#anti dex dizznee

[the-way-astray]

okay but what if keefe and fitz kissed. while dex stood in the corner crying

[obsidianstrawberrymilk]

kotlcblr should shut the fuck up actually

Keefe is a mid character at best and people are allowed to be mad he's getting so much focus over the main damned character

Also everyone else has equal if not more potential for development than Keefe and yet constantly giving him plots has taken away any space for them. Its annoying and it sucks and people are allowed to be mad about it

That said Keefe is the most popular damned character in the whole series. Everyone complaining about widespread Keefe hate what invisible demons are you fighting

Dex isn't a cinnamon roll nor is he a bully. Stina regularly called him and his parents elf slurs and never changes her views throughout the entire series. He pulled a prank on her as revenge for something she did, and they live in a world where temporary body modification means nothing. The next scene we see her in she has her back, she's fine, AND she sneaks a live creature into Dex's locker - which requires DNA to get into

Alden sucks. However he does not mean to. Cassius on the other hand is a genuine asshole who knows he sucks and still abuses his son and I cannot believe people are defending him

Tiana and Dexiana are both mid and Biana is a boring character

Stina is barely developed, never really stopped being mean, and a bigot. People need to shut the fuck up about her

Christians are not oppressed especially not in this fandom and everyone should shut up about it.

[lucyshypemaster]

wylinh shippers, dni. dexiana shippers, 𝒹𝓂 𝓂ℯ...

[the-witch-of-woods-beyond]

okay, so i already said i don't like keefe, but i want to expand on the fact that him getting all these books of development and NOT developing is so annoying when amazing characters like linh, tam, biana, marella and fitz are all sidelined is so annoying.

his whole family drama was focused on in neverseen and then could have been drawn out in lodestar when he runs away, and then in flashback, we get the vackers, but in sooo much more depth because they're so intricate, and then we get more of the diznees because two chapters in book six was not enough and linh and tam talk about how they're dealing with all that happened in nightfall with their parents, and marella's storyline with her family is expanded.

but instead all this falls to the background and we get constant repetition of sophie worrying about keefe when all these characters have minor lines about all this every now and then.

like, stop focusing on him!!! give me fitz and biana explaining how it was to grow up in a family that expected perfection and always feeling like they were failing only to have their brother betray them all instead of just hinting at it every now and then and moving on, give me linh and tam working through the fact that they were abandoned by their parents and society for something out of their control and continue on from what started in nightfall, give me marella discussing the stress of how everyone views her family. even dex has been sidelined, the boy sophie calls her best friend, and his family are so tragic and interesting. why weren't they given more time to develop???

[floofeeeeee]

Dex dizziness for character bingo?🙏

I think he’s silly lil guy :)

he’s a pretty good character I feel like if he got more page time to develop I’d like him a lot more. I also think he works a bit better in a dynamic you know? He doesn’t really have a strong character by himself compared to someone like biana who works well in dynamics but can hold herself pretty well on her own

But otherwise love him 💖

[crippling-pages]

I am a FIRM believer in that Dex should've had the book 9 cover and not Maruca. You can't change my mind.

[kotlc-ships101]

THE TRUTH

[smolandweirdwriter]

My friend, looking at my pinterest board of teal hair colors: You want to dye your hair teal? But I thought you hated--

Me: 

TEAL

[the-way-astray]

i agree with some things here and disagree with others. but i think the heart of my problems with keefe come down to one thing: shannon's intentions with his character. this will be very long. sorry if this is weird or if you didn't expect a response but. here it is lmfao

"Nevertheless, I don’t disagree with the people who say that Keefe isn’t the awesome person Sophie’s (biased) opinion makes him out to be. Not for the manipulative reasons -- which, Keefe is a teenage boy and I don't know about anyone else but that is like THE demographic for being a little messy in relationships lmao -- but for a lot of his planning. Joining the Neverseen without telling anyone what his plan was? Proposing himself as Mercadir without giving anyone a chance to refute him? Lying at the end of Legacy and showing up to the confrontation even though it was explicitly agreed he'd stay back? Basically, everything he did in Lodestar? Not great."

one thing i think i really disagree with is when people excuse a character's actions based on age. like, yes, some actions can be, but not others. saying being manipulative is normal or at least dismissible just because keefe's a teenager feel weird to me. and even if it is normal, it should at least be acknowledged by someone, and if it isn't it just comes across like shannon fully intends for us to perceive it as okay. personally, i don't know many manipulative teenagers the way keefe's manipulative. and if you bring up his childhood for his messed up view of how to use his empathy, well that only goes so far.

in legacy, for example, fitz was literally writhing and twisting in keefe's grip trying to get away from him. that's like. not a subtle thing. that's very much something any decent person would take notice of. instead, keefe ignores it entirely. i think there's a point at which you can tell keefe just doesn't care about his friends' feelings. like, that was such an obvious "i don't want this, get the hell off of me, keefe" moment, there's not really a way to justify it with some "oh, he's a confused teenager" stuff.

