FoME Thinks Too Much: Chromaharmonics · 12:23pm Mar 13th, 2016
This is a blog I've been meaning to write for quite some time, as you may have gathered from the story tag. It's an explanation for my choices when associating the Elements of Harmony with the colors of card game magic. If you have no interest in me connecting Equestrian thaumology and Magic color philosophy (or how my thought process generally runs when planning a crossover,) then I'll see you next week. Everyone else, read on as I plumb new depths of nerdery.
Before I begin in earnest, I should note that Bearers and Elements are not identical, which is why I insist on using the term "Bearer" in the first place. Just as lands are not mana, the Mane Six are not their superpowered jewelry, nor do they completely share their respective color identities. Twilight Sparkle is one of the bluest blue characters to ever write a metachecklist, but claiming that the Element of Magic is associated with one color more than any other is patently absurd.
Given that, this blog will focus more on the harmonious concepts than on the ponies who exemplify them. I'll go roughly in the order in which I finalized my decisions. Magic was self-evident, so we begin with the next easiest:
Kindness - White
Kindness is an incredibly white concept. Really, the Elements are in general, weaponizing close interpersonal bonds to create a power greater than the sum of its parts that vanquishes the unrepentant and cleanses or exalts the worthy. Still, Kindness is the whitest Element of all. White excels in nonlethal methods. Sometimes, this means imprisonment, but it also takes the form of forcibly applied remorse or compassion.
Most importantly, white is by far the most merciful color. Other colors might spare you for some reason: Blue aims for maximum effect from minimum effort, black might see you as more useful alive than dead, red may just feel like it, and green may heed a maternal instinct or just ignore you. But no other color will protect others solely because it is right. White is also the most moral color, the color of the meek masses, devoted to protecting those who cannot protect themselves. It doesn't get kinder.
Note that this can be a double-edged sword. As Fluttershy demonstrated in "It Ain't Easy Being Breezies," it's all too easy for that kindness to become stifling or smothering. Also, being the most moral color doesn't mean white is always good, just that it's the most concerned with the concepts of good and evil, but that's a discussion for another day.
Honesty - Green
Again, this was an easy one. Every other color wants to change the world somehow: White wants a perfect society, red wants a world without obligations, blue wants a global laboratory, and black will take anything that puts it on top of the heap. Green, however, accepts the world as it is, adapting itself to better suit that world rather than the other way around. Its entire philosophy is built around accepting the intrinsic truth of the world rather than ignoring and trying to overwrite it.
Green's mechanics reflect this. Naturalize effects remove artificial impositions on the world, returning it to the true, natural state of reality. Several mechanics like uncounterability and hexproof reflect natural adaptations to unnatural pressures, defenses against deceptive and underhanded tactics, especially those of green's enemy colors. (And, like any natural defense, they evolved after and in response to those forms of attack, even in the game itself.) Green is up front about its motives: It just wants to expand to encompass more of the world, appreciate its residents, and if necessary, use the larger residents to reduce the less forthright to a gooey paste.
Generosity - Blue
Now we start to get into shakier territory. After all, anyone who's played against the average control deck will find the idea of generous blue laughable at best. I admit, my decision first hinged on a single card, Donate. But there's far more generosity to be had in blue, both mechanically and philosophically.
Mechanically, blue shows generosity best in its symmetrical effects. Yes, every color gets these, but none quite like blue. Red and black kill everything. Green heals everything (or kills everything with flying.) White can do either, depending on its mood. Blue gives everything new opportunities, whether through draw effects or control swaps.
The same thinking applies philosophically. Blue believes that everyone is born a blank slate with the capacity to improve themselves in whatever direction they choose. It's just a matter of having the right resources and opportunities to realize that potential. Generous blue teaches, inspires, and encourages progress in both conventional and unconventional ways.
As for all of those counterspells? Consider them constructive criticism. You'll never grow if you don't know what you're doing wrong.
Loyalty - Red
I admit, this seems more than a little absurd at first. After all, red is the color of temporary theft effects and the only color other than blue that frequently turns opponents' spells against them. Its carelessness often takes out its own allies. Furthermore, red is the funniest color; surely it should be paired with Laughter.
I made my decision for two reasons. For one, associating Laughter with red would force me to associate Loyalty with black, the color with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. Red may steal stuff for a turn, but black can cause permanent postmortem betrayal through reanimation effects. Rather than lose them to collateral damage, black deliberately and eagerly kills off its pawns when they have outlived their usefulness. Black is the least harmonious color in general, but its disloyalty is especially pronounced.
