Unclear Description: Locked Into Strangeness

Roughly one third of examples are actually Disease Bleach and some others are just hard to decide with current descriptions of both. I think the difference should be made clearer, especially in the finer points: if Disease Bleach is "character's hair turns white from stress/trauma/disease", and Locked into Strangeness is "character's hair is (permanently) changed by supernatural incident", what is "character's hair turned white from supernatural-induced stress/trauma"?

From my point of view, any hair change caused by trauma should go to Disease Bleach, whatever the cause of the trauma was. Locked into Strangeness should take all other hair-changing incidents, like demon posession, spells, chemicals and the like.

From what I saw, some tropers who wrote examples in Li S used the same distinction (even linking to Disease Bleach), so I think it could work. Maybe changing the name of Disease Bleach to Trauma Bleach would help, too.

I can't see much of the difference at a glance because both are horrible names. Specifically, neither convey that they are solely about hair colors.

The difference as I understand it is that Disease Bleach is a gradual change over time, while Locked into Strangeness is an instant change. The latter is also not strictly about changing to white, but that is the most common use as far as I can tell. Essentially, Disease Bleach doesn't turn the hair white; it turns the new hair growing out white.

Locked into Strangeness is an awful name, though: it indicates absolutely nothing about what the trope is, neither the supernatural part nor the hair color part. I'm not surprised to see that this has only 50 inbounds.

From what I can see, Locked into Strangeness is an instantaneous, permanent change in hair color (not necessarily bleaching) as a result of contact with some supernatural or sci-fi influence. Disease Bleach is a gradual, permanent whitening/greying of the hair as a result of stress, malnutrition, illness, etc. Power Dyes Your Hair is an instantaneous but usually not permanent change in hair color as a result of gaining/using supernatural power.

I think those are sufficiently distinct, but Locked into Strangeness could use a rename and a description cleanup.

Disease Bleach is also a horrible name when compared to, say, Brain Bleach.

Well, I might be overthinking it, but since Disease Bleach specifically says that in real life the hair can't turn white when already grown, I thought that Disease Bleach is any white-by-stress change, gradual or not.

I agree that Locked into Strangeness is a bad name - the play on "lock" and "locks of hair" is painful, not to mention unclear. Disease Bleach isn't really that bad, though the closeness to Brain Bleach isn't too fortunate.

I still think that "hair turned grey by supernatural-induced stress" and "hair changed colour due to contact with supernatural" shouldn't be lumped together.

I think both tropes could use a rename.

Trauma Bleached Hair works for that one. Or a variant like Stress Bleached Hair or Disease Bleached Hair. I don't think there's any misused with that trope for things not relating to hair, but adding that to the name might help with finding it in the first place. I think a lot of the problems with people adding these examples to Locked into Strangeness is that people just don't know about Disease Bleach. On the other hand, I do like the pun about some opinions about the series...

I can't really think of a good name for Locked into Strangeness, though.

edited 11th Apr '12 5:55:35 AM by Feather7603

Since Disease Bleach has only <50 wikilinks total, let me do a "quick" Wick Check for it:

Zero Context

• Characters.Ace Attorney Prosecutors And Law Enforcement Officers (Godot)
• A Song Of Ice And Fire (Tropes A-I): "Lancel Lannister. Theon Greyjoy in A Dance with Dragons."
• Edgar Allan Poe: "Roderick in The Fall of the House of Usher."
• Characters.Infernal Devices
• Tanith Lee
• The Order Of The Stick (Tropes A-L): "Ian Starshine"
• The Dresden Files (Tropes A-M): "Justine in Blood Rites"

