Lithos Writes Essays Sometimes (And You Can Too!)

[Lithos Maitreya]

Hi! Years ago I had a thread for essays about RWBY. That thread was a shitshow, because the RWBY fandom is a shitshow (or was at the time, maybe it's changed?) and so is spacebattles (that one hasn't changed).

So this time, I'm starting a more generic essay thread and I'm doing it here. Feel free to leave any responses or thoughts of your own, whether in essay form or not!

Here's my first contribution. The spoilers to note for this one are: FULL SPOILERS FOR BRANDON SANDERSON'S COSMERE.

-x-x-x-

Revolution, societal change, and reactionary ethics in the Cosmere​

I want to preface this by saying that I love the Cosmere. Adore it. Like, you all how no idea how far ahead I am in drafting Of Many Colors already, and that back catalogue of chapters in the editing pipeline is only growing. It's an incredibly rich setting, and in many ways I find it much more philosophically palatable than just about any other fantasy series I've read.

But there are a few big exceptions to that rule. The first of these is the extremely reactionary attitude it presents to societal change.

To be clear: I'm about to say some things about the emergent philosophy of the Cosmere based on the subtext of the books that have been written so far. That does not mean that I believe these themes are going to be present in all future Cosmere books, nor does it mean I believe Brandon Sanderson actually holds these beliefs. I don't actually believe either of those things. Privately, I think he is in the process of reexamining some of these assumptions, and we will see much more nuanced engagements with many of these topics in future books.

Let's talk about caste systems.

We've seen rigid caste systems in quite a few of the Cosmere's worlds now. In fact, they've appeared to one extent or another on every world in the Cosmere that we've visited, as far as I can remember. But the best examples are on Sel, Scadrial, and Roshar.

I want to talk mostly about Roshar, because it's the most fleshed-out. Anybody who's read more than a few pages of a Stormlight Archive book is at least passingly familiar with the lighteyes-darkeyes divide in those books. There are further subdivisions within those two castes, but there is some social mobility between those levels (dahn and nahn). There is none between the lighteyes and darkeyes castes. The only exception is that the acquisition of a Shardblade gradually lightens a person's eyes and grants them the rank of a fourth-dahn lighteyes—a major noble and direct vassal of a highprince. But given that there are only a couple dozen Shardblades known to exist in Alethkar at the start of The Way of Kings, that's not really social mobility.

This is lampshaded directly in the text. We see several examples of Kaladin grappling with these smoke-and-mirrors examples of upward mobility—the rumor that a bridgeman will be set free if he survives a hundred bridge runs, the tradition of raising Shardbearers to the fourth dahn, the ability to acquire a more comfortable life by selling oneself into slavery in the ardentia. The text acknowledges that these things are, for the most part, illusory ways to keep the masses satiated with a diet of false hope.

And the masses need to be kept satiated. Kaladin's experiences in Bridge Four show just how terrible things are for slaves and low-nahn darkeyes in Alethkar. Their lives are, quite literally, less valuable than a single soldier's gear. Highprince Sadeas throws away darkeyed lives without even a first thought because doing so simply makes economical sense to him. (There's another discussion to be had about whether he's causing an impending population crisis by doing this, but for our purposes here I'm willing to take his calculus at face value.)

Here's the problem with all of that. We've seen that the caste system is institutionally violent, worse than most of the systems we have here in the real world that work to keep disadvantaged populations from achieving equality of opportunity. And we've seen that the Alethi lighteyes use tactics employed by real-world dictators and elites to keep their serfs, slaves, and underclasses dreaming of a false hope built into the system so that they won't look to break the system entirely.

But when change finally does begin to come to Alethkar, when someone finally stands up and says that this system is broken beyond repair and must be changed? Who is that person?

Well, there are two. The first is Moash, and the second is Jasnah Kholin. Do you begin to see the problem?

