exo: color theory (notes)
Before anything else, let me thank Jasper Fforde and his amazing book, "Shades of Grey", for inspiring me to do this. The concept of living in a world of colors came from the book, and it was so much fun exploring the said world. I recommend everyone to read it.
The fic doesn't follow the plot of Fforde's book, though.
I will discuss the details in the order that they appeared in the story.
1. Color cycles. Color cycles are the years we spend as living creatures. The fixed number, 150, was just made up. I think I failed to mention this in the fic, but when one buys things, he pays for it with his own life. One color cycle is equivalent to 150 ounces, so if one doesn't buy anything with his colors (which is just weird and stupid because he'll die of starvation, anyway), he'll have 8,212,500 color ounces. The 1,095,000 color ounces one spends in his entire life (20 ounces/day * 365 days * 150 years) roughly equates to a year and a few months.
2. Color ranks. Primary colors are on top, followed by the secondaries, then the tertiaries. No one is born a natural neutral. You can only become a neutral when you are elected to a government post.
3. Color sales. Color sales are held so that people can replenish their colors and extend their lives. One can only buy up to 46,000 color ounces (6 years and a few months) their whole life, though.
4. Color pills. Joonmyun mentioned somewhere in the fic that Technocolor gives people 4 different pills - a color pill, a solvent, and two additives in the form of emulsifiers and adhesion promoters. Let me explain each pill.
- The color pill is just, well, your color. Lol.
- The solvent dissolves the color, making it possible to "extend" a color cycle by half with the help of the adhesion promoter.
- The adhesion promoter makes the color "stick" to the person's system far long than a usual color transfusion would.
- The emulsifiers bind all of these elements together, allowing the colors to flow in the person's system easier.
The pills are safe IF you're able to maintain the medication. As we've seen with Jongin, he started suffering from some kind of disease after he stopped eating the sweets from Lu Han.
5. Color grading. Color grading is the process of enhancing colors. We often call this the color correction process. In this world, color graders are doctors.
6. Color separation. This is a process normally used in printing. It's pretty hard to explain, but basically the colors of an image are separated into red, blue, and green, then inverted since RGB is additive. Red then becomes cyan, blue becomes yellow, and green becomes magenta (CMY). To be able to perfectly capture the colors of the original image, a black component is added (K, which stands for "key).
7. Halochromes. Halochrome compounds are added to paint to be able to make color changing paints. These are the same compounds that were found in Jongin's system, hence the orange veins. Lu Han, a yellow, tried infusing his yellows into Jongin's system using the candies that had halochromes in them.
8. How exactly can a Neutral "heal" a sick color? Well, it's a neutral color. In this world, Neutrals can basically reset a sick color. Joonmyun mentions that it is hard to extract colors from a Neutral, and this is because Neutrals are hard to come by and the government, the only institution filled with Neutrals, is against Kim Color.
9. Why does Joonmyun need blues to neutralize the yellows? It's a Photoshop thing! No, really, I'm serious. Notice that when you use Selective Coloring (or any color-altering tool, tbh) in Photoshop, you only have four scales - red, green, blue, and black. When you move the selector for the red scale to the right, the red intensifies; when you move it to the left or the negative side, the green intensifies. This is because red neutralizes green, blue neutralizes yellow, and vice versa.
10. Pinnacle Point is where people during the Middle Stone Age scraped ochre, a red clay colored by iron oxide. Cardinal is a red bird, and was named after the color of the robes worn by cardinals called "cardinal red".
11. It wasn't explicitly stated in the fic but Jongin and Yixing had a past, and Yixing was sleeping (lol) with both Lu Han and Jongdae.
12. Oh God, this is harder to write than the fic itself.
If you successfully finished reading this post, props to you! If you decided to close the tab, props to you, anyway, for even deciding to click the cut link, haha. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the fic!
Back to "Color Theory"
The fic doesn't follow the plot of Fforde's book, though.
I will discuss the details in the order that they appeared in the story.
1. Color cycles. Color cycles are the years we spend as living creatures. The fixed number, 150, was just made up. I think I failed to mention this in the fic, but when one buys things, he pays for it with his own life. One color cycle is equivalent to 150 ounces, so if one doesn't buy anything with his colors (which is just weird and stupid because he'll die of starvation, anyway), he'll have 8,212,500 color ounces. The 1,095,000 color ounces one spends in his entire life (20 ounces/day * 365 days * 150 years) roughly equates to a year and a few months.
2. Color ranks. Primary colors are on top, followed by the secondaries, then the tertiaries. No one is born a natural neutral. You can only become a neutral when you are elected to a government post.
3. Color sales. Color sales are held so that people can replenish their colors and extend their lives. One can only buy up to 46,000 color ounces (6 years and a few months) their whole life, though.
4. Color pills. Joonmyun mentioned somewhere in the fic that Technocolor gives people 4 different pills - a color pill, a solvent, and two additives in the form of emulsifiers and adhesion promoters. Let me explain each pill.
- The color pill is just, well, your color. Lol.
- The solvent dissolves the color, making it possible to "extend" a color cycle by half with the help of the adhesion promoter.
- The adhesion promoter makes the color "stick" to the person's system far long than a usual color transfusion would.
- The emulsifiers bind all of these elements together, allowing the colors to flow in the person's system easier.
The pills are safe IF you're able to maintain the medication. As we've seen with Jongin, he started suffering from some kind of disease after he stopped eating the sweets from Lu Han.
5. Color grading. Color grading is the process of enhancing colors. We often call this the color correction process. In this world, color graders are doctors.
6. Color separation. This is a process normally used in printing. It's pretty hard to explain, but basically the colors of an image are separated into red, blue, and green, then inverted since RGB is additive. Red then becomes cyan, blue becomes yellow, and green becomes magenta (CMY). To be able to perfectly capture the colors of the original image, a black component is added (K, which stands for "key).
7. Halochromes. Halochrome compounds are added to paint to be able to make color changing paints. These are the same compounds that were found in Jongin's system, hence the orange veins. Lu Han, a yellow, tried infusing his yellows into Jongin's system using the candies that had halochromes in them.
8. How exactly can a Neutral "heal" a sick color? Well, it's a neutral color. In this world, Neutrals can basically reset a sick color. Joonmyun mentions that it is hard to extract colors from a Neutral, and this is because Neutrals are hard to come by and the government, the only institution filled with Neutrals, is against Kim Color.
9. Why does Joonmyun need blues to neutralize the yellows? It's a Photoshop thing! No, really, I'm serious. Notice that when you use Selective Coloring (or any color-altering tool, tbh) in Photoshop, you only have four scales - red, green, blue, and black. When you move the selector for the red scale to the right, the red intensifies; when you move it to the left or the negative side, the green intensifies. This is because red neutralizes green, blue neutralizes yellow, and vice versa.
10. Pinnacle Point is where people during the Middle Stone Age scraped ochre, a red clay colored by iron oxide. Cardinal is a red bird, and was named after the color of the robes worn by cardinals called "cardinal red".
11. It wasn't explicitly stated in the fic but Jongin and Yixing had a past, and Yixing was sleeping (lol) with both Lu Han and Jongdae.
12. Oh God, this is harder to write than the fic itself.
If you successfully finished reading this post, props to you! If you decided to close the tab, props to you, anyway, for even deciding to click the cut link, haha. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the fic!
Back to "Color Theory"