Over-focus on the outer-space/extraterrestrial kind of "aliens": Bizarre Alien Biology

As currently written, the descriptions of this trope and its "Bizarre Alien X" subtropes (e.g. Bizarre Alien Reproduction) restrict the tropes to the "extraterrestrial lifeform" sense of "alien", while essentially excluding the "explicitly-supernatural creatures (e.g. demons, mythical monsters) whose definitely-"alien" reproduction/biology is explored/mentioned, but are not actually extraterrestrial in nature" sense. I wish to get the troper community's opinion on the matter before I decide whether or not to rework the articles in question.

edited 2nd Sep '11 11:18:06 PM by MarqFJA

Personally, I think these tropes make just as much sense being "Bizarre Nonhuman Whatever", and see no problem including examples that are not space aliens.

I'm not against a Bizarre Supernatural Biology trope. Or expanding this one. I really should get around to Bizarre Alien Psychology though.

Sorry, but this seems like mole-hilling to me. What does it matter if demons are considered aliens for the purposes of the trope?

A) the word alien is right there in the title, so it's not surprising that it focuses on aliens, and not on ghosts or leprechauns or something. B) Supernatural creatures with really bizarre biology are far more rare than aliens with bizarre biology. C) Tropes Are Flexible, if you have an example of a supernatural creature with truly bizarre biology, I think we can consider it effectively an alien. And finally, D) most of the tropes on the index are not limited strictly to aliens. They're just tropes that often apply to aliens.

If there's particular subtropes you want to see broadened, that's probably worthwhile, but I don't see a lot of point in complicating the description of the index. Index descriptions should be brief, in my opinion.

^^ Worldmaker, he's asking for a clarification so that the YKTTW he's proposing doesn't spend half its time arguing about whether it should include supernatural but not extraterrestrial beings or not, and so that the resultant trope doesn't end up being hauled into TRS because of it. Right now, the tropes and index in question are very specifically written to only include space Aliens. If they are that narrow, then we need other tropes to cover creatures that aren't human but aren't space aliens. If they aren't that narrow, then the descriptions need to be made less restrictive in the way they're written.

In other words, he's trying to avoid an easily-foreseeable problem by clarifying the situation now.

Which is a good thing.

edited 3rd Sep '11 9:49:20 AM by Madrugada

Thank you, Maddy. You've pretty much hit the nail on the head, though I'd like to add that this issue has been bothering me practically ever since I came across the trope ages ago.

If it was merely just "focusing", I wouldn't have raised the issue at all. The problem is that the articles are written with the preconception that "alien = extraterrestrial", and the resultant description leaves no "legal" room for other non-extraterrestrial alien creatures - which are not necessarily supernatural in nature; they could be terrestrial nonhuman Precursors to humanity who were either wiped off or driven to hiding (sometimes underground).

Well, Tropes Are Flexible, but I certainly have no objection to a mild re-wording to make the tropes that need to be more obviously flexible, but if it's a whole set of tropes you're concerned with, wouldn't special efforts be a better place than TRS? We need to identify the tropes that need changing and change them. (It may not be a big special efforts, but if it affects several tropes, then it's beyond the usual scope of TRS.)

As I said earlier, a large number of the tropes on the index are already clearly not limited just to extraterrestrials, so I'm curious which ones actually concern you.

I have no preference.

Bizarre Alien Biology, Bizarre Alien Reproduction, Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism, Alien Blood, Alien Kudzu, Alien Lunch, and even Starfish Aliens. I count at least three/four examples of the last one that are not the traditional "space aliens": Digimon, Neon Genesis Evangelion's Angels (because according to supplemental material, they are the Earth natives, with us being the actual foreign species), the Many from System Shock (they're engineered by a man-made AI, and therefore technically man-made), and the Scourge example from the World Of Warcraft entry.

edited 3rd Sep '11 3:58:33 PM by MarqFJA

I think that broadening this too much is a bad thing. If we start getting away from aliens and into mythological things then we get into magic which tends to end up skewing tropes a lot.

A supertrope to this might not be bad though.

Well, the problem is that "alien" in this context means either "extraterrestrial", "extradimensional", "nonhuman", or just plain "strange/exotic" (Bizarre Alien Biology used to have a real-life section, didn't it?), which are not synonymous with each other.

That said, what supertrope(s) can you concieve of? Splitting off Bizarre Nonhuman Biology from Bizarre Alien Biology (it's currently a redirect) would be a good first step, but what after that?

edited 3rd Sep '11 4:14:06 PM by MarqFJA

Well, a good sister trope would be Bizarre Fantasy Biology where things seem to run mostly on magic.

Broadening Starfish Aliens would seem to make it overlap even more than it already does with Eldritch Abomination, but might still be a good idea, since the classic Lovecraft version was broadened by his successors.

I really think that either super or sister tropes is better than broadening in most cases. When you broaden them you lose a lot of the elements that make the trope.

I think Bizarre Fantasy Biology would work, so long as its limited to things that require magic to function. Like a creature that is made up of mystic runes, and can turn them into a summoning circle to summon minions (summoning ooze from Dungeons And Dragons, for the record). Not just "Bizarre Alien Biology but magic."