Moash is a darkeyes who, like Kaladin, has experienced the absolute worst horrors of the Alethi system. He reacts to this by attempting to assassinate King Elhokar, and replacing him with the only lighteyes whom he's actually seen treating darkeyes with respect—his uncle Dalinar, who set Moash and his fellow bridgemen free. This assassination attempt precipitates Moash's descent into being one of the most hated villains in the entire series, for many good reasons.

Jasnah, by contrast, is literally the highest-ranked person in the entire Alethi caste system. After her brother's death, she takes the throne of Alethkar as Queen. And its there, once she has that authority, that she begins to speak about the need to abolish slavery. When she does this, it's greeted with trepidation by Dalinar, who believes that the ongoing apocalypse is probably higher priority than sweeping societal changes right now. It's not yet clear, in canon, if either of these perspectives are going to be framed as right, or if it's just a difference in how Jasnah and her uncle see the world.

Jasnah isn't even shown talking to a single actual darkeyes about any of this. She doesn't talk with Kaladin, now leader of the Order of Windrunners, a former darkeyed slave himself. She doesn't talk with any of her ward Shallan's former-darkeyes Lightweaver squires and students. She doesn't, in fact, talk with anyone about the need to abolish slavery except other lighteyes of fourth dahn and higher. It's possible I've forgotten a conversation somewhere, but I don't think so.

So we're presented, on Roshar, with two different approaches to seeking societal change to abolish profoundly unjust systems. The first is change-from-below using any means necessary, through Moash, and through what happens to Moash and his moral decay we get the implication of a slippery-slope argument; that this sort of any-means-necessary approach to societal change leads to an ethical slide and, potentially, to even worse outcomes than the original problems. The second is change-from-above using the simple authority of a despot, and while we haven't really seen the outcome of that approach yet we certainly haven't seen a total ethical collapse like what Moash was already undergoing by the end of Words of Radiance.

This isn't a uniquely Rosharan problem. On Sel, and specifically in Arelon, we have the two-tiered citizenship of pseudodivine Elantrians and ordinary humans. We're told that, until the Reod ten years before the events of Elantris, Arelon was in a golden age. We're told that things were so much better for the peasantry when the divinely-chosen Elantrians were in charge, and that when the Reod shattered their power and the human merchant-prince Iadon took control, everything became worse for everyone, including the lower-class humans. Our hero is Iadon's son, Raoden, who becomes an Elantrian and eventually reclaims his throne through his authority as both Iadon's heir and the leader of the Elantrian survivors. While we don't see much of what Arelon looks like with Raoden in power, it's implied through the short story The Hope of Elantris that it looks a lot better than it did under Iadon.

On Scadrial, we have two examples. In Era 1, we have the overthrow of the Final Empire by Kelsier, Vin, and their crew of skaa thieves and rebels. This looks like a counterpoint to everything else we've seen… except that more than half of the next book is dedicated to Elend Venture learning to accept the necessity of seizing autocratic control of Luthadel. He tries to replace the Lord Ruler with a republic, but is eventually forced to concede that an autocracy is just better in this context. The rule of the masses simply leads, in Mistborn Era 1, to greed and demagoguery making things worse for everyone, while a benevolent dictator can actually improve things.

In Mistborn Era 2, meanwhile, we have the interplay between the centralized authority of the city government of Elendel and the colonial governments of the outer cities, who resent Elendel's hegemony. This subplot is mostly below the surface until the final book in the series, The Lost Metal, where it takes center stage.

In The Lost Metal, there are two primary forces working to increase the representation and right to self-governance of the outer cities. The first is the outer cities themselves, who are increasingly leveraging their resources and population to attempt to force Elendel to accede to their demands for self-determination. The other is an internal group within Elendel's representative body who are trying to moderate a peaceful outcome whereby a higher representative federation would be granted authority over all the cities, Elendel included, and be staffed by representatives of the outer cities as well as Elendel. The first of these forces is revealed to be little more than a sockpuppet for the evil, alien goddess Autonomy to facilitate her army's invasion of Scadrial. The second is headed by our protagonist, Senator Waxillium Ladrian. One is clearly framed as more morally sound than the other, and it's not the one coming from the actually disenfranchised population.

