You might say that the author is the bane to your existence, both a cure and curse. It’s almost like the books existence both hurts you and brings you value, like some kind of bane/cure/curse thing. Almost as if you’re in some kind of eternal infinite cyclical something in which this book is your bane, your counterpart both a cure and a curs-
@@sovietcanuckistanian I'm already expecting it to get to the finale (until there's more): L8: Nexxus .Don't know if that's how it's spelled, but all I can picture is the hair care line popular in the 80s and 90s
I feel like the forced to wear revealing clothing trope comes from the fact that women can’t admit to wanting to wear sexy clothes unless they’re deemed a slut.
Yeah, I feel like it’s a perfect example of “having your cake and eating it too”. It’s a fantasy where you get to be sexy and desired but at the same time you didn’t choose the clothing so you don’t have to feel guilty or ashamed. It’s just internalised misogyny and slutshaming.
@@Misa.misatoAs if clothes make you a slut bfr lol but it's YA written by mostly conservative yt middle aged woman so I shouldn't be surprised. And male YA characters who are often half naked are cool and different and not sluts for some reason I've noticed.
@@mittag983 it takes a lot for a man to be considered a slut. They would be sooner labled a womanizer, or a chad if the labeler is an incel, than a slut... Unless they are gay of course, then "slut" is used. Including if they are wearing revealing clothing now that I think about it...
I like how the Nightshade land is supposed to be this edgy wretched hive of debauchery and sin, but it just sounds like the Hot Topic and Spencer's Gifts shops you can find at any suburban mall in America
I am so confused with how helpless Isla seemingly is all the time in this book. Like, the first book went on and on and ON about who trained she was and how badass she was with sword and daggers and FUCKING NINJA STARS… and yet she’s constantly getting bodied by random NPCs
You know, give her an explicitly stated arc about gaining agency and power while in fact making her less agentive and powerful. Because women always need a hunky man to save them /s
@@pippastrelle aster literally could have spun the arrow to the heart making her weaker and her struggling to get back to her normal self, but it never happens
I guess the ACOTAR series is going the way of the hunger games and twilight, spawning thousands of way worse copycats for us to vicariously make fun of through youtubers 😂
The fundamental problem is that, in the wake of Twilight, Fifty Shades, and the Hunger Games, that's how the publishing industry has come to work, jump on a trend as fast as possible, make as much money as possible, and run it into the ground. Arguably, you could even say that Colleen Hoover is probably the thing that everything is trying to copy now or will be very, very soon.
The thing about Enemies to Lovers is it's meant to be a relationship ARC. there is meant to be stages and progression. It is about starting off opposed to another character, perhaps even thinking them a monster, and then the narrative stripping down their preconceived motions of each other through their interactions. They learn to humanize each other, and this eventually grows into caring and pater love. But so many times Enemies to Lovers just means that there is Some Guy who is a sexy asshole that abused and hurts the MC in a way that she hates but secretly finds so sexy until she finally just Gives In and admits that him being a jackass turns her on, actually. Oh and he kills a random rapist for her at some point. It's just so boring.
Very much this. Extremely unfortunate but most of these writers just can't write good enemies to lovers imo. One other thing they consistently do is create abyssally deep power dynamics that are somehow supposed to be part of the appeal? Not only is the love interest horrible to them, but they also have immense power over them. There needs to be a back and forth on relatively equal terms, otherwise it's just abuse. This is why, despite the fact that enemies to lovers should be right up my ally, I much prefer rivals to lovers. The development of something like Sasuke/Naruto is the perfect outline for these kind of romances imo.
Yes!!!!!! It's supposed to be about getting your assumptions challenged and gaining new perspectives on things and finding common ground with someone you originally couldn't imagine sharing anything with!! And it's supposed to go BOTH WAYS!!!! Not "hehe he used to be mean and hate me but now he's mean and wants to jump my bones so we're in love" 🙄 No judgement to people who like that kind of thing, but it's a DIFFERENT TROPE than enemies to lovers
Ok I know this is still technically supposed to be a YA novel, but I feel like Grim's whole dumb "pain makes you stronger" deal would have been so much more interesting if Aster had just had the guts to make him a full-on masochist, like sexually. Hear me out: - Avoids glamorizing SH with the whole "enduring pain is Morally Good and also literally makes you a powerful wizard" thing; instead it just turns him on which is all anybody's reading for anyway. - Canonically, this all comes from a formative childhood experience where he endured ritualized public punishment to win daddy's approval. That is like, a perfect lab-engineered scenario to give somebody a fetish. - Adds a fun little twist to his existing power dynamic with Isla, where he's the gruff bad boy protector in regular life, but during sex he allows himself to be extremely vulnerable and she's in charge. Maybe Isla discovers that after having every single aspect of her life thus far dictated for her by others, being in control is exactly what she wants, and perhaps even starts exercising more agency in the actual plot as a result! Also Aster can write some long-winded descriptions of Isla's sexy dominatrix outfits or whatever. - Makes all those wound-tending scenes a little less pointless if at least they get to be horny about it.
I don't read het stuff at all, but this suggestion would kinda make me consider it. I don't get why ALL of the YA romances have to have a dominant love interest and changing that up would be the first thing I did as a writer^^
When Grim attacked the person Isla was about to bang consensually out of pure jealousy, I had to stop, eat a bagel, then come back. Because I was so flabbergasted.
The next book is going to be an extended 500-page Grim/Isla love scene. Then the epilogue will helpfully explain why Oro was actually secretly evil and abusive the whole time, and how Grim never did a single thing wrong in his entire life, so it's actually okay that Oro's entire purpose in the story was to die unceremoniously off screen and get cucked by Bargain Bin Rhysand
I think at this point it's more likely for Oro to just go and die heroically, but saving Isla. He can't move on and fall in love with someone else, because this way Isla would loos 50% of her powers. So the best option is to just make him die, so his powers stay with her forever.
@@CrowcallerOH, I just realized that it is literally your book that you are instilling upon him!!! Then surely his petrification must be from the sheer admiration! He is so engrossed, did not even moved when you generously left him your friend as an afternoon snack. 😅
She could have solved the skeezy memory loss by having Isla suggest it herself: "If I don't remember, he won't know I'm lying." It would have given the character agency, and shown her actually being able to think ahead. Forcing people to do things against their will is abuse, and I worry about what kind of relationships girls are in these days if they find these kind of misogynistic, abusive arseholes sexy. Do they understand this kind of behavior is controlling and not at all okay?
I honestly wonder if toxic relationships being so popular in fiction is because Twilight and 50 Shades made it more 'okay', or if it's the natural progression of the 'all girls liking the bad boy' trope.
i'm firmly of the stance that people can like whatever they want in fiction (regardless of if it's a toxic trope or not), but i draw the line at bad writing
The more I think about it, the more I come to a conclusion, that Grim wants to date Isla specifically so he can feel superior compared to her. He constantly infatalizes her as a ruler and as a person. And that's the reason why he never tells her about his plan to return to the OG world or about them being married and what said marriage means (her dying if he dies and vice-versa). He has to be the one in control, the one who knows more. That's why he erased the memories of all the Wildlings and saved Isla's abusive caretakers and never told Isla about it. It's probably not how Alex Aster wanted people to interpret Grim's action. One might argue that Grim not telling Isla anything was specifically made so that the plot could happen and there is nothing more to it. But it's actually kind of interesting that in making this decision Alex Aster actually gave a quite accurate portrayal of a man who dates only younger women specifically because he can feel like the smarter and more mature one and women in the same age-range would actually see how pathetic he is.
I thought I already replied this to you but apparently, I didn't so here I go again. Your theory also makes sense as to why Isla is like 18 and not 90 compared to Grim's great-grandpa-times-100 age. Ofc, Alex Aster most likely (definitely) made her what 18?19?20? to appeal to teens and young adults and Grim like 5000 because teens and young adults like immortals falling in love with young, self-insert mortals. _BUT_ if all he wants is to feel superior, what better way to feel superior than dating someone who isn't even in her twenties (and probably a minor when he started dating her) when you've been around for centuries.
