#If the Black Swan and Sophie both acknowledge their faults

[bookwyrminspiration]

is it still council-hating hours? even if not, this is something that's been bothering me for....so long. and i am going to explode if i don't say it right now. (In fact i actually have a doc titled "council incompetence rant" that is. getting a little long.)

One of the things that annoys me the most in Keeper is how utterly incompetent the Council is. They are shit at their jobs! They don't make sense! And that would be fine if that was something that was explored and talked about in the story, but it's not?

Like, sure, it's brushed on a little, but Keeper never goes in-depth in order to explain just how flawed and corrupt the system is! We have no idea how far the rot goes because we haven't been given a chance to see how far it goes, and despite the earlier books being really great setup for all kinds of plots and discussions surrounding the Council, it feels like Messenger is completely dropping that in favor of..."Neverseen Bad, Council + Black Swan Good". Which I call fucking bullshit on, by the way, because this series has gone to pretty decent lengths before to show that it's not the case! So WHY are we getting to that now?

Well, I think all of this is the symptom of a bigger problem.

Note: I don't want to be mean, and please tell me if I'm being too critical here, but this series has some serious problems actually delivering on what it's saying.

Like, it's trying to tell us that Sophie shouldn't be doing all this because she's a kid, but then it treats her very own existence as a project as background information when that should absolutely be at the forefront (like it was in earlier books)!

It's trying to tell us that discrimination against the Talentless is bad, but then every single member of it's cast has an ability, has a strong ability, and regularly uses their ability! Even Dex, who could have easily been talentless and good with tech, gets to be a Super Good Gadget Person thanks to his ability as opposed to his own creativity and ingenuity.

It's trying to tell us that maybe banishing children is bad, but also tells us that Exillium is now """fixed""" because Oralie gave them...better tents? Food? And never touches on the fact that children are still. getting. banished. It doesn't explore Tam's anger in detail, Linh is only there to be the token asian girl, it does nothing to fully dispel any thought of the Council being alright.

And it's trying to tell us that the Council fucks up, it's showing us that Councillors have no problem being incredibly selfish and violent and so many other terrible things, but that never changes. Nothing in Keeper is changing. It is only maintaining the status quo!

I'm confused as to what Messenger is trying to tell her readers! Are the Council good or bad? Is working with the Council good or bad? Are the Black Swan and Neverseen actually morally grey? Should I be angry at what's happening in these books? Am I meant to look at all the rot and shrug because "that's just how it is"?

And like...I wouldn't be mad if Keeper was just...bad! I mean, I would, but I wouldn't be as distraught! What really grinds my gears is that Keeper has the chance to be good. It has the chance to do great things - and at times it absolutely does! - but it keeps reinforcing belief in a deeply flawed and broken system that is regularly hurting people. And those examples were just off the top of my head!

And again, if this was explored within the series, that would be amazing, but the problem is that it's...not. And that's just...a real fuckin' shame, honestly.

- pyro

(sorry if this was like...too angry? i started and then kinda just...couldn't stop. i should probably get a hobby that's not tearing a middle grade series apart. oops.)

it may have been over a week since you sent this (thank you for being patient with me!!), but fuck yes it is still council hating hours. it is always council hating hours in this household that is not actually a house. (also that incompetence rant sounds intriguing)

yes! you are right! they are so bad at what they're supposed to be doing it's like they're just figures for people to look to and say "yea they'll take care of it" to keep everyone else from acting out! but it's really interesting to see a government so awful and incompetent be such an integral and influential part of the story...without acknowledging that they're actually really bad? I know in Unlocked there's a line where Shannon says something like "Sophie had to figure out who the bad guys were: the black swan? the council? someone else entirely?" but then it's never touched on again that I can remember. Thinking through the series, I honestly can't think of a situation that the council, of their own volition, saw was an issue and corrected in a way that was beneficial to those who needed it. Like yea, Oralie gave money to Exillium, but that was after Sophie chewed her out about it. I think i've said it before but in case not: it feels like they've taken the "for the good of the many over the good of the few" ideology too far in a society that doesn't work for. If someone threatens the majority (and often that's just in appearance only) they get rid of them to preserve the image of the rest. It doesn't care about their people, it cares about the majority of people feeling undisturbed.