So this is the underlying problem to all of these unjust systems in the Cosmere. Brandon does not shy away from showing that these systems are unjust. However, he almost invariably argues that change to those systems has to come from within and above. Attempts to break the system by the people that system disenfranchises are almost universally treated as either easily manipulated to evil ends or worse than the systems they're trying to overthrow. And that's a problem, because if you apply that same logic to real-world structural injustices you get, well, some very problematic reactionary schools of thought. Real politics are obviously always going to be more nuanced and complex than those in any work of fiction, but Brandon could at least try to fall a little less consistently on the side of the benevolent dictators.

 

[UARTman]

Here's my five kopeck, if you'd like them:

This problem, in one way or another, is bloody endemic in speculative fiction in general, and, in my opinion, there are multiple factors contributing to this:
- To begin with, social inequality and tyranny are a very frequent theme in fiction because they are an excellent source of conflict. It's also, well, a fact of life, to the point that it's genuinely hard to create a fictional society that's truly equal is any singular aspect even if you try.
- When writing fiction, people tend to project their politics, if not on the characters directly (because they're too skilled for that), then onto the structure of the world and plot.
- The ideal of bringing the change you want to the system from within is quite prominent, and so it's gonna be reflected in the narrative in some way.
- In order to be able to affect any significant change, the person logically needs to have a big amount of control over the system. "I reduced the War Crimes Coefficient by 2.5% and it got reversed by my superiors a year later" does not make a very satisfying story.
- And, following points 1 and 4 to their logical conclusion, we get, well, benevolent tyrants.

Of course, you also have some media where this problem gets way out of proportion, like That Damn Light Novel( Ascendance of a Bookworm) . They describe the inequality and oppression in grotesque, lurid detail, and also have the character do unabashedly evil shit to ascend the hierarchy just for their self-interest without acknowledging the second narratively. The novel itself is kinda the anti-Baru Cormorant, where the main character ascending the ranks of a horrifying self-perpetuating hierarchical machine is not a commentary on the immense existential evil of said society, but a rags-to-riches story!

Another example of having a very unquestioned "benevolent" tyrant that springs to mind is Project Hail Mary. Its feeble attempts to hold Eva Stratt to moral account fail spectacularly, because no one in the narrative acknowledges the way she wields power in such an obnoxiously petty way.

I don't have a coherent way to finish/sum up these ramblings for now, so I'm just gonna throw it out here and see what you all think.

 

[Lithos Maitreya]

I agree that this problem is uncomfortably common all over the speculative genres, and to be clear, Brandon is MILES better than certain other middle-aged TERF authors I could name. (I'd write an essay about Rowling, but I think everybody in this thread would be able to quote the entire thing before I even wrote the first word.)

The fact that a problem is common does not mean we shouldn't point it out when it surfaces in places we care about, but it's also good to keep perspective.

 

[PatrickDiomedes]

Yeah, a prime example of Brandon's problems in this regard can be seen in 2 quotes. First, from The Lost Metal;

She didn't like the Outer Cities being forced to work this way—but these gang members had killed innocent people on the street. Plus, they were likely collaborating with some kind of evil god bent on the subjugation or destruction of the world.

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Second, from Oathbringer;

He'd always been met with hostility, no matter where he storming went. A youth like him, too big and obviously too confident for a darkeyes, had been considered a threat. He'd joined the caravans to give himself something productive to do, encouraged by his grandparents. They'd been murdered for their kindly ways, and Moash … he'd spent his life putting up with looks like that.

A man on his own, a man you couldn't control, was dangerous. He was inherently frightening, just because of who he was. And nobody would ever let him in.

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When you have one of your heroes saying the first quote, and one of your villains saying the second one, it's not a great look. And while I'm white and thus can't personally speak to the accuracy of it, I have a few nonwhite friends who have commented on how much Moash resonates with them as people of color, and how they've been viewed/treated.

 

[Lithos Maitreya]

And while I'm white and thus can't personally speak to the accuracy of it, I have a few nonwhite friends who have commented on how much Moash resonates with them as people of color, and how they've been viewed/treated.