my problem is, once again, in the framing. this action is framed as a perfectly reasonable and acceptable thing to do, is never questioned by the narrative, has no consequences for keefe whatsoever, and is easily swept under the rug. this is one example, but bigger and smaller shitty things keefe does get the same treatment.

as for all those other things you mentioned, you'll notice none of those things get any lasting consequences. there's never any damaged relationship that comes out of it, or any plot-related consequence. with the double agent thing: no damaged relationship (except fitz, who is disregarded at best and villainized at worst), no plot consequence (such as the neverseen being able to get into the cache he handed over, for example, which would be disastrous and entirely keefe's fault). same thing with the dimitar thing. you could argue that he does seem to apologize and that sophie does break things off with him for a bit, but then after his apology, that's just reset right back to zero. there's never a sense that that incident actually impacted how sophie sees keefe in the long-term. he just apologizes and boom, sophie trusts him completely again. and then the apology is entirely undone when he makes the same mistake again: legacy. hijacking a shared plan for his own, and this time it's not even talked about at all after he wakes up, besides once when he tells sophie he shouldn't have gone. but this is more a sense of "i shouldn't have gone because look what happened to me" than it is a sense of "i shouldn't have gone because it wasn't right to betray everyone's trust like that". (the same is true for the nightfall incident, keefe apologizes more out of a feeling of "i shouldn't have done that because sophie got mad at me" than he does out of a feeling of "i shouldn't have done that because i betrayed sophie's trust in me". in other words, the apology doesn't come from self-reflection or a true desire to change, but rather from the external consequences of his actions.) once again, no lasting character consequences (meaning nobody's mad at him despite him betraying their trust), no relationship wound, no sense of distrust, no nothing. you could argue that there's plot consequences (his new abilities thing) but then that does nothing for his arc because in the end, he once again runs away without consulting a single other person, which is the exact same mistake he's been making the entire series.

"But that's his role. Keefe was literally designed to occupy this grey, questionable space, both in the narrative and outside of it."

right there is where you lost me. i talked about this a lot in my rant, but shannon does not want you to see keefe as a morally grey guy (in my opinion). you are very much supposed to see him as a perfect angel (minus the recklessness, a character flaw, not a moral flaw). that's why all his tinier (and larger, honestly) "bad" actions are swept under the rug with no consequences and why he goes on entire monologues on how much sophie deserves whoever she chooses. he's the perfect angel, entirely devoted to sophie, perpetually concerned with sophie, always there for sophie. he's never morally in the wrong, even when he is. his sense of right and wrong is never to be questioned.

"Lady Gisela's plan revolves around pushing Keefe to become a worse and worse person; that involves raising him in a way that cultivates bad behavior and forcing him into increasingly extreme situations that are designed to make Keefe "ready" when the time comes."

i think that's what shannon was going for. truly, i do think so. the problem is with execution. keefe is never portrayed as anything other than pure, flawless good (i'm talking morally here). whenever he does do morally shitty things, it's clear we aren't supposed to see them as morally shitty things, and instead as him just being entirely devoted to sophie. when he tears dex and fitz down. when he breaches boundaries. when he becomes obsessed with sophie. these are all meant to be seen as him just being in love with sophie (i don't think he's in love with sophie but that's another debate) and aren't supposed to be seen as character flaws. they aren't supposed to be in any way connected to his legacy or the way his parents raised him (specifically his mom). they are just bad traits, and the problem is that they are never made out to be that way.

"Admittedly, I don't think Shannon has made him evil/grey enough, which I know isn't a popular take. There was real potential to make Keefe a wild card in Lodestar and make it so that the question isn't what stupid scheme is he planning? but to what extent have Lady Gisela's machinations worked? It's an interesting plotline to me."

100% agree here. keefe during lodestar is the real test, i think. shannon should've leaned way more into the potential of that plotline. i feel like if shannon truly wanted us to perceive keefe as a morally grey guy, she'd have made him do something you can't come back from in that book. something that tilts the stage, makes us all wary. because if he could do that, just to prove to the neverseen he's one of them, what else could he do?

unfortunately, i never see that sort of commitment from shannon, and because she is so obsessed with needing keefe to be a perfect angel love interest, it actively takes away from what his character could be. keefe never does anything irredeemable while he's with the neverseen (i'm talking like, helping or at least not actively hindering the neverseen while they carry out a torture or murder scheme). the only things he does are be really stupid (again, not a moral failing, just a character failing), and even those stupid things never have any real consequences. he never goes through any sort of moral conundrum. there's never a point where sophie doesn't trust him (past the first couple of chapters) to be perfectly good. keefe never confesses he did something so undeniably horrible to sophie that she starts wondering is keefe's time with the neverseen changing him? is he a good guy anymore? none of that, at all. sophie thinks of keefe as maybe a stupid, reckless guy who doesn't know what he's doing, but she never, past her initial doubt in the first few chapters, questions whether his morals, his sense of right and wrong, may be affected by the neverseen.

this is what sophie says about keefe. "yeah, his plan maybe a bit reckless, and we'll probably have to bail him out, but he's not ever going to be morally wrong". she says this after two conversations with keefe, one in-person, one telepathic. and then this belief is never questioned, not for the entire book. keefe never does anything that has sophie, even for a minute, thinking hey, keefe, that was kinda . . . morally questionable. the most she thinks is "his stupidity's going to get him killed". and i think that truly, truly takes away from what keefe could've been. he could've been less sophie's perfect love interest that does everything for her and more wow, this guy . . . he really could do anything, couldn't he?

