I had one of those moments recently that happens occasionally; where a seed that has been germinating at the back of my mind finally blossomed out into a full thought. And it was thus: “I think the modern concept of “Equity” may just be fundamentally toxic to good storytelling.” Yes, this is one of THOSE journals; those of you who read these to find things to be upset about and subsequently jump up my ass over; kindly go away, my ass is not open for visitors today thank you.

… Are they gone? Good, let us dive into this.

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“The first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered, where everyone would be happy… It was a disaster… Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that as a species; human beings define their reality through misery and suffering.”
- Agent Smith, The Matrix

This idea has been around in my head a while and I’ve touched on it before, but it happened to crystalize after a bout of reading 3 things: A glut of terrible X-Men stories (Basically everything since Krakoa became their base of operations), and two different Dungeons & Dragons modules: The Delver’s Guide to Beast-world, and Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel. All three share something in common; a setting written by people concerned with the concept of “equity”; that everyone in their setting get along, that nobody be wanting; that it be a “more perfect world” where YOU the reader, or the writer themselves might want to live… And all their narratives suffer greatly as a consequence.

The stereotypical intro to an X-men story from their golden age of the 80s and 90s was to find one or more X-men training in The Danger Room; their equivalent of Star Trek’s holodeck. Why? Because the X-men lived in a dangerous world; they wanted to be ready for whatever the next adventure had in store for them. Ever since the modern reinterpretation of the X-men however; the usual intro to their story is to find one or more X-men just… sort of milling around on their island paradise. In fact; they don’t seem to do… much of anything besides talk, cat-fight, and eat. They have gone from avengers and defenders of the outcast to… basically “the beautiful ones” from the Mouse Utopia experiments: they sit around eating and preening all day long; and a lot of them come across as utter psychopaths as a result. Don’t make me go get that “X-men green” book again where we follow the sympathetic story of Nature Girl; the mass-murdering eco-terrorist…

Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel meanwhile is set in and around… the Radiant Citadel appropriately enough: a sort of “world between worlds” crossover realm ala the arcade in Wreck It Ralph. Thing is: this is hardly a new concept in the Dungeons & Dragons Multiverse, in fact this “city crossover point” idea already exists in Sigil; “the city of doors”. But where Sigil is a dangerous, seedy place as one might expect an inter-dimensional hub world come port city to be and is kept in order through only the threat of its patron demi-god, The Radiant Citadel is… well: it’s basically a mall. “Visitors from all over the multiverse come and get along to trade and prosper!” it proudly boasts. But swiftly dodges the question of “why does everyone just agree to get along?” because the answer to that is… “they just do”. No really: the setting includes a magical force that just prevents anyone from doing anything nefarious; literally the authors throwing up their hands and going “uh… it just works okay?” and not realizing they’ve basically written a location that mind-controls anyone who sets foot in it. As one D&D youtuber I watch pointed out: if you want to illustrate how fucked this truly is: just teleport a group of Skaven from the Warhammer universe into this place… and watch them slowly starve to death because they are incapable of taking any action at all due to how the Skaven mind works.

Which brings us to: the Delver’s Guide to Beast-world; a wholly furry D&D supplement which I once linked to the Kickstarter of… I’m now thoroughly regretting that. You see, like the Radiant Citadel; its creators seem to have been overly preoccupied with writing a world in which the only conflict that exists is the ones they envision. Those being the one between the Fur-species and humanity, and the other being between both and “The Dungeon”: a sort of globe-spanning ever repopulating, ever-changing labyrinth. This is a form of what I like to call a “non-plot”: commonly used in gear-grindy free-to-play games of all things because it allows for a non-changing status quo that can go nowhere, and infinite grinding; it just sits there generating non-specific peril for anyone nearby. Multiple of the nations in this setting go on for pages about how they live in tune with nature and want for nothing… despite several of the things proposed there-in being nonsensical the moment you think about them for more than 5 seconds; the sorts of things written by people who have no earthly idea how food gets to their table or electricity into their devices. One friend of mine made the mistake of pointing this out on Twitter only to be swiftly blocked for daring to poke holes in the creator’s perfect fantasy.

All three of these settings share something fundamental: they want their setting to be “an ideal place to live”, they want “everyone to have equity”, but in doing so: they sacrifice something fundamental to a satisfying story… Particularly in the realm of adventure fiction, which, theoretically, all three ought to be. But also, just for relatable or compelling stories generally.

