The bit towards the end about how Aster has nothing to say with this series really brought into focus something I’ve felt but haven’t quite been able to articulate. There is an endless library of books where the author intended to make apolitical nonsense fun where the curtains are just blue, but accidentally include revealing details about their beliefs and how they see the world, but the Lightlark series feels like the opposite. So much of it feels like it’s trying to say something, even if that something is #feels about the character relationships, but there’s just so much content packed in with so little detail it’s hard to get a bead on what the characters even feel about a given thing, let alone the author. Even Nova’s Playlist had an overarching paranoia about ever more secret layers of reality and everything in your life being one random event away from being gone forever. Not every story needs to have intentional themes, but this series is one of the first I’ve encountered that feels like it’s almost completely sidestepped even incidental meaning, or at least any I can find without doing an intense line-by-line analysis that i doubt would be worth it. Aster keeps chucking more stuff into the pool but it never gets any less shallow.
This book makes more sense as a poorly coded game. Her pants were flagged as a container, which she filled with daggers. Hearts are flagged as a liquid container, and they are full of blood when looted. The auger can reuse those hearts to carry water or soup or lava in the future.
@40:00 You put your finger on something that I’ve been trying to figure out about Aster’s plot style - In much the way that Nova’s Playlist has this existential horror of unending capitalism, this book seems to have an existential horror of unending magical bureaucracy. It’s like the DMV of magical plot points
ok so i know you guys were just asking for a break right at the end but i am begging y'all to, one day, read Aster's middle grade duology "Emblem Island" she published before Lightlark, please!! There are no in-depth reviews about it on RUclips, almost nothing on Goodreads especially for the second book, I couldn't find it online (I'm not from the US) so I can't read it myself, and I think it would be such a fun and great experiment to compare what those two books are to what Lightlark is. Because unlike Lightlark, those were sold to an agent with no TikTok fame to back it up, and they were probably written with far more time than Lightlark. So I wonder if her writing in those was better? Idk about the creativity in terms of "creatures" but at least the pacing? Idk, but what I do know is that SBU is the right place to cover that!! Anyway, here's hoping you get to do that someday. Happy new year! It was lovely listening to y'all throughout this year.
I have been waiting with baited breath for this. Merry Christmas. I feel like... every book starts with, "Yeah the last book happened... but we're on to this stuff now." Like Alex thought of new stuff to write about between each book. And I'm starting to think it won't wrap back around to make a complete loop or tie up loose ends.
@@TheAdarkerglow merry christmas always appreciate your comments I hope you get a pants-full of daggers this year with throwing stars atop your tree. Also a couple cursed soul feathers for good measure
I don't know if it was one y'all's video or someone else's, but the entire series is bad middle-grade pretending to be adult fiction by wearing mommy's high heels. Skyshade is no different. But there is a big flaw with the whole series. She said there are supposed to be five books. That means I'm not worried that Isla is going to die, she will be alive for at least two more novels. It's like Hellraiser: Bloodlines. By opening on the future and showing Le Merchant's descendant, I know someone will always survive in each section. You're not worried about the kids, because we know the great-great-great-great grandchild is alive. This is true for the Lightlark series as well.
So Nightbane proved that Aster watched the SBU English Club episode because she put the bear with antlers and giant spiders in. And now that Skyshade made the Eternal Flame canon, it's proof she watched the tabletop game episodes too.
yess i've been waiting for you guys to cover this one! someone i follow on tumblr was posting snippets of this book and every one i read confused me further. can't wait to hear what you guys have to say :D
Andrew explanation of the world building until this book that was just abandoned was incredible it really makes it seem like it would have actually been interesting
I was so excited to remember most of those and was so sad to hear none of it mattered. I kept having to rewind because I was confused just to have you guys point out that it had never been brought up previously.
Yaaay! What a perfect way to settle in to the Christmas holidays. I'll probably have more to say later but right now I'm just dashing into the SBU meeting room, getting the best seat (it's the green armchair by the window), and grabbing a snack.