"But a lot of people don't feel this way. A ton of the complaints I see around the book have to do with Keefe getting too much page time, the plotline taking up too much space in the story, etc. Which is fair! If you don't like Keefe, I'm sure a lot of this is grueling."

in and of itself, i'm not mad about keefe getting too much page time. my problems arise with the way he's executed (very poorly, in my opinion). my line of thinking is, if shannon's going to insist that keefe get so much page time, she should at least do something with all that page time. but she doesn't. so that is where my frustration comes from.

"The decreased page time of supporting characters isn't solely because Keefe is eating the narrative, but because there are way too many characters for everyone to get a subplot; rather than have pre-existing characters solve issues, Shannon tends to just pull new ones in, and then leave them to hang out for the following books."

agreed. keefe isn't the only reason keefe gets so much page time, ironic as it is. there's definitely the whole too many characters thing that's going on. but i think, as an author, if you pull in so many characters that you end up with a group like that, it's your job to do them all justice. doing a character justice doesn't mean they need a whole lot of page time. but they do need some page time, something to flesh out their character. and i think because (in my opinion) keefe and sophie spend a lot of time having the same exact conversation over and over in different fonts and never getting anywhere or developing, it feels repetitive and boring, and you can't help but think, what if this time went to a different character instead? we could do something that feels new and fresh. and i think shannon herself understands this. she as good as told us in legacy that the reason she created team valiant was to give those characters more page time (something i don't think she succeeded at, but whatever) and to flesh them out a bit. but once again, too much keefe eats up any room for the other characters.

"A lot of the nostalgia for this old version of KOTLC presents itself in fandom discussions of Dex. Full transparency: I didn't really like Dex that much in the early books when I did my reread. I found him unbearably rude to Fitz and Biana. His crush on Sophie felt invasive at times as if she was catering to a boy that was projecting his feelings and making her accommodate him. It's very similar stuff to the current criticism of Keefe!"

i'm not exactly what i'd call a fan of dex either, and i sort of agree, sort of disagree here. absolutely, he was rude to fitz and biana. although, shannon made it very clear that it was a product of his upbringing and that it wasn't a good thing. as the series progresses, dex realizes that he was kind of a dick toward fitz and biana (and they realize the same thing too), and it all come to a head in neverseen where he apologizes to fitz. the narrative never, ever makes out his rudeness as anything other than that: rudeness. it treats it like the flaw it is, gives it an arc, and brings the arc to a close. and even if dex had never warmed up to fitz and biana, the narrative would've never let him off the hook for his rudeness. it would always be portrayed as the flaw it is. and that's why dex, in my opinion, is at least a better written character than keefe.

as for the whole crush on sophie thing, definitely some jealousy of fitz was mixed in there. i personally don't think jealousy itself is a flaw. it's more of a feeling. it's what you choose to do with those feelings that defines whether or not it's a flaw. but yeah, dex was rude and possessive of sophie, so his jealousy was definitely a flaw. but i don't think sophie ever really catered to those feelings? i'd say dex did treat sophie like trash sometimes, ironically because of his crush on her and because of his jealousy of fitz, but like, all that is always made out to be not a good thing. i'd argue dex had the same expects-sophie-to-end-up-with-him-one-day narrative in his head that keefe had, but it's better because he's proven wrong, and he grows out of it. keefe doesn't. so yes, it's the exactly the same criticism as the one of keefe, except that isn't actually the reason people criticize keefe. the actual criticism of keefe is actually that keefe never faces consequences for those things and is never proven wrong by the narrative for those things. instead, his worldview is propped up and encouraged.

while i personally find dex almost as annoying a character as keefe for personal reasons, i don't think i could argue that he's poorly written the way i could argue keefe is poorly written, because he actually grows out of his flaws/learns from them/realizes he's wrong/develops and changes/the narrative portrays him as wrong when he does those things. and that is the key difference.

"But I have yet to see any discussions around Dex that don't characterize him as kind, goofy, or sweet. Maybe there is some discussion of him being snarky or sarcastic. The most criticism I've seen of him is about how he treated Stina in his introduction, which was taken largely in isolation."

i, personally, don't talk about dex a lot because as i've said, i don't really like him, but i also can't make the argument that he's not well-written. so there isn't much to say about him. he's fairly uninteresting to me. he doesn't get enough page time to do anything real interesting with him, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because he's fleshed out and i'd say shannon did him justice. but it also means he isn't really a favorite of mine or a lot of people. he's just there.

(for the record, i disagree with the notion that he was in the wrong with that incident with stina, which i've talked about before. i think he was fully justified there.)