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I don't have a lot of close friends who read the Cosmere, so I wasn't even aware of this reading. But it only cements something I've believed for a while: Moash deserves to be treated as a tragic, nuanced character, not an evil villain in the tradition of Straff and Sadeas.

 

[picklepikkl]

When you have one of your heroes saying the first quote, and one of your villains saying the second one, it's not a great look. And while I'm white and thus can't personally speak to the accuracy of it, I have a few nonwhite friends who have commented on how much Moash resonates with them as people of color, and how they've been viewed/treated.

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This kind of puts a finger on my big problem with Rhythm of War. After Oathbringer, I wasn't actually on the Fuck Moash train. He felt tragic, a tragedy that was the mirror of Elhokar's. It was a deeply upsetting moment, but especially his final scene had a sort of dignity to it where I found myself angry, not at him, but at everything that had driven him to throwing in his lot with the Fused: Alethi society, Elhokar's particular failings, and of course the big O himself. His vengeance was, if not sympathetic per se, understandable and compelling, and I nodded my head at a lot of his internal monologues throughout the book.

And then in Rhythm of War he got flattened out into a nihilist edgelord, which I get is a psychological coping mechanism for what he's become but also made me go "...really? Were, like, too many people fans of his? Was that a problem?" Cause now there's just nothing to like or side with, he's just awful in the same way Rayse-Odium is awful.

Maybe Stormlight 5 will recover his narrative arc in some way.

 

[NekroVictor]

I don't have a lot of close friends who read the Cosmere, so I wasn't even aware of this reading. But it only cements something I've believed for a while: Moash deserves to be treated as a tragic, nuanced character, not an evil villain in the tradition of Straff and Sadeas.

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Was he not? This is a legitimate question here, I always saw moash as the corrupted revolutionary/fallen hero/etc type.

I remember a video that was designed to teach people how to write D&D villains, and the big piece of advice it gave was don't write a villain, write a hero. A hero, doing their best to do what is right, yet they stray from the path of heroism, commuting worse and worse acts until they are no longer a hero. And frankly, that's how I saw moash. A man fighting for what's right, but fighting monsters so long that he became one.

And yeah, he's miles better than sadeas, I'd say may he burn in hell, but for the in universe equivalent he'd need to be a radiant, so I won't.

 

[Lithos Maitreya]

I think my problem with Moash's portrayal is that it's framed almost as though trying to assassinate Elhokar was some sort of moral event horizon. Although there is very much a possible reading where the actual fly in the ointment is that Moash himself thought it was a moral event horizon and stopped trying.

But, like, murder is bad, sure. But so is doing nothing in the face of the kind of staggering injustices endemic to Alethkar. I really, genuinely do not believe Moash crossed any objective moral lines until he killed Jezrien. Everything up to that point was a matter of perspective. Yes, it was tragic that he killed Elhokar just as Elhokar was going to commit to being better, but he had every reason to assume that allowing the man who helmed Alethkar for most of the worst decade of his life to gain more power and prestige would be a bad thing. I wish Elhokar had survived, but I don't think Moash was evil to kill him any more than Kaladin was evil for killing Helaran.

 

[PatrickDiomedes]

Yeah, I'm holding out hope for Moash to become a Dustbringer. Seems like the order that would fit him the most. Maybe an Enlightened Ashspren?

 

[a simple pilgrim]

@Lithos Maitreya I think I'm going to have to disagree with your thesis and argument in several fundamental ways.

Societal Predisposition to Hierarchy​

Throughout history all societies have had some degree of inequality, and what differentiates them is the degree of inequality, and how it is determined who is a the top and bottom. The most successful societies, purely in terms of outcompeting others, not in moral/ethical/humanitarian terms, are those who give preferential treatment on the basis of merit. Those who say 'the richest person should be the most able person' or 'the most powerful person should be the most successful person', rather than say 'the richest person should be he with the purest blood' or any other hereditary social system.

