But like. what do you mean by SA? when did that happen?

Nightfall. when they 'kissed' . i don't think SM ever thought of that

I mean. they're kids? That's the kind of thing that I feel like would probably happen in real life and would only really cause awkwardness

guys that is not sa 😭 immediately afterwards dex opens his eyes and he's not traumatized by it, he's just let down. villanizing a 16 yo is insane because let's be so fr, in real life teenagers do awkward things and viewing them with a black/white lens just hurts everyone. obviously shannon did not write sophie with the intent of sa and comparing sophie to actual sa-ers is so minimizing and counterproductive.

and suddenly everyone's relationship has to have them ask for permission before holding the other's hand otherwise it's toxic or sa?? by these standards everytime someone in a book series kissed someone without asking beforehand then it's sa which..it's not. even in real life, people don't go "can i kiss you" "yes" and so on - not doing so does Not make it sa.

the part in neverseen where keefe pushed sophie against a wall - is that sa? no, but if we use the same definition it could be considered that. ifl people are trying to get righteous with the legal definitions of sa so let's use critical thinking skills!! bc! awkward kisses happen! every romantic moment does not have perfect "consent" by these standards! this does not make it sa!

so which seems more likely for an author of a middle-grade series? making her protagonist invertedly sa a character or write an awkward kiss to write dex off? because these scenes go through an editor, beta readers and so on, and obviously was thought to be okay enough to be included.

if you don't like sophie that is fine!! you don't have to justify it by making her a morally horrible person - same goes for someone liking a morally "bad" thing, characters are meant to be analyzed and not perfect, if we all only like perfect human beings (i don't mean mary sue's, but characters that don't make mistakes which sophie has) then books would be soo uninteresting and pointless.

i think sophie's numerous flaws and "overpowered" character make her more interesting and i could write an essay about that but if you don't, that's also fine! at the end of the day this is a series for middle schoolers about magic elves, so yeah.

wow that got long </3

^ literally everything 😭😭 thank you

^ lmhoo ofc. i was soo baffled reading through this bc how did we go from sokeefe v sofitz to arguing if sophie's an sa-er

^^^Agreed! While I do get why it might have made people uncomfy, Dex was not.

Tbh, to me, when Keefe pushed Sophie against the wall that felt way more icky to me (think it was in Nightfall, actually.) Probably because it would have been hard for her to get out of that situation if she was really uncomfortable. That’s a while other thing though lmho.

I mean, was it a weird thing of Sophie to do? Yes, because wdym kissing him is going to prove there’s no spark? 😭 kissing is awkward all the time. But that’s more an issue with tropes in YA/middle grade books. Would I call it SA? No, Dex kissed her back and even thought it was kind of a good kiss or something iirc. I mean, if he’d hated it and tried to push her away and she kept going? Totally different thing. But that’s not what happened.

^ exactly!! we need to view the scene as a whole rather than sophie's one singular action. and let's be so fr, if sophie asked to kiss dex he would've said yes - the lack of spark in the kiss confirmed it without sophie actually going "no" because then dex would've always had false hope of them working out.

^Personally I don’t think the kiss was necessary to prove whether they had a “spark” and I think it could have been a good message if Shannon showed Sophie saying no, and Dex respecting and accepting it.

Maybe I’m also a little bit biased because I’ve been dating someone for half a year and we haven’t kissed lmho. As in, the ever-elusive spark so many books talk about isn’t maybe always necessary.

i also think dex and sophie’s dynamic just really does come into play😭 i don’t ask my friends or family if i can kiss their cheek, i know my dynamics with them and i know their preferences and i know that it’d be fine. sophie kissed dex in nightfall which, in the book, wasn’t very much timeline wise but they still went through all their trauma and became very close friends, we can’t really judge from just what we see and we have to take into account the scenes we don’t see that were meant to assume.

sorry if that doesn’t make sense i’m on day #2 of being sick ( worst day idc ) and have light mode on but anyway what i mean is just sophie most likely already knew how dex would feel about it and it wouldn’t be in a weird sa way at all