"And I don't believe that he disappeared from the books in the way that some people claim. He just... doesn't have a subplot anymore. His crush on Sophie was resolved. It was a sticking point in his and Sophie's friendship which made him part of her character arc, and that arc is done. If that went on for any longer, it would be a drag on the pace of the series."

i think he did disappear from the series, or at least, he isn't in it as much as he used to be. and i think just because he doesn't have a crush on sophie anymore, doesn't mean he can't be there? shannon would just have to give him something else to work through in terms of character arc. she didn't, so he's kind of just there. unfortunately, that means i agree with you. it would be a drag on the plot if he were given more page time, because he's not working through anything, so any page time he got would just be him bantering or something. so dex has some wasted potential there, too, and i wish it were tapped into but alas.

personally, i'm not really so much a proponent of the whole "dex should get more page time" thing as i am a proponent of "group dynamics outside of sokeefe should get more page time". i think the other members of the crew should be more fleshed out, explored more. i think their dynamic with sophie and each other should be more obvious and have basis some actual basis in canon. i think the cast in general is a massive waste of potential. it could be cool to see to see them be more three-dimensional-ized.

as for nostalgia, yeah, i think that's a part of it, certainly. but i also think there's a valid reason to say "i wish keefe had less page time" other than "i just want to see more ensemble cast". i genuinely think there's an argument to be made that throwing all those characters out there and doing nothing with them is the pinnacle of wasted potential. so i think people are just frustrated shannon is forsaking all that for more sokeefe conversations that feel really repetitive, if you ask me. this entire response isn't really a rebuttal, because i agree with a lot of things you said, but i think there's definitely something to be said about the abundance of keefe in the series.

tagging @myfairkatiecat because it is only fair after you requested this word vomit lol

The thing about Keefe not being a good person is a little complicated. Full disclaimer, I don’t really believe in the whole good/bad person dichotomy, and definitely not for KIDS. Nevertheless, I don’t disagree with the people who say that Keefe isn’t the awesome person Sophie’s (biased) opinion makes him out to be. Not for the manipulative reasons -- which, Keefe is a teenage boy and I don't know about anyone else but that is like THE demographic for being a little messy in relationships lmao -- but for a lot of his planning. Joining the Neverseen without telling anyone what his plan was? Proposing himself as Mercadir without giving anyone a chance to refute him? Lying at the end of Legacy and showing up to the confrontation even though it was explicitly agreed he'd stay back? Basically, everything he did in Lodestar? Not great.

It's not Certified Good Guy Behavior. But that's his role. Keefe was literally designed to occupy this grey, questionable space, both in the narrative and outside of it. He's Sophie's character foil. Lady Gisela's plan revolves around pushing Keefe to become a worse and worse person; that involves raising him in a way that cultivates bad behavior and forcing him into increasingly extreme situations that are designed to make Keefe "ready" when the time comes. That is a huge part of the plots of Nightfall and Legacy.

Admittedly, I don't think Shannon has made him evil/grey enough, which I know isn't a popular take. There was real potential to make Keefe a wild card in Lodestar and make it so that the question isn't what stupid scheme is he planning? but to what extent have Lady Gisela's machinations worked? It's an interesting plotline to me. It's why I'm so excited for Unraveled; it's a chance to see this push-pull in action without Keefe's "north star" (AKA Sophie) guiding his decisions.

But a lot of people don't feel this way. A ton of the complaints I see around the book have to do with Keefe getting too much page time, the plotline taking up too much space in the story, etc. Which is fair! If you don't like Keefe, I'm sure a lot of this is grueling. However, a point I see connected to this line of thought is a wish for the books to return to a more ensemble vibe. That there should be more Dex, more Biana, more Stina, more Tam, etc. the way that it used to be.

That version of the books, though? It only really exists in the first book. Keefe is a prominent character in Exile and a huge driver of its plot. It's only in Book One where he only exists on the margins and isn't super involved. The ensemble cast has grown exponentially since then, to the point where there are frankly too many characters to keep track of in a scene without straight-up listing them all (which did happen but I'm forgetting which book). The decreased page time of supporting characters isn't solely because Keefe is eating the narrative, but because there are way too many characters for everyone to get a subplot; rather than have pre-existing characters solve issues, Shannon tends to just pull new ones in, and then leave them to hang out for the following books. If the series was for a more adult audience, I would say that it was time to start killing people off (like the popular critique of The Boys) but because this is a kids series, they're going to just hang around and not do much.

A lot of the nostalgia for this old version of KOTLC presents itself in fandom discussions of Dex. Full transparency: I didn't really like Dex that much in the early books when I did my reread. I found him unbearably rude to Fitz and Biana. His crush on Sophie felt invasive at times as if she was catering to a boy that was projecting his feelings and making her accommodate him. It's very similar stuff to the current criticism of Keefe! But I have yet to see any discussions around Dex that don't characterize him as kind, goofy, or sweet. Maybe there is some discussion of him being snarky or sarcastic. The most criticism I've seen of him is about how he treated Stina in his introduction, which was taken largely in isolation.