That's how modern society works, and most people agree that the most intelligent, able, and hardworking people should be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor, to a greater or lesser degree. This situation starts to get more complicated when you introduce magic powers that make you more able. Elantrians have abilities which don't just grant them physical powers, but grants them "increased insight and mental abilities" (from coppermind).

That naturally leads to the situation where the majority of the ruling class, and the majority of the most capable and intelligent people, come from the Elantrian population, making them an upper class by default. The only way to prevent this, in my view, would be to have policies in place to artificially suppress Elantrians, that make sure that a normal human has greater consideration by virtue of not being Elantrian, some sort of affirmative action I guess. You could call the Reod this artificial agent that worked not by uplifting normal people, but suppressing Elantrians as much as possible.

The natural conclusion is that a society in which Elantrians are allowed to compete on even terms with humans would lead to two things, a more meritocratic and successful system, and a system where the majority of the ruling class are made up of Elantrians. And that such a society would, all things being equal, outcompete and be more successful than a society where there was a systemic repression of the most capable people in society in order to give everyone a fair chance. See Harrison Bergeron.

I haven't read Elantris in like 7 years so I don't remember it well, but the fact that Merchant Princes like Iadon existed means that it was possible for the most capable humans to achieve success and become powerful, meaning that humans weren't necessarily oppressed, and that the most capable humans had incentives to rise as high in the system as they could reach.

One counterargument you can give is that the divine worship of Elantrians give them unfair societal power, and that is to a large degree true. However it is also true that even current society 'worships', to a degree, the most successful people. That's how we've gotten cults of personality around celebrities, athletes, and billionaires. That such a thing would develop around Elantrians, and expand to religious worship due to their literal magic, is a very natural development.

So I don't think you can argue that Elantris is a particularly unproductive and unnatural society, or one which tries to argue that some arbritary group of people deserve to be in charge of society. I think they have good odds of developing some sort of democracy eventually, but I'm not sure if it will be 1-man-1-vote, or some sort of weighted system, but Elantrians will likely remain in charge as long as they are the only ones with boosted mental capabilities from the AonDor.

Scadrial and the transition to Democracy
​

Let's be realistic here, there has been no large society that's been able to make an instant transition from pure, unadulterated autocracy to a functional democracy. The best examples of attempts to go from a completely autocratic and repressive system to a democracy where the post colonial nations of Africa. Invariably democracy collapsed in all of them. This usually happened in one of three ways.

Either the first guy to win the election become a dictator for life, making the place a one party state, until they eventually crown themselves like Napoleon(this actually happened). Or perhaps there is a military coup that kills the first leader, or supplants him, and then we have a more exciting military dictatorship that probably engages in some sort of civil war. Finally, we have a president who takes over, pretends to have elections for 10-20 years while having autocratic power, transferring that autocratic power to their vice-president/son, who then rules for another 10-20 years, all the while having 'elections', until 40-50 years have passed, the country is in a decent state, and actual elections are allowed, though at that point the dominant party probably remains dominant for the foreseeable future. This is what we would call a benevolent dictatorship.

The most successful post-colonial nations, who did not have democracy before being released, all fell under benevolent dictatorships soon after gaining independence, and the transition to actual democracy was slow, and in most of these countries not complete even to this day. For examples look at Botswana and Ghana.

For Elend to be able to set up a functioning democracy from the corpse of the final empire, which had 0 democratic institutions, during a general war and the literal apocalypse is so hilariously impossible that suggesting that Brandon should not have chosen to make Elend a benevolent dictator as the best way to guide his nation straddles the line between blind idealism and willful ignorance of reality.

Asking for some sort of monarchy not to emerge after the death of the lord ruler would require a final empire that is extremely different than the one Brandon wanted to represent, and which gained such success as the book that really put him on the map.

As for Era 2 and the Outer Cities vs Elendel, the economic disparity, and the inbuilt dependence on Elendel for capital and expertise means that some sort of independence of the various cities would be unsustainable and make everyone worse off, the federal structure is the only thing that makes any sort of sense. That the federal structure was proposed from Elendel and not the Outer Cities is a point that can be criticized, but realistically, any sort of federation would still see Elendel hold primacy, so that they would take over discussions and negotiations eventually.

