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** I thought the same when the first book came out, but then the second book took us into how things actually work at the Green Dragon, and now I'm not so sure. [[spoiler: High-colour semen is provided by the Rainbow Brotherhood, and they're depicted as rather dejected, despised figures who desperately need the money for themselves or the people they're supporting - much like sex workers in ''our'' world. Conversely, National Colour is a very prestigious career track, and we see that a Colourman is treated with great respect and awe. So why would a Colourman be involved in Rainbowing?]]
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** Confirmed in ''Red Side Story''. [[spoiler:''Homo coloribus'' are humans that have been genetically engineered by Utopia, Inc to form a future spacefaring civilisation, because the Earth will not stay human-habitable forever. Chromatacia is a 25-generation experiment to see how they do on their own.]]
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** It's also mentioned that Holden has ''never'' presided over a Mildew case. He presumably ''knows'' about it, but he doesn't use it.
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[[WMG: The ''Literature/ShadesOfGrey'' universe is the future ''{{Pokemon}}'' universe]]
You read it here first! Cities in this universe have similar or identical names to those in the first-generation ''{{Pokemon}}'' games (Vermillion, Cerulean, Cinnabar), and the wilderness around them is populated with strange animals, all of which have (apparently) naturally-occurring barcodes somewhere on their bodies, taxa numbers that once upon a time would have been used to log them into the Pokédex.

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[[WMG: The ''Literature/ShadesOfGrey'' universe is the future ''{{Pokemon}}'' ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' universe]]
You read it here first! Cities in this universe have similar or identical names to those in the first-generation ''{{Pokemon}}'' ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' games (Vermillion, Cerulean, Cinnabar), and the wilderness around them is populated with strange animals, all of which have (apparently) naturally-occurring barcodes somewhere on their bodies, taxa numbers that once upon a time would have been used to log them into the Pokédex.
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[[WMG: Homo Coloribus is the result of nanotech wired into the nervous system.]]
The effects of certain colors, causing mild hallucinations or acting as an anesthetic, might be possible to implement using pure biology, but the "Herald" which appears during the Gordini Recalibration seems too complex to be something implanted biologically--it's a complete set of visual and auditory stimuli which are apparently exactly the same for each individual. The Previous seem to have some command of nanotech, based on the Perpetulite and the Mildew, so maybe that's how it's accomplished: nanites attached to the eyes or optical nerve interpret certain specific colors as commands to perform certain functions (numb parts of the body, cause hallucinations, [[spoiler:enable night-vision, disable the Mildew response.]]) The Herald is a feedback mechanism, letting someone know that their nanites have received input and that they're working--sort of like an "Installing updates. Please do not turn off your computer" message, but for your central nervous system.
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[[WMG: The ''ShadesOfGrey'' universe is the future ''{{Pokemon}}'' universe]]

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[[WMG: The ''ShadesOfGrey'' ''Literature/ShadesOfGrey'' universe is the future ''{{Pokemon}}'' universe]]
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[[WMG: Homo Coloribus and indeed the entire Collective are a huge experiment to test something unknown or a bizarre future theme park, perhaps both.]]
It would explain all the limitations on space and population that the citizens have to deal with, as well as the strict adherence to the seemingly arbitrary Rules. The barcodes on everything can be explained as the people running the show wanting to keep track of everything in their mock environment. The line about giant swans flying so high they sometimes don't seem like swans suggests that they are planes doing fly-overs of the environment and the Fallen man [[spoiler:who seems to be a pilot who didn't eject safely]] supports this. Then of course the bizarre limits on a Collective citizen's vision, their differing appearance to modern humans and their heavy lifelong condition suggest heavy genetic alteration. This doesn't really explain the presence of RiffRaff though.
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fix Namespace...+


* Point 3: The whole "invaders" angle also gives them good reason to hate Homo Coloribus the way they do.

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* Point 3: The whole "invaders" angle also gives them good reason to hate Homo Coloribus the way they do.



[[WMG: It's all an experiment run by [[{{Paranoia}} Friend Computer]]]]

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[[WMG: It's all an experiment run by [[{{Paranoia}} [[TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}} Friend Computer]]]]



<<|WildMassGuessing|>>
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Jane mentions late in the book, that [[spoiler: swatchmen are generally lackeys for Head Office, infecting unruly citizens with the Mildew.]] Although she believes that Holden is not an evil man, it's entirely possible that he is edging Eddie on, pushing him forth into situations where he will either be captured by agents of Head Office or inadvertently reveal pertinent information to them about the resistance. After all, it takes a pretty shitty dad to [[spoiler: [[RapeIsOKIfItsFemaleOnMale set up his own son to be raped.]]]]

