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Deeply honored to see my Lightlark wiki shitposting highlighted in the latest KrimsonRouge Skyshade roundtable video.

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Thinking more about Lightlarks centennial and honestly it is kinda insane about how little everyone in the books seems to care about doing anything to fix it and just wings it.

Like this is the one shot in 100 years to break these debilitating curses and just the rulers show up to spend the first 25 days just doing magic tricks and showing off to see who should be paired with who? Then they spend the rest of the time wandering around looking for anything that could help them solve the riddle.

I think It is a real missed world building opportunity that none of the leaders really had a team of advisors, who’s sole responsibility it was to research the curses and prophacy, and to guide them and offering ideas of what to do. ( also more concrete character development for some of the side characters that could be in or changed to this role, like there were advisors in the later books that could have fit here) It could also be a way to further show the differences between the realms too. Here’s some ideas I thought of of how they could be different. If the leaders can’t bring them with them to Lightlark, maybe they could have talked thorough some portal or crystal ball thing

- Sunlings : small team since Oro has trust issues but completely exhausted since they are isolated on Lightlark and have been searching in between centennials without any leads for a while. It’s also hard to mount expeditions while their curse makes them burn in sunlight. Their library is incomplete because the other realms have moved most of their stuff to the newlands

- Skylings: Very put together with a large team consisting of a lot of varied disciplines. Democratically will vote on everything. However, they can over analyze and occasionally suffer from analysis paralysis when given too much info.

-Moonlings : A large, very put together team also like the Skylings, but not democratic and way more ruthless and cutthought. They always assume that they are right even when they may be wrong.

-Starlings: A large Super enthusiastic team, but they are completely inexperienced since they all die young

-Wildling: a small team that is not organized maybe since lack of realm leader for the past 20 years, Isla doesn’t really care to listen to them and maybe that’s why she always needs an oracle or something ( idk really for the wildlings, as they are super under developed and basically window dressing DESPITE Isla being the main character and a wildling. Going from leader personality, they could be just dumb and impulsive AF but I imagine the wildings to be better then that .)

-Nightshade : No team because Grim thinks he can do it all by himself (despite his royal advisors protests) . If Nightshade showed up previously, the team included only military advisors who thought about the most violent and rutheless solutions. They also cared the least about solving the curses.

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one of my degrees is in statistics, so here's some fun numbers for you, all pulled from AO3

total number of twilight fanfics: 18790

date of oldest posted twilight fanfic: 19 July 2008

mean number of twilight fanfics posted per year to date: 1105

total number of twilight fanfics tagged Canon Rewrite: 104

date of oldest posted Canon Rewrite twilight fanfic: 22 September 2013

mean number of Canon Rewrite twilight fanfics posted per year to date: 8.7

years for a Canon Rewrite twilight fanfic to appear: ~5

percentage of Canon Rewrite twilight fanfic in total numbers: 0.5%

percentage of Canon Rewrite twilight fanfic in yearly average: 0.8%

total number of ACOTAR fanfics: 13304

date of oldest posted ACOTAR fanfic: 14 July 2015

mean number of ACOTAR fanfics posted per year to date: 1330

total number of ACOTAR fanfics tagged Canon Rewrite: 53

date of oldest posted Canon Rewrite ACOTAR fanfic: 14 August 2017

mean number of Canon Rewrite ACOTAR fanfics posted per year to date: 6.6

years for a Canon Rewrite ACOTAR fanfic to appear: ~2

percentage of Canon Rewrite ACOTAR fanfic in total numbers: 0.3%

percentage of Canon Rewrite ACOTAR fanfic in yearly average: 0.5%

total number of lightlark fanfics: 47

date of oldest posted lightlark fanfic: 4 October 2022

mean number of lightlark fanfics posted per year to date: 15.7

total number of lightlark fanfics tagged Canon Rewrite: 5

date of oldest posted Canon Rewrite lightlark fanfic: 25 June 2023

mean number of Canon Rewrite lightlark fanfics posted per year to date: 2.5

years for a Canon Rewrite lightlark fanfic to appear: <1

percentage of Canon Rewrite lightlark fanfic in total numbers: 10.6%

percentage of Canon Rewrite lightlark fanfic in yearly average: 16%

a pretty firm measure of a media property's success is how much its fans engage with it - not just buying the books but thinking about the characters and the setting, and engaging in transformative art using the piece of media as a canvas. by this measure, compared to one of its forerunners and one of its closer contemporaries, lightlark is an abject, objective failure. practically no one is writing lightlark fanfic, and the few people who are seem to be more engaged by trying to rewrite it than by playing around in canon. even Powerless, released closer to Lightlark than ACOTAR, has 41 fanfictions with ZERO works tagged as Canon Rewrite and only three that appear if one searches "rewrite" outside of the tags - and only one of those is a rewrite of the entire story, and not just an expansion of a specific scene.

look, if you like lightlark, i... question your taste and judgment, but ultimately i can't do anything about it. but i'd encourage you to question why you like lightlark. what is it about the series that grabs you? do you think about it after you put the book down, or does it slide from your mind as soon as you close the last page? and if it's the latter, does that really mean you like it?

wouldn't you rather have something that makes you think rather than something that lets you turn your brain off?

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(This is word for word from one of the excepts that Aster recently “leaked” from the upcoming Lightlark “Dueling Crowns” book. )

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Lightlark's Centennial in promotional materials:

"Its a super Deadly game that all leaders must fight to break their curses "

"Its like the Hunger games was a dark fantasy fairy tale..."

Lightlark's Centennial in the actual book:

Competitive show and tell, and then break into pairs for a scavenger hunt. (Also no killing for the first half and you cant kill your scavenger hunt partner)

The Centennial is less of a dangerous game and more like a slightly dangerous business Conference.

Also ironically to how its been described in advertising for the book, NO ONE HAS DIED DURING THE CENTENNIAL. 5/6 rulers were alive when the curses were cast and have been ruling ever since. (The only ruler that is new is Wildling, & Isla's Mom did not die via centennial ). Thanks to all the overly constrictive rules about not having an heir and the Nexus curse, with all 6 realms still around its proof that no one leader has been offed. Additionally if they interpret the prophecy wrong and kill someone they are permanently down to 5 realms and can never re-attempt breaking the curses because the prophecy explicitly requires all 6 to work together. (Which also is not strictly followed since it takes 500 years for all 6 to finally attend, despite being one of the clearest rules of the prophecy)

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I absolutely LOVE how expansive and detailed the world building in the Lightlark universe is where like we are 3 books in and Isla’s mother and father still don’t have actual names despite some major twists about them in Skyshade and Nightbane.

So……sticking with the similar scheme to how their daughter is named, I propose that they should be named Península (mom) and Golfo (dad) Any other fine names on the below chart could also work but I thought those were the best.

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New drinking game for reading Skyshade: take a shot every time Grim says “My wife” or publicly speaks to the fact that yes, he has a wife. I do not think I’ve seen him call Isla by her real name once so far.

Also I’ve usually read Grim’s voice like an extra edgy Shadow the Hedgehoge but now all I can think about is Borat