Either I am the most unobservant reader or you guys secretly edit these masterpieces, because I swear I find some detail that wasn't there before everytime I re-read them.
I know nothing about NCIS (Aside that it's obviously a cop show), but I'm still having fun seeing the reactions of the normal people to the Rangers, erm, eccentricity towards something's ('Well, it is a house inside a tree, so it does fit the definition of Tree House' were my thoughts as Kensi seemed to have a meltdown). I always have a hard time to keep from grinning, they're interactions are a real delight!
Could you explain what kind of personality does a Ranger develop due to their color?
If you'll take a look at your History page, it'll tell you what - if any - changes were made to a work since you last read it *solemn*. But no, nope, no sneak post-upload changes; story's just packed full of details. (Really, why use a negative when it's possible to use a positive instead?)
The tree house conversation was totally one of our favorites! It started out in a joke-sequence outside of the main story, but then we liked it so much we found a spot for it to belong - and the story ended up that much richer for it.
OH GOD Colour Theory. There's any number of those floating around fandom, some more popular than others; this one's a house special - it's my rather idiosyncratic thing which Sol and I embellished and broadened together for this 'verse. One of the thing that make it a bit different than most is that we treat Colours are functions rather personalities - which seems to me to make more sense given just how wildly different same-Colour Rangers can be.
So Colours are functions, jobs that need doing in order for a Team to be functional. This would also be why there's some Colours you just can't have a Team without (recent Dino Charge oddity aside), and some Colours that are usually either/or (i.e. it's fairly rare for a Team to have both a Pink and a White in their core five, or both a Green and a Black). This also means that what a specific Colour "looks like" can vary a lot based on the full Team context - a person might be a terrific Yellow for one team, but a wrong match for another.
The three base Colours are Red, Blue and Yellow. As we know, Reds are usually - but not always - leaders. This is because what Reds are for is making decisions, specifically decisions that keep people alive, and more specifically making those decisions in combat under a massive time crunch and also with a lot of missing/uncertain information. This would be why Reds tend to fly on instincts and a massive protective streak, and also have a tendency to charge straight into danger and without telling anyone. (Casey comes to mind.) The protective streak is also connected to the fact that whether or not they like that (Jayden certain didn't), Reds like people and tend to get really invested, really fast. If you want to know what a specific Red is weakest at, look no further than their Blue: Blues are fixers and problem-solvers and make up for whatever their Red is shit at. This is why some Blues are tech-savvy (Billy, Justin, Ethan), some are the best-trained person on the team (Kai, Sky, Theo), some at people-handling (TJ) and some provide stability and sanity-checks (Tori, Maddie, Kevin); what Reds suck at, Blues excel at. Yellows, on the other hand, are course-correctors: you want to know which way a Team is likely to err on, look at which way a Yellow pulls. WF were the hippiest of Teams, and their Yellow was hardassed, disciplined Taylor; LR were made of conscientious, disciplined personalities, and their Yellow was fun-loving, mellow Kelsey.
The course-correcting Yellows provide is distinctly moral: the disapproval of a Yellow will make most Rangers squirm if not outright freak out. (Samurai flat-out considered Emily to be the best of them.) Greens are also course-correctors, but in a different way: they the counter-balance, the outsiders from within. LR's Kelsey and Samurai's Mike are a good illustration: they're both easy-going fun-loving people on highly disciplined Teams, but LR was a Team of adults who needed to be reminded to go easy on themselves (with Joel's relative self-serving-ness being the genuine alternative, and not a lauded one) whereas Samurai were essentially child soldiers (with Emily their built-in reminder to cherish kindness and innocence and the "best of [them]" for it, marking those traits as something to aspire to and not just something to be protected). This would also be why Greens have the rep of being trouble and a headache, though they're darling as often as not. (That they're both course-correctors is why Greens and Yellows are particularly likely to make really good friends.) Blacks are similar to Greens (which is why it's rare for both Colours to be part of the same core five), but they're Balance, jesters and mediators.
That leaves Pinks and Whites, of the more-or-less common Colours. Pinks are the ones who remember (or else reminder others) to care for the wellbeing of team members rather than the Team; they're the necessary check against the tendency of Ranger Teams to think in "We". (JF had Fran - and RJ, to a degree - to do a Pink's job; WF had the advantage of all of them being kind and people-loving; and NS suffered for the lack of a Pink.) Whites raise questions of morality, each differently: Tommy's righteousness, Alyssa's excellence, Trent's struggles, Udonna's devotion in face of decades of suffering and grief.