Even if Isla doesn't wanna kill her abusive caretakers for some reason why hasn't Grim killed them yet? Isn't the appeal of his character archetype that he will do the things you are too moral to do but at the end of the day only does it because he cares about you? It felt wrong in the last book that he teamed up with them but it really feels like in this book one day Grim takes Isla on a morning walk just to gleefully show her their heads on pikes.
Grim is absolutely the type of guy to get mad at wait staff and he would absolutely just tell them that they got his order wrong it genuinely feels out of character for him not too
Even If Isla doesn't wanna kill her abusive caretakers why would Grim let them live? I thought the appeal of a character like Grim how dangerous it feels to be around him but in the end he would never do anything to hurt you and would deal with the people your too nice too, so he's killing his own people for talking bad about Isla but is letting her abusive guardians who tried to kill her go around free?
wow, what a fantastic episode! made me laugh out loud many, many times. the point about the book being uninterested in language and how we use it to communicate and what _words mean_ is SO astute, like, holy shit, yeah! and it really does feel like you've just read the same book three times. like the narrative is just spinning its wheels as Aster adds more and more things without actually getting anywhere, and we're already 3 books into a 5 book series! I agree with the theory that the other world will be a soft reset, kind of a get out of jail free card out of the hodgepodge of a ton of disparate ideas that this universe has become. also, Isla's villain arc feels like such nonsense to me... it feels less like a natural consequence of the story so far, less because it's authentically a part of the story you want to say and more like something you add into the story because Tiktok likes villain arcs, I guess, because "female rage" is trending on Tiktok while you're writing your book. it feels like Aster had a pinterest board for Isla's villain arc and tried to somehow stretch it into a whole book with little regard of how it interacts with the story thus far or how well she'd be able to execute it. I love it when you guys imitate the tiktok text-to-speech voice so much, way too funny. 😭CONGRATULATIONS ON GETTING MONETIZED!!! happy holidays, SBU English Club hosts and fellow SBU English Club members! ♥
1:17:33 If Terry Pratchett himself (closest thing to a pope we have since we didn't really have a religious wedding) officiated us and then tried to get me to do suicide cult shit, I'd be confused. Not because he asked us to do suicide cult shit but because how the fuck did he come back to life?
The strange spicy scene with Oro in the desert was apparently also a bonus chapter for either Lightlark or Nightbane. Alex either wrote up a bonus chapter for one of the other two and decided to put it in Skyshade for giggles, or knew this scene would be in Skyshade and for some reason... also included it as a bonus chapter??
Something that drives me nuts is this getting a 5-book series deal when most authors struggle to even get a duology (or god forbid a triology) greenlit these days. I really do agree that Alex Aster must be suffering from publishing pushing deadlines, because it sounds like there are a lot of right ideas here that just don't get to flourish. It's deeply unfortunate. Anyway, love listening to you guys go over books like this. I struggle to listen to/watch other creators go over booktok books because it usually turns into feasts of negativity with sometimes deeply unfair, un-constructive criticism. You guys providing approval when it's due is really refreshing, and your critiques are like... actual, genuine critiques, which is something that's difficult to come by on videos that go over similar subject matter. Keep it up, you do excellent work (:
@@xTheRainFallsx incorrect! If your great-great grandmother decides one day to become a necromancer you can join her in creating a new world in which there is no death! Hope this helps :)
i think you guys helped what made this book so weird to me. at least with empress theresa, you can feel the love the author put behind it. there is no love for the lightlark series, it is a stepping stone for the author to break through into the writing world. just get enough marketable tropes to push through and voila, profit. because yes, the book isnt terrible, but it is so inoffensive you have a hard time trying to figure out why you *feel* offended
As much as I love the term "sonically toxic", there is an actual reason why Lark Crown is so bad to pronounce. In poetry we call it a spondee/spondeus, which is when two stressed syllables come right after another. The human mouth also really can't pronounce spondees well, which is why you have this kinda forced pause between the words.
the one thing is that I don't think that Starling was heading toward democracy exactly, they still had nobles and referred to them as such. but that's a small small things. much less mistake than Aster made
shademade always made me read it as shadesmade or shadesmar because of the stormlight archives. fundamentally its like. shadesmade reads better.in my oppinion. also it couldnt be obsidian because how are poppy and terra supposed to put shards of obsidion in isla's food?
