Author’s note: Medium put the original color wheel article (with its 19,000 claps!) behind a paywall without my permission and without me being able to change it, so I’m rehosting/reposting here.
Hey there! I've had your article bookmarked for over a year now. I shared it like crazy when I first read it, and had as many conversations as I could about it. It's really done a lot for me, and the temperance with which you approach the tool is admirable.
Thank you for moving it over here. I re-read it every now and then, so this helps me a lot. I'm eager to check out the changes :]
I think this is a great analysis of the MTG color wheel, but I tend to think that Green is a bit misrepresented in this article. Green's primary function is to promote Growth. Winning with green *can* be/feel harmonious and balanced, but more often green asserts dominance through a feral smackdown by being bigger than its opponents. It has big creatures, and its spells most often focus on ramping up those creatures or making more land. It's about development and nurturing nature, and embracing the feral as well. and its negative society is that its natural selection, where weaker/smaller creatures are stamped out. Color combos with green focus on how that growth is directed. Green-red focuses on being big and hitting fast, green-blue is an accelerant for knowledge (or card draw), green-white is often about lifegain or life in general, and green-black is about abusing nature and growth to your benefit (reanimation is a common theme in green black). By focusing on Harmony, you take away some of the more brutal/less nice aspects of the color, and represent it as a hippie only type color. Green characters are like Godzilla, Khal Drogo, or Chewbacca.
This is largely the difference between gameplay and philosophy. In the game of Magic, which is about combat, the "smackdown" elements of green are overemphasized and the core of green is underemphasized (just as the "rage" elements of red are overemphasized, and the core joie de vivre of red is downplayed). Everything you're saying about green is true, but I think that your description is a bit of an error in the opposite direction, in terms of the *balance* of what green cares about.
Thanks for the response! Honestly wasn't expecting that! I think we agree for sure. I think I should've used the word underrepresented, rather than misrepresented in hindsight. I wanted to point out that the description of Green in the article doesn't acknowledge those aspects of the color (as part of the philosophy of Harmony) whereas I felt your analysis of other colors in the article had better explored the aspects of each color. You do mention Wolverine as an example of feral use of Green (which I absolutely agree with), but I just felt like the duality and balance of nature wasn't fully represented. Mainly I think the victory example of "a tired general retiring to his farm" feels distinctly more in line with White (Peace) to me than Green for instance. Your other victory examples are definitely more in line with Green as a growth/nurturing idea "a mother nursing her baby, a valley lush with growth now that the rains have come and the pestilence has passed" and also are consistent with your description of Green as relying on established wisdom. I'd add that established wisdom and harmony can also sometimes mean a brutal, unfeeling and uncaring force of nature. A victory example of Green I would use would be of a wolf eating their freshly caught prey. My intention was to add to the Green discourse, and I did use a lot of gameplay jargon in hindsight! Hope this helps adjust my stance more into the Philosophy category rather than Gameplay.
I really like this though I think your examples seem pretty off at times. Like several of these I was like 'what is Duncan talking about'. Either that or I don't understand your ontology. (Katja helped with some of these suggestions)
White:
Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones - dunno, Why not Ned? Surely Ned? Or early John Snow? Stannis before he goes crazy
Javert from Les Misérables, - good
Ozymandias from Watchmen - definitely not. Surely Rorchach. Ozymandias is black
Superman - good
McGonagall from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality - can't remember
Marge from The Simpsons. - I find the simpsons analogy a bit tortured. Marge doesn't feel anything enough for me. Sometimes she obeys her passions, often she wants harmony.
Others I'd say:
Jesus
Judge dredd maybe? I haven't read enough
Batman
Atticus finch
Blue
Merlin is a classic blue character - Merlin differs a lot from depiction to depiction and is often pretty green
Spock - good
Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen - Feels off. Dreiberg feels more blue than Manhattan. Manhattan is pretty green in his being locked to his understanding of the future, and often oddly incurious
Lisa from The Simpsons is blue - good though also white
Ravenclaw House - good
Spongebob Squarepants is at least partially blue - interesting case
Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres in HPMOR is more than one color, but his projects with Hermione and Draco are strongly blue-leaning. - sure
Others:
Black - note that I think victory is a better word than satisfaction
Han Solo - this doesn't feel right. Solo isn't powerhungry. Lando feels better here.
Cersei Lannister - Again, this feels off, given the options. What about Littlefinger?
