Clean up to match new definition NEW CROWNER 03/02/12: Greeneyed Redhead

It looks like a trope about aesthetics more than anything else. When a creator has a greater control over the visual appearance of their characters and doesn't have to obey basic rules of genetics, the Greeneyed Redhead is a common physical appearance because of the contrast in the colors. She's probably got a blue eyed blond and a brown eyed brunette friend as well. For some reason, this is just considered a stock appearance. It's not a particularly deep trope, it's just one that seems common.

Then it's like Pimped-Out Dress in the sense that most examples of that trope today are not for any deeper meaning than the artist things they look cool. That is largely the same with this trope.

Largely, yes. It's an aesthetic tropes. They're still tropes.

Yep same goes for Dark Skinned Blonde and Dark Skinned Redhead...

Not saying these dont need work, they do, just these are a trope.

Wait, I thought those were both about tans or something?

A bit off topic, but in case anyone is starting that YKTTW, it's "complementary colours", not "complimentary".

edited 11th Jan '12 12:52:59 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash

Blonde, Brunette, Redhead is a trope because it's a staple trio, the trope being the characters in said trio having a different hair colour IIRC. Pimped-Out Dress represents wealthness, or so says the description. Dark Skinned Blonde is associated with a particular kind of character. The same with Dark Skinned Redhead.

Greeneyed Redhead? Not so much. The characters, more often than not, don't even fit the description. We can take from them the green eyes (which is what people notice less) and they would be the same character with different eye colours. Our perception about them wouldn't change if we had known them with a different eye colour from the beginning.

Aesthetic tropes without anything else aren't really tropes, and that's what this trope fails. If you can change the appearance of a character and it changes nothing about said character then it isn't a real trope, because it will serve the same purpose it served before the change in appearance.

Without a purpose to serve it's not a good trope. It's People Sit On Chairs.

edited 11th Jan '12 1:21:22 AM by DrMcNinja

To people who say this trope is People Sit On Chairs:

Yes and no.

I'm usually the first person to doubt if a trope is really a trope, but here, I see a reason for it to exist. But should it exist as a separate trope? That's the question.

You see, I agree with you in one thing. I recently came to think that Green-Eyed Redhead is actually not a trope per se. Just like Redhead In Green or Orange/Blue Contrast. It's just a list of instances that follow a certain, quite popular, color scheme. It's a list, not a trope.

But I see a pattern with such lists. They're all examples of Common Color Combinations. I'm YKTTW'ing such a trope at the moment (here). In my opinion, one or another instance is not a trope per se, but a pattern formed by these instances is a trope.

I think, it's like Stock Foreign Name. "Russian Called Boris" is not a trope per se, but Stock Foreign Name is (though that page needs some cleanup btw, but that's another topic).

What do you think?

edited 11th Jan '12 3:36:25 AM by Zulfiqar

Right. Pimped-Out Dress is not Dresses Often Appear. It's Fancy Dress To Add Glamour And Convey Wealth. Dark Skinned Blonde is not Dark Skinned Blondes Often Appear (and if you life in California, you'd swear they don't appear very often at all). It's Exotic Character With Dark Skin And Blonde Hair To Add Mystery And Obscure Origin. Some people ignore this and add any dark skinned blonde; hence the page's open TRS discussion. Dark Skinned Redhead is not Dark Skinned Redheads Often Appear. It's Dark Skin Implies Energy And Adventure And Though With Dark Hair It Conveys A Muted Personality Red Hair Let It Retain Its Outdoorsy Implications. However, that thread too sees misuse, as discussed in its open Image Pickin' thread.

I think that could make a fine page. The individual entries would not be the individual characters with color schemes but the color schemes themselves. One entry would be "Green-Eyed Redhead," in would include a note on each trait's real-life rarity and will include a few examples before moving on to teal/orange or whatever.

edited 11th Jan '12 4:25:54 AM by Routerie

@Routerie: Yeah, that's what I meant. Combination, 5-7 examples to prove it's common. Next combination, etc. Just like Stock Foreign Name was intended to be (I'll still get to cleaning it up when I have the time).

For that you don't need this page. It would stay a list the same. You can mention in your YKTTW that it's a common combination and write a pair of examples, the most prominent ones. But having a list to hold every single example makes no sense at all. It would be the Russian Called Boris of Stock Foreign Name to your trope.

That said Redhead In Green is the same as this trope. However Orange/Blue Contrast makes an association to the colours and clearly explains it's purpose in the definition, that's what Green-Eyed Redhead and Redhead In Green lack, a purpose of their own.

edited 11th Jan '12 3:55:06 AM by DrMcNinja

@Dr Mc Ninja: Well, that's actually what I meant Sorry, I must've been a bit confusing in my explanation :)

I meant that I now support cutting Green-Eyed Redhead and similar pages, and make them into subsections of Common Color Combinations with 5-7 examples for each... if Common Color Combinations survives YKTTW and if it would be voted for launch by tropers, of course.

