is it still council-hating hours? even if not, this is something that's been bothering me for....so long. and i am going to explode if i don't say it right now. (In fact i actually have a doc titled "council incompetence rant" that is. getting a little long.)
One of the things that annoys me the most in Keeper is how utterly incompetent the Council is. They are shit at their jobs! They don't make sense! And that would be fine if that was something that was explored and talked about in the story, but it's not?
Like, sure, it's brushed on a little, but Keeper never goes in-depth in order to explain just how flawed and corrupt the system is! We have no idea how far the rot goes because we haven't been given a chance to see how far it goes, and despite the earlier books being really great setup for all kinds of plots and discussions surrounding the Council, it feels like Messenger is completely dropping that in favor of..."Neverseen Bad, Council + Black Swan Good". Which I call fucking bullshit on, by the way, because this series has gone to pretty decent lengths before to show that it's not the case! So WHY are we getting to that now?
Well, I think all of this is the symptom of a bigger problem.
Note: I don't want to be mean, and please tell me if I'm being too critical here, but this series has some serious problems actually delivering on what it's saying.
Like, it's trying to tell us that Sophie shouldn't be doing all this because she's a kid, but then it treats her very own existence as a project as background information when that should absolutely be at the forefront (like it was in earlier books)!
It's trying to tell us that discrimination against the Talentless is bad, but then every single member of it's cast has an ability, has a strong ability, and regularly uses their ability! Even Dex, who could have easily been talentless and good with tech, gets to be a Super Good Gadget Person thanks to his ability as opposed to his own creativity and ingenuity.
It's trying to tell us that maybe banishing children is bad, but also tells us that Exillium is now """fixed""" because Oralie gave them...better tents? Food? And never touches on the fact that children are still. getting. banished. It doesn't explore Tam's anger in detail, Linh is only there to be the token asian girl, it does nothing to fully dispel any thought of the Council being alright.
And it's trying to tell us that the Council fucks up, it's showing us that Councillors have no problem being incredibly selfish and violent and so many other terrible things, but that never changes. Nothing in Keeper is changing. It is only maintaining the status quo!
I'm confused as to what Messenger is trying to tell her readers! Are the Council good or bad? Is working with the Council good or bad? Are the Black Swan and Neverseen actually morally grey? Should I be angry at what's happening in these books? Am I meant to look at all the rot and shrug because "that's just how it is"?
And like...I wouldn't be mad if Keeper was just...bad! I mean, I would, but I wouldn't be as distraught! What really grinds my gears is that Keeper has the chance to be good. It has the chance to do great things - and at times it absolutely does! - but it keeps reinforcing belief in a deeply flawed and broken system that is regularly hurting people. And those examples were just off the top of my head!
And again, if this was explored within the series, that would be amazing, but the problem is that it's...not. And that's just...a real fuckin' shame, honestly.
(sorry if this was like...too angry? i started and then kinda just...couldn't stop. i should probably get a hobby that's not tearing a middle grade series apart. oops.)
it may have been over a week since you sent this (thank you for being patient with me!!), but fuck yes it is still council hating hours. it is always council hating hours in this household that is not actually a house. (also that incompetence rant sounds intriguing)
yes! you are right! they are so bad at what they're supposed to be doing it's like they're just figures for people to look to and say "yea they'll take care of it" to keep everyone else from acting out! but it's really interesting to see a government so awful and incompetent be such an integral and influential part of the story...without acknowledging that they're actually really bad? I know in Unlocked there's a line where Shannon says something like "Sophie had to figure out who the bad guys were: the black swan? the council? someone else entirely?" but then it's never touched on again that I can remember. Thinking through the series, I honestly can't think of a situation that the council, of their own volition, saw was an issue and corrected in a way that was beneficial to those who needed it. Like yea, Oralie gave money to Exillium, but that was after Sophie chewed her out about it. I think i've said it before but in case not: it feels like they've taken the "for the good of the many over the good of the few" ideology too far in a society that doesn't work for. If someone threatens the majority (and often that's just in appearance only) they get rid of them to preserve the image of the rest. It doesn't care about their people, it cares about the majority of people feeling undisturbed.
considering Sophie is part of a huge organization created literally because their society, led by that system, isn't working for a lot of people, they (the Black Swan) sure do go along with the council a whole lot. I think one of the linked posts in one of my masterposts is specifically about how making the Black Swan work so closely with the council screwed them over and completely undermined everything they were working towards. I'm going to make a very vague comparison here, but the Black Swan feel like "we need to fix the system" while the Neverseen are "the system is broken lets start over" (except the Neverseen added a lot more violence into the mix). It's absolutely infuriating to have them working side by side: one, because the Black Swan aren't accomplishing any of their goals and should cut their losses and go back to being mysterious underground groups with more freedom to move (in my opinion), but two, because it makes the council seem like it's trying to fix things when really it feels like a publicity thing to make the public think they're addressing the rebel issue while they're really just showing up in places and causing problems. And!! that's another thing! it feels like their collaboration with the Black Swan is to address the problem of having rebels, not the problems these rebels have identified and are trying to fix. Unfortunately, it seems the council is getting their way more than the Black Swan, getting them to act more legally and work closer with less room for working outside the system. if that makes sense.
