No, the other one.
The first I looked at was if Bizarre Alien Reproduction requires actual aliens, since a bunch of the other tropes don't. Seems to be just about weird reproduction, at least going by the examples. "Alien" means "strange" in this case, not "ET".
- Non-Mammal Mammaries: If they for one reason or another aren't for reproduction, they're not Bizarre Alien Reproduction, so it's not a subtrope.
- Exotic Equipment: Yes.
- Mister Seahorse: Yes.
- Facefull Of Alien Wing Wong: Yes.
- Chest Burster: Seems to potentially include examples where it's not about reproduction, but merely some kind of host transfer for a parasite. I don't think that quite fits Bizarre Alien Reproduction, so it's not a proper subtrope.
Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism probably needs cleaning, since going by examples it's just Sexual Dimorphism.
edited 3rd Aug '16 1:48:54 PM by AnotherDuck
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The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Yeah, I've always taken "alien" in Bizarre Alien Biology and other "Bizarre Alien X" to mean "nonhuman" note , since the trope is Truth in Television when we look at Earth's nonhuman forms of life, and I don't see any reason why it can't apply to non-extraterrestrial fantasy creatures.
You do make a good point with Non-Mammal Mammaries and Chest Burster; if they do involve reproduction, then they just overlap with Bizarre Alien Reproduction rather than being actual subtropes.
I do notice that you haven't said anything about the relationship between Bizarre Alien Sexes and Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism, though.
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No, the other one.
Bizarre Alien Sexes shouldn't actually be a subtrope of Bizarre Alien Reproduction. You can for instance easily have worker type sexes that aren't involved in reproduction at all.
Likewise, Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism isn't a subtrope of Bizarre Alien Sexes, since the first can easily occur with regular male and female sexes.
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The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
... An infertile worker caste is just a Hive Caste System example, not Bizarre Alien Sexes.
And you are assuming that Bizarre Alien Sexes has to be "more than two sexes", when the very first paragraph has "Perhaps it has two sexes that are not identifiable as either "male" or "female" in terrestrial terms" as one possible form of the trope, and the second trope goes on to mention a real-life fish species with just one sex (and in fact, lists One-Gender Race as a subtrope) and Mister Seahorse's Trope Namer.
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World's Toughest Milkman
It doesn't actually say that Non-Mammal Mammaries or Chest Burster are subtropes, so I'm not sure anything's actually wrong here. It might be useful to adjust the phrasing to distinguish the ones that are subtropes from the ones that are merely potentially related. I would definitely support that.
(Bizarre Alien Sexes is my trope, btw. Or, more specifically, one I found abandoned on YKTTW, and nurtured into an actual trope. And what Marq FJA says in ![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
matches my intent with the trope.)
edited 3rd Aug '16 5:45:39 PM by Xtifr
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No, the other one.
No, I'm not assuming that, but I did miss the line about them being indispensable for the species' reproduction process. That in mind, I am assuming that a potential example with a species with three sexes, males, females, and something else, where the males and females correspond to what we're familiar with, and the third isn't involved in the reproduction, would not be an example of the trope.
The very last example would just be Hive Caste System, by the way.
When checking if a trope is a subtrope or not, I check for potential exceptions (i.e. examples of the subtrope that aren't examples of the supertrope), as that means it's not actually a supertrope.
edited 3rd Aug '16 6:15:44 PM by AnotherDuck
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World's Toughest Milkman
Hmm. Interesting thought. Don't think I've ever encountered an example (and I read a lot of stuff with bizarre alien whatevers). Usually sexless workers are simply non-functional variants of an existing sex (as with the real-world example of bees, where the workers are non-reproducing females).
I agree in general with your method identifying subtropes and non-suptropes. That's basically my approach as well. In this case, however, I have mixed feelings. I certainly see your argument, but that sort of exception seems too rare to trope, and tropes are flexible.
For that matter, would you even call it a "sex" if it's not involved in reproduction?
I dunno. I could go either way. But I'm pretty sure that every actual example of BAS you'll find out there is also an example of BAR. It may not be 100% subtrope in theory, but I'm pretty sure it is in practice.
As for the original question (which I re-read, and understand better now), yeah, I'd say that Non-Mammal Mammaries and Chest Burster are merely related tropes; the others are actual subtropes.
