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@padawanpadme I feel like if you include an overt caste or class system and you aren’t also doing comprehensive worldbuilding on a Stormlight level, you’re telling your reader “here’s a point I’m making about class in the real world,” because you’re drawing attention to something that’s a hot-button issue in the real world.

Which isn’t an inherently good or bad thing. It’s just something to keep in mind.

In the real world, throughout nearly all civilized cultures, your class is determined mostly by your birth. Your family determines who you’re allowed to be around, how likely you are to be educated, and whether you’re even allowed to own land.

I don’t think race, gender, or money are overdone as class differentials so much as when I see them as those differentials, they’re used in a clumsy and simple manner that tells the reader “hey treat people equitably” and has no nuance to it.

I think a good caste or class system should have deliberate gradiation in it, at least regarding upward mobility. It’s a lot more common in the real world—and throughout the history of the world—for a person’s class privilege to be stripped from them than it is for them to suddenly gain a ton of class privilege. Like, a noble whose family refuses to pay his ransom will end up a slave at once, but once you’re a slave, it takes multiple generations of ideal circumstances before your descendents are even on the same level as an ordinary citizen. Or, you might end up an outcast because your fortunes capsize and a political rival sues you for all your landholdings, but even if an ordinary person were to gain that same amount of wealth, society would not accept them. This is old money vs new money.

If a person were to come along with extraordinary gifts, they would most likely be manipulated by the people around them rather than shoved into their own cool kids class. A rich old lady might pay for your education as your patron, or the local noble might pay your parents a lot of money to adopt you and then tell everyone you’re his firstborn child, or if you were a slave by birth or circumstance, your corpulent master might parade you before his party guests to do magic tricks at dessert.

@mgtask has a great point about values tying into class. I don’t think it’s realistic that people adhering to values will help their mobility, though. In the real world, we instead see the people in privileged classes convincing everyone that they do adhere to those values more than they actually do, and claiming that they therefore have more value, though they used their inherently greater resources to achieve that.

Like, all the low-class women wear their makeup asymmetrically, but all the high-class women have the money to get plastic surgery to be even more asymmetric. Also, they go around telling everyone it’s natural, and that the finer breed of women in high society are just so much naturally prettier than low-class women. And I will stop typing now before I go on about how the low class women believe it and are racist against themselves because they believe the high-class women deserve all their power and wealth and have earned it by being naturally superior.

Going back to Stormlight: I’m pretty bored by the worldbuilding in that series but I like the class system. We get a sense of a realistic hierarchy based on ancient religion, one which has clear roles for men and women without just being “women slaves, society sexist” like you usually see in this situation. We get a picture of modesty which absolutely reflects the diversity of that concept in the real world without just being an excuse to have female characters walk around without a lot of clothes on “because different standards, fantasy world, I write whatever I want, she breathes through her skin it’s totally scientifical guys.” Which is also what you often see in this situation =P And finally, we see a slow method of upward social mobility between the dahns and nahns, which are very difficult to pass between but which fuzz a little where they meet. Not to mention the role of the Ardents. It’s a cool system that feels believable.