Ah yes, it is time for a 3 hour essay of my favorite book: Nightbark featuring Woman Named After Boat, GOLD, Edgelord McEdgy, The Color Blue, and Cleo going to seductive haunts.
Crow’s arc of going from not knowing how to pronounce Isla’s name to knowing and having a ~70% hit rate of pronouncing it right is a better arc than any of these characters
I thought it was kind of interesting how they turned the plant into a drug and a healing medicine, but the fact that they just keep bringing it up in the most ham fisted way ever, makes it feel like they're slapping me with a wet fish
@@frogmaiden6015 seeing your icon, I can see why being slapped with a wet fish is familiar to you. (Im trying and failing to make a joke about fish royalty.)
@@guggelguggel7491 actually I'm such a good swimmer I always let the fish swims free and never get in their path, But I really liked that joke it's really FIN-Y
I like to imagine the "star stick" exactly like Card Captor Sakura's one. The sad thing is that CCS is way more mature than whatever Lightlark pretends to be
I'm a dirty, dirty girl and my mind keeps going to a completely different kind of "stick" whenever the star stick is mentioned. XD I'm sorry; it just sounds too much like the phrasing you would use around kids to keep them in the dark.
I imagine it like the star stick or whatever from the princess peach game. Which, ironically enough for the person who said they had a dirty mind, people ALSO constantly say is a euphamsim
@@theflamedragon2508 Oh, the *_vibe scepter?_* (eyebrow wiggle) Unrelated, but Super Princess Peach is pretty dope. Stupidly easy if you get all the upgrades, though. ...Now I wanna dig that game out and play it again.
grim's backstory is that he was horrifically abused and that's why you have to feel bad for him, but isla's backstory is also that she was horrifically abused so to make him seem sympathetic he has to have been abused *even harder*. oh your guardians left you hanging from a tree? well mine SKINNED ME ALIVE. in front of my DAD. so there
The _idea_ of a villain whose homeland had a brutal, barbarous institution of formal child abuse which promoted the stoic endurance of pain as a manly virtue... that could work, I think. Literally flaying them moves well into the realm of the ancient Spartiates (which is some extremely grim stuff that really shouldn't be brought into a YA novel, I feel), but the basic concept is entirely functional. _However,_ the Spartiates make a case study on how societies with such horrific practices tend to be deeply dysfunctional and a bad thing for everyone involved. Some of the ways these practices perpetuated from generation to generation was by A) twisting those subjected to it into a position where questioning the necessity of the abuse would be directly opposed to their own mental stability - they _have_ to convince themselves that the abuse is beneficial, because that conviction is what's keeping their own trauma suppressed. B) fusing the abuse into positive aspects of life, so that rejecting one means rejecting the other. C) making former victims actively complicit in brutalizing the next generation and stigmatizing hesitation or doubt about doing so, thus fostering further psychological dependency and adding peer pressure to the mix. In other words, it would mean either having Grim go through a very real, very personal emotional meltdown in order to process what was done to him, putting that in his backstory as a major formative experience in making him who he is today... _or having him still be under the impression that it was all okay._ That last one actually could work well for an out-and-out villain - imagine if Grim had reacted to Isla's disgust by laughing and getting nostalgic about how a friend of his married a wildling, and they 'had' to physically restrain her from intervening when it came time for their child to be put through the same cultural meatgrinder that his father experienced. "Outsiders! Soft, the lot of you."
Given that there's nothing in canon to contradict it I choose to believe Grim's previous unspecified self-harm was actually just CBT. he just hits himself in the nads with a hammer real hard and gets a massive power boost as a result
@@sophiaaretuza I thought it meant Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (hey, it makes sense that is a punishment for Grim) but the balls came up and I have no idea what CBT means.
The fact that the book ends with Isla somehow still having feelings for Grim and even contemplating a relationship with him, is where my suspension of disbelief breaks. I can get into dark romance. I can get into love interests who are bad people. But this ain't it, 'cause the book's narrative is constantly bending over backwards to justify Grim's horrible actions, which just makes them seem even worse, because it makes it seem like Isla doesn't fully grasp the implications, and therefore doesn't understand what she's getting into with Grim. Like, let's go through a list of Grim's horrible actions, that I can remember, in no particular order: Constantly used what I can only describe as a racial slur as a term of endearment to Isla Erased her memories without her consent Never divulges informations that she would need to make an informed decision, and unless when telling said information directly benefits him, makes him appear superior or in the right Negged her into wearing an outfit she was uncomfortable in, as well as seducing a man, but decided to violently torture a guy, she was kissing consensually, right in front of her, telling her he would torture him even more, and only then revealed the guy was a rapist Groomed her after removing her memories, which he claims he did so she could seduce Oro without her feelings for Grim getting in the way, but considering the "seduce Oro" plan was part of Aurora's plan and Grim only agreed to it because Aurora would "give him Isla" and Isla was already willing to marry him? I seriously doubt that was his intentions for doing so. Kidnapped an entire people away from their homeland to his domain and wiped their memories. The story insists he had their consent, but I doubt that an entire population would agree to that, especially from a guy who is considered untrustworthy by the general world population. Had no qualms about using memory erasure after the woman he claims to love expressed such strong feelings of violation from it, that she refused to be with him Tricked her into secretly marrying him by lying about the marriage necklace's true meaning, presenting it instead as a helpline, and never telling her that once she wears it, she can never take it off Started an actual war in her name, when she never asked for it, and when doing so put her directly in danger. Claiming that the war is to save her because their lives are linked, but because of this life link, he put her life in double-danger, as she's not only in danger of his people killing her, but if the other side kills him, he dies too! It seems more like the war is for selfish reasons, and he used the "my life is connected to Isla's" thing as insurance, since he only shared this information when he was about to lose! If getting to the other world was all about saving Isla, why the hell didn't he try the diplomatic route first by talking to Oro about it? The only reason I can think of, aside from Grim having ulterior motives, is that he doesn't love Isla as much as he loves his ego
If Grim lived in our world he’d totally be a KKK member that marries a racial minority that’s acceptable enough to marry but he’s still dangerously racist and does take it out on the wife. I’m sure that by our society’s standards he’d be considered a war criminal.
As someone writing a fantasy series centered on magical animal companions and their relationship to humans I am disappointed in how little lynx matters. It feels like such a checked box instead of a character. When the whole point is a constant presence to love and support you
I ever really thought of it that way but you're kind of describing emotional support magical animal companion, and I agree that's the best use of that setup
i genuinely have no clue why anyone would find grim attractive in the slightest 😭ignoring him grooming isla, it still feels like the dude is a literal walking red flag but the book warps around him to position his actions as romantic when he is so unnervingly possessive, violent, and insufferable up to a point he just pisses me off. this has been itching my mind throughout the whole review because it boggles my tiny mind he is supposed to be a love interest. edit: just got up to the final plot twist between isla and grim. it genuinely made me so angry and i was awestruck i didnt think it could get worse and yet here we are.
I also don't even find his physical descriptors (at least those I've heard, haven't read the book) to be that hot. He's just jacked and presumably eight feet tall, the *most* generic idea of "hotness" possible with little to no personality. Conventionally attractive guys are apparently a dime a dozen in YA worlds so there would be no point in putting up with him for the sake of his appearance so if his personality, actions, and appearance aren't worth staying for, all that's left is his power and wealth. Maybe that's the appeal? I mean that's the one thing he has in common with his love rival Mr. Gold (Oro)
Right?? I’m into kinda toxic bad boys as much as the next person, but they usually have some sort of redeeming qualities. Grim at his best is just really condescending which just makes me mad
@@thatrantinggirl7376 And let's face it, well-written bad boys aren't even toxic (at least, they weren't in my Wattpad days), just introverts/loners. And sometimes, the relationship with the bad boy was healthier than any other relationship I read about.
@@annajensen7360 I don't get the appeal of wanting dudes 2x your height. Jacked is not my vibe but I get it at least. But reallllyyyy tall? Why? My five foot one ass hopes that anyone I fall for isn't going to be a giant (i.e. hypothetical/future love, please be less than 6ft).