Caste and Roshar
​

Here is where the strongest and most coherent argument emerges. The Caste system in Roshar is not in fact based on anything tangible, like being an Elantrian, but instead on eye color. Not exactly the greatest predictor for being a competent person. In that aspect it's pretty nonsensical and inefficient, being harmful for individuals and society as a whole.

However I'm going to argue that it's not as bad as you claim. We can see from Kaladin's flashbacks and other sources that life isn't exactly terrible for the upper Nahns. Brandon states in a WOB that the large majority of darkeyes have the right of travel, and that this greatly limits the absuses of the nobility, and that the percentage of low Nahn 'serfs' and slaves are relatively small, formed primarily by people who have messed up in life and their children. Obviously there's something wrong with slavery, and with the children of slaves having lower social rank and legal rights. (Though even modern society has extremely low pay forced labor, it's called prisons, and almost 1% of the US population is in prison, and the children of prisoners are obviously way worse off than the average person).

Lower Dahn lighteyes, especially tenners, are also just normal people and appear to have greater social privileges than the high Nahns, but no real legal rights over them. A curious thing to know is how the 'court' system works, if a Darkeyes can testify against a Lighteyes, and 100 other little things that contributed to discrimination. Rich Darkeyes (notice that they can get rich) commonly marry Tenners, and thus their children can be in the Dahn system, and use their darkeyed parents money to buy themselves a rank or two. This feels reminiscent of the way things were in Victorian England with poor 'nobles' marrying rich commoners so that their kids could rise in social status. While that is obviously very backwards and outdated, Victorian England wasn't exactly a terrible oppressive society to live in.

Getting rid of Slavery and granting everyone the right to travel seems to be an incoming social change, though one that was pushed from the top not bottom. You could argue however that the decision was made in order to gain greater support from the lower classes in the war against Odium. Additionally with Jasnah being restrained to Urithiru due to the occupation of Alethkar, which slaves or low Nahns was she supposed to speak to?

Fundamentally I think we are getting a very warped view from the perspective of Kaladin. Mostly because we didn't see his life as a slave until he reached the shattered plains, and those are stated multiple times to be not be representative of Alethkar. They have far higher rates of slavery, partially due to the personal actions of Sadeas, the rule of law is weak there, and the rulers are all personally present so can rule by decree and solve disputes in person not necessitating a fully developed legal system.

Most of what we see in Alethkari slavery is in Sadeas's warcamp amongst his bridge men. It's not even clear if what he is doing there would even be legal back in Alethkar. Dalinar seems to think it wouldn't be.

Fundamentally history has shown that in all the most successful nations in the world, the process of reform came from both above and below, not in a purely revolutionary way, and that when that did occur it caused enormous damage, disproportionate with the benefit it brought the people. However, it always involved system insiders eventually choosing to or being forced to do the right thing, rather than burning the system or killing all the people at the top.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

The most successful societies, purely in terms of outcompeting others, not in moral/ethical/humanitarian terms, are those who give preferential treatment on the basis of merit. Those who say 'the richest person should be the most able person' or 'the most powerful person should be the most successful person', rather than say 'the richest person should be he with the purest blood' or any other hereditary social system.

That's how modern society works,

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Seriously, define "merit"

Meritocracy is literally a word originally made up to make fun of aristocracy and then adopted unironically by people because irony is dead.

If you promote/reward based on "merit" you need some sort of (proxy) metric of merit and people will immediately find ways to game the metric. Well okay; actually, it's 100% the case that the metric was rigged from the start to favor people already rich and powerful (and their heirs).

Any argument based on "meritocracy" is prima facie laughable. It's a concept for angry children who haven't gotten over the "it's not fair" mindset. Systems reward people already in a position to benefit and those who are good at working the system. Unless you consider "good at working the system" inherently meritorious, "meritocracy" is a joke.