Every major character in Seinfeld is black except Kramer
Bart Simpson - maybe
Slytherin House, Blaise Zabini and Sirius Black - sure
Others
Lex Luther
Jason Bourne
The godfather
Red
Toph Beifong - this feels murky, especially when you have early series Zuko
Wile E. Coyote - sure yeah this is fun
Romeo and Juliet
Kramer from Seinfeld
Homer - this feels strained, again, bart surely is driven by his passions too.
Joyce Byers
Others
Robert Baratheon
Green
Yoda - yes
Guinan
Tom Bombadil
Buffy in later seasons
Wolverine from X-Men - not red? I dunno, but this seems off
The centaur society in HPMOR
Maggie - sure
Others
I argue Dr Manhattan - he is sort of locked in his own destiny
Ogion in the wizard of earthsea (Carlsmith's suggestion in an essay)
I understand based on examples so it seems pretty important to me to have ones that feel right. Many of these seemed so off that I wonder if I am misunderstanding the whole ontology.
I agree Dr. Manhattan's second color would be G, but I'm again leaning on Rosewater's claims here.
Power-hungry is not critical for black. Han Solo is definitely black *at first,* and I agree with you re: Lando. I also agree with you that Littlefinger is black, and probably a better example since Cersei also adds R a bunch.
Lex Luthor is UB, not just B; the U is crucial to his character. Bourne ... there's an argument for B but I think there's a much stronger argument for G, at least post-amnesia; he was acting out of a desire to be left alone, acting from instinct and reflex, didn't want to mess with anything until he was forced, etc.
Ned Stark also a great example of a W character. Stannis as well.
Ozymandias is W, and Rorschach is WB. The only path to viewing Ozymandias as B is if you don't trust his self-report/don't believe the things he claims about his motivations and internal experience. (This is a valid reading! But I think that step should be spelled out.)
(Also, I note that I draw a lot of the color wheel examples from Mark Rosewater's blog, where he often talks directly and at length about this; he's almost certainly THE foremost expert in the entire world on the MTG colors and their philosophies, having spent nearly the past three decades thinking and writing extensively about them. He's stated in no uncertain terms that Ozymandias is W and Rorschach is WB.)
I agree with you that the Simpsons analogy is a bit stretched; I like it mostly because it has five characters who fit at least relatively well.
Jesus is GW in his overall message/depiction (also has moments of flashing R).
Batman is a B persona in service of WU goals, tho the "no killing" rule is very W.
So we seem roughly in agreement, other than Ozymandias. It is hard for to me to think that Rorschach is less white than him (look at the final confronation "never compromise even in the face of oblivion" (paraphrase) that's such a white perspective). Rorschach regularly compromises his goals to fit in with rules. When does Ozymandias do this?
Ozymandias breaks all norms and rules to achieve his goals and could have acheived them in other ways. Perhaps in the universe of Watchmen he makes the right call but I don't think we are meant to be like "here is the order/peace/law guy".
I absolutely do not trust his self-report. That's kind of a point of watchmen. I don't think we are meant to read it and go "well if Ozy says that then we should trust him". He's a megalomaniac who has a mad plan that succeeds and we are meant to ask ourselves if we accept the win even at the enormous price. To treat that perspective as lawful seems mind bending to me. Ozymandias is SBF who wins. Do you think that person is a white character?
I don't think that I'm gonna take Mark Rosewater's take on faith here.
But again, I appreciate your work writing this. It's a useful ontology.
I think the main place where I disagree with you is that you're assuming Ozy cares about a *particular* set of rules.
"Rule X is the highest rule above all other rules" is a very very White perspective. Black doesn't care about *any* rules, at *all,* whereas subordinating everything to a single principle that you hold more sacred than anything else is White.
Ozymandias is trying to minimize death, period. He thinks that nuclear war is an inevitability, and that the human race will destroy itself. He made (from his perspective) a sacrifice of millions, to preserve billions. He's a dyed-in-the-wool utilitarian, and he bit the bullet on a massive trolley problem because it was the "right" thing to do from a total-lives-saved-in-expectation perspective.
Meanwhile, Rorschach is doing a very black-white ingroup-outgroup thing. He disobeys the rules that he thinks are stupid or counterproductive, and he gets angry at others for *not* holding sacred the rules that *he* thinks matter.
Rorschach being WB means that white perspectives are in his wheelhouse! It just means that black perspectives are *also* in his wheelhouse.
This is an masterful and impressive achievement, it has sparked a ton of amazing ideas for me, outside of MTG (which I barely ever played). So thanks for this incredible intellectual artifact!
