u/LemonKindly6715

I've had this feeling for a while but like... where did all the themes of societal change go? I swear it was such a big part of the earlier books that Sophie was here to confront the parts of society that no other elves could see, but that's just been getting less and less relevant.

The Vacker legacy wasn't some huge injustice, it was just a mildly shady deal that didn't even hurt anyone until the Neverseen interfered. The Council's failures? The Council is no longer relevant - and Sophie's working with them now anyway. The business with humans only mattered in books 1 and 6. We've gotten some stuff about Talentless mistreatment, at least, and a couple of scraps about matchmaking, but... like, it's not morally wrong for Fitz to want to date someone who's on his list; it would be wrong if he started looking down on people who didn't.

But the biggest example is with the Black Swan and the Neverseen. The Neverseen's goals are just "take over" and the Black Swan's goals have devolved into "defeat the Neverseen". Like, really? It doesn't feel like the BS have any actual plan for improving society. Or any plans in general. They just toss it over to Sophie and then sit back to do nothing. Meanwhile, the Neverseen aren't inherently interesting just because they're evil and power-hungry. It's about what they want to do with the world, and we don't really get to see that (except from maybe Brant. Who's dead. And Vespera. Who's also dead.)

(side note, evil is generally pretty banal as a concept, but Ruy, Trix, Umber and Gethen are all powerful enough to be in the nobility if they wanted to. Gisela was a noble. There were easier routes to power than hiding in caves with horrible food. What made them decide to tear down the world? What do they want to replace it with?)

Yeah, I know the series isn't finished yet, but this isn't the feeling we should be getting 9/10(?) books in. It just feels like the concept of societal change and standing against authority wasn't well-handled. It's like a superhero movie that doesn't go any deeper than good guys vs bad guys, which wouldn't be a problem except that it didn't use to be that way.

Disclaimer: This is not a hate post, and Fitz is not the only character with this problem.

A lot of people credit Fitz as one of the best-written and most realistic characters in KOTLC. Because he's a teenager with problems, who can struggle to maintain a relationship even if he likes the other person (Sophie for romantic, Biana for familial). And you know what, that's fair. Most of the gang gets almost zero time to shine, so it's hard to say he's not one of the better handled ones.

However.

If we're going for realism and good character writing, why does Fitz never actually change?

He acts essentially the same to his father's "death" in book 2 as he does during the breakup in book 8 - the only difference is that he takes a little longer to get to that point, which you can chalk up to him being romantically interested in Sophie now. You would expect that after he said all those things to the girl who healed his dad's mind, he would be more careful going forward, because if Sophie had done what he said and stayed away, he wouldn't have a father.

Now you could say "teens don't always learn their lesson quickly, that's being realistic". But not only is Fitz an unusual teen in unusual circumstances, he's not JUST a teen. He's also a character in a story. People grow or at least change, especially when they're facing huge events like almost dying or being betrayed by a family member. And as a character, having a flaw in itself is not enough to make you "good".

Especially because said flaw is pretty much the only thing that the author seems interested in giving him.

He doesn't actually have an arc centred around his anger. He doesn't react in new and interesting ways to this or that character/plot point. If he's in boyfriend material mode, he'll be chill in a rather generic, background-character-esque way. If he's in angry guy mode, he'll be disagreeable. You can sort 99% of his interactions into one of these two boxes. Sure, there's the Alvar business, but we never really get into why he took the betrayal so hard. Was he Fitz's role model? Was he Biana's role model, so Fitz hates him for hurting her so badly?

The author really needs to give him more. If he's the team strategist, let him do that! Or if he's trying to be a better big brother to Biana than Alvar was to him, give him the space for it! Or really dive into the burden of his family's reputation! He just doesn't get any of that, you know? It's kind of depressing comparing him to the other love triangle members.

Oh and one more thing, he really got shafted in terms of power scaling. Sophie basically never needs him except when the author decides her unstoppable telepathy suddenly can't find a memory implanted in a non-Telepath baby's brain as an excuse to sink the Fitzphie ship. Bro didn't even bring a weapon to Elysian, he had to yoink Sandor's 💀 justice for this man

Was anyone else excited for Stina and Sophie's enemies-to-begrudging-friends arc? Honestly Stina in book 8 ended up better off than some of the main cast because she had a unique emotional role - "keeping Sophie in line", as she said, or more accurately being unafraid to call Sophie out.