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The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
In other words, the third sex is essentially an intersexed/pseudo-hermaphroditic male that lacks female gonads but has some extra female-like structures to serve a typically female-exclusive biological function.
edited 3rd Aug '16 6:48:40 PM by MarqFJA
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No, the other one.
Seems reasonable enough to call it a subtrope, then. If an example like that pops up, it can probably qualify as an "unusual variation".
I think the difference between "sex" and "caste" is probably best left to the work in question. What that calls it, it is. If unspecified and not related to reproduction, it probably falls under some kind of caste. And naturally, a species can belong both to Bizarre Alien Sexes and Hive Caste System.
That third sex sounds like a male with the possibility of converting, fully or partially, to female, but the species still adhere to male and female as base sexes. Still probably bizarre enough to qualify.
Some birds do it across species as well, such as several species of cuckoos, to pick an obvious example. Not quite sure I'd call that bizarre, since it's really just a kind of changeling.
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The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
So... Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Subtrope of Bizarre Alien Sexes, or not? Everything seems to point to "Yes" IMO, as I've explained above.
edited 4th Aug '16 3:45:02 AM by MarqFJA
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No, the other one.
Everything points to "No", as I've explained above.
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The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
... Then I'm afraid that your explanation managed to fly straight over my head. I've reread your posts just now and I can't quite figure out how you came to that conclusion.
edited 4th Aug '16 4:13:00 PM by MarqFJA
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No, the other one.
We just concluded that Bizarre Alien Sexes is exclusively about reproduction.
Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism is just when the sexes look sufficiently different. If they still reproduce like humans do, with a male and a female, then they don't fit Bizarre Alien Sexes.
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The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Again, I do not see where you have derived that conclusion from; sexual dimorphism is part of the reproduction process, after all. Perhaps it would be better if you compile all of your arguments into a single post, and make sure that you didn't unintentionally make some points unclear.
edited 5th Aug '16 10:03:57 AM by MarqFJA
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No, the other one.
How is "looking different" part of the reproduction process? Maybe the males look more like monsters because they're fighters and the females aren't. That's not part of the reproduction process, unless you define "reproduction process" as "everything that makes it more likely for the species to survive".
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World's Toughest Milkman
Yeah, I have to side with Another Duck here. Bizarre dimorphism doesn't mean the sexes are bizarre. Obvious example: there's a type of deep sea fish (some sort of anglerfish, IIRC) where the male is tiny and attaches permanently to the female, and most of its body atrophies. When scientists first found it, they thought the male was an organ, not a separate creature. (I'll let you guess what organ they thought it was.)
Bizarre as that dimorphism is, however, anglerfish are still basically simple males and females. No Bizarre Alien Sexes at all.
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The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Sexual dimorphism is by defintion a product of natural selection for traits that improve reproductive chances; i.e. the males and/or females became that way because such traits were the ones that the opposite sex preferred, which over time leads to increasingly exaggerated forms of said traits becoming more commonplace (potentially becoming the norm). That makes it a part of the reproductive process and — since it's directly about what makes the sexes what they are — a subtrope of Bizarre Alien Sexes.
Look up Wikipedia if you still have doubts.
edited 6th Aug '16 4:21:07 AM by MarqFJA
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No, the other one.
So you are defining "reproduction process" as "pertaining to evolution". By that definition, you can define absolutely everything pertaining to how a species looks as part of the reproduction process, which effectively makes it a useless definition.
But even that only holds up if every single fictional species is designed with evolution in mind. If someone wanted to create a race that looks like monsters, but still wanted sexy females, so only the males look like monsters, then the only evolution relevant is the creative evolution of the idea of the species. It has nothing to do with how the species has evolved with those traits because they're better for their survival.
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The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
edited 6th Aug '16 9:54:36 AM by MarqFJA
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World's Toughest Milkman
Dimorphism may be related to sex, but our trope, Bizarre Alien Sexes, is specifically about cases where the sexes don't match our usual pair (male/female). Since that's not true of Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism, it is in no way a subtrope of our trope! Even if it could be referred to as a subset of the broader concept of bizarre alien sexes. (The concept, not the trope.)