But that sweet, goofy version of Dex that people talk about missing? He doesn't exist. Sure, Dex mellowed out a ton in the later books, but he didn't become a whole new character. And I don't believe that he disappeared from the books in the way that some people claim. He just... doesn't have a subplot anymore. His crush on Sophie was resolved. It was a sticking point in his and Sophie's friendship which made him part of her character arc, and that arc is done. If that went on for any longer, it would be a drag on the pace of the series. Like I said before, the presence of so many side characters, each with their own needs and motivations, makes it difficult to introduce him into new stuff. It's why he gets so much more page time in Unlocked. With the presence of so many other characters, Shannon tends to handwave a lot of the background group dynamics. Dex ended up becoming close to Keefe and was able to shine there, away from Sophie's perspective and their finished arc.

All of this is to say, it's not wrong to dislike Keefe or like Dex. But I think a lot of the conversations surrounding these guys can get muddled in nostalgia and what people think the books should be rather than what they are. I'm (severely) guilty of it too. It's part of a broader trend in fandoms as "fandom" as a concept becomes more popular. That is a whole other post, though, and frankly, this one is long enough lol

[hi-imgrapes]

Even more Taylor Swift Songs That Just Sound Like Dex Dizznee

-Enchanted

-Bejeweled

-Look What You Made Me Do

-White Horse (um, helloooo? sodex??)

-Anti-Hero

[gay-otlc]

Fic Masterpost

KOTLC:

A Little Bit of Love and a Whole Lot of Trust: The four horse girls of the apocalypse celebrate Hanukkah together.

A Risk I Want To Take: Marella is afraid of losing control and hurting Linh.

Alden Sucks: The Vackers are Jewish and Alden is anti-semetic. See @vacker-jew-au​ for more Jewish Vackers content.

Alien: Sophie and Dex talk about gender

Am I Pretty: I'm back to torture Biana more. Biana is Struggling™ post-Nightfall and it's yet another songfic.

And They Were Roommates: Flashback but we get the Keefe and Fitz roommates we were robbed of

Awed By Her Splendor: Sappho poetry, Sophiana, and lesbian sun and moon.

Bad With People: Dex Dizznee is good at a lot of things. One thing Dex is decidedly not good at is people.

Beautiful Mistake: Fitz and Dex had always been destined for destruction, for shouted words at a dinner table, cold glances from disapproving fathers, stormy exits from the outcast, but how could Fitz be a mistake when he was so beautiful?

Break The Rules: Marella is banished to Exillium for being a lesbian pyrokinetic, where she meets Linh and forms a gay revolution. (And fanart by the amazingly talented @thecatdemon!!!)

Cognate Rings: Fitz coming to terms with being aromantic.

Dear Maruca: Biana writes a letter to Maruca.

Defeated By Gay Panic (and a stupid elf cold): Hekster sickfic

Doesn't Pull Away: Short fic on the relationship between Marella and Fintan

Don't Know How To Love People: Stina doesn't think love is worth the effort. It definitely wouldn't be worth the effort to fall in love with Sophie. So it's easier to be an asshole to her.

Empty Space: Post-Flashback angst with Tam's found family.

Fairy Tale Kisses: The first time Marella kissed Biana Vacker, both were six years old and Marella thought Biana looked like a princess. Marella would quite like to marry a princess, she thought, like in fairy tales.

For The Honor Of The Moonlark: SPOP, but make it KOTLC.

Fortunate: Sophie tries to make latkes. It goes badly.

Flowers On The Grave: Sophie visits her old house and grieves the child that she used to be

Girls Like Girls: Biana should like boys, but she likes Sophie instead, and wonders what’s wrong with her. (A songfic to Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko)

Green: Grady and Edaline mourning Jolie.

Grom Queen: Grom, but make it Biana and Maruca.

Hearts Are Stupid Like That: After Nightfall, Maruca visits Biana in the healing center. They have a long overdue talk.

how could something so beautiful hurt?: Marella pyrokinetic Hanukkah angst.

I Kissed Sophie Foster: I Kissed Shara Wheeler, but make it Hekster.

Illegal Rebellions Can Be Stressful: Black Swan game nights.

Invisible: Biana feels invisible, and Linh is the only person who’s ever really seen her.

Jealousy: Keefe is in love with both Sophie and Fitz, and they love each other, but not him.

Keepers of the Chaos: The KOTLC characters are fans of a show... about us.

Little Miss Perfect: A songfic exploring Biana and Maruca's relationship pre-Keeper.

Lost: When he's lost, like it's gravity, he's pulled to Fitz. At least this fucked up universe gave him Fitz Vacker.

No Limits To Love: As he falls in love with both Sophie and Fitz, Keefe tries to understand what love means, and how he can love more than one person.

Pain Is Waiting Alone At The Corner: At Alden's funeral, Quinlin and Tiergan talk about the lovers they've lost.

Perfect: Fitz can’t love Keefe, because he’s perfect.

