Goodnight, faraway star...
— Ernie, Sesame Street
This is the trope when outer space is associated, not with epic Space Battles or dangerous Negative Space Wedgies, but rather sleep or dreams.
After all, the moon and stars are visible at night, and night is when people (or at least, most people) sleep. Common in lullabies and children's stories with a "Getting Ready for Bed" Plot are mentions that the humans are asleep but the moon and stars are "awake", and there might be mentions of celestial bodies "watching over" the sleeping humans protectively. A character might also be seen dreaming about being in space.
An anthropomorphic moon might be illustrated as sleeping with a nightcap or bidding people goodnight. There might also be illustrations of moons or stars on sleep-related things, such as pajamas or bedding, and characters with sleep-related powers might have Cosmic Motifs. A Celestial Body might also be sleep-related. Compare Sleeper Starship and Artistic License – Space.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Pokémon: The Series: In the radio drama Pokémon: The Birth of Mewtwo, Ambertwo teaches a young Mewtwo about the world, and how the nighttime means it's time to sleep.
Ambertwo: That's the sunset. That's when the sun says, "Goodnight! See you tomorrow."Mewtwo: [as the moon appears] Is that a sun?Ambertwo: No... [giggles] ...that's the moon! And the stars are the little lights that twinkle all night, just so we won't feel alone in the dark.
Comic Books
- In "After Dark", a licensed comic for The Loud House, one strip involves Lily dreaming about being on a spaceship.
Fan Works
- "Go to Sleep, Baby Yoda
" is a fan-video of The Mandalorian set on a spaceship about Din Djarin singing Grogu (here referred to as Baby Yoda) to sleep.
Films — Animated
- In Turning Red, the red moon ritual seems to involve magically putting the person undergoing the ritual to sleep so that their mind can enter the astral realm.
Literature
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: One illustration in "The Long Haul" shows a motel called "Sleep-Tite" with a logo of a sentient, sleeping moon.
- Goodnight Moon is about saying goodnight to the moon.
- Rolie Polie Olie: In the book "Sleepy Time", Pappy bemoans being so old and weak. Olie decides to make him feel better by inventing something that makes him and the whole family float through space in bubbles. They become drowsy in the bubbles and go to bed afterwards.
- Whateley Universe: The act of dreaming, for even non-superpowered people, creates areas in the Astral Realm, and those who can explore the Astral could use those zones to be a Dream Walker.
Live-Action TV
- Played for laughs in Father Ted: whenever Ted and Dougal want Jack to fall asleep, they place a cardboard box over his head which is painted black and covered in paper cutouts of a crescent moon and stars.
- The Really Loud House features a bedtime book for kids called Wake Up, Moon (a parody of Goodnight Moon).
Music
- Jim Yosef: "Ghost": The first two lines are "Looking at the moon / As I can't sleep".
- Preschool Popstars: The song about bedtime shows the girls sleeping on the moon.
- "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" is a lullaby about a star.
Podcasts
- The No Sleep Podcast looks at the moon at night, befitting the title mentioning insomnia.
- Sleep Deprived: The logo background is starry, befitting its title.
Puppet Shows
- Bear in the Big Blue House: At the end of most episodes, Bear talks to a sentient moon named Luna, which signifies that it is almost time for bed.
- Fraggle Rock: In "Capture the Moon", the Fraggles think Junior Gorg has stolen the Fraggle Moon. To put him to sleep so they can go out to the Gorgs' garden and search for it, they sing him the Moon Lullaby, "Sail Away".
- The Roly Mo Show: One story involves a sentient moon being sad that she never gets to see anyone playing because she sleeps when everyone else is awake, so a small star sprinkles magic dust on the humans, allowing the moon to see their dreams.
- Sesame Street:
- During the song "I Think That it is Wonderful", which is a sentimental song about what characters love the most and sung at bedtime, Ernie says that seeing the stars is wonderful.
- One song, titled "The Moon Shines", is about the moonlight shining on everything, as the singer is in bed waiting to fall asleep.
- In "Quiet or Loud", the moon is shown sleeping with a nightcap.
Tabletop Games
- Magic: The Gathering: The gods of the plane of Theros and their servants have fields of darkness filled with stars and nebulae covering every part of their bodies that would normally be in shadow (which serves a dual purpose, triune if you add "looking really cool", in that it serves as visual shorthand for "enchantment creature"). The mortal locals refer to this as being "infused with Nyx", Nyx being the land of the night sky and the home of the gods which mortals visit through dreams.