I've been using Jungian Cognitive Functions under the name "Color Model" for nearly a decade now, both as a personal tool and a teaching one. It's amazing to me how much of what you've said of this 5part model maps to that 8part one, both in the source of major insights and in the best usecases.
EG, how one's colors alter one's perceptions, internal world structure, and actions all at once. The mistake of using Blue/Red intuitions when giving advice to someone thinking in a Yellow mode. How the same word can be used in different ways.
Meanwhile, having a categorization model gives really solid starting heuristics for how to interact with people. Walk into a Blue venue and begin with a Blue language model, then alter from there. If someone is consistently using terms/impressions on a single color, then you can mirror that color OR challenge their assumptions with another. It won't bring mastery, as individuals are more complex, but it lets you quickly get close and gives a starting point from which to deviate.
Downside of using an 8part model, it's honestly too wide to quickly generate intuitions or easily explain. I've regretted it multiple times. Probably this 5 part model outperforms it by being more memorable and useable!
I was also interested in the Jungian model at the time when I read Duncan's earlier version of this essay a few years ago (in the time since then, I've found the MtG model more useful overall) and had the instinct to try to create a mapping between them. I'm curious if yours matches mine? (or maybe when you said MtG "maps to" Jung, you just meant that in a broader sense of them having similar uses?)
Anyway, while any attempt to establish a correspondence between them will necessarily be a bit forced in some places, if I had to establish such a correspondence, I would do it like this:
I did mean that they had similar uses, but I separately think that a mapping is a fun thought exercise! It seems intuitive to me that both models are cutting up the same ideaspace, and so a mapping should be possible.
My mapping ended up very similar to yours, although I allowed myself the right to smear functions across multiple Colors where it made sense.
White: Primarily Fe, through harm reduction via making the world safe for everyone. Secondarily Se's communal aspect of Known Hierarchy.
Blue: Primarily Ti/Ne, the quest for new knowledge and organization there of.
Black: Primarily Te. Secondarily, the less-ascetic Si's desires for material comforts. It also splits Fi/Ti, sometimes it's personal and sometimes it's not, different cards give different vibes depending on Black/Red or Black/Blue, respectively.
Red: Primarily Fi, passion and drive. Secondarily Se's individual aspect of Drama.
Green: Primarily Ni, the long history of life. Elements of both Se and Si's forms of predictability, both in social order and personal life. Splits Fe/Te, every being is natural and it's natural some get eaten. Green is the weird color here, being neither particularly emotional (F) nor particularly rational (T), but rather about What Is.
I think this is born out by the conflicts as well:
White vs Black is the classic Fe/Te conflict, Mistake theory versus Conflict theory, Raise the quality Floor versus Raise the quality Ceiling. (I'm not completely happy with Orzhov's take on this split)
Black vs Green is Te/Fi individual optimization against Ni/Se/Si communalism and conservatism. What can I take vs what can I keep.
Green vs Blue is Ni's Metis and Stability vs Ti's Episteme and Ne's Rampant Growth. What can I make vs what can I keep.
Blue vs Red is the classic Fi/Ti conflict, Red Oni Blue Oni, Passion vs Truth (but I love how Izzet bridges this difficult split)
Red vs White is the classic Fi/Fe conflict, "be yourself regardless of who is watching" versus "be no more than what those around you find palatable", "A safe space is where you can be yourself" vs "A safe space is where you won't be harmed"
Nice, I hadn't thought about how there's not only parallels between the individual colors and the individual function-attitudes, but also between the conflicts between colors and the conflicts between function-attitudes - that's really neat!
Hm, say more about Wolverine being green? He doesn't parse that way to me. (At least not Hugh Jackman's portrayal, which is the only one I'm familiar with.) I'd label him red.
I can see the X-Men as a group being green. But Wolverine specifically has generally seemed a reluctant member, restless if he stays in one place too long, tied down by and fighting for people in front of him - Rogue, Jean Gray, Professor X, X-23 - rather than any ideal.
> In our own society, the two major political parties have absolutely become white/black in their motivations in recent years, with the most disappointing example being the Republican party’s unwillingness or inability to do anything about the excesses of the president.
NBD but it's not entirely clear when "recent years" are, since the publication date hasn't been preserved. But I guess you'd still mark it as true except the specific word "president".
Wolverine is base red, as you note, but his (strong) secondary color is green. This isn't super emphasized in the post, since it's harder to translate to humans-living-in-the-modern-era, but ferality and ferocity and wild instinct are also green.
