Needs Help: The Hard Hat

The Hard Hat is a 12-year old trope, and has only 35 wicks. There are several issues contributing to its underuse:

1. The name is misleading, as hard hat is an existing phrase (meaning the type of yellow safety helmet worn during construction), which the trope is unrelated to.

2. The description is both short and unclear, starting out by describing characters being protected by their hats, then adding that metal plates in characters' skulls that protect them also count even though those are treated completely differently in narratives.

The wick check confirmed that the trope is being used in two main ways:

1. Metal plate in skull protects character (often from mind control): 11/35, or 31%

2. Reinforced or specialty hat protects a character: 9/35, or 26%

There were also a few cases of it being used as people wearing safety helmets, a handful of ZCE/unclear use cases, and some indices.

I would suggest splitting into two tropes (Metal Skull Plate and Protective Hat) since there's basically no overlap in the concepts, and send both to the TLP to gather examples. If we keep it, it needs a description overhaul + a new name.

Opening.

I agree with splitting this into Protective Hat and Metal Skull Plate and TLP for example farming

Edited by MacronNotes on Jun 20th 2022 at 8:13:54 AM

Split Pocket Protector-style Protective Hat (though a conveniently timed construction helmet would work) and cybernetic head enchantments (Metal Skull Plate, also what the image is going for), and send both to TLP because either may not stand on its own.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 20th 2022 at 7:17:17 AM

Not sure about the Protective Hat part. Those 9 examples are quite diverse.

Tropes Are Flexible.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 20th 2022 at 7:31:56 AM

What relation to Hard Head, I wonder.

It seems like this is Hard Head due to tech?

They're unrelated. Hard Head is about head injuries in fiction having only minor or temporary consequences, when in reality they're extremely dangerous and often cause long-term or permanent effects.

The Hard Hat is about something (either a hat or a metal plate) preventing a head injury in the first place.

yes to metal plate in skull, no to a general "wears a hard hat" trope.

because that feels pretty chairs to me. so what if a person is wearing a hard hat? if they're a construction worker or doing anything related to construction then it's just what you wear.

Edited by amathieu13 on Jun 21st 2022 at 10:37:44 AM

Wears a hard hat that very lucky did protect them from lethal damage. We're not doing another appearance trope.

Edited by Amonimus on Jun 21st 2022 at 5:39:16 PM

So in the proposed trope the hat has to be seen protecting the wearer from injury otherwise it doesn't count? But is that not just what a hard hat does?

If the trope were about hats that aren't designed to protect someone but it ends up doing so, I could get behind that. Like a baseball hat miraculously saving someone from a concussion. But I'm not sure how many examples even fit that idea.

The Protective Hat proposal sounds like a Goggles case.

• Goggles Do Nothing:Helmet does not do the thing a helmet should
• Goggles Do Something Unusual:Helmet has some odd function
• Goggles Protect Eyes:Helmet protects head

In my head, I imagined that the idea was that it would be for hats that aren't designed for protection or hats that protect by supernatural means

I think it might be split by whether the hat being protective is treated as a reveal or not.

Hidden Helmet: character's innocuous-seeming hat actually has a secret protective function

Unrealistic Helmet: character's headgear protects them from things it really shouldn't

to the split. Also with

It's been 3 days, could we get a crowner?

Hidden Helmet would cover examples like John Steed's bowler hat, and Batman wearing a metal skullcap under his cowl.

Agree that the title is misleading, as the trope seems to exclude construction safety helmet ts.

Whipped up a draft for one of the new tropes at Sandbox.Metal Skull Plate.

I like it.

Alright, made drafts for the other two concepts: Sandbox.Unrealistic Helmet and Sandbox.Hidden Helmet

Hidden Helmet's Laconic about "secret protective function" seems to be too close to Hat of Power?

Does it have to be material?

Then "Hidden Helmet Material"? Or is that too many syllables?

Edited by Malady on Jul 4th 2022 at 9:23:19 AM

^ None of the on-page examples of Hat of Power are of the hat directly protecting the wearer, so I'm not worried about them overlapping. The closest they got to the concept of hats protecting the wearer were of granting abilities that could be used defensively, like intangibility or turning into metal.

Edited by Orbiting on Jul 4th 2022 at 2:15:16 PM

The sandboxes look good to me.

The crowner description for the split crowner says that there will be another crowner to decide the names we will be using for the three proposed tropes. Are we still doing that?