I was just thinking the problem is, we've got several tropes jumbled, including at least four spacecraft shapes:
- Flying Saucer
- Actual sphere, as seen here◊
- The Tailsitter
- The shipping crate with a cockpit type spacecraft, as seen here
For the record: Alien Geometry covers the actual sphere-type. Drop Ship covers Drop Ship.
SSoT, I can see what you're saying, but I think there's also a trope here about general alien vertical take-off/landing that may also warrant splitting. My first thought was the Quintesson ship from Transformers The Movie. It's shaped like a cork-screw, and takes off straight up.
Edited by macroscopic Support stupid freshness, yo.When I said split, that's the other part of the split. We have craft that are round and then we have the impressive landings and take offs.
Scrub the stuff in the bullet points, move the Impressive Spaceship Vertical Take Off to a better name (not that one), use Spheroid Dropship for sphere like dropships.
Taking into account the discussion here, I'd say do not cut this page until the split/rewrite/clean-up is complete.
Looking at the YKTTW, it was originally intended to be (and appears to have been launched as) strictly spherical or nearly spherical, ground-to-space, VTOL craft. Somewhere along the way, the description started being modified to suit the examples instead of the examples being cleaned up to fit the description. Return the description to the version in the YKTTW and clean examples, then make whatever other pages are necessary for the other examples (we don't have the classic pointy-nosed sits-on-its-fins spaceship,for example, and we should, but not on this page, as it's neither spherical nor a dropship)
I agree that the main problem this page has is that it's trying to be too many things at once.
Edited by Madrugada ...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Re:Cut
I'll add this to the discussion too but basically I completely disagree with most of their points.
I think really the problem is just that it has a very technically focused write up, trying to classify the space ships as if they were real things, which missed the tropetacular content and the fact that it really has two tropes.
Remember all those scenes from movies in which a large alien spacecraft would hover and slowly descend. Its presence would be signalled first by its shadow and a portentous wind before its mass would fill the screen? A very specific sort of moment, very common in cinema and just pretty much nowhere on this site other than this page.
Now, the writer noticed another common trope connected to this but failed to see it as distinct- the Spheroid shape ship. This shape is very common for these sorts of ships because most of our UFO mythology has these shape. Shapes that must be definition be nothing like a normal aircraft, often hiding any possible engine or even a way to see. Completely alien shapes. Obviously this shape can also be used elsewhere so it's a different trope.
Problem- extra stuff not related to either of those on the page. Cause- the technically focused write up plus the attempt to categorise the types thus putting the other shapes on equal footing with the spheroid. That last point isn't wrong, it's just that it's wrong for the footing to be naming the page and apparently integral part of the trope.
So split it, rewrite it a little and remember that Artists Are Not Architects.
Edited by SomeSortOfTroper Hide / Show Replies