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the-way-astray · 8 days ago

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Omg I am so glad to have found your blog and your anti keefe anti sokeefe posts! I was in the Keeper of the Lost Cities fandom many years ago pre-Legacy. I at first really liked the series but starting with book four Keefe’s entire existence really started to grate on me. His constant ‘pity me my mom is evil’ thing that just kept going on and on and Sophie kept spending all her time and energy on him when she had enough crap of her own to deal with and then Keefe quickly began overtaking the series as main character shoving Sophie the actual protagonist aside and it drove me crazy because he continued to become more obnoxious and more infuriating as time went by and he never learned his lesson or changed his behavior or got properly called out by anyone and continued to get worse.

The only thing that kept me reading was that I had become a major Sophitz shipper starting in book three and it seemed like they were going to become canon. I thought Sokeefe had to be a red herring and then Flashback came out and I was so happy that my ship was canon. It was hard being in the fandom because everyone loved Keefe but the fan base was fairly evenly split between Sokeefe and Sophitz shippers at the time. And then Legacy came out and destroyed everything. I felt that it unfairly demonized Fitz and made him and Sophie OOC just to break them up so that Sokeefe could happen. And suddenly the Sophitz side of the fandom grew super tiny as the Sokeefe fandom became the majority.

I stopped reading the series after that and left the fandom because the love for Keefe and Sokeefe was so big and unavoidable and it drove me crazy because I hated his character and that ship so much and it felt like no one understood me or my frustration with him or with the author for so blatantly favoring him and propping him up and turning him into the main character and protagonist. I was tired of arguing with people and feeling like an outsider. I can’t even reread the books (except the first one because Keefe is such a minor character in comparison) because Keefe has completely ruined it for me.

I hadn’t touched anything kotlc related for years until now when by pure chance I stumbled across your anti Keefe/anti Sokeefe post (the super 3 hours long to read one) and I ate it up. Devoured it. Finally I felt seen, I felt heard, I no longer felt alone or like I was the crazy one for not being able to see what was so great about Keefe and Sokeefe.

So I just wanted to say thank you for being brave enough to speak out with such an unpopular opinion in the fandom and write such a detailed well thought post that hits every point about how problematic this character and ship is and the author’s clear bias. It’s been really cathartic and validating for me to go through your blog. You are amazing!

ooooh hiiii anon!!!!

edit: goodness i really can't shut up ever when i get an ask can i. this is incredibly fucking long and goes off topic several times. sorry . . . also every single major unraveled plot point is spoiled. so. yeah

pre-legacy era is just a tad before my time, so i can't really speak to what it must've been like to be in the fandom then. but i know that it was pretty anti fitz and pro keefe even on tumblr during that time. so

although i disliked keefe from the second he was introduced to the series, i thought he was relatively bearable until neverseen. he was even genuinely funny in a couple moments in everblaze. so i completely see where you're coming from with how you were pissed off by keefe starting mostly in neverseen. that's the book where he gets his sad tragic backstory explored and therefore the book where he becomes more prominent . . . and more annoying. and yes!!!! the pity-partying is awful. goddamn. hate it so so so so much . . . no other character in the series, sophie included, has ever been such a pity magnet. every single chance the narrative gets, it will dump a truckload of pity on keefe that nobody else in the series can compete with. we get it . . . he has a tragic backstory . . . you don't have to say it one million trillion gazillion bajillion times we get it. never never never never will you see this amount of pity dumped on anyone that isn't keefe, even though everyone is struggling and traumatized. and this beating over the head with how hard keefe's had it ends up wrapping around all the way to staleness. now, every time it comes up, the reaction is less "awwww poor keefe" and more "we're here again????" . . . at one point, saying the same thing over and over, having the same exact conversation over and over isn't fleshing out. it's just repetitive and desperate and also bad writing

sophie constantly having to stroke keefe's ego is another thing . . . oh my goodness it is pure unadulterated misery. she is like this with keefe's major flaws and nobody else's so you can't even argue that it's just her overly forgiving nature coming out. no. it's shannon's fucking golden boy bias coming out, actually. keefe gets away with every single thing he does with the neverseen (and more) with exactly zero long-term consequence. sophie trusts him exactly the same amount she always has in nightfall (aka more than he deserves). god will she just distrust him for longer than four point seven seconds ever please. please. please i am begging. no, the nightfall scene does not count because sophie immediately forgives keefe after just a week and there's no period where you can tell she still doesn't trust him and where he has to slowly earn her trust back (so basically their relationship has zero development ever and is the most boring thing i've ever read. seriously how can something be so unhealthy and so stale? only sokeefe . . . ). and keefe apologizes more out of a desire to pacify sophie than a desire to truly change and grow. this scene is a sham and does not count. goddamn i am so tired of that fucking argument i am so fucking done i hate it here. why does sophie let him off the hook so fucking easy all the time just because of his fucking tragic backstory . . . and god i swear this fandom falls into the exact same fucking trap as well . . . every day i will log on and see some post that starts "guys can we stop hating on keefe he's just a teenage boy with flaws" before starting in on same exact explanation of keefe's tragic backstory that shannon is always shoving down our throats and act as if this magically absolves keefe of bad writing. it does not. jesus christ i am so done if i see one more post like that i will scream (i will not because i am so cool and chill trust) (but i will) (don't fucking test me) (just kidding keefe lovers you can do what you want forever and always i love you all i promise i am just annoyed and frustrated right now)