Ambiguous context and/or possible misuse

• Dye Hard (Gerard Way): "...going platinum blond in order to "method act" as The Patient for The Black Parade."
  • Trivia.My Chemical Romance
  • Trivia.The Black Parade
• George W Bush: "The stress placed on him during his presidency made him look much older by the time his presidency ended than when he was first sworn in."
• Hair Color Spoiler (Tales Of Destiny): "A One Degree of Separation twist is hidden by the fact that one character's hair changed color..."
• Half Prince: "Happens to the Big Bad as a result of his chronic illness."
• Hayate The Combat Butler: "Isumi's hair is turned white when she uses too much of her power during the Athens arc."
• Heroic Albino (Diablo): "TPTB suggest that he gained his pale skin and bleached hair from years of studying in tombs, crypts, and other dark and sickly places. Or maybe getting scared silly is an occupational hazard."
• Hillary Rodham Clinton: "Her hair is grayer now than it was when she took her oath as Secretary of State, and she has been looking increasingly more haggard as she deals with a rather delicate international situation."
• Last Scenario: "Inverted; Ethan was blond until he got buried in biorite for three years."
  • Characters.Last Scenario
• Characters.No6: "The reason for his white hair."
• Pastwatch The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus: "After Columbus has a near-death experience and a vision from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that turns out to have been sent by people from a previously existing timeline to create the one that led to the 23rd century setting of the novel, his hair starts rapidly turning white."
• WMG.Persona3: "Either that, or he bleached his hair (Official character design sports darker roots) or even the theory of hair color change due to trauma (though it's more on a contributing factor along with genetics but a dude who got it as early as 15 getting premature gray hair's pretty odd indeed.) Disease Bleach is ruled out (because he IS an athletic guy, after all)"
• Characters.Recess: "Said to get the white streak in his hair after seeing his brother make out with his girlfriend."
• The Elenium: "...it's hinted that his hair is the result of some hereditary version of Disease Bleach."
• The Omega Man: "rather Narmy, it kicks in instantly and just as instantly reverses when someone is cured."
• Characters.Warcraft Dressing: "Okay, so going from straw blond to silver on death is not that dramatic a change. Shut up. (Lark's skin being a creepy gray-blue is probably a more significant change.)"
  • Wyrmrest Accord

Correct

• All He Ever Wanted
• Recap.Doctor Who S 32 E 10 The Girl Who Waited (aversion)
• First Gray Hair
• Characters.Gosick
• Characters.Ice Heart
• Characters.The Order Of The Stick Greysky City
• White-Haired Pretty Girl

Related mentions

• Locked into Strangeness (compare)
• Skunk Stripe (overlap)

Lists and indexes

• Hair Tropes
• Indexitis
• Trope Names For A Band

edited 11th Apr '12 8:14:00 AM by Stratadrake

I think several of those ambiguous ones at least points in the right direction.

The real life examples with Clinton and Bush may be invalid as examples, but the use of the trope is correct.

The Diablo example is poorly potholed, but otherwise correct.

Otherwise, I can't really say much as I'm unfamiliar, but from just looking at it, Half Prince, Pastwatch The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus (depending on rapidness), and Characters.Warcraft Dressing seem correct. The Omega Man seems plain wrong.

We may need a higher level trope for Stress Inducing Aging and use this as a subtrope that's just for hair?

Several of the the wrong ones are clearly Locked into Strangeness material (Hayate The Combat Butler, Pastwatch The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus). Weird, considering I agree with Feather that people don't know about Disease Bleach, but whatever.

Maybe we could make a supertrope for all hair changing tropes? (Group Locked into Strangeness, Disease Bleach, Power Dyes Your Hair, maybe Power Makes Your Hair Grow, and provide a good dividing definition here - that would help clear up the confusion.

That aside, I'm for renaming both Disease Bleach and Locked into Strangeness. Trauma Bleached Hair sounds good (maybe even Trauma Bleached would do, since it sounds less like snowclone of Brain Bleach and more like a hair change). Locked into Strangeness... I don't know. Supernatural Hair Change is explanatory, but sounds godawful. Magic Hair Dye sounds good, but isn't much explanatory. Better ideas, anyone?

I support a rename.

Sooo... any other ideas?

That Hayate The Combat Butler example was more Power Burnout turned her hair white for a little while.

Rename both, or merge.

So, should I put a page action crowner up? With the options being:

• rename both
• rename both and create a supertrope for hair changing colour due to something or other
• merge as a trope for unnatural hair changes, with Types A,B,C for causes

anything else?

Clocking as inactive.

Locking up.