Video Games
- Epic Battle Fantasy 5: The Warp Zone features a gentle music box in the background alongside a lack of enemies and the only real point of interest aside from warping being holiday-based content. Downplayed with the game's true final Superboss which, while clearly a Space Battle, features one of the most relaxing melodies in the game and a boss which actively cheers you on.
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach: The Daycare Attendant's Moon personality wears a nightcap, and its job is to round up lost children and put them to sleep when it's their naptime. Unfortunately, it's an Unnecessarily Creepy Robot with menacing red eyes that likes to say, "Bad children must be punished..."
- Genshin Impact: Chronically sleep-deprived, sleepwalking Layla is a student studying theoretical astrology at the Akademiya. Her character is themed around stars, nighttime, and sleep.
Layla: Even when we're not looking up at the stars, they're always there, watching over us.
- Honkai Impact 3rd: One set of decorations for your Chibi Dorm is themed about space and night sky, complete with dark starry wallpaper, space-themed bed and moon wall stickers.
- Kirby Super Star: In the Game Over screen, if you choose to end the game, a hand sets a sleeping Kirby on a crescent moon and puts a blanket on him. In Ultra, however, he's put on Planet Popstar.
- Living Books: In the cover of Dr. Seuss's ABC, the talking moon wonders when the mice will go to sleep.
- Miku Monogatari ~Yume to Taisetsu na Mono~: World 3, which has space as its main theme, takes this concept in Stage 3-2. In that stage, your character exploring a Dream Land of a sleeping girl.
- PsyCard: Sleepyhead Blunda, seen in the game announcement, says "Zzzzz...", and presumably she's sleeping, as she's wearing pajamas, which additionally have a night theme, being dark blue, with clouds and crescent moons on it.
- Spyro the Dragon: Many Dream Weavers have feathered wings patterned to look like the night sky with stars.
- Titan Quest: Immortal Throne: The Sands of Sleep from the Dream Mastery set of skills, has its icon be a crescent moon with "Z Z" inside it, for Catching Some Z's.
Web Animation
- In the second episode of Helluva Boss, Stolas takes a young Octavia to see the destruction of a solar system as he sings her to sleep.
Webcomics
- Pebble and Wren: One of Wren's dad's nightshirts has a sleeping, anthropomorphic moon on it.
- Spaceytales: While space isn't usually associated with sleep, in one strip, Neptune is seen wearing a nightcap when describing himself as a "dreamer".
Web Original
- The official website for Cbeebies shows three bugs sleeping on the moon to represent the bedtime-themed programming. The page to watch videos of bedtime stories being read also has an illustration of the moon reading the stories.
Western Animation
- Blue's Clues: Blue's bedtime story involves several characters telling a bird to sleep, including the stars and moon.
- Bluey: "Sleepytime" is all about Bingo having a dream about flying through space with her stuffed rabbit Floppy. She ends up Sleepwalking, which influences her dreams in many ways.
- Care Bears:
- Bedtime Bear, whose role is to help kids fall asleep, and is often quite the Heavy Sleeper himself, has a belly badge of a crescent moon and a star. Care Bears: Unlock the Magic also gives him star shaped Blush Stickers.
- Sweet Dreams Bear has a pink moon as her belly badge, and as her name states, her purpose is to give people nice dreams.
- Danny Phantom: Nocturne, the ghost of sleep, has his entire body except his eyes and face mask as stars in space.
- Ducktales 2017:
- Zigzagged with Della Duck. While she created a sweet lullaby for her sons about looking to the stars so they will be brave and unafraid of the unknown, her 10 years stuck on the moon trying to get home to her sons was anything but sleepy, with her still having some issues with it once she comes home.
- Played for dark comedy with Dewey, who reveals in "Nightmare on Killmotor Hill" that he has a recurring dream about being cradled by a moon made out of his own tears. Dewey doesn't know what it means. Huey has some theories.
- Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs: In "I Don't Wanna Go to Bed", Dino World's anthropomorphic moon is shown snoring.
- Morpheus from Hercules: The Animated Series is the God of Sleep who uses a cosmic blanket made from the starry night sky.
- The Jetsons: "Elroy Meets Orbitty" has Elroy dreaming about being on a rocket ship.
- Max and Ruby: Max has one pajama suit with space printed on it.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- Princess Luna (the princess of the moon) has Dream Walker magic.
- "Look Before You Sleep": Twilight Sparkle has space-themed blankets for her bed.
