#i'm going to talk about this a tad bit more but. i think keefe can be done well. in fact i hope the movie does him justice

[the-way-astray]

hello just wanted to let you know your blog is healing me. i am on a reread of the series rn and am so thoroughly fed up with keefe's character. i've never loved keefe before but i'm just so annoyed at him this read around. gonna circle back to your essay FOR SURE after getting back through the series.

you handshake me: rereading the series and disliking keefe every time he comes on page. even if keefe was a perfectly written character with a flawless arc, i'm pretty sure i'd still hate him, because he's such a pity-party-throwing cookie cutter with atrocious humor and the critical thinking skills of a six year old. it really, really doesn't help that my number one, number two, and number three pet peeves when it comes to characters are stupidity, unfunniness which the writer thinks is genuinely funny, and excessive, comically over-the-top angst for the sake of having angst and nothing else. and keefe's character manages to have all three, while also eating up a ridiculous amount of pagetime.

that's very kind! i'm glad you like it here. i think each time i reread the series (i've done it roughly once a year since i first started reading the series circa 2017), i hate the guy even more. each year i'm older, though, so i suppose that may have something to do with it. or not. i'm not sure. what i can say with complete confidence, though, is that i have never not hated keefe. from the moment i picked up this series, i disliked him. so just keep in mind that i am super, super biased. super. the essay (whichever one you're referring to . . . it's not really clear) is not meant to be taken as some gospel truth. think of it as five years' worth of pent-up rage put in a semi-coherent form.

[the-way-astray]

ok so I know you don't like Keefe but I wonder what your extensive thoughts on Sophie are (if you have any)

i do, anon! all thoughts that follow are almost 100% subjective, etc. etc. etc. it starts out negative, because i want to end on a positive note :) this will be long

alright i will start by saying: i love sophie. but when i started reading the series, i was very much a sophie hater. actually, that's a bit strong. i was a sophie . . . non-enjoyer. while part of it was definitely the fact that i was exposed only to people that hated on sophie, i also did think by myself that sophie was a tad annoying, to put it mildly.

i've talked extensively about how much i dislike keefe, as you've mentioned, and part of that isn't really about keefe at all, so much as it is the way the narrative frames keefe. and the narrative is . . . mostly sophie herself. surprising exactly nobody, i'm not a fan of the way she lets keefe walk all over her, and the way she's kind of a doormat when it comes to him. she lets him off the hook all the time, justifies the crap out of his behavior, and even when you can tell she feels something negative from whatever toxic trait he's exhibiting this time, she never says anything about it, except for once or twice (i've talked about the nightfall scene at length before, and how it results in zero character development for keefe, just the illusion of it, and same with the legacy thing). it would be incredibly satisfying to have sophie tell keefe something like "hey, if you keep ruining all our plans because you're too stupid/arrogant to let the plan go according to plan, then we won't be able to include you. sorry not sorry". yet she doesn't. and she doesn't even have a good reason most of the time. like in legacy, when she went to tell him that his mom had ordered tam to kill him, after tam had specifically told her not to do that, because they both know keefe makes atrocious decisions when it comes to his mom. and yet sophie still goes straight to him and decides to tell him!!!! and it's like why the fuck would you do that???? keefe needs to be put in his place, and unfortunately, it seems like sophie is the only person that has the power to do that. it annoys the fuck out of me that the fact that keefe is constantly shitty to her doesn't seem to affect their relationship in the slightest. she somehow still trusts him the same after all the shit he's put her through, she still thinks him smart despite evidence to the contrary, and in general, when it comes to keefe she's excruciatingly irrational and lenient. and it annoys me. like she's so logical everywhere else, why can't she be the same with keefe? it makes her character ridiculously inconsistent, to me at least. i won't talk about this any more than this because i've already ranted about it at length but: the answer to that is basically that shannon needs to keep shoving sokeefe and keefe loving sophie and sophie needing keefe down the audience's throats. it's very fan-service-y, but i'll leave it at that for now.