The other reason for making Loyalty red is that there's more than one kind of loyalty. While I made a point of distinguishing Bearer and Element, we can still look at the former to tell us about the latter. Going by Luna and Rainbow Dash, elementally harmonious loyalty isn't blind devotion to a faceless cause, which would be white. No, the kind of loyalty the Element looks for is more personal than that, internally chosen rather than externally imposed. It's the kind of loyalty that makes someone stick with their friends because they choose to, because of a close emotional bond that no amount of empty rhetoric can forge without a heartfelt connection. We even saw a fantastic example of it in the Battle for Zendikar storyline when Chandra gave up becoming the abbot of Keral Keep because Zendikar and her friends needed her.
Sadly, there's little mechanical support for this. Brand stands out, as do "don't touch" effects like the one on Thunderbreak Regent, but for the most part, this one is a lot more philosphical.
Laughter - Black
And so we come to the last pair. However, there's a lot more to this pairing than linking up the last two by default. Red may be funny, but comedy is founded on two very black concepts: schadenfreude and insanity.
Pain is the basis of a lot of comedy. To quote Mel Brooks, "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall in an open sewer and die." We laugh at slapstick and practical jokes in part because we're glad that it isn't happening to us. Stand-up comics turn the struggles of their lives into hilarious monologues through nothing more than summarization, exaggeration, and the audience's emotional distance from the described events. We often laugh so we don't cry.
Other times, we laugh because our brains just don't know what else to do. Metahumor is practically founded on subverting expectations and triggering laughter as the mind's pressure release valve, as seen even in such basic fare as the jokes about the road-crossing chicken, the man who painfully walked into a bar, and a five-hundred pound gorilla's seating options. Parody and satire also make use of this principle, making us laugh at the most absurd and uncomfortable parts of existence.
Granted, this doesn't seem especially harmonious. "Seem" is the operative word here. By making things funny, we make them relatable. We find a way to integrate even the strangest and most alien concepts into our lives by putting a silly spin on them. Whether it's trying to mock a cosmological theory by calling it a "Big Bang" only to give it the perfect title to capture the masses' imagination or just Hello Cthulhu, people get things when they're funny, silly, or irreverent.
Mechanically, black's funny bone is best found in life drain effects and death triggers. Sure, the former are often flavored as draining blood or life force, but they could easily be seen as happiness at the misfortune of others. (It certainly feels that way when playing with or against them.) As for the latter, when black seeks humor, it does the same thing it does when seeking power: it transgresses in areas no other color will dare explore.
Alright, I can accept this.
There is a reason I use enemy color pairs or wedges to describe these concepts - they're way too complicated to sum up monocolored. Your choices are similar to mine, though.
Makes perfect sense to me :)
I thought that last link was something different at first.
Yeah. Although Red has yet to really exemplify the concept of loyalty card-wise, I totaly get its sense of loyalty from the philosophical standpoint.
Making a concious choice to help people you care about is quite the loyal act.
I suppose its probably because helping your side of the board is within white's design space. Which leads me to believe there is possibility of overlap in hybrid design space.
We already know from many Boros cards that there is a sense of comradarie when red\white cards are shown, just with a sense of responsibility. (on Lorwyn, they just seem to be itching for a fight). That said, Rainbow Dash's mana alignment probably ranges from RRW to possibly R/W.
In a way though, red sort of does show a sense of loyaly with its 'anthem' cards (look to a lot of red's cards in Avacyn Restored). It boosts your allies (like white), but only briefly. I attribute this to the spur of the moment red ideology. Red will help those it cares about, but will not commit to sticking around and helping people all the time, that would would be implementing structure, something red hates.
I read something not too long ago that made me think, "And that's why Laughter is black," and I wanted to link to it, but I can't remember what it was at all
Thanks for the peek inside your mind.
My newly remade Nekusar the Mindrazer deck definitely exemplifies generosity (free card draw), Loyalty (free creatures and free hand refreshes), and Laughter (free creature rezzes and just general derp) as described here up until Discord (aka Nekusar) shows up and turns all these virtues on their heads. Thinking becomes painful after learning so much at once, the free creatures start to riot, and Discord is the only one still laughing.