The richest and most powerful people are those who had rich parents/benefactors, plus a small scattering of "right time right place" types who got lucky.

So no, there are no such societies as you seem to envision. Unless by "merit" you mean "inheritance"

 

[Jenny]

While that is obviously very backwards and outdated, Victorian England wasn't exactly a terrible oppressive society to live in.

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Tell that to India, or Ireland. Or if you're ignoring everyone England ruled over except those who live in one corner of one island, tell that to the child laborers, or to the women.

(Though even modern society has extremely low pay forced labor, it's called prisons, and almost 1% of the US population is in prison, and the children of prisoners are obviously way worse off than the average person).

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You say this as an aside, rather than an indictment.

Frankly, citation needed for everything, especially your claim that there even are merit-focused societies to outcompete the wealth-focused societies of today.

 

[picklepikkl]

Societal Predisposition to Hierarchy​

Throughout history all societies have had some degree of inequality, and what differentiates them is the degree of inequality, and how it is determined who is a the top and bottom. The most successful societies, purely in terms of outcompeting others, not in moral/ethical/humanitarian terms, are those who give preferential treatment on the basis of merit. Those who say 'the richest person should be the most able person' or 'the most powerful person should be the most successful person', rather than say 'the richest person should be he with the purest blood' or any other hereditary social system.

That's how modern society works, and most people agree that the most intelligent, able, and hardworking people should be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor, to a greater or lesser degree. This situation starts to get more complicated when you introduce magic powers that make you more able. Elantrians have abilities which don't just grant them physical powers, but grants them "increased insight and mental abilities" (from coppermind).

That naturally leads to the situation where the majority of the ruling class, and the majority of the most capable and intelligent people, come from the Elantrian population, making them an upper class by default. The only way to prevent this, in my view, would be to have policies in place to artificially suppress Elantrians, that make sure that a normal human has greater consideration by virtue of not being Elantrian, some sort of affirmative action I guess. You could call the Reod this artificial agent that worked not by uplifting normal people, but suppressing Elantrians as much as possible.

The natural conclusion is that a society in which Elantrians are allowed to compete on even terms with humans would lead to two things, a more meritocratic and successful system, and a system where the majority of the ruling class are made up of Elantrians. And that such a society would, all things being equal, outcompete and be more successful than a society where there was a systemic repression of the most capable people in society in order to give everyone a fair chance. See Harrison Bergeron.

I haven't read Elantris in like 7 years so I don't remember it well, but the fact that Merchant Princes like Iadon existed means that it was possible for the most capable humans to achieve success and become powerful, meaning that humans weren't necessarily oppressed, and that the most capable humans had incentives to rise as high in the system as they could reach.

One counterargument you can give is that the divine worship of Elantrians give them unfair societal power, and that is to a large degree true. However it is also true that even current society 'worships', to a degree, the most successful people. That's how we've gotten cults of personality around celebrities, athletes, and billionaires. That such a thing would develop around Elantrians, and expand to religious worship due to their literal magic, is a very natural development.

So I don't think you can argue that Elantris is a particularly unproductive and unnatural society, or one which tries to argue that some arbritary group of people deserve to be in charge of society. I think they have good odds of developing some sort of democracy eventually, but I'm not sure if it will be 1-man-1-vote, or some sort of weighted system, but Elantrians will likely remain in charge as long as they are the only ones with boosted mental capabilities from the AonDor.

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So, the main issue with this, as I see it, is the following: Elantis isn't real.

It's fake. Brandon Sanderson made it up. We know this.

Like, you're not wrong: taken on the terms of the work, the Elantrians are just kind of better than normal humans, once the part where they are incredibly cursed gets dealt with. But there's a huge wrinkle there: taken on the terms of the work. LM, as I read him, isn't saying "within the fiction of Elantris, it's actually no different whether Elantrians or vanilla humans are in charge, Big Elantris is lying to us and keeping the common folk down." What he's saying is that it's kind of fucked-up that Brandon Sanderson made the conscious choice to write a setting in which there are a group of people who are Just Better than others and rule over them in a paternalistic Glowing-Man's-Burden sorta way.

