Jess asked Brent Weeks:

How many Prisms have been women? It's so refreshing to meet a world where women and people with dark skin are inherently privileged, and I was wondering if that translated to women being prisms, or holding positions like Satrap, or Spectrum Color more often.

Brent Weeks Quite a few! And yes, it does translate to women being satraps (satrapahs in their language) more often, and in holding positions on the Spectrum more often. I wanted some of these re-appraisals of society to happen organically. Women tend to be better color discriminators (by science, for real), but not _always_. Also, given that drafters show their colors in their skin, a drafter whose skin is dark is going to have an advantage in situations where you confront a hostile stranger who may or may not draft (war, especially). The physics of this world gave some shape to the society. It's not deterministic--I also have the colors drafted themselves have effects on the drafters, so that blue is calming and orderly, but a blue drafter is not therefore always calm and ordered!

In some ways, we see less of the normal social repercussions because two of my major POV characters are very much atypical: they are male drafters who are above several kinds of the usual kinds of discrimination. But yes, it is something that I gave thought to. You'll see little nods to this throughout, such as the default pronoun for a drafter being 'she', or the collective noun for a student-disciple of the Chromeria (discipulus) being discipulae rather than discupuli. (Mixed gender groups in Latin usually took the male plural, -ae is the the feminine plural.)

I meant a lot of these things to be subtle because the characters don't think about them. They take them for granted. Much like how they think or don't think about slavery. This is part of their world. How you feel about it is (I hope!) very much different.

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