No but I get you. My girlfriend knows everything about Lightlark... Because I've read it 3 times and watched every video and read every article about Lightlark 😢 I am over my own brain
Augh same, I haven't even read the book but I've fixated on it so much that I've started a whole rewrite complete with character redesigns and a wholeass lore document
It’s wild to me that Aster didn’t retcon the mind wipe to be Isla idea. Seems like it’d have been an obvious mid-book reveal. A flashback that had her say “Grim theirs no way I can get close to Oro if you’re around, I need you to erase us from my mind” While Grim did as asked he left the sex memories on purpose
Grim: And... there are many different kinds of pain Me: *immediately pictures the tumblr heart locket My Bals meme* haha wow okay Grim Crow: Pain in his heart- Me: OH right. yeah. that was also definitely what I thought he meant.
I mean... eye-lah is how you pronounce the actual name Isla, and I had assumed that it was a deliberate connection with the ISLAnd.... but apparently I was putting way too much credit in Alex Aster's writing ability.
I'm someone who reads a lot of dark romance, aka romance stories that include darker themes and tropes where the romantic plot and love interest have qualities that would certainly be considered abusive if a real person or relationship had them. Things like extreme violent posessiveness, stalking, drugging, even violations of consent. The thing is, there are a few things that any good dark romance author worth their salt does in their writing: 1) including content warnings either in the book itself, in the synopsis on any purchasing website, or on their personal website, 2) not writing that sort of thing for underage readers! There's no sure-fire guaranteed way to prevent teenagers from accessing 18+ content, but at the very least there should be some sort of disclaimer that this sort of thing is intended for adults only. I'm not fond of this ongoing trend of dark romance tropes infiltrating YA, especially because sometimes I'm not even sure if the author even recognizes that the tropes are unhealthy. It isn't YA by any stretch, but that's my big problem with 50 Shades- at least publicly, E.L. James acts like Christian and Ana's relationship is a healthy and aspirational and not (at best) unhealthy and rife with red flags and (at worst) intensely abusive. I have no problems with the depiction of abusive relationships in fiction, even when it's depicted in a way that is "romanticized", as long as the author is aware that what they are writing is abusive and not something to aspire to.
I remember in one of my favourite "problematic" romance stories as a teen, (Hana Yori Dango) someone asked the author if the male lead was her ideal guy, and her response was "Oh GOD no! This is a fantasy! Do not actually date men like this!" Also good news, I have literally never met a woman who ended up in an abusive relationship because they read some weird sh*t as a teen. My friends and I love talking about the strange fanfictions we read and the iffy fandoms we were part of growing up, and then we all go home to our loving, unproblematic spouses. Not that I think we should be handing out hardcore smut to kids, but they're gonna get into things whether we like it or not, and they'll be okay.
Yeah its a weird thing where like the dark romance here has all the pieces, but then the author tries to make it actually not dark by acting like the evil dude is continuously justified which is just a weird decision because like the appeal of dark romance is that its wrong and fucked up
What I'm about to say isn't about crow's content, but I've felt like a lot of book review stuff as of late is just bashing dark romance for existing. there are definitely writers / other dark romance creators out there who know their shit is fantasy only and warn the audience appropriately! and there's definitely writers who bleed into YA without warning, acting like their characters are the model of healthy relationships when they're horribly abusive (and yet justifying this somehow. no layer of fantasy should justify abuse as right). read dark romance and unusual things but holy shit. realize it's fictional and don't endorse actual situations that are like this. and writers should realize this shit too!! this applies in and out of romance. i write horror. the nastiest shit happens to my characters. horribly abusive (romantic or nonromantic) relationships, dangerous scenarios, contrived plots. i don't wish for anyone to experience these things in real life. i put warnings. i write these horrific things to process what's happened to me and to displace my feelings, not to promote the experience as aspirational.
Like, one of my favourite romance tropes is the evil king/mob boss etc. taking in a more naive woman into his power. Because it's a fun-ass power fantasy to be the centre of adoration of a powerful person who will smite whoever disrespects you and makes you his equally evil queen. Make Isla *into* all of Grim's BS and I would have been for it, but what's the point of having an evil love interest when all he does it make *his love interest* uncomfortable, attack *his love interest*, while the love interest isn't into the evil for him or herself?
@@jessip8654 I’ve always disagreed with the idea that the media you consume doesn’t affect you at all. Someone might not be able to directly say that one specific book led to them being in an abusive relationship, but they *could* say that the normalization of certain tropes can lead to the development of an unhealthy mindset, like how fatphobia in media can lead to someone internalizing fatphobia ideas or, more on topic, how the normalization of adult-teenager relationships in media targeted towards teenage girls can lead to them being more accepting of adult-teen relationships in real life. I think there’s the extreme that we need to censor all media because of how it could affect us and then that media doesn’t affect us at all and neither are true. Like let people enjoy what they enjoy, but also people should be aware of what they’re creating and what they’re consuming
The most horrifying thing in this entire review is the information that you read this book IN PUBLIC in its entirety. Praying for the recovery of your retinas Crow 🙏🙏🙏
Gods I hate how they throw out what little interesting traits they give isla for the sake of fitting tropes better. She’s horrified at grin’s abuse even though because of her background it should seem like training. And the author could have shown off her character here and how her past shaped her. But no, it’s thrown out to have her comfort him. Same with her being shocked by nudity. We can’t have a consistent character shaped by their world and environment. It’ll get in the way!
so something ive seen in online dnd communities is that you occasionally find a dm that is super railroad-y and totally unwilling to give players agency in their dnd games. and the advice given to these dms is "you dont want to play dnd, you want to write a book". hearing you compare the book to pathfinder, my current theory is that the author of these books was given that advice and actually followed through o.O
I actually like Sara j Maas’s stuff. Not bc it’s peak literature or whatever, but because it’s easy to read and fun. I know it’s not like… good literature lmao That being said, copying that general vibe and template is a shit idea, because unlike hunger games rip offs, SJM rip offs don’t have a solid base to copy off of. It’s like trying to build a good table by looking at a broken one and using that as your basis for what a good table looks like, with no other instructions. This is all a long winded way of saying lightlark sucks Edit: I should add, I haven’t read ACOTAR. I’ve just read throne of glass and that series. So hearing about what goes down in ACOTAR got me AGHAST
Only with hearing this, my suffering mind immediately create an imaginary scene. Where instead of refusing to kill Grim when he found out that Isla and Grim tied up in life, Oro just straight up "Fine, I'll marry you too!!" to Grim
Gotta increase the genocide counter from 3 entire people's over one romance to 4 entire cultures over a love triangle. This is why the nightlings forbid their rulers from having sex with the same person twice, not only power stealing but they could all be killed if the ruler marries someone and they fall down the stairs.
21:24 something I'm super thankful for with Sanderson's Stormlight archive is that the MC Kaladin was chronic depression and its not a thing he can just conquer. Like it's acknowledged in the text that it's a thing that is and will be with him he can and does however get better at managing it and learning how to avoid being sent over the edge and spiraling. Learning to work with and live with his mental illness actually is pretty important for learning and growing with his powers but it's not just like ok I leveled up and depression is gone
The sheer pain in your voice at "Panthers don't have pointed ears" was a delight. I'm sorry you had to go through this, thank you for writing this review.
books like this make me want to write a series with an evil shadow boy. i don't know if it would be good but it would at least be better than [gestures at grim, rhysand, all other YA evil shadow boys]
Oh my goodness. Isla is such a Mary sue, and it feels like the author is making all of the characters circle jerk her by saying “no you’re wonderful, you’re the best thing ever!” I’m only like 30 minutes into the video but oh my god the dialogue is AWFUL
@@guggelguggel7491 It's a similar type of hackery, though. Adding on more and more and not explaining or overexplaining the wrong parts iinistead of focusing on what you already have.
I think Grim's voice is just permanently Crimson Rouge's dramatic male lead voice to me. Because every time you read one of his lines I can hear it lol
I guess Aster took the, "black cats are mini panthers," literally with that pointed ear line. LOL Edit: I'm also baffled that Grimm is just slaughtering people for the smallest thing and Isla just doesn't seem to be bothered at all. If I had a boyfriend that so much as yelled at a dog I wouldn't stay with him. This sounds like a 12 year olds first fanfiction with excessive death as making it sound more serious. Like who's so unbothered by this? Lol it's not like she was raised in carnage.
