Context?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Well like, they are colonies of microscopic (single celled?)organisms, they can act independently but usually live inside the bloodstream of a host species and control them via psionic powers. Are those starfishy enough?
Edited by HaborymAim
These sound like an alien version of human parasites. I would not list them under this trope, but that's me.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
They are parasites but they can also act independently; when they do, they look like large green blobs. They're also intelligent and parasitize much more than just humans. In fact, when the game begins they are controlling an entire species of aliens, not humans.
Dr Kaleidoscope
Is it okay if we add a Urban Legends/Folklore/Mythology section? Because I think Moth-man would definitely fit the trope description, there's just no folder to put him in right now
A Professional Teratologist, An Amateur Satirist Hide / Show Replies
... huh? How does Mothman fit the description at all?
Not that anything is known of its biology, but there's no reason to believe it's really starfish-y.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
EDIT: Double post.
Edited by 216.99.32.45 Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
"both tropes have some overlap"
Does this parenthesized phrase in the last paragraph of the description refer to this trope having an overlap ONLY w/ Eldritch Abomination? In which case, I'd prefer "The two have ...".*
Or does it mean that this trope overlaps both Our Monsters Are Weird and Eldritch Abomination? That would seem to be true, but if so, that would require more delicate rewriting. And it would leave me wondering why not also Bizarre Alien Biology.
- At 65yo, I'm natively a speaker and writer of mid-20th-c. English; as a linguist, however, I can easily tell that "both" has long since reacquired its simple Old English sense of "the two". However, since "the two" seems still recognizable by you 21st-c. English users (yes, I've read the Troper Demographics page), it's a good finesse.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
so no one gets the wrong idea Takwin and I have been communicating via pms about the entry and got it sorted out.
Who watches the watchmen?
For a trope that's allegedly about really weird aliens, it has some pretty harsh restrictions on the weirdness. Apparently aliens don't qualify if they don't have a language or culture, and they have to sleep, eat and reproduce.
So, is there a trope for the TRULY different alien species? Because apparently it's not this one.
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The Trope is for weird intelligent aliens.
If your looking something like with the Xenomorphs from Aliens
Listed at the bottom of the blurb.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BizarreAlienBiology
Does this trope name have anything to do with the starfish aliens in "Warning from Space?" (Daiei Studios, 1956.) They were aliens. And they were starfish-y. If it does, should we give credit? Or put the original movie and its attendant tropes up? It's a fun movie and deserves a little love.
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The Trope Namer is Richard Dawkins, who joked that starfish, urchins, etc. must be aliens because of how strange they are.
Cut this from the Chanur Novels list:
The stsho look like humans, even though their psychology and physiology is very different, so they aren't Rubber Forehead Aliens.
Edited by KhymChanur
Shouldn't be H. P. Lovecraft mentioned in the article? He used the description "starfish aliens" in At the Mountains of Madness (as is also indicated in the Literature section in the examples.) That was written in 1931, so I think it was probably the first and therefore is a trope namer.
I would like to add it to the article. May I? :)
Edited by ver Hide / Show Replies
Factual edits of this nature are always permitted, as long as they don't make the description run on too long or constitute a major revision to the article.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Removed for obvious reasons:
- The Protoss also have some elements of serious weirdness, like no mouths, and being naturally
magicalPsionic.- However, the Protoss are still very humanoid, both in appearance and culture, so they don't count as an example of this trope.
It does seem, however, that people seem to take any species with "some elements of serious weirdness" as an example of this trope. I think I'll go and delete much of the Real Life section now.
Resident pretentious dickwad
Am I the only one who finds it odd that the picture for this trope depicts aliens with such recognizable features as necks, hands, fingers, heads, eyes, mouths and teeth? I don't have any replacement picture to offer, but I'm sure there are some to be found. EDIT: Oh, "Some resemblance to living things with which we are familiar." Never mind.
Edited by ArtisticPlatypus This implies, quite correctly, that my mind is dark and damp and full of tiny translucent fish. Hide / Show Replies
We have a forum for discussion of page images. This image was already settled on via this method, so any changes would have to go in a new discussion. Someone already got banned for arbitrarily editing the image.
Can someone please tell me what the page picture is of? It's adorable!
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Looks like it is cropped from an original artwork by Michael Dashow. See the next to last item in his website.
Would the green blobs from X-Com Apocalypse count?
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