My thoughts have been positively consumed with this hypothetical elf
Imagine: you are an elf born in the remarkably unremarkable times that most elves are born in. No worries about a black swan or neverseen or anything like that. Everything is positively normal and pleasant.
But to you that is boring.
As all elves do, you must find a career to entertain your eternal life.
You could do something typical, maybe something having to do with your ability, whatever that may be.
But no
You decide to become a candy maker.
Instantly the kids love you. “Mx. Prattles!” They say, “what is your secret to your delicious candy?”
You do not tell them. Your empire grows with the popularity of the fan favorite candy, named after you, of course.
Soon, stores beg of you, “Mx. Prattles, we’ll put your candy in our store, give you a cut of the money.”
But you don’t care about money. You care about fame. The prattles name will extend across all elvin cities, you will be always remembered.
Somewhere along the line the council approaches you with a request to pair your candy with images of creatures, get the young generation caring about conservation. You’ve never had a passion for conservation, but you start making pins nonetheless. Collectibles, get people thinking about you even after they are done eating their candy.
By the time you are 100 you have too many factories to count, so many workers under your thumb. Whether elves realize it or not, you are one of the most famous. Your name echos through the halls of foxfire, screamed by children who see your candy in stores and beg their parents, from the mouths of those of all generations who have your pins.
You have won.
Literally why does no one care about this as much as I do I feel like this
Right?! The elvin world is simultaneously tiny and humongous at the same time.
Foxfire has tons of students and a teacher for every student. Everyone has gym class together.
There’s enough animals for a product to include a pin representing each one and sell loads of products. There’s only a few places that take care of animals.
Cities are huge and filled with people. Only a few hundred (maybe) elves have ever died and there’s only one graveyard.
If there’s so many elves (and other intelligent species) how are they still hidden from humans? But if there’s not that many, why do they have so many different places to live? How is foxfire filled with students, but there’s only two schools. How are there enough teachers to accommodate the entirety of the next generation if, like, everybody isn’t a teacher?
Why are there massive ubiquitous brands? In a non-capitalist society?
I am so confused about everything all the time.
okay, my ramble-y thoughts on this:
there are only a few elven caretakers, but each one has many gnomes working for them. Gnomes only sleep for 10 minutes a day, so they can do a LOT of work. They also seem pretty skilled with medical stuff, so even though we think of Havenfield as being just Grady and Edaline, it really has dozens of highly trained animal caretakers. The Sanctuary probably has even more, since Havenfield mainly focuses on prepping the animals to be moved to the Sanctuary, where they then stay permanently.
As for mentors, they’re part of the nobility, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a fairly desirable job. and elves are immortal, so they can continue being mentors indefinitely.
My theory about the prattles is that it’s specifically endangered animals. Moonlarks, alicorns, etc. Species that they’re actually tracking. Which is why we don’t have billions of pins shaped like bugs.
And the prattles bakery canonically uses gnommish workers, who are insanely efficient, so they could probably manufacture
As for whether the elves are capitalist…even with 5 trillion human dollars, you’re going to run through your money pretty fast if you build houses out of gems. Gems are expensive. If you insist on using them as a building material, you’re going to need a good source of income.
So an alternate theory: Lord Cassius started the prattles company to fund his construction of Candleshade and his pretentious lumenite statue. Keefe won’t tell Sophie his middle name because his middle name is Prattles.
unpopular opinon: the series is better when keefe is absent. lodestar is one of the best kotlc books, and one important thing about it is that it doesn’t overwhelm you with keefe. when he isn’t there, other characters really get a chance to shine, unlike when he is there, and he takes a lot of attention away from characters who actually should get that extra page time.
Because she isgiven traits that should make her interesting and relatable!
Her tendency to overthink and often overwhelming anxiety are the most prominent ones I can think of, but also her analysis skills and low self-confidence.
And she isn’t devoid of character! However, she is given traits that give her the unfortunate “I’m not like other girls” vibe. One of the main culprits is her relationship with wearing dresses and fancy attire.
Two ways to handle Sophie’s aversion to dresses/fancy clothes (according to me, a teen girl):
1) She only wears fancy clothes to fit in with elven society and begins wearing pants/more simple clothing as the series goes on to show how she’s standing against elven society. This sort of happened in Flashbackwith her new, simple combat attire, but it seems to have been dropped since.
2) Her aversion to dresses was a result of human internalized misogyny and low confidence and she works through it throughout the series. She grows to appreciate the style and becomes confident in wearing it and comfortable in her own femininity.
and neither seems to be happening? Is just treated as, “Sophie’s not like other girls, she doesn’t like dresses but she’s doing it anyways to appease elven society and she doesn’t like the attention but also she wants Fitz/Keefe to look at her but also she’s oblivious to their advances” and it’s just. No.
please no.
Because she isn’t exactly oblivious to their romantic interest in her, but she does for the most part ignore it. I think part of it comes from her low self-confidence, stemming from her childhood as an outcast, but she also seems to be actively ignoring their advances. It’s safer to keep them as friends for the moment, to keep them a stable part of her life as everything else spirals out of control.
And see, I think this is an interesting and realistic take to a love triangle! But the way other characters perceive Sophie and label her as “oblivious” is very unfortunate. It sort of pushes her into a box of the “cute, innocent, oblivious girl” and denies readers introspection into Sophie’s actual thought process.
Another thing I wanted to address, that I unfortunately can’t speak on to great extent, is Sophie’s habit of ripping out her eyelashes. This seems to be some form of trichotillomania, a hair-pulling mental disorder which involves recurrent, irresistible urges to pull out hair. The fact that this is portrayed as a quirky character trait, and not the serious issue it is, seems unfortunate to me. Again, I don’t suffer from trich, so I’m not sure what the opinion of someone who has trich would be, but I wanted to point it out.
I know there was more I wanted to discuss that I can’t currently remember. Just. There are a lot of different factors combined that make Sophie a rather dull character to me, when she had the potential to really stand out as a protagonist.
Okay, I wrote this like two years ago, so sorry if any of this is outdated, but some ~Sophie analysis~ for the remaining keeper fans :P