considering it's literally stated in unlocked that there is no "good" and "bad," there does seem to be a lot of focus on associating the Black Swan with being Right, and the Neverseen with being Wrong. I can hope that it's the outward reactions to the Black Swan realizing they've done some fucked up stuff (Sophie) and are now overcompensating and trying to make sure their every move is the correct one. But I do think it will be interesting to see if Sophie makes the connection in canon (as she's already started to) that there isn't always a right option, there's just the best you can do with a situation and the Black Swan's insistence that she was "in the wrong" (a summary) helps her realize her own values and think through their decisions with her own perspective instead of just trusting them
response to your note: you're fine! you bring up a good point that this book sounds like it wanted to be a unique perspective (by having the "good guys" also be questionable and give the "bad guys" reasonable motives) but the execution misses the mark for a lot of us. so you're qualms and observations are entirely valid and I don't think you're being mean at all! I think you're expressing a frustration you have with something, which I support and encourage.
at times it feels like Shannon bit off more than she could chew in terms of all the complicated things she could get into when it comes to this series. not saying she's doing a bad job or a horrible author or anything, just that there are some things she introduced that kind of get left behind or unexplored because there's so much else going on. I think we can see that in the whole being experiment part of Sophie life. we saw sophie was uncomfortable with it in the first few books and would sometimes bring it up, but I personally would've been more satisfied if she'd either taken the time to process it (opposed to her think about that later strategy) or come to the realization that no, she isn't okay with it and she deserves to have her thoughts on the matter heard. she was literally created to serve someone elses purpose, and brought into the fight too early at that. and yet it's treated like an "oopsie, guess we just gotta go with it" thing, like this minor part of her story when I bet her thinking about it for more than a minute at a time would absolutely wreck her. but I'm getting caught up in this, so moving on!
I think we can see it in the talentless too, as it's treated like a "that doesn't affect me" thing for Sophie. because she doesn't have any friends that are talentless right now--the closest she's got is Marella, who I think is still legally considered talentless with her pyrokinesis. it's been acknowledged that she doesn't think the way talentless are treated is right, but it doesn't impact her right now so she's not really doing anything about it. maybe if this was brought back later with someone like Jensi, then that would be a satisfying conclusion to this issue (not a conclusion, but it wouldn't be left hanging, if that makes sense). And I can understand the benefit of leaving things open to go back and explore later from a writers perspective, but at a certain point it becomes more of a hindrance to the story than anything else.
and exillium! I have so many thoughts on Exillium that I actually started talking about it earlier in this post. They're not doing anything unless prompted and what they do is the bare minimum. With the tents and the food, they aren't fixing Exillium, they're making it into what it should've been at the very least were they going to actually go down that route. So I can't praise them for it when it's just basic decency to provide literal children with food and shelter when you force them to be somewhere they don't want to. But all this doesn't fix Exillium, because the problem is that it exists in the first place. The problem is that the council saw children who were struggling, and decided the best thing to do with them was to just get them out of the way for everyone else. Three coaches total for leadership? yeah, there's no way that place was ever supposed to be "alternate learning" or however Oralie phrased it, that was just so you could say you hadn't completely abandoned them in the middle of nowhere.
you're so right about the council fucks up bit--I think the most obvious example of this is with Sophie's ability restrictor. Yea, she's not wearing it anymore, but that's not because the council changed their minds. It's because she broke the law and the didn't punish her for it. this is a great example of how things keep trying to move forward, but the council isn't doing anything to stay up with it. "they are selfish and violent[...] but that never changes." yes!! this!! you put it so well! the council is still the same old council that we saw in book one, concerned with their own interests and their own views, just trying to mitigate the damage Sophie and her friends are capable of doing to their system. Note: the fact that a handful of teenagers who haven't even graduated can do this much damage might be telling of the structural integrity of their system. Bronte and Terik did a little flip, and Alina replaced the Now Crispy Kenric, but aside from that nothing has changed.
I will say, I personally don't want it to be clear who the good guys and bad guys are. (not saying that's what you're asking for! just piggybacking off your comment on the confusion). I'm glad that the characters make me think and I'm grateful there isn't just the "we're good and they're bad" element you see in other stories. not that that's bad, i just think realistically they'd be more complex and their simplicity grows repetitive after a while. But like I said, at times it feels like there's too much going on for there to be a clear message, which in and of itself could be the message. i could be seeing something where there's nothing, though. I think part of it might be Shannon trying to take on all these complex narratives and perspectives with a limited perspective (as in she only has Sophie to tell the story through), while also needing to make it enjoyable and palletable to a young audience.
and I agree with you! I think it's a lot of the potential we see not being used that makes us so infuriated (or me at least). Because there are some stories yo uread where you're like "ah. it's just one of those stories. cool." and you move past it. Because you know it's going to have a set perspective and you know it's going to accomplish what it wants, but Keeper seems to have so many possibilities and Shannon's getting stuck in this rut of good and bad after so long. maybe we'll get out of it in the next book with sophie thinking the Black Swan was in the wrong, but I also wouldn't be surprised if that Didn't Happen.
it's just like what i was saying about Ro! There's all these opportunities for these characters and this world to be really explored and fleshed out and complex, but we've gotten stuck in this romance drama and loosing fights again and again with little progress. All their actions are undoing the Neverseen's actions and counting it a victory because no one is dead. I just think there could be so much more that we're not getting because the story tried to go too broad when it wasn't ready for it.
this response got very long but in essence: I agree with your assessment of the story. is frustrating to see so many of the details and paths we'd like to see explored that often aren't in fiction just pass us by.
there is a special place for keeper in my heart and I will always appreciate it for that, but I also mourn what it could've been.
(also: you are not too angry! you have genuine thoughts about this series and they deserve to be heard! we are allowed to have complaints, even about the things we like. we don't have to appreciate every single aspect and we're allowed to be mad at the things we don't like.)