Then book 9 rolled around, and boom. All that development just vanished. Almost none of her arguments in that book even made sense (including such gems as "Sophie why don't you have a plan???" into "You don't get to order me around!!"; "Now you've made the murder terrorists mad at us!"; and of course "You mean you DON'T have a plan to handle a diplomatic crisis and potential war with the trolls?? Way to go Foster!")

It feels like she was changed so Sophie would have someone criticising her (maybe to fight off the Mary Sue allegations, which is a whole other bag of heads) - because of course we can't have her actual friends get mad at her.

I mean, think about it. How often does anyone (besides Sophie) get genuinely angry at a friend without being portrayed as being wrong? There was Keefe in book 4, and... that's kind of it, isn't it? The whole gang showed up about the warehouse fire, but Stina and maybe Fitz were the only overtly pissed ones there - both of whom are portrayed as difficult and unreasonable for their anger almost everywhere else.

And no, this isn't just Sophie's POV being biased, because Dex, Biana, Linh, Marella and Maruca are (presumably) also mad in that scene, but they barely have any angry reactions. Biana looks a little haughty. Dex won't meet her eyes. If it was Sophie having a god complex or whatever, those would be blown out of proportion as well.

It's just odd. Having arguments is a natural and normal part of relationships, especially as teenagers. When it seems like all the dissenters are wrong and the "good" friends react with the mildest possible annoyance that they quickly apologise for (Biana and Dex in particular), it makes Sophie's friendships feel weaker and less real.

I have pretty much nothing good to say about her.

In theory, it's great to have a character with a different moral/ethical alignment to everyone else, but 1) we already have too many characters, and 2) she's only ever done a couple of bad things anyway (Tam's forced obedience chains and letting Gisela free), so it's not even that big of a moral shift from the rest of the gang.

On a more subjective note, we already have two sassy female characters in Marella and Maruca (and sort of Stina?) so she's not really adding much in terms of personality. It's like adding another introverted & secretive character when we already have Tam.

(also I hate her for being annoying and functionally replacing my goat Wylie as the group Flasher)

Marella said it best: it's awfully convenient that Glimmer was never around for all the terrorism stuff. Not on the characters' side but on the writing's side. Make her worse, Messenger! Make it more shocking when Sophie decides to work with her after everything she's done!

I'm the first person to advocate for putting characters through hell over and over again. I love seeing them on the verge of breaking down, surviving by the skin of their teeth, unable to catch more than 4h of sleep - all that good stuff.

With all that said, though... the way Keefe's parental issues are handled is only hurting his character and the overall story.

We knew basically everything about him by the end of book 4. We'd already seen all his layers, Sophie described them outright - funny haha bad boy, hurt scared boy, and broken kid determined to fix things. And every single interaction he has had since then has been fixed around those same layers.

In other words, he hasn't changed at all, save for becoming slightly less reckless. His weekly traumatic reveal about Gisela/Cassius/stellarlune are cool, and they make it look like he's getting more complex or fleshed out, but really each one is as shallow as all the other ones since book 4, and maybe a few in book 5. They don't show us a new side of him. They never change his view of things. They don't change how he interacts with others.

I'm not saying he should learn his lesson about recklessness (though he should), or that we should abandon those parts of his character. But if we could stop piling on trauma after trauma and use his huge amounts of page time to let him grow, it would improve him by a LOT.

Keefe is far from the only character who suffers from a lack of development. It's just that his situation is unique.

I've been thinking about this recently. Are the beauty standards for elves literally just "be slim and glamourous and wear suits/gowns"?

I don't think we've met a single female elf who isn't the exact same kind of slim, or a male elf who's anything besides moderately hunky. The most variation we ever get is height (Marella's short, Stina's tall) and hair or skin colour. Okay, actually, there's Sir Caton in book 1 who's apparently super muscly, but that's about it.

Could this just be a slip-up on the author's side? I know the elves aren't a perfect society, but they don't strike me as the type to care about different body types, the same way they don't care about skin colour. They're all perfectly healthy, sure, but there are a lot of different ways you can look while still being healthy. I'd imagine that some of them would have different tastes, and of course the matchmakers are supposed to keep genes of every kind fresh. So what gives?

