To-do list:

• Merge examples that fit the Weird World, Weird Food draft with said draft if they fit; otherwise, remove them. Examples have been moved to Sandbox.Alien Lunch examples to see whether they fit the draft; remove ones that don't.

I first encountered the problems with this trope when I started drafting Weird World, Weird Food, which is about unusual foods used for the sake of world-building. Multiple people attempted to argue that this is Alien Lunch or to protest my use of Alien Lunch in the description, claiming that the trope was about how "aliens eat weird food". However, this take is at odds with the actual trope's description, which only talks about how people might be served food they find gross and react accordingly, with the food not even needing to be "alien" in nature. This issue continued on into the Alien Lunch Wick Check, which resulted in these stats:

• Reaction-Based: 10/50, or 20%
• Weird/Gross in General: 13/50, or 26%
• Weird Food, Weird Place: 4/50, or 8%
• Non-Humans eat Weird Food: 6/50, or 12%
• ZCE: 7/50, or 14%
• Other: 9/50, or 18%

I'll note right now that the first folder isn't necessarily the "correct usage" folder. Many of the examples don't fit the "served something they thought was good and then realized it was gross" plot the description uses. Some of you might've just said... "Wait, isn't that I Ate WHAT?!" and yes. Yes it is. We'll get to that.

The usage is all over the place here. The Other folder in particular was full of things that were so nonsensical or unrelated that there was no other place to put them, and some of the foods eaten include things that weren't even intended as foods in the first place, or merely there to describe someone as a bad chef.

What do we do? Well, we can't retool it because every possible definition is already covered by Foreign Queasine, I Ate WHAT?!, my TLP draft, Lethal Chef, and more. The other reason this can't be retooled is because the usage is so inconsistent that there's no way to ensure it won't just get misused further.

I suggest a disambig.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Sep 30th 2022 at 7:29:39 AM

Seeing as there isn't something we can retool this into that isn't covered by other tropes, to disambig.

Yard literally inhuman dinner and disambig.

Well... there's also Fantastic Diet Requirement, which is a trope I forgot to mention before. IDK if it's exactly what you're thinking, but...

Fantastic Diet Requirement might already cover it, considering the nature of the subtropes.

May work. I was thinking along "interplanetary Foreign Queasine".

Sort of my trope idea, though. Well, mine is more of a worldbuilding concept, but most of the foods mentioned would be physically impossible for humans to eat IRL, which makes the other settings seem that much more bizarre. (And forgive me for speaking so confidently here, but the trope doesn't have many major issues right now and there seems to be nothing that'll stop it from eventually launching aside from a few description tweaks it might need, so I'm counting it here)

Basically, I think the concept is covered in a few ways.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 24th 2022 at 11:47:02 AM

With Foreign Queasine, I Ate WHAT?!, and Fantastic Diet Requirement (a trope I also didn't know existed til today), I think Alien Lunch is pretty much covered, though I do think if/when we decide to disambiguate Alien Lunch, Foreign Queasine's definition should be tweaked some so it isn't so country (and thus Earth/human) specific.

(as an aside, WarJay, I think Fantastic Diet Requirement overlaps too much if not fully subsumes your draft idea, unfortunately. I'll comment as much on the draft itself, but thought I'd mention it here too since it's been brought up).

Edited by amathieu13 on Sep 25th 2022 at 4:37:41 AM

Merge Alien Lunch into the Weird World, Weird Food draft and sort out the latter's overlap with Fantastic Diet Requirement.

Looking at that TLP, yeah it would cover basically everything missing from disambig, so certain examples can possibly be moved there when cleaning.

I'm pretty sure Foreign Queasine would cover interplanetary examples if the work is set in such broad setting.

Disambig.

Edited by Adept on Sep 25th 2022 at 10:48:28 PM

Fantastic Diet Requirement is in need of TRS itself. The "weird character eats weird thing" part of that trope and Alien Lunch could be moved to Weird World, Weird Food, and limit Fantastic Diet Requirement to just "weird character needs to eat specific weird thing to stay healthy".

Well, I'll deal with the overlap concerns at the TLP, but either way it's clear that Alien Lunch's possible concepts are covered. I might've flown too close to the sun with my draft for a bit, but whether it launches or not, Alien Lunch has no new niche for itself.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 25th 2022 at 2:04:03 PM

I made a wick check for Fantastic Diet Requirement, and "characters will suffer if they don't eat a specific thing" is the most common usage.

Yoooo, shocked that "merge" has so many votes because of the "possibly already covered" concerns... but I also can't say it really makes a difference. If I my draft doesn't launch... oh well, bye Alien Lunch

Well, if the draft fails after we transplant examples there (which I was thinking we should do with a sandbox first, then move the sandbox's contents to the draft itself), then c'est la vie.

At least disambiguating has consensus, so it's not like we'd hit an impasse if the draft failed post-merge and disambiguating lacked consensus. (I was actually meaning to say that if we redirected instead of disambiguating, this would be cut if the draft isn't launched before this thread closes, and then it would be recreated as a redirect after that, but I neglected to mention that.)

Edited by GastonRabbit on Sep 27th 2022 at 1:17:29 PM

Basically this is just a good chance to plug the draft and say... hey, pop in maybe, help me figure everything out and see if we can get this puppy to launch or if it's all for naught

👀 This better launch, Warjay!

The idea behind the draft seems solid to me. "Ordinary food on other worlds/'verses is strange to the Earthling viewer and/or POV character", right?

Weird World, Weird Food sounds excellent!

Right. The concern brought up was that Fantastic Diet Requirement might overlap too heavily, and whether that's true or not, well, that's a debate for the draft itself. I'm playing around in Sandbox.Weird World Weird Retool to see if there's any changes I can make that'd help us focus more on the worldbuilding stuff, and doing it in the sandbox specifically so that I can test out large changes without committing to anything (especially if we decide no change is needed).

Let's please discuss these things on the draft itself, though, since that's where the conversation is taking place.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 27th 2022 at 3:01:26 PM

The beginning of the third day.

So, if we can discuss the disambig targets now and if they're gonna be the ones exactly listed in the crowner, then I'm saying to replace Lethal Chef with Bizarre Taste in Food, because that's more about food.

We can have both. I suggested Lethal Chef since a few wick check examples were about bad cooks.

Anyway, it looks like the issues with the draft have been resolved, so launching shouldn't be an issue anymore.

I'm TLP-banned so I can't see the draft, but if that new trope is about literal space alien foods being weird, and leaving Lethal Chef for cooks and eaters matching species, then, these Lethal Chef-s from the wick check would actually go there instead?

Edited by Malady on Sep 29th 2022 at 9:59:12 AM