it’s just so crazy that there’s two main metaphors for racism in the stormlight archive, lighteyes/darkeyes and humans/singers, and brandon fumbled both of them like. dude you could have just decided not to talk about racism at all if you didn’t have anything to say about it.
stormlight is so fundamentally about being a white american man that you can read into brandon's metatextual arc into the politics of the series.
kaladin and shallan have two ends of the 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' story within a corrupt system while dalinar realizes from his position as an embodiment of the system that corruption exists. there are good moments here and good themes, hope and perseverance and don't kill yourself etc. (neoliberal slop)
then we get moash and the parshmen are people reveal. the ambiguity of the moash storyline is what makes it compelling. if there wasn't a case to be made from both sides then it doesn't work. the audience needs to be with kaladin all the way through even as he helps and then ultimately betrays moash. parshmen slaves being full sentient beings is a slight subversion of a sort of house elf trope, but not unexpected. we have had rlain the whole time as a tease that things are not what they seem.
oathbringer is where it all comes together to get to the point where reality and fantasy are almost merging. humans conquered the continent and subjugated and exterminated the natives and their culture. your way of life, even if you can't abandon it was built on genocide and slave labor. can you still participate in that and consider yourself a good person?
and then RoW shows that Brandon isn't ready to write these books. he regresses back into fantasy, dropping the ball on the moral rolling stone that has been building momentum since minute one. all nuance is written out and it becomes a straightforward fight between good and evil.
the way odium and the fused were written means that any doylist critique can be given a watsonian answer.
q: should the land of the continent that was violently conquered be given back to its original inhabitants?
a: no because they worship an evil god.
q: when, if ever, is revolutionary violence justified?
a: never, he told his best friend to kill himself.
this is the frustration. brandon sanderson is not ready to reckon with the answers to the questions that made the first books so compelling. he is not ready to admit some systems might need to be overthrown. he set up for a grand slam and then bunted.