Come to think of it, Discord's corrupting of the element bearers didn't necessarily change the elements' color identities (though honesty staying green while being dishonest takes a bit of a stretch).
How I've always seen magic colors in your depiction of Equestria/Ungula is as the opposite of how New Phyrexian sees them. Where Phyrexian shows the worst view of each color such as the blind religious zeal of Elesh Norn, or the unbridled savagery of Vorinclex, Ungula is the best view of each as you explained above. They are both correct if seen a certain way, just executed differently, hell Phyrexia treats red the opposite way that you described.
I accepted it as premise when reading the stories, but now that you invite us to think about it I kinda disagree on a few points.
I think you're giving white way too much credit. It's good at order and CAN be harmonious. But it's also the color of oppressive order. Orzhov is more white than black, honestly. Sombra is white-and-black, Chrysalis is (depending on the writer) white-and-blue, etc. White might be good if you're part of the in group (ie ponies), but when you're on the bottom white is THE color interested in keeping you there forever. It's better than most at being nonlethal, but I wouldn't call it merciful.
(The game doesn't always portray right either, but word of god is that they were at least trying to give them all good and bad qualities, and that's white's.)
Anyways, as for the elements. Kindness is, as I said, not really much of a white thing. Not sure where it would go, since most of the colors have their warlike sides put forth first.
Honesty you got dead-right.
Generosity... is tough. Again, hard to say given the game's focus. I will say that white has more symmetrical effects than blue, or any color. I guess as long as you don't give it to black or green you can get away with any choice.
Loyalty is the one I'd definitively make a different choice on though. Loyalty is white. White has the most effects for protecting or enhancing your creatures, except possibly green. And it definitely plays into the order theme of white. Of course, that kind of loyalty isn't so much the kind represented in the show.
You can make an argument for laughter being black, but it does fit more naturally into red, which is literally the home of emotion in the color pie.
Not to belittle your enthusiasm or anything, but it seems to me that there's an underlying problem with this kind of scheme: the five colors of Magic are meant to contain basically everything, while the Elements of Harmony only contain some rather specific things. Things which, when considered one by one, are pretty much all White all the time. Loyalty? White. Kindness? White. Honesty? White. Laughter? Well, Pinkie's "laugh with you, not at you" kind of laughter, yes, definitely White. Generosity? White. Magic? ...Well, ordinarily it would be all the colors but since here it's the culmination of all of the above it would sort of have to be White as well =|
All those things don't even comprehensively explore White, as they are all confined to the White of straight-forward fairy-tale morals rather than the White of authoritarian order.
Equestria is, all in all, a very White-flavored society. And while the Bearers are not identical to the Elements, I also think they're all dual-colored with White as one color for all of them. White-Blue for Rarity and Twilight, White-Green for Fluttershy and Applejack, and White-Red for Pinkie and Rainbow Dash.
The nearest thing to a non-villainous character who has a flavor of Black about them that I can immediately think of is Trouble Shoes. Well, and Luna of course.
3805752
Yeah, it can be an awkward fit at times.
3805872
She went home. She's a farmer; ain't got time for all this adventurin' hooey, not when she can be with her family and her work. Applejack knows her place.
3806224
I really like that interpretation. Thanks.
3806235
Yes, white is the color of oppression, security over freedom, and the tyranny of the status quo. (And most other tyrannies, for that matter.) However, it's also explicitly the color of healing, protection, and championing the downtrodden. White may not always be kind, but it's still kinder than the other colors. Heck, going by Fluttershy's Stare and whatever Celestia did to keep the country stable for a millennium, Bearers of Kindness seem to have at least a little of white's harshness to them.
Also, I'm working with a list of virtues. If you focus on the negative aspects of the colors when trying to associate them with positive traits, none of them are going to fit.
As for white loyalty, we run into a matter of conceptual overlap. Protection, for example, could be seen as both kind and loyal, and maybe even generous, depending on the context. This is the problem when trying to get very different magic systems to cooperate; there are bound to be some hiccups, especially when one of them is rather nebulously defined. Given the constraints I imposed, I tried to do my best. (Emphasis on the constraints. As noted above and below, if I weren't forcing every color into this, this would be a lot different.)
3806339
You definitely have a point. After all, trying to play every note at once isn't a harmony but a cacophony. I even noted the intrinsic whiteness of the Elements in the blog. And yes, there's a white aspect to every member of the Mane Six. Rather unavoidable for those whose friendship is powerful enough to defeat gods. Equestria is similarly white. Really, when the pony who's shaped the nation for the last millennium has the mana symbol for a cutie mark, it should come as no surprise.
