This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Hair Color Plausibility Levels launched as You Gotta Have Blue Hair Discussion: From YKTTW
Working Title: Hair Color Plausibility Levels: From YKTTW
Dr Dedman: Uh, dude. You have heard of hair dye haven't you? Blonde and orange-brown ("tea-colored")dye-jobs are not all that uncommon nowadays. Seen as acceptable in "polite" society no, but there are plenty out there.
Harpie Siren: Hair dye's one thing.... were talking about a character's natural hair color...
Point being, a lot of the blondes are supposed to by dyed. (Sailor Moon probably not, Otaki from Oh My Goddess almost certainly, Genshiken too). A lot of these examples are lumping two different situations without figuring if it's "fantasy hair" or "real hair" being represented. A clear sign that the hair is in full fantasy mood is if The Class Rep has off-color hair, usually they are black. Lastly, keep in mind that not all Orientals have the same hair shade. I taught a Japanese student who got flack from some of her teachers for "dyeing" her hair. She just had natural rusty brown highlights. So in Patlabor are we to read Izumi as a true red-head or is it just an indication her hair's an off shade? (Everyone else in the cops is black or grey-haired). It's certainly not the same trope as your average magical-girl scenario.
Kayube: Someone change that picture and give Stinkoman his actual mouth. That's his "incomplete" appearance (I think from when the trope title is actually said, but still...)
Pisthetairos: No Avatar example in the realistic hairstyle list? This is madness.
Dan: This! Is! SPARTA!! Actually, Avatar wouldn't count because there's nothing saying characters can't have other hair colors even if they're based on Asians. For that matter, Naruto shouldn't count since it takes place in a fantasy world, so even if their culture is based on Ancient Japan, there's nothing saying they can't have other hair colors. (But the fact that Sakura has pink hair while everyone else has normal hair colors is why it gets the mention)
Harpie Siren: But every character other than Yue has had hair ranging from black to auburn (or white or gray due to age) Unless they have a character with a haircolor outside that range, that isn't connected to a Spitit, or Word of God says it, then it's completly logical to assume that they can't have impossible hair colors. And it'd also be an example even if characters had blond and red hair as well, because the point of the Avatar example was that Yue had pure white hair because of her connection with the Moon Spirit. It's like the Inu Yasha and Mushishi examples.
Pteryx: Did someone forget Hair Colors?
Looney Toons: Yeah... what does this page bring to the table, other than sorting the examples by plausibility, that Hair Colors didn't already do two years ago?
Citizen: Basically, I guess it allows for hair examples that don't fit the personality stereotypes discussed at some length in Hair Colors. And at least this version has the examples in a separate section. Hair Colors is more like an essay on the relation of hair and character, whereas this is a page that can be updated as new examples come in. I say leave this be. I guess you could also just tack the entire example block to the bottom of Hair Colors, but it seems like there'd be a slight mismatch in theme...
Looney Toons: Hm. I'm not entirely convinced there's that much difference...
Semi-Known Troper: I cant' see a differance at all. It would be better to make Hair Colors more consise and Cut List this.
Citizen: Nuh, uh. Not unless you can find a good way to tack on all the examples.
Romanticide: One art teacher used to tell me to never use undiluted black while painting, but very dark brown or even dark blue. I always asumed that dark blue, or dark purple, or even dark green hair colors were meant to be seen as black but they didn't used that color reserving it only for the lines or pure black backgrounds.
As a slight justification for the blue hair, I would like to not that in one of his short stories, H. G. Wells actually described Asian hair as either blue or blue-black (can't remember which). While Wells was period racist, this could be considered a bit of evidence supporting the reality of blue fair, in that the black hair of Asians does seem of a slightly different shade than that of Caucasians, with the former seeming almost inky (dark blue/purple) and the latter being an exceptionally dark brown.
Austin: I notice that in DBZ, Trunks' hair seems to vary between shades of lavendar and gray. I also noticed this to a lesser extent with Pegasus of Yu-Gi-Oh, who usually has silver hair. Anyone else notice anything like this?
"The blonds, Yamato and Takeru, are partly European, so that at least is reasonable." (Digimon) Bwah?! This is the fist time I've heard of this.
- You fail genetics forever!!
"Gundam Seed very carefully and deliberately averted this trope by giving unusual hair and eye colors ONLY to Coordinators, genetically engineered humans, while Naturals, those without genetic modification, had only natural hair and eye colors. The sequel, Gundam Seed Destiny, almost immediately screwed this up with Sting and Auel, Naturals with green and blue hair respectively."
This is incorrect. Shani in the first Seed series had green hair, and like Sting and Auel, he was a Natural, though a "Biological CPU" or "Extended human".
Akatsuki Daybreak: I removed one of the Naruto examples because I have yet to see any evidence that Shiho (the example incorrectly gave her name as "Chiko") has pink hair or that her hair color has been revealed or not, but I'm not sure. Can anyone confirm whether or not we actually know what her hair color is?
Splitting off trope. Need to move some of the examples over to Implausible Hair Color.
