Ais the Trackt gender change

[Honorless]

Why was Ais' gender changed from the prose to the graphic novels?

And since it was changed, why were the gender dynamics on Taldain also changed from prose to the graphic novels?

Wouldn't it have made for a stronger characterisation of Ais if she had to deal with being a Trackt, a Kerztian and a woman within that society? Why change that?

Why did we get handwaved gender equality? The Daysiders, the Kerztians in particular were very patriarchal, the Darksiders were more advanced but were still patriarchal like on Earth. Why was this changed in the graphic novels?

[+ILuvHats]

Quote

Questioner

So the difference between the White Sand novel and the White Sand graphic novels, what was the thought behind changing Ais's gender?

Brandon Sanderson

There were a couple thoughts. The main one was, I just thought the character was more interesting. A lot of my early books, you'll notice I did a thing where I'm like "I want to make sure that I'm doing the female character really well." And you can see the problem in that sentence, and that is really how I approached it, I'd say "Well I want to make sure I do the female character really well." And I think I did do the female character pretty well in some of those early books. But you'll see a consistency to them, and this is just coming aware of your biases.

Now, there is nothing wrong with writing a book intentionally and saying, "You know what? Because of the way I want to write this book in this world, I'm going to make the cast almost all one gender or the other. It's when you're doing it consistently on accident, that there's a problem. And I had to kind of sit down and say, "Did I do this because I thought it was best for the character, or did I do this because I love Inspector Javert and I just wanna have to have Inspector Javert in my book?" And that's where the character came from, quite obviously.

And I sat down and said, "If I were going to build this character from the ground up to be my own character and I were trying to throw away all biases, what would be the best for the character?" And Ais being female was not a "I need more women in the book," it was more of, "If I'm throwing away these biases and building the characters, what works the best?" and I just really liked how that character came out when I was rebuilding. Yeah, anyway, we'll go with that.

Legion Release Party (Sept. 19, 2018)

 

Quote

Windrunner Savant (paraphrased)

I asked about the cultural importance of Ais' gender-swap.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

He talked about how part of the reason for the change, was he felt that he had already covered the strong patriarchal society and the oppression of women some of his other works, such as Elantris and Stormlight.

Dark Talent release party (Sept. 6, 2016)

 

[Honorless]

Elantris and Stormlight were pretty weak in terms of representing gender dynamics, in my opinion. In Elantris, the societal aspects were explored somewhat with Sarene but it was strangely like what gamers would call "munchkinry", she expertly sidestepped the issues and that was it, though the fencing team was done well, even the ending. I don't know if I can consider Vorinism as an exploration of the same, it's a bit too out there. Men are illiterate and mostly expected to fight in wars while women control information and culture? That's not sustainable over long term, the fact that men have the Shards would give them military might, a power which can grant them legitimacy in other fields because that is what power does. How did an actual active divide even arise between the genders? Please don't just cough up the quote about it being meant to control who gets the Shardblades and Shardplates, and "proper behaviour" being used to control (like the safehands, against which the women reciprocated by saying what proper manly behaviours are) such a divide is very... meta, I don't know how else to put it. It is still somewhat realistically handled with Stormwardens and Ardents being Vorinism-approved ways of men reading; having the women handle the finances, the glyph system being used by men in fields such as medicine (as we see with Kaladin) and some women like Liss still getting their hands on Shardblade, as well as other women like Tyn, Lyn, Renarin, currently also Dalinar & I think with time, Adolin bucking the trends. Of course, we have real world examples of women wearing corsets, diagnosed with hysteria and mandatory conscription for men (also think of UK's White Feather during WW). Unless we get much more info on how the divide came to be, I don't think I'll consider it as a strong representation. It's sustainability is certainly plausible though, I feel I should point out, if these behaviours get embedded in the culture and of course, Vorinism's rule-oriented structure and the Ardentia meant that women had less of a monopoly on info.

I also take issue with his wanting to change Ham's gender. He's well-written as a male character, simply taking a traditionally masculine role and putting a female character there is not good representation.

But more importantly for White Sand itself, why would having explored a topic before mean it can't be explored again? It was done well enough in the prose, so it shouldn't have been that he decided that he wasn't good enough at writing gender dynamics yet. 

[Jofwu]

@Honorless I'm not sure what you're expecting, as that was Brandon's own direct answer to the question. If you want to know why he feels that way you'd have to ask him yourself.

