stria sixteen, she/her. i switch between hating on keefe and loving on aldella. header by @crescentpaws (thank you max) and pfp by @sunflowers-and-scales (eating your art)
i follow and ask from @fix-me-sixteen. my official (fake) birthday is 04/04/04 at 4 am.
some random stuff:
anything not kotlc-related will be tagged #not cawtulk, so it doesn't end up in the main tag. so if you don't want to see any not-kotlc-related posts from me (which there are very few of, i'll just say, this is very much a kotlc blog), that's probably a tag you'd wanna block or something
feel free to shoot me a dm about literally anything, ever, at any time, ever (dms to the main are fine, too). you don't have to follow me or be mutuals or anything. i'm open to being friends with people i don't follow or who don't follow me. just don't be a rancid bigot and we're good :)
there's definitely more to say. updates coming soon or something
posts that i want to be able to find on short notice (honestly this is more for me than anyone else) (i update this frequently):
anti-keefe long posts:
keefe rant part one (keeper through unlocked extras)
(ask) excerpt of keefe rant part two (keefe and fitz in the healing center scene) (will take this down once full part two is up) and another excerpt from part two
the infantilization argument (explained properly)
(ask) the extortion argument
a list of things i don't like about keefe (not the point of the post, but whatever)
(response) thoughts on keefe's supposed gray morality and comparison to dex
(response) thoughts on the relationship between keefe's trauma and actions and some sokeefe stuff
(response) a comparison of keefe to sophie, and why i think people let keefe's mistakes go while calling the same things out in sophie
(ask) how i would write sophie rejecting keefe
(ask) sokeefe, from a writing standpoint, reeks of insecurity (plus a fun headcanon) and more thoughts on chapter 42
(ask) i think keefe's arc is incredibly poorly written, to the point where it's practically nonexistent
i ramble about aldella (ship and non ship stuff):
t4t aldella
another t4t aldella, starring their transitions
age gap musings
slightly-toxic!aldella
their strangely idealistic marriage and secrets
(ask) obsessions by marina and the diamonds as an aldella song
(response) debunking some common anti alden arguments
they're scared to be alone
miscellaneous:
(ask) how i would rewrite the series
(ask) ocd!fitz
(ask) why i don't like legacy
(ask) keefe headcanons
(ask) assorted vacker thoughts
(ask) what if sophie and fitz died while keefe and fitz were still not okay?
(ask) extensive sophie thoughts
(ask) why i don't like dex
(response) why i hate the elwin is sophie's biological father theory
gethen is koralie's kid and glimmer is keefe's twin sister theories explained (disproven)
breaking news: tumblr user crescentpaws, whose entire blog is dedicated to repeatedly analyzing and drawing fintan and fintante, has revealed that he doesn't actually know what fintante is
every day i remember that max admitted he doesn’t know what fintante is. such a shame. i’m sure he’d have a lot to say about them . . . if he knew they existed . . .
hello anon! glad we’re going on this wonderful journey together lol. oralina is the ship between oralie and alina and its appeal lies in these ten reasons, at least for me:
it’s not koralie
it’s not koralie
it’s not koralie
it’s not koralie
it presents the two characters involved, oralie and alina, as equally morally dubious and equally lacking in ethics, which subverts the popular narrative that oralie is a “good” councillor and alina is a “bad” councillor. both the presentation of oralie as a “better” councillor and alina as a “worse” councillor are rooted in misogyny and both are also inaccurate to a significant extent, and shipping them implies they are on the same playing field with regards to morality, which, in my opinion, they are
kenric is an asshole toward oralie and not even in a cool, fun way, but instead in a boring, uncool “empaths can’t handle anything let me just not let you do anything and take away your agency too” way, which is thinly veiled misogyny by the narrative seeing as how keefe, a notorious empath, is able to handle things fine apparently. we are supposed to see this as romantic and also enemies to lovers, which it’s not. god i hate koralie. oralie’s entire canon character revolves around this man as if he doesn’t have the personality of a misogynistic piece of wet cardboard, which oralina would fix
it goes against the matchmaking propaganda of “telepaths x empaths forever!!!!” which koralie falls into, therefore pushing the “matchmaking bad!!!!” angle that this story so desperately needs to get back. ew koralie. also it’s wlw which means it just inherently subverts matchmaking (lmfao look at me making a case for this ship as if shannon will actually give it the time of day)
they have the potential to be a proper enemies to lovers, unlike koralie (ew koralie) which is half baked and bad. they also both suck the entire time because they are councillors <\3 ew councillors
they would be so toxic and bad <3 who doesn‘t love a good toxic and bad ship am i right or am i right