Alex Aster just keeps coming back for more, and I understand why! She isn't getting enough advice from her editors and publishing company. If she did, her books would be very different (maybe they wouldn't even exist).
Ever since the second novel, I've been afraid that Azul, mentor, gay and POC extraordinare was going to die. Now knowing there'll be more than 3, this fear is still alive and well
not only could a heart not do that. there's a whole sentence about her carrying around these hearts impaled on her sword aster doesnt know anythinggggggg
@@bluegreyflowers9714 like there’s aphantasia and there’s not knowing that piercing a vessel of liquid with a sword might make that vessel not hold liquid well
something i'd love to see y'all cover if you ever wanted to dip into more young adult romantasy is the once upon a broken heart trilogy, because it's actually pretty okay (for young adult romantasy, anyway) until the last book, so it gives the hilarious though hopefully untrue impression that stephanie garber just gave up or something.
I have so many question, but one is more important than the others: the name Austria spelling like Austria the country, or I just constatly mishearing?
I know there are like artists with aphantasia. I dont exactly know what the process would be for a writer but i kmow it has to be possible. This js rediculous. Like krimsonrogue complains about the land and provided map are super inconsistent and i dont know why as a writer you wouldn't refer to tangible materials like a map you have at this point. Like hire an artist to help you with these things or research images or something
I have aphantasia (not total, but I see blurry static instead of images) and I have to work harder to make my stuff make sense. Like it takes longer for me to write and visualize scenes that it would take most people but I do it because I like writing. I put effort in to make sure it’s understandable and putting in detail even though I can’t visualize it. It definitely makes things harder but if you’re really passionate it’s not that much of a hindrance. It gives off the impression that Alex doesn’t care enough to try to combat this and just writes the easy way with no description. It makes it seem like she doesn’t actually care about what she writes and just does it to do it.
I read the excerpt for her "adult romance" and in it, the mc is holding a bunch of snacks and then they just... disappear. She doesn't drop them, the male lead doesn't take them, they don't explode in a hail of seasoned carbs, Aster just forgets about them and they're never mentioned again
Maybe this is mean, but at this point the people who claim that the series has good writing are just saying that based on vibes and not from actually reading it.
Also the AO3 catalogue of Lightlark fics are filled with Isla/Oro, Celeste/Isla, Grim/Oro, polyam Grim/Isla/Oro, polyam Celeste/Isla/Oro even, very little Isla/Grim, & at least one rewrite attempt.
Cursed shut doesn't make any sense at all to me. By definition a curse is words spoken at least in anger with the specific intent to harm someone. The more hate and anger the more powerful the curse. See in universe the curse of Lightlark. It would make more sense/be more energy efficient to just put a spell on a book to keep it closed. Since it's Alex who wrote this, just don't think about it. She hasn't learned the skill to word things precisely. I mean her Augur? Yea the word sounds good but Alex clearly doesn't know what a Augur really is/was. An Augur was a religious official in ancient rome who observed and interpreted omens and signs to help guide the making of public decisions. He did that formost by studying the flight of birds. If an eagel circled the forum three times and pooped on an unfortunate senators head you went to the Augurs for an interpretation if it was a good or bad sign.
Fell asleep and my sleepy brain yelled haruspex at me. Now awake I realized I forgot to tell you what I believe Alex confused an Augur with. What she probably meant was a Haruspex. Who was also a roman seer but specialized in reading the entails of animals. What she didn't describe either but it's more in the line of what was described. I'm not even mad that nobody caught that one in a possible edit. It's just random and oddly specific information about the priests of ancient rome.