i actually disagree with the argument that pre-unlocked keefe shoved sophie out of her own story . . . yes he was in it a lot but i wouldn't argue that he was a second main character. i think that argument manifests from frustration with keefe taking up so much space in the story (an argument i do agree with. ahem. as you can see from above) but i don't think he was a main character, not in the way sophie was . . . up until unlocked. oh brother. and unraveled, of course, is a continuation of, to use sophie's words, "the keefe show". it's blatant fanservice i don't care what shannon is saying to justify it . . . now that i've read unraveled i'm willing to bet my entire life's savings on the fact that you can skip it entirely and be just fine. any important information keefe gleans that needs to become plot-relevant needs to be revealed to sophie anyway for book ten to move forward so. like. yes unraveled is nice to have . . . especially since when sophie learns about alvar it will likely seem out of nowhere for her since the last time she saw keefe and alvar interact they were very clearly confrontational toward each other. so unraveled fills that in and removes some of the forcedness (not well i might add. but it does) but that is still just a nice to have thing. same with the revelations regarding eleanor and her dad . . . information that will inevitably be revealed to sophie if it becomes important (as it should). once again. it is nice to have keefe's interaction with eleanor from his pov, but it's not needed. and guys you know i love keefe and cassius in this book you know i do i literally love it so bad i made an entire post on it . . . but guys even that is still a nice to have thing!!!! it could've been a short story. we did not need it as a mandatory thing . . . i am so sorry but. yeah. those are the three points i would consider to be the most important things about unraveled and they are all nice to have. the rest is fluff and angst and keefe walking streets and eating deserts. none of which is strictly needed in sophie's story. this story is sophie's we should not need keefe in it as a mandatory aspect i am so so so so annoyed by this clear fan pandering especially since keefe as a character only entered kotlc around draft twenty. he should not be this pivotal to the goddamned plot this is a clear-as-day sign of bad planning

"he continued to become more obnoxious and more infuriating as time went by and he never learned his lesson or changed his behavior or got properly called out by anyone and continued to get worse" this is perfect. anon i love you can i marry you . . . nothing to add to this. i swear between neverseen and legacy he just gets worse and worse with every book. it is awful and i hate him

the reason sophitz seemed like it was going to be canon in the earlier books is because it was. btw. i know this because keefe wasn't supposed to exist at all and kotlc is at heart an early 2010s series so who the fuck else was sophie supposed to amatonormatively end up with if not keefe but fitz. so obviously this is what shannon was pushing for up until around neverseen (possibly everblaze), i'd say. but because keefe does exist and was by far the more popular of the two love interests she created (no, dex was not ever a serious love interest for sophie), she switched gears and decided to make keefe endgame. and yes i do think fan pressure played a big role in this. but you have to understand that kotlc is shannon's debut series and, guys, the publishing industry is brutal, and at the time even moreso for female-led stories like kotlc. she wasn't getting much traction for it up until around lodestar, i believe, and to this day kotlc is still far more popular than her other series, the sky fall trilogy (which was all published before lodestar's release aka before she started making a name for herself as an author, which is why it's lesser known . . . seriously i think if she published that series now instead of before lodestar's release it would have been exponentially more popular than it currently is. i admit i take shots at keeper of "the series that never ends" the lost cities as much as the next guy, but guys. kotlc never ending is the reason it is even as popular as it is right now. i guarantee shannon would have drowned in the publishing industry if kotlc had been a trilogy like it was originally supposed to be). keeping this in mind, i do think she needed to capitalize on whatever crumbs she could get her hands on just for a shot at success, so i don't necessarily blame her for the way she abruptly changed the endgame love interest to the one less likely to get fans mad at her. it's understandable. i wish she had written keefe better so it wouldn't have been such an annoying change, but. hey. whatever, i guess. fan pandering is a lot more nuanced than "it's bad and i wish authors wouldn't do it" makes it out to be. but that is a discussion for another time (i say having discussed it already lmfao)