It's a subtle line—the rage of a berserker is red, but the violence of wolves caught up in bloodlust during the hunt is green. You could think of it as red being heart, and green being gut. Red is anger and wrath, and green is a mother bear destroying everything that might be a threat to her children (it's got ... less model behind it? It's less totalizing? The mother bear probably does not HATE the threat to her children, it just ... needs to die).
Wolverine often acts from this place, of a sort of dispassionate, instinctive brutality, as opposed to an emotionally-driven, passionate anger. (He ALSO acts with emotionally driven, passionate anger, of course—I usually cite him as a red-green character but I needed more characters I could mention AT ALL in the green section.)
I read this the first time in 2019 or 2020, (When I first started playing MTG Arena, that's the only format I've played it in). I was also looking at similar personality systems at the time, and have actually used it as a mental jog as suggested, along with some other personality systems. I do like how you straight up use it as a simple intuition pump and nothing more, since a lot of systems are the same thing but people try and read more into them.
Some suggested changes and other comments, though overall it works great.
-The color wheel kind of matches up with DISC, which is a simple little 4 part system that apparently lots of HR people like to use. Black and D are pretty similar (Ambitious, willing to push boundaries, often combative), C and blue kind of fit (organized, patterns, though color wheel blue is more open to new things), White and Green mesh well with S (like to keep things as they are, community emphasis), Red somewhat with I (strong emotions, passionate, energetic), though the matches are nowhere near exact.
-Black: Descriptions of black always sound straight up evil, despite claims otherwise. ("amoral", "strong should take advantage of the weak", the second is popular on official Rosewater posts.) Which doesn't work with those claims otherwise. Personally, if you look at interactions/conflicts I have, black describes them well, but I don't go around thinking about how morality doesn't matter or how everyone just has to look out for themselves. Some ways to make black less evil:
--Slogan change to "Satisfaction through opportunity", which combines (I think) two official slogans. Could still represent a con man, thief, supervillain type person breaking rules and wrecking things for personal gain, but could also represent someone with friendlier goals, looking to satisfy them in ways other people might not think of.
--Emphasizing the personal agency, ambitious, big goals as the center of the personality, and the questionable morals parts get dropped. Philosophy, personality, way of thinking are big on personal agency, big goals, willing to do things their own way. Which like anyone else could go well, or badly. Seems to be what official MTG has done at points, but not as a core part of how the color is described.
-Black and White Friendly: Tribalism does seem like just one way of combining the two colors, which doesn't capture close to everything. Hierarchy or meritocracy could be another, a system which is organized but big on personal advancement within it. Though how to turn this into a personality or way of thinking that a random everyday person relates to is trickier (Creatrivity, heroism, etc. are easier to imagine as part of a personality) "Status" is what I thought of after some brainstorming, that a person with lots of black and white qualities wants to visibly be considered above others in some social system, while people with qualities of other colors don't care so much. I'll see how others comment. (This would include tribalism, where other tribes are below, plus other hierarchies. And fits the "corrupt priesthood" black white cards often are.)
--Black White Conflict: Stag vs. Rabbit doesn't seem a great example, since Stag is clearly the better option if you can get it. You could argue people with black qualities are less trusting and more likely to pick rabbit, but they'd still want more food. "If the group is happy, the individual is happy" vs. "Groups exist to serve the individuals in it" are actual phrases I've seen used to describe people, something based on these maybe could work, though off the top of my head I don't think of any obvious examples. I'll let my brain work on this and see if it spits anything out.
--Black Green Conflict: I was thinking "use resources instead of wasting them" vs. "preserve them" was a better way to describe black green conflict, and you went and edited it exactly that way. :) A really clear example I heard of recently: Titanic (and probably other archaeology sites) has a dispute over whether to leave artifacts in place, or take them to the surface. Argument for first is that it is a gravesite and should be treated as such, argument for the second is that the stuff will be buried and/or decay anyway, so might as well get it before it goes. Seems an example where most people could easily understand both arguments, even if strongly agreeing with one. Though I didn't think of a quick way to write this.
Hey there! I've had your article bookmarked for over a year now. I shared it like crazy when I first read it, and had as many conversations as I could about it. It's really done a lot for me, and the temperance with which you approach the tool is admirable.
