Planet Of Hats Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

Looney Toons: "...all Twi'lek girls are exotic dancers..." Except for the one who's a Jedi...

J Random User: Well yes, of course Hats fall off. Still, the number of them dancing in cantinas is too large to be ignored—enough to make it a Hat, IMHO.

Looney Toons: Oh, no, I wasn't criticizing. I forgot to put an emoticon after that, as I was actually zinging Lucasfilms — the only Twi'lek girl who got out of being a dancer did it by getting drafted nearly at birth for the Jedi... not exactly a wide spectrum of choice there. (Oh, and just a usage note — I've tweaked your name above so that it turns into a real link. Wiki links can't have embedded periods, which is why the curly bracket markup failed.)

Seth: How did this entry go so long without a link to My Species Doth Protest Too Much?

Kizor: There's an interesting justification for humanity's status as the surgical Mario in James White's Sector General scifi hospital books. (This is a guy who [[Handwaving handwaves]] hyperdrives and universal translators but thinks low and hard about how to perform CPR to a six-foot silver-furred sentient caterpillar.) Apparently the human hand is relatively crude and its movements limited in comparison to, say, manipulator trunks, but it requires minimal unobtrusive protection, and the underlying musculature works very well in other atmospheres and gravities.

TravisWells: I haven't read a lot of Known Space, but from Ringworld I got the impression that it wasn't "humans are genetically lucky", it was that the Puppeteers were running an experiment to artificially select for luck, and Teela Brown was the result of that. Wu, for example, is just as human but doesn't share her luck that I can recall. Can someone who remembers this series better correct me or the article?

(random passer-by): Read the sequel, "The Ringworld Engineers." It's considerably darker and Teela does not seem especially lucky. First she gets turned into a Protector by exposure to the Pak Tree-of-Life virus, then she dies. Wu lives, at least, though he's not especially happy about it by the end. All things considered, he comes out of it looking a hell of a lot luckier than Teela Brown.

Dangermike: Born Lucky, I think has something on that. But in the end, it's left ambiguous to the reader and the characters whether "genetic luck" actually exists. Niven later tried to Handwave it by saying that it's not lucky for the individual, but rather for their genetic line; your "luck" is whatever makes your descendants more likely to suvive. Blessed With Suck, indeed.

Fast Eddie: pulled ...

Sometimes the show tries a weak handwaving, just to be fair.

(random passer-by): The fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons comment doesn't apply. The split between the two races was done because having a single race be both the best nature types and the best caster types is too good.

Dangermike: Of course they're too good, they're Elves.

INH: I'm not sure I buy the "nature lovers don't have much paper" argument somebody added. In 3E, at least, they have no problem with hunting (though they don't do it very often), and the example elf warrior given in the monster manual is described as wearing leather armor. Even if one assumes they don't make animal skin parchment, I'm sure some plant based paper like thing would be viable. Heck, they're supposed to be really good at crafting with wood, so it would not be unreasonable to expect them to be especially skilled at paper-making.

Gizensha: Would it be worth adding the quote (plus what the Doctor said to merit that response) for Doctor Who's parody of the trope as the page quote, and is a gag really worth spoiler tagging?

Peteman: Do Denobulans really qualify as having "Doctor" as their hat? There are plenty of non-Denobulan doctors, any excess doctorhood amongst their people can probably be handwaved as Phlox just keeping in contact with his colleagues.

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