Still, harmony magic manifests in a rainbow, and Elementals would've been a lot less interesting if all of the titular creatures could be defeated by asking politely.
Also, there's more black among the protagonists than you think. For examplke, Rarity is incredibly ambitious, is willing to use virtually all available tools and methods to advance her goals, and has an unfortunate tendency to put her own needs and priorities ahead of anypony else's. If only swamps weren't so... icky.
3806503 If it helps, you're changing my thinking on many of these. I used to think of Honesty as WuB. Now I'm shuffling things around and think that GwU is a better fit.
For those that care, I think about them like this:
Honesty - GwU
Loyalty - RgW.
Generosity - UbR.
Laughter - BrG.
Kindness - WuB (this is the most tenuous one).
Magic is enemy pairs in general.
The interesting thing is wondering what colours the BEARERS are. Applejack and Twilight are easy: green and blue. The others......sort of a crap-shoot, there, isn't it?
3806559
Well, I like to think of Pinkie Pie as being Mardu (BRW). Who else would volunteer to be the pony in a Ponyback Brigade?
On a related note, I am most disappointed in my inability to find fan art of Pinkie in said situation. That should have been both obvious and hilarious.
3806559 I have Rainbow down as black, albeit a very positive and harmonious black. She's ambitious and driven, always wants to be The Best, and will do just about anything to accomplish her goal of joining the Wonderbolts. She could also suit red, being energetic but impulsive.
3806503
Well yeah, I get that trying to fit in all five colors limits your options a bit. I guess if you shifted Loyalty to white and Laughter to red, you'd have to stick something else in black, and Kindness certainly doesn't fit the bill. Like I said, Honesty is the only real no-brainer.
I'm a little late on this one, but if you wanted to have a different yet symmetrical six-element cycle, you could use "colour trios with white in them". WUB, WBR, WRG, WGU, WUR, and WBG. I don't know if MtG has ever done anything like that. This might be more suited for defining the Bearers than the Elements.
And if you really wanted, you could assign the other four trios to assorted villains. Discord, for example, is pretty clearly red, but also has a sadistic black streak, while like green he wants to take away the trappings of civilisation and see how things turn out. On the other hand, he's deliberately opposed to Order (white) and Logic (blue).
3820257
An interesting concept, but color trios get so philosophically complex, it can be hard to pin down precisely what they represent, especially wedges. Plus, villains like Nightmare Moon and Sombra, who seek to conquer and dominate, are pretty clearly white in their own right.
3820267 Oh, okay. Good to get the perspective of someone who knows what they're talking about. I don't play Magic, I just like the idea of the colour pie. How you can fit different philosophies and personalities into colours or combinations of colours, and then try to find significance in the symmetries you get. Even - no, especially - if you sometimes have to shoehorn your interpretations a bit to get them to line up.
I like your associations here, but I would like to propose an alternative scheme. See, your mention of black's Chronic Backstabbing Disorder got me thinking about opposing colors. Why not visualize the elements as paired colors, opposing their antithesis?
In this case, Loyalty would pretty clearly be white and green, opposing black's treachery.
Opposing the trickery of blue would be Honesty, as green and red.
Opposing the malice of red would be Kindness, as white and blue.
Opposing the staunch moralism of white would be Laughter, as black and red.
Which leaves Generosity opposite green. I got nuthin. Probably shoulda thought this out more.
3889930
A further problem there is that red isn't really malicious; it just does what it wants. Red is as much about positive emotions as it is negative ones; those just don't translate well to cards that fit red's slice of the color pie. (And so we come full circle to Laughter being more red than black, but Loyalty being much more red than black. Ah, balancing acts.)
Still, very interesting way to look at it... even if it doesn't quite pan out.
3889963
Hmm, good point. In that sense, red might be considered the most selfish of the five (or at least tied with black), with generosity opposed.
Which still leaves green as the hard one. Still, while green is all about healing and adapting oneself to nature, it's much less harmonious with respect to its opponents. There it's all about *imposing* nature - naturalize and whatnot - not to mention the previously-discussed ferocious beasties. So (maybe kinda sorta?) not-kindness?
Meh. Let's go with "C+ for effort, stick to FoME's colors"