If I can speculate... I'd say that Brandon simply doesn't have much interesting in writing about patriarchal societies. I believe I've seen him say elsewhere that one thing he loves about fantasy is that the words he writes about don't have to develop the same way that our own did. He's not obligated to write a book that perfectly explores patriarchal cultures before he's allowed to move on. If he's satisfied with what he wrote on the matter (minimal as it may be) and wants to do something else then... obviously he's going to write what he thinks is more fun.

For Ais specifically I would bet that, being a man, Brandon naturally gravitated towards writing mostly male characters (in patriarchal societies) when he was younger. So Ais's gender was less of an intentional decision and more of a... default. So they were probably reworking White Sand for the graphic novel and Brandon simply figured, "There aren't enough female characters in this story, and I like having a diverse cast. Ais would probably work well as a woman. Let's do that." Personally, I really like the change. The male cop trying to do his job while worrying for his family's safety is a tired trope in my opinion. Making Ais a wife/mother is a meaningless change that somehow puts a slightly different spin on that story. And otherwise not much else changes.

Same for gender dynamics in general. Why NOT change it? It's not like the patriarchal aspect of their culture in the prose adds anything unique or interesting to the story. Well, at least not in my opinion. I would assume Brandon feels similarly.

[Honorless]

I did mention the more interesting way he dealt with gender dynamics in Stormlight. This isn't really an issue that can just be put as a non-issue in any created world where the concept of gender exists.

I'm not really looking for the answer to why Ais' gender was changed or even the in-world answer to the more strangely liberal societies of Taldain per the graphic novels (though I am going to throw this out: I was really hoping to never have to see a bikini armour warrior again ever, least of all in the Cosmere). I wanted to hear what other people had to say about the change and how it affected (or didn't) the story.

Like I said, if the gender dynamics were kept and Ais' gender was changed, it would've made for a great story. It was such a big part of character interactions in the prose but in the GNs everything was suddenly conveniently progressive, except no women in the Diem.

Sadly, the answer is probably that Brandon doesn't have time to write this, he just gave the source material, specified some changes and so on. Hence, the... less than stellar reception of the GNs.

At least the Khriss - Kenton relationship was taken out, there are too few male-female friendships in fantasy. And Khriss' meeting with Nilto/Gevalden was much more impactful in the GN. 

[Jofwu]

27 minutes ago, Honorless said:

This isn't really an issue that can just be put as a non-issue in any created world where the concept of gender exists.

Why?

28 minutes ago, Honorless said:

Like I said, if the gender dynamics were kept and Ais' gender was changed, it would've made for a great story.

Hmm. I guess I'm skeptical that story would work? I guess I had the impression if you didn't sweep the gender politics away (by changing the culture) than that aspect of Dayside culture would drown her story. There's only so much room to tell a story in a graphic novel. Do that and you sacrifice time spent on everything else she's trying to do. In particular, you take time away from exploring her struggle to find balance between her sense of justice and her religious beliefs.

In a longer firm story, that would totally be interesting though, I agree.

32 minutes ago, Honorless said:

except no women in the Diem.

Yeah, that's an oversight they complained about. A mistake of the artist that they didn't catch at first. Volumes 2 and 3 have more female sand masters I think.

And yeah, that's the real tragedy here. The graphic novel didn't get enough love and attention. I'd hesitate to throw it out, as they're planning to make more (sequels). I wouldn't be surprised if we get a good chunk of the cosmere via graphic novels in the years to come. They clearly learned a lot through doing the first 3, so I'm hopeful the next set will be a clear improvement.

[Honorless]

Why? If there are divisions/categorizations, if there are interactions than there are socio-political relationships.

Ais' fanaticism and anger issues were downplayed in the GN, I feel. I would say that Part 3 was actually better than the latter third of the prose, but parts 1 & 2 were bad. Really bad.

I don't remember seeing any female Sand Masters in Parts 2 & 3 either... 