Pretendaer: Ae can’t catch a fucking break, so, a songfic of Biana struggling with aer gender.

Pride: Various KOTLC characters and their first time at a pride parade.

Sappho And Her Training Partner: Bronte is unaware that Marella and Linh are in a romantic relationship.

Say Goodbye Like You Mean It: Biana, before her friendship with Maruca fell apart + Maruca, after.

Say Goodbye The Hundredth Time: The family Tiergan has lost over the years, and how he remembers them.

Sick of the Silence: AU where Fitz moves to Solreef during Flashback.

Snap the Pen in Half: Tiergan writes Prentice letters while he's in Exile

someone will remember us, i say: Sophie and Biana read Sappho poetry.

Starlight And Superheroes: Biana, being Jewish, is one of the only superheroes available on Christmas, and she’s pretty sure falling for the villain Moonlark isn’t part of her job description.

Tales Like These Tragically End Badly: Marelliana songfic to "loved you a little."

The Owl Haven: Hollow Mind: The Owl House KOTLC au, retelling Hollow Mind.

This Is Where We're Supposed To Be: 11K Delivvy fic.

To Love Unafraid (With An Ugly, Poisonous Heart): Marella has OCD, and her intrusive thoughts center around hurting her girlfriend, Biana.

Untitled Sophiana fic: Sophie gives Biana a pride pin

Untitled Tiergan/Alden as exes fic: Tiergan shows up to yell at Alden for breaking Prentice's mind, and Tiergan and Alden are exes.

Used To Receiving Flowers: Biana hates receiving flowers from boys who only like her looks, but when she receives flowers and notes from a secret admirer who seems to like her for her, she doesn’t mind as much.

We Can Leave This World, Leave It All Behind: Stellarlune fix it, sokeefitz + run away with me trope

Writing Ask Game: Compilation: I had people send me a character and a word, I wrote short fics, and I put them all into one ao3 work.

You Rock My World: Tiergan and Prentice join the Black Swan without telling the other. They start dating as Granite and Keeper, unaware that they've already been dating as Tiergan and Prentice for years. Shenanigans ensue.

You're A Lot Like Me: Marella and Fintan parallels

THE OWL HOUSE:

Bard Magic Can Be Cool: Raine begins teaching Eda bard magic.

i tripped and ended up falling for you: Eda takes Raine to the Human Realm, trying to convince xemself it's not a date. It is very much a date.

Hey, You, Don't You Think It's Kinda Cute: Eda and Raine during that King's Tide scene.

Mundane Slice Of Life: Luz panics over her first date with Amity. Eda tries to reassure her.

Stop Running Away From Your Feelings (Hoot Hoot): Luz talks to Eda about what happend with Raine at the coven day parade.

Try Again: Eda and Raine during O Titan, Where Art Thou.

Untitled raeda fic: Eda comes out to Raine as genderqueer.

THE GREAT LIBRARY:

A Great Deal More Than He Expected: Dario reads Santi's journal and makes the shocking discovery that Santi and Wolfe might not be 100% heterosexual.

Able To Love As Deeply As Normal People: Glain and Morgan discuss aromanticism.

Born Wrong: Wolfe is queer of gender.

Deadly, But Elegant: Glain is nonbinary, feels dysphoric in a dress, and gets some more gender-affirming clothing with the help of their wonderful found family.

Too Much Love Will Kill You: Santi's biggest character flaw is loving Wolfe too much.

You Don't Have To Hide Yourself: Santi comes out to Wolfe as trans, and Wolfe decides to support him in the most Wolfe way imaginable: Researching gender.

THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES:

A Dozen Reasons In This Gun: Daisy and Basira's relationship

Skin: Analysis of Jane Prentiss and dermatillomania.

Unclean: Longer analysis of Jane Prentiss and dermatillomania + contamination OCD.

[the-way-astray]

Heyyy any chance you could make a post explaining why you don't like dex? :33

sure! @unaside i believe you also wanted to know

it's actually very similar to the reasons i dislike keefe. when he's jealous of fitz, he tends to humiliate sophie over it, he's whiny, in general i despise characters/people in real life that immediately start off a friendship with an expectation of romance tied to it at some point, i despise the sodex kiss scene and prefer to pretend it didn't happen (though that was mostly sophie's fault), and just like keefe he acts ridiculously possessive over sophie. he's incredibly immature for his age, just like keefe (gagging at fitz, volunteering sophie to be in a very intimate position with him without her permission, tearing down sophie and fitz's relationship, etc.) and i find that he just in general has no personality besides being vaguely bitchy sometimes, and that gets resolved by the fourth book. basically, he's someone i would steer very clear of in real life. i dislike his character immensely and found him unbearable to deal with as i read the story.