here's where i may make some people mad, so i would like to say that this is all what i used to think. i've since matured, so i don't really think this anymore. but her crush on fitz. oh, boy. when i first read the series i found it the epitome of annoying. i was basically screaming at her (mentally, i did read most of this series in school lmfao) to get it together the entire time. i was just like. sophie. just. stop being so weird around him! he's just a guy! there's no need to act like an idiot and a half every time you interact with him to the point where everyone around you can tell what's up! it gave me a ridiculous amount of secondhand embarrassment. i was like . . . sophie . . . you can have a crush . . . but you don't have to be so obvious and embarrassing about it. anyway. i've since realized i'm aro and also apparently somewhat emotionally repressed so i think i'm just not like sophie. but because i couldn't understand why the fuck she was letting the stupid crush drag her through the mud, socially speaking, i found it excruciating. although i now understand why sophie acts the way she does, even to this day when i read those scenes where keefe or biana or dex makes a comment that implies they know exactly what's up with sophie and fitz it makes me so embarrassed (secondhandedly speaking), like come on, sophie, can't you make your crush just a tad less obvious???? but i also get that that's just how sophie is. again, this is entirely a personal taste thing.

legacy sophie annoyed the crap out of me, not gonna lie. it was excruciating. keefe consistently told her, again and again, to reach out to fitz, to confide in fitz, to lean on fitz. and then! she doesn't!!!! the thing is i can't even necessarily be mad because she fully acknowledges herself that she was a bad girlfriend. but also it's like could you not have gone to fitz just once instead of keefe. just once!!!! he literally told you he'd go at your pace!!!! even after he knows about the matchmaking thing, he's still willing to be with her, and he also wants to help her search for her parents, something she has interest in at that point. just. watching sophie make a mess out of her relationship with fitz was so annoying to me. i would put around 90% of the blame of sophitz falling apart on sophie, because she's the one who consistently ignored him, despite being told not to do that exact thing by both himself and keefe. and it's like!!!! i get it!!!! it can't be easy knowing you're dating a guy who literally cannot be in a bad match after being told you're going to be a bad match. i get the perspective. but it was still hella annoying to read. i wanted sophie to properly communicate with fitz just once, just once, and the miscommunication grated on me the entire time. the miscommunication trope is one of my least favorites and god, i just wanted sophie to be a good girlfriend to fitz just once!!!! just once!!!! like you have fitz over here, doing literally everything he can to try to meet sophie halfway, beyond halfway, even, and then you have sophie, spitting in the fact of his efforts. it's hard not to get frustrated reading that.

there's also this small moment at the beginning of legacy where she gets super butthurt that keefe left her out of one of his personal projects that has nil to do with her, then tries to like . . . guilt keefe into telling her? almost? and it's the same thing keefe's always doing with her, and it's very shady. no, sophie, you do not have a right to know everything keefe knows just because you're his friend!!!! back off!!!! that same scene she flips through one of his personal notebooks without his permission while he looks visibly uncomfortable, too. stop it!!!! that's not yours!!!! keep your hands to yourself!!!!

and my least favorite thing sophie has ever done in the entire series happens in legacy too: hijacking fitz's project and letting alvar go. oh my goodness. i cannot even begin to describe how much that single (hmm maybe not single, but they're connected) action pissed me off. she knew for the entire book how hard fitz was working to find alvar! keefe explicitly states that he was feeling a mix of some very negative emotions, which is how he nailed down that him working on his dad's memories was about alvar. she knew he was dealing with keefe's ass dad for the sole purpose of trying to find alvar after the shitshow that went down in flashback, and she knew exactly what he was going through in that book as well!!!! and then!!!! she fucking hijacks his project, doesn't even have the decency to tell him, and tries to justify it with some bullshit "oh, your dad's gotten too good at pushing fitz around" stuff. like sophie. that's very talk-down-y to fitz. like he's not a little kid!!!! let him make decisions for himself!!!! stop taking his choice away!!!! and i don't like it. and then, when she succeeds at fitz's project, she doesn't even have the decency to tell him then!!!! like, girl, i don't know how i can continue to defend this!!!!

