Misused (alt names crowner 11 May 2020): Bad Dreams

Bad Dreams is the trope about when characters have nightmares about their past; events that had happened to them and still trouble them. However, with a title this generic, it's being used across the wiki has a general trope for "Character has nightmares". But don't take my word for it, see for yourself!

My Bad Dreams Wick Check looked at 75 different wicks:

• ~39 of those wicks were misuse, involving the character merely having nightmares, unrelated to anything from their past; other forms of misuse include potholing the trope to the word "nightmare" or using it in an unrelated sentence, again, to mean "nightmares".
• This leaves only ~36 wicks left, ~9 of which are lacking any context, are too ambiguous to properly sort, or are otherwise useless in determining the health of the trope.
• That leaves ~27 healthy wicks, or 36% proper usage.

That's not a good sign.

I really think the title might be the cause. Like with Drink Order, the title is too generic to really tell people what the trope is about, and far too easy to use in an unrelated sentence.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 29th 2019 at 11:33:55 AM

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Sorry to keep you waiting, ~War Jay 77. Opened for discussion.

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Whoo hoo.

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Past Experience Nightmare? Hopefully, nightmare won't be seen as metaphorical...

Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!

^ Nightmare-Inducing Trauma, maybe?

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I think Past Experience Nightmare is a more indicative name. Nightmare Inducing Trauma sounds like it's about the trauma, and not the event of getting bad dreams about it.

I don't think the example-as-a-thesis helps either.

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 2nd 2020 at 7:31:01 AM

How does this trope contrast against Flashback Nightmare and Nightmare Sequence?

Nightmare Sequence is what people seem to think it is. It's when a character is shown having a nightmare for a short bit of the story; it doesn't matter what the nightmare is more than the way it's presented to the audience.

Flashback Nightmare is specifically when a flashback is shown via a nightmare. Bad Dreams doesn't need to be an actual flashback and could be a surreal re-imagining of what'd happened, while this is just "the nightmare is a flashback, nothing invented by the dream itself".

Flashback Nightmare is a very specific subtrope, while Nightmare Sequence is more just about nightmares in general.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 2nd 2020 at 9:09:31 AM

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I think Past Experience Nightmare is a better name. I agree that Nightmare Inducing Trauma sounds like it's about the trauma; Trauma-Induced Nightmare would be better, though I still prefer Past Experience Nightmare.

Is Flashback Nightmare actually distinct enough from this? Bad Dreams is "nightmares about their past", while Flashback Nightmare is "nightmares about their past, but framed as a flashback".

Too tired to think this through completely, but I'm reminded of the situation that resulted in Jerkass Façade being merged into Hidden Heart of Gold. (Edit: That wasn't the best analogy to use.)

Edit: Just to clarify, this post is only meant to be a vote in favor of renaming to Past Experience Nightmare. As I said, the Flashback Nightmare thing is something I haven't completely thought about.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 3rd 2020 at 4:51:04 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

>>I'm reminded of the situation that resulted in Jerkass Façade being merged into Hidden Heart of Gold.

As far as I am concerned that merge backfired for various reasons.

Edited by eroock on Apr 3rd 2020 at 1:40:26 AM

Yeah, Past Experience Nightmare is the better option.

I've no strong feelings for or against a merge.

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For what it's worth, I had nothing to do with that merge decision (never voted in the crowner, and never posted until after the thread was starred); I just handled some of the wick cleanup after it spent several years in the TRS backlog (I think the thread was starred at some point before I started posting on TRS), and only really did said cleanup to help with the backlog. I was referring to the reasoning given for the merge, though perhaps that was the wrong merge to use as an analogy.

In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have used an analogy to begin with.

Edit: I should probably clarify what I meant by the reasoning used. I meant that people were arguing that the differences between the two were too subtle; I'm not going to get into whether it was good reasoning.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 3rd 2020 at 5:26:08 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I feel like the name Past Experience Nightmare, and the way it's being discussed here are narrower than the current definition of Bad Dreams and too similar to Flashback Nightmare.

This implies to me that Flashback Nightmare includes dreams that aren't literal play-by-plays of the traumatic event and includes surreal mashups of the events.

By my read of the description, the dreams in Bad Dreams don't have to be shown, and can include sleep deprivation and other sleep problems. So I would name it something like Trauma Induced Sleep Disruption or Poor Sleep Due To Trauma.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

That's true, the dreams don't need to be shown to the audience here, good catch.

Though the proposed titles are a little too clunky for my tastes, I don't have other ideas.

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If Bad Dreams can include stuff like sleep deprivation/disruption in addition to dreams, then wouldn't that mean that the descriptions of Bad Dreams and Flashback Nightmare are inaccurate in claiming that the latter is a subtrope of the former?

By definition, subtropes' examples are always examples of their supertropes, but if Bad Dreams examples can extend to problems that occur while awake, while Flashback Nightmare is restricted to dreams, then that sounds more like Flashback Nightmare is a sister trope instead of a subtrope.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I think bad dreams causing sleep deprivation can be covered by Sleep Deprivation

Macron's notes

I think given its broad name, and the fact that its current definition seems to have been covered by other tropes, Bad Dreams should just be redefined as a supertrope to Flashback Nightmare and Nightmare Sequence that covers any unpleasant dreams (whether or not the dream is actually shown).

That doesn't seem like a worthy distinction that demands a separate trope, and it'd probably be easier to expand the definition of Flashback Nightmare to cover those "surreal imagining" rather than rename this trope.

But is "character has nightmares" really a tropeworthy concept? It doesn't mean anything on it's own; it needs other context to give it meaning. The meaning it has now is far more meaningful than "nightmares exist" is.

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I think another potential distinction is that Flashback Nightmare is about nightmares as exposition. If it's about showing how a character is emotionally affected, it's Bad Dreams (or whatever the new name will be). If it's about introducing the audience to new information, it's Flashback Nightmare. It's not clear that they are always used this way though, but I think applying this would make things clearer.

For example, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry sleeps poorly, mutters in his sleep, and has nightmares where he relives Cedric's death. This would be Bad Dreams but not Flashback Nightmare, because the reader already knows about the traumatic event, which happened in the previous book, but how this affected Harry emotionally is new information.^note This example is currently listed as a ZCE on Flashback Nightmare, but I would argue it's incorrect. These nightmares aren't even described explicitly.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

I feel Bad Dreams is distinct enough from Flashback Nightmare as the latter is about a nightmare being used as exposition and the former is about showing how past traumatic experiences affected someone. Bad Dreams just needs a more indicative name. Rename to Past Experience Nightmare.

Another vote to rename to Past Experience Nightmare.

back lol

This one fell into the depths. To revive it, do we need a crowner?

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It wouldn't hurt.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Alright; what should the crowner options actually be?

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These are 2 actions that have been suggested in the thread:

1. Rename
2. Merge with Flashback Nightmare