#pro fitz vacker

[ann-lol]

I love it when I see certain posts go like “I love fitz don’t hate me!” “Fitz is misunderstood but you’re not ready for that conversation” “Am I the only one who loves Fitz??” Like babes you’re on tumblr now, you’ve escaped the horrors that is Pinterest. Relax, we all love Fitz here and welcome <33

[laughter-loving-thalia]

Just to be clear, I don't think Fitz's arc should be about learning to direct his anger to those who would 'deserve' it. The consistent reason why Fitz has been directing his anger at 'the wrong people' is because he had bottled it up instead of managing it healthily, which means his explosions were 1) completely outside of his control, and, 2) directed at people who 'didn't deserve it' simply because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Fitz was not actively seeking to evacuate his anger on 'innocent' people and use them as punching bags, he is just really, really unlucky about the timing of his explosions, because they always happen to be in public. Which could just be another one of these disadvantages of being the Lost Cities' golden boy that they don't tell you about on the job's résumé.

Thus learning to direct his anger would be more like trying to treat a symptom than looking for a cure. The 'cure' would be to confront the core issue: Fitz should not be bottling up his negative emotions, and should not see his explosions as the only way to get them out. The explosions are not the flaw themselves, they're the result of a flaw, a psychological failure; which is that Fitz, the most elf to ever elf, doesn't know how to healthily regulate his emotions to save his life.

[artemisiarising]

in my experience a lot of the fandom hates fitz because of how he reacted to sophie being unmatchable. but like. he’s in love with her but he also knows how much scorn being a bad match will bring not just on him but his FAMILY. who have already been through so much. and on SOPHIE. who has gone through it too. people love painting him as selfish for this but he’s not

and also yes. he gets angry a lot. but he’s SO valid for it most of the time. the first time was when alden’s mind broke. which was. he was grieving, something elves are notoriously bad at. and he APOLOGIZED mind you. he acknowledged that he was terrible to sophie and he APOLOGIZED. and then again when he was angry at alvar. who again brought a bunch of scorn on not only fitz but his entire family. fitz had every right to be angry about that. and more so that he was the only one who was worried about letting alvar go back to everglen which was also so valid. alvar literally tortured some of his closest friends and everyone just shrugged it off. he wasn’t feeling seen or heard and he was reacting in the only way he knew how. fitz is NOT a bad person!!!

[thesamsungsmartrefrigerator]

Maturity

This was spurred on by making the mistake of reading KOTLC fanfiction and the remembering of how often Fitz is portrayed as an immature man child and Keefe the calm and collected one. So I wanted to yap about the main 3 (Keefe Sophie Fitz) and what I think a lot of people miss about these 3 (in pos or neg discussions), which is the actually maturity or lack of it in these 3.

Right off the bat: Fitz is not immature, but Sophie and Keefe are. Its shows up differently then lets say the triplets or Bronte (but I would also argue Bronte is immature for a adult), but its still true.

Immaturity is defined as "not behaving in a way that isn't calm and wise as people expect from someone your age". Which is isn't the best definition of actual Immaturity, which is closer to "Not reacting appropriately to situations, lacking the care or focus on actual priorities and the understanding of ones emotions being able to articulate them appropriately, overly focused on trival and unimportant events or situations, crude and childish sense of humor". Because "calm and wise as expected for your age" isn't a definition that actually gives any context as to wtf your talking about.

Starting with Keefe. Keefe doesn't articulate ot understand his emotions. When he gets angry (which he does a lot, it's just treated less poorly then Fitz) it's not often for an actual good reason that could have been avoided if only other people took different actions (people being stupid, not listening to you, etc) but rather often because of the consequences of his own actions. He is incredibly impulsive and lacks actual understanding of his priorities (confirmed in Stellarlune by how often he talks about Sophie being right compared to literally anything else). Keefe is also incredibly childish in his behavior, and while yes this is a mask/coping mechanism, it's not like he finds this behavior dumb, unfunny, or obnoxious. He does it because he finds it funny, it's his sense of humor, even if he's using that to cope with trauma.

To adress this people I get people telling me: Yes Keefe is traumatized and was abused, honestly it's very likely why he is so immature. Not every abuse victim is automatically a mature person, and very very often is the exact opposite. He's not evil he's just very much a child.

Sophie is also immature, for almost every single one of the same reasons as Keefe. She also gets angry for reasons fully in her control, doesn't understand or make attempts to actually articulate her feelings, her priorities are less skewed then Keefe’s (as she is worried about the Neverseen and angry at the council) but she also continues to prioritize teenage romance and drama at the expense of literally everything else. I say drama because there's a difference between building relationships and connections and highly focusing on drama and petty arguments that has 0 consequences. Sophie should be allowed to focus on little relationships, but she's also not 12 anymore, she's 16 with the emotional maturity of a 12 year old.