The anglerfish I mentioned do not meet our definition for Bizarre Alien Sexes, even though they're pretty bizarre and alien as examples of sexes. They do, however, meet our definition for Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism (and are listed there under Real Life). Therefore and QED, Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism (the trope) cannot be a subtrope of Bizarre Alien Sexes (the trope).
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No, the other one.
While I disagree with that, your argument still depends on fictional characters following biological and realistic evolution. What if it's a genetically manipulated species? What if they're artificial from the start?
edited 6th Aug '16 1:48:45 PM by AnotherDuck
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The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
- An alien species' sex system is very bizarre in comparison with terrestrial ones: This sentence is quite general in scope, especially since it uses the term "sex system", which pretty much encompasses everything about biological sexes, from how the work and interact to how they look.
- Perhaps it has two sexes that are not identifiable as either "male" or "female" in terrestrial terms: One easy way this could happen is if the morphology of the two sexes is not what we'd expect (e.g. what we think are "males" are actually females, and vice versa), which would make it an unusual form of sexual dimorphism.
- among seahorses, the male bears the children: Seahorse sexes do actually match our usual pair (male/female), with the one remarkable deviation from the norms of fish reproduction is that the fertilized eggs are incubated within the father's body rather than the mother's.
- But this only scratches the surface of what writers can imagine: This sentence in particular stresses that Bizarre Alien Sexes is quite broad in what possible forms it could take.
I mean, let's be honest, some notable fictional examples of Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism would probably stretch the limits of realism if not break it entirely, even if most people are unware that the concept is a lot more grounded in reality than they think.
... On a different note, I can't help but notice that no matter what the topic is, the Trope Talk threads that I've made over the past 1-2 years seem to only attract the attention of 1-2 tropers on average. Do I have a knack for wanting to discuss "unpopular" tropes or ask really "uninteresting" questions, or something?
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No, the other one.
That's not what Justified Trope means. The species being genetically modified doesn't justify the sexes looking different by itself, because there could be any number of reasons for them looking different, such as "some character just did it like that". That's a Hand Wave. A Justified Trope is when it's the trope itself that's required, or serves to give more sense to the story.
If it's a Subverted Trope, it's not an example. Is it less of an example because the source of the difference isn't natural evolution?
I'm seeing less and less of a difference in how you define Bizarre Alien Sexes and Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism. You don't seem to be describing a subtrope and supertrope. You seem to be describing the same trope, with the only difference in that it doesn't include identical sexes, or a One-Gender Race. That's less But More Specific and more But Not This Variant.
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World's Toughest Milkman
To be honest, I had my doubts about the seahorse example when I made the trope, but I finally decided that it might barely count. But only because the male is actually doing something normally associated with the female. It's a stretch to call it Bizarre Alien Sexes at all, but tropes are flexible.
However, the anglerfish don't match any reasonable definition of bizarre alien sexes that I can think of at all. No matter how much I try, I can't see the trope being that flexible. They're just ordinary males and females, and the female lays eggs as usual. However, they're an extreme case of Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism.
eta: And when I wrote about barely scratching the surface, I was thinking about the fact that writers can probably come up with more unusual things. Not less! The fact that I wanted to make room for the truly bizarre is not an indication that I was trying to include the mundane! 
edited 6th Aug '16 8:33:52 PM by Xtifr
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The tropes listed below are mentioned on Bizarre Alien Reproduction's article, in a passage that asks that any examples that falls under any of those tropesbe put there instead of Bizarre Alien Reproduction, but does not clarify why nor how the tropes and Bizarre Alien Reproduction are related.
I'd like to hear other tropers' feedback on the nature of the relationship between these tropes and Bizarre Alien Reproduction, especially regarding whether or not they may be subtropes. I'll be giving as brief of a definition as I can for each one, followed by my personal verdict, and then await second opinions.
So, what do you guys think?
On a related note, Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism seems to me like it should be a subtrope of Bizarre Alien Sexes (itself a subtrope of Bizarre Alien Reproduction, hence why I'm mentioning the issue here), since it's one common way of depicting a species' sexes as bizarre in a way that either complements or doesn't involve addition of extra sexes. Am I on to something here?
edited 3rd Aug '16 12:42:32 PM by MarqFJA
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