Panther is a blanket term that refers to big black cat. Hence why black jaguars are also called panthers. If a tiger were to have a completely melanistic cat it would also be referred to as panther.
@@guggelguggel7491 A!) I called my rats cat and dog. B!) Last time I checked panthers weren't 10ft tall. C!) Bears don't have antlers either. D!) It's a fantasy animal in a fantasy world.
@@Grumbless you must be fun at parties. When did I ever say fantastical animals Have to be realistic? I just complained over a spot of semantics regarding the ears, because a fantasy panther mount being Large isn't weird, but having a panther not be a panther (the ears) and seemingly never even looking up a picture of the animal you're taking inspiration from is, in fact, lazy. If she wanted this mount to be, say, a dark lynx (since its named Lynx and has pointed ears), why didn't she do that? She doesn't have to follor irl rules, but she did take a real animal and ✨fantasyfy✨ it while seemingly not knowing what the animal even looked like in the first place. Excusing it as "its fantasy shut up" is boring, because if she wanted Lynx to be similar to a panther but with different traits, why isn't that clear from the start?
@@guggelguggel7491 you're the one that initially got rude with me. Why would I be polite to you? Again. I'll try to explain this simply for you. A black panther literally means a big back cat. So any black cat that's big is a panther. Understand? "You must be fun at parties." Says the person who is upset they are wrong 🤣 why do you want to die on this hill? Why are you so mad you're wrong over such a little thing? "She should say dark lynx." A black lynx that is ten foot tall would literally be classed as a black panther. I know this may be hard for you but again, big cat = panther. Black big cat = black panther. Here, funnily enough this UA-camr recently made 16 minute video that might make you able to understand ua-cam.com/video/0dJzhnejrF4/v-deo.htmlsi=CWGrtIjVqJByHtpK
there’s just so much bad stuff in the flashbacks but they really could’ve just had two different names for the same flower. Like regional language differences happen all the time
It being not named at all is still so weird. Extremely most important special Wildling flower. Isla doesn't know if it has a name and it seemingly doesn't
I was trying to figure out the whole “comparing Isla to Nightbane” thing because it really makes no sense. She never really does anything that could be considered morally dubious out of her own will. Yeah she bothers Grim but that’s a him problem. She’s not a curse or a cure or ANYTHING as a character, but then I realized it’s not *her*. It’s Oro and Grim. Her only notable character trait, the thing everyone uses to describe her, is just “Ooo! Which boy will she chose!!” And for a book that seems to be trying to have any semblance of a strong female protagonist type character that just kinda sucks.
A great step to Isla being an actual character (not necessarily a independent strong woman) would be for her to go into like a blind rage or psychosis and kill Grim after she finds out that he protected her abusers. And now she has to come face to face with the fact that she was indeed an abused child but tried to act like that didn’t happen. But unfortunately Aster seems to really like the idea of having a MC that’s terribly flat. Like even Cleo is a better character than her.
1:28:16 Aster really was like 'and Grim said "I will procure you exactly one heart. Specifically the heart of Crow Caller." Since you love asking so much...'
I got jumpscared irl by a copy of Lightlark in a local independent bookshop recently, taking this as my way of healing from that lol. Thank you so much for exploring these books, I frikkin love your work
lightlark jumpscares are the worst, i spotted it in a local bookshop a number of months back which is especially annoying bc im dont even live in an english-speaking country . someone had to translate that. someone got paid for translating lightlark and i hope they got paid enough
I was looking at the new acquisitions sections of my library, and wouldn't you know the Teens Room now has a copy of each. I was very startled. You're right though, the fact somebody has to translate it is worse. There's also an audio book, which means people had to read it out loud.
It's strange seeing a book you've only seen youtubers mock out in the wild, I saw ACOTAR at an airport bookstore... right next to Tolkien and Terry Pratchett.
Ah yes, I absolutely LOVE the "asexual but YOU'RE the exception" /s To be serious, I don't mind a story being about someone who's on the ace/aro spectrum discovering having feelings for someone or whatever, but I feel like way too often it's not used as a way to explore acespec/arospec experiences (with microlabels like -flux and gray- etc.) and instead used as an excuse to just "ignore" their orientation. As an aroace person myself I'm real upset that while ace people can be all of these things (including people who have sex) I find it frustrating that you so often see portrayals where it's "I'm ace but you're special uwu" like pls It feels like an insult as someone who tries to take a lot of care to how I portray ace people in my writing, including the ace characters I have who ARE in active sexual relationships like fuck dude what am I going through all this effort for D:
Yeah it's all very dumb. Again really I guess we're just lucky Oro ISN'T asexual at all because he'd be such a bad rep if so. But it's very weird half hearted inclusivity to bring it up at all
1:22:28 "In the middle of the night, in my dreams, you should see the things we do, baby" I see you quoting Taylor Swift, Alex Aster, I FCKING SEE YOU 😭😂
Books like Lightlark and Fourth Wing both excite and terrify me as a writer. Like excite me because the bar is on the floor so I might make it, but terrify me, because what if my books are as bad as them? Is constant dread.
Fourth Wing, at least, is baseline competent. It's very paint-by-numbers. It's like the literary equivalent of a song made by one of those studios who can make a hit every time because they've algorithmically figured out what our brains respond to and target that. The worldbuilding and plot is more than a little crazed because of their insistence on trying to blend as many features of Eragon, Deadly Education, etc, as possible but
Oh, I think I get it now! See, it's really quite clever (if you have a high enough IQ to get it): Isla, our protagonist, is both the poison AND the cure, which is a very subtle connection to the Nightbane flower. And see, that's why that is the title! Pure Brilliance!
I ended up reading Lightlark after watching your first review because I was curious to see what elements of the book stick out to me and I'm fond of death game/fantasy stories. Considering my least favourite parts of the book were the parts not centred on the Centennial, especially masquerading Grim's disrespect and borderline sexual harrassment as romantic, and one of my favourite parts was how wiping her memories without consent was actually treated like a dealbreaker.... I don't think that curiosity carries over It's a shame to know the author hasn't improved that much. They feel like first drafts considering the issues that any proper editor should have pointed out and changed
"romantic fluff serving no other purpose than to give me dark hot air balloon based memories" Brand new sentences like this is what keep me coming back to this channel (despite having no interest in YA romance novels).
Wait wait wait, bonded animal companion? I know what YA book this pulled from. It’s three dark crowns. I read that book and was deeply unimpressed by it (The lead girl didn’t even get her animal) and while this is a whole trope I couldn’t help but flash back to that specifically
Ah yes, Lightlark 2, also known as 2 Light 2 Lark. Can't wait for the rest of the series- The Light and the Lark: Tokyo Drift, Light and Lark, Light Five, Light & Lark 6, Lark 7, The Fate of the Lark, L9 and LarkX.
how did they make grimm worse... he sounds like characters i intentionally write as abusive in a lot of these scenes?? and like that'd be fine if it was intentional books can have sensitive themes but like it just so clearly isn't. i don't even know how you can get that far from ur intent
Love it when Isla said “it’s nightbaning time” and and both night and baned/lifed and deathed all over the place. Truly one of the curses and cures of all time. This video came at a perfect time, as I’m working on my own fanfic about the main love interest having memory loss and getting it recovered and this was an absolute great checklist in what to Strictly Avoid if I had any doubts about how it should progress! fantastic video as always, never stop putting out videos on books I’ve maybe vaguely heard of because I will always listen to several hours of YA lunacy. If you’re in need of another series to cover, i’ll suggest “Hidden Wings” by Cameo Renae- I only read the first book when I was a kid but it’s about angels and Lucifer and forbidden paranormal romance and I would love to hear your thoughts on it
On Isla's mental health plotline, I'm someone who has been able to recover a lot from a pretty bad depressive period by telling myself essentially that I was just going to stop, I didn't want to live like this and I was going to try living and thinking more positively. But it wasn't just a one and done type deal, it was a lot of effort at first. It took time to see the potential goodness in my future, to see myself as anything more than a waste of space, to see the good in the world. It took time, and even now I still slip and go back into that mindset but I have the tools now to dig myself out. It's easier now only because I've kept it up for years. As a complete resolution to a plot about mental health, where it seems it wraps up fairly quickly, it feels sort of disingenuous to me? If only because I've been there, I used those tools, and it took me years to be where I am now. It's not an instant fix
THANK YOU for bringing up the age gap thing. ACOTAR and SO many other fantasy books do this and I'm sick of it. I get that it's like a mark of the loss of innocence for these characters but... why is it always at the expense of young girls? It feels weirdly misogynistic to me. Also, if these girls were like 17, people (readers) would have something to say about it and feel uncomfortable (rightfully so). But they're 19/20 so it's okay? I mean, what's the REAL difference between a 17 year old brain and a 19 year old brain? Yeah... virtually nothing. It's weird. Age gaps are not what I have a problem with. It's authors always making the female characters the young/innocent ones and having 500+ year old dudes take full advantage of it/prey on it. I'm over it.
