" is scary enough as a song on its own as it's about a Stalker with a Crush telling the woman about all the disturbing things he does without her knowledge. The music video is even scarier as we see that the woman Al is following is clearly much younger than him and we actually see him doing all the acts he talks about in the songs. Probably the most frightening part is when we see that he has a Stalker Shrine to her in his apartment and has also mapped out the route from her home all the way to where she works. And let's not forget the creepy Slasher Smile Al does before shoving her fingers in his mouth. The character designs do not help in the slightest.
My Comments: Sounds like another keeper. (The example, that is.)
- "Perform This Way" has the following line which we really hope neither Al nor Gaga would actually do in their concerts.
I'll wrap my small intestines 'round my neck and set fire to myself on stage.My Comments: I'm not sure about this one. It's pretty out-of-nowhere and a bit violent for the particular song, but it's also a relatively quick line (and yes, I'm relatively certain that no one is actually going to do that onstage). This sorta sounds like an "imagine if this happened in real life!" example, which I'm pretty sure aren't usually allowed on NF pages. I'm willing to hear what other folks think about it, though.
- "Jackson Park Express" is told from the POV of a man who thinks that everything a woman does is part of a complicated Facial Dialogue, that she's passionately in love with him and shares his bizarre fantasies. It starts out mostly harmless, but some of the guy's (already-bizarre) ideas of "romantic gestures" become increasingly violent to the point where sound like they came right out of an Eli Roth movie:
I could never hold you close enough
Let's have our bodies surgically grafted together
(...)
Oh, I never, ever want to see you cry
So, please let me cauterise your tear ducts with an arc welder
(...)
I'd like to rip you wide open
And French-kiss every single one of your internal organs
Oh, I'd like to remove all your skin, and wear your skin, over my own skin
But not in a creepy wayMy Comments: Yeah, this one seems like a keeper for many of the same reasons as "Melanie" and "Do I Creep You Out?".
- Just about any music video where Al acts mean can be pretty intense. Special mention goes for his videos for "Jurassic Park" and ESPECIALLY "I'll Sue Ya".
My Comments: This seems safe to cut for many reasons. "Intense" isn't the same thing as "scary", making this sound a lot like a "character gets angry" example, which are generally rather iffy. This example also doesn't list much context as to why viewers may find these videos intense - and Nightmare Fuel is generally focused more on specific moments as opposed to just "every time this happens". In addition, I'm not really seeing how Al is supposedly acting mean in the video for "Jurassic Park" (except for maybe being mildly inconvenienced by the fact that he has a huge chunk taken out of his torso). And in "I'll Sue Ya", the reason Al is acting mean is because he's suing companies for ridiculous reasons - both of these are comically exaggerated, and I can't see it being legitimately frightening to most people. Finally, it's pretty common for Al to act "mean" in a lot of his songs/videos, depending on what kind of character he's playing; it's a bit of a real life example of Mean Character, Nice Actor and can be pretty jarring, but it's not typically worth listing in Nightmare Fuel unless it's outright scary.
- "One More Minute" mainly fuels on Tear Jerker, but some of the things Al Would Rather Suffer rather than spending, well, one more minute, with his ex girlfriend are extremely gruesome and sound like Happy Tree Friends fates. "Highlights" include spending eternity eating shards of broken glass, and ripping out his intestines with a fork.
My Comments: I'm probably willing to keep this one, since "One More Minute" is pretty well-known for describing rather gruesome violence.
- This video where he talks about why his show was cancelled starts out fine... until he takes out a kitchen knife and starts hacking it into his arm, causing it to bleed. And just imagine everyone's reaction to the ending where he collapses...
My Comments: This seems okay to keep, and certainly counts as a Surprisingly Creepy Moment.
- Alluding to Nirvana's "Endless, Nameless" from Nevermind, Off the Deep End has a very jarring hidden track named "Bite Me", designed to scare listeners into ejecting the CD if they forgot to. Needless to say, with loud music and Al screaming at top of his lungs, it works pretty well. Basically what happens if you take all punk and metal influence from Grindcore, but keep its aggressive tempo and heaviness.
