#“you wanna kiss her sooooo bad sophie you know you wanna”

[the-way-astray]

so sorry if this is rude, like i get this is just a cute fluffy post, but am i the only one that thinks that admitting someone is physically attractive is not tantamount to having a crush on them or having feelings for them?

(this isn't a specifically you thing or anything, i see it in fandom spaces a lot and stuff and it just confuses me.)

this might be the aro-spec in me but i can be like "wow, that guy's pretty" (*cough* lemontarto's fitz vacker *louder cough*) without being like "wow, i really have a crush on him"? especially if someone's as attractive as shannon wants us to believe keefe is. i don't know, if he's even more attractive than the already attractive elves, i feel like pointing that out is not really the same as having a crush? mayhaps?

(just so we're clear, the conversation about whether or not sophie has a crush on keefe in the first eight books is a different conversation entirely. i'm not saying she didn't, necessarily, have feelings for him at this point, i'm just saying this description wouldn't be indicative of that if she did.)

i feel like this post is sort of implying that sophie's hidden, mysterious feelings for keefe, if we're calling them that, manifest in ways like this pre-stellarlune, where she describes how attractive he is, and not in other scenes where they're like, talking or something? i don't know

also in stellarlune, sophie also says that fitz is more "classically handsome" than keefe and obviously, what that means is up to interpretation, but i think it still hammers home that the subtle ways sophie's feelings for keefe manifest before she "realizes them" or whatever don't really have anything to do with his looks. it's more of a "yeah, he's super hot, but that's not why i like him" thing more than a "wow, he's super hot, and the fact that i thought that was definitely a sign that i liked him" thing.

also her saying that half the girls in the school must have a crush on him was i think purely based on his looks and his "cool, popular guy" persona. i don't think she had any feelings at all behind that statement at that point in time in book one because, hell, that's literally the scene where they meet for the first time, and i think the appeal of sokeefe for a lot of people comes from the friends-to-lovers of it all (and you can't really put friends-to-lovers with love at first sight, it kinda doesn't work). so i think that observation by sophie doesn't really mean anything in terms of her feelings for keefe.

anyway, i get that this was supposed to be a cute sokeefe post but i analyzed the crap out of it and probably sucked all the fun out, sorry about that

tldr: the scenes that are pointed out in this post all have to do with surface-level observations about keefe, such as his looks or cool-kid persona, and are not really indicative of sophie having any feelings for keefe pre-stellarlune. it's more like she's just making observations and inferences about very not-that-deep things about him

You guys 😭

Sophie in Legacy: catches Keefe shirtless, proceeds to comment on how his messy hair “REALLY works for him” and say that in a world of gorgeous people he was even more gorgeous than the rest and is also like ��yeah he’s handsome and he knows it”

*a book point five later*

Sophie in Stellarlune: sorry Fitz I really thought I still liked you. I have no clue when these mysterious feelings for Keefe snuck up on me. I didn’t even know I was feeling them until last night when I kissed him

SOPHIE YOU SAID IN BOOK ONE THAT HALF THE GIRLS IN THE SCHOOL HAD TO HAVE A CRUSH ON HIM? AND YET STILL FIXATED ONLY ON FITZ??? AND DIDNT EVEN REALIZE YOU HAD ANY FEELINGS?

I mean I guess we call it the great foster oblivion for a reason