Line #5 PlayingWith/StarfishAliens


1	'''Basic Trope''': Aliens that bear little to no resemblance to terrestrial life forms.
2	* '''Straight''': The [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens Maura]] are a bizarre race of silicon-based aliens, with an [[StarfishLanguage incomprehensible, gurgling language]], [[XenoNucleicAcid Spiral shaped DNA]], [[BizarreAlienBiology unprecedented, mangled biology]] and [[BizarreAlienSexes six sexes]] ([[BizarreSexualPolymorphism Each of them so different that they almost look like different species]]).
3	* '''Exaggerated''':
4	** Maura are {{Eldritch Abomination}}s who [[GoMadFromTheRevelation shatter the sanity]] of those who see them, despite [[BlueAndOrangeMorality not being inherently malevolent]].
5	** In addition to strange biology, the Maura are InscrutableAliens; their psychology and purposes are unknown and perhaps even unknowable.
6	* '''Downplayed''':
7	** Maura are very different from Humans in biology, psychology, and language, but not so different that coexistence is impossible.
8	** Maura are very different in biology and communication, but still have some basic elements shared with humanity, such as a comprehensible grammar system and concepts for life, death and an afterlife, and a system of morality and ethics comparable to some human beliefs.
9	** Maura don't look like humans, [[HumanoidAliens but they have the same body type]].
10	* '''Justified''':
11	** The Maura home world has almost nothing in common with Earth.
12	** The sheer size of the universe means that there are sentient beings out there with varying biologies, no matter how weird-looking.
13	** The Maura live in the ([[TimeAbyss extremely]]) [[UsefulNotes/HistoryOfTheUniverse far future of the universe]] and are adapted to live with the insane conditions (such as a Big Crunch or the Heat Death of the Universe).
14	* '''Inverted''':
15	** The Maura are TransplantedHumans.
16	** HumanAliens.
17	** The Maura just look like generic [[RubberForeheadAliens "little green men."]]
18	** The Maura look as us and [[HumansThroughAlienEyes think that we're the weird ones]].
19	* '''Subverted''': With the help of TranslatorMicrobes upgraded to deal with the Maura language, humanity discovers that the Maura have a very human-like psychology.
20	* '''Double Subverted''': ...Until [[BlueAndOrangeMorality morality and philosophy]] come up.
21	* '''Parodied''':
22	** The Maura's incomprehensible language is subtitled, revealing them to be {{Cloudcuckoolander}}s of the highest degree.
23	** The Maura are ''literal'' StarfishAliens. They are a sentient race that have built a truly amazing empire across several planets...and then you meet one. It looks like a normal [[strike:starfish]] sea star. Uh...[[FridgeLogic how did they build that amazing empire again?]]
24	** The Maura have a completely inhuman appearance... but talk in Midwestern American accents and enjoy baseball and apple pie.
25	** The Maura are entirely different to humans in biology, language and living habitat... but their language is subtitled and reveals them to have [[HumansAreCthulhu the exact same fears about meeting humans as humans do about meeting them]].
26	* '''Zig Zagged''':
27	** The Maura are a bizarre alien race, until TranslatorMicrobes reveal them to be very quite human-like in psychology, until [[BlueAndOrangeMorality morality and philosophy]] come up, but later they come to understand our morality and philosophy, even [[ShapeShifter taking on]] [[AFormYouAreComfortableWith a form humans are comfortable with looking at]]. Then, it turns out that they were putting up a facade so they could invade our planet and [[strike:destroy]] ~Terraform~ it, but [[HumanityIsInfectious prolonged contact with humans]] convinced some of the Maura to help humans either by siding with them or at least find another Earth-like planet for them to live on.
28	** The Maura are shown to have a very human-like mindset, until morality and philosophy come up... but their culture in many respects is still quite human-like, having developed music which has some Earthen analogue, having scripts and language which show development similar to some human languages, and having developed systems of government which are easily compared to human ones.
29	* '''Averted''': There are no aliens.
30	** The aliens are all much easier to understand.
31	* '''Enforced''':
32	** The work is a hard science fiction, where RubberForeheadAliens are too ridiculous to be taken seriously.
33	** The creator finds HumanAliens and other humanoid aliens boring and over-used, so they made exotic non-humanoid aliens to spice things up.
34	** The aliens are given far out designs to keep them distinct from {{Transhuman}}s and other modified life forms of Earthly origins.
35	* '''Lampshaded''': "That's a Maura?! [[FlatWhat ...What]]."
36	* '''Invoked''': The Precursors isolated entire worlds from each other and gave them completely different environments as a project on evolution.
37	* '''Exploited''': GeneralRipper successfully uses the alien appearance of the Maura to argue that they can't be trusted not to try and conquer Earth.
38	* '''Defied''': The BenevolentPrecursors seeded all intelligent life with certain basic commonalities to ensure galactic peace and diplomacy.
39	** The Maura have at least some terrestrial analogue, and can, with TranslatorMicrobes, communicate with humanity easily enough.
40	* '''Discussed''': ???
41	* '''Conversed''': "Now that is how you show alien evolution."
42	* '''Deconstructed''':
43	** The Maura fail to recognize humanity as sentient, or their BlueAndOrangeMorality causes a diplomatic incident of unimaginable scale, resulting in interstellar war.
44	** The Maura, have lived on a planet which has many predators on it and thus developed instincts which are comparable to human ones, even if their state of being is entirely different to how humans turned out. Because of this, they recognise humans as having something similar to them, and aim to learn more because they sympathize with how humans developed.
45	* '''Reconstructed''': Humanity and the Maura realize they don't know enough about each other to communicate meaningfully. But since they occupy completely different types of worlds, they simply stay out of each other's way.
46	* '''Plotted A Good Waste''': The Maura are alien, but so alien they avert being [[UnintentionallyUncannyValley unsettling]] and so are easy for audiences to read as human-allied... in contrast with the [[HumanAliens Troperians]], [[UncannyValley which way too look off]].
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48	Back to StarfishAliens
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50	%% Optional items, added after Conversed, at your discretion:
51	%%
52	%%* '''Implied''': ???
53	%%
54	%%* '''Played For Laughs''': ???

Context PlayingWith / StarfishAliens