Meet the World's Dorkiest Homophobes
Brandon Sanderson fans are having their own little culture war
Note: This post contains mild spoilers about Wind and Truth.
I recently finished reading perhaps the dorkiest book ever written. It's called Wind and Truth, it's 1,344 pages long, and it's the recently-released fifth volume in a planned ten-book saga called The Stormlight Archive, written by a man named Brandon Sanderson.
If you've never heard of Sanderson, he is the current godking of fantasy-scifi authors—he’s like J.R.R. Tolkien with a YouTube channel. The Stormlight Archive is his magnum opus, itself part of an interconnected magical universe called the Cosmere that now spans 24 books with many more planned. The series is both extremely cool and extremely lame at the same time. Imagine if everyone in Marvel Comics was a virginal knight, and you wouldn’t be far off.1
Sanderson has built an empire on being fantasy literature's most reliable supplier. From his literal underground lair in Provo, Utah, his company Dragonsteel employs over fifty people who help him maintain a relentless publishing schedule, create games and comics around his work, and even host annual Sanderson-themed conventions. In 2022, Sanderson raised $41 million on Kickstarter to write four extra Cosmere novels on top of his regular book deal. He's basically a one-man fantasy-industrial complex, supported by a legion of worshipping fans.
Across 60 quintillion pages of output (my conservative estimate), Sanderson's work has garnered two main criticisms: he overwrites everything, and his characters are largely sexless. The first remains hard to argue with—my house is too small to keep physical copies of his cinderblock-sized novels lying around. But Wind and Truth pushes Sanderson’s characters into new romantic territory with the introduction of a gay couple.
It’s a plotline that might have been widely controversial thirty years ago, but most modern readers will find it innocuous, particularly in a genre where it’s frighteningly easy to stumble upon dragon-on-hobbit fanfic. To Sanderson’s credit though, the relationship isn’t tossed off; it’s actually crucial to the resolution of the book, and therefore also makes these characters important to the larger Cosmere universe.
This, apparently, was too much for many readers to bear.
Ah, right. The Mormon thing. I almost forgot to mention it.
Part of the reason why Sanderson has such a devoted following, and perhaps part of the reason why his work hasn't quite crossed into mainstream pop culture, is that he and his inner circle are all devout LDS members. Many of his fans also share that faith, which has created an unusually intense parasocial bond—after all, how many bestselling authors are also magnanimous Mormon nerds? He's not just their favorite writer; he represents the pinnacle of their very specific way of life.
Now that devotion has curdled into fury. The Google Books page for Wind and Truth looks like a Joe Rogan comments section, with angry fans decrying Sanderson’s surrender to “woke culture” and ranting about “alphabet people” (a charming new slur for LGBTQ+ folks that weaponizes language in the same way we’ve recently seen DEI used to demean Black mayors and women firefighters.)
The backlash got so intense that Sanderson felt compelled to write a blog post explaining his creative decisions. He wrote that these character developments were part of his original story outline:
Renarin’s story in these books is the one I wanted to tell for him from the beginning. I’m not trying to indoctrinate or placate. Nor is doing things like this a recent development for me… My plan was for Renarin to be gay when I wrote Way of Kings Prime in 2002.
Why? Because my stories are the way I explore the world, and the way I understand the people in it.
That’s an entirely reasonable explanation. But there are obviously still people out there who will never forgive Sanderson for making two imaginary people gay in a fictitious universe populated by literally thousands of other characters. That makes me sad.
Wind and Truth is far from a perfect book. One character invents Freudian-style talk therapy in a way that seems inspired by Marty McFly inventing rock-and-roll. And did I mention it's 1,344 pages long? Nevertheless, the whole situation perfectly encapsulates the fundamental stupidity of bigotry. These are fans who have spent hundreds of hours reading about characters who become superhuman by saying magic words about how honest they are. Entire chapters take place under an ocean of glass beads. But two dudes holding hands? That’s just too much!
(Quick note: One of the gay characters in this imbroglio isn’t even human! His species doesn’t really exist! In a way, the whole thing is like getting offended because Roger Rabbit kisses Eddie Valiant.)
It would all be funnier if it weren't so depressing. The fact that the tendrils of reactionary politics reach all the way into dorky-ass fantasy literature shows there truly is no escape from the culture wars. When people are willing to reject their literal favorite thing in the world because it acknowledges the existence of gay people, we're dealing with something far more ridiculous than anything a fantasy author could dream up.
MORE DEEP THOUGHTS FROM CHORTLE
The subversive genius of “Lola”
It seems hard to write a funny song. I say this in part because I know that it’s difficult to write anything funny. (Shoutout to me for being brave.) But I also think music is a tricky business for the humorous. You can accidentally ruin a perfectly good melody with flat jokes — and vice versa.
A.I. isn't scary. Your boss is.
Did you know that you’re required by law to have a strongly held opinion about Generative AI? It’s true! If you don’t take a position on ChatGPT, you get sent directly to maximum security prison—no take-backsies.
You might think everyone who reads these books is also virginal, but not true! I have a son!
Orson Scott Card is another Mormon nerd author. He has a whole series that is basically Joseph Smith fiction.
As an ardent fan of both SISTER WIVES and the meticulously reported and written UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN, this was a delightful read. We alphabet people sure are bananas for wanting to smooch each other!