Thank you for moving it over here. I re-read it every now and then, so this helps me a lot. I'm eager to check out the changes :]
I think this is a great analysis of the MTG color wheel, but I tend to think that Green is a bit misrepresented in this article. Green's primary function is to promote Growth. Winning with green *can* be/feel harmonious and balanced, but more often green asserts dominance through a feral smackdown by being bigger than its opponents. It has big creatures, and its spells most often focus on ramping up those creatures or making more land. It's about development and nurturing nature, and embracing the feral as well. and its negative society is that its natural selection, where weaker/smaller creatures are stamped out. Color combos with green focus on how that growth is directed. Green-red focuses on being big and hitting fast, green-blue is an accelerant for knowledge (or card draw), green-white is often about lifegain or life in general, and green-black is about abusing nature and growth to your benefit (reanimation is a common theme in green black). By focusing on Harmony, you take away some of the more brutal/less nice aspects of the color, and represent it as a hippie only type color. Green characters are like Godzilla, Khal Drogo, or Chewbacca.
This is largely the difference between gameplay and philosophy. In the game of Magic, which is about combat, the "smackdown" elements of green are overemphasized and the core of green is underemphasized (just as the "rage" elements of red are overemphasized, and the core joie de vivre of red is downplayed). Everything you're saying about green is true, but I think that your description is a bit of an error in the opposite direction, in terms of the *balance* of what green cares about.
Thanks for the response! Honestly wasn't expecting that! I think we agree for sure. I think I should've used the word underrepresented, rather than misrepresented in hindsight. I wanted to point out that the description of Green in the article doesn't acknowledge those aspects of the color (as part of the philosophy of Harmony) whereas I felt your analysis of other colors in the article had better explored the aspects of each color. You do mention Wolverine as an example of feral use of Green (which I absolutely agree with), but I just felt like the duality and balance of nature wasn't fully represented. Mainly I think the victory example of "a tired general retiring to his farm" feels distinctly more in line with White (Peace) to me than Green for instance. Your other victory examples are definitely more in line with Green as a growth/nurturing idea "a mother nursing her baby, a valley lush with growth now that the rains have come and the pestilence has passed" and also are consistent with your description of Green as relying on established wisdom. I'd add that established wisdom and harmony can also sometimes mean a brutal, unfeeling and uncaring force of nature. A victory example of Green I would use would be of a wolf eating their freshly caught prey. My intention was to add to the Green discourse, and I did use a lot of gameplay jargon in hindsight! Hope this helps adjust my stance more into the Philosophy category rather than Gameplay.
Yeah, might be worth an edit at some point. I definitely appreciate the detail.
I really like this though I think your examples seem pretty off at times. Like several of these I was like 'what is Duncan talking about'. Either that or I don't understand your ontology. (Katja helped with some of these suggestions)
White:
Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones - dunno, Why not Ned? Surely Ned? Or early John Snow? Stannis before he goes crazy
Javert from Les Misérables, - good
Ozymandias from Watchmen - definitely not. Surely Rorchach. Ozymandias is black
Superman - good
McGonagall from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality - can't remember
Marge from The Simpsons. - I find the simpsons analogy a bit tortured. Marge doesn't feel anything enough for me. Sometimes she obeys her passions, often she wants harmony.
Others I'd say:
Jesus
Judge dredd maybe? I haven't read enough
Batman
Atticus finch
Blue
Merlin is a classic blue character - Merlin differs a lot from depiction to depiction and is often pretty green
Spock - good
Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen - Feels off. Dreiberg feels more blue than Manhattan. Manhattan is pretty green in his being locked to his understanding of the future, and often oddly incurious
Lisa from The Simpsons is blue - good though also white
Ravenclaw House - good
Spongebob Squarepants is at least partially blue - interesting case
Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres in HPMOR is more than one color, but his projects with Hermione and Draco are strongly blue-leaning. - sure
Others:
Black - note that I think victory is a better word than satisfaction
Han Solo - this doesn't feel right. Solo isn't powerhungry. Lando feels better here.
Cersei Lannister - Again, this feels off, given the options. What about Littlefinger?
Every major character in Seinfeld is black except Kramer
Bart Simpson - maybe
Slytherin House, Blaise Zabini and Sirius Black - sure
Others
Lex Luther
Jason Bourne
The godfather
Red
Toph Beifong - this feels murky, especially when you have early series Zuko
Wile E. Coyote - sure yeah this is fun
Romeo and Juliet
Kramer from Seinfeld
Homer - this feels strained, again, bart surely is driven by his passions too.
