The Grand Unified Appearance Trope Clean-up:

Good point. I made a request in the Locked pages thread taking that into account.

Though I do think Significant Green-Eyed Redhead may need a look from this thread at some point.

Time to start dewicking Green Eyes?

Aye, I've begun by deindexing and cutting the subpages.

Guys, just to point this out, as I noticed it on one of the works I follow.

Don't automatically move Green Eyes examples to Significant Green-Eyed Redhead. The problem with SGER is that it cannot apply to works where You Gotta Have Blue Hair is in effect. As a result, there may be examples of green-eyed redheads who are plot-significant but, being in a YGHBH work, they are not eligible for the SGER trope.

I've just undone one case so I wanted to flag it here, hopefully before too many are done.

On a personal note, I'm not sure why YGHBH is a disqualifying factor as there are examples of plot-significant green-eyed redheads in such works ^note The character I've just undone frankly should be an SGER candidate and was only in Green Eyes in the first place because of this disqualifier but I wasn't involved in the creation of the trope, so I don't know what the argument behind it is. The warning is there in the trope description, however.

So, yes, I agree. I do think Significant Green-Eyed Redhead needs looking into at some point.

Edited by Wyldchyld on May 7th 2019 at 11:59:55 AM

I guess its because having unusual colors like blue or pink would make the redhead not stand out as much?

Good to note. In general I've been trying to delete ZC Es and move examples with actual context to other tropes, but I'll be more careful about that qualifier.

Yeah, I have mixed feeling about YGBH and other appearance tropes. Sometimes it definitely is just random to make characters look more different, but in other cases the hair/eye color is actually used for symbolism in addition (the Tsundere has red hair, the Emotionless Girl has blue hair, etc). Some meaningful appearance tropes like Cherry Blossom Girl, Rei Ayanami Expy even require it.

The problem is that the vaguer the trope, the easier it is to just make stuff up. And Significant Green-Eyed Redhead is pretty vague and gets most of is currency on how rare the combo is in real life. In a work where everyone has unusual features (that might not even be supposed to be taken literally), having this specific hair/eye combo doesn't really mean anything.

I just wanted to say I've been removing some wicks of Green Eyes, and this gem has to be shared:

• Green Eyes: Not that they really indicate anything though.

It sums it up just about perfectly.

Edited by XFllo on May 9th 2019 at 7:32:23 AM

Where is that? EDIT: San kyuu.

Edited by Brainulator9 on May 9th 2019 at 12:42:53 PM

I previously removed Green Eyes from the Trope Epitaph because, as someone else pointed out, it was added prematurely (discussion was still ongoing). I undid my removal now that the decision for what to do with it was finalized. If this edit was also premature, I apologize.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 11th 2019 at 4:12:53 AM

I think Artsy Beret is ready to launch, but I wanted to get permission since this is a costume trope.

A lot of appearance tropes have problems because they're things that are common and easy to use by accident, or for color contrast, with no intended symbolism (i.e. almost every color trope). Berets are unusual enough that use of them as a costume is rarely by accident. The fact that it is a Dead Horse Trope with an extensive history I think supports its existence as a valid trope. There's even an entry for it on Stock Costume Traits (not added by me).

Since I have gotten no response to the contrary, planning on launching this soon.

Green Eyes got successfully dewicked. Yay! :-)

Time to move on?

- To what?

We had discussed making a possible trope for "eye color means magic powers" that may or may not be merged with Purple Eyes.

While de-wicking various eye tropes, I made some changes to Sandbox.Eye Color Symbolizes Magic and added examples that seemed legit. Does this seem workable? Or should we axe this idea once and for all.

