This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Sea Monster: From YKTTW
Fighteer: There is a forum proposal now to relaunch Sea Monster as a Super-Trope and prune Stock Ness Monster to include only examples of things that live in lakes/rivers and may or may not be real.
Three day comment period started, otherwise I'll do the rename.
Majin Gojira: Since I can't find any references to dates when the three-day period began and have seen little action on this front (and the links being rather dead), I might as well kickstart a discussion of it here.
Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans, a Cryptozoologist, classified Aquatic Monsters generally through these broad categories.
- 1: Merhorse - a seal-like animal 40-100ft long, with large eyes, facial bristles and a mane, smooth skin and flippers; undulates vertically.
- 2. Multihumped Whale - Exactly What It Says on the Tin. 50-100ft long, commonly sighted off the coast of Massachusets.
- 3. Long Necked - Seal-like animal with small dog or seal-like head on top of a long neck, four flippers and no tail. Undulates vertically.
- 4. Multi-finned - Whale-like animal 50-70ft long with many laterasl fins, a segmented armored body and dorsal fin or crests. Spouts like a whale, undulates vertically.
- 5. Super-Otter - Giant otter-like animal. Uniform grey or beige in color.
- 6. Marine Saurian - Alligator-like reptile with long head and many teeth, scales and a long muscular tail.
- 7. Super-Eel - Giant eel-like fish, 20-100ft long. with big eyes and no limbs. Often leaps out of the water.
- 8. Father-Of-All-Turtles - Giant Turtle.
- 9. Yellow-Belly - Giant tadpole-like creature 60-100ft long.
A lot of those donm't show up in fiction, and there are some others that do, but some of them have rather appropriate titles. I'd add/alter for fiction's use, a few more.
- 1. True Sea Serpent - A classical reptilian creature.
- 2. Giant - Generic Attack Of The50ft Whatever from the sea. Be it Giant Whale, Giant Turtle, Giant Eel, Giant Manta Ray or Giant Seal.
- 3. Plesiosaur - The most commonly attributed case.
- 4. Mososaur or Basilosaur - Ones a seagoing lizard, the others a primitive whale. Very visually similar, if not for the whole head-shape and undulation direction thing. Very snake like (and you may want to merge the two to cover all elongate critters).
- 5. Kraken - Cephalopods of Unusual size. Why does it get its own category? Because Giant Squid are Truth in Television.
- 6. The Weird - Needs Better Name. Covers the miscilaneous other sea organisms that do not fall into standard biology. Things like the Cloverfield monster or alien horrors.
I'm sure there's more, but that's just from a cursory check.
Madrugada: That looks like a good basic breakdown to start from.
Madrugada A misleading name can be fixed. It's no reason to cut a page. I oppose cutting strongly.
Some Sort Of Troper: Objection your honour- flagrant misuse of the cut list. It should be on the Trope Repair forum. (It was, as is noted on the top, and then it was ignored for so long that the discussion dropped off).
girlyboy: Frankly I don't think there's anything wrong with the trope title either. If there was no interest in discussing it on the Trope Repair forum in the past, perhaps that simply means most people didn't see a problem with it?
Some Sort Of Troper: Actually I think it was discussed and for the most part agreed but sometimes when the person who brought it up doesn't make a move a topic can accidentally fall by the wayside. I'll bring it up again to be fair but it seems likely that it would be changed.
