Evil colour. Am I completely overthinking this?

[Eli_Freysson]

I was originally going to go with red as the colour of demons in my latest work: They appear through rifts in reality that manifest as a red haze that falls over everything: A confusing, eye-hurting red in which barely-visible monsters lurk.

But the main good guys of my setting, um, use red as a symbol. Their blades are red, their ethnic group has impossibly crimson-coloured hair, and their outfits are red and black. The idea is that they associate red with life and vitality, because blood is red.

I considered going with purple or magenta for the demons, but those didn't really feel elegant in the prose.

"Something moved in the magenta. Something awful, whose shape made no sense but radiated violence. He fired at it, but wasn't sure if he hit. The thing darted to the side, vanishing into that hideous magenta..."


I then considered making reference to an awful pink colour, but I don't know if that works either.

My latest idea is to make it a lurid blue colour. There would be a coldness and a darkness to it.

I need to figure this out pretty fast, and I don't know why on Earth I've taken so long to make this change. And I would really appreciate some opinions.

[hexa]

Magenta works fine.  It's not supposed to be elegant; it's supposed to be evil.  Evil doesn't have to be elegant

[Eli_Freysson]

Magenta works fine.  It's not supposed to be elegant; it's supposed to be evil.  Evil doesn't have to be elegant

I don't mean elegant in-universe. I mean elegant in the text itself.

[ScarletBea]

Use purple, then - that flows better.

[Peat]

Indigo's a good word for a purple-ish colour. Ditto violet at times.

But... I'm not seeing the issue with having red be a colour for the good guys and the bad guys? If anything, there seems to be a lot of interesting parallels to work with.

[Alex Hormann]

Magenta is a great colour for horrors beyond imaging.  Fun fact, magenta doesn't really exist.

In terms of flow, I think  single syllable words tend to work better. The Red, for example. Or the Grey. Longer words break apart the rhythm too easily.

[Eli_Freysson]

Indigo's a good word for a purple-ish colour. Ditto violet at times.

But... I'm not seeing the issue with having red be a colour for the good guys and the bad guys? If anything, there seems to be a lot of interesting parallels to work with.

Hmm. Indigo WOULD be a good choice.

As for parallels... I don't know. I'm not sure how to make anything out of it.

Magenta is a great colour for horrors beyond imaging.  Fun fact, magenta doesn't really exist.

I know. They used it very effectively in the movie adaptation for The Colour out of Space, since in the Lovecraft's short the Colour was completely unrecognisable.

In terms of flow, I think  single syllable words tend to work better. The Red, for example. Or the Grey. Longer words break apart the rhythm too easily.

I'm now leaning towards "blue", with occasional clarification of "indigo".

[Bender]

Demons in magenta, indigo or blue....seriously?

I'd have imagined, black or dirty gray would be a more appropriate choice. They sync with darkness/evil or evil lurking in darkness themes. Also "they are so black/gray that they seem to suck the colors of the world" would be nice...something like Dementors.

[cupiscent]

Grey's a nice choice for that anti-colour, anti-life, anti-brightness aspect.

Indigo is both a lovely word and a nice dark, shadowy colour though.

[xiagan]

Use monochrome. They suck life and colour out of everything.

[NightWrite]

I agree with going with shades of grey to show a sense of them draining away the life and vitality of someplace, to help given them a sense of an alien nature. You could also play with descriptions of texture, like the demons have thick dried out skin which resembles pitted, cracking stone. It depends on how "anti-life" you want to go with things.

[S P Oldham]

I was going to suggest grey too. It can be brooding, dark, menacing and miserable. We often think of grey areas as being indistinct and undecided. You could expand that to mean an indistinct kind of evil, a lurking, uncertain threat or danger. There are many variations to grey too, plus it could combine with the clouds, with the shades of light at night and even in the daytime, allowing the danger to hide in plain sight.