Confusing, doesn't display trope well: Human Aliens

On the trope page it says

"Note that, for this trope, the alien must be visually indistinguishable from a human. "Human, but with blue (or purple, orange, green, etc.) skin" falls under Rubber Forehead Aliens. Aliens with cultural rather than biological similarities fall under Inexplicable Cultural Ties. "

Yet the picture, is a whole gang of Humanoid Aliens / Rubber-Forehead Aliens . Yes Superman fits but you wouldn't get that from the picture and even the caption doesn't help it much.

I was thinking if there's a picture of Superman on Krypton or something similar? 1◊

or 2◊

It has an alien setting yet and the people are flying, yet look perfectly human?

edited 27th Jun '11 4:03:23 PM by Tomwithnonumbers

I think either of those could work, but it's gonna depend on how they look at wiki size.

I agree that a picture of Superman alone would be better. The current one contains both non-examples and "these characters are examples!" which lowers it in my opinion. I like 2.

FWIW, I wrote the caption for this one, and I believe I provided the image too (for the previously image-less page).

My thinking was that the "mix" of different alien types was a good thing - i.e., "Yeah, obviously the green guy and the blue guy and the orange girl are aliens. But Superman, Orion, and Guy Gardner? The guys who look exactly like humans? Yep, they're aliens too, just like it says on the tin."

If you just show Superman alone, visually he looks just like a human, as would any other example of the trope, so the only way I could figure to show the trope visually was by contrasting Human Aliens with the other kinds.

edited 28th Jun '11 6:08:31 AM by suedenim

I agree if would be JAFAAC if it was just Superman, and if it was just superman flying it could be for all sorts of other reasons. You were definitely right to notice that and I get what you were trying to do,

but I think unfortunately the picture clouds the trope a bit, because it just happens that people get confused between Human Aliens and Humanoid Aliens anyway, also Superman isn't centre and the other people are hard to make out (and one has a practically alien skin tone?)

So that's why I thought a picture of people on Krypton would be best, because they're flying so they can't just be humans visiting, and the world is clearly alien so they're alien.

The Doctor regenerating might make on okay picture, particularly if he's regenerating on a different world

Or 3◊ 4◊ 5◊ has the advantage that the title explicitly states that they're alien and look human.

Teenagers From Outer Space is a good choice, though I think only the second of the three images is acceptable. The first one has too much pre-photoshop trickery trying to spice the imagery up, and the third apparently is a band poster (album cover?) or something - the image isn't from the movie.

edited 28th Jun '11 2:48:26 PM by suedenim

I think a good image would have to be of some sort of First Contact situation with normal humans. Without that it'd just look like Space Clothes.

I think the pictures so far, even the current one, put the human looking figure in a alien enough setting, or doing alien enough things that people wouldn't assume they're just humans in space. But if you can find a picture like that, it'd be great. In the end it's always going to be a little hard to picture this trope but providing we keep it as a very human looking picture, it will at least help decide between the other human-aliensesque tropes. I mean people are more likely to confuse with Humanoid Aliens, than space clothes, just from the trope name

Is there any picture showing evolution of Human Alien ? Because there is no way to show Human Alien who nobody confuse with simply human.

BTW I don't see Humanoid Alien of current picture.

edited 25th Jul '11 5:55:24 PM by DeathCloud

bump

This trope is one where a collage would be ideal.

I'll work on one later today.

Bump...Foxxy Mod, are you still gonna do that?

Bump. Whatever happened to that, Madru?

I forgot all about it.

What about any given picture of the Doctor? He looks quite human and even wears human normal human clothing (barring Six).

I don't think there'd be anything showing him as "alien" unless you had a pic of the other Time Lords in their Gallifreyan clothes.

There's also this◊ from the Official Handbook Of The Marvel Unverse.

Now that's decent. I bet we could mock up something like that with The Doctor, even.

How about the cast of Star Wars? It does take place "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away", so Luke, Leia and Han all count.

Uh, nope. That probably falls under "Call A Human A Smeerp" since there's no indication that they are not human.

edited 15th Oct '11 1:37:20 PM by Stratadrake

Hmmmm...if someone wants to take a stab at doing a O Hot MU-style writeup for the Doctor, that'd be cool. I don't watch Doctor Who so I have no idea about all the details that would need to be included.

edited 15th Oct '11 7:07:36 PM by Willbyr

Why not use Son Goku's picture or any other Saiyan instead? A Saiyan is quite literally a Human Alien, to the point of being the same species, but from different planets.

Hm, does having a tail mean they no longer count? Or would that fit into Rubber-Forehead Aliens? Anyway "this is an example" is not what we look for in images (you're thinking of some other wiki), we use "this is what the trope generally looks like".

Sometimes "this is an example" results in Just A Face And A Caption, too.

That's specifically what I was thinking of.

"Hm, does having a tail mean they no longer count?"

Yep, that doesn't count. The trope definition is pretty specific, that they need to look exactly like humans, in all ways (including skin tones, which is the most common error when applying the trope.) ANY outward non-human feature makes the character a Rubber-Forehead Alien.

That said, a character with a tail MIGHT still qualify, if it's a "hidden" difference you'd only see if they were naked (and they're clothes-wearing aliens.) Like Babylon 5's Centauri, who presumably would look quite different from humans if you saw them naked... but you never do.