I disagree with you on Orange/Blue Contrast, though. Sure, its description is much more crafty that Green-Eyed Redhead's, but imo it still boils down to "orange and blue are contrasting and complementary colors, and they're used often in movie posters". All the stuff about invoking "fire and ice themes" etc. isn't really supported by most examples.

Oh, sorry then.

Really? I didn't really notice that, I looked a bit in the definition and nothing else. Redhead In Green was short enough to see that the examples failed hard. Well, if it has to be cut because the examples don't fit no problem about that.

And don't worry, your YKTTW seems pretty good. You can count with my hat ("And my bow" - "AND MY AXE!" )

edited 11th Jan '12 4:07:32 AM by DrMcNinja

I'm not really sure I'd want to delete this page. I think it's worth noting that it's a common type of color coding that has visual appeal. Much of visual design is determined by the author thinking "I think it looks cool" or "It is easier for me to draw" rather than any kind of deep seated logical emotive reason. It'd be like claiming greebles aren't a trope because they don't do anything.

@Dr Mc Ninja: Thanks :)

As for Orange/Blue Contrast... Well, you see, the problem about it isn't that the examples misunderstand the trope or something like that. The problem is that there isn't a trope in the first place, it's just a list of examples of the orange-blue combination. All the big words about it representing "fire and ice, land and sea, day and night, invested humanism vs. elegant indifference, good old fashioned explosions vs. futuristic science stuff" are just that - words; without any actual proof via examples.

@Deboss: I agree with your reasoning, but I don't think it warrants a trope page for each common color combination. Just because it's common, doesn't mean it's a trope per se - it's just an example of a bigger pattern. However, I think that the pattern itself (the aforementioned Common Color Combinations) may be a trope.

As I said, compare it with Stock Foreign Name. There's a lot of examples of Russians being called Boris in (Western) fiction. There's a lot more Borises than, say, Mikhails. But does it warrant a trope page called Russian Named Boris? And then Russian Named Ivan? And then Australian Named Bruce, etc.? No, those are just examples from a larger pattern - a pattern called Stock Foreign Name. That's why they belong as subsections on the Stock Foreign Name page, and not separate trope pages. Imo.

edited 11th Jan '12 4:31:36 AM by Zulfiqar

Ok, no prob, it's just that TL;DR and I just focused on the part explaining why it's a trope. Things that aren't tropes should be cut without batting an eye.

edited 11th Jan '12 4:30:28 AM by DrMcNinja

It's a pattern in fiction with a specific (if rather shallow) reason, visual appeal. It doesn't have to be a particularly deep trope to still be a trope.

@Dr Mc Ninja: Hey, a certain "batting an eye" called a crowner is still needed

@Deboss: No, I actually don't think that the reason Green-Eyed Redhead is much, much more popular than, e.g., Blue Eyed Redhead is visual appeal. Are you implying that Green-Orange is for some reason more appealing than Blue-Orange? Orange/Blue Contrast says otherwise.

So, the popularity of Green-Eyed Redhead isn't because it's "more visually appealing than other similar combinations". It's popular for a rather unexplained reason. It's just popular. And Common Color Combinations is my attempt to list all these, surprisingly popular, color combinations.

I'm not sure... what?

I'm not saying it's green is more appealing than blue. I'm saying that the specific combinations are fairly common on their own, and I dislike having an absolutely massive list of various color combinations that are appealing. There's specific sets of color combinations that seem to be appealing because they're featured more. We know they're appealing because they keep showing up over grey or brown eyes with red hair.

Exactly. This isn't a trope just because it's appealing. This is a trope because it's a distinct pattern in fiction. That's all you need for a trope. A distinct pattern in fiction. It deviates from reality in it's frequency. Deeper meaning is nice, but costuming tropes don't need to be deeper than that. Costuming Tropes are some of the shallower tropes on the page.

As for not fitting the trope description, as long as they have the proper colour combination, they fit the trope description. There are some of the easiest tropes to fit.

We don't say that a character doesn't have a Pimped-Out Dress because it doesn't have some deeper meaning. We look at it, go does it fit this stock visual yes/no. Airplane Arms, Pimped-Out Cape, Red Eye, these are all just stock visuals. Not everything needs to be Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory for it to be a trope.

Crowners and discussions decide if it's a trope or not, I'm not talking about cutting everything just like that.