to me, it was clear that when sophie and fitz got together in flashback, they were the red herring. there were so many red flags in the way shannon wrote them, namely the fact that fitz put way too much emphasis on the match from the start. you'll see people talk about this a lot . . . how sophitz deserves a true chance and real moments where they were just being them instead of the match being introduced as a constraint so early. just. they just. they just deserved that chance you know? even if the match inevitably becomes the reason for their doom shannon didn't have to start them out nipped in the bud . . . we could've gotten to see them for what they could've been. anyway. it's clear shannon did not want her readers seeing this as an actual relationship from the moment they got together. and even before. which annoys me. like they should've gotten something. i can't imagine how much worse this must've been for someone that was truly rooting for them and once again i have no clue what the fandom landscape was like at that point in time but i can only imagine with the excessive keefe adoration it was pretty miserable

alright i may lose you here . . . sorry anon . . . but i personally don't think either fitz or sophie were ooc in legacy. at least not for the way they were set up to fail by shannon from the jump (flashback). sophie spends a great deal of time worrying about how fitz will respond to her unmatchable status (in character for sophie because she is a worrier and it is established in flashback that fitz is confident in the fact that they will be matched, so now without that security to fall back on . . . what is even there for her? that's what sophie's thought process is), and because of this, she avoids fitz. a lot. which annoyed me, too, don't get me wrong, and god i wish she had gone to fitz just once (just once!!!!) instead of keefe because sophie you are making a bad situation worse by doing this shit. but i wouldn't call it out of character for sophie. it was certainly annoying that shannon was not willing to give sophitz a proper chance, but that problem had already long been apparent to me so it was like a continuation of the same ongoing issue, not the introduction of a brand new one imo

as for fitz, he was also not out of character and was in fact incredibly sweet and kind to sophie for the majority of his appearances in legacy. seriously. his one (1) flaw was putting too much emphasis on the match and setting up the idea that sophie would inevitably end up on his list one day as the major support system for their relationship (which ended up collapsing beneath his feet). once again, the problem is the fact that shannon refused to give them a candid chance and had fitz bring up the match at every possible fucking opportunity except for one (1) time. it's not ooc for fitz to bring this up and see it as important to him (and it is. you can't really blame him for this . . . from his perspective, his entire family would be ruined and scrutinized for the rest of his indefinitely long life if he went ahead with this plan. it's kind of selfless to not drag them into endless drama just because he wants to be in a certain romantic relationship. if you think about it from that angle) but shannon went completely over the top and had him bring it up constantly and consistently. every time. it did not need to get brought up every time!!!! there were no romantic sophitz moments in legacy where they were allowed to be just them. which circles back to the same issue i had, which is that sophitz were never given a fair chance. shannon ruined them from the start to make sure that sokeefe would be seen as the superior ship in every way possible and reminded you at every single turn that sokeefe was superior (which ironically is part of why i hate sokeefe and feel it's incredibly forced and insecure as a ship)

as for fitz getting angry at sophie at the end of legacy, he's not angry at her because of the match, he's angry at her because she let alvar go, something i 100% support and think sophie deserved to hear (minus the yelling . . . but communication skills during emotional moments are something fitz has consistently been shown to be bad with, so this is not out of character for him either. and he apologizes for it and continues to work toward a better place . . . it really is just a character flaw that he relapses into). and i'm mad that fitz was the one villainized for this whole thing when it was so clearly sophie that was in the wrong . . . i have already ranted about that at length so. maybe i'll not talk about it again but yeah bottom line is that the only thing fitz was in the wrong for, for the entirety of legacy, is the fact that he yelled at sophie instead of calmly explaining his points. which themselves were valid and logical and i will forever be mad that fitz's attempt to bring alvar to justice is treated like a mad quest as a result of an irrational, emotional obsession when it was genuinely the most logical and even sweet action he could've taken (see: end of legacy where he wants to catch alvar to help keefe). and he doesn't even leave a trail of destruction and regression in his wake (that for some reason nobody gives half a shit about) as he tries to bring a traitorous family member to justice, unlike someone i know and fucking hate. anyway. you'll notice that for the part of the conversation where fitz and sophie are talking about the match, fitz is calm and even sweet. once again his only flaw is placing too much importance on the match, and it does have realistic consequences for his character (see: his relationship to sophie ends because of it), but other than that he is genuinely doing his best to comfort sophie. he also should not have ambushed sophie at a moment where she was clearly not feeling good, but again. he was mad about alvar and fitz consistently does not make good emotional decisions when he's angry. this is a character flaw of his . . . it is consistent and not out of character for him and most importantly results in actual fucking consequences for him. this action results in a breakup with sophie, a proper consequence that is a direct result of this flaw. this phenomenon is also known as good character writing, something shannon magically loses touch with whenever she turns the pen over to her golden boy

