Having trouble coming up with... hair color, of all things.

[nothing to see here]

Yeah, I know, weird thing to get stuck on.

I'm in the process of writing a Pokémon fanfic-ish thing at the moment (finally! this idea's been in my head for what, 2 years now?) and I've run into a small problem... I haven't been able to figure out what hair color one of the major characters should have.

Basically, she's a little girl (somewhere in the 10- to 14-year-old range, around 4'08" to 4'10" tall) who doesn't exist according to all the official records and just kind of shows up in the streets of Saffron City one night, walking around in the rain without a coat on or anything.
There's a religious-fanatic group (the bad guys of the story so far) that's absolutely convinced that she has some sort of important item that they're looking for, so they've been searching all over the world for her during the past few months before the story starts.
Eventually it'll be revealed that the "thing" that the religious fanatics are looking for is actually a legendary Pokémon that she's been hiding in her backpack all along. The girl was somehow chosen to protect this Pokémon and has a sort of telepathic bond with it. And of course, very bad things will happen if the being that the religious fanatics refer to as "Master" gets his/her/its hands on the little critter.

I've decided that she's going to have fairly dark-colored hair, and I've kind of narrowed it down to either black, dark brown, or maybe some sort of dark green... I just can't decide which one.

(She also doesn't have a name yet, at this point... but that's something I'd rather come up with on my own, and I usually don't have too much trouble deciding on names as long as I have plenty of time to come up with them.)

 

[Evolutionary]

Brown? It just seems to for for me, a good deal of my short friends have brown hair.

 

[ultraviolet]

It would be interesting to link a feature of her appearance (so eye colour, hair colour etc) to the legendary pokemon that she's been 'chosen' to protect.
Otherwise, blue, because blue is an awesome hair colour.

 

[Bombsii]

Brown. For a young girl it fits in.

 

[surskitty]

Brown or black.

 

[Charizard Morph]

I'm for the brown or black, maybe go with a really really dark brown?

 

[Sparkling Dragon]

I'd go for a midnight blue, almost black. Super kawaii, if that's what you're going for.

 

[nothing to see here]

Hmm... looks like the vast majority's going with brown or black. Except the two Other votes (both for blue... which was actually the fourth color idea I had, after green. weird) and the one random person who voted for green but didn't post, heh.

I think I'm probably going to go with a really dark brown, like the kind of color that looks brown in well-lit areas but looks pretty close to black when it's wet or there's not much light.

Thanks for the help, everyone. I wasn't expecting to get any response at all on this, for some reason...

It would be interesting to link a feature of her appearance (so eye colour, hair colour etc) to the legendary pokemon that she's been 'chosen' to protect.

That's actually where my idea for green hair came from. Though of course, on the Pokémon, it's a light green instead of the dark green I was considering.
Now that I've seen the Pokémon's Sugimori art, though, I think I might actually be able to do that with her eye color instead.

 

[octobr]

What difference does hair color make? Just describe it as dark.

She had dark hair. There you go.

 

[OrangeAipom]

Celebi's eyes are too big, so it must be Shaymin.

i am a bit suspicious!

 

[nothing to see here]

Yeah, the Pokémon she's carrying around in her backpack is Shaymin.

Originally (or actually, in my second attempt at the story... the original version from two years ago skipped the "main character #2 finds Shaymin and starts investigating the religious fanatics' group" part of the story and went directly to what happens about a week later), Shaymin was going to be wandering around by herself, since the girl that's supposed to be hiding/protecting her didn't exist yet... but that led to a first chapter that came a little too close to the anime's "cute legendaries can't fight back unless they're Mew" thing, which I really didn't like. Hopefully I'll actually get past the first chapter this time, instead of finding something else I don't like and rewriting the whole thing again...

(And... suspicious? About what?)

 

[Greenumbreon]

Bright mettalic pink! 8D

 

[DonKarasuMan]

A very hazy ash-blonde was what I had in mind.

It has this sense of doubt and mystery contrasting with her innocence (that is, if she is innocent).

 

[Valerunner]

Get the girl to have black hair with green highlights, or reverse.

 

[Amoeba]

I don't know why but I had a vivid picture in my head of her having very light teal green hair. Though it probably sounds kind of illogical, since green doesn't occur in natural hair. Having such a responsibility and also not having any real past records, I don't think she would be a hair-dyer either.

 

[Flora]

^ Keep in mind that it's a Pokemon fanfic, and pretty much anything's possible.

I'd say brown.

 

[Amoeba]

Whether or not it's a pokemon fanfic, it's still within good taste to keep a sense of realism. This person is asking for the best hair colour for their character given the circumstances and background. I'm sure a lot is possible, but saying almost anything is possible is stretching it. Fics based on that mindset tend to have a lot of plot holes and lack structure.

 

[nothing to see here]

While I wouldn't really say "anything is possible," humans in the Pokémon universe do have weird hair colors sometimes... and there's nothing in any of the games that suggests that they're all just dying their hair.

Plus, there's a lot of "talking about obvious things" NPCs in the games, like the "I like shorts!" kid--they would have had someone mention hair dye at least once if all the weird-haired people were actually supposed to have dyed hair.

I suppose if someone was basing their version of the Pokémon universe on some sort of "Pokémon world is our Earth in the future" or "humans are native to our Earth but moved to the Pokémon world" theory, then they'd have to explain away the weird hair colors with dye or something. But I'm not using either of those, so there's nothing stopping someone from just having a weird natural hair color.

 

[Amoeba]

Hmmm... I guess I never thought about it that way. I just always assumed it was styled and dyed.

 

[opaltiger]

Odd hair colour is red flag #2 for readers (right behind odd eye colour), crazy anime hair be damned. Stick to something halfway realistic.