considering Sophie is part of a huge organization created literally because their society, led by that system, isn't working for a lot of people, they (the Black Swan) sure do go along with the council a whole lot. I think one of the linked posts in one of my masterposts is specifically about how making the Black Swan work so closely with the council screwed them over and completely undermined everything they were working towards. I'm going to make a very vague comparison here, but the Black Swan feel like "we need to fix the system" while the Neverseen are "the system is broken lets start over" (except the Neverseen added a lot more violence into the mix). It's absolutely infuriating to have them working side by side: one, because the Black Swan aren't accomplishing any of their goals and should cut their losses and go back to being mysterious underground groups with more freedom to move (in my opinion), but two, because it makes the council seem like it's trying to fix things when really it feels like a publicity thing to make the public think they're addressing the rebel issue while they're really just showing up in places and causing problems. And!! that's another thing! it feels like their collaboration with the Black Swan is to address the problem of having rebels, not the problems these rebels have identified and are trying to fix. Unfortunately, it seems the council is getting their way more than the Black Swan, getting them to act more legally and work closer with less room for working outside the system. if that makes sense.

considering it's literally stated in unlocked that there is no "good" and "bad," there does seem to be a lot of focus on associating the Black Swan with being Right, and the Neverseen with being Wrong. I can hope that it's the outward reactions to the Black Swan realizing they've done some fucked up stuff (Sophie) and are now overcompensating and trying to make sure their every move is the correct one. But I do think it will be interesting to see if Sophie makes the connection in canon (as she's already started to) that there isn't always a right option, there's just the best you can do with a situation and the Black Swan's insistence that she was "in the wrong" (a summary) helps her realize her own values and think through their decisions with her own perspective instead of just trusting them

response to your note: you're fine! you bring up a good point that this book sounds like it wanted to be a unique perspective (by having the "good guys" also be questionable and give the "bad guys" reasonable motives) but the execution misses the mark for a lot of us. so you're qualms and observations are entirely valid and I don't think you're being mean at all! I think you're expressing a frustration you have with something, which I support and encourage.

at times it feels like Shannon bit off more than she could chew in terms of all the complicated things she could get into when it comes to this series. not saying she's doing a bad job or a horrible author or anything, just that there are some things she introduced that kind of get left behind or unexplored because there's so much else going on. I think we can see that in the whole being experiment part of Sophie life. we saw sophie was uncomfortable with it in the first few books and would sometimes bring it up, but I personally would've been more satisfied if she'd either taken the time to process it (opposed to her think about that later strategy) or come to the realization that no, she isn't okay with it and she deserves to have her thoughts on the matter heard. she was literally created to serve someone elses purpose, and brought into the fight too early at that. and yet it's treated like an "oopsie, guess we just gotta go with it" thing, like this minor part of her story when I bet her thinking about it for more than a minute at a time would absolutely wreck her. but I'm getting caught up in this, so moving on!

I think we can see it in the talentless too, as it's treated like a "that doesn't affect me" thing for Sophie. because she doesn't have any friends that are talentless right now--the closest she's got is Marella, who I think is still legally considered talentless with her pyrokinesis. it's been acknowledged that she doesn't think the way talentless are treated is right, but it doesn't impact her right now so she's not really doing anything about it. maybe if this was brought back later with someone like Jensi, then that would be a satisfying conclusion to this issue (not a conclusion, but it wouldn't be left hanging, if that makes sense). And I can understand the benefit of leaving things open to go back and explore later from a writers perspective, but at a certain point it becomes more of a hindrance to the story than anything else.

and exillium! I have so many thoughts on Exillium that I actually started talking about it earlier in this post. They're not doing anything unless prompted and what they do is the bare minimum. With the tents and the food, they aren't fixing Exillium, they're making it into what it should've been at the very least were they going to actually go down that route. So I can't praise them for it when it's just basic decency to provide literal children with food and shelter when you force them to be somewhere they don't want to. But all this doesn't fix Exillium, because the problem is that it exists in the first place. The problem is that the council saw children who were struggling, and decided the best thing to do with them was to just get them out of the way for everyone else. Three coaches total for leadership? yeah, there's no way that place was ever supposed to be "alternate learning" or however Oralie phrased it, that was just so you could say you hadn't completely abandoned them in the middle of nowhere.