Stock visual is not a trope if it doesn't mean anything else. Chair, table, TV, aren't tropes, yet there is a pattern to have them in current reality based works. Green-Eyed Redhead is not a trope for the same reason.

edited 11th Jan '12 5:06:53 AM by DrMcNinja

None of those are stock visuals. Those are just objects. A stock visual would be something like Cool Chair, Kotatsu, The Couch which are tropes. A specific way of making a look look that becomes a visual trope. Not just an object themselves. The things you're suggesting are more along the lines of person, which I agree is not a trope. But you're comparing apples to oranges. It's a logical fallacy and a sign that you have a very poor argument.

edited 11th Jan '12 5:13:05 AM by shimaspawn

But all your examples have significance.

• The Couch isn't couches, about more fictional living rooms than real living rooms having them. It's the couch in a sitcom that allows all the main characters to sit, facing the camera, for their conversations. Yeah, people literally sitting on chairs, but done in a specific manner for a storytelling purpose.
• Cool Chair is a little broad and not our best page, but its about chairs that are fancy or enhanced or slick - each is significant on its own, independent of any pattern; the trope is not Chairs Are Common.
• Kotatsus are definitely not a trope, no matter how common they are, but the Kotatsu page lists two tropes associated with them.
• Pimped-Out Dress has meaning in that it's pimped - it's elaborate, its glamorous, it cost a bundle. The trope is not Dresses Are Common, or even Attractive Dress.
• Pimped-Out Cape as some clear problems, but at least each cape is apparently notable on its own. We don't have a Blue Cape page.
• Red Eye is not about red eyes, which is not a trope without attached significance, but about a gesture one character uses to offend an opponent.
• Airplane Arms... yeah, we have some bad pages. We should clean it up. But once we do, we're left with a stance characters adopt to express happiness and feeling of victory and freedom - which is significant.

edited 11th Jan '12 5:58:09 AM by Routerie

Actually, Cool Chair is not a page to list "all fancy, slick and notable chairs". It's a subtrope of Rule of Cool, and was intended to mean "chairs that are over-the-top and improbable, but the authors expect the audience to think they are "cool" and therefore give in to Willing Suspension of Disbelief". In practice, sadly, many tropers treat it as "list of all chairs that we, the tropers, consider "cool". ...But that's a story for another thread, isn't it :)

I don't think "list all examples of X" are tropes.

That's actually the main thing we're fighting in the Everything's Better With X cleanup thread. E.g., people were using Everythings Rascally With Raccoons as a page to "list all examples of raccoons in fiction". We renamed it to Rascally Raccoon, and now it only lists raccoons who are rogues or mischief-makers, which is a trope (a stereotype, to be exact).

Yeah, raccoons are common in fiction, and many authors use raccoons. But "list all raccoons" is not a trope.

The same with "list all redheads with green eyes".

edited 11th Jan '12 6:29:47 AM by Zulfiqar

I think I'll just have to repeat myself from before, since I was not acknowledged:

"As I've been saying, the frequency in which a red-haired, green-eyed character is a main (or very important) character is not random. It's a deliberate costuming trope that I believe is chosen to reflect the character's "specialness". Red hair is uncommon. Green eyes are uncommon. In fact, I'd say the issue with there usually only being one red-haired, green-eyed character in single work is indicative of how fond creator's are of using this as a way to make a character unique and special. If tons of characters have it, yes, it's definitely notable, but it takes away from that character's specialness."

"Compare the live-action film to the literature, anime, western animation, and video games sections—it's much smaller in comparison because it's much harder to find red-haired, green-eyed actresses. Two are from Maureen O'Hara (probably the most famous green-eyed, red-headed actress ever), and one of them is digital and cosmetic make-ups and wigs.

My point is that it's not a random trope. They don't seem to be selecting any old hair color or any old eye color, there's a disproportionately large amount of creators who favor this color combination, and it's noticeable. The reason seems to be how striking it looks. If I had to guess, it's also that, since the colors are so rare, it makes the character look more unique."

"Red and green are the only two complementary colors (meaning colors that appear to make each other brighter with proximity) that humans can actually have. Combined with their rarity, I believe creators choose this combination to reflect perhaps the importance of a character or to make them look more dynamic and interesting. It's why we often see extremes in color in animation—why no one seems to have dirty blonde hair or mud brown hair, but platinum and chestnut. No one has watery blue eyes (except villains or ineffectual people), they have sky-blue eyes. It's to make them seem more unique and special, and better to "look" at."

There. A bit long, but these have been my general points—which no one has yet to address. This is why being unique is important to the trope. This is why this trope occurring only once or twice in-universe is actually relevant to it being a trope.

ETA: In short, Greeneyed Redhead is used to visually identify special or important characters.

edited 11th Jan '12 6:53:11 AM by helterskelter