alina would not gatekeep shit from oralie in the name of “protecting her fragile little empath mind” because alina does not gaf about oralie. or so she thinks. or something. enemies to lovers except it’s equally toxic in both directions the whole time etcetera etcetera
random question what is your craziest crack theory
fintante shippers look away. i’m being so serious rn i don’t want to traumatize you
okay so when i was like fourteen it occurred to me that fintan and bronte might be the same person and that “inflicting” was just “bronte” manipulating heat inside someone’s body is such a subtle way that it felt as if feelings were being altered (????). keep in mind this was never a serious theory and always very much a crack theory but it was funny to me. the idea ig was that fintan needed an inside man on the council, so he became the inside man himself to keep tabs on things. yes this would mean forkle, thinking he was making sophie an “inflictor” like “bronte”, instead made her a pyrokinetic completely on accident but fourteen-year-old me did not think that far quite honestly
okay i did not have this out on time for. reasons. so i am releasing an excerpt in the name of proving this is actually a thing. crumbs for my loyal fans:
i’ve decided that for every day that i’m late to posting this rant, i will release one excerpt. sorry everybody, i’m taking far longer to edit this than i ever imagined. here’s today’s:
we are trying so hard to get this under ninety pages and honestly? it’s a struggle (hopefully we’ll succeed). live footage of me being manhandled by this monster of a rant as i attempt to get it under control:
okay i did not have this out on time for. reasons. so i am releasing an excerpt in the name of proving this is actually a thing. crumbs for my loyal fans:
i’ve decided that for every day that i’m late to posting this rant, i will release one excerpt. sorry everybody, i’m taking far longer to edit this than i ever imagined. here’s today’s:
we are trying so hard to get this under ninety pages and honestly? it’s a struggle (hopefully we’ll succeed). live footage of me being manhandled by this monster of a rant as i attempt to get it under control:
okay i did not have this out on time for. reasons. so i am releasing an excerpt in the name of proving this is actually a thing. crumbs for my loyal fans:
i’ve decided that for every day that i’m late to posting this rant, i will release one excerpt. sorry everybody, i’m taking far longer to edit this than i ever imagined. here’s today’s:
every day i remember that shannon made keefe the ultimate pity partier and somewhere along the line she realized that and her solution to this particular conundrum was to just have keefe verbally express how much he hates pity. like the call is coming from inside the house hello?
okay i did not have this out on time for. reasons. so i am releasing an excerpt in the name of proving this is actually a thing. crumbs for my loyal fans:
i’ve decided that for every day that i’m late to posting this rant, i will release one excerpt. sorry everybody, i’m taking far longer to edit this than i ever imagined. here’s today’s:
I will say, I agree with most of your Alden defense post (I do also think that there is a certain level of Alden unlearning his parenting/generational trauma, just due to the characterization of the Vackers, but not in the "he's abusive" way more the "cut him slack either way, my man doesn't know how tf to even good-dad in the first place, and he's doing pretty damn good," and would love to hear your opinion on it), I do disagree that Fitz was a loner. He, throughout the series constantly tries to form bonds with people. They just write him off due to him being a Vacker (Dex), because he's "above them" and "would never care about someone like me" (Sophie), and just idfk what Keefe was doing. Him and Sophie just suck as friends.
I honestly think the reason he wasn't bummed was because it chased off the people who only wanted to befriend him because he was a Vacker and wanted him to be near them for social standing and nothing else (aka didn't actually give 2 fucks about him).
He actually seems really lonely in canon to me, especially from the other POVs we get (that aren't Sophie and Keefe, because both of them see Fitz as a person who has to be prefect 24/7 then react like hes a demon at any other point in time for being a human with mental health issues). Especially when we look at his attempts to befriend Lihn, Tam, Dex, Marella, Ro (yes, Ro, genuinely this kid has tried with every single character). He's lonely, he's canonically disabled (and I would bet money on being neurodivergent and queer, because wtf are his interactions with other male characters and that confession scene) in a society that protizes upholding the "prefect race" and "gentic purity" through government breeding programs (eugenics. I have a few posts about this, long story) with a DEEPLY creepy older brother (genuinely why did Shannon write every just being fine with 27 year old Alvar immediately rooming with 14 year old keefe, after saying he didn't want to sleep with Fitz- after Fitz has only known Keefe for 2 years?)
idk, couldn't find any posts of yours about Fitz and was curious about your opinions!
-- @thesamsungsmartrefrigerator (side blog so i couldnt directly ask :( either way your blogs chill)
awwww that’s very sweet . . . and helloooo there . . .
