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silveradept) wrote2020-07-09 09:30 pm
silveradept) wrote2020-07-09 09:30 pm
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Sunshine Challenge 2020 #3: Yellow? YOLO? Whatever, Here We Go!
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sunshine_challenge is on to prompt three, continuing down the spectrum with Yellow.
When we learn first about colors, yellow is the one most associated with Sol, because when it's high in the sky, that's usually the color it's closest to. So that's the bright association, and things that are yellow stand out a lot against their backgrounds, which I think is why it shows up in fashion with a lot of people saying that it's far too bright, and that it takes a very particular person to be able to wear yellow without it being rendered entirely too bright. Like, say, Beyoncé, who does it fairly regularly.
"Yellow," of course, has the association of cowardice for anyone who's grown up with enough Westerns to hear someone in an accent declare "Yer' yeller!", often right before there's some sort of fistfight or duel as the called-out character has to prove their masculinity by combat or other martial exercise, because using one's brains to do anything is the province of villains!
And, of course, what should flit into my head at this thought but Ming the Merciless, pulp villain who also demonstrates another media portrayal of yellow in a negative light, the racist idea of the Yellow Peril. As I was looking for yellow villains, (and there are a few, like the Yellow Lantern Corps) the Internet reminds me that Yellow Diamond, from Steven Universe, is a hothead prone to immediate violence in the same vein as most pulp heroes. In Steven Universe's context, though, which is entirely invested in talking, communicating, expressing feelings, and using violence as a last resort, this absolutely makes Yellow Diamond a villain.
Outside of Steven Universe, though, one of the contrasts that often happens, at least in the Hollywood media tradition (and especially in pulps and media involving or adapted from drawings, is that male heroes are rectangles and tend to be muscular and physically strong, even if some of them also have intelligence and are allowed to use it in their stories. Villains, on the other hand, tend to be triangles and ovals, the structures that construct them to be more feminine or less physically healthy than their heroic counterparts. (Hopefully your local public library has access to that particular article in their deatabases. If you haven't already gotten one, a library card is probably a good idea - you've already been paying for their services through taxation in most placed in the world.)
Weakness is an association with yellow as well, not just because of the cowardice association, but because of the very real symptom called jaundice, which makes people get a yellow (or green) tinge to their skin. Clearing up the underlying conditions generally cures the jaundice.
So let's talk about Jaune Arc, the leader of the deuterotagonist team JNPR in the web show RWBY. Jaune's name is important in a few different ways. He's patterned after Jeanne d'Arc, thus the similarity of the names, he's blond-haired, and he's the only boy of seven children. He also falsified his transcripts to get himself into Beacon Academy, the elite military school, because everyone in his family had written him off as someone who wouldn't accomplish anything. Several generations of Arcs have been the heroic Hunters that keep the planet safe from teh creatures of Grimm, but it looks a lot like Jaune just won't be able to cut it. His weapon is a hand-me-down (Ruby mentions a need to appreciate the classics), he tries way too hard to be Casanova when he doesn't have the charisma (or, really, the deceptiveness) to be more than a Casanova wannabe, and it's pretty apparent to the teaching faculty at Beacon that his actual skills and his supposed skills are a major mismatch. He tends to run rather than fight, he gets airsick easily, and he's not good at being assertive against bullies. Thoroughly a yellow character through and through, right?
Not quite. He almost immediately makes the acquaintance and an ally out of Pyrrha, the undisputed combat queen of Beacon Academy, whose martial prowress is easily as long, and genuinely obtained, as Jaune's falsified transcript, because Jaune had no idea who she was and was honest enough to admit it. Pyrrha is excellent at anything you throw at her and could surely stand to associate with someone other than that loser, right? Pyrrha gives us a clue that Jaune has depths early on - in unlocking his Aura, the spiritual power that allows for the physics-defying action of RWBY to happen without Reality Ensues (so long as the aura hasn't shattered from taking too much damage), Pyrrha mentions that Jaune has a lot of Aura. This mostly gets played for laughs, as "Jaune can take a tremendous amount of punishment, usually in the form of slapstick comedy, and come out the other side just fine," but that reserve of Aura turns out to be extremely useful when Jaune unlocks his Semblance (the superpower that is unique to each person that their situation shapes and their tarumas might inform) later on.
