i would not breed a normal male. not to anything. i especially would not breed normal to normal.

normal females are a different story, but normal males are quite useless for breeding. if you want to work with stellar examples of normal BPs in order to improve other morphs using line-breeding, then go for stellar examples of normal females.

its a lot of work. and it can be rewarding to breed a male fire to a really awesome-looking normal female to get some better-looking fires. but given how much work and effort goes into it, i would rather invest more time in researching the market and pay more and buy a really good example of the fire-morph to begin with. or you could also breed a mediocre-looking fire to a really stunning and bright and reduced-pattern top quality pastel, and also get a nicer fire. and pastels and fireflys on top.

but then, different people have different goals. if your goal is to produce the very best calico pastel the world has ever seen using linebreeding, you may need a few carefully selected normals for that. but generally most people want to improve in the number of genes and combos they produce and also in quality, both at the same time in a continuous process.