Joyce Byers
Others
Robert Baratheon
Green
Yoda - yes
Guinan
Tom Bombadil
Buffy in later seasons
Wolverine from X-Men - not red? I dunno, but this seems off
The centaur society in HPMOR
Maggie - sure
Others
I argue Dr Manhattan - he is sort of locked in his own destiny
Ogion in the wizard of earthsea (Carlsmith's suggestion in an essay)
I understand based on examples so it seems pretty important to me to have ones that feel right. Many of these seemed so off that I wonder if I am misunderstanding the whole ontology.
Early series Zuko is RW, not just R, but I agree he had a lot of R. Toph is an avatar of R, though.
Agree re: Homer. Agree re: Robert Baratheon.
Wolverine is RG; his various depictions bounce around from almost totally red to almost totally green but he usually has substantial both.
Again, agreement that Manhattan's strong secondary is G; I could see an argument for GU but he's not NOT U.
Haven't read Earthsea.
I agree Dr. Manhattan's second color would be G, but I'm again leaning on Rosewater's claims here.
Power-hungry is not critical for black. Han Solo is definitely black *at first,* and I agree with you re: Lando. I also agree with you that Littlefinger is black, and probably a better example since Cersei also adds R a bunch.
Lex Luthor is UB, not just B; the U is crucial to his character. Bourne ... there's an argument for B but I think there's a much stronger argument for G, at least post-amnesia; he was acting out of a desire to be left alone, acting from instinct and reflex, didn't want to mess with anything until he was forced, etc.
I fell asleep during The Godfather so idk =P
Ned Stark also a great example of a W character. Stannis as well.
Ozymandias is W, and Rorschach is WB. The only path to viewing Ozymandias as B is if you don't trust his self-report/don't believe the things he claims about his motivations and internal experience. (This is a valid reading! But I think that step should be spelled out.)
(Also, I note that I draw a lot of the color wheel examples from Mark Rosewater's blog, where he often talks directly and at length about this; he's almost certainly THE foremost expert in the entire world on the MTG colors and their philosophies, having spent nearly the past three decades thinking and writing extensively about them. He's stated in no uncertain terms that Ozymandias is W and Rorschach is WB.)
I agree with you that the Simpsons analogy is a bit stretched; I like it mostly because it has five characters who fit at least relatively well.
Jesus is GW in his overall message/depiction (also has moments of flashing R).
Batman is a B persona in service of WU goals, tho the "no killing" rule is very W.
So we seem roughly in agreement, other than Ozymandias. It is hard for to me to think that Rorschach is less white than him (look at the final confronation "never compromise even in the face of oblivion" (paraphrase) that's such a white perspective). Rorschach regularly compromises his goals to fit in with rules. When does Ozymandias do this?
Ozymandias breaks all norms and rules to achieve his goals and could have acheived them in other ways. Perhaps in the universe of Watchmen he makes the right call but I don't think we are meant to be like "here is the order/peace/law guy".
I absolutely do not trust his self-report. That's kind of a point of watchmen. I don't think we are meant to read it and go "well if Ozy says that then we should trust him". He's a megalomaniac who has a mad plan that succeeds and we are meant to ask ourselves if we accept the win even at the enormous price. To treat that perspective as lawful seems mind bending to me. Ozymandias is SBF who wins. Do you think that person is a white character?
I don't think that I'm gonna take Mark Rosewater's take on faith here.
But again, I appreciate your work writing this. It's a useful ontology.
I think the main place where I disagree with you is that you're assuming Ozy cares about a *particular* set of rules.
"Rule X is the highest rule above all other rules" is a very very White perspective. Black doesn't care about *any* rules, at *all,* whereas subordinating everything to a single principle that you hold more sacred than anything else is White.
Ozymandias is trying to minimize death, period. He thinks that nuclear war is an inevitability, and that the human race will destroy itself. He made (from his perspective) a sacrifice of millions, to preserve billions. He's a dyed-in-the-wool utilitarian, and he bit the bullet on a massive trolley problem because it was the "right" thing to do from a total-lives-saved-in-expectation perspective.
Meanwhile, Rorschach is doing a very black-white ingroup-outgroup thing. He disobeys the rules that he thinks are stupid or counterproductive, and he gets angry at others for *not* holding sacred the rules that *he* thinks matter.
Rorschach being WB means that white perspectives are in his wheelhouse! It just means that black perspectives are *also* in his wheelhouse.
This is an masterful and impressive achievement, it has sparked a ton of amazing ideas for me, outside of MTG (which I barely ever played). So thanks for this incredible intellectual artifact!