Help us emotionally process the fact there are more Lightlark books coming in our Discord! discord.gg/RSuU5CeDSU
Calling Cleo "Chief Bisexual" is more characterization than Aster ever bother to give her 😂
The bit towards the end about how Aster has nothing to say with this series really brought into focus something I’ve felt but haven’t quite been able to articulate. There is an endless library of books where the author intended to make apolitical nonsense fun where the curtains are just blue, but accidentally include revealing details about their beliefs and how they see the world, but the Lightlark series feels like the opposite. So much of it feels like it’s trying to say something, even if that something is #feels about the character relationships, but there’s just so much content packed in with so little detail it’s hard to get a bead on what the characters even feel about a given thing, let alone the author. Even Nova’s Playlist had an overarching paranoia about ever more secret layers of reality and everything in your life being one random event away from being gone forever. Not every story needs to have intentional themes, but this series is one of the first I’ve encountered that feels like it’s almost completely sidestepped even incidental meaning, or at least any I can find without doing an intense line-by-line analysis that i doubt would be worth it. Aster keeps chucking more stuff into the pool but it never gets any less shallow.
The former is just an painter making a painting. Aster is someone take pictures of paintings and trying to make something out of them.
Finding out that SBU is fictional is the adult version of finding out that Santa Claus is fictional.
We’ve fooled and converted a couple students of Stony Brook University. One of these days it’s gonna get us in trouble
"you don't stop being gay when your husband dies" cracked me so hard, this is going to stay with me
This book makes more sense as a poorly coded game. Her pants were flagged as a container, which she filled with daggers. Hearts are flagged as a liquid container, and they are full of blood when looted. The auger can reuse those hearts to carry water or soup or lava in the future.
I also see it as like
Bool AlexIsMakingMoney = TRUE;
While (AlexIsMakingMoney)
{
publishBooks();
}
I really get the feeling that she loves coming up with ideas but gets quickly bored of writing them
It's been like that for the whole 3 books lol
@40:00 You put your finger on something that I’ve been trying to figure out about Aster’s plot style - In much the way that Nova’s Playlist has this existential horror of unending capitalism, this book seems to have an existential horror of unending magical bureaucracy. It’s like the DMV of magical plot points
@@AidenFeltkamp THE DMV OF MAGICAL PLOT POINTS 💀💀💀
"You don't stop being gay when your husband dies!"
That’s for J to decide
ok so i know you guys were just asking for a break right at the end but i am begging y'all to, one day, read Aster's middle grade duology "Emblem Island" she published before Lightlark, please!! There are no in-depth reviews about it on RUclips, almost nothing on Goodreads especially for the second book, I couldn't find it online (I'm not from the US) so I can't read it myself, and I think it would be such a fun and great experiment to compare what those two books are to what Lightlark is.
Because unlike Lightlark, those were sold to an agent with no TikTok fame to back it up, and they were probably written with far more time than Lightlark. So I wonder if her writing in those was better? Idk about the creativity in terms of "creatures" but at least the pacing?
Idk, but what I do know is that SBU is the right place to cover that!! Anyway, here's hoping you get to do that someday.
Happy new year! It was lovely listening to y'all throughout this year.
Oh shoot you’re so right, we have to look into this. For the creatures
I have been waiting with baited breath for this. Merry Christmas.
I feel like... every book starts with, "Yeah the last book happened... but we're on to this stuff now." Like Alex thought of new stuff to write about between each book. And I'm starting to think it won't wrap back around to make a complete loop or tie up loose ends.
@@TheAdarkerglow merry christmas always appreciate your comments I hope you get a pants-full of daggers this year with throwing stars atop your tree. Also a couple cursed soul feathers for good measure
I don't know if it was one y'all's video or someone else's, but the entire series is bad middle-grade pretending to be adult fiction by wearing mommy's high heels. Skyshade is no different. But there is a big flaw with the whole series. She said there are supposed to be five books. That means I'm not worried that Isla is going to die, she will be alive for at least two more novels. It's like Hellraiser: Bloodlines. By opening on the future and showing Le Merchant's descendant, I know someone will always survive in each section. You're not worried about the kids, because we know the great-great-great-great grandchild is alive. This is true for the Lightlark series as well.
saying lightlark is to kafka as in its behavior mirrors it is CRAZY but also i agree
So Nightbane proved that Aster watched the SBU English Club episode because she put the bear with antlers and giant spiders in. And now that Skyshade made the Eternal Flame canon, it's proof she watched the tabletop game episodes too.