The visual of the literal ocean unlocking a door and beating some rando to death with a bat like a Looney tunes cartoon literally sent me into cardiac arrest
7 year old in bad media: I must honor my father by showing no sign of pain, I will not betray him! Torture me all you want, I will be stoic! This is the most important thing in my life and I am very composed, incredibly proud and definitely understand grown-up concepts like "honor".
I really felt it when he said “you were the bane of my existence”, because it’s like the title. Cause night bane? BANE?! But I think it overshadowed the even more eloquent “you are the bane of my existence”, because I just love how it alludes to nightbane, the poison or the flower or whatever, which is ALSO the title of the book, so it’s just so cool and I don’t know how the author came up with it because it’s just the most clever thing I’ve ever heard ever and oh my god BANE, NIGHTBANE it’s NIGHTBANE like the title of the book NIGHTBANE
i mean tbf the phrase "bane of my existence" far predates bridgerton. the use of it in this book is just so unnecessary and on-the-nose it's like 🙄 guess the author really thought it would be clever, lol
The whole "I'm not going to explain myself to you, but I am right, and eventually you're going to see how right I am and admit that you want me" shtick would be gross enough without all the over-the-top "threatening to torture someone to death."
This is such a perfect timing for the premiere for me. Was literally *just* scrolling through my recommendeds for a video that I can listen to while I get some work done. Thank you Crow, for saving me from ADHD boredom once again
with the whole religion thing (dunno if this was addressed again in video i am only an hour in) but she kept calling grim a demon and it made me so Angry because where did you get the word demon??
Honestly? Im betting that the "old world" is just (more) Earth Lite and there's Fantasy Catholisism (or at least what the author imagines catholisism to be like) or something. Either that or there exist some dark ancient Creature (of which this book has a large assortment of random critters, so it wouldn't shock me) and calling him a demon is essentially like calling someone a feathered beast.
I just learned that alex aster blurbed an ali hazelwood book, so your comment about her taking inspiration from the love hypothesis giant enormous men feels even more likely true
I no longer want to ruin Grim's life. I want this man to be forgotten and to disappear forever. Trying to make him into poor little meow meow was a mistake. Now he's just boring. Give me horrible toxic disfunctional garbage man eho cannot be fixed or give me nothing!
At this point I think you should pronounce her name different in every video. Options you’ve used and could use are: Eye-la Eee-la Ice-la Eye-zla Eee-zla Eee-sla Ihs-la Ihz-la (like “is”) (Basically any combination of the ways you’ve pronounced the first vowel with any way you’ve pronounced the “s” including ignoring it)
And because I’m a linguistics nerd I’m gonna try to put them into ipa. [ailʌ] [ilʌ] [aislʌ] [aizlʌ] [izlʌ] [islʌ] [ɪslʌ] [ɪzlʌ] You could also probably say it’s an [aɪ] diphthong for the “eye” sounding ones but I was being lazy typing at first cause I have to copy nonstandard characters. Also unsure if it’s actually [ʌ] at the end, since I pronounce [ʌ] and [ə] the same in my dialect.
Finally. I'm back. 7:11 - Upon hearing this again I realized with horror that "Immortal unless killed or unless they have a child" SPECIFICALLY the part about the child... that's how boss monsters in Undertale work. Alex Aster I'm coming for your knees. 9:30 - I'm not just an Izz-la truther because your Lightlark video was the first one I heard (and possibly what got me into Bad Booktube), but also because Aster had it coming. 12:07 - A groupchat with the intent for power sharing is such an Idea. And- god dammit didn't this happen in Mortal Instruments. 15:18 - Is intelligence a flair? 28:23 - I'm picturing Isla with an unawareness on the level of the British Monarchy, holding a ceremony to be crowned while there are still Problems. 28:48 - I'd be very concerned knowing that my ruler could portal anywhere. Wildlings checking their closets to make sure she's not in there before they talk about her. 34:00 - Oro sighed and turned to her. "Isla, you are my favorite little pogchamp." 40:30 - The vagueness of all of this is... well we don't need to talk about how Aster can't write, but "uses of ability" makes me want to eat drywall (derogatory) 44:39 - New headcanon: Oro does not have friends. He just needed people for a council and these people are being paid. 46:15 - Zed? Why is his name Zed? Aster I'm going to bite you. This is the worst name, and that includes Lynx. 48:05 - Now, this might be stretching. And I understand that. But I think Feyre was called "cursebreaker". I know this isn't particularly unique, curses are a fantasy thing, and being The Person Who Broke The Curse isn't exactly original. But. 50:49 - I like to think that "the ocean" came through the plumbing and drowned him in his toilet. 55:49 - Give us the AU where Grim dies right here. I want to read that. 1:08:26 - The bar is so low it's Under The Mountain. 1:17:05 - "Couples were coupling" has been living in my head rent free for the past three days I am not even kidding. 1:25:55 - This is actually interesting, yes! I'd also like to pose the idea from last time that you mentioned about black-room mystery sex for the Wildlings. Grim could just stick his starstick through a hole in the wall and women could line up to ride it and boom. Heirs. 1:28:25 - Wait, I thought the curses were broken. Do they still need to eat hearts? Or is this just a... yummy snack thing? 1:41:55 - Whenever I have small potatoes for dinner now, I think of them as Lightlark Potatoes. 1:43:37 - Aster coming for my character's arc now, poorly. 1:46:27 - Isla gets abused by two women: Grim sleeps. Isla gets touched by another man: GRIM WAKES. 1:56:29 - Just realized, that he's not teleporting. He's portaling. I feel like that implies a physical portal, which can't be that subtle and must be less convenient in battle in comparison.
"Wildlings checking their closets to make sure she's not in there before they talk about her." Imagine them turning around and there she is, holding a glittery 🌟🏑 in one hand.
You might say that the author is the bane to your existence, both a cure and curse. It’s almost like the books existence both hurts you and brings you value, like some kind of bane/cure/curse thing. Almost as if you’re in some kind of eternal infinite cyclical something in which this book is your bane, your counterpart both a cure and a curs-
🤣🤣🤣 Maybe you should have written the books
2 Light 2 Lark: Grimcel and the Wench Throne
this is the best comment here i need it higher
I need a minute to think about this
Can’t wait for LightLark 3: Wildling Drift
@@sovietcanuckistanian I'm already expecting it to get to the finale (until there's more): L8: Nexxus .Don't know if that's how it's spelled, but all I can picture is the hair care line popular in the 80s and 90s
grim telling isla about his traumatic upbringing really was just him saying "when i was 6 i was forced to eat cement"
For some reason "You will dream of me touching you. With my hands." absolutely fucking killed me. Actual laugh out loud.
He's a coward for not continuing that sequence to its logical conclusion, 'with my dick'
I now imagine, Isla imagining and "dreaming" of Grim attempting to touch her with his shoulders like a madman.
@@sparksparkle His dark shoulders of which he only shrugs one of them
@@icecreamsamwich LMFAO
I was just about to comment this lmao it really sent me
I feel like the forced to wear revealing clothing trope comes from the fact that women can’t admit to wanting to wear sexy clothes unless they’re deemed a slut.