you're so right about the council fucks up bit--I think the most obvious example of this is with Sophie's ability restrictor. Yea, she's not wearing it anymore, but that's not because the council changed their minds. It's because she broke the law and the didn't punish her for it. this is a great example of how things keep trying to move forward, but the council isn't doing anything to stay up with it. "they are selfish and violent[...] but that never changes." yes!! this!! you put it so well! the council is still the same old council that we saw in book one, concerned with their own interests and their own views, just trying to mitigate the damage Sophie and her friends are capable of doing to their system. Note: the fact that a handful of teenagers who haven't even graduated can do this much damage might be telling of the structural integrity of their system. Bronte and Terik did a little flip, and Alina replaced the Now Crispy Kenric, but aside from that nothing has changed.

I will say, I personally don't want it to be clear who the good guys and bad guys are. (not saying that's what you're asking for! just piggybacking off your comment on the confusion). I'm glad that the characters make me think and I'm grateful there isn't just the "we're good and they're bad" element you see in other stories. not that that's bad, i just think realistically they'd be more complex and their simplicity grows repetitive after a while. But like I said, at times it feels like there's too much going on for there to be a clear message, which in and of itself could be the message. i could be seeing something where there's nothing, though. I think part of it might be Shannon trying to take on all these complex narratives and perspectives with a limited perspective (as in she only has Sophie to tell the story through), while also needing to make it enjoyable and palletable to a young audience.

and I agree with you! I think it's a lot of the potential we see not being used that makes us so infuriated (or me at least). Because there are some stories yo uread where you're like "ah. it's just one of those stories. cool." and you move past it. Because you know it's going to have a set perspective and you know it's going to accomplish what it wants, but Keeper seems to have so many possibilities and Shannon's getting stuck in this rut of good and bad after so long. maybe we'll get out of it in the next book with sophie thinking the Black Swan was in the wrong, but I also wouldn't be surprised if that Didn't Happen.

it's just like what i was saying about Ro! There's all these opportunities for these characters and this world to be really explored and fleshed out and complex, but we've gotten stuck in this romance drama and loosing fights again and again with little progress. All their actions are undoing the Neverseen's actions and counting it a victory because no one is dead. I just think there could be so much more that we're not getting because the story tried to go too broad when it wasn't ready for it.

this response got very long but in essence: I agree with your assessment of the story. is frustrating to see so many of the details and paths we'd like to see explored that often aren't in fiction just pass us by.

there is a special place for keeper in my heart and I will always appreciate it for that, but I also mourn what it could've been.

(also: you are not too angry! you have genuine thoughts about this series and they deserve to be heard! we are allowed to have complaints, even about the things we like. we don't have to appreciate every single aspect and we're allowed to be mad at the things we don't like.)

[ellatheblueelephant]

Ella the Sorting Hat

So, a little while ago @swan-darkwings asked what house Dex would be in. I may have gone off on a little rant over why I think Dex is a Hufflepuff and not a Ravenclaw. That got me thinking about the other characters as well, and what houses I think they’d be sorted into. So I’m starting a new thing where, every once in a while on no particular schedule, I’m going to post a little blurb about what house I think each character would be in and why.

If you disagree with one of my sorts, hit me up with why you think they’d be sorted differently! :)

Let’s start off the event with our very own Wonderboy, Fitzroy Avery Vacker. 

In my mind, Fitz is a Slytherin.

Indubitably.

Let’s take a jaunt down memory lane, alright? 

Fitz is a member of the Vacker family, one of the oldest Elvin families and the family of one of the original three council members. I mean, even Sophie acknowledges that they’re kind of the celebrities of the Elvin world. That would make them the equivalent of “purebloods.”

Right about now some of you may be thinking, “Just because he’s a pureblood doesn’t mean he’ll get sorted into Slytherin. Sirius was sorted into Gryffindor!” That’s true. Sirius Black was a pureblood that got sorted into Gryffindor. However, nothing about Sirius’ upbringing is comparable to Fitz’s. Sirius was raised in an abusive household by his emotionally distant and also legitimately evil family. Fitz was raised by his father, who loved him, and his mother, who loved him, both of whom are also high class. If he was raised in the wizarding world, he wouldn’t have been taught to hate Slytherins, he would have been taught that one day he would become a noble Slytherin like his father and brother (both of those to come in a later post).