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“As Doctor Polaski would say: Life is rarely fair.”
- Lieutenant Commander Data, The Measure of a Man

Inequity is not just an inevitable result of us living in a real world, where we are imperfect, and finite things exist in finite places, and we all have finite time to exist therein; it is a fundamental requirement of a good story. You’ll swiftly notice there aren’t many stories set in a time and place in which everyone is just going about their day and things go swimmingly. This is the root of the writing adage: “is this the most interesting time in your protagonist’s life? If yes, continue, if not, why are you not showing me that instead?” To quote one of my TTRPG writing and creative writing influences:
"The Greeks believed there were seven types of stories: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. I disagree: generally, if we look at most stories that humans tell one another, there's only really one, and generally it can fit into this sentence: ‘Someone, somewhere, wants something, very badly, and is having trouble acquiring it’."

That might sound overly reductive; but it is fairly accurate if you think about it; the “someone” is not always the protagonist, the “something” is not always a literal “thing”, and sometimes it’s multiple someone’s who want one or multiple things acting at cross-purposes to one another. But ultimately it will ring true if you boil things down enough. Journey to the West; one of the oldest and most influential stories in human history is itself just a story of a monk and his entourage, on a journey to collect a thing, and the adversity they face on the way there and back. By attempting to remove inequity from a setting; a creator fundamentally undercuts the ability for that magical sentence of storytelling to be formed. Incidentally this might be why… I’ll be charitable and say “un-gifted” writers have a hard time writing for Star Trek: because the future Gene Roddenberry envisioned is a very equitable place; a purely theoretical post-scarcity economy. To quote the man himself: “In the future, there will be no hunter, there will be no greed, and all the children will know how to read.” Thus: crutches that some writers use suddenly make no sense once transplanted into the post-scarcity economy of the United Federation of Planets. But the fact remains: you cannot create that magical story core sentence if nobody wants something and has trouble getting it; IE: inequity.

Inequity is a force for change; the same way that a rock out of balance at the top of a hill will eventually find a way to roll down it to convert potential energy into kinetic energy; and change or lack there-of is what a story is fundamentally about. This is both why a utopian setting is almost impossible to write a compelling story within… and also why many stories are either at the beginning of something, or at the end of something, and rarely in the middle. Allow me to illustrate.

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“I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate.”
“What does that make us?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
- Dark Helmet, Spaceballs

Here is a question to test your brains: what is a common element between the Original Star Wars Trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, and the Harry Potter book series? Superficial answers: magic, heroism, fantasy. Slightly deeper answers: Joseph Camble’s Hero’s Journey writing motif, coming of age storytelling trope, soft magic systems. More relevant to the previous topics though: they are all stories of how someone (funnily enough often the antagonists) wants something very badly, and how that wanting leads to the end of an era.

Star Wars Original Trilogy:
- The Emperor and Darth Vader want to recover the Death Star plans and crush the Rebellion, very badly, and are having trouble doing so.
- Princess Leia wants to get the Death Star plans to the Rebellion very badly, and is having trouble doing so, because of Darth Vader.
- R2-D2, Obi-Wan and Luke Skywalker want to deliver the plans to Princess Leia very badly, and are having trouble doing so.
- The above culminate in the end of the Galactic Civil War, and defeat of Emperor Palpatine… That is; before something contrived and stupid happened called the sequel trilogy.

The Lord of the Rings
- Lord Sauron wants to recover his One Ring so he can conquer Middle Earth very badly, and is having trouble doing so.
- Frodo Baggins wants to throw the one ring into Mount Doom, very badly, and is having trouble doing so.
- Gandalf, Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn want to save Middle Earth from being conquered by the above, very badly, and are having trouble doing so.
- The above leads to the destruction of The One Ring, the death of Sauron, and with them, the end of the age of magic, and the beginning of the age of Men.

Harry Potter Series:
- Lord Voldemort wants to return from a state of living death maintained by his horcruxes, and conquer the Wizarding world, very badly, and is having trouble doing so…. Funnily enough on a semi-annual basis.
- Harry Potter wants to find (and subsequently protect) a place that he belongs, very badly, and is having trouble doing it from under the stairs.
- Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix want to stop Voldemort from returning, very badly, and are having trouble doing so.
- The above culminates in the final defeat of the Dark Lord, along with his faction, and starts a new era for the Wizarding world, now free of the spectre of Voldemort’s presence.

See what I mean? Someone wanting something and not having immediate or easy access to it is fundamentally a part of telling a story that people give two shits about. It’s also a contributing factor to why characters like Rey in Disney-Wars or Captain Marvel in… Marvel are fundamentally either bland or off-putting to most viewers: their perfection and lack of struggle with anything at all makes them seem unreal, inhuman, and definitely unsympathetic. They come across less like fleshed out people with desires, goals, and struggles, and more like aliens who haven’t grasped the finer points of human-ing yet. A perfect example being an interview I saw where-in Daisy Ridley was asked “what does Rey want?” and her response was “to do the right thing.”… Problem is though: that isn’t actually a desire or a goal: if anything, technically; it’s a LACK of desire.