Yeah, I feel like it’s a perfect example of “having your cake and eating it too”. It’s a fantasy where you get to be sexy and desired but at the same time you didn’t choose the clothing so you don’t have to feel guilty or ashamed. It’s just internalised misogyny and slutshaming.
@@Misa.misatoAs if clothes make you a slut bfr lol but it's YA written by mostly conservative yt middle aged woman so I shouldn't be surprised. And male YA characters who are often half naked are cool and different and not sluts for some reason I've noticed.
@@mittag983 it takes a lot for a man to be considered a slut.
They would be sooner labled a womanizer, or a chad if the labeler is an incel, than a slut...
Unless they are gay of course, then "slut" is used. Including if they are wearing revealing clothing now that I think about it...
I like how the Nightshade land is supposed to be this edgy wretched hive of debauchery and sin, but it just sounds like the Hot Topic and Spencer's Gifts shops you can find at any suburban mall in America
An edgy shopping mall, with blackjack! and hookers! /ref
So where teens buy adult toys?
I am so confused with how helpless Isla seemingly is all the time in this book. Like, the first book went on and on and ON about who trained she was and how badass she was with sword and daggers and FUCKING NINJA STARS… and yet she’s constantly getting bodied by random NPCs
That was all for seducing Oro, though. Now that she’s won Oro, she doesn’t know how to do anything! /s
Yeah that’s another weird thing
Goes to show that there was no planning when these books were written.
You know, give her an explicitly stated arc about gaining agency and power while in fact making her less agentive and powerful. Because women always need a hunky man to save them /s
@@pippastrelle aster literally could have spun the arrow to the heart making her weaker and her struggling to get back to her normal self, but it never happens
I wish fantasy authors would stop copying ACOTAR which is not even a great series to begin with 😭
I guess the ACOTAR series is going the way of the hunger games and twilight, spawning thousands of way worse copycats for us to vicariously make fun of through youtubers 😂
@@ayannabranchcomb7535except hunger games is still really good.
@@ranchustars3050Hunger games has something to say.
Where the copycats it’s inspired said nothing.
The fundamental problem is that, in the wake of Twilight, Fifty Shades, and the Hunger Games, that's how the publishing industry has come to work, jump on a trend as fast as possible, make as much money as possible, and run it into the ground. Arguably, you could even say that Colleen Hoover is probably the thing that everything is trying to copy now or will be very, very soon.
ACOTAR itself is copied from Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels series
The thing about Enemies to Lovers is it's meant to be a relationship ARC. there is meant to be stages and progression. It is about starting off opposed to another character, perhaps even thinking them a monster, and then the narrative stripping down their preconceived motions of each other through their interactions. They learn to humanize each other, and this eventually grows into caring and pater love.
But so many times Enemies to Lovers just means that there is Some Guy who is a sexy asshole that abused and hurts the MC in a way that she hates but secretly finds so sexy until she finally just Gives In and admits that him being a jackass turns her on, actually. Oh and he kills a random rapist for her at some point.
It's just so boring.
Very much this. Extremely unfortunate but most of these writers just can't write good enemies to lovers imo. One other thing they consistently do is create abyssally deep power dynamics that are somehow supposed to be part of the appeal? Not only is the love interest horrible to them, but they also have immense power over them. There needs to be a back and forth on relatively equal terms, otherwise it's just abuse.
This is why, despite the fact that enemies to lovers should be right up my ally, I much prefer rivals to lovers. The development of something like Sasuke/Naruto is the perfect outline for these kind of romances imo.
Yes!!!!!! It's supposed to be about getting your assumptions challenged and gaining new perspectives on things and finding common ground with someone you originally couldn't imagine sharing anything with!! And it's supposed to go BOTH WAYS!!!! Not "hehe he used to be mean and hate me but now he's mean and wants to jump my bones so we're in love" 🙄 No judgement to people who like that kind of thing, but it's a DIFFERENT TROPE than enemies to lovers
Hear me out, but Doofenshmirtz and Perry the Platypus knocked that arc out of the park
Ok I know this is still technically supposed to be a YA novel, but I feel like Grim's whole dumb "pain makes you stronger" deal would have been so much more interesting if Aster had just had the guts to make him a full-on masochist, like sexually. Hear me out:
- Avoids glamorizing SH with the whole "enduring pain is Morally Good and also literally makes you a powerful wizard" thing; instead it just turns him on which is all anybody's reading for anyway.
- Canonically, this all comes from a formative childhood experience where he endured ritualized public punishment to win daddy's approval. That is like, a perfect lab-engineered scenario to give somebody a fetish.
- Adds a fun little twist to his existing power dynamic with Isla, where he's the gruff bad boy protector in regular life, but during sex he allows himself to be extremely vulnerable and she's in charge. Maybe Isla discovers that after having every single aspect of her life thus far dictated for her by others, being in control is exactly what she wants, and perhaps even starts exercising more agency in the actual plot as a result! Also Aster can write some long-winded descriptions of Isla's sexy dominatrix outfits or whatever.
- Makes all those wound-tending scenes a little less pointless if at least they get to be horny about it.
oh.
this.
i like this :3
I don't read het stuff at all, but this suggestion would kinda make me consider it.
I don't get why ALL of the YA romances have to have a dominant love interest and changing that up would be the first thing I did as a writer^^
We should get Aster out the kitchen and put you there instead cause you cooked
When Grim attacked the person Isla was about to bang consensually out of pure jealousy, I had to stop, eat a bagel, then come back. Because I was so flabbergasted.
Did the bagel taste good?
@@grimdarkmalarkey5402 ure asking the real questions here
@@grimdarkmalarkey5402yes, it did! It's some kind of fancy seasonal bagel and I'm enjoying them while they're around.
Thoopsy’s short affair with the bagel is a better love story than Lightlark.
@@thoopsysounds delicious 😋
How does it feel to have better drip than anything in the lightlark universe
This book had WAY less fashion lol, like the only notable one is "make me look like a dagger.... Dangerous and bloody" or something.
@@Crowcallerthat's a line so edgy I have just cut myself on it
@@nobody4248 careful there you might just bleed like you're bleeding from something
The next book is going to be an extended 500-page Grim/Isla love scene. Then the epilogue will helpfully explain why Oro was actually secretly evil and abusive the whole time, and how Grim never did a single thing wrong in his entire life, so it's actually okay that Oro's entire purpose in the story was to die unceremoniously off screen and get cucked by Bargain Bin Rhysand
I think at this point it's more likely for Oro to just go and die heroically, but saving Isla. He can't move on and fall in love with someone else, because this way Isla would loos 50% of her powers. So the best option is to just make him die, so his powers stay with her forever.
Oro dying somehow would be a better fate than what SJM has done to Tamlin
I would simply rather die
"The falling from a hot air balloon to riding d**k pipeline" had me dying.
lmao, 'cleo is too bitchy to attend meetings so she sends some random dude', so there really can be only 1 (one) woman around?
Honestly, this just makes Cleo the best character in my eyes, she can’t be bothered to deal with this BS and I respect that.
She left to be in a better story, hopefully.
Two out of three female rulers are villain coded, the internal misogyny is very strong with this one
If there are 2 girls, how can Isla be special? But also, as soon as Cleo was turned into a mean MILF, I suddenly found myself more interested... 😍
@@nootnoot1537 There can only be one!
"People usually have multiple friends" ok NOW we're in the realm of fantasy
I enjoy the implication in that first minute or so of the video that Crow just hangs out in a dark unfinished basement between posting these.
I do actually it's my house I was reading to my son
@@CrowcallerBased on your son doing ☠ emoji irl, it was probably one of your higher level cringe-inducing books.
I enjoy the implication that their room mate is still stuck there.
@@CrowcallerOH, I just realized that it is literally your book that you are instilling upon him!!! Then surely his petrification must be from the sheer admiration! He is so engrossed, did not even moved when you generously left him your friend as an afternoon snack.