Because remember, not all Slytherins are bad. In fact, a lot of Slytherins are good. Take Regulus Black, for instance. He was a hero! Severus Snape turned out to be noble and courageous in the end. Merlin himself was a Slytherin! In fact, in terms of the wizarding world, I’d liken Fitz’s family to being descended from Merlin. He comes from a long, noble, purebred family line. 

There’s nothing wrong with Slytherin.

And Fitz fits the Slytherin traits: cunning, prideful, resourceful, ambitious, intelligent, and determined. While Fitz isn’t exactly the most cunning person ever, he can be very manipulative (recall: getting Sophie to the Lost Cities, getting Sophie to become his cognate, getting Sophie to tell him her secrets). Not in a mean way, but he knows how to get what he wants. 

In the same way, Fitz is prideful. He’s very proud of the fact that he’s the youngest Telepath to ever manifest, he seems to enjoy being the Vacker “Golden Boy,” and he laughs at Sophie when she says light travel is impossible according Albert Einstein and the theory of relativity. He laughs. He doesn’t try to explain to her or look at things from her perspective, he just dismisses her arguments out of hand. Remember back in book 1 when he calls Dex, “Deck.” Yes, it’s an honest mistake, but it shows how little attention he pays to those below him, both in age and status. If I brought a girl to a completely new world, I’d make sure she had someone to sit with at lunch, no matter what our age difference was. And if she’d found her own friends, I’d be sure to sit with her just to let her know I care about how she’s adjusting. I’d check in. Fitz just...doesn’t. He gets her to the Lost Cities, helps her through the whole doctor debacle (he’d have been an absolute monster if he didn’t), and then he lets her go off and do her own thing; he viewed it as a job well done. That lack of empathy, the inability to see things from someone else’s perspective shows a level narcissism and vanity characteristic to most Slytherins, and his behavior in that moment definitely isn’t demonstrative of a Gryffindor or Hufflepuff.

Fitz is ambitious, that’s not a secret. He’s very proud of the fact that he’s the youngest Telepath to ever manifest, and he clearly want to be Sophie’s cognate, but it doesn’t seem it’s about Sophie, it seems more like its about getting a cognate. That’s the highest level of Telepathy, when you get there, you’re arguably the strongest level you can ever possibly be. And to have your cognate be the most powerful Telepath ever, the only one more powerful than you? That’s a major ego boost. He wants to be the best, and having a cognate is the way to get there.

Which segues into Fitz’s intelligence. He’s smart! He might not have a photographic memory, but he still works hard in school and gets good grades. However, he doesn’t seem to pursue knowledge just for the sake of knowing, which completely rules out Ravenclaw as an option for him.

However, Fitz is determined. He’s determined to be the best, to become Sophie’s cognate, to learn everything he needs to know. He knows what he wants and he’s not going to stop until he gets it. Fitz has grown up in a world where every possibility is open to him. He doesn’t hear the word “no” often, and doesn’t seem to like it when he does. That’s Slytherin. 

Coming back to resourcefulness, Fitz has an abundance. He was the only one quick enough during the Black Swan’s disastrous rescue attempt to try to do something about Dex’s lightning overloaded invention. He races over and flings it outside the room, saving countless lives and getting impaled in the process. 

Some of you are probably thinking “That’s a very Gryffindor move!” And I’ve seen him sorted as a Gryffindor, but I just don’t agree. Whatever Fitz is, he’s not reckless. And what house people are sorted into doesn’t just have to do with the traits we have, but also the traits we value. Fitz doesn’t value his reckless bravery, he values his skill and ambition, placing them above all other traits. He wants to be the best; it’s simple as that. And that’s a Slytherin mindset.

In addition, Gryffindors never turn their backs on a friend, they’re loyal to a fault. Remember in Exile, when Fitz literally blames Sophie for Alden’s mind break? That’s not the Gryffindor thing to do. The Gryffindor thing to do would be to find a way to fix it, not to sulk around and blame other people. If Fitz was a true Gryffindor, he would’ve been helping Sophie instead of Keefe. Or he would have been helping Sophie and Keefe. 

And that’s why I think Fitz is a Slytherin. 