To compare against one of my favourite examples of strong writing: The Expanse series. The Expanse depicts a future some time in the mid-2300s; humanity has used fusion-based rocketry to explore and colonize most of our home solar system, and humanity’s technological achievements are closing in on interstellar flight. The Expanse’s world is many things: probably the most scientifically plausible science fiction setting ever put to page or screen, a fascinating look at what future human interplanetary politics could look like, a poignant character piece about the effects that the sheer distances involved in space travel have on people; but “equitable” it is most certainly not. Indeed; I’d say the super-majority of people in this setting are to one degree or another dissatisfied with their lot in life; the major factions are almost defined by wanting something they don’t have. Earth wants to acquire more resources to feed, clothe and house its gargantuan and still growing population, Mars wants to be left alone to focus on terraforming, and the tribes of The Belt want to be taken seriously and respected by the two inner system powers. Even the setting’s antagonists aren’t “villainous” for the sake of it; they all have tangible goals, some even quite understandable.

Notice something though? None of those worlds; Arda, Wizarding World Earth, Star Wars Galaxy, and Expanse solar system; could ever be described as a place where people “want for nothing”; much the opposite actually. Lots of people want for lots of things; often mutually exclusive things… just like our real world. But they also are NOT our real world: they have their own conflicts, their own factors, their own priorities and concerns. They are at once familiar enough to emotionally bond with, while being at arm’s length enough to be escapism. It does not matter that Luke Skywalker lives in another galaxy, or that Frodo isn’t strictly human; their struggles against an imperfect world are relatable.

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"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

There is a reason that the basis for the word “Utopia” basically is a word for “nowhere”; because the concept of a “perfect world” is almost impossible to conceive of, much less realize or create in specific detail. Indeed; chances are it would be different for every person, more on that later. You could almost liken the quest for a perfect fictional world to the way that some people with clinical depression sabotage themselves: imagining “happiness” as a transcendent state of utter unrelenting joy, where in unflinchingly happy people are transcendently happy all of the time. That is a state that nobody on Earth has, or even COULD have: even IF hypothetically you had someone behind you jamming needles full of dopamine into your nervous system, you WOULD eventually adjust to the “new normal” (or possibly OD and die); that’s how our brain chemistry works; for you are not some ethereal meta being: you’re a fancy test tube with a face, sorry to break it to you.

Another problem with this idea of creating a “perfect place everyone would want to be” is inherent to the concept of a utopia… that being: that it will inevitably be different to every person. One person’s perfect utopia is another person’s inescapable nightmare dystopia; see the example of the Radiant Citadel from earlier; that WAS someone’s ideal way to square the circle; to paraphrase Anakin Skywalker: “If people don’t agree, then they should be made to.” The reason why this is? Because not everyone is the same; even people who agree on a lot can still disagree on how they prioritize things. Yes, idiot intersectional puritans: people on “the same side” CAN still disagree on specifics.

The reason why “good people” still disagree on topics of morality is because a topic that broad is not universal; it is inherently specific and personal. There are five foundational concepts in morality, axis if you will: Care/Harm, Fairness/Unfairness, Loyalty/Betrayal (we can call that “in-group preference” if you prefer), Order/Subversion, and Sanctity/Degradation. Where you generally fall on subjects of morality is based upon how much you value each one of those factors; and you WILL value them differently; because your thinking and thus, caring inventory is limited by virtue of you having a limited number of neurons. People of a “left” or “liberal” persuasion tend to value the first two, people of a “conservative” or “right” persuasion tend to value the latter three, and people of a “centrist” position end to value them all somewhat evenly, chances are though you care about them all to one degree or another. The issue with the modern concept of “Equity” is that it values one; the “Fairness/Unfairness” one; to the exclusion of all others; yes, even the Care/Harm one. The writers who create these settings and fall into this trap seem to have lost sight of the ability to see things from anyone else’s perspective.

That got pretty deep into philosophy and ethics, so let’s come up for air here. Why is creating a story set in a “perfect world where everyone would want to live” sort of self-sabotaging? Well quite simple: you get rid of the thing that allows you to start telling a compelling story in the first place; someone being dissatisfied with their state of affairs, and setting out to change them. By the same principal that extremely pure water cannot freeze because it has no imperfections around which ice crystals can form, or a star dies once it starts trying to fuse Iron because any element heavier than Iron consumes more energy than it releases when fusing. You’ve sabotaged your ability to construct the most important sentence in narrative writing: “Someone, wants something, very badly, and they’re having trouble acquiring it.”