Not, like, incredibly fucked-up. There are a lot more fucked-up things in the world. Compared against some of the shit out there, it barely tips the scale, in terms of worldbuilding that unquestioningly reifies some of the poisonous ideologies from history. I still love Brando Sando, I'm not trying to cancel him, I've been a fan for years and I anticipate that continuing for a long time.

But, like. It's a little fucked-up.

 

[brokenTower]

See Harrison Bergeron.

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Harrison Bergeron is a satire of "merit" written in support of affirmative action.

It is a satire of eugenicists and others who think the ADA and ERA are evil.

 

[Lithos Maitreya]

What he's saying is that it's kind of fucked-up that Brandon Sanderson made the conscious choice to write a setting in which there are a group of people who are Just Better than others and rule over them in a paternalistic Glowing-Man's-Burden sorta way.

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This is exactly what I meant to argue. Very well put. The worldbuilding is entirely within Brandon's control, so the optimal strategies are not a suitable refuge, because he also decides what makes a strategy optimal.

That bring said, I do suspect that the Elantrian problem is something he is working on and planning to solve when next we return to Sel. Almost every Elantrian we've seen since Elantris has been an antagonist, ranging from moderate assholes to total monsters. I suspect we're going to see the darker side to a race of divinely empowered immortals selected from fallible human stock.

 

[Reveen]

The only exception is that the acquisition of a Shardblade gradually lightens a person's eyes and grants them the rank of a fourth-dahn lighteyes—a major noble and direct vassal of a highprince. But given that there are only a couple dozen Shardblades known to exist in Alethkar at the start of The Way of Kings, that's not really social mobility.

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This is a pretty small point in the grand scheme of things but I do want to highlight it because it's a running thing in a lot of fantasy that tries to grapple with these issues, that the magic society has some sort of supernatural derived mechanism for ascending up the social hierarchy that operates on it's own regardless of what the asshole nobles want. Allowing criticism of the social ladder while having a relatively non-problematic way of climbing it for the characters to go from rags to riches.

The problem is that the actual historical equivalent is... not that. In the rare instances of not-noble ascending to noble it was usually directly handed down for a service done to one's lord. There are a lot of different ways this happens throughout history but the simplest and most common one is probably war. Achieve enough success and reknown in conquering new lands and you might get made a lord of those new lands. Rising in a pre-modern hierarchy requires participating and accepting the brutality of that hierarchy.

While it's not a bad trope in of itself and has valid narrative utility in smoothing over the reader's discomfort with the protagonist rising to power. But ultimately magic social advancement in an otherwise brutal and repressive society often feels disingenuous or outright deceptive. Severing the link between advancing in society and having a direct hand in it's violent domination. In a way it's a form of liberalization of a brutal feudal-ish society, creating a magic institution that makes unbiased and rational decisions without needing to go through the nobility. Which sets the society up as having some redeemable, liberal heart to it instead of it just being a pyramid of brutality and enslavement to the core.

This is why I see a lot of inherent value in grimdark fantasy despite the subgenres other issues. Because they're the ones most likely to portray a brutal society where people need to be brutal to attain power and standing without any magic caveats to make it look more modernist than it actually is.

I remember a video that was designed to teach people how to write D&D villains, and the big piece of advice it gave was don't write a villain, write a hero. A hero, doing their best to do what is right

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I mean the joke to make here is that DnD parties as played are often not really heroic. In which case you could easily do this without the 'they turn evil' part. If anything making the antagonist more evil in these kinds of stories often feels less about honestly displaying a realistically evil side then it is about making fighting them look more objectively heroic.

 

[Prince Chrom]

This is why I see a lot of inherent value in grimdark fantasy despite the subgenres other issues. Because they're the ones most likely to portray a brutal society where people need to be brutal to attain power and standing without any magic caveats to make it look more modernist than it actually is.

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The problem is that that tends to be the only thing they get right, which has it's own problems.