Frustration

The children of Ashyn promised to stay in Shin.  They broke that promise.  I cannot regard them as oathbound, honorable, or in any way respectable in the grand moral arc of the Cosmere, so long as their ideals are negotiable, their duty optional, and their commitment to absolutism based on a giant flipping cheat-compromise-lie and broken promise.

The only thing that gives them any hope of redemption in my eyes is their zealotry.  People like Szeth give me hope that at some point, the children of Ashyn will accept living only in Shin (and maybe Ashyn).  That kind of unreasonable, no-benefit, do-it-even-though-it-hurts I-made-a-promise-and-nothing-more-needs-be-said is what gave us "Storm it, we have to go back".

So, if Brandon Sanderson got kidnapped by aliens and the terms of his release was that he could never write anything in The Stormlight Archive ever again, so all of our guesses and suppositions were as good as any other because the true answer would never come out, thus meaning nobody could say "You're wrong, Aliroz, and here's why", "I don't think that's likely" or "I think future books will prove you wrong"...

If it was like that and my ideas were as good as anybody else's, so there was no need to defend them nor any measure to which they had to be evaluated...

(Or, in other words, if Brandon Sanderson died and had all of his unpublished notes, works, and existing WOBs deleted.)

I would make what TvTropes (Ah, TvTropes, my first internet home, before some of you posters here were even born, probably) calls a WMG, wherein the moral arc of the children of Ashyn ends with them living only in Shin (and maybe Ashyn), abandoning all else, because it is right.  I'd have them do so with the words "We have to go back.  Storm it, we have to go back."

But, of course, that's not what's going to happen, because none of us have any idea what the series will be like.  Nobody in 2010 could have predicted that The Stormlight Archive would go where it did.

What happens will be weirder, cleverer<1>, more morally coherent, and more wonderful than anything I could have guessed.  At least, that's how it's been with every ending of every Sanderson story that ever grankled my bajankles in the middle.

And, if not, well... if it turns out that nuance was the whole point, that the author's favorites get whatever they want, and that the central message of The Stormlight Archive is a more palatable delivery of what is at its core the Melian dialogue, then...

Well, C.S. Lewis wrote a lot on Spenser's The Faerie Queene in 1936.  I read it over the last few weeks, and it resonated deeply with me.  I'm pretty sure it is public domain because this is 2026.  This is the relevant chapter.  If it turns out as the previous paragraph suggests, then I shall have to regard The Stormlight Archive as being to the Cosmere in the same way Lewis regards Book V as being to The Faerie Queene. 

Except, without Sanderson being guilty of real-life evils.  My point is that the salt flats and the enthusiasm mountains meet at the appreciation hills because certain types of salt come only from unironic enthusiastic joyful engagement confronted with Freaking Baloney. 

I feel a lot better knowing that one can be an emotionally compromised kind-of-embarrassing let-me-tell-you-about-my-favorite-thing-at-great-length giddy fanboy or fangirl and also a sharp  at Freaking Baloney without either of those invalidating the other.  (Not that I'm comparing myself to the great C.S. Lewis, of course, whose writing is always nuanced, reasonable, and gives you a permanent +1 to wisdom, but having an author I respect wax indulgently prolix about his youthful fictional hyper-fixation makes me realize that (1) We are all one in the great circle of literate dorks and (2) I could have been way more polite and considerate of other people in internet disagreements without conceding certitude; so maybe I can be just as stubborn and unreasonable without being an acerbic grouch (though of course this does not imply adding any grey to my black-and-white thinking.  It simply means accepting that I cannot convince people of things so I might as well stop trying and just vibe)).  Apologies to everyone who disagreed with me, I didn't need to be so pessimistic and hostile.

I will (at least try to) maintain childish glee for the Cosmere and childish indignation whenever the bad guys get away with Evil Stuff.  (Lol, I'm probably one of the older posters here, old enough to still spell it e-mail with a hyphen!  I also use double-spacing between sentences.  I'm even old enough to remember when newspaper comics were actually funny.  I'm not kidding, they really were; you just weren't born yet.)

Adults, being far more morally sophisticated, cannot handle the dissonance and so they resolve it with nuance (my dumb lizard brain dislikes nuance in fantasy and bacon in sandwiches).  Children, being much less morally sophisticated, throw tantrums knowing that they have zero control over things that matter enormously to them (like bedtime, or moving from one town to another).

Being an adult means being emotionally mature about real-life things. It does not require being emotionally mature about stories involving fairies and magic swords.

If my final reaction to The Stormlight Archive is a childish "No, nuh-uh, that's wrong.  I don't care what it says, it's stupid and unfair, because they made a promise and you can't break promises!", well, I'll take the L (kids are notoriously not as good at debate as adults are) and accept that the author disagrees with me.

I mean, that's how I've always felt about the end of The Hobbit (Dwarf treasure is for DWARVES, not elves!  The Elvenking can just get the heck out of there and jump in a lake, and take his stupid crown of red leaves and berries with him.  Forget the Elvenking, all my homies hate the Elvenking).