I've been using Jungian Cognitive Functions under the name "Color Model" for nearly a decade now, both as a personal tool and a teaching one. It's amazing to me how much of what you've said of this 5part model maps to that 8part one, both in the source of major insights and in the best usecases.
EG, how one's colors alter one's perceptions, internal world structure, and actions all at once. The mistake of using Blue/Red intuitions when giving advice to someone thinking in a Yellow mode. How the same word can be used in different ways.
Meanwhile, having a categorization model gives really solid starting heuristics for how to interact with people. Walk into a Blue venue and begin with a Blue language model, then alter from there. If someone is consistently using terms/impressions on a single color, then you can mirror that color OR challenge their assumptions with another. It won't bring mastery, as individuals are more complex, but it lets you quickly get close and gives a starting point from which to deviate.
Downside of using an 8part model, it's honestly too wide to quickly generate intuitions or easily explain. I've regretted it multiple times. Probably this 5 part model outperforms it by being more memorable and useable!
I was also interested in the Jungian model at the time when I read Duncan's earlier version of this essay a few years ago (in the time since then, I've found the MtG model more useful overall) and had the instinct to try to create a mapping between them. I'm curious if yours matches mine? (or maybe when you said MtG "maps to" Jung, you just meant that in a broader sense of them having similar uses?)
Anyway, while any attempt to establish a correspondence between them will necessarily be a bit forced in some places, if I had to establish such a correspondence, I would do it like this:
Blue: Ne/Ti
Red: Se/Fi
White: Fe
Black: Te
Green: Si/Ni
I did mean that they had similar uses, but I separately think that a mapping is a fun thought exercise! It seems intuitive to me that both models are cutting up the same ideaspace, and so a mapping should be possible.
My mapping ended up very similar to yours, although I allowed myself the right to smear functions across multiple Colors where it made sense.
White: Primarily Fe, through harm reduction via making the world safe for everyone. Secondarily Se's communal aspect of Known Hierarchy.
Blue: Primarily Ti/Ne, the quest for new knowledge and organization there of.
Black: Primarily Te. Secondarily, the less-ascetic Si's desires for material comforts. It also splits Fi/Ti, sometimes it's personal and sometimes it's not, different cards give different vibes depending on Black/Red or Black/Blue, respectively.
Red: Primarily Fi, passion and drive. Secondarily Se's individual aspect of Drama.
Green: Primarily Ni, the long history of life. Elements of both Se and Si's forms of predictability, both in social order and personal life. Splits Fe/Te, every being is natural and it's natural some get eaten. Green is the weird color here, being neither particularly emotional (F) nor particularly rational (T), but rather about What Is.
I think this is born out by the conflicts as well:
White vs Black is the classic Fe/Te conflict, Mistake theory versus Conflict theory, Raise the quality Floor versus Raise the quality Ceiling. (I'm not completely happy with Orzhov's take on this split)
Black vs Green is Te/Fi individual optimization against Ni/Se/Si communalism and conservatism. What can I take vs what can I keep.
Green vs Blue is Ni's Metis and Stability vs Ti's Episteme and Ne's Rampant Growth. What can I make vs what can I keep.
Blue vs Red is the classic Fi/Ti conflict, Red Oni Blue Oni, Passion vs Truth (but I love how Izzet bridges this difficult split)
Red vs White is the classic Fi/Fe conflict, "be yourself regardless of who is watching" versus "be no more than what those around you find palatable", "A safe space is where you can be yourself" vs "A safe space is where you won't be harmed"
Nice, I hadn't thought about how there's not only parallels between the individual colors and the individual function-attitudes, but also between the conflicts between colors and the conflicts between function-attitudes - that's really neat!
I remember reading this article when it came out, but had no recollection that you were the one who wrote it! Glad it's back on the open web.
Hm, say more about Wolverine being green? He doesn't parse that way to me. (At least not Hugh Jackman's portrayal, which is the only one I'm familiar with.) I'd label him red.
I can see the X-Men as a group being green. But Wolverine specifically has generally seemed a reluctant member, restless if he stays in one place too long, tied down by and fighting for people in front of him - Rogue, Jean Gray, Professor X, X-23 - rather than any ideal.
> In our own society, the two major political parties have absolutely become white/black in their motivations in recent years, with the most disappointing example being the Republican party’s unwillingness or inability to do anything about the excesses of the president.
