#askks

"kingdom of lumenaria" was definitely written by ai. who edits these. i know that has zilch to do with the actual excerpt but i need to say it

keefe snuggling the tree was cute. strieefe shippers this is not a safe space for you

he's obviously in a forest somewhere, which is interesting to me. i guess i didn't imagine him living rogue. i envisioned him being in the forbidden cities the entire time. maybe not having the best time of it, but i didn't expect him to be living off the land, as they say. it just doesn't fit kotlc's vibe. so that was interesting. whether i like or don't like that is something i'll only be able to say with more context, but it's different for sure

my first thought when he saw the animal prints was that this was the scene where he meets the fox, but on a reread i saw that he said the prints "did not look [] tiny", and fox prints are relatively tiny. he might've seen a bear instead

the fact that he's super, super cold but does not once think about regulating his body temperature, something he himself said was incredibly useful in flashback, points to the fact that he's too physically or mentally drained to use it or even think about using it. so i'm curious about whatever scene came directly before this

he does think about levitation, though. so. clearly he has enough energy for that

"otherwise he'd go splat!" was the second worst line in this excerpt. the second i saw it i went. ah. why is that exclamation point there . . .

he seems to be worried about people finding him, which to me seems like a worry he'd only have toward the beginning of the book. i'd wager that this scene happens during the days he spends back-to-back light-leaping, as mentioned in stellarlune

i need dex to make keefe a panic switch. i need it to be teal. for. reasons

"he should be totally untraceable" keep believing that buddy

keefe pouring energy into trying to block an unblockable person from getting into his head is. weird. to me. you see him try to block her and then immediately after you get a monologue about how she's unblockable. weird waste of words, if you ask me

oh, boy, here comes the sokeefe

i thought it wouldn't be bad because for a while all he talks about is how he likes speaking to her telepathically. so i was like. oh, okay, i can handle this. this is cute. i get why this is the scene the marketing pushed. it gives fans a crumb of the story, while also remaining so vague about the actual plot that it won't spoil anything major

but then he started talking about the letter . . . it all goes downhill from there

i have a pet peeve for the way everyone around sophie claims she's "oblivious", which i don't believe to be the case at all. i genuinely don't think she's oblivious, which i've talked about. and even if it was a valid argument, i hate that it gets brought up so. much. and almost always feels like it's shaming sophie. can we leave it alone. so this point i was rolling my eyes

keefe thinking about sophie peeing through her leggings was! not! it! thank you, shannon! i did not! need that! this was the worst line in the excerpt. but also i wasn't surprised. idk what you all expected from keefe "king of cringy potty humor" sencen

speaking of middle names. i did briefly wonder before reading this excerpt whether the revelation would be made in it, because it isn't really plot-relevant (unless it is? idk) but also enough of a revelation to get people talking and hyped. but i was wrong

the weird sophitz bashing was. sigh. i've talked about this before, but jealousy isn't a character flaw to me, it's only the actions a character takes because of their jealousy that determines whether or not it's a character flaw. so this isn't really something that's objectively wrong with keefe, but it does grate on me all the same

it's annoying to me that keefe is convinced fitz is the one in the wrong and the reason sophitz broke down, though. i've talked about this before, but i would put roughly 90% of the blame of sophitz falling apart on sophie. it was mostly her fault. so the fact that keefe thinks that fitz needs to do all the groveling, when, realistically speaking, sophie should have to do a shit ton of it too, makes me go. sigh. typical keefe

i don't like keefe's mental image of sophie. i'll have more thoughts about this in the part two rant, but it feels incredibly dumbed down and feels like he sees her as a lot less mature and strong than she really is, and makes her seem more weak and silly. fin touches on that a little bit in this post, if you want more details. but the weirdly infantilized mental image of sophie continues in this excerpt. you can see that when he pictures fitz and sophie kissing, she bites her lip and idk that feels incredibly stereotypically like. adorable and soft and immature and cute. if that makes sense

the monologue about how sophie deserved to choose whoever she wanted without keefe shoving himself into her face is another symptom of shannon's immense capacity to show and not tell how sweet and perfect keefe is. i talked about this a lot in my rant, but keefe's actions portray him as pretty much the exact opposite of what he says here. he puts down fitz, he bolsters his own relationship with sophie, he assumes sophie will end up with him one day anyway, and so on. so to see that continue here, and to know that sokeefe stans will undoubtedly use this as evidence to continue to be delusional about their favorite guy, was. not fun for me

"he understood foster's feelings even better than she did" had me banging my head into the wall. tied with the peeing line for worst line in the excerpt. i hate this. it's inherently invalidating, and i despise the head-heart theory as a concept in general. probably this also ties into my hatred for sophie's "obliviousness"; i just don't like this idea that it's possible to know someone's emotions better than. they know their own emotions. to even say that is something that's just supremely, immensely invalidating, in and of itself. this post, also by fin, comes to mind. he explains it much better than i am right now. but anyway. thanks for taking sophie's agency to know what she's feeling away from her i guess. sure. make keefe the expert on sophie. this will end well

and then he continues to monologue about sophitz. which is like. i get he's jealous. but this is over the top

the line about how he hadn't been able to hang out with humans for long before he snapped intrigues me. maybe that's the scene before this one. idk