So in each Colour there's a lot of personal variation - each Team needs different things - but there's still things that tend to repeat. Those things are often about motivation. What good are a Red's instincts, if they don't care about people - or if they can't inspire trust and love? Blues have to have the drive to Fix Things; notably a lot of them are orphaned, and tend to develop strong bonds with their Reds; or else Blue-Red pairs get romantic. Blues are also dependable and reliable, and usually invested in that (and in being perceived that way). Yellows have to be the sort of people in whose good opinion others are invested, as well as the sort of people who totally will stand up to their loved ones and call them out. Greens have to be the sort of people to stick their own way, too - but need to be able to compromise and grow about those things that set them apart from their Team. Adam-as-Green grew less hesitant and shy; Joel got better at altruism; Cam softened and opened up; Xander got better at accountability and conflict. Tommy-as-Green, Xander and Mike are all examples of the way Green-Red relationships can get as loaded as Blue-Red ones (and Cam had his moments with both Shane and Hunter, though NS were a Red-Blue sort of a Team): a lot of Greens have trust issues or are otherwise harder to win over, and as a rule Reds need to be trusted. (Mike is the one person on that team that Jayden defended to Ji - and the person to whom Jayden looked whenever he fucked things up with the Team.) And so on.
The Power pushes and nudges Rangers to develop in ways that enhance their chances of survival; some Rangers need more of a push - whether because they don't match the template as well, or because their circumstances are nastier. We don't see a lot of Rangers after their Rangering years, but - imagine Casey as a teacher, Tanya in the limelight, Maddie as a mediator: the same personality traits that made them good in the role of their Colours could serve them well for other things. The things that made Kim a great Pink could've protected her from the typical psychological harms of competitive gymnastics. Too hard a push is not healthy, though: Tommy in DT was an illustration of that - he couldn't let go of a Red's pushiness or a White's righteousness, and it made him a bad Black and not a very well-adapted person. Humans are adaptable; we change and grow and adjust out behaviour to the world around us.
Tori - the entire NS Team - in this 'verse don't know how to form genuine connections any other way, and it takes a huge effort to perceive human relations not through Colour. It's a hell of a problem and, indeed Tori and Blake are the only ones to build their lives in the "normal" world; the rest found or made their sheltered spaces. Sam's worry is not unfounded or unjustified (even if he could - and should - get better at expressing it): when someone's personality is rigid and non-adaptable in multiple domains of life (i.e. both work and family), in such way and degree as to cause genuine difficulty, the psych term for that is a personality disorder. For Tory in this 'verse, the Blue became a personality disorder. Worse: because of the ninjas' double power and because of the way things developed for them, there's a Grid aura hanging around all of them that means their Colour expectations have real power. The way Tori perceives her NCIS team in Colour-roles acts on them like a weaker form of the way a morpher does on a Ranger.
It ends up being a good thing too, though - but I'd better start a third comment now.
You said you don't know NCIS LA, so - G grew up in a string of foster homes, not knowing who his family was, what happened to them or even his own first name. There was exactly one foster home he liked: he was in his late teens at the time, and he bonded with a little girl who was a biological daughter there. (Decades later, when Hetty got tired of his refusal to live in the same place for more than a few weeks, she up and bought and registered on his name the house that family had lived in then.) In the first season, G runs into that girl again, now a young woman - and dead, for reasons that end up leading to him. That younger sister of G's? Was blond. Which is the Little Sister Issues Nate brings up at that hotel room in Yemen, and the reason G snarls at him for it.
In her Ranger Team, Tori was the source of stability and sanity, the Team-in-general's and Shane's in particular model of a well-adjusted person. She was that in canon: she's the only person on that Team with two living parents who are not known to be bad parents, which carries extra weight considering how young the Winds were - what're the odds Shane was half-raised at Tori's home? (His brother gives a good idea of what Shane's parents are like.) In this particular timeline, Tori also took on extra protective duties, a necessary safety given the risks both Shane and Blake took on the matter of Hunter.
Tori's Colour expectations have real power, though, and she thinks of G as a Red - but G isn't Shane, and the relationship can't look the same way. G has Sam for sanity, stability and standards - and given the overall low level of sanity on this Team, they certainly need Sam for a Yellow. G doesn't need the same sort of protection Shane did - but if there's something G fears is to lose what people he's let into his life, and Tori might as well be invincible where mundane threats are concerned and through her healing she can extend that to others. But that's not where Colour-influence ends, here. The fear Tori tried to articulate to Sam, in that conversation in his car, is that because the OSP Team can't sense Colour they might end up hurting her - the way Sam eventually does, because he doesn't grasp the clout Yellow gives him. Worse: to do right by Shane as his Blue she had to maintain distrust of Hunter - and Dustin's the Yellow that's big on trust and second chances. Tori's got a massive trauma from conflict with her Yellow, but it's not Sam she was worried about then but G, because she's damn well aware that Red-Blue relationships can and often do get Loaded. And well, G's a people-using manipulative asshole, and she can't turn off the Blue.
