Color Tropes Cleanup

Much like other appearance tropes, Color Tropes are often horribly misused or just generally ZCE-bait. Their very nature makes it too easy for shoehorns to slip under the radar, as it's hard to really tell what's an example of Red Is Heroic and what's just a hero in red. Color Tropes do have actual meanings to them, in most cases- but that meaning gets lost in a sea of examples that are just "character + color", with no attempt to connect the color to the character in any meaningful way.

As such, this thread will tackle these tropes. We'll figure out which ones are being misused and work to cleanup the misuse however we can.

For a list of tropes we're working on and intend to work on, see Color Tropes Cleanup.

Edited by WarJay77 on Nov 28th 2020 at 2:45:44 PM

I think this thread is good idea.

I made a Trope Talk thread about how Blue Is Heroic is plagued with a lot of ZCE issues and poorly written examples. While blue might actually have some heroic symbolism, the vast majority of examples do not show that.

Agreed. Great idea.

Two colour tropes get on my nerves: Pink Means Feminine and Graceful Ladies Like Purple. It's very often used for "this female character wore pink/purple once".

I had been grabbing this draft on how pink, a feminine/innocent looking color, can be subversive.

But some told that this could be expanded to a girly girl/boy and/or person who has feminine hobbies who is evil/psycho/violent, somewhat like a dark version of Real Men Wear Pink.

You probably should expand, if you have enough examples.

So, which trope should we try and work on first? Blue Is Heroic?

I miight be a little biased but I think is Blue Is Heroic is a good choice to start with.

What qualities does blue have that creators have been using to symbolize heroism. I know blue has connotations of being a calm/cool color but I dunno I think that connection is only clear when the villains are color coded red.

This is pretty much one of the few examples that show blue representing heroism.

• Aladdin: The creators intentionally used the color blue to symbolize good characters (primarily Jasmine and the Genie), opposed to red for evil (Jafar and Iago) and purple for "good, but flawed" (Aladdin, Abu).

Edited by MacronNotes on Aug 28th 2020 at 8:53:07 AM

I know in the Rocky Horror remake, they intentionally gave Brad and Janet blue clothes because they're the heroes.

Blue's a Warm, a.k.a Bright color like Orange and Yellow, but with a lot less negative connotations than Red's Blood / Violence?

Is Blue used more for Thinky Heroes??

Edited by Malady on Aug 29th 2020 at 3:01:59 AM

I've madea a Sandbox.Color Tropes Cleanup to log the problems. So far, I've gotten through the Blue Tropes and plan to continue scanning alphabetically through the Amazing Technicolor Index sub-indices. I note that some of them, such as Innocent Blue Eyes, overlap with the Appearance Tropes cleanup.

Which isn't a big deal. I think the appearance tropes cleanup should focus on the ones that aren't color related.

Supernatural Is Green is heavily misused for aliens that are green (which is Little Green Men).

I need your opinion on the examples in Rainbow Lite. Should the trope be narrowed down?

Man, this died quickly.

So...we all good to work on one of the tropes discussed above?

I think the examples fit the description? If we are going to narrow it down what would that look like?

Yeah all the tropes brought up have issues. Not sure what to focus on specifically though.

I think we may as well start with Blue Is Heroic.

Ok sounds good.

As I said before the association with description and the text that's on most examples is very weak. Most of them are just saying that the characters are wearing something. A ZCE sweep will probably eliminate most of them... I feel like this was created solely to contrast with Red Is Heroic (not saying its not tropable).

As for fixing it, not sure what to do but if so many examples miss the mark doesn't that usually means we need to refine the definition?

Hmmm...

I'm not sure what the best option is. The misuse is so pervasive that you could honestly convince me to disambig the damn thing, cutting the trope entirely, and I'd probably be okay with it. But because there are legit examples lurking around the wiki, the best thing to do is probably to solidify the definition and then enact a cleanup effort, maybe coming up with new tropes for the misuse to go if possible.

The description says blue is used to define cool and collected heroes like Red Is Heroic focuses on hotbloodedness so I guess we can focus on that. I guess there could be some examples on Red Oni, Blue Oni that actually color codes the characters as red/blue.

Okay.

I know of at least one example of blue-wearing heroes that didn't fall into that "cool and collected" category, but it's fine because that scenario is already Good Colors, Evil Colors and thus has a trope attached to it anyway.

So Blue Is Calm?

I'm surprised we don't have that already. Blue being calming is basic color theory- while the color red gets your heart beating faster and is associated with things like adrenaline and lust, blue settles you down and is associated with sleep. Hence, Blue Pill and Red Pill.

We already have Red Oni, Blue Oni, but the "Red Is Passion and Anger" concept is also covered by ideas like Red Is Violent and Red Is Heroic. So it'd make sense to create a blue-specific trope for blue being the color of calm characters and situations.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 15th 2020 at 2:27:01 PM

Yeah I agree that a Blue Is Calm trope is needed. Besides that, I don't know anything else about the color blue that signifys heroism.

I am guessing we can split Blue Is Heroic into Blue Is Calm, Good Colors, Evil Colors, Color-Coded Characters and whatever else that the examples can go into.

The other significance to blue-wearing heroes is the aforementioned Good Colors, Evil Colors scenario; when the villain is wearing red because it's a violent, bloody color and so the heroes are in blue for the sake of contrast. Blue also symbolizes purity to a degree, a trope we might have but I can't remember what it's called.

So yeah. I think we might actually end up with this as a disambig.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 15th 2020 at 2:39:58 PM

True Blue Femininity is a gender-restricted blue for purity, I think

Edited by Libraryseraph on Oct 15th 2020 at 6:06:01 AM

Yeah, we don't have that yet. Maybe call it True Blue Purity?