😅
@@ironicallyniceI am 😞
It would appear im being called again
She could have solved the skeezy memory loss by having Isla suggest it herself: "If I don't remember, he won't know I'm lying." It would have given the character agency, and shown her actually being able to think ahead. Forcing people to do things against their will is abuse, and I worry about what kind of relationships girls are in these days if they find these kind of misogynistic, abusive arseholes sexy. Do they understand this kind of behavior is controlling and not at all okay?
No but you're so right. It just had to be Isla's idea! And it explains why he would still be so drawn to her in book one.
I honestly wonder if toxic relationships being so popular in fiction is because Twilight and 50 Shades made it more 'okay', or if it's the natural progression of the 'all girls liking the bad boy' trope.
i'm firmly of the stance that people can like whatever they want in fiction (regardless of if it's a toxic trope or not), but i draw the line at bad writing
My guess is no, because creepy, controlling, borderline-stalkers being portrayed as sexy is a trope that goes way back in YA books.
@@silverdrag0n_Most toxic relationships are badly written exactly because the male abusive LI's motivation makes no sense and feels AI generated lol
The more I think about it, the more I come to a conclusion, that Grim wants to date Isla specifically so he can feel superior compared to her. He constantly infatalizes her as a ruler and as a person. And that's the reason why he never tells her about his plan to return to the OG world or about them being married and what said marriage means (her dying if he dies and vice-versa). He has to be the one in control, the one who knows more. That's why he erased the memories of all the Wildlings and saved Isla's abusive caretakers and never told Isla about it. It's probably not how Alex Aster wanted people to interpret Grim's action. One might argue that Grim not telling Isla anything was specifically made so that the plot could happen and there is nothing more to it. But it's actually kind of interesting that in making this decision Alex Aster actually gave a quite accurate portrayal of a man who dates only younger women specifically because he can feel like the smarter and more mature one and women in the same age-range would actually see how pathetic he is.
I thought I already replied this to you but apparently, I didn't so here I go again.
Your theory also makes sense as to why Isla is like 18 and not 90 compared to Grim's great-grandpa-times-100 age. Ofc, Alex Aster most likely (definitely) made her what 18?19?20? to appeal to teens and young adults and Grim like 5000 because teens and young adults like immortals falling in love with young, self-insert mortals. _BUT_ if all he wants is to feel superior, what better way to feel superior than dating someone who isn't even in her twenties (and probably a minor when he started dating her) when you've been around for centuries.
both lightlark and nightbane are valid warrior cat names.
Ah yes, it is time for a 3 hour essay of my favorite book: Nightbark featuring Woman Named After Boat, GOLD, Edgelord McEdgy, The Color Blue, and Cleo going to seductive haunts.
Cleo is the sane one in all aspects.
@@Saphia_ Truly. There could have been an entire book written about her but nah, can't be THAT creative!
The way you describe it makes it sound actually fun and interesting! 😂
@@JuniperJadePR Why make things interesting when you can take the easy route and bore everyone to tears? Am I right or am I right.
@@ZielonaPastela If only it was.
1:26:31 “eloquently said, dumbass”. This phrase, exactly how crow said it, needs to be normalized
Forget all this mess, now I want a book about an Uber friendship polycule
I want to know if love bonds work between magical creatures.
Isn't that just like the Power of Friendship that saves the day in a bunch of anime? 😅 There's a reason it's so popular, it's a good trope!
Scooby Doo
you'd love sense8
The raven cycle
Crow’s arc of going from not knowing how to pronounce Isla’s name to knowing and having a ~70% hit rate of pronouncing it right is a better arc than any of these characters
I thought it was kind of interesting how they turned the plant into a drug and a healing medicine, but the fact that they just keep bringing it up in the most ham fisted way ever, makes it feel like they're slapping me with a wet fish
That comparison feels like something you'd find in the tags of a reblogged Tumblr post
@@strangeaelurus log off tumblerina (jest)
@@strangeaelurus I'm a bit of a tumblrgirl so you're right on the money
@@frogmaiden6015 seeing your icon, I can see why being slapped with a wet fish is familiar to you.
(Im trying and failing to make a joke about fish royalty.)
@@guggelguggel7491 actually I'm such a good swimmer I always let the fish swims free and never get in their path,
But I really liked that joke it's really FIN-Y
I like to imagine the "star stick" exactly like Card Captor Sakura's one. The sad thing is that CCS is way more mature than whatever Lightlark pretends to be
i imagine it like star's wand in star vs the forces of evil 😭
@@cassiehosh1677i did too! Or like those magical girl wands
I'm a dirty, dirty girl and my mind keeps going to a completely different kind of "stick" whenever the star stick is mentioned. XD
I'm sorry; it just sounds too much like the phrasing you would use around kids to keep them in the dark.
I imagine it like the star stick or whatever from the princess peach game. Which, ironically enough for the person who said they had a dirty mind, people ALSO constantly say is a euphamsim
@@theflamedragon2508
Oh, the *_vibe scepter?_* (eyebrow wiggle)
Unrelated, but Super Princess Peach is pretty dope. Stupidly easy if you get all the upgrades, though.
...Now I wanna dig that game out and play it again.
grim's backstory is that he was horrifically abused and that's why you have to feel bad for him, but isla's backstory is also that she was horrifically abused so to make him seem sympathetic he has to have been abused *even harder*. oh your guardians left you hanging from a tree? well mine SKINNED ME ALIVE. in front of my DAD. so there
YES THANK YOU!!!
The _idea_ of a villain whose homeland had a brutal, barbarous institution of formal child abuse which promoted the stoic endurance of pain as a manly virtue... that could work, I think. Literally flaying them moves well into the realm of the ancient Spartiates (which is some extremely grim stuff that really shouldn't be brought into a YA novel, I feel), but the basic concept is entirely functional.
_However,_ the Spartiates make a case study on how societies with such horrific practices tend to be deeply dysfunctional and a bad thing for everyone involved. Some of the ways these practices perpetuated from generation to generation was by
A) twisting those subjected to it into a position where questioning the necessity of the abuse would be directly opposed to their own mental stability - they _have_ to convince themselves that the abuse is beneficial, because that conviction is what's keeping their own trauma suppressed.
B) fusing the abuse into positive aspects of life, so that rejecting one means rejecting the other.
C) making former victims actively complicit in brutalizing the next generation and stigmatizing hesitation or doubt about doing so, thus fostering further psychological dependency and adding peer pressure to the mix.
In other words, it would mean either having Grim go through a very real, very personal emotional meltdown in order to process what was done to him, putting that in his backstory as a major formative experience in making him who he is today... _or having him still be under the impression that it was all okay._
That last one actually could work well for an out-and-out villain - imagine if Grim had reacted to Isla's disgust by laughing and getting nostalgic about how a friend of his married a wildling, and they 'had' to physically restrain her from intervening when it came time for their child to be put through the same cultural meatgrinder that his father experienced. "Outsiders! Soft, the lot of you."
Given that there's nothing in canon to contradict it I choose to believe Grim's previous unspecified self-harm was actually just CBT. he just hits himself in the nads with a hammer real hard and gets a massive power boost as a result
Hi hello that abbreviation has to many meanings and I was a bit confused here for a sec 😂😂
Owww my bals
@@sophiaaretuza I thought it meant Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (hey, it makes sense that is a punishment for Grim) but the balls came up and I have no idea what CBT means.
@@Saphia_cohones and ball torture is the most likely meaning
@@Duhgel OHHH... thanks!
The fact that the book ends with Isla somehow still having feelings for Grim and even contemplating a relationship with him, is where my suspension of disbelief breaks. I can get into dark romance. I can get into love interests who are bad people. But this ain't it, 'cause the book's narrative is constantly bending over backwards to justify Grim's horrible actions, which just makes them seem even worse, because it makes it seem like Isla doesn't fully grasp the implications, and therefore doesn't understand what she's getting into with Grim.
Like, let's go through a list of Grim's horrible actions, that I can remember, in no particular order:
Constantly used what I can only describe as a racial slur as a term of endearment to Isla
Erased her memories without her consent
Never divulges informations that she would need to make an informed decision, and unless when telling said information directly benefits him, makes him appear superior or in the right
Negged her into wearing an outfit she was uncomfortable in, as well as seducing a man, but decided to violently torture a guy, she was kissing consensually, right in front of her, telling her he would torture him even more, and only then revealed the guy was a rapist
Groomed her after removing her memories, which he claims he did so she could seduce Oro without her feelings for Grim getting in the way, but considering the "seduce Oro" plan was part of Aurora's plan and Grim only agreed to it because Aurora would "give him Isla" and Isla was already willing to marry him? I seriously doubt that was his intentions for doing so.
