Quick Breakdown Of Prisma:

happy WBW! i am so intrigued by prisma and wonder if you could go into a little more detail abt the colour coding? :)

Thank you for the ask! Conveniently, this is actually the subject of my brainrot and thus you are a very kind mutual. Sorry if this is a bit incoherent btw. I'll deep-dive the specific components at a later date.

The colour coding is a huge part of Prisma both in it's conception and worldbuilding. Each story revolving around their respective protagonist is coded a colour (I.E, Jack's story and red); themes, ideas, and symbolism regarding this occur both in a meta way and in an in-universe way.

Neat fact: Prisma is a play on the word "Prismatic", nodding to the fact that white can be split into the spectrum of colours by a prism.

Quick Breakdown of Prisma:

Prisma is the setting of these stories, and colours - hues are the primary power/magic system. A surreal other-land where figurative can become literal and vice versa. Hues are it's fundamental building block, existing both as an abstract but also a resource. Here is where our three protagonists come in: at some point in their stories they become 'Key Figures', a facet of that colour embodied in a person. I'll elaborate on that particular concept in another post.

I'll give you the rundown on each protagonist and their relation to the colour coding. These aren't the only aspects of the hues, but the main ones.

Jack, Red -

“It doesn’t matter what powers you hold, or the trials you’ve faced; as long as I reach into the four corners, my Judgement is tangible irregardless.”

Red watches over rules and conventions. It's a hue of hierarchy, of domination and submission, of judgement. It works with the pre-existing fabric of things, tending towards tangling things in it's rules rather than violating it's own tenets.

There's also another aspect integral to red: Mediums. In Prisma, a Medium is not someone who merely gazes ghosts, but possess sight that stretches past horizons; the domain of a medium is to wrench meaning from things. Mediumship as a quality is inherently linked to the hue of red.

What this means for Jack, my favourite red-eyed little bastard, is that his power is in pulling at exposed threads. People constantly transgress all sorts of rules - personal, natural, even physical rules; it just isn't noticed. Jack as a key figure is an Arbiter. By acknowledging a transgression the appropriate punishment is applied automatically as a principle of Prisma itself.

He can gaze at the True Names of things, unravel their nature and bring forth what lays dormant.

As a whole it also ties in with Jack's character and background. There's more to it but I'll elaborate on a dedicated post.

Hel, Blue -

Blue is to expand and grow endlessly. It's boon and plight is that everything that that it is will behold genesis, but all that they are is the horizon's boundary

The sky, the ocean; a roiling pit of genesis from which life sprung. Blue is desire and manifestation - the self crystalised into something tangible. In it's purest form as a hue it is creation unbridled. However, blue - deep, roiling blue, horizon spanning azure - is crystallisation of self. It's dominion ends past the boundary of self, past the ownership of such a minor existence.

Blue can create vast shapes and forms, even spring life to being with it's lustre, yet it has no control over that which it did not create.

Hel first wields this hue in the form of the Principle class artefact 'The Flask', a portion of the sky stolen and inverted long ago, bound by it's own genesis. Hel's character arc is about identity and assumptions, of presumed boundaries and humanity. And how enough imagination can transcend flesh.

Absorbing The Flask at the precipice of death something much vaster, and above all free. The key limitations of this hue remain true, but post-rebirth Hel's entire body is comprised of blue, they let it seep into the ground and spread themselves vast and wide. Something brilliantly inhuman.

Dorothea, Purple -

Pocket watches running in parallel and paradox to the march of moons

Such an awfully royal colour, and so fitting is it for sovereignty to be it's domain. Many things hold power over others: the moon over night and the passage of time, the land from which things sprout, and of course what every person owns: themself.

Dorothea's sovereignty is to fragment - split things into parts, isolate them and take ownership. If she wins ownership over something she can even fragment it's time; send things backwards, freeze things into a single state, steal something's time spent.

Red, Blue, and Purple form a colour triad, and one of purple's specialities is 'borrowing' from these. Out of all the hues Purple is the only one able to use aspects of another by collecting fragments belonging to them.

To the Lilac Sovereign what may be someone's present is merely a puzzle to rearrange to their whims.

Without subjects sovereignty means nothing. Thus, in pursuit of her own royalty Dorothea fragmented herself to become her very own pawn.

Extra Tidbits :

The powers a hue possesses has a lot to do with the associations and symbols connected with them, and while each hue has a scope of it's own they can present in several ways. A key figure is a pure manifestation and expression of the hue, often taking a specific thematic direction. Hues are used by others in the form of materials imbued with it naturally, artefacts, or by acquiring it as a part of oneself.

Red as a hue is violent and bloody and passionate, essential yet bitter like blood. That's kind of why I went with hierarchy/rules. Also got some prey/predator stuff going on.

Blue, to me, is a colour of imagination, creation, and things so vast it's terrifying. Think like life arising from the sea.

Royalty for purple, obviously, but I think it's a very moon-ish, celestial and mystical colour. Time, both as an invention to understand the passing of events better, and as a natural mechanism are very big here.

There are other hues and such and they do stuff but I'm focusing on blue, red, and purple as they're the colours of the respective protagonists.

The colour triad dynamic is kind of:

Red is concerned with rules and convention, judging and causing conclusion in the present.

Blue is creating things anew in the present that persist.

Purple isn't tethered to present: rearranging and altering the state of things.

ALSO: I really didn't want to do like "Red=Fire" or something and I wanted something symbolic to fit my surreal little world so the hues do not function in such a straightforward way.