Rename so Blue hair is not a big deal: You Gotta Have Blue Hair

For historical interest, this is the older version of the description I can find from 2008.

As you can see, this was obviously meant to be a character trope before two tropers nattered analysis all over the description.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

That archived page shows that this article was for works, not characters. ("Some anime have...", not "Some characters have...")

Read the examples though. Every one of them is talking about the characters in the work and the mentions of anime in the trope seem mostly there to emphasize the mistaken idea that it's an anime trope. That sort of thing was really common in that era of the site.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

I think this page can be left more or less as is, but we should re-trope Works With Impossible Hair Colors, in the way it originally was. Basically in some works the Impossible Hair colors don't represent died hair, or alien hair or anything, but are there to differentiate between characters and/or has something to do with their character.

SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)

Wasn't Westrim the one who started the last rename topic and got really... I'd say "argumentative" when it didn't go through? I can't find the old topic. Though I do remember doing an ungodly long wick check on it.

Yep, that was him. Single issue wonk warping a trope.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

" Read the examples though. Every one of them is talking about the characters in the work"

Okay, I did that. Know what I saw? Mostly works qualifying as examples, and individual characters being used to show why. I do see a few where the example is written to focus on the characters, but the first three (which are the ones most likely to have been written by the first troper) are all listing works, and detailing characters with impossible hair colours as evidence.

You'll find the same thing over on Only Six Faces; the examples are written about the work and mention characters that fit to show it.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Double posting to keep the examples separate:

Mushishi plays this one straight by having everyone have black or dark brown hair, unless they've been Touched By Vorlons or have something else supernatural about them.

Almost all characters in Mermaid Saga have black or brown hair, with the exception of one woman whose hair turned white due to severe trauma.

Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch,where, for the mermaids at least, hair colour also indicates race. Humans and other characters can have any colour.

The works of Key Visual Arts would fall under "improbable", but there is always a small amount of characters with odd colours: Nayuki and Akiko (purple), Kano and Michiru (blue and magenta), Kotomi (blue), etc.

Tokyo Mew Mew. In the anime, their hair colour changes from normal to outrageous, save for Zakuro and Retasu, who remain purple and green (albeit different shades).

Corrector Yui falls somewhere in between this and implausible. In the anime, Haruna has normal roan red hair, while Yui, being blonde, puts it at least at implausible. The other Correctors have rainbow hair, but they're computer programs. In the manga, though, Haruna has unmistakably purple hair, and in the second season of the anime, purple-haired Ai comes in from the real world (but who cares about the second season?).

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

(Yes, I'm a bad, bad troper for triple posting)

Since the earliest form of the trope's description supports the idea that it is a work trope.... Since the current form of the trope's description supports the idea that this is a work trope.... Since the earliest form of the trope's examples are written as a work trope....

Convince me that "character has hair colour X" isn't People Sit On Chairs, and I'll end my stance.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

...wait, what? Not only does everyone say how the trope seems to be working fine, I don't see any difference at all in this line of thinking (@14).

edited 8th Nov '11 8:06:34 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

If the qualification for a work trope is that it at least has one certain character with a certain trait, then by all means it should probably be a character trope.

edited 8th Nov '11 8:54:05 AM by MangaManiac

Actually, they don't.

The first post was by troper/Raso who said, "Lately I have been coming across wicks where they must point out when this trope is literal." They then outlined the following things that could be done:

1. Switch with the redirect You Gotta Have Colorful Hair
2. Make this trope a Supertrope, and create subtropes where the hair colour is associated with their personality

Then poster troper/Routerie agreed with the second option, arguing that "Hair colour X" is not a trope.

Raso disagreed.

I chimed in with support for the supertrope.

Then Routerie started going into why "Hair colour X" is not a trope.

Raso then argued that it must be a trope because as long as one character has odd hair colours, the entire work has broken from reality.

Routerie agreed that it might justify a works trope, but this cannot be a character trope, because it is People Sit On Chairs in the Simpsons.

troper/Auxdarastrix then suggested that this trope should be reworked into a strictly visual artistic style trope.

That's three tropers other than me pointing out issues before troper/Insignificant asked for evidence of issue. That was the point at which I started looking at the trope carefully and realized that the trope wasn't intended to refer to individual characters at all, and that Raso's point was that this trope was getting treated as an X Just X appearance trope, like Red Eyes, Blue Eyes, and the other eye tropes were.

I'm currently in agreement with troper/Routerie and am asking for an argument regarding how "Has hair colour X" is a trope, and not People Sit On Chairs. The current trope is intended to refer to hair colour as a method of distinguishing between characters, with either no significance attached to the colour, some in-universe explanation for why the hair colour is abnormal, or an explanation for why the hair colour is normal for group X. Proposed is to create sub-tropes for when the colour represents a character's personality.

see post 6

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

The fact that someone designs a character with an impossible hair color breaks reality, it is a character design trope. I just wanted to beat the blue out of this damn trope as any break out the crayons impossible color (pink, green, blue, cherry red, orange (not fiery red, bright orange.), purple etc) fits this trope Blue is nothing special.

