Rename (alt titles crowner 5/15): Purple Is The New Black

The name makes it seem like a fashion choice (and some wicks do that), when it's about purple highlight or replacement for black in situations where outright black won't do.

Wick check (20 out of 53, with 54 inbounds):

• A Profile: Seems to be correct.
• Argai: The Prophecy: Misuse for purple clothing on a villain.
• Black Knight: Misuse for a villain wearing purple.
• Black Magic: Hard to tell from the context.
• Breath Of Fire II: Hard to tell from the context.
• God Hand: No context
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: Aside from the description wick, the two examples make it hard to tell what fits, but one of the wicks is an outright sinkhole (as in even if the character is an example, the wick is in the wrong place to pothole it).
• Graceful Ladies Like Purple: Misuse for purple in clothing.
• Hair Color Dissonance: Correct, even if potholed on the wrong word.
• Heroic Albino: Correct
• Kamen Rider Double: Looks like a misuse, as it's stating purple and black are distinct points of the villain's colors.
• Characters.Kinetic Adventures: Need context.
• Characters.Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: Would be correct, but it's a troper WMG.
• Characters.Magic The Gathering: Not an inversion, since it's just a color choice, not a highlight or replacement.
• Characters.Mahou Sentai Magiranger: No context.
• Characters.Revolutionary Girl Utena: Technically not this trope, as it's more plain, old You Gotta Have Blue Hair.
• Shaolin Wuzang: Correct, I guess.
• Shiny Midnight Black: Correct
• Spiral Knights: Misuse. Depicting dark guy elements as purple is just Good Colors, Evil Colors.
• Characters.Sugar Shooter: Correct

• Breath Of Fire II is correct. Her wings are said to be black in-game, but drawn purple.
• Characters.Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha should be You Gotta Have Blue Hair, I think.

On the other hand, isn't this basically You Gotta Have Blue Hair for purple and applied to everything else?

I think a namechange to something like Purple Is Black would be enough to fix any confusion. Saying "the new black" implies more of a fashion statement, which seems to be the cause of most of the misuse.

edited 4th Feb '12 5:26:39 AM by Feather7603

Yeah, Purple Is Black should keep people for interpreting this as "Purple is good."

Darkness Is Purple would be better still, as this trope is about darkness or the colour black being represented as purple, not the other way round.

I disagree. Blue is also very common for darkness.

Still, we should probably start by agreeing that a namechange is what we're going to do.

Maybe what we really need to do is broaden this trope to any instance of black being represented as a dark colour.

That sounds like a good idea. Purple and blue are the most common ones, but I've also seen shades of red used for stylistic reasons. It's not really a different trope to represent black with other colours than purple.

What related tropes do we have?

• You Gotta Have Blue Hair is essentially this for hair, as it's mostly an anime trope, and most anime characters are supposed to have black hair, like Japanese people. Some people like Superman also falls into this.
• Hair Color Dissonance is related, but distinctly different.

Are there any others?

edited 4th Feb '12 8:39:01 AM by Feather7603

Well if expanded, this could be renamed to Highlighting Black, or something along those lines.

edited 4th Feb '12 10:00:52 AM by DragonQuestZ

Black Substitutes? Highlighting is really only part of it anyway, and not present in examples where a pure purple is representing black.

The description needs some work, it doesn't even go into the fact that animation is done with a black outline around everything then color is added inside it, (Example: [1]◊ look at the way the hair is outlined in black and used to show detail) so black on black loses detail and will even start to bleed on a black background.

To avoid that there are 4 colors mainly used Purple, blue, brown, and a dark gray (which gets compared to Shiny Midnight Black [2]◊.) (Brown is boring and really dark brown can be ugly so it is rarely used)

Adaptation hair color change happens mainly because of this (and adding variety to characters that look a little too much alike.)

edited 4th Feb '12 1:28:36 PM by Raso

That's not an anime thing, Raso. That's a general visual media thing.

edited 4th Feb '12 10:30:39 AM by shimaspawn

"Black Substitutes?"

That could mean a lot of things.

I meant to say "Animation" as static drawings such as Manga can get away with black (especially some works like Negima and Hayate No Gotoku which add a little white border around their characters just to avoid this and ease of putting hand drawn characters into CG backgrounds.) but you add movement and things get messy.

edited 4th Feb '12 10:41:01 AM by Raso

Bump

{checks page}

... How? That sort of makes sense to what the trope is about (purple being the replacement for black), and it points out that despite the fact that they're black, they tend to show purple when used. (their symbol, for those without context, are these little labels on the USB-style Memories, usually a shape the memory is named for bent to resemble the first letter of that word, for example, Skull's a skull with some outlines to make it an S)

Not to mention that the Joker and Skull memories were used by good guys (though Skull's case was a different story).

Just felt like pointing that out.

edited 15th Feb '12 2:24:27 PM by Psyga315

Some of the examples on the page itself are bad. For example, the Transformers one that list Decepticons with purple. They are actually purple. Not black. Purple is not used for black in this case, as seen by actual black decepticons (The Insecticons, Skywarp).

Empty page action crowner hooked.

Added a couple options.

Bumping for more votes.

So, just to make sure I have the definition right, do examples like this count?

• Ganondorf's attacks in Super Smash Bros Melee and Brawl produce a purple haze and cause enemies to turn purple for a half-second on connecting akin to fire, electricity, and aura attacks.

It's only for when purple is used to represent the color black, and not when purple is used to represent evil or badness in general, right?

That has nothing to do with the trope. I think we already have Magic Is Purple around here somewhere.

[edit] Supernatural Is Purple.

edited 5th Apr '12 11:15:36 AM by lebrel

Yeah that has nothing to do with this.

This is When something is intended to be black they will use blue or purple to create a black substitute.

Like this image here. The one on the left her Magical Girl name is "Cure Black" but her outfit is a dark blue. (the one on the right one's hair is this too fitting Blonde, Brunette, Redhead it is suppose to be black.)

edited 5th Apr '12 11:20:56 AM by Raso

The Moon Empress in Yaiba wears black, which can bee seen in covers for the manga. The anime made her outfit look mostly purple. That is an example of this trope.

And if the expansion wins the crowner, most examples of Shiny Midnight Black hair would count when they are highlighted with blue.

edited 5th Apr '12 12:31:43 PM by DragonQuestZ

Wouldn't this be a supertrope to Shiny Midnight Black?

Depends on if it's always highlighted that way. Doesn't look like it though.

edited 5th Apr '12 1:15:12 PM by DragonQuestZ