Secondly, the faculty, or at least Ozpin, the mysterious head of Beacon, make a decision that appears to make no sense at all to the other students or to the viewer. After all, when you watch the first major battle involving the eventual teams RWBY and JNPR versus two giant creatures of Grimm, (monsters get limbs severed and decapitated in the video, although there's no blood as such) it's the first time that the animators have really let loose on the kinds of stylish action that's going to be part of the series. It's easy to get caught up in the action and miss the details on the first (or several more) viewing. The narrative stays on Ruby long enough for her to say she's got a plan, so there's the explicit foreshadowing that she's going to be a leader of her group, but Jaune shows off his chops as well. Everything he says in that entire battle cycle is tactically sound and advantageous. He recognizes the danger of a team being separated, even if he doesn't know how to get there. (That's Nora's disregard for their safety that gets them there.) He recognizes the two shield-holders need to get forward to block the claws. He sees the limply-dangling stinger on the deathstalker and gets Pyrrha to sever it, which stops and pains it enough for Pyrrha to then shield-boost Nora (note that Jaune tells Nora to hammer it immediately after the stinger strikes) to deliver her gravity-assisted smash and send the deathstalker to its doom. That's Jaune's best natural skill, and that's why he ends up in charge of team JNPR. And why, a few volumes later, despite the fact that his sword and shield are in the shop, Jaune specifically is brought along to help fight a tough creature of Grimm. Jaune has the best tactical skill of both teams.
His best attitude is that you cannot outwork Jaune Arc. Despite starting as far behind as he does, he catches up fast, because he has a work ethic to match his desire to be a hero. (And, as Cardin finds out later on in the first season, you can pick on Jaune all you like, but if you threaten his friends, he will kick your ass. (Or at least demonstrate that he can by taking the head off of the Ursa Major threatening his bully in one swipe with his sword.)) By the time Jaune collects his Semblance, he's almost on par with everyone else, and a couple volumes past that, you wouldn't know that he hasn't been a Hunter all his life.
There's a lot that's cringeworthy about Jaune at the beginning of the show, but he learns fast and takes direction well, and so he's the most complete Yellow that I can think of at this point in time.
sunshine_challenge is on to prompt three, continuing down the spectrum with Yellow.Yellow is a bright color that is associated with a variety of things including: joy, enlightenment, enthusiasm, alertness, danger, clarity, summer, expression, deceit, cowardice, confidence, satisfaction, and optimism.All I feel is celestial desire
A distant joy is dancing all around me
All I see is yellow in the spring air
How beautifully the color worked itself in —CITIZEN, “Yellow Love”
Yellow can be a polarizing color, for some invoking the bright joy of optimism ... while serving as a symbol of duplicitous gutlessness for others. When has yellow been a prominent color in your life? Were you torn in two directions, or was its meaning clear?
Please feel free to answer in whichever way comes naturally to you, be it a memory you share or an artwork you create. If you’d like a more specific idea to kick things off: tell us a story that reminds you of the color yellow or one of its listed qualities.
When we learn first about colors, yellow is the one most associated with Sol, because when it's high in the sky, that's usually the color it's closest to. So that's the bright association, and things that are yellow stand out a lot against their backgrounds, which I think is why it shows up in fashion with a lot of people saying that it's far too bright, and that it takes a very particular person to be able to wear yellow without it being rendered entirely too bright. Like, say, Beyoncé, who does it fairly regularly.
"Yellow," of course, has the association of cowardice for anyone who's grown up with enough Westerns to hear someone in an accent declare "Yer' yeller!", often right before there's some sort of fistfight or duel as the called-out character has to prove their masculinity by combat or other martial exercise, because using one's brains to do anything is the province of villains!
And, of course, what should flit into my head at this thought but Ming the Merciless, pulp villain who also demonstrates another media portrayal of yellow in a negative light, the racist idea of the Yellow Peril. As I was looking for yellow villains, (and there are a few, like the Yellow Lantern Corps) the Internet reminds me that Yellow Diamond, from Steven Universe, is a hothead prone to immediate violence in the same vein as most pulp heroes. In Steven Universe's context, though, which is entirely invested in talking, communicating, expressing feelings, and using violence as a last resort, this absolutely makes Yellow Diamond a villain.
Outside of Steven Universe, though, one of the contrasts that often happens, at least in the Hollywood media tradition (and especially in pulps and media involving or adapted from drawings, is that male heroes are rectangles and tend to be muscular and physically strong, even if some of them also have intelligence and are allowed to use it in their stories. Villains, on the other hand, tend to be triangles and ovals, the structures that construct them to be more feminine or less physically healthy than their heroic counterparts. (Hopefully your local public library has access to that particular article in their deatabases. If you haven't already gotten one, a library card is probably a good idea - you've already been paying for their services through taxation in most placed in the world.)
