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Disabilities in Sanderson Books


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I've only read Sanderson books from the Stormlight Archive to date, but I have noticed there appears to be a strong emphasis on addressing disabilities. From schizophrenia, to depression, to PTSD, to substance abuse, to Alzheimer's, to Amnesia, to Autism, to ADHD, to Insomnia, to Antisocial Personality Disorder, to Narcissistic Personality Disorder, to Intellectual Development Disorder due to umbilical cord around neck at birth, to Selective Mutism, the Stormlight Archive appears to be heavily addressing mental disorders. In the books, Sanderson does a really unique thing in turning these on their heads to be benefits at times for specific characters. 

Are disabilities a strong theme in other Sanderson books? Examples?

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Yeah, Brandon tried to write an autistic savant type character in Elantris which was a bit problematic, but he's improved a lot since then. Brandon intends for Adien to be a main protagonist in the Elantris sequels, so there'll be more of that, improved! 

There's also Steris in era 2 of Mistborn.

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Questioner

What inspired Steris?

Brandon Sanderson

Partially, me feeling that I didn't do a fair shake by an autistic character in Elantris, and wanted to do a better job of it later on after I had read more and more about it, and I'd known some people with autism, and things like that, and I wanted to try approaching someone on the spectrum from a more realistic viewpoint. Not that Elantris is completely wrong, but it's more Hollywood interpretation, rather than the real-life way that a lot of people who have autism live with it. That was part of it.

Part of it was also, I wanted to write a character based on a friend of mine, who when I first met them, was very kind of abrasive. And as I got to know them, became one of my best friends ever. And I'm like, "I want a character like that for fans." So if you read the book, you're like, "I hate this character." But at the end, you're like, "Oh, when I can see from their eyes, suddenly they're one of my favorites."

FanX 2018 (Sept. 8, 2018)
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Questioner

neuroatypicals

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, my pleasure. She says that she has Asperger's and when she read the book The Bands of Mourning, and the other ones that have Steris in them, she identified a lot with Steris. I appreciate that.

Questioner

 

Brandon Sanderson

What research did I do, did I talk to autistic people. I have several people in my life who actually have Asperger's specifically, and they were a huge resource, as you might imagine. One of the things that I like to do, kind of a mandate I have in my fiction, is to try to get people who are heroic who have different types of psychology than we usually see in heroes. Because the more I've lived in life, the more I've realized that we all are really distinctive in our own way, and our psychology all works differently. And yet we see a lot of heroes that all kind of have the same brain chemistry, it seems. Which has always felt really weird to me. And so it's kind of one my mandates to do that.

What research did I do? When I was in college, one of my favorite things to do was sneak into classes I wasn't signed up for, and the psychology classes were my favorite. This friend, who coincidentally was the one who wanted to be a chef, actually got a psychology major. His parents were "You should do something useful with your life." and so he got a psychology major, which he ended up going to med school. He didn't become a chef, he went to med school. He likes that too. But I would sneak into his classes and they were so useful as a writer, just listening to the different types, and to start to see personality not as-- We like to look at a lot of things as being normal or abnormal, but that's not the way it is. Everyone's personality is on this interesting spectrum and what is normal and what is abnormal is completely a matter of perspective. Where you stand on this line as opposed to-- It's like trying to make a value judgement that shouldn't really exist. And to come to see these personalities as great swathes of interesting color is what the psychology classes taught me. And so there was that and I did do some specific research for Steris and then I interviewed people as well.

I'm glad that you picked up on it without me ever having to say what she was, and things like that. That's when I really feel like I've nailed something, when you can read something and say "Yeah that's who this person is" instead of someone outside pointing and saying "this is who this person is, who they are"

Calamity Seattle signing (Feb. 17, 2016)

Don't forget physical disabilities, with Rysn in Dawnshard : )

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  • 1 month later...

What I really want is a deaf character! They don't get represented very often in... well almost anything. From what I've seen, there's a deaf character in supernatural, magnus chase, doctor who.... and not much else. Even then, they're often side characters. I think there's a lot of cool things you can do with a deaf character, but it will be pretty hard :/

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  • 1 month later...
On 3/8/2021 at 11:07 AM, IAmTheStick said:

What I really want is a deaf character! They don't get represented very often in... well almost anything. From what I've seen, there's a deaf character in supernatural, magnus chase, doctor who.... and not much else. Even then, they're often side characters. I think there's a lot of cool things you can do with a deaf character, but it will be pretty hard :/

If Brandon ever gets around to writing the Silence Divine, we could get this. On Ashyn humans are given powers by being infected with diseases and one of the powers which allows for the flying cities causes deafness as a result.

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