and then!!!! it gets fucking worse!!!! because she actively stops fitz from achieving the one goal he's been trying to achieve for the entire book (about three weeks, for context, it's actually the shortest kotlc book timeline-wise besides unlocked): trying to capture alvar. like, sophie. come on. and i do feel bad for keefe in this scene, i truly do. it's like the telling-sophie-to-confide-in-fitz thing, he's doing so much to try to keep their relationship together, and then when sophie's out here with a baseball bat fucking smashing it to pieces and he's just standing there watching it, you're like. okay, that must be painful. anyway, back to sophie. her reasoning is shit, this decision is shit, the fact that keefe is the one that tells fitz she let alvar go is shit, everything about this scene fucking sucks. as fitz said, not only is sophie more powerful than the average telepath, but she and fitz are cognates. there's pretty much no way they couldn't have gotten the secret from alvar, even if he supposedly knows how to hide the real story from the fakes. and!!!! that doesn't even consider the fact that sophie and keefe could've just backstabbed alvar. he was weak, and the deal was they'd let him go if he told them, right? well they could've just. not let him go!!!! that was a valid option!!!! it pisses me off that they didn't do that. the second sophie saw alvar, she should've been thinking about how fitz was looking for him and how she was going to capture him so fitz didn't go down a very dark path, the same thing she'd be thinking if it was gisela and keefe. but no!!!! she doesn't even consider capturing alvar a priority in the slightest, if not for the sake of capturing alvar itself, then at least for the sake of supporting her boyfriend. and that pisses me off.

i do agree that fitz's . . . method of communication . . . was not the greatest. that's why i think he deserves 10% of the blame. but everything he says was perfectly logical. he just says it very emotionally so it's difficult for sophie to think about anything other than the fact that he's yelling at her. but his points were valid.

and what actually pisses me off isn't that in and of itself, it's just how quickly the narrative just . . . lets sophie get away with it. when fitz and sophie do their shoddy little make-up at the end of legacy, there's never an implication that fitz feels some resentment toward sophie for stopping him from achieving his goal. like he just drops it instantly???? and he's the one apologizing, which he needed to, but sophie owed him an even bigger apology, like what she did to him could be considered some form of betrayal???? like sophie. you were wrong. you were wrong. when is the narrative going to let sophie be wrong, and not villainize the person saying she is???? she should've been apologizing to fitz for the shit she put him through this entire book, yet she did not. when fitz shows up she sighs and goes "is this about alvar" and fitz is like "no, of course not!!!! i would never!!!!" and i was like. this should be about alvar. stop making it out to be that fitz would be in the wrong for making it about alvar, he deserves to call sophie's ass out for that instantly!!!! sophie should be villainized for that action. but instead fitz drops it and it never comes up again. now i am truly pissed at sophie. just because she's the main character doesn't mean everything has to bend to her whims. she's allowed to learn and grow like everyone else.

basically, if keefe is the main reason i don't ship sokeefe, then sophie is the main reason i don't ship sophitz. that comparison will make sense to people who have read my anti keefe stuff, but if you haven't, ignore that.

moving onto unlocked sophie! i don't know what happened to sophie in these later books but i don't like it. there's one specific moment that really grates on me in unlocked, except that moment then expands over like four or something chapters. which for a sixteen-chapter-novella is . . . a lot. when keefe decides, in an uncharacteristically logical manner, to stay away from sophie because she seems to be making his abilities go out of control, she gets so butthurt and at this point i'm just sitting here rolling my eyes because i don't even know how to defend this anymore. she somehow manages to twist it in her head to make it out to be like, "keefe doesn't want me around!!!!" and then gets super butthurt at something . . . that isn't happening. in the slightest. and it's not even a logical conclusion to jump to!!!! she just fucking does!!!! and then!!!! the narrative supports this view by having keefe apologize to her in an incredibly forced scene for something . . . he didn't do. his offense was *checks notes* trying not to harm anyone with his new, dangerous ability by keeping someone who basically acts as an amplifier away. i can only assume shannon put this in here because she loves her forced consolation sokeefe scenes, whichever direction they may be in, because it makes no sense whatsoever and is just about the dumbest thing to have to make up over.