Edited November 23, 2019 by Honorless

[Karger]

On 11/22/2019 at 1:49 AM, Honorless said:

I don't know if I can consider Vorinism as an exploration of the same, it's a bit too out there. Men are illiterate and mostly expected to fight in wars while women control information and culture? That's not sustainable over long term, the fact that men have the Shards would give them military might, a power which can grant them legitimacy in other fields because that is what power does. How did an actual active divide even arise between the genders? Please don't just cough up the quote about it being meant to control who gets the Shardblades and Shardplates, and "proper behaviour" being used to control (like the safehands, against which the women reciprocated by saying what proper manly behaviours are) such a divide is very... meta, I don't know how else to put it. It is still somewhat realistically handled with Stormwardens and Ardents being Vorinism-approved ways of men reading; having the women handle the finances, the glyph system being used by men in fields such as medicine (as we see with Kaladin) and some women like Liss still getting their hands on Shardblade, as well as other women like Tyn, Lyn, Renarin, currently also Dalinar & I think with time, Adolin bucking the trends. Of course, we have real world examples of women wearing corsets, diagnosed with hysteria and mandatory conscription for men (also think of UK's White Feather during WW). Unless we get much more info on how the divide came to be, I don't think I'll consider it as a strong representation. It's sustainability is certainly plausible though, I feel I should point out, if these behaviours get embedded in the culture and of course, Vorinism's rule-oriented structure and the Ardentia meant that women had less of a monopoly on info.

Plenty of complicated stratified societies have existed for extraordinarily long periods of time.  The divide arose because a women published Arts and Majesty a book which defined masculine and feminine tasks.  As to a man shoving his way into a traditionally feminine role.  People who act outside of the roles that they are given tend to alienate supporters.  As such if a shardberer wanted to learn to read many men would ridicule him and perhaps more importantly he might also alienate many women who would feel threatened.  This would deprive the shardberer of most of their authority as well as their real power(the ability to influence people).  Gender dynamics are complicated like that.  I actually find it more likely that a women (like Jasnah) would gain the support of one or more generals and allow them to repeat her orders to troops as a way of dominating the battlefield.  As to the gender swap.  I personally liked it.  I think it made Ais a bit more of a nuanced character.

[Honorless]

On 11/24/2019 at 4:14 AM, Karger said:

Plenty of complicated stratified societies have existed for extraordinarily long periods of time.  The divide arose because a women published Arts and Majesty a book which defined masculine and feminine tasks.  As to a man shoving his way into a traditionally feminine role.  People who act outside of the roles that they are given tend to alienate supporters.  As such if a shardberer wanted to learn to read many men would ridicule him and perhaps more importantly he might also alienate many women who would feel threatened.  This would deprive the shardberer of most of their authority as well as their real power(the ability to influence people).  Gender dynamics are complicated like that.  I actually find it more likely that a women (like Jasnah) would gain the support of one or more generals and allow them to repeat her orders to troops as a way of dominating the battlefield.  As to the gender swap.  I personally liked it.  I think it made Ais a bit more of a nuanced character.

That was not the purpose for which I brought out the Stormlight Archives as an example.

What nuance did her character gain? She only lost nuance. Look at Shallan or Kaladin, for example. Can you imagine their character arcs could've stayed the same if their genders were flipped?

If Ais' gender were flipped again, it would not affect the plot at all (and the same goes for Ham). But that only applies to the graphic novel version of her, if we did the same with the prose version, so much of what the character was going through would change, in my opinion, for the better. 

[Karger]

40 minutes ago, Honorless said:

Can you imagine their character arcs could've stayed the same if their genders were flipped?

Yes.

41 minutes ago, Honorless said:

If Ais' gender were flipped again, it would not affect the plot at all (and the same goes for Ham)

Ham should be a women.  I agree.

41 minutes ago, Honorless said:

But that only applies to the graphic novel version of her, if we did the same with the prose version, so much of what the character was going through would change, in my opinion, for the better. 

In my prose version I did the gender change by making edits as I read(I had read GN first and I thought making her a man was weird).

[Honorless]

4 minutes ago, Karger said:

Yes.

Ham should be a women.  I agree.

In my prose version I did the gender change by making edits as I read(I had read GN first and I thought making her a man was weird).

one word answer

That is the issue I was raising

I read the GN before the prose too, though Ais was more fun to read in the GN as her fervor was downscaled, I still believe a female Ais in the world of the prose version would've made for a much more interesting and nuanced character

[Karger]

8 hours ago, Honorless said:

I read the GN before the prose too, though Ais was more fun to read in the GN as her fervor was downscaled, I still believe a female Ais in the world of the prose version would've made for a much more interesting and nuanced character

I agree with you.