My Comments: Given that this hidden track was pretty much made to be scary, and part of this track is used for the Ear Booker Productions logo at the end of The Weird Al Show (already mentioned on the Nightmare Fuel page for vanity plates), I'd say this is probably fine to keep.
- The video for "Bedrock Anthem" is a clear parody of "Give It Away" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's mostly lighthearted until you see that there are a few closeups of Al's mouth where there are monsterous teeth.
My Comments: Maybe? This seems like another case of a Surprisingly Creepy Moment in an otherwise lighthearted song/video, so I guess it could be fine, but I'd like to hear some input.
Whew! Feel free to let me know if you think my judgments seem incorrect or anything - before I go in and make changes to this page, I'd like to hear what some other folks think, especially with the ones I was uncertain of. I've never done an analysis of a whole page like this, so I apologize if I'm doing anything wrong. Sorry that some of my comments are a little long; hopefully, it's clear enough what I was trying to get at.
I mentioned earlier that there were several examples that could use at least a partial rewrite, so here are my suggested rewrites.
- "Christmas at Ground Zero" is about Christmastime during an imminent nuclear war. The lyrics describe the urgency of the situation, such as "The radio has just let us know / That this is not a test", and "Everywhere the atom bombs are dropping / It's the end of all humanity / No more time for last-minute shopping / It's time to face your final destiny". It's considered to be one of Al's darkest songs, to the point in which some broadcasters have refused to air it due to its subject matter. The song ends with the following lyrics, and an air raid siren:
What a crazy flukeWe're gonna get nukedOn this jolly holiday.
- Weird Al's other Twisted Christmas song is "The Night Santa Went Crazy", which describes how Santa Claus went on a massacre, with rather graphic descriptions of how he killed most of his reindeer. The "Extra Gory" version is especially scary, since it ends in Santa having been shot in the head and killed by a member of the SWAT team, with mention of "his brains on the floor".
- The video to "Foil" starts off as a typical silly song about what to do with leftovers featuring Al on a cooking show. Suddenly, the lights dim, and it takes a Halfway Plot Switch into the subject of conspiracy theories. At the end of the video, it turns out that Al was Properly Paranoid the entire time; after The Men in Black drug him and take him away, the producer turns out to have been a reptilian in disguise. "There's always someone that's watching you", indeed.
- After the halfway point, Al's facial expressions and acting are very disconcerting; he repeatedly stares directly into the camera (including giving a Kubrick Stare early on), and even completely stops blinking, making him look rather crazed.
- During the line "...be aware", when Al is seen in close-up, there are two disturbing Freeze Frame Bonuses shown in quick succession depicting him covered in blood◊ while appearing to be screaming in pain◊.
- "Nature Trail to Hell" is about the plot of a fictional horror film, so naturally, it has a creepy atmosphere. It starts out describing the premise of the movie, which involves a slasher who brutally murders a Cub Scout troop. The song also describes the film's 3D effects with the phrases "severed heads that almost fall right in your lap", and "that bloody hatchet coming right at you". And then there's the part where the bridge wraps up, since it features an axe swinging and Al screaming bloody murder.
Like what I said about the judgments, I'd appreciate feedback on my suggested rewrites as well before I add them to the page. I'm a little concerned that some of my rewritten examples may border on "scene summaries" and/or may be missing some details, so let me know if you think there's anything that needs to be changed about those.
Cold turkey's getting stale. Tonight I'm eating crow.
Now we're so young, but we're probably gonna die
I agree with your cuts/keeps, and the rewrites are definitely better.
Tobias/TJ (He/Him)
Thanks for the feedback! I'll probably wait until I get a few more opinions before making changes, just to make sure.
I think that's a pretty good judgment there. I myself felt like the page might have needed a cleanup, especially from the second "Handy" point, as I feel like no one was truly scared by Al's character there.
—signature not found—
Tobias/TJ (He/Him)
Yeah, that particular example felt like someone was just looking for something to put on the page - "Handy" was one of the first Weird Al songs I ever listened to, which I always just saw as a humorous, lighthearted song about a handyman/repairman, and I'm pretty sure that most people are likely to see it that way as well. I distinctly remember wondering "Um... where are you getting that?" when I saw that example.