I don't think this is a hot take, but Tam HAS to be the best written character in the cast.

He's almost the only one besides Sophie who gets a multifaceted character trait: his love for Linh. I mean, Sophie said it herself in book 8: he'd do anything for her, which is really kind and noble - but she doesn't know how far he'll go to protect her. It's not a wholly negative quality, but it's also not wholly positive.

But also. I am so grateful to this guy for his eternal dedication to moving the plot forward.

How many things has he caught that no one else had? It's gotta be at least 10. Literally every time someone doesn't listen to him, they end up regretting it. He and Biana are really out here carrying the Black Swan's entire quantity of braincells. Thank you for your service Tam. Please continue to advance the plot in book ten.

I'm not pissed because Marella has negative character traits or says dumb stuff. Is it understandable for her to resent Sophie for "abandoning" her in book 3? Well, she was a 13 year old going through stuff at home, so yeah.

But dear Lord, the stuff this girl says afterward.

"Why didn't you invite me to run away with you?" after you literally told her she's too dangerous and everyone who hangs around with her will die.

"Oh Sophie how dare you forget me" every time, like YOU PUBLICLY HUMILIATED HER, what did you expect to happen??

After Sophie almost dies and is in the ICU for weeks Marella doesn't call or visit once. Then she turns around and has the audacity to say "you never told me about battle training, don't you care?" Girl, don't you??? Sophie had basically NO HAND BONES for WEEKS and you couldn't spare 5 minutes of your day to check on her???

And the worst part is that the story acts like she's right to be mad. Sophie's out here apologising like she's the one who broke off their friendship. Hello?? Stop telling her you'll be there for her more often! You already tried to help and she pushed you away!!

All I'll say is thank GOD Sophie grew a spine in book 9 and stopped acting guilty about it.

I know the obvious answer is the unlimited birth fund, but let's get creative. What little annoyances or problems would a Lost Cities item solve in your life?

Personally, I'd just want a branch of the Pures (the trees that purify air) to carry around in my pocket. There's a lot of old diesel buses and trucks where I live that quite literally spew black smoke in your face when you're walking. Also, I hate having to walk behind people who are smoking/vaping so a free purifier would stop me from crashing out...

Is anyone else a little tired of EVERYTHING being decreed by fate and the ordained declaration of StarClan?

For starters, half of them literally spoil the endings of their arcs. You're telling me three must become four to stand against the darkness? Gee, I wonder what's going to happen in the rest of OOTS. It makes me wonder if these guys even have free will - like, what would have happened if Alderheart never went to find SkyClan? Would everything else not happen? If so, why didn't StarClan just say "hey, don't go there, and if you do, don't trust this Darktail guy..." and save everyone a lot of trouble?

Also... like... the characters will get a prophecy foretelling death and destruction, and proceed to do basically nothing for pages or even entire books (save for whatever plot-mandated twist or cliffhanger happens in the meantime). It's a coinflip whether they even tell anyone else about the possible END OF THE CLANS (for real this time, we mean it!)

I don't know. Can we have an arc that doesn't tell us who the important character is and how it's going to end? It doesn't actually help the tension of the story.

A lot of people have talked about how the Sanctuary is a very shaky concept. There are a lot of reasons:

• Many animals are obligate carnivores, i.e. they can ONLY source certain nutrients from meat. A T-rex like Verdi can't just go vegan and would likely be dead of malnutrition by now.
• It's a rather simplistic treatment of extinction. Some species evolve into other ones, would the elves count that as an extinction? Do they have the ancestors of humans somewhere in the Sanctuary?
• Um. Timeline issues... yeah it's the dinosaur thing. I don't even know where to start with the dinosaur thing.
• As far as we've seen, the Sanctuary is more of a zoo than an animal reserve. Animals don't get whatever biome or ecosystem they're best suited to.

So how can we improve it?

What if the elves only stepped in when they could prove an extinction was unnatural, i.e. interference from sapient species? This would include a lot of ancient megafauna like giant sloths, who were the earliest victims of human-influenced extinctions. And for more fantastical beasts, the ogres or dwarves or whoever were overhunting them. If you really need dinosaurs, say there was a surviving underground colony being culled by trolls. Idk.

Then the Sanctuary becomes a place where the elves try to perfectly reconstruct the ecosystems of these species, instead of whatever it is right now.