Every time someone asks Sanderson to be more respectful toward his marginalized characters or include more marginalized characters, the same assholes come out and say, “Oh, should he have someone look at the screen and say that homophobia is bad?”
Nobody ever points out that Sanderson’s portrayal of these systems is so extreme in the opposite direction that what is otherwise par for the course for the genre feels extreme! They’re actually honestly right. At this point, Moash—to pull a random derivative example out my ass—assembling a team of antiheroes and oppressed marginals to resist the Kholin monarchy would feel like a tokenizing move, because the message against dissidents has been so extremely hostile that the same leeway comic books, TV shows, and movies have been giving those kinds of characters feels like an astronomical leap compared to having the man (who has experienced literally the same racial harassment I have) murder prisoners on page.
Okay girlies Sanderson crit moment. I’ve been making jokes about comparing the Stormlight characters to superheroes, but I realized that the fundamental conflict between Kaladin and Moash in Words of Radiance would be more compelling and make more narrative sense if it took place in a superhero setting. Kaladin’s “No… I can’t kill… it’s not who I am… this isn’t justice” just doesn’t work when sandwiched between his butchering hundreds of listeners and singers. He cuts through singers like it’s nothing, and he only ever feels bad about it once, in Oathbringer, and then I guess just resolves that guilt and decides to keep killing them, telling himself he’s honorable because he doesn’t kill the Fused fliers. Literally if you put them in a setting where Kaladin refused to kill, and Moash proffered the idea of killing Elhokar as their one exception, and that created a schism between them, that would be so much more compelling than what we got, which was a handwave when Kaladin brought up that he’s killed a lot of more innocent people. You could even incorporate his time as a soldier and having killed then, in a Rurouni Kenshin type “the man so good at killing, so skilled with a spear, refuses to kill again.” Instead, Kaladin’s nonviolent ethos comes up with the people in positions of power and the literal single white character in the story.
okay i’m reading wax and wayne finally because i need to be up to date for the inevitable kelsier shenanigans and genuine question is mr waxillium supposed to be a likable character because i cannot stand him
not wax “the law” ladrian dismissing the peaceful protestors??????? SHUT UPPPPPP
like again there’s nothing wrong with that wob, it’s just in the context of the other wob saying homophobia doesn’t exist under vorinism, it’s frustrating!! bc i don’t like that wob bc i don’t think brandon genuinely thought through the implications. and this is just further proof he didn’t think through the implications.
