The Pen & The Sword: A Discussion Book

Trope Breakers #12 | A Pen & the Sword Article

 So, you've just set out on your quest to vanquish the irredeemably evil dark lord and his mindless minions. You are accompanied by your best friend/comic relief character and at least one mega hot love interest. You probably have some extra members in the team, including but not limited to your wise old mentor. Now that your main cast has assembled and you have set up your plot, it is finally time for the world building to happen. We all know how it will go. Whether you're in space, a dystopia, a high fantasy world, or in an Urban Fantasy version of our own world, you're going to stumble upon numerous factions or sects of people . . . all of which have one characteristic. You'll get your warriors, villains, nerds, and whatever categories the author thinks to include. Each person from that kingdom/nation/group of people matches that characteristic and usually receives no additional characterization.

     As you may have guessed, the trope I am discussing today is the Planet of the Hats. To fit this trope, a story has to contain a society or multiple societies that are based around a single characteristic. Virtually all characters shown from this group of people are basically just personifications of that trait. Most series I have read fall victim to this trope, even extremely popular media. Since no real culture or society is that cardboard cutout, it is very noticeable in stories. Like the other tropes we have discussed, this is not a bad  trope objectively, though there are bad methods for developing the world.

There are multiple reasons people create Planets of Hats. Sometimes they want to justify the lifestyle, beliefs, or personality of a certain character, sometimes they use the hats as social commentary, sometimes they do not not feel like world building (never a good idea). Sometimes they are actually making a society based on stereotypes of a real life country. No matter why someone constructs their world like this, it is good for authors to execute it in a way that does not feel sloppy or like a shortcut.

     One common example of the Planet of the Hats is a group of humans who are "sorted" into social groups based on common character types. Harry Potter and Divergent are common examples of this. In Harry Potter, a magical hat scans the mind of witches and wizards to decide which Hogwarts house is best suited for each student. Divergent has a test which determines which faction teenagers have the highest compatibility with, then the teenagers get to decide which faction they want to join based on the test results. Both of these stories note that these are broad characteristics that do not objectively describe the people in the house or faction . . . except that they do describe everyone in their groups. For the most part, all Ravenclaws are shown to be intelligent in their own ways, all Hufflepuffs are loyal, and almost all Slytherins and Gryffindors are bad people and brave respectively. I would say that Gryffindor and Ravenclaw have the most diversity in terms of characters, Gryffindors because we see that the characters are more than just brave and Ravenclaw because we do not see enough Ravenclaws to establish a pattern. In Divergent, most characters are repeatedly demonstrated and written as being exactly like their faction's description. Almost all Dauntless are reckless and brave, all Erudites are intelligent, all Candors tell the truth, all Abnegation are selfless, and all Amity are nice. The only people readers see that do not match these characteristics are the Divergent, whose entire identity revolves around them not belonging to a single faction.  Their societies are their hats. There is nothing more to them.