and burning the archetype pissed me off. to be clear: totally chill with her burning down the storehouse. but the archetype???? and then later she justifies it by saying "well, gisela hasn't come looking for it so it's probably not important". like no???? gisela tells sophie and keefe in nightfall that she has a photographic memory and has the entire thing memorized . . . please . . . can you tell i hate it when. stupid characters. i hate this!!!! it's not even like an understandable stupid decision! sophie makes tons of those throughout the series and they make sense! but they're still stupid (see: reading king dimitar's mind). this was straight up stupid stupid. it was so bad . . . so bad . . . ugh. she tells flori to keep the archetype safe, then like five seconds later changes her mind completely???? i can only assume shannon did this because the archetype would ruin the story (make it too easy if the crew got their hands on it), but then she didn't have to write the archetype into that scene at all!!!! done! i don't understand the decision here . . . it was so utterly stupid it scares me.

i don't like stellarlune sophie. i don't like stellarlune in general, but stellarlune sophie feels like a hyper-girlbossed caricature of sophie. kotlc has a major girlbosses-instead-of-proper-female-characters problem, and nothing illustrates that more than stellarlune sophie. if the elves were to make a movie out of sophie after this is all over that parades her around as a hero, they would characterize her as something close to stellarlune sophie. absolutely despise sophie's personality in that book (and the books leading up to it, legacy and unlocked). everyone's constantly telling sophie to her face how she's not that little girl anymore and how she's so grown up and how she doesn't take anyone's shit anymore (false, see: keefe) and how she has this badass new personality now and how they're a fan of her snark and this and that and the other and it makes me want to scream (because one, it's terrible writing, and two, it's just not true). one of shannon's worst examples of tell-not-show. i don't know how to describe stellarlune's entire vibe aside from "desperate". currently on lodestar in my reread (well, if my computer lets me back into the ebook) and i just. like sophie so much more in this book. she has good plans, she has some fight, she has somewhat of a sense of humor and the narrative isn't constantly spoonfeeding how cool she is at the reader. you're allowed to form your own opinions on her.

which is a good way to start talking about the things i like about sophie! i love sophie in books one through seven. there's a conversation in flashback with mr. forkle (blech) where he tells sophie that she may be ready for more responsibility in black swan, and it feels infinitely more natural than the weird spoonfeeding we get in the later books about how grown up sophie is, because you can feel that sophie in flashback is very different than sophie in keeper, and not in a weird over-the-top forced girlboss-ish way. i genuinely liked that scene, despite forkle (yucky).

okay, the storehouse fire. i liked it, as i mentioned earlier. it was a fantastic character moment for sophie. but what i like even more than that is that sophie faces a ton of opposition for it, both rational and irrational (irrational being the shit like "you just started a war" . . . to which i say, hello, where have to been for the last eight books, as well as the rational stuff like forkle saying that she didn't think before she started the fire, as well as the mid arguments of like "now the neverseen are going to be extra motivated to get revenge, and it's your fault, sophie"). because that's realistic! when you do anything bold like what sophie did, you are going to be met with lots of illogical and logical arguments for both sides. it's a lot to navigate, and it's a lesson in nuance. sophie now has to navigate this, and she does, for pretty much the rest of the book. in the end, you're sort of forced to sit with the fact that sophie's action wasn't perfect, nor was it horrible. it had bad sides (she did it somewhat recklessly) but it also had good sides (she did take out their soporidine stores and retrieve the caches). and that nuance is a fantastic addition to the story.