For the moment, I'll be removing the second bullet point from "Handy", as well as cutting the "any time Al acts mean" and "Everything You Know is Wrong" examples (which I was also rather confident on cutting), adding my rewritten examples to the page, and fixing the indentation on the example for "Melanie" with a citation to this thread.
Cold turkey's getting stale. Tonight I'm eating crow.
I can chase the wind, I can race the rain
Remember way, way back when I brought up how on NightmareFuel.Public Service Announcements Health there was an entry for an obesity PSA called Rewind The Future that was a really hyperbolic wall of text? Well, it's back, months later, seemingly from the same editor (~Roomy Lego 101; please don't kill me if I am wrong) in a very long-term edit war. The fact that the same editor just added it to Tear Jerker as well makes me wonder if this is a single issue wonk.
Edited by AlmightyKingPrawn on Sep 29th 2023 at 3:22:02 PM
She/her. Profile pic is by Richard Michael Gomez @StarmansArt. Please watch Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock. https://youtu.be/Vm92JNgPbqk
EDIT: Nevermind, misplaced post, ignore this
Edited by RobertTYL on Oct 16th 2023 at 7:51:01 PM
low-poly Shinri
Found this in NightmareFuel.Slow Damage (spoiler marked)
- One has to remember that Maya's business had gotten her plenty of customers, with most of them being people of import, from politicians to celebrities to professors. Hasegawa even mentions that there were times that they even had foreign guests. And even with Euphoria shutting down after Maya's death, most if not all those depraved people are still at large. If there are any who eventually got caught indulging in their sick fetishes, they're more than likely to be greatly outnumbered by those who continue to get away scot-free.
From what I can recall (read:Playthroughs on YT, haven’t played the VN myself yet), this doesn’t brought much outside of Hasegawa mentioning how influential Euphoria was. So it reads more as Fridge Horror than NF.
She/Her | Currently cleaning Char Clone
Logic Girl
NightmareFuel.Rugrats has a few entries about what could have happened, but didn't happen.
- (Sub-bullet for "Tommy Pickles and the Great White Thing") The climax of that episode, where Tommy is in the bathroom and he keeps almost falling... It isn't scary as a kid, but to an adult, that whole scene is terrifying; what with the fear of walking into the bathroom to find your baby dead on the floor, with his skull cracked open. Oh- also, babies' skulls are very soft.note
- (Sub-bullet for "The Slumber Party") Babies are highly sensitive to cold temperatures and a cold wind can KILL them. Didi could have walked in to find that Angelica MURDERED her cousin.
- (Sub-bullet for "Down the Drain") To couple with the above example in "Tommy Pickles and the Great White Thing", there's Tommy and Chuckie trying to plug up the bathtub drain with Play-Doh, Tommy climbing in and out of the tub and almost falling over! Two babies left unattended in a bathroom is always a terrifying thought.
- "New Kid in Town", where Tommy and his friends join up with this fat boy named Josh, who decides to play a game called "Pillow". He swings to the highest point he can and then tells the babies he's not trying to jump over them ...but he's going to jump on top of them. This kid looked heavier than all four babies combined, and he was going at least as high at the swing bar. Had it not been for Angelica intervening when she did, imagine what could have happened.
- "Toy Palace" had an actual working time machine (the Wee Willie Warp Time Translator) and a life-size toy robot got inside after hijinks ensued. It was transported back to the Revolutionary War in the middle of an ongoing battle with no way to return. Tommy and Chuckie, an infant and toddler, could've ended up lost in the past forever in the middle of a bloody battle! Just imagine the trauma that would wreak on their innocent minds...
- Worse... with a robot toy from the future in that era, there might be an impact on the future. It showed up in plain sight during the war. Maybe it caused alien paranoia...?
- What about the fact that it never said that there was any way of getting back to the present?
- One of the toys was an electronic alligator that had a miniature fission reactor. What kind of toy store is this?!
