-Syd's Archive-

If I’m honest this turned out kinda brighter and louder than traditional emo, maybe more scene? But it’s ok bc he still looks so cool <3

So I went out of my way to fetch a copy of the short story (I used to have a physical copy but it's lost. Eh. It was in French anyways) because I lowkey want to give you like my thoughts on a line level. I hope you're chill with that anon.

Don’t talk to anybody. Don’t listen to anybody. Don’t make friends.

This is just a silly nitpick but it's hilarious to me that Tam pretends like he made up these rules to survive Exilium when they are quite literally. The main Exilium rules. The Boobrie Dude tells Sophie to not do these things too. Once again supports my agenda that Tam is actually a rule-abidding citizen rather than some riotous, trouble-making punk (the mischaracterisation never ends).

Tam studied his tiny, stuffy room, smirking at the ridiculous touches someone had added—as if they thought he’d look at the embroidered pillows and the jeweled moon jars and think, Oh, I guess I’m not a prisoner, because they gave me a mirrored tray with… Is that a sparkly cat statue?

Fun fact I used to be OBSESSED with the theory that this room was Umber's old bedroom when she was still, well, alive. Honestly if it weren't for Stellarlune's insistence with Rayni calling it her cat statue, I would still be on this agenda. Sometimes I find myself still believing that it's Umber's bedroom BECAUSE IT MAKES THE MOST SENSE. Glimmer is supposed to live in this remote hideout which is why she has no interaction with the other Neverseen (allegedly) but if this was her bedroom then she's probably near Gethen and Gisela which contradicts her testimony. Also why would you kick out your residing Flasher when the dead Shade just freed a room.

Her hair was pulled back into this supertight bun that looked like it had to be giving her a headache, and the skin on her face had this weird, stretched look to it. It almost looked like it hurt when she moved her mouth.

Other nitpick but I hate that beauty is so strongly associated with morality in Keeper. Most of the Neverseen have faced disfigurement of some kind or have features that would be considered less conventionally attractive: Gethen, Gisela, Brant, Alvar, Umber, Vespera. Honestly wouldn't be surprised if Ruy truly is "ugly" under his hood because this is Shannon we are talking about and she clearly thinks that only evil people deserve scars. This is why I am so fucking glad that artists in the fandom disreguarded Shannon's statement that Biana doesn't have any facial scars and go out of their way to give her some.

“I know how to deal with stubborn, snarky boys,” Lady Gisela told him.

Snarky is the worst word ever why does Shannon keep using it so much- anyways what I wanna say is. Tam and Keefe are not similar. Tam is not stubborn he is brave and resilient those aren't the same things and I'm sick of Shannon mischaracterising my boy every chance she gets because she needs him to "parallel" Keefe. You can keep shoving him into Keefe's parallel but it won't change the fact that a square and a circle aren't the same shapes.

“You should be. Now come on. Gethen’s waiting.” Tam’s stomach dropped. “Gethen?” “Our Telepath.” Lady Gisela’s smile stretched wider. “He’s very much looking forward to spending the day with you.”

I cannot grasp why Gisela had to tell Tam that Gethen is their Telepath. He knows. We also knows. She knows that we all knows. This is Maid & Butler dialogue (i.e. dialogue that could start with "As you know...")

“You don’t talk much, do you?” When he still didn’t respond, she sighed—then leaned closer and whispered, “Gethen’s mad at you.”

I can assure everyone that Gethen is not mad at Tam. Gethen probably doesn't care. Anyways. This is the best short story because it has so many Gethen mentions and seeing his name brings me joys.

“I seriously don’t know how you can make any sense out of that journal,” Glimmer said, taking the seat across from Tam and plopping a book about light theory down on the study’s table. “Shades are weird.”

Okay I'm just starting to realise how much of Glimmer's testimony in Stellarlune this short story directly disputes. Here she is said to read a book about "light theory" even though the Neverseen were training her specifically to be a physician. Glimmer is a liar theory will never die.

Tam kept his eyes on Umber’s precise writing.

Loud incorrect buzzer. Umber doesn't have precise writing I refute this.

“I heard you crying last night,” Glimmer added, her voice softening in a way that reminded him of his sister. And it made him break his rule and talk.

Fun fact, this used to be fuel for my "Gethen implanted false memories of Glimmer in Tam's brain to get him to trust her more easily, the same way he would've implanted false memories of Trix in Glimmer's brain to get her to trust him more easily" theory. Like it feels so fake that Glimmer speaks in a way that reminds him of Linh, and that it was the thing that instantly made him trust her. Tam is not like that.

Glimmer shrugged, picking up the tiny cat statue from his bedside table and trailing her finger along its curved tail. “It gets lonely here.”

I swear on all the gods that this is not her cat statue it cannot be stop mentioning the cat statue if it's just a fun little prop it's not hers it's not hers-

Glimmer took the cat statue with her.

It's not hers it's not hers it's not hers it's not hers-

Please don’t let Keefe be there. Please, just ONCE, let Keefe do what someone tells him to do.

Proof that Tam's short story just puts the entirety of Legacy to shame and especially makes Keefe look bad:

So a few thoughts:

First of all, I think this short story has something over the others and it's its brevity. It's a quick, fast-paced and effective read. Brevity is the soul of wits and with the others there's a whole lot of yapping and very little like, progression of any kind. The advantage of Tam's short story is that it's made of multiple vignettes rather than one long, drawn-out scene, and seeing from how effectively they convey the information that Shannon wanted to convey, I really must ask why she didn't make Unraveled a short story like this one instead of. What we got. (Yes I complain about Unraveled. All roads lead to Unraveled).

Unfortunately I am not all that happy with Tam's characterisation. You can see that Shannon fully forgot about who she characterised Tam to be in his first, "faceless" scenes, because here she describes him as "ominious" and low-voiced and "gloomy", and it actually doesn't make much sense because this is presented in the story as Tam being stubborn or whatever when this is actually supposed to be his FACADE. He's supposed to wear this as an armour to make himself scarier than the people around him, he's supposed to be giving them the creeps so no one wants to mess with him.

This short story lacks a lot of interiority compared to those of, say, Fitz or Keefe, but that should be expected of Shannon considering she didn't give much to Linh or Marella either. Still. It's unfortunate that we didn't get much of Tam's internal world, rather focusing on getting straight to the point. This short story might as well have been renamed Glimmer's short story because we learn more about her than we do about Tam. And it's not like there's nothing to learn about Tam, if you ask me Tam had the potential (with Wylie) to be the most interesting character of the series. There's so much you could've talked about in the short story while balancing it with Glimmer's introduction. So yeah.