i think i would've gone crazy if i'd been on a non-tumblr platform pre-2020 because goddamn the way that most social media platforms are set up does not do a fantastic job of supporting unpopular opinions and washes them out. there's also not a lot of room for long analysis-type things on many platforms, so you just kind of have to say the most outrageous claim you can possibly think of and oftentimes it becomes either difficult or outright impossible to prove your claim. so you don't. and you continue to sound insane because of that. and the other side is relying on this feature (or bug) too, so then it's just an endless cycle of unchecked popular opinion . . . it's only on platforms like tumblr where there's space for proper proof to be shown that people with unpopular opinions start sounding considerably less insane and start actually changing people's minds (and i have . . . check the tag #konversion on my blog for people whose minds were changed about keefe to some extent). and even then . . . i feel like this new wave of people that have entered or started posting consistently circa 2023/2024 era truly and really do not understand the depth of unadulterated keefe adoration that there was prior to that. even on tumblr. keefe haters being prominent or a relatively popular opinion is pretty new and also still a tumblr-only thing . . . and because it’s better now, anon, i truly think your situation is just a bad timing issue. it's generally a better experience to be a keefe hater now. keefe lovers leave you alone for the most part and we leave them alone. coexisting in harmony as they say . . .

interesting that you can't reread the books because of keefe alone. much as i hate keefe and several other aspects of kotlc i do feel like the series just has an allure that i will just never fully shake off. i like to separate kotlc's good and bad sides into different compartments of my head and just try to enjoy what i like about kotlc when i do my rereads . . . i usually skip or skim keefe-heavy areas of the book on rereads. so that's a thing that might help if you really do love other aspects of the story /gen

like i said, keefe hatred is . . . not even close to being the majority opinion. shamelessly plugging this poll by fin as evidence. who btw himself does not have the most positive opinion of keefe, so there's no way this is some sort of skewed population poll. goddamn if i hear someone say that there are a lot of keefe haters on tumblr one more fucking time i will lose it because you are just objectively wrong . . . keefe haters make up 3.3% of the people that voted on that poll, and people that have a negative opinion of keefe make up 16.4% of the people that voted on that poll. a fantastic but incredibly low number. (excluding the people that didn't know who keefe was, this number goes up to just under 20%.) on the other hand, 46.4% of people voted that they were, not neutral on keefe, but keefe fans. (excluding the people that didn't know who keefe was, this goes up to about 53%, the remaining roughly 27% of people are neutral on keefe). people, even on tumblr, overwhelmingly have a positive opinion of keefe. if you seriously think there are a lot of keefe haters here, you're seriously deluded and i cannot fathom what keefe-hater-utopia-reality you think you live in (people who hardcore hate keefe, people who mildly dislike keefe, and people who are neutral on keefe combined still don't even come up to half of the people who voted on that poll and know who keefe is). and this is just on tumblr, the most keefe-hater-friendly platform. so. you can imagine what it's like in other places

anyway. all this to say, seeing as how we're well in the minority and people don't tend to go on unhinged rants about how much they hate him, i can see how this might be your reaction to seeing that rant but i want to emphasize that it wasn't actually particularly brave since i knew it wouldn't get a particularly bad reaction on tumblr. like. like i knew that going in. even though there aren't many keefe haters, the opinion is still generally respected. so like. i knew that people who didn't like it wouldn't really bother with me, especially since i'm a relatively small blog and those don't tend to get lots of hate . . . mostly i was determined to do it out of pure rage and vitriol but i don't think it was particularly noteworthy for the average kotlc fandomgoer. most people aren’t even aware it exists, i don't think, and because of that i didn't really get attacked. so. that's a thing

anyway this entire ask was super sweet and my response to it was entirely too long but i always love hearing from fellow keefe haters so. thanks for that and also you should dm me anon . . . i need to hear more of the opinion . . . jkjkjkjk . . . unless . . . ?

#this was not supposed to be this long i just started answering this ask when i was in a particularly bad mood and i spiraled into a rant #anon #asks #kotlc #anti sokeefe #anti keefe sencen #hey guys did you know i hate keefe irwin sencen. did you know that. i don't think you did here let me tell you. i hate keefe irwin sencen #<- what shannon unironically sounds like when she brings up keefe's tragic backstory up every seven point six seconds #kotlc sophie #sophie foster #kotlc fitz #fitz vacker #anti sophitz #<- i actually this post is relatively PRO sophitz but juuuust in case i’m wrong

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