Again, because just like Keefe she is traumatized, severely anxious and was in a human high-school (where the idea of what a teen romance is so scewed by sexism, immaturity, people being assholes to eachother, and is placed so high on the prioty list for no reason that it's not shocking this is her veiw of her teenage years). And yes, by 16- if you are a "mature" 16 year old- you should have a grasp of your emotional prioties, not because it's the best years of your life or because your expected to be an adult, but because understanding "the terrorist organization attacking us is more important then getitng in this boys pants." That's a mature 16 year old, but at 16 your also allowed to be immature. Your a child it's not an insult and shouldn't be used as one. Sophie is an immature 16 year old.

Then there's Fitz, who due to being angry often is constantly seen as an immature man child. The issue is, Fitz anger isn't (often, and especially not in the later books when he's not 14 anymore) because of something he could change, it's because he's being ignored, belittled, insulted or being told his very real concerns aren't an issue. Which isn't immaturity, literally every single person regardless of maturity level would get angry at this.

Fitz priorities also aren't nearly as skewed as Sophie or Keefe. Caring about dating isn't immaturity (and wasn't the point I was making for Sophie or Keefe), but as I touched on in my Fitzphie post, I also don't even think it was that much a priority for him compared to how much Sophie viewed everything he did through that lense. He care about keeping his friends around, but he gets angrier and angrier and eventually stops putting the effort in.

Fitz also does actually articulate his emotions well. He's severely emotionally stunted but he DOES actually tell people what he's feeling. It's just when he does he's brushed off as worrying to much (when he's trying to do it calmly), melodramatic (when he starts to get upset), then a "rage monster" when he finally blows up because no one will listen to him.

Fitz most "immature scenes" (or the ones I see brought up the most where he's called so) aren't even him being immature. Him breaking up with Sophie because she's unmatchable isn't petty, or angry. He's genuinely upset and while yes later it's because she won't use one of her parents to apply that's because she continues to imply they should just be together but won't make a sacrifice on her end and just asks him to make one. At the start he's not upset at her, hes just upset, which is a very different thing.

Fitz getting annoyed when Sophie hides shit from him is not unreasonable. Because it's not just "we're dating!" that's not what's the weight of the term "Cognate" actually means. And even beyond that, they are allies ln the same side in the same army in the same war. The Blackswan fails constantly because literally no one knows wtf everyone else is doing, so they trip over eachother and fuck things up. Their biggest wins were when they LISTNED to eachother OR to Fitz! Fitz thought holding Fintans healing in that tower was a bad idea, Fitz thought letting Apvar back was a bad idea, Fitz thought Keefe wasn't responsible and couldn't be trusted not to leave again, Fitz noticed Dex’s worth (even just as an ally and talented Telepath) and was one of the few people who DIDN'T complain when sent to work with him. He did complain, but because he was on the sidelines with Dex, not because he just "with Dex".

There's this weird thing that Shannon does, where she has her characters make objectively bad or good decisions then attempts to spin them by literally just telling the reader "No! Actually that was good/bad not the opposite" with the expectation that that actually changes the actions or logical conclusions about why a character did something. Fitz at this point is at least more politically mature then half the adults in the book holy fuck.

(This also feeds into my theory that at the end of Stellarlune Fitz realized how much literally none of this matters because the "good guys" don't want to change any of the other demonstrably evil systems in place from the Council, his firneds are all drinking the "there's only 2 bad Councilors and one of them is actually just an unlikable women and the only bad thing that we need to change systemically is the matchmaking system because everything else is needed because their evil" juice, the Neverseen don't have an actual plan to eiher fix or make life worse (which I've talked abor before) and therefore aren't even an option, and last but not least realized no one else around him has actually put two and two together and would 100% call him melodramatic if he tried. So he just gives up and stops caring by the end of Stellarlune (how we see him act), giving into the apathy of "Whats the fucking point anymore" and following Sophie around like a lost dog because he literally doesn't know what else to do anymore)

Either way, not hate to Sophie or Keefe lovers, and idk if I got anything else wrong

[m13graphite7]

Listen, it wasn't a bad thing that Fitz stopped pressing buttons. He was under a lot of stress, and we all know how elves respond to stress. He can't be considered at fault, he was trying to get Alvar out of there. It it wasn't a conscious decision, he folded under the pressure.

Not only that, but even if he could be considered at fault, would you save the very man who tortured you, your friends, and your love interest? Not to mention that he would have killed them if they got the chance. Would you let the person who lied straight to the face of his own family and deceived you for almost your entire life walk free? Would you give him the chance to do it all again?

I don't care if he supports us queers —or whatever he did I haven't read 9.5 yet— he is a terrorist, a torturer, and a murder.

[spoofio]

Neverseen-Fitz and Lodestar-Fitz would kill Legacy-Fitz with a hammer for acting like that.

[the-way-astray]

i genuinely cannot think of a moment pre-legacy where fitz ever displayed jealousy over sophie

[shiloh-the-shidiot]

The reason everyone on pinterest hates fitz for his exile crash out is because they're all 10 year olds who think that he must be so mature if hes 15 and "should have better emotional regulation skills" at his "grown age" there I said it goodbye