SHE KNOWS TOO MUCH SHUT IT DOWN 😂😂
yess i've been waiting for you guys to cover this one! someone i follow on tumblr was posting snippets of this book and every one i read confused me further. can't wait to hear what you guys have to say :D
Obviously it didn’t originate in this video but “kiss about it” is an all-timer phrase
@@evilredflame one of those infinite use turns of phrase
Andrew explanation of the world building until this book that was just abandoned was incredible it really makes it seem like it would have actually been interesting
I went on and on for 10 minutes and made up 0% of it yet NONE of it came up in Skyshade 😭😭
@sbu_englishclub Well there's more for the TTRPG then
I was so excited to remember most of those and was so sad to hear none of it mattered. I kept having to rewind because I was confused just to have you guys point out that it had never been brought up previously.
Yaaay! What a perfect way to settle in to the Christmas holidays. I'll probably have more to say later but right now I'm just dashing into the SBU meeting room, getting the best seat (it's the green armchair by the window), and grabbing a snack.
Excited for you to hang out! Just don’t sit in norman’s seat. He doesn’t like that
Oh, I did that once and man, did I regret it. Good thing I was wearing my little black nothing dress, which sort of placated him
Aren't all Nightshades immune to curses? Wouldn't any of them be able to kill the immortal Blacksmith or at least just Grim?
Even if Isla doesn't wanna kill her abusive caretakers for some reason why hasn't Grim killed them yet? Isn't the appeal of his character archetype that he will do the things you are too moral to do but at the end of the day only does it because he cares about you? It felt wrong in the last book that he teamed up with them but it really feels like in this book one day Grim takes Isla on a morning walk just to gleefully show her their heads on pikes.
Grim is absolutely the type of guy to get mad at wait staff and he would absolutely just tell them that they got his order wrong it genuinely feels out of character for him not too
Lark is the worst name for an antagonist in anything ever
Even If Isla doesn't wanna kill her abusive caretakers why would Grim let them live? I thought the appeal of a character like Grim how dangerous it feels to be around him but in the end he would never do anything to hurt you and would deal with the people your too nice too, so he's killing his own people for talking bad about Isla but is letting her abusive guardians who tried to kill her go around free?
ISLAND ISLAND 😭
So excited for this! Been avoiding anyone else's videos on this book cause I knew you guys would do it best
wow, what a fantastic episode! made me laugh out loud many, many times. the point about the book being uninterested in language and how we use it to communicate and what _words mean_ is SO astute, like, holy shit, yeah! and it really does feel like you've just read the same book three times. like the narrative is just spinning its wheels as Aster adds more and more things without actually getting anywhere, and we're already 3 books into a 5 book series! I agree with the theory that the other world will be a soft reset, kind of a get out of jail free card out of the hodgepodge of a ton of disparate ideas that this universe has become. also, Isla's villain arc feels like such nonsense to me... it feels less like a natural consequence of the story so far, less because it's authentically a part of the story you want to say and more like something you add into the story because Tiktok likes villain arcs, I guess, because "female rage" is trending on Tiktok while you're writing your book. it feels like Aster had a pinterest board for Isla's villain arc and tried to somehow stretch it into a whole book with little regard of how it interacts with the story thus far or how well she'd be able to execute it. I love it when you guys imitate the tiktok text-to-speech voice so much, way too funny. 😭CONGRATULATIONS ON GETTING MONETIZED!!! happy holidays, SBU English Club hosts and fellow SBU English Club members! ♥
Happy holidays to you too! This year my only wish is a better pinterest board for Alex Aster 😭😭 thanks for hanging out with us
Isla being so powerful as a baby her castle crumbles really proves that we're not dealing with the average Wildling anymore.
Like most girls, Isla has always been different, but not like the others
1:17:33 If Terry Pratchett himself (closest thing to a pope we have since we didn't really have a religious wedding) officiated us and then tried to get me to do suicide cult shit, I'd be confused. Not because he asked us to do suicide cult shit but because how the fuck did he come back to life?