however. having said all of that. as i said in this post, i can't argue that dex is a poorly written character as i could with keefe, because the difference here is that the narrative makes all of the above out to be flaws and punishes dex for them or develops him accordingly. the jealousy towards fitz and subsequent sophitz bashing? villainized throughout the series and eventually resolved. his crush on sophie which results in him treating her poorly and expecting her to cater to it? developed out of when sophie rejects him and therefore proves his beliefs about her wrong (and you notice he gets way more chill about her relationship to fitz later on). the immature behavior slowly grinds to a halt and by legacy era it's basically gone. so i can't argue that his flaws aren't developed from or villainized, just because i found them annoying (which is what you're supposed to feel). his entire arc is about learning to become less jealous of fitz and to get over his crush on sophie/stop treating her badly because of it.

the only thing is that this arc is resolved in like nightfall era, meaning that for the latter half of the series, he's not in it as much, leading to movements such as the dexvolution or the begging to make dex more relevant again. which i don't agree with, i think the fact that his arc has basically ended means he would eat up a lot of time that could go to something better if he was in the story more (which i think i touched on in the post linked above). but again, i say that as someone who is biased when it comes to him; as i've already said, i don't really like him.

this is very much a case of "i dislike a fictional person" more so than it is a case of "i dislike a character". and i think it's really important to make the difference clear. do i like dex? no. but i do think he's a well-written character. it's just that his flaws and general personality and arc don't gel with me (i hate the "guy learns not to be a incel" arc on principle, it's tiring for me, but that's entirely personal preference), but shannon did write it well, for what it's worth.

now if only she could do the same with keefe (which for me, is a case of "i hate a character" not a case of "i hate a fictional person").

tldr: dex is a trope i really don't like, however shannon executed that trope well, making it so that i can't argue that he's a poorly written character, but i still hate him as a person.

[obsidianstrawberrymilk]

A small collection of KOTLC things Shannon told me at 3am

I promise she told me guys, this is totally legit

Dex Dizznee isn’t actually blonde but ginger, he gets his hair color from his dad. The three triplets all have strawberry blonde hair like their mom. His hair is also curly but like, loosely curly, and it’s really dry from all the shit he ‘experiments’ on it with.

Fitz Vacker once accidentally stumbled into a musical while in the human world and now absolutely loves musical songs. His favorite is Phantom of the Opera. It wasn’t like Alden was constantly watching him in the human world so he’d sometimes just sneak into theaters to listen and watch the shows.

Maruca Chebota is the most middle child ever. She has an older and a younger brother, but also another older cousin (Wylie) and two younger cousins. She’s even in the middle in terms of that, which is ironic because her mom is also the middle child between her two siblings.

Terik is Talentless, but he’s got basically a watered-down version of Empathy from his parents, who were both incredibly powerful Empaths who had been tasked with making sure Elves turned into myth for humans. He’s been scamming the whole Elven society for centuries and isn’t about to stop now.

Alina’s family was involved in a scandal when she was very young that resulted in them being cast out from the Nobility and their birth funds being revoked, though they were allowed to remain in Talentless cities. She decided to pursue Alden primarily for his family name - and the fact that she would up being one of the first people on his Match list was just the cherry on top. It made it even worse when he decided to marry Della instead, though at that point it was later enough she could detach herself from her family anyway.

Sophie Foster’s human family were anti-vaxx, Protestant, and Republican. Sophie was always a bit too busy trying to manage her telepathy to notice much about their political stances. Amy is growing to be significantly more liberal and had began to openly argue with them before everything in Nightfall happened.

Alina is Fitz’s biological mother. After Alvar was born and already not shaping up into the son Alden wanted by age 11, she used his desperation to Beguile him into having a child with her. When Alden realized what she’d done he did his best to cut all contact with her, though he did take Fitz, something with both Alina and Della resented. Alvar knew about this, which is why he dislikes Fitz so much while still loving his younger sister, Biana.

Livvy Soden is a triple agent, working in the Black Swan as a spy for the Neverseen as a spy for the Black Swan. No one is quite sure what her intentions are any more.

Wylie Endal has his own group of friends, who are all in their early 20s, and who love making fun of him for being forced to hang out with a bunch of teenagers. His best friend among them is Tanho, who’s Talentless, and was kicked out of his house at age 15 as a result after an abusive childhood. He stayed with Wylie and Tiergan for a few months after while trying to sort himself out, and is a large part of the reason why Wylie is now as observant and skeptical as he is.

Stina Heks isn’t actually an Empath, she’s a Mesmer, but a weak one. Not that she knows it.

It’s not actually Fitz who has the Nobility attitude towards humans, as in condescending and ignorant, though it does seem that way - he spent far too much time in the human world to not pick up on some of the good and interesting parts of humanity as well. It’s Biana, who spent most of her childhood being raised in a fairly isolated group of Elves who all had huge superiority complexes towards other species.

Ruewen is Edaline and Juline’s last names. Juline took Kesler’s last name to finally shut up her parents, who were harping on about how Kesler was using her for her family.

Grady Ruewen’s mother disappeared soon after he manifested as a Mesmer at age 12, resulting in a huge amount of people blaming him for it and his family, already in a precarious social position, to get hit even harder. Taking Edaline’s last name allowed him to entirely reform himself to a new person to the outside world. At least, until Jolie died.