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Jane mentions late in the book, that [[spoiler: swatchmen are generally lackeys for Head Office, infecting unruly citizens with the Mildew.]] Although she believes that Holden is not an evil man, it's entirely possible that he is edging Eddie on, pushing him forth into situations where he will either be captured by agents of Head Office or inadvertently reveal pertinent information to them about the resistance. After all, it takes a pretty shitty dad to [[spoiler: [[RapeIsOKIfItsFemaleOnMale [[DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale set up his own son to be raped.]]]]
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[[WMG: The original humans invented space travel and left Earth. The people who were left behind have been subject to intense genetic alteration and/or testing.]]
Jane specifically mentions [[spoiler:the "lights on the dark part of the crescent moon," which apparently look like stars. These seem a lot like moon bases. Taken into account with the other lights that streak across the sky, some of which are probably meteorites, some of which might be satellites, and others of which might be space stations, you get what a spacefaring civilization might look like to an earthbound human...ish.]] Perhaps the Fallen Man was meant to be looking in on the remnants to see how they're doing when his lander failed or something.
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*** Jane seems to think so. And it's not like they don't have plenty of good reasons to, the Collective hoards all the good land and Previous artifacts they can get their hands on, forcing the [=RiffRaff=] to scrape a meager existence in the wilds (which are infested with megafauna and yateveos, the latter of which was specifically created by the Collective to kill [=RiffRaff=]!)
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** Do they really hate Homo Coloribus? The only ones we actually meet seem not to go much beyond dislike, and most of the what we hear about the RiffRaff is probably just propaganda.
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** Alternatively, by crazy etymology, "The Digineous" could mean the opposite to ''indigenous'', and ''they're'' the outsiders.
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** This was something I thought as well, going through the book. [[spoiler: Matthew Gloss' actions can be seen as creepily paternal, particularly offering Eddie the opportunity to join National Colour.]]
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** That seems very unlikely, given that they can reproduce and everything. ArtificialHumans, perhaps, but RidiculouslyHumanRobots seem unlikely, especially given the fact that the Bestiary on the website does show some ''genuinely'' robotic 'animals' such as the Asimov Horse.
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** But that's kind of the point - the society is so messed up that even a reasonably decent man will do something that unpleasant. Pimping out your own children is endemic.
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** [=RiffRaff=] can [[spoiler: get the Mildew]], there's a mention of some captives that did (most captives do, it's implied). It might have been a lie, like most things concerning [[spoiler: the Mildew]], but it makes just as much sense that it's technically true that they caught it.
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[[WMG: The main characters are all robots, the Riff Raff are the remaining real humans]]
The Something That Happened was the robot revolution. The robots all had a massive sense of inferiority over the fact that they were not real creatures, Munsell's Epiphany was that if the robots did not know they were robots then they were free to live happy lives. The point of the Leap Backs is to bring science so low that no-one can even comprehend the idea of what a robot is. This is how everyone has a bar code and how they can have programmed responses to colours and sounds.
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[[WMG: The RiffRaff are the real future humans. Homo Coloribus are the result of extraterrestrial and human crossbreeding.]]
* Point 1: The RiffRaff seem to see at least more than one color and aren't affested by artificial colors (or at least it seems that [[spoiler: they can't get the Mildew]]), like us.
* Point 2: The RiffRaff refer to themselves as "The Digenous" as in indigenous, which means something along the lines of "the original inhabitants." If they (or their ancestors) considere(d) Homo Coloribus invaders, this name makes perfect sense.
* Point 3: The whole "invaders" angle also gives them good reason to hate Homo Coloribus the way they do.
* Point 4: The author even hints at in in [[http://www.jasperfforde.com/grey/ramblings.html this article]]. He says in the section "Colour Vision Deficiencies" that the fact that everyone can only see one color is near impossible in modern humans, leading one to "consider that Eddie and his kind are not like us at all." The colorblindness could be the result of a genetic defect caused by extraterrestrial and human DNA combining.

[[WMG: The Something That Happened was an alien invasion.]]
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