Misused: Good Colors Evil Colors

So recently I wanted to add an example to this page, but almost immediately after trying to edit it, I realized something was wrong. The page suffers from a lot of indentational problems, natter, and zero-context examples, but that's not why I'm here. The trope itself suffers from a lot of misuse, on-and-off the main trope page.

I checked out 120 wicks, the results of which I posted in Sandbox.Good Colors Bad Colors Wick Check. It's a lot to read, which is why I'm giving the link instead of posting everything directly. (And yes, I know I miswrote the name of the trope in the title )

My criteria was pretty simple: I was looking for examples that demonstrated an in-universe color contrast between opposing moral forces, and had enough context to let me know that, yes, one group was good and one group was evil.

My results were as follows:

Of the 120 wicks, only 41 of them could be considered "proper" examples. This left 79 examples where the trope was either being blatantly misused (a substitute for Color-Coded Characters or as a substitute for existent tropes like Evil Wears Black or Red and Black and Evil All Over), where the example was too non-contextual to properly tell, or where the wick was either in a neutral/misc category (trope description, troper sandbox) or too confusingly written for me to properly sort it.

This really doesn't bode well, and the main trope page shows similar examples of misuse. The biggest trend seems to be that people use the trope to mean "any time a character wears a stereotypical color for their alignment", whether or not any other characters in the setting follow suit, whether or not there's a more fitting subtrope, and whether or not the character is even properly part of that alignment.

...So, yeah. There's some cleanup to be had here.

(This is my first time opening a TRS thread, so I hope it's up to standards, and I hope I did the Wick Check properly as well.)

Edited by WarJay77 on May 29th 2019 at 10:22:33 AM

I'll add that this looks like it should be a NRLEP trope. Some of the Real Life section is applying a trope indexed under various villain indexes (including Obviously Evil) to modern politics, while some of the section (like the example about the economic terms "in the black" and "in the red") isn't even about people (not directly, at least) and thus isn't about morality (it's also listed as inverted; I'm pretty sure examples from real life can't count as being played with, especially since the origin of that specific color usage isn't clear and may not be an inversion).

Also, the description is overly long. The list of colors could easily work as part of the Analysis page, which is currently very short, only listing the connotations of two subtly different shades of a color.

Edit: Did a Ctrl+F for "in general" in the list of on-page examples and removed the general examples I came across.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 30th 2019 at 4:18:43 AM

Yeah, this could use cleanup.

Why isn't this NRLEP again?

I didn't even realize it was accepting Real Life examples. What?

Definitely cut and prohibit real life examples of this trope. Hero and villain are specific roles in a written story, and Real Life is not a pre-written-and-scripted novel/movie/etc. Hence, calling Real Life people heroes or villains would be shoehorning.

The problem is clear, but I'm not sure on the solution. Color and appearance tropes all have a problem with misuse and ZC Es. The concept and definition of the trope seems ok though. We could perhaps shorten the description to ensure people actually read it, but I dunno how much that would help.

And yeah, real life examples shouldn't be allowed.

Trimming the description could definitely help. I would not be surprised if the second misuse category (examples with no contrast) were caused by people reading the list of colors and assuming that because a color is on the list, it's automatically in-line with the trope to say "Captain Evil wears Black".

Bumping with an idea. Maybe changing the title will help? If we switch to a title that makes it clear this trope is about a color contrast, then that will at least help curb misuse. I'm thinking Moral Color Contrast or something like it.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 22nd 2019 at 9:04:05 AM

Er...anyone there?

Another thought- would giving this an Example Sectionectomy help? It seems like the biggest problem with misuse is people listing the supertrope when a subtrope applies better.

Hmmm...good point.

I really don't want this effort to die prematurely, but I'm at a loss for what to do here.

I'd be in favor of distilling examples to sub-tropes. Oh, and NRLEP too.

Crowner, maybe? Discussion is very stagnant here...

The first, minor issue I see is that the description goes on for way too long. The color list is the key part of the trope, and I don't even see it begin until I scroll. A couple of paragraphs ramble on about where they think certain color associations came from. That kind of trivia can be cool sometimes, but it really uses up a lot of space here and doesn't even commit.

Otherwise, my suggestion would be to require formatting for this trope. List good characters and bad characters (and neutral characters if applicable) in separate bullet pointed lists. I'd say maybe requiring at least two characters in each list to at least attempt to show it isn't a complete fluke. These characters have to be associated with a color from their respective list in the trope description.

Each character should need at least a token description of their hero or villain status and exactly how they're associated with said color, but being categorized already should hopefully narrow down complete misuse. Neutral characters would require further description, especially for the transition characters who may be going from good to evil or vice versa.

Edited by Jokubas on Jul 15th 2019 at 1:10:25 AM

I'd like that method. Examples that can't be made to fit this format would be moved to a subtrope.

Maybe the description can be chopped and moved to Analysis?

...So crowner sound good?

Probably, since this thread has been up since late May.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/crowner.php/PageAction/GoodColorsEvilColors?open=all#1p4oq906

Votes bump? Or do we call? The votes have been stable for a while...

I think that we should make an analysis of this (super?)trope and put the paragraphs before the list in there.

Currently, there are two options with consensus:

• Make NRLEP has 12 up-votes and 0 down-votes
• Trim description has 8 up-votes and 2 down-votes

Not convinced this alone will fix the issue, but it's something.

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 7th 2019 at 4:27:15 AM

...Mods?

Can we start with trimming the description? It really is bad.