@@aliendaydreamer7931 💀💀 see there’s always layers of stuff to be confused about
The strange spicy scene with Oro in the desert was apparently also a bonus chapter for either Lightlark or Nightbane. Alex either wrote up a bonus chapter for one of the other two and decided to put it in Skyshade for giggles, or knew this scene would be in Skyshade and for some reason... also included it as a bonus chapter??
It was just so good that it absolutely had to be in the actual corpus
Something that drives me nuts is this getting a 5-book series deal when most authors struggle to even get a duology (or god forbid a triology) greenlit these days. I really do agree that Alex Aster must be suffering from publishing pushing deadlines, because it sounds like there are a lot of right ideas here that just don't get to flourish. It's deeply unfortunate.
Anyway, love listening to you guys go over books like this. I struggle to listen to/watch other creators go over booktok books because it usually turns into feasts of negativity with sometimes deeply unfair, un-constructive criticism. You guys providing approval when it's due is really refreshing, and your critiques are like... actual, genuine critiques, which is something that's difficult to come by on videos that go over similar subject matter. Keep it up, you do excellent work (:
hi SBU English Club! thanks for the upload! there is no god and nothing awaits us after our last tortured breath. keep up the great work! 😳❤️🙈
@@xTheRainFallsx incorrect! If your great-great grandmother decides one day to become a necromancer you can join her in creating a new world in which there is no death! Hope this helps :)
@sbu_englishclub good to know!
i think you guys helped what made this book so weird to me. at least with empress theresa, you can feel the love the author put behind it. there is no love for the lightlark series, it is a stepping stone for the author to break through into the writing world. just get enough marketable tropes to push through and voila, profit. because yes, the book isnt terrible, but it is so inoffensive you have a hard time trying to figure out why you *feel* offended
when grim told isla she could kill him she had the chance to be hilarious. alas
As much as I love the term "sonically toxic", there is an actual reason why Lark Crown is so bad to pronounce. In poetry we call it a spondee/spondeus, which is when two stressed syllables come right after another. The human mouth also really can't pronounce spondees well, which is why you have this kinda forced pause between the words.
@@carydorse705 dang, I get me not knowing that but J definitely should’ve. They should’ve stepped up their game
I feel betrayed that this series wasn't a trilogy the ending to this book made me sad
@@romulusnuma116 I’m literally dreading it it feels like I’m in a hallway that keeps stretching and stretching
Ive been waiting for someone to do an indepth reveiw on this one because i have no desire to read them but i need to know what happens 🙏😭
Don’t you worry it’s 500 pages of nothing happening 🔥
the one thing is that I don't think that Starling was heading toward democracy exactly, they still had nobles and referred to them as such. but that's a small small things. much less mistake than Aster made
shademade always made me read it as shadesmade or shadesmar because of the stormlight archives. fundamentally its like. shadesmade reads better.in my oppinion. also it couldnt be obsidian because how are poppy and terra supposed to put shards of obsidion in isla's food?
Alex Aster just keeps coming back for more, and I understand why! She isn't getting enough advice from her editors and publishing company. If she did, her books would be very different (maybe they wouldn't even exist).
ALEX I CAN FIX YOU 😭😭
@@sbu_englishclub 😆😁 Please help her!
Characters? What characters? *What Characters Aster?!*
Ever since the second novel, I've been afraid that Azul, mentor, gay and POC extraordinare was going to die. Now knowing there'll be more than 3, this fear is still alive and well
2:42:19 oh my god how long are you going to stare at each other
Not until every drop of chocolate is gone 👁️👁️
not only could a heart not do that. there's a whole sentence about her carrying around these hearts impaled on her sword
aster doesnt know anythinggggggg
@@bluegreyflowers9714 like there’s aphantasia and there’s not knowing that piercing a vessel of liquid with a sword might make that vessel not hold liquid well
something i'd love to see y'all cover if you ever wanted to dip into more young adult romantasy is the once upon a broken heart trilogy, because it's actually pretty okay (for young adult romantasy, anyway) until the last book, so it gives the hilarious though hopefully untrue impression that stephanie garber just gave up or something.