I feel like they break the "hypotheticals are not nightmare fuel" rule.
For every low there is a high.
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
Yeah. They do.
Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Hypotheticals can probably be removed.
Angry babby
Depending on how some of the ones related to a baby being about to fall off of something or otherwise get hurt were played, that could work since the tension could be deliberate, but the examples as-written read too much like Fridge Horror (and could be moved there).
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
Tobias/TJ (He/Him)
I feel like some of them are viable for Realism-Induced Horror as well (which is still technically a form of Nightmare Fuel, but you get the idea).
Edited by punkcrow on Nov 10th 2023 at 2:09:17 PM
Cold turkey's getting stale. Tonight I'm eating crow.
"The New Kid in Town" was the only one the writers and narrative unambigoussly showed as horrifying. That one's legit.
Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.
he/him
As we've had a few issues with docudramas and non-fiction documentaries, is it worth adding this to the Nightmare Fuel "Notes to editors" folder?
- Nightmare fuel is No Real Life Examples, Please! and examples for real events reported in documentaries or other non-fiction works aren't normally permitted. Examples for docudramas and historical fiction are allowed, but must focus on things as they are presented within the work, not the real events they adapt.
If folk are comfortable with that, I'll run it past Trope Description Improvement Drive
as well.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 14th 2023 at 3:08:19 PM
Tobias/TJ (He/Him)
I think that sounds good.
On a similar note, I'd like to ask a question about real life troping on Nightmare Fuel pages (this is also a question for Tear Jerker, since that's also No Real Life Examples, Please!). Understandably, listing real life events as NF is off-limits - but I want to know if it's okay to mention that a specific instance of fictional NF was based on real life events.
I'm not talking about examples like "Bob being an abuser in this movie is so much more horrifying when you realize his actor became an abuser in real life" (which really sounds more like Harsher in Hindsight). But if Word of God officially states that an example of NF was based on real life events (such as an example of Abusive Parents being based on their own experiences with having... well, abusive parents in real life), would that be okay to mention in the example?
The reason why I'm saying only admitted Word of God examples should be considered is to prevent speculation like "The creator of this show has talked about their experiences with child abuse before, so this means that the scene with child abuse might've been based on real events" or "There are some similarities between this scene and a real life event, so it might have been based on that".
If that's not allowed, that's understandable, though I do know that Realism-Induced Horror can be very effective - and in the cases where the events were based on personal experiences, writers do tend to write what they know (myself included).
Cold turkey's getting stale. Tonight I'm eating crow.
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
I don't think so, if only because that's no longer troping the work but rather troping what the creator says. Word of God is trivia for this very reason; it's not part of the official work, it just contextualizes it.
Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Tobias/TJ (He/Him)
Showtime!
Chunks of this entry from NightmareFuel.Grizzly Man feel like they're bringing in meta facts about Herzog from outside the documentary, mostly the first third-level bullet
- A movie about a man and his girlfriend who got eaten by a bear is bad enough. Then there's Herzog's reaction to the Apocalyptic Log...
- And it's not just that they were eaten by a bear. The audio itself is six minutes long, during which Treadwell is alive and conscious while being mauled. The attack was neither quick nor painless - he was literally Eaten Alive. In pieces. Treadwell's girlfriend tried to fight the bear off but failed, powerless to stop the bear from dragging Treadwell into the woods, and left alone by herself before the bear came back for her. Here's The Other Wiki's description of what was left of them (NSFW/NSFL): "The mangled remains of Treadwell and Huguenard were discovered quickly upon investigation. Treadwell's disfigured head, partial spine, and right forearm and hand, with his wrist watch still on, were recovered a short distance from the camp. Huguenard's partial remains were found next to the torn and collapsed tents, partially buried in a mound of twigs and dirt." It's the most horrific sort of death imaginable.
- Amie Huguenard's death will be terrifying when left to the imagination. She had a phobia of bears and may have been so traumatised and guilt ridden for failing to rescue Timothy that she couldn't defend herself or escape from the bear when it came back.
