Markup View

Author: crazysamaritan

Feb 13th 2014 at 1:19:51 PM

'''''DRAFT'''''\
Either way, (as with Alien Hair and Non-Mammalian Hair), the main purpose of this trope is to make a robot either seem more human (In-Universe or not), or emphasise a human-like robot's mechanical nature by making the "hair" look stiff and unnatural.
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I think that you don't need to split the directions of the trope.  That's what this description seems to do.  I was going to suggest splitting "makes them look human" away from "makes them look robotic", but I think ''both'' are intended, for separate audiences.  Suggestion: The main purpose of this trope seems to be humanizing the non-human form (like in AlienHair and NonMammalianHair) for characters InUniverse, while emphasizing the robot's mechanical nature to the audience.  It isn't unheard-of for characters to add LampshadeHanging in the form of asking why robots need to have hair.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' has Data, and his brothers, who are androids designed to be superficially similar to human beings in many ways.  Their hair is made to look artificial by heavy application of gel, and keeping Creator/BrentSpiner's hairline sharply trimmed.