NBD but it's not entirely clear when "recent years" are, since the publication date hasn't been preserved. But I guess you'd still mark it as true except the specific word "president".
Wolverine is base red, as you note, but his (strong) secondary color is green. This isn't super emphasized in the post, since it's harder to translate to humans-living-in-the-modern-era, but ferality and ferocity and wild instinct are also green.
It's a subtle line—the rage of a berserker is red, but the violence of wolves caught up in bloodlust during the hunt is green. You could think of it as red being heart, and green being gut. Red is anger and wrath, and green is a mother bear destroying everything that might be a threat to her children (it's got ... less model behind it? It's less totalizing? The mother bear probably does not HATE the threat to her children, it just ... needs to die).
Wolverine often acts from this place, of a sort of dispassionate, instinctive brutality, as opposed to an emotionally-driven, passionate anger. (He ALSO acts with emotionally driven, passionate anger, of course—I usually cite him as a red-green character but I needed more characters I could mention AT ALL in the green section.)
Hm.
Rand al'Thor: WRB?
Matrim Cauthon: UBR?
Perrin Aybara: WG? and RG as Young Bull?
I read this the first time in 2019 or 2020, (When I first started playing MTG Arena, that's the only format I've played it in). I was also looking at similar personality systems at the time, and have actually used it as a mental jog as suggested, along with some other personality systems. I do like how you straight up use it as a simple intuition pump and nothing more, since a lot of systems are the same thing but people try and read more into them.
Some suggested changes and other comments, though overall it works great.
-The color wheel kind of matches up with DISC, which is a simple little 4 part system that apparently lots of HR people like to use. Black and D are pretty similar (Ambitious, willing to push boundaries, often combative), C and blue kind of fit (organized, patterns, though color wheel blue is more open to new things), White and Green mesh well with S (like to keep things as they are, community emphasis), Red somewhat with I (strong emotions, passionate, energetic), though the matches are nowhere near exact.
-Black: Descriptions of black always sound straight up evil, despite claims otherwise. ("amoral", "strong should take advantage of the weak", the second is popular on official Rosewater posts.) Which doesn't work with those claims otherwise. Personally, if you look at interactions/conflicts I have, black describes them well, but I don't go around thinking about how morality doesn't matter or how everyone just has to look out for themselves. Some ways to make black less evil:
--Slogan change to "Satisfaction through opportunity", which combines (I think) two official slogans. Could still represent a con man, thief, supervillain type person breaking rules and wrecking things for personal gain, but could also represent someone with friendlier goals, looking to satisfy them in ways other people might not think of.
--Emphasizing the personal agency, ambitious, big goals as the center of the personality, and the questionable morals parts get dropped. Philosophy, personality, way of thinking are big on personal agency, big goals, willing to do things their own way. Which like anyone else could go well, or badly. Seems to be what official MTG has done at points, but not as a core part of how the color is described.
-Black and White Friendly: Tribalism does seem like just one way of combining the two colors, which doesn't capture close to everything. Hierarchy or meritocracy could be another, a system which is organized but big on personal advancement within it. Though how to turn this into a personality or way of thinking that a random everyday person relates to is trickier (Creatrivity, heroism, etc. are easier to imagine as part of a personality) "Status" is what I thought of after some brainstorming, that a person with lots of black and white qualities wants to visibly be considered above others in some social system, while people with qualities of other colors don't care so much. I'll see how others comment. (This would include tribalism, where other tribes are below, plus other hierarchies. And fits the "corrupt priesthood" black white cards often are.)
--Black White Conflict: Stag vs. Rabbit doesn't seem a great example, since Stag is clearly the better option if you can get it. You could argue people with black qualities are less trusting and more likely to pick rabbit, but they'd still want more food. "If the group is happy, the individual is happy" vs. "Groups exist to serve the individuals in it" are actual phrases I've seen used to describe people, something based on these maybe could work, though off the top of my head I don't think of any obvious examples. I'll let my brain work on this and see if it spits anything out.
--Black Green Conflict: I was thinking "use resources instead of wasting them" vs. "preserve them" was a better way to describe black green conflict, and you went and edited it exactly that way. :) A really clear example I heard of recently: Titanic (and probably other archaeology sites) has a dispute over whether to leave artifacts in place, or take them to the surface. Argument for first is that it is a gravesite and should be treated as such, argument for the second is that the stuff will be buried and/or decay anyway, so might as well get it before it goes. Seems an example where most people could easily understand both arguments, even if strongly agreeing with one. Though I didn't think of a quick way to write this.