ooh, i see you saw that post! i believe alden is the best dad in the series. like i think he has several flaws outside of being a dad, but i think he’s a fantastic father. and i also think he was not raised in a good household, due to his being a vacker. there’s no evidence to support that but i have headcanons. lol
okay i actually see what you’re saying with the fitz is not a loner thing. what i meant when i said that in the defense post is that he didn’t seem to care that he didn’t have many friends besides keefe. i do think he would try to form bonds with people, as you said, if he believed they were actually worth it to him (not using him for his status). however i do disagree that he tried to really be sophie’s friend in book one, like it seems like he was primarily motivated by alden’s encouragement at first and not intrinsically motivated to be her friend. this is a pretty clear point in the first book. so i do reason that there must be a reason for that. maybe he was just apathetic toward sophie. it’s pretty unclear what it was but. yeah. you would think this would come up during cognate training but instead we get the useless piece of information that he wants to go to ravagog instead
keefe was almost certainly “using” (i use the term extremely loosely; i don’t think keefe was doing this like. meanly) fitz to get closer to alden. a bit similar to what biana’s fear was? of like girls using her to get closer to fitz. canonically the order of events was: keefe gets second on his midterms -> cassius yells at keefe/alden tells keefe he’s proud of him -> the fight with cassius -> alden tells fitz to befriend keefe -> fitz and keefe become friends in semester two. i think it’s pretty clear that if we fill in the gaps, it becomes obvious that keefe had a desperation to have alden as his father so at the first sign his son wanted to be his friend, he jumped at it. he was not after fitz, he was after alden. i do agree he is an awful friend to fitz in the current timeline. sophie was not a bad friend to fitz until stellarlune, though i do think she was a bad girlfriend to fitz. istg stellarlune sophie isn’t even real bro
oh fitz is definitely lonely in canon. nobody is choosing him first. sophie and keefe will choose each other over him, it seems like biana, dex, and tam are closer to each other than they are to him, stina, maruca, marella, and linh are their own little gang, and wylie seems to be close to linh and linh’s gang. then there’s jensi. who’s jensi again?
completely unrelated i know wylie is older than the rest of the group because shannon needed him to really know prentice before he was exiled but that decision genuinely annoys me every day. wylie should have been in the same age category as the rest of the gang. aged down wylie and fitz should have been besties. to have wylie know prentice just push back when he was exiled? instead of being exiled twelve years ago it could have just been five or six years ago. that would change almost nothing of the canon story, and would put wylie in the same age bracket as the rest of the gang. sorry i am just kind of annoyed with it because wylie feels like he falls a tad too close to the black big brother trope
don’t even talk about sophie’s and keefe’s povs of fitz to me like what did he do to you . . . the exile thing is blown completely out of proportion. it was a bad action that fitz shouldn’t have done, but he apologized and atoned. why is he still apologizing and atoning in stellarlune this is a joke
i don’t understand why sophie and keefe are always going on about how perfect fitz is because like. they literally know about his temper they know he’s not perfect. this is a thing that they know. does fitz have a nasty temper or is he perfect. which is it, guys
does he really try to befriend tam, dex, and marella? linh is a bit ambiguous, but i wouldn’t really argue he tries with those three. with tam it seems like he just falls in with a group that tam is also in. dex is the one that makes the effort to befriend him, not the other way around, but i see your point. i genuinely. genuinely. cannot remember a single time where he attempts to befriend marella and i know canon very intimately. so i do think he’s a loner in the sense that he doesn’t really seem to like. know? how to actually make friends. this is not a skill he possesses. maybe that’s why he seemed so apathetic toward sophie in the first book. maybe he just didn’t know how to befriend her, so he didn’t try without alden’s encouragement
you will never convince me he tried to befriend ro. nope. nope. nope. nope. he did not try that. sorry hard disagree with that one. and who can blame him? ro was basically attacking him out the gate without knowing anything about him
guys i’m telling you he has ocd. i actually have an oc with ocd that is partly inspired by fitz. buy into my propaganda now
idk what you mean by his interactions with other male characters and the confession scene being evidence of his neurodivergence and queerness i just always saw him as having ocd personally
this is a pretty unpopular opinion on tumblr i think but i don’t think legacy fitz was ooc. i think legacy fitz was perfectly ic. with the running away to join the black swan thing, that happened because he was literally able to see, right in front of his face, the danger the council was posing. he is not able to do the same with matchmaking (no, being friends with dex does not count). he’s a vacker he is not looking to be a bad match under any circumstances, especially considering the alvar debacle. his desperation for sophie to be matchable again is understandable. his anger at her for letting alvar go is understandable. he’s actually very patient in legacy despite sophie being a bad girlfriend (istg if shannon magically makes sophie a good girlfriend in elysian it will be so over for me. make her a bad girlfriend shannon. do it. come on) (to be clear i like pre-stellarlune sophie and i like that she was a bad girlfriend i just wish she paid a bit more narrative penance for it)
ah, yes, the elves’ famous eugenics system. this is why a perfect kotlc rewrite would end with fedex canon . . . unfortunately in the current canon we have that is. not happening. and frankly i wouldn’t even want it to. people would just dogpile on fitz more and be homophobic toward him. he’s already a hated character
am i the only one that thinks it’s. genuinely fine. for alvar to room with keefe. like shannon’s thinking was clearly just “we must have alvar indoctrinate keefe during the one (1) night they spent sleeping in the same room” and also “i must set up how much alvar hates fitz”. like idk maybe it’s just me but i . . . think that’s fine? saying this as someone who hates alvar btw . . . like ig i can see how you may read that as creepy, since keefe does not know alvar that well in canon before unraveled, regardless of what shannon wants us to believe, but it’s not like they were sleeping in the same bed or anything? is rooming with someone who’s an adult as a kid really that bad in and of itself? idk imo not really but maybe i am just not correct
i have plenty of posts about fitz, they should all be under #fitz vacker or #kotlc fitz on my blog lol