i like the concept behind sophie. outside kotlc tumblr, one of the main criticisms you'll see of sophie is that she's too overpowered . . . and it's like . . . yeah . . . nice job, you have successfully nailed down the premise of the series. do you want a cookie for this marvelous achievement. literally the point of the story is that sophie cannot defeat the neverseen with her numerous, powerful abilities alone. she can't. they have been planning this for years and unless she puts some serious thought and good planning into it, she will never be able to catch up. it doesn't matter how powerful she is, the neverseen are smarter. so what's the solution then? well, she has to sit down and come up with a solid plan to take them down. she has to go on the offensive instead of just defending herself and her loved ones. and you see her take that step in stellarlune. and most importantly, she has to stop being so reckless. this is the thing. sophie has shown throughout the series that she has a knack for being reckless. you see it with king dimitar, you see it with several other things. but the thing is that that's a flaw. it puts herself and others in danger and if she wants to take the neverseen down for good, she needs to work on that. in that way, the fact that sophie is so overpowered serves as a vehicle for character development: at one point she'll realize that it's just not enough. and she'll have to change accordingly.

i think sophie being faced with the fact that she'll likely end up having to kill a neverseen member is a good thread to introduce. i wish it had been done before stellarlune, because this series is gloriously repetitive, but better late than never, i suppose. i like that she knows that one day she may have to go there, and she's dealing with that beforehand and trying to stomach it before she can get there. i'm curious to see where this will go, and i'm not entirely certain it will go anywhere, since shannon has a tendency to drop random plot/character threads, but that will be interesting to see unfold (if it does).

sophie's character is about perspective. a change of perspective in a world that desperately needs it. and i like that. it's easy to see how the elves might carry on thinking their world is perfect, because that's all everyone talks about or verbalizes. like we know our world isn't perfect, only because we are taught the appropriate history and we have exposure to several resources that show us the sneaky (and not-so-sneaky) ways people are exploited. but the elves don't have that. if you are talentless or otherwise affected, it's like, well. you shut up, and i think you're even almost gaslighted into thinking yourself that the world is perfect because that's what everyone says. there is nobody to tell the elves to check their internal biases, there is nobody to show them all the ways their society is wrong. so sophie is valuable there. on top of that, people pay attention to her. this makes her perspective all the more valuable, because people will actually listen. and i think that concept is incredibly fascinating. i want to see a scene where sophie calls everyone out in a really bold way, where it's undeniable that she's poking holes through society's weak spots. so far, we haven't really seen her make any bold statements, just her checking her friends' biases every so often. but i hope that's where her story is going, and why shannon seems so obsessed with spoonfeeding us how bold sophie's getting.

obviously, as a reader, i'm dead curious about who her bio parents are. but i think it makes a lot of sense that sophie herself doesn't want to know unless provided with an incentive (matchmaking/fitz). it makes her even more fleshed out, because it sort of reminds you that sophie doesn't like any of this. given the choice she probably wouldn't even be a noble. she wants to be as detached from project moonlark as possible, because she doesn't like the spotlight. she doesn't want to know things because she's curious, she only wants to know them so that the neverseen can be defeated. and you see a sort of attitude of trying to be as detached from project moonlark as possible while still insisting that she's the moonlark, meaning she was designed to be a part of everything that's going on. that's really interesting to me. the relationship between sophie and project moonlark, and how it distorts her perception of herself. she doesn't like being the moonlark, yet she's obsessed with being a perfect one, she's obsessed with filling the role she tells herself she needs to fill. you can see how that leads to conversations like the ones where black swan members are telling her she wasn't really made for anything other than to be herself, and you see her grapple with that for the series.

tldr: i like the themes and general direction that sophie's arc and story appear to be going in, but there are a few things she does that i feel the narrative lets her off the hook far too easily for.