Misused: Blue Is Heroic

Regarding opposing red/blue emotion tropes, the contrast to Blue Is Calm would then be something like Red Is Passion, which would be a sister trope to Red Is Violent. (Probably not a super-subtrope situation, since violence is not necessarily tied to emotion.) 'Passion' covers a lot of things: anger, love, sexuality. The one common association it doesn't cover (as far I can think of) is danger. Red Is Danger I guess would be the super-trope to Red Is Violent.

Edited by Twiddler on Feb 11th 2021 at 8:07:57 AM

Red Is Hyper?

Anyway, should we set up a crowner to finalize the decisions?

Bump...

I think Blue is Calm is too vague. A lot of tropes like Red Oni Blue Oni, Heavenly Blue, True Blue Femininity or Water is Blue can be its subtropes. Blue always represents calmness or passivity, sometimes coldness (Blue is Cold). The trope Blue is Heroic is supposed to show blue as a color motif for heroes, the same way Red is heroic does. I don't think we need to change the name of the trope or make it disappear into Good Colors Evil Colors.

The issue is that there's no real connection between "Blue" and "Heroism". It's just a color some heroes sometimes wear.

Yes, that's the point. There's a missing super trope here.

The previously-discussed Blue Is Peaceful could be made as a subtrope to Blue Is Calm if there are enough examples to split off.

I agree with an idea to make Blue Is Heroic into Blue Is Calm (though I'd rather prefer the name Blue Is Tranquil), and with splitting off Blue Is Peaceful if there are enough examples.

Oh, and Christelle, Blue Is Heroic (much like Red Is Heroic) in themselves are just an example of chair-sitting. "A hero wears blue/red color" is not a tropable concept. There needs to be a meaning behind them wearing these colors, otherwise it's just "a guy is a hero, and he coincidentally bears some color which does not actually relate to his heroic nature", which, again, is just a chair-sitting.

There might be something tropable in blue being a main character color.

Maybe? Again though, why blue? What would it say about the character? What would the color represent?

That's the issue with tropes like this. Even if the pattern is observable, if they don't have actual meaning attached to them, they're not technically tropes.

Correlations have been observed between primary colors and heroes, and secondary colors and villains. (Primary-Color Champion, Secondary Color Nemesis) Power Rangers even made a joke about it:

Sure, but that doesn't mean blue itself, in isolation, has any special meaning not already covered by Primary-Color Champion.

Primary-Color Champion is about the combination of red and blue (and sometimes yellow), though. It's the subtrope of (as currently defined) Red Is Heroic and Blue Is Heroic.

Right. But what I'm asking is, what meaning does the color blue have beyond being common? What's the significance that makes it a worthy subtrope? "Common" doesn't mean "Tropeworthy".

Don't think Red Is Heroic is getting off scot-free here. We may need to check that one as well.

Is the "it" referring to Blue Is Heroic? I said Primary-Color Champion is the subtrope.

I think what we may be missing is a proper counterpart to Secondary Color Nemesis. As far as I can tell, Secondary Color Nemesis doesn't require a combination of colors, it's about a set of colors which may or may not be used together. Primary-Color Champion, on the other hand, is more specific. A proper Good Counterpart to Secondary Color Nemesis (again, if I'm reading that trope correctly) would be about good guys wearing primary colors, with Primary-Color Champion (as currently defined) being a subtrope of that.

Huh. I interpreted the other way around (BIH being the subtrope), but that just gives me even more questions. Such as: is Blue Is Heroic distinct enough to not just be The Same But Broader? (That really should be a thing). Does it have meaning beyond being common? If so, what's that meaning?

Unless we get to the bottom of those questions, this trope is doomed.

Edit: And I'm not talking about the proposed Blue Is Calm/Peaceful/Etc idea- just Blue Is Heroic itself.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 11th 2021 at 12:00:39 PM

Seconding Blue Is Peaceful and Red Is Passion. I think red being passionate is mentioned on its index, but nowhere else.

IDK, what's the meaning behind Secondary Color Nemesis and Primary-Color Champion?

I'm starting to lean towards making a proper counterpart to Secondary Color Nemesis and moving fitting Blue Is Heroic examples to that.

Yellow is kind of an odd one out, though. It's used for heroes (e.g. The Flash) but also for villains (see the page image for Secondary Color Nemesis).

And as far as all this goes, it's all subtropes of Good Colors, Evil Colors.

Not...quite. Because that trope is explicitly and specifically about the contrast. "Hero wears blue" wouldn't apply as an example of that trope unless there's a contrasting villain color. Thus, it's not a subtrope, since subtropes always apply to the supertrope.

Right, I meant primary-coloured good guys vs Secondary Color Nemesis is a Good Colors, Evil Colors subtrope.

Maybe... Main Character Colors?

https://www.logoshi.com/blog/how-to-choose-color-logo

https://happidistraktions.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/the-secret-behind-color-coding-your-characters/

https://comicsalliance.com/tags/color-theory/

There’s definitely something here. Blue is just a small part of that. If we can nail down the supertrope(s), there might not be any need for an item covering Blue, Specifically.

Edited by Twiddler on Mar 11th 2021 at 10:16:34 AM

Yeah, this is the conundrum...

Anyone else have input?

I think there could be merit with Main Character Colors but I think we still run into the same problems we had with Blue Is Heroic (and Red Is Heroic). What ever trope we create in place of Blue Is Heroic needs to focus on the associations behind the color and not so much the color itself. If we are still going to keep Blue Is Heroic is should be remade into something like Cool Blue Hero for rational “cool” heroes/anti heroes (not a great name but I needed something to express my build) and then we can build from there. I think we can still have Blue Is Calm for more general stuff that doesn’t involve heroes or protagonists

Bumping for more input.

I still think this should be added to Tropes in Aggregate.

I don't know. Even if it's common, I'm not convinced it's a trope, in aggregate or otherwise, if there's no extra meaning to it.