The suggestion of sorting into subtropes was intended to be just that, sorting by the major impossible hair color. Guesses what and why they chose that color would be "might or maybe" (like Rose Haired Girl) IE Blue Hair might mean Shy Blue-Haired Girl, it might mean they are smart, it might be they use water or ice powers, the Blue Oni in Red Oni, Blue Oni, (purple getting much the same treatment) Or it might blue for the sake of blue. Any specific must subtrope would be just that a subtrope. Maybe it was a bad idea.... (I do intend to YKTTW Strange Green Haired Girl / Guy sometime soon as in animes green hair usually means the person is strange.)

A few (not many) works though an impossible hair color actually means something beyond the break from reality as a whole, like Haruhi only aliens have this (with one odd man out who might be hinting that she might be.), Gundam Seed where only the Genetically Engineered or otherwise enhanced have them, or Digital Devil Saga where only those from the Junkyard have them and they treat black hair as an impossible hair color when one with one shows up.

edited 8th Nov '11 2:37:53 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Except, we did a large scale wik check last time this came up and according to that blue isn't a big deal. The literally people aren't confined to this trope. They're an issue for Special Efforts to deal with. The issue you're talking about doesn't actually exist.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

If it is repeatedly coming up as something people do in new wicks (even in a minority as blue hair itself isn't the most popular impossible hair color, that being purple.) and people still haven't stopped it after the last cleanup... Isn't that a big sign for a rename or redirect swap? Especially one so easy as You Gotta Have Colorful Hair.

Every anime page I look at (from a show that is like a year old or less) and someone has blue hair it says "Literal" on it.

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Yes, impossible hair color breaks reality. You can apply that to a work's whole art style. But once we've established that a work breaks reality in that manner, does any one character's abnormal hair color hold any significance? No, none at all. Unless the specific color is supposed to represent something, in which case it's an example for the subtropes.

On the other hand, what if just one character has strange hair in a work that otherwise has normal hair colors? This would seem to mean something. I suppose it says something about that character - he's a rebel, or he's weird, or he's an alien or whatever. But in these cases, the trope is that meaning. It's more than just "breaking reality."

edited 8th Nov '11 2:58:18 PM by Routerie

I agree with the notion of taking the "literally" problem to special efforts. An example of another trope being affected would be the Girl Genius character page which discusses the fact that Gil uses Shock and Awe to implement a Shock and awe strategy.

That doesn't mean that this trope doesn't need renaming, but a rename might be a band-aid on a broken leg.

That's not something wrong with this trope though. The literally thing is effecting every single trope that could possibly be read literally. No matter what we rename this, it will have some different literally issue. All tropes are picking it up. It's the new big wiki meme. The only way to take care of it is to make a special efforts thread to kill the use of literally.

edited 8th Nov '11 3:03:45 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

The fact that it broke reality is it's significance as a trope.

The fact that the artist broke out the 108 pack of crayons and decided to break reality and go with X for Y character is the trope.

very much disagree it's a problem (with a very easy fix) that will only continue with each work page created.

Its a Character design trope that is connected to that character. It is different from Only Six Faces as that is an aggregate trope with the artist not the work or the character.

edited 8th Nov '11 3:36:10 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

But by itself, it says nothing about the character, only about the creator. Regarding the character, it's as important as sitting on a chair. Regarding the work itself, it tells us that the creator is going to use the colour somehow, generally to make the character stand out more than Only Six Faces would allow. Only Six Faces isn't a character trait, why should this one be?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Because this trope has nothing to do with Only Six Faces and the majority of the works that it shows up in don't use that trope. Those two are only used in conjunction in anime which is not the only medium that this trope is associated with.

At it's core, this is a character design trope. A character is given an unnatural hair colour. The reasons need never be explained, but this is always a deliberate choice on the part of the creator.

edited 8th Nov '11 3:39:21 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Only Six Faces is also a character design choice. Nothing you've said can't be applied to that trope, or any of the others I listed earlier.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

The difference between this and Only Six Faces is that that trope requires and entire work to be the trope. Thus as it requires a whole work, it's a work trope.

This only requires a single character to have this done to their character design. Thus as it only needs one character it's a character trope. It's the same way Red Eyes, Take Warning is a character trope. It just needs to be there on one person.

edited 8th Nov '11 3:49:15 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

And the character doesn't break reality. Reality's already been broken by the work overall. Could you say that Stewie from Family Guy is an example of Negative Continuity? Yeah, weird things happen that inexplicably have no consequences on him, but that's an attribute of the show overall. His lacking continuity doesn't mean anything.

edited 8th Nov '11 3:51:01 PM by Routerie