Jolie Ruewen was a part of the Elven equivalent of a punk rock band, which tends to have a slightly more melodious (though still loud and chaotic) sound than human rock. Brant was their singer, and they had their first kiss during a concert, to excite the crowd even more. They decided they liked it and just kept doing it even off stage.

The movement began a few decades earlier, after an illegal trip to the human realm gave some twenty year old elves the idea to begin making their own instruments to try and mimic the sounds they found in the human world.

Tam and Linh Song grew up purposefully separated from each other, with Tam mainly spending time with their Dad and Linh their mom. As a result, Linh developed a love of painting, as it’s some of the only pleasant times she can recall with her mother, and Tam developed a hatred of economics and desk chairs.

Keefe Sencen and Linh Song are really good friends. No one else is aware of this. They also regularly vandalize council buildings.

Despite what certain artists and books will tell you, Elven houses are not made of crystal. They’re based on Ancient architecture, mainly using stone or wood or both, and have a wide variety of designs and patterns depending on where you go.

Most Elves do live in populated cities. Rimshire is a small-ish house located on the outskirts of Mysterium, not as close to the more densely populated parts of the city, but still with a lot of people. However, as Nobility usually do love in isolated, grand estates, it took a bit for Juline to get used to it. As Kesler grew up in a much smaller house with five siblings, he had the opposite experience.

Marella Redek’s favorite aunt is a Neverseen member. Marella is a Black Swan member. They have fought each other before and the next day hugged at a family gathering. Neither are aware of this.

Fitz Vacker talks to his stuffed animals. He has more than one - he has Mr Snuggles, obviously, but also Biana gave him one during Flashback, and Keefe made him one before he left for the Neverseen the first time. They all give different advice. Mr Snuggles sounds like Tiergan, the one Biana gave him sounds like Alvar, and the one Keefe made him sounds like Keefe.

Rayni Aria (Glimmer) was lying about her entire backstory in Stellarlune. Tam is the only one who knows what actually happened to her.

Rayni and Linh eventually grow to tolerate each other, if for Tam’s sake only. Linh can’t deal with having to share the one person she’d always thought would put her first (nevermind if he always would anyway); Rayni sees Linh’s hostility and automatically returns it with her own. As they get used to each other, they can be in a room without arguing or passive aggressively insulting each other.

Despite this, they’re actually very similar people, which makes them both even angrier. Linh can’t even make fun of how he acted with Keefe anymore now because of how she and Rayni act.

The reason Bronte is so mad at Fintan is that he found out that Fintan was dating JRR Tolkien at the same time as they were secretly dating (as to avoid being kicked out from the Council). Fintan was under the mistaken impression Bronte was also dating him, Bronte had misspoken and said he was ‘dating’ Tolkien instead of ‘rating’ Tolkien (as in, his books).

Fitz and Dex are in love, the Vackers are Desi, and Fintan has a flat ass. This is common knowledge though.

[the-way-astray]

ok so keefe doesnt like you and you dont like him

this has been established

but how would this affect ur relationships with the rest of the crew

ANOTHER ASK THAT I HAVE NOT SEEN UNTIL THIS POINT tumblr when i catch you . . .

i'd like to think it wouldn't affect my relationships with them too much.

i like sophie and fitz fine. realistically speaking, my reaction to keefe would be to stay as far away from him as possible and interact with him never. if he notices and tries to reach out, well, fuck him. sophie and fitz would likely notice my desperate attempts to avoid keefe at all costs and be slightly puzzled, and if they confronted me about it, i'd list off all the things i don't like about keefe and leave it there. they may get slightly defensive at first, but i think they would eventually accept the truth. that he sucks balls.

i don't care about dex (ew). but i think he would care a bit too much that i don't like keefe, because he and keefe are pretty similar. he may or may not confront me, at which point i may or may not tell him that i'm not his biggest fan either. that may piss some people in the crew off.

biana i'm utterly neutral on. i honestly have no idea how she would react, seeing as she has no canon personality whatsoever to me.

i think tam would be a bit put off by the ferocity of my hatred (tam's dislike for keefe is very mild-annoyance-y) and claim i'm giving him too much power by hating him so ferociously, to which i would say i keep my hatred quiet unless called out on it.

linh wouldn't care, i feel. she's not close enough to keefe.

marella would find it amusing. because she loves drama and gossip.

maruca, hmm. i have no idea. shannon please do something with her.

stina probably wouldn't even realize i'm avoiding keefe, i think.

and wylie would try to sit me down and have a talk in which he explains keefe's bad childhood to me after i go on a lengthy rant against him. to which i would say i know but that's an explanation, not an excuse and that everyone was only encouraging his shitty behavior by making excuses for him and dumping pity on him. which wylie may reflect on and see my point. or at least he would respect it.

[the-way-astray]

I don't actually know if you hate this ship or not

But dexiana

this one is very sporadic since biana ship people are super chill in general. i have mild disdain toward the ship but no personal beef

i don't like dexiana but that's just because they have no romantic chemistry whatsoever to me. better off as friends. also i dislike dex. biana deserves better