Weakness is an association with yellow as well, not just because of the cowardice association, but because of the very real symptom called jaundice, which makes people get a yellow (or green) tinge to their skin. Clearing up the underlying conditions generally cures the jaundice.
So let's talk about Jaune Arc, the leader of the deuterotagonist team JNPR in the web show RWBY. Jaune's name is important in a few different ways. He's patterned after Jeanne d'Arc, thus the similarity of the names, he's blond-haired, and he's the only boy of seven children. He also falsified his transcripts to get himself into Beacon Academy, the elite military school, because everyone in his family had written him off as someone who wouldn't accomplish anything. Several generations of Arcs have been the heroic Hunters that keep the planet safe from teh creatures of Grimm, but it looks a lot like Jaune just won't be able to cut it. His weapon is a hand-me-down (Ruby mentions a need to appreciate the classics), he tries way too hard to be Casanova when he doesn't have the charisma (or, really, the deceptiveness) to be more than a Casanova wannabe, and it's pretty apparent to the teaching faculty at Beacon that his actual skills and his supposed skills are a major mismatch. He tends to run rather than fight, he gets airsick easily, and he's not good at being assertive against bullies. Thoroughly a yellow character through and through, right?
Not quite. He almost immediately makes the acquaintance and an ally out of Pyrrha, the undisputed combat queen of Beacon Academy, whose martial prowress is easily as long, and genuinely obtained, as Jaune's falsified transcript, because Jaune had no idea who she was and was honest enough to admit it. Pyrrha is excellent at anything you throw at her and could surely stand to associate with someone other than that loser, right? Pyrrha gives us a clue that Jaune has depths early on - in unlocking his Aura, the spiritual power that allows for the physics-defying action of RWBY to happen without Reality Ensues (so long as the aura hasn't shattered from taking too much damage), Pyrrha mentions that Jaune has a lot of Aura. This mostly gets played for laughs, as "Jaune can take a tremendous amount of punishment, usually in the form of slapstick comedy, and come out the other side just fine," but that reserve of Aura turns out to be extremely useful when Jaune unlocks his Semblance (the superpower that is unique to each person that their situation shapes and their tarumas might inform) later on.
Secondly, the faculty, or at least Ozpin, the mysterious head of Beacon, make a decision that appears to make no sense at all to the other students or to the viewer. After all, when you watch the first major battle involving the eventual teams RWBY and JNPR versus two giant creatures of Grimm, (monsters get limbs severed and decapitated in the video, although there's no blood as such) it's the first time that the animators have really let loose on the kinds of stylish action that's going to be part of the series. It's easy to get caught up in the action and miss the details on the first (or several more) viewing. The narrative stays on Ruby long enough for her to say she's got a plan, so there's the explicit foreshadowing that she's going to be a leader of her group, but Jaune shows off his chops as well. Everything he says in that entire battle cycle is tactically sound and advantageous. He recognizes the danger of a team being separated, even if he doesn't know how to get there. (That's Nora's disregard for their safety that gets them there.) He recognizes the two shield-holders need to get forward to block the claws. He sees the limply-dangling stinger on the deathstalker and gets Pyrrha to sever it, which stops and pains it enough for Pyrrha to then shield-boost Nora (note that Jaune tells Nora to hammer it immediately after the stinger strikes) to deliver her gravity-assisted smash and send the deathstalker to its doom. That's Jaune's best natural skill, and that's why he ends up in charge of team JNPR. And why, a few volumes later, despite the fact that his sword and shield are in the shop, Jaune specifically is brought along to help fight a tough creature of Grimm. Jaune has the best tactical skill of both teams.
His best attitude is that you cannot outwork Jaune Arc. Despite starting as far behind as he does, he catches up fast, because he has a work ethic to match his desire to be a hero. (And, as Cardin finds out later on in the first season, you can pick on Jaune all you like, but if you threaten his friends, he will kick your ass. (Or at least demonstrate that he can by taking the head off of the Ursa Major threatening his bully in one swipe with his sword.)) By the time Jaune collects his Semblance, he's almost on par with everyone else, and a couple volumes past that, you wouldn't know that he hasn't been a Hunter all his life.
There's a lot that's cringeworthy about Jaune at the beginning of the show, but he learns fast and takes direction well, and so he's the most complete Yellow that I can think of at this point in time.