- What's particularly scary about Herzog's reaction to the audio is the very quiet way he says, "Can you turn it off," when he's finally had enough. There's something artificial about his calm that seems to indicate he's trying very hard not to freak out. Werner Herzog is freaked out. Eventually you see tears coming from his eyes and his hands trembling from the tape.
- To make the point clearer for those not in the know about Werner Herzog... well, we are talking about a man who once during an interview got shot by an unseen sniper and his immediate in the moment response was to disinterestedly say, "What was that?" before resuming the interview in a different location and shrugging off the interviewers concerns by saying "It was not a significant bullet." Among Herzog fans, this incident is considered the tip of the iceberg among his antics and that's even putting aside the visceral insanity of the production of some of his films. And yet, this Crazy Is Cool man who willingly jumped into a cactus patch on a bet and threatened Klaus Kinski with a murder/suicide if he walked off the set of Aguirre was so visibly shaken by the audio record that he sternly and calmly advised/insisted that the tape be destroyed.
- And the executives wanted the actual audio played in the movie itself. Herzog absolutely refused.
- Not only he asks Palovak to turn the recording off, he asks her to never, ever listen to it, and to destroy it as soon as possible. She hasn't destroyed it, and to this day, no one else has listened to the recording.
Like, the movie is probably trading on people's knowledge of Werner Herzog being unflappable to the point of lunacy, and there's a break in the film's stylistic choices itself where it's the only time Herzog is seen on-screen instead of as the narrator, but this still seems like it needs a streamlining to remove real life elements that aren't integrated into the documentary
Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?
he/him
Anything not within the work is an easy cut.
Beyond that, as mentioned a few posts earlier, NF for documentaries must be for the documentary, not real life events - e.g. Blackfish has some valid examples from posters and credit sequences, but interviews and source material generally fall foul of Real-Life Troping rules.
Showtime!
Here's a rewrite based on what's in the film
- The details of Amie Huguenard and Treadwell's deaths. It's not just that they were eaten alive by a bear. During the attack, Treadwell was alive and conscious while being mauled. The attack was neither quick nor painless - he was literally Eaten Alive. In pieces. Treadwell's girlfriend tried to fight the bear off but failed, powerless to stop the bear from dragging Treadwell into the woods, and left alone by herself before the bear came back for her. Here's what was left of them: "The mangled remains of Treadwell and Huguenard were discovered quickly upon investigation. Treadwell's disfigured head, partial spine, and right forearm and hand, with his wrist watch still on, were recovered a short distance from the camp. Huguenard's partial remains were found next to the torn and collapsed tents, partially buried in a mound of twigs and dirt." It's the most horrific sort of death imaginable, and, since the camera was on at the time (just with a lens cap) the whole thing was captured on tape.
- Herzog appears on screen for the only time to listen to the death tape. He listens to it over headphones, in complete silence, getting obviously more distressed as it plays. What's particularly scary about Herzog's reaction to the audio is the very quiet way he says, "Can you turn it off," when he's finally had enough. There's something artificial about his calm that seems to indicate he's trying very hard not to freak out. Werner Herzog, who built a reputation on being nigh-inflappable in his devotion to his art, is freaked out. Eventually you see tears coming from his eyes and his hands trembling from the tape. At the end, he tells Palovak to never, ever listen to it, and to destroy it as soon as possible. She hasn't destroyed it, and to this day, no one else has listened to the recording. In some ways, that complete unknown is worse.
Thoughts?
Edited by Libraryseraph on Nov 22nd 2023 at 4:41:32 AM
Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?
I say cut those entries, the songs aren't scary in the slightest. Hell, looking up the top Youtube comments for the Bob-omb Battlefield theme has people making jokes about how cheerful and upbeat the song is despite taking place in the middle of a battlefield.
I did find one comment that got a lot of upvotes talking about how the "Inside the Castle Walls" theme gave them a melancholic feeling, which I can understand. But that's not really the same as being scary. At best, the entry should just focus on the sudden Scare Chord that happens when the message from Bowser first pops up. I can see that frightening some younger players.
Edited by chasemaddigan on Sep 20th 2023 at 11:17:40 AM