I still think this is a bad title...: Ghost Ship

We have Ghost Ship and Soul Train. Ghost Ship is for derelict ships. Ships that are actually ghostly fall under Soul Train.

Needless to say, these titles almost guarantee that examples of ghostly ships are put under the wrong trope; Soul Train is used mostly for trains.

(Or is it? If you read the definitions really literally, derelict but physical ships with ghosts fall under Ghost Ship and nonphysical ships are Soul Train, which seems like a rather odd distinction._

It makes some sense to me. Ghost Ship is related to Ghost Town and fits the pre-existing term definition. However, if you have found significant number of Soul Train ships under Ghost Ship, something might need to be done.

Is it bad that my first thought was that Ghost Ship was some sort of Shipping trope?

Anyway, the names are kinda unintuitive, but the distinction makes sense.

That's because whoever named it shipping was an asshole.

I thought "Ghost Ship" was a common phrase? I usually hear it in reference to abandoned ships...

It's a fandom term well outside of this wiki.

It is, which is why it should be about that.

The title is fine, it just needs a clearer note on the page of what it's not.

Doesn't mean it's not stupid.

The terms isn't really used that way in real life. The trope isn't totally off from the term, but it's a pre established phrase that means something else.

At least personally, Ghost Ship sounds like it's about abandoned ships to me. It's Soul Train that's really non-indicative - I would have guessed it was about trains as a passage to the afterlife. It certainly sounds train-specific, anyway.

Yeah, I've very frequently heard Ghost Ship to be exactly this trope. Soul Train, makes me think of the show. Not a trope. I can understand why people aren't realising to use it.

Ghost Ship, when spoken outside trope pretext, can mean three thing:

a) Haunted ship, ala Flying Duchman or b) Abandoned ship with no indication of crew or c) both at the same time.

Title fits. It's just we have separated Soul Train and Ghost Ship. Of course, we can add redirect from Derelict Ship.

Actually, we don't have a trope for just "haunted ship". Soul Train is about vehicles that transport souls to the afterlife. That may be why we're having problems with those examples cropping up on both. Unfortunately, as noted just above me, Ghost Ship can mean either of those things, which makes it a bad name for specifically either, IMO.

It doesn't help that Soul Train is misused on the Ghost Ship page, I'm sure.

My tentative suggestion is to rename Ghost Ship and launch a third trope for Haunted Ship, which is a common plot device.

EDIT: Wait, Ghost Ship can be haunted according to the first paragraph... but not according to the sentence with the Soul Train wick. Woah, schizophrenic trope. Is haunted ship significantly different, trope-wise, from derelect ship? My gut says they overlap sometimes but can diverge.

edited 4th Apr '11 11:59:29 AM by ccoa

Suggest Ghost Transportation if people think Soul Train needs a rename or at least a redirect.

As a quick note to those who say Ghost Ship is a preexisting term: It is, but it is a term that means either ship found abandoned, haunted ship, both, or a decommissioned but not yet scrapped ship. See here.

edited 4th Apr '11 12:07:13 PM by ccoa

I would immediately associate the term Ghost Ship with Phantom Hourglass-type Ghost Ships. The kind with a skeleton crew. Usually dead in the water. And typically with a—no, you know what, nevermind, I'll just spare you all. Point is, Ghost Ship is the trope I would want to use for those examples.

We could just handle this exactly like we did Living Ship. Come up with a list of definitions that people are using. Put them all on a crowner to see which gets the main name. Split the tropes by definition and throw them all through YKTTW. Then link the resulting pages with disambig links. It worked very well last time.

I like that idea.

In normal use I'd say the "derelict" version is a clear winner, but we're talking about tropes in fiction, and the idea of the ship literally crewed by the dead is a persistent and popular one.

Another possibility could be to make Ghost Ship a disambig (or super trope, if we can work it) to Haunted Ship, Derelict Ship, and Soul Train (or whatever they get named/get renamed).

We also need to determine if derelict and haunted ship are distinct tropes or if they belong together. My inclination is to split.

edited 4th Apr '11 5:52:41 PM by ccoa

So you could either have a derelict ship, a derelict ship with ghosts, a ship actively crewed by the undead, a ship that takes souls to the afterlife, or the ghost of a ship.

Type 1 and 2 could possibly be lumped or split. Same as 2 and 3, I guess (but I'd say the Black Pearl is played very different than a haunted ship.) Type 4 is Soul Train, and I'm not sure if 5 is tropable.

edited 4th Apr '11 9:16:59 PM by jebuz

You might be able to do 5. It would have to involve either Sapient Ship or some kind of fantasy thing where ships have spirits.

Yeah, lumping 1 and 2 makes sense for situations where the ghosts are more just static reflections of their living selves and don't really do much. Lumping 2 and 3 works for when you have a ghostly crew. I think that says a bit about where the split should be. It's the difference between having a crewed ship, and a ship that's passive but explored by an outside party.

So we split Ghost Ship and Soul Train into three categories? (names by me, free to change)

Derelict Ship: Abandoned, non-dismanteled vessel. Can have ghost or not. Difference between Ghost Ship is that possible ghost are not active force, instead reflections of their past selves. Examples could be spaceship from Final Fantasy VIII. Can't think anything with ghost onboard that doesn't go into

Ghost Ship: Vessel actively manned by undead, who can interact with world. Black Pear would fit here as would Flying Dutchman, both have undead crew who are quite aware what is going on.

Soul Train: Vessel that carriers souls to underworld. I would recomend renamming Soul Ferry to make it more clear, Soul Train seems less clear. I have seen only one train in fiction and it is serving as a page image.

Note I used "vessel" instead of ship.

Also, this. Flying Dutchman, it kinda relates to this since it's half-trope half-work page. Add it to this mess or shall we make separate topic for it?

Haunted Ship would be better then Ghost Ship for the second. As it have been mentioned, Ghost Ship is also a common term for what you are calling Derelict Ship.

I think Ghost Ship should primarily be about "mysterious derelicts," because that's the primary real-life definition. There *is* an inherent overlap with notions of "haunted" ships, though, and that's perfectly OK. The mind, particularly the superstitious mind, naturally runs to paranormal explanations for discoveries like the Mary Celeste. In fiction, they're often correct.