Monday DE: Color theory

[bjornwilde]

 Good morning and welcome to another week. Got any challenges you're going to crush this week?

As for today's topic, let's talk color and it's use. How is your canon's color palette? Is it bright or is it desaturated like a Snyder film? Do specific colors have meanings within canon? How about the use of color in meta-canon? Feel free to add any details I didn't think of in my questions.

Comments

[inlovewithwords]

I have a conference to prep for and it's in deathly heat and I have to find clothes in which I will not die in it and wash them. Help me obi-wan kenobi you're my only hope

Okay, right, topic:

Eriond has a canon with some pretty specific color things. Each of the Gods has a color associated with them. Also, Blue = Good, Red = Bad as far as super-powerful objects go. This is also true in the Elenium/Tamuli (Eddings is... not always creative).

Evelyn actually also has some of that blue-red thing going. Red lyrium is diseased and tainted and The Worst Thing Actually. If other people take on DA, go ahead, I am blanking on stuff right now.

Lois has some variations based on canon, obviously--see Steph's answer on Smallville--but Lois herself often carries a purple theme (... blue and red mixed oh god why). Book Lois has less of this than visual media Loises, obviously--but she does have the eyes. And, well, red-blue-yellow as a combination has a very specific meaning in her worlds in general...

Anakin and R2, of course, come from a world where color is a pretty good indicator of some things! Padme is strongly associated with white and pastels, and the Jedi in general with tans and browns, to darker or lighter degrees--although some do go in for black, in surprising ways! Bounty hunters tend to go darker browns and greens and blacks. Sith like black. Because they just can't help themselves. Blue/green/yellow are the standard Good Guy Lightsaber colors, with the occasional variant (we see you, Mace). Red is, of course, Teh Ebols and also tortured crystals and yeah. There are some really interesting meta-discussions to be had around the use of white-grey-black with the Empire, and Stormtroopers being white.

As for the boys themselves, R2 of course is white and blue and while that is slightly an accident of design, I think, it fits quite nicely. (Came from Naboo, gets tangled in Jedi.) Anakin keeps wearing progressively darker colors as time goes on--and, of course, his eye color is highly indicative of what's going on with him, and his lightsaber. Luke and Leia rather interestingly follow the various patterns associated with both their parents, in different ways, with Luke leaning towards Anakin's side and Leia towards her mom's.

Tavi-- y'all, what is it with me and the red-and-blue? Is this just a fiction thing, liking them, or is this some mysterious power by which I attract all the red and blue ever? Anyway. There's quite a lot of color-use in canon, both inside it and meta. The various High Houses all have their identifying colors, which do and don't have some meta implications.

Canonically: the House of Gaius is scarlet and royal blue. Interestingly, that's very not like the other canons Good/Evil distinction, but is also obviously pretty real-world associated; for that matter, the star of the First Lord is gold, so red-blue-yellow is lurking in there. When Bernard becomes Count Calderon, he just outright picks green and brown for colors because EARTH TONES (and ignores the Rivan colors). House Aquitaine is scarlet and black and House Kalarus is canonically green and grey, I think (or that may be my choice, not sure). Of the others, both ones I picked and ones I didn't (but I don't remember which are and aren't, and the research takes hours), most were chosen or can be read either for nature, location, or connection to the House of Gaius.

The other groups have colors too! The Canim have black armor with blood-magic related inlays which denote which range they're from. The only two we see are red and black. The Marat are white-all-over (hair, pale skin) with some rainbow-ness (eyes pre-bonding). The Vord are sickly green.

Then there's the black-and-green theme going on, too. Tavi's Legion ends up, for reasons, carrying not the red-and-blue eagle but a black crow as part of their symbol--with black being distinctly not in royal palettes. And as for green, non-Vord shades of green are extremely important in that literally four (important) people in the entire series that I can think of have green eyes. The only three born with it are also born with jet black hair.

All the Aleran families with Evil People have black or grey as a color; everyone more spotlight-oriented has gold. The Canim, who could destroy the Alerans given the wrong thing but ultimately ally with them, are black with red-and-blue--just like Tavi's Legion. The Vord are icky green. Somehow the Gaius family carries symbolic red/blue/gold and physical green and black. There are some really interesting symbolic discussions to have around this, both as in-world connections, the symbolic relationships to each other, and how the Gaius family is arrogant and more or less personally built, destroyed, and rebuilds Alera. But I will stop there.