What do you think? Agree? Not? Why? I’d love to hear what houses other people would sort the Keeper crew into!

[bookwyrminspiration]

the sophie & keefe parallels with jolie & brant 🥺🥺🥺

oh this one hurts. this one hurts real bad. if we take it far enough then we could say Sophie and Keefe's relationship is leading to inevitable ruin because they love each other too much to acknowledge their faults and hold each other accountable

but to break it down further

Sophie and Jolie/Keefe and Brant:

We can draw some pretty obvious parallels between Sophie and Jolie. They're both Ruewens, they're both members of the Black Swan, Jolie wanted to make the world a better place and that's what Sophie is trying to do now. There's also the element of forgiveness and leniency, Jolie still trying to save Brant and reason with him and understand him when he was past redemption for everyone else, which ultimately killed her. Sophie keeps forgiving Keefe because "I could never hate you," when he's given her plenty of reason to do just that. She keeps giving him chances and if it continues they'll never learn and they might go down in flames, too. We can also touch on the elements of secrecy and privacy, as Grady shared that Jolie was a very private person and didn't talk about her life a lot and Edaline shared that she'd seemed closed off and worn out before she died.

There's the obvious Neverseen parallel between Brant and Keefe, though Keefe joined as a ruse and Brant was a real member. They both thought they knew what was best and they both tried to convince everyone around them they were right (Keefe later admitted he fucked up bad, tho). They're both incredibly determined and aggressive in a fight, throwing around a lot of cocky attitude and threats (when Keefe isn't being emotionally devastated by his mother). A minor detail that I can't help but notice is the notes. Brant wrote Jolie love letters constantly while she was in the elite levels as an expression of his affection. Keefe leaves notes behind when he wants to see her and when he's leaving, as those are expression of him wanting to connect with her and just be near her. If we look specifically at the note from Unlocked, it's him saying he loves her by trying to protect her--in this case, by not being near her.

however, I also want to present this perspective

Sophie and brant/keefe and jolie:

what are some of the defining characteristics of Brant? What makes him, well, him? Passion. Drive. A willingness to do things no one else is (like torture a child, but not saying that's a good thing). Still held guilt and grief over Jolie, saying "If she doesn't get to live--no one does" in Everblaze. A lot of these traits are reflected in Sophie too. She's incredibly passionate about her friends and keeping them safe, making choices no one else agrees with (burning down the storehouse, which notably uses fire) and always wanting more. more success and progress, more results, to be getting somewhere. Brant has delivered several passionate speeches and lines throughout the series, but a lot of the times it's Sophie who responds to them and talks back. They're both burning their way through life and blazing a breakneck paced trail, frantically running towards something/someone (note: also the bad match situation for both of them, denied something everyone is supposed to have access to)

Jolie and Keefe both give me the vibe of gentle souls, of people who have been hurt and are just trying to live with it (although Jolie died with it). Jolie was quiet but determined, willing to take risks and put herself and her personal safety on the line, same as Keefe when he ran away to join the Neverseen. Actually, I think we have an even better parallel between Jolie and Keefe's time with the Neverseen than his comparison to Brant. They tried to play double agent, and it didn't end well for either of them. They both lost something--Jolie, her love and life, Keefe, the caches and the trust in his relationships. The journaling interests me too. Keefe has his sketchbooks and Jolie had her notebook about Brant, both of them organizing their thoughts on paper and trying to make sense of things. I also want to briefly make the point that Jolie kept asking people (the reader of the journal) to give Brant another chance, that he's just misunderstood, and Keefe is constantly asking Sophie to trust him, to let him back in. There's this element of clinging to the past and trying to make things right without acknowledging how everything has changed.

and then we could also touch on how they're both childhood friends sharing something--Brant and Jolie had that gremlin, which is how they bonded, and Sophie and Keefe had that element of both sticking out and garnering attention, Sophie being the new/weird human-girl (though she isn't human) and Keefe skipping a grade and having a bad family life. They were both challenged by distance and communicated through other means--love letters and transmitting.

I could probably keep going but!! there's so many similarities between the two relationships and their past, but we can only hope that Sophie and Keefe don't end up the way Brant and Jolie did. this is a super interesting comparison tho, so thank you for the prompt! I hadn't even realized how similar they were until I started writing this