Since the proposal does not seem to have much interest, why don't we move on to Grey Eyes? This has a similar problem to Green Eyes of being a common, normal eye color with no consistent meaning, and seems to be covered by other eye tropes. The trope has a list of different meanings:

1. "Spiritual "prophet" characters, blind or otherwise, will have either gray or light blue eyes that are often described as "looking right through you"" Covered by Prophet Eyes
2. "Gray eyes can also characterize a cold, strong-willed, and unapproachable character often with an "ideas above people" mentality." Functionally the same as Icy Blue Eyes, and it's often difficult to distinguish blue and grey eyes
3. "They can also mean innocence—frequently paired with golden hair." 'Innocent Blue Eyes, blue and grey are difficult to distinguish
4. "In the real olden days, gray eyes were the absolute height of beauty." What Beautiful Eyes!
5. "During The American Civil War, superstitions characterized gray eyes with danger: namely that said person was most likely an extremely competent marksman". Seems Too Rare to Trope, no actual examples on the page. Can be made an entry on Forgotten Trope

I'm gonna recommend that we cut or disambiguate Grey Eyes. We could make Icy Gray Eyes (and perhaps Innocent Gray Eyes) redirects for Icy Blue Eyes and Innocent Blue Eyes.

Edited by naturalironist on Jun 23rd 2019 at 12:36:52 PM

Grey Eyes aren't really normal. At least from what i know.

According to this site, there is a difference between "true" grey eyes and light blue eyes. The former are rare to impossible, while blue eyes are the second most common eye color. I think in practice most people don't know the difference (the page image for Gray Eyes is the latter for sure), and irrelevant hair-splitting about what precise color a character's eyes are is one of the main problems these eye tropes create.

Gray Eyes are definitely possible (and not especially unusual in certain parts of the world), so they're not a break from reality and thus not inherently tropeworthy.

Sounds good to me. You have demonstrated that all of its meanings are covered by other tropes, and the fact that the page image is actually light blue is particularly convincing.

I think the proposal for what do with Grey Eyes is good. All of it's supposed meanings belong to other tropes.

I agree.

What about silver eyes that denote some lunar, divine or mystical connection that's singled out in the work as being extremely special, but gets troped under Grey Eyes because there's nowhere else to put them?

I'm asking because there's definitely at least one work on this wiki that is using Grey Eyes for that purpose — so, yes, the association with Grey Eyes is an example of trope misuse, but it will need to identify what trope it should be moved to.

And the in-universe legend about people with silver eyes actually uses the above example about these eyes symbolising a warrior who excels in their combat skills above all others (so it's not quite a Forgotten Trope even if it still probably qualifies for Too Rare to Trope).

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jun 30th 2019 at 7:13:55 PM

Hey guys, over at the ZCE thread I brought up the problem with Fingerless Gloves, which is an appearance trope with a lot of no-context examples. Any advice on how to handle this?

To add I have a rough on-page examples check - "rough" because someone may or may not be more generous about whether the badass/cool is implied and therefore holds up, etc. These are categorized by the indications on the page

• Badass: 30
• Snobbery/high-class: 8
• Poverty: 10
• Rough and ready type: 16
• To look cool/Rule of Cool: 27
• Purpose stated but their function has nothing to do with fingerlessness: 13
• Zero-context example: 166
• The gloves function as gloves (e.g. they're warm), nothing else stated that can be placed into other categories: 50

Fingerless Gloves should probably be split into a few tropes with names and descriptions that focus on their meanings. Badass, rough and ready, and Rule of Cool all seem like they could be one trope together. Poverty/hobo gloves seem like another distinct trope. The high class uses should be moved to High-Class Gloves. All other uses seem like People Sit on Chairs.

For the sake of doing things one at a time, it would be nice to keep moving on Grey Eyes as there seems to be some momentum on that.

~Wyldchyld I think those uses could fall under Prophet Eyes. Potentially Elemental Eye Colors as well; "Moon" is listed under other elements on Elemental Powers. And of course, Color-Coded Eyes is the place for meaningful eye colors that don't fit into other tropes.

Edited by naturalironist on Jul 1st 2019 at 6:57:05 AM

Yeah, I didn't intend to derail the thread, I just wanted some extra opinions. I'll gladly bow-out to let you work on Gray Eyes.