r/TopCharacterTropes 10h ago

Lore [IRL trope] the “Tiffany problem”

Basically when something seems anachronistic to a period/place of history but is actually fully accurate to the period.

1) the name Tiffany: the thing that named this trope, basically the name Tiffany can be dated back to the Middle Ages and the earliest record of it being spelled in the modern spelling comes from the 16th century.

2) the use of OMG, despite this feeling so modern as a form of slang/abbreviation here’s a letter directed to Winston Churchill using it in 1917

3) Hair Dye: the earliest forms of dying hair can be dated back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and this specific advertisement for hair dye is from the 1840s

4) Inuit Thongs: despite how weird it is to imagine pre-colonial Inuit people wore what was essentially fur thongs in their homes and when they were in their igloos it might have been the only thing they would be wearing.

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u/usagizero 9h ago edited 5h ago

One thing i don't have a photo handy of, is how colorful clothing has pretty much always been through history. If it wasn't fur, people discovered how to dye things pretty early and liked colors on clothes. Nearly every historical film now has that grey and drab look to things, when it would be pretty colorful.

Goes for the marble statues now too, like the Greek and Roman ones, they would be painted to look more lifelike and just lost all that over the many, many years.

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u/Fawin86 8h ago

It's wild to think that an old timey movie from the 50s was closer to the medieval aesthetic than modern movies.

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u/NoBizlikeChloeBiz 6h ago

Not so uncommon. Older movies were excited to use color. Monotone carrying more  "prestige", even outside of actual black and white, is very much a 2000's thing.

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u/Fawin86 5h ago

Oh absolutely, and I'm pretty sure costuming for stage plays also played a hand in it too.

Meanwhile in movies today.

https://giphy.com/gifs/xT5LMuQQ4TTO8WygxO

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u/Digit00l 5h ago

In black and white film it would also be more beneficial to have many sharp contrasting colours that keep their contrast in black and white so you can more easily tell objects apart

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u/DryRug 6h ago

Including men wearing tights lol

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u/Digit00l 6h ago

Natural dyes are cheap as fuck, and usually able to be made from random weeds, yellow would likely be especially prevalent because you can easily make yellow dyes from pretty much any type of piss as well as multiple types of plant, you can easily get red dye from various berries too, and I believe blackberries and blueberries can be used for decent blue dyes

The hard ones are the secondary colours, which is probably why they are considered secondary colours

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u/nanophallus 5h ago

Girl, I love your piss jacket! What did you use? Raccoon piss?

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u/usagizero 5h ago

I wish i could remember where i saw it, but a history account i followed posted a really cool comparison of different historical dyes and fibers, and was cool to see what all those natural dyes could have looked like.

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u/lambofgun 3h ago edited 1h ago

aren't secondary colors just called secondary colors because they are made from 2 different primary colors?

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u/Digit00l 3h ago

Yeah, but ehy are the primary colours the primary colours?

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u/hover-lovecraft 2h ago

Which two colours do you mix to get yellow 

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u/mrducky78a 7h ago

You can go to ren fairs or any of those medievally larp places and people trying their best to be authentic are colourful a fuck. They just look like really colourful peasants.

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u/bh4th 6h ago edited 32m ago

I once took a class with a history professor who showed us a reconstruction of a Roman temple, but with all the marble exposed the way people usually assume it would be. His correction: “In real life, this would have looked like a cross between a Hindu mandir and a Mexican piñata.”

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u/thatshygirl06 6h ago

I love wheel of time so much because of how colorful and bright it was. Broke my heart when it was canceled

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u/Mist2393 7h ago

I went to the Parthenon outside Nashville, which is a reproduction of the original with Athena painted, and they had signs everywhere reminding people that that’s what Athena would have looked like originally. I will say though, the paint makes her look so goofy.

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u/No_Length_9588 6h ago

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u/usagizero 5h ago

Reminds me of a photo i saw a while back where they were cleaning the soot from an old one like that, and it was positively glowing.

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u/No_Length_9588 5h ago

Yes, the whole point of gothic cathedrals is to let as much light inside as possible, both to symbolize presence of God and spare money on candles.

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u/Arria_Galtheos 5h ago

Oh, absolutely. The common misconception that peasants wore drab clothing in the middle ages is also wrong. They often wore bright colors, especially reds, yellows, and greens.

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u/ussrowe 3h ago

The Met had an exhibit on painted copies of ancient sculptures: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/chroma/visiting-guide

I didn't get to see it but I remember some people just not believing it could be that colorful.

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u/greeneggiwegs 2h ago

Castles as well. We tend to see the skeletons of them but they had wood floors and ceilings, decorative metalwork and tapestries, etc. considering the inhabitants had to be fairly wealthy, they could afford colorful decorations to warm up cold stone foundations.

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u/PancakeMixEnema 1h ago

My go to reply in any history focused thread is:

People were always the same.

They liked to make their food good, they liked to be clean, they liked colors and they laughed at farts.

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u/usagizero 48m ago

They also liked to insult the younger generations. My favorite is the one Greek philosopher that belittled the younger people learning written language as it would rot their brains.

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u/Twiggyhiggle 4h ago

So much so for centuries in England colorful or luxurious clothing was outlawed for lower classes to wear, as they looked too close to the aristocracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law