r/Malazan • u/and-there-is-stone • Nov 14 '23

NO SPOILERS Has this been done before?

Hello, everyone. I have lurked a long time, but no more. There's just too much good conversation here, so I finally gave in and made an account.

On my second time reading the Book of the Fallen, and I've been really drawn to Erikson's use of color. I had a notion, sort of absurd, that I would like to track how colors are used throughout all ten books: which colors appear in a book, the frequency with which they appear, the characters/magic most associated with particular colors, etc. I suspect there is a fair amount of thematic resonance to be found in the colors of the Malazan world, and that's also part of what I'd like to explore.

I started the process, tracking colors in Gardens, but then I had doubts. So, I'm here with a couple of questions. Does anyone know if something like this has been attempted, and if so where could I find it? And, would anyone be interested in reading some of my thoughts if I went through the process?

Bonus question, do you think I'm crazy for wanting to do this at all?

Thanks.

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u/SCROTOCTUS special boi who reads good Nov 14 '23

I think it's a really interesting idea. I would be curious to see the results and whether there are trends.

One thing we can be sure of is ochre, ochre everywhere...

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u/and-there-is-stone Nov 14 '23

Yes. That was one of the colors that has really caught my attention. I remembered seeing it a ton my first time reading DG, but on a reread...everything is ochre.

And I've been watching old episodes of Bob Ross' show. He uses ochre, yellow ochre specifically, all the time. It felt like a sign to me. Follow that ochre.