But the Power that hangs around her is real and, unknown to her, G's got Little Sister Issues. The residual power that hangs around her pulls on that: it doesn't let Tori hide her vulnerabilities and her damage from G - and it doesn't let G ignore it. Sam's freakout about it is understandable, moreso given he has no idea Tori is not an example of what a Ranger ought to be like. But whatever Sam may believe, the pull of the residual Power hanging around Tori as shaped by her Colour-perception funnels her and G into a relationship that's ultimately healing for both of them. G's issues flat-out prevent him from forming genuine relationships almost entirely, and the more vulnerable the other person the harder it is (see: foundational fear of loss); the Power drills right through that and gives him near-impossible-to-kill Tori - who's got it hammered into her hard through her Rangering career that her job is to be Sane and Stable and Strong, and might've not been able to form the sort of a relationship in which she can also be young and hurt if not for G's, her second Red's, desperate need to care for another person (and preferably a younger woman; blond and lean is a bonus).
Sam gets the job of modelling Well-Adjustedness and Stability and enforcing structure, instead; and where he course-corrects too hard - because he's got his own baggage - there's Kensi, the resident Green, to be contrary and get in his face just like she would anyone. (Deeks is over there, being Not A Spy and insisting on being an Actual Person not lost in spy-masquerades.)
That was a lot of info. But very interesting (And I'll accept that I'm unobservant when it comes to small details). And a lot of food for thought about the Rangers (Both main and 'verse).
So I reread this and then was like “wait. Kevin as stability and sanity check? Kevin? Mr. ‘Every second not spent training is a second wasted’?” That doesn’t compensate for Jayden’s neuroses, that enables them.
And then I thought, “Wait. Samurai is the only season where the Rangers weren’t chosen by the Power or by their predecessor at the time they retired from being a Ranger or by mentors trained in their field or by there being no one else left (gotta love Ninja Storm). They were chosen by virtue of being the eldest child in families trained to be Samurai Rangers.”
You could maybe argue that Emily was chosen by the Power due to her sister getting ill, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how the Power works.
And temperament is a matter of nature and nurture, so upbringing and careful choice of spouses could...encourage certain traits, but it’s not a guarantee, especially with Blues needing to suit their Reds rather than having general traits as needed.
Even Mia isn’t actually that much of a Pink, because when her brother is all “screw med school, I wanna be a musician,” Mia scolds him for not falling into the family line. Which makes sense! The Pink trait of reminding the Rangers that they’re people as well as a team would not be encouraged in a system that requires children to take up the life-threatening duties of the previous generations when ordered to do so.
And Jayden’s “I must fight alone, the team cannot help me, and if they try to take blows that hurt them a lot less than they hurt me, then that is bad” is REALLY WEIRD for a Red. I can’t think of anyone else who did that (regularly, that is, not as one-off incidents). Like, maybe Will and a number of Sixths, but never a Red (mayyyybe Carter, but I think he got over that pretty quick, where Jayden had that moment really late into his SECOND season). Sure, there’s the Lauren and imposter syndrome factor, but the Power forges TEAMS. Jayden’s behavior acts in opposition to that.
This means that Emily and Mike being such good Yellow and Green Rangers, respectively, is really lucky: no matter how much Power they have and how much the color roles shape them, they can’t change their nature, temperament, and upbringing.
Antonio is the exception because he’s the only one who freely chose to be a Ranger and his color wasn’t essentially forced on him. He’s Gold because he was all “I wanna be a Ranger and I studied and worked to make this morpher” and the Power responded with “you are suitable, here is your Color because it fits your nature.”
...okay now I want to give you the draft to the story that will never be complete (because SailorSol and I no longer write together) about Cam and the Samurai Rangers, because holy shit but does this get discussed there - what exactly makes Kevin Jayden's Blue, how lucky the team is for Emily and Mike and how they're the only ones on that team with proper Colour-instincts, Antonio having an advantage because he didn't inherit his Colour and morpher, the whole shebang. You're seriously right on the nose.
(There was going to be a Cam-and-the-Samurai fic. And a Space fic. And a Once A Ranger fic. And possibly a bunch more I don't remember off the top of my head. But then the partnership fell apart and *palms up*.)
If you’re still open for sending that draft of Cam and the Samurai and Color Issues, this is honestly the coolest Color Theory I’ve seen, so I’d love it if you want to!
Also, since Dino Charge is finished, how do you think they did without a Yellow? Had to jolt the team dynamic a bit.
Also also, Abby left NCIS! What do you think about that?
I didn't watch Dino Charge (I fell off somewhere in Megaforce and hadn't come back yet) but I heard about the lack of yellow! I'll need to watch to figure out how that works. Possibly it's something like the way we explained RJ's morpher in this 'verse - as a blue/pink hybrid instead of "purple" being its own colour, which goes towards how the JF team stays in one piece despite not having a Pink. (WF got extremely lucky with Alyssa's personality.)
And wow, no Abby? I heard DiNozzo's actor left, too. Sounds like at this point Gibbs' actor is basically holding the show.
THE DRAFT OF THIS STORY IS A DELIGHT I’m so sad that it’s not going to be published
Which Red nearly conquered the galaxy?
BUT THE TEAM DYNAMICS. CAM AND THE TEAM. CAM POKING EVERY HOLE AND FIGURING OUT HOW IT WORKS. THE RANGERS BEING HALF RANGERS AND GETTING NO POWER BENEFITS. I just!!!
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