That sounds pretty fun actually, I’ll check it outp
Everyone would rather be playing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. They usually have enjoyable stories after all.
If Lightlark 4 ends with rayquaza blowing up a meteor I’ll freak
still really struggling with one of these characters being called HORACE
also "remlar" is giving "rem lazar" of rlm fame
@@nanizet yeah yknow Cronan Malvere and his buddy/enemy horace
@@sbu_englishclub it feels a bit like something youd read in a terry pratchett book
I assumed it was Horus, although I always heard it as Horace and it made me laugh.
All setup, no payoff
I have so many question, but one is more important than the others: the name Austria spelling like Austria the country, or I just constatly mishearing?
@@forgottengod Astria [sic], like Austria without the U
@@sbu_englishclub Thank you! I'll sleep calmer this night
We looked at Ao3 and there are more Oro x Grim fics than Oro x Isla
Classic lowbrow proletariat can’t appreciate the subtle nuances of Orisla
I checked fanfic for Warframes The Sacrifice. It’s a very hard to get to mission. It has 42 fanfic.
I know there are like artists with aphantasia. I dont exactly know what the process would be for a writer but i kmow it has to be possible. This js rediculous.
Like krimsonrogue complains about the land and provided map are super inconsistent and i dont know why as a writer you wouldn't refer to tangible materials like a map you have at this point. Like hire an artist to help you with these things or research images or something
@@CosmicGardener especially in Alex Aster’s case where she has the money and access to talent
I have aphantasia but it doesn't mean I'm incapable of thinking about what stuff WOULD look like lol. where's my book deal
I have aphantasia (not total, but I see blurry static instead of images) and I have to work harder to make my stuff make sense. Like it takes longer for me to write and visualize scenes that it would take most people but I do it because I like writing. I put effort in to make sure it’s understandable and putting in detail even though I can’t visualize it. It definitely makes things harder but if you’re really passionate it’s not that much of a hindrance. It gives off the impression that Alex doesn’t care enough to try to combat this and just writes the easy way with no description. It makes it seem like she doesn’t actually care about what she writes and just does it to do it.
I read the excerpt for her "adult romance" and in it, the mc is holding a bunch of snacks and then they just... disappear. She doesn't drop them, the male lead doesn't take them, they don't explode in a hail of seasoned carbs, Aster just forgets about them and they're never mentioned again
Maybe this is mean, but at this point the people who claim that the series has good writing are just saying that based on vibes and not from actually reading it.
Also the AO3 catalogue of Lightlark fics are filled with Isla/Oro, Celeste/Isla, Grim/Oro, polyam Grim/Isla/Oro, polyam Celeste/Isla/Oro even, very little Isla/Grim, & at least one rewrite attempt.
Cursed shut doesn't make any sense at all to me.
By definition a curse is words spoken at least in anger with the specific intent to harm someone. The more hate and anger the more powerful the curse. See in universe the curse of Lightlark.
It would make more sense/be more energy efficient to just put a spell on a book to keep it closed.
Since it's Alex who wrote this, just don't think about it. She hasn't learned the skill to word things precisely.
I mean her Augur? Yea the word sounds good but Alex clearly doesn't know what a Augur really is/was.
An Augur was a religious official in ancient rome who observed and interpreted omens and signs to help guide the making of public decisions. He did that formost by studying the flight of birds.
If an eagel circled the forum three times and pooped on an unfortunate senators head you went to the Augurs for an interpretation if it was a good or bad sign.
Fell asleep and my sleepy brain yelled haruspex at me. Now awake I realized I forgot to tell you what I believe Alex confused an Augur with. What she probably meant was a Haruspex. Who was also a roman seer but specialized in reading the entails of animals.
What she didn't describe either but it's more in the line of what was described.
I'm not even mad that nobody caught that one in a possible edit. It's just random and oddly specific information about the priests of ancient rome.
It’s another example of the more you look into this book the worse it gets. When there’s a haruspex in book 4 I’ll know to blame you
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