Ambiguous Name: Supernatural Is Purple

To-do list:

• Since Supernatural Is Green and Supernatural Is Purple have been merged into Technicolor Magic, any examples that fit Technicolor Magic should be moved accordingly. Both Supernatural Is Green and Supernatural Is Purple have been disambiguated, so there may be a more fitting trope for a given example.

Supernatural Is Purple is a trope describing instances where the color purple is used to signify magic and/or the supernatural. There is a similar trope, Supernatural Is Green, for the same description, except substitute purple for green. There is also a TLP draft for the same trope, but instead it is Supernatural Is Blue. The only distinguishing factor between the three? The color used.
A wick check was done to see if there were any patterns within the examples covered by other tropes as well as seeing how general examples for both tropes are, and if merging the two tropes is a possibility, or if the concept is even a trope. The wick check findings are summarized below:

• 17/60 Supernatural Colored Trait or 28.3%
• 9/60 Magic Is Colored or 15%
• 4/60 Color-Coded Wizardry or 6.6%
• 11/60 Possible Shoehorns 18.3%
• 19/60 ZCE or 31.6%

The wick check shows a tendency towards ZCEs, with the next prominent usage being supernatural status indicated by a physical trait (usually eye color). I can see why the usage is varied, the definition is quite broad, aside from the color restriction. It boils down essentially to "supernatural is represented by X color" so I can't say this is really misuse, except for the shoehorns and examples that are actually Color-Coded Wizardry, so I guess a 25% misuse rate then. Something to note: while doing the wick check, I noticed that Supernatural Is Green has already gone through one rename for being unclear, so it being back here is not a great sign.
Here are a couple of different ideas I've stormed up:

1. Combine Supernatural Is Purple, Supernatural Is Green, and Supernatural Is Blue (along with other colors) into one general trope about how a strange color (in-universe) is indicative of supernatural origin.
2. Narrow definition of trope to specify either "Odd-colored trait is indicative of supernatural" or "magic is supernaturally colored"^note this would need to be settled on which colors count, otherwise we're heading into chairs territory.
3. Rename the trope(s): This would hopefully cut down on misuse and ZCEs as several of the no-context examples were just the trope name.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 28th 2022 at 8:12:56 AM

If we're renaming, I'll pitch Supernatural Color.

Opening

I prefer option one. I don't think all three tropes can stand on their own and their existence will encourage people to splinter off more color specific variants.

Edited by MacronNotes on May 1st 2022 at 3:43:09 PM

Option one, definitely. The color shouldn't matter more than what it symbolizes.

Option one

I posted a link to this thread in the Supernatural Is Blue TLP draft.

What's the difference between options 1 and 2, besides the combining? Seems like option 2 is just option 1, but with leaving the other Supernatural Is Color tropes alone.

Can we tag the TLP draft the way we tag the other tropes? Now that it's been bumped, people are just adding examples and stuff like normal, even though it'll probably be discarded.

and Whoops. Probably should have anticipated that. I apologize.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on May 1st 2022 at 6:16:13 AM

It's not your fault, people just have an awful tendency to ignore any issues with a draft in favor of just spamming examples.

I don't know, in the other hand I normally see more examples of purple being used to convey magic because it isn't a color you see frequently in nature, giving a more exotic feel.

But we already have Purple Is Powerful, which also sort of covers the "purple is exotic" stuff.

What would be the difference between the combine trope (throwing in The Color Of The Supernatural) and Color-Coded Wizardry?

I feel like the color doesn't matter as long as it's clearly symbolizing the supernatural. Making separate tropes for each color with the colors being the only differences causes unnecessary fragmentation.

I'm not trying to sound like a Lumper by saying this — if we already had a Supernatural Colors supertrope rather than such a trope being a proposed merge between color-specific tropes, Supernatural Is Purple and Supernatural Is Green would be The Same, but More Specific.

Edit: And as for Color-Coded Wizardry, merging it with the combination of Supernatural Is Purple and Supernatural Is Green might be possible.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 1st 2022 at 5:45:37 AM

I think Color-Coded Wizardry needs to be, well... color-coded. Red for pyromancy; blue for hydromancy; purple for straight up psychic abilities, etc, or maybe the colors signify rank or skill, but either way the colors need to be symbolic of the wizard's powers or class.

Whereas I feel like "Supernatural Colors" or whatever we end up calling it would be the supertrope, where colors are just used to convey the supernatural, but aren't necessarily linked to a particular sort of magic. A work where all sources of magic are yellow wouldn't count for Color-Coded Wizardry, after all.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 1st 2022 at 7:21:35 AM

If we do end up renaming, we will have to delete the image on IThoughtItMeant.S To T.

I'll bring that to IP later.

I think its important to link the Trope Talk thread that happened about this class of tropes seen here.

The idea brainstormed here was to make a single trope called Technicolor Magic that was about how magic is usually colored and to list the most common associations.

I think that graphs onto Option 1

ETA: We also discussed keeping Supernatural Is Purple somewhat but redefining it a bit to focus on purple being associated with mystery, ambiguity, and the unknown. Thus it explains why magic is often coded as purple without it being an explicit "all magic is purple" trope

Edited by amathieu13 on May 1st 2022 at 9:16:22 AM

Fair enough on the differences between Color-Coded Wizardry and the proposed trope for supernatural colors. I admit I'm not that familiar with the former trope.

I agree that Color-Coded Wizardry is distinct from this trope, because the colours are used to convey additional meaning, not just "this is supernatural". It's probably a subtrope.

Another possible subtrope is where the supernatural is associated with some eldritch colour which does not occur in nature (however that is supposed to work). Lovecraft was fond of that trope. Or is that not different enough from using a natural colour?

Edited by GnomeTitan on May 4th 2022 at 4:56:09 AM

We have Fictional Colour, with which the titular The Colour of Magic is used.

Edited by Amonimus on May 4th 2022 at 3:01:22 PM

So Color-Coded Wizardry is when X color is used for certain users or kinds of spells, but what we're merging Purple/Green into is when all magic in the setting is disproportionately X color?