Markup View

Author: fulltimeD

Dec 21st 2012 at 12:29:33 PM

It's more like saying Planes Must Have Propellers, because Propellers Are Cooler Than Jets. The problem with this is that many planes don't have propellers (or even jets, in the case of gliders), and there's no actual objective basis for saying that propellers are cooler than jet engines.

Or it's like saying that shows set in the future must have robots. But there are plenty of shows that take place in the future and don't have robots. That's not an averted trope, because there's no trope in the first place to avert.

I do think there might be a legitimate basis for a trope involving rustbuckets unexpectedly armed with cutting edge weapons, but the OP seems to be going for something far less consistent and concrete and more of a cliche, which pushes this into PeopleSitOnChairs territory. There's no rule saying a spaceship "must" be armed; they usually are armed for dramatic, narrative reasons, not because spaceship aesthetics typically require weapons. They don't. There are plenty of unarmed spaceships in fiction. It's just that they are rare in particular sub-genres like SpaceOpera which focus on space-based combat.

As this stands, though, this is '''Not A Trope.'''