Kidnapped an entire people away from their homeland to his domain and wiped their memories. The story insists he had their consent, but I doubt that an entire population would agree to that, especially from a guy who is considered untrustworthy by the general world population.
Had no qualms about using memory erasure after the woman he claims to love expressed such strong feelings of violation from it, that she refused to be with him
Tricked her into secretly marrying him by lying about the marriage necklace's true meaning, presenting it instead as a helpline, and never telling her that once she wears it, she can never take it off
Started an actual war in her name, when she never asked for it, and when doing so put her directly in danger. Claiming that the war is to save her because their lives are linked, but because of this life link, he put her life in double-danger, as she's not only in danger of his people killing her, but if the other side kills him, he dies too! It seems more like the war is for selfish reasons, and he used the "my life is connected to Isla's" thing as insurance, since he only shared this information when he was about to lose! If getting to the other world was all about saving Isla, why the hell didn't he try the diplomatic route first by talking to Oro about it? The only reason I can think of, aside from Grim having ulterior motives, is that he doesn't love Isla as much as he loves his ego
This is just a really really good list of his crimes.
If Grim lived in our world he’d totally be a KKK member that marries a racial minority that’s acceptable enough to marry but he’s still dangerously racist and does take it out on the wife. I’m sure that by our society’s standards he’d be considered a war criminal.
It's scary how similar this guy is to rhysand from ACOTAR YIKESSSSSS
@@ArtyTheNinthYT probably based on him, everything about this book series is derivative (except for the yolky things maybe)
⁰
As someone writing a fantasy series centered on magical animal companions and their relationship to humans I am disappointed in how little lynx matters. It feels like such a checked box instead of a character. When the whole point is a constant presence to love and support you
I ever really thought of it that way but you're kind of describing emotional support magical animal companion, and I agree that's the best use of that setup
“The Launch of Orbs” sounds like the place holder you put in to get the point across that you’re definitely going to change in the next draft
i genuinely have no clue why anyone would find grim attractive in the slightest 😭ignoring him grooming isla, it still feels like the dude is a literal walking red flag but the book warps around him to position his actions as romantic when he is so unnervingly possessive, violent, and insufferable up to a point he just pisses me off. this has been itching my mind throughout the whole review because it boggles my tiny mind he is supposed to be a love interest.
edit: just got up to the final plot twist between isla and grim. it genuinely made me so angry and i was awestruck i didnt think it could get worse and yet here we are.
I also don't even find his physical descriptors (at least those I've heard, haven't read the book) to be that hot. He's just jacked and presumably eight feet tall, the *most* generic idea of "hotness" possible with little to no personality. Conventionally attractive guys are apparently a dime a dozen in YA worlds so there would be no point in putting up with him for the sake of his appearance so if his personality, actions, and appearance aren't worth staying for, all that's left is his power and wealth. Maybe that's the appeal? I mean that's the one thing he has in common with his love rival Mr. Gold (Oro)
Right?? I’m into kinda toxic bad boys as much as the next person, but they usually have some sort of redeeming qualities. Grim at his best is just really condescending which just makes me mad
@@thatrantinggirl7376 And let's face it, well-written bad boys aren't even toxic (at least, they weren't in my Wattpad days), just introverts/loners. And sometimes, the relationship with the bad boy was healthier than any other relationship I read about.
@@annajensen7360 I don't get the appeal of wanting dudes 2x your height. Jacked is not my vibe but I get it at least. But reallllyyyy tall? Why? My five foot one ass hopes that anyone I fall for isn't going to be a giant (i.e. hypothetical/future love, please be less than 6ft).
I legitemately am being haunted by the specter of lightlark. i do not choose the hyperfixation and it is THROTTLING me
Best wishes for your illness
I'm so sorry
No but I get you. My girlfriend knows everything about Lightlark... Because I've read it 3 times and watched every video and read every article about Lightlark 😢 I am over my own brain
My excuse is that it will make me a better writer. I am sharing in case you want to borrow it.
Augh same, I haven't even read the book but I've fixated on it so much that I've started a whole rewrite complete with character redesigns and a wholeass lore document
you can tell crow’s learning to let go because she made the video about the sequel a mere 3 hours long
I really actually don't get how that happened because the script is 2k longer but the vid is an hour shorter. Huh???
@@Crowcaller You talked faster?
Maybe?
It’s wild to me that Aster didn’t retcon the mind wipe to be Isla idea. Seems like it’d have been an obvious mid-book reveal. A flashback that had her say “Grim theirs no way I can get close to Oro if you’re around, I need you to erase us from my mind” While Grim did as asked he left the sex memories on purpose
The yaoi hands part is absolutely taking me out😂😂😂
I wholeheartedly believe Crow put more effort and thought into this slay of an outfit than anyone did with this book (series)
Was there ever any doubt?
Grim: And... there are many different kinds of pain
Me: *immediately pictures the tumblr heart locket My Bals meme* haha wow okay Grim
Crow: Pain in his heart-
Me: OH right. yeah. that was also definitely what I thought he meant.
my bals 💔
MY BALS!!!!
he drinks too much bone-hurting juice. oof owie ouch
the “awww……….. what did he mean by this?” was pure comedy LOL your delivery is top notch .
I mean... eye-lah is how you pronounce the actual name Isla, and I had assumed that it was a deliberate connection with the ISLAnd.... but apparently I was putting way too much credit in Alex Aster's writing ability.
I appreciate how this author managed to find the only wrong way of pronouncing Isla
Book 3 will reveal that Oro and Azul are actually pronounced Oh-raw and Ay-sull
THANK YOU I WAS THINKING THE SAME THING. Pronouncing it like eye-la rolls off the tongue much better than ice-la 🙄
I'm someone who reads a lot of dark romance, aka romance stories that include darker themes and tropes where the romantic plot and love interest have qualities that would certainly be considered abusive if a real person or relationship had them. Things like extreme violent posessiveness, stalking, drugging, even violations of consent. The thing is, there are a few things that any good dark romance author worth their salt does in their writing: 1) including content warnings either in the book itself, in the synopsis on any purchasing website, or on their personal website, 2) not writing that sort of thing for underage readers! There's no sure-fire guaranteed way to prevent teenagers from accessing 18+ content, but at the very least there should be some sort of disclaimer that this sort of thing is intended for adults only. I'm not fond of this ongoing trend of dark romance tropes infiltrating YA, especially because sometimes I'm not even sure if the author even recognizes that the tropes are unhealthy. It isn't YA by any stretch, but that's my big problem with 50 Shades- at least publicly, E.L. James acts like Christian and Ana's relationship is a healthy and aspirational and not (at best) unhealthy and rife with red flags and (at worst) intensely abusive. I have no problems with the depiction of abusive relationships in fiction, even when it's depicted in a way that is "romanticized", as long as the author is aware that what they are writing is abusive and not something to aspire to.
I remember in one of my favourite "problematic" romance stories as a teen, (Hana Yori Dango) someone asked the author if the male lead was her ideal guy, and her response was "Oh GOD no! This is a fantasy! Do not actually date men like this!"
Also good news, I have literally never met a woman who ended up in an abusive relationship because they read some weird sh*t as a teen. My friends and I love talking about the strange fanfictions we read and the iffy fandoms we were part of growing up, and then we all go home to our loving, unproblematic spouses. Not that I think we should be handing out hardcore smut to kids, but they're gonna get into things whether we like it or not, and they'll be okay.
Yeah its a weird thing where like the dark romance here has all the pieces, but then the author tries to make it actually not dark by acting like the evil dude is continuously justified which is just a weird decision because like the appeal of dark romance is that its wrong and fucked up
What I'm about to say isn't about crow's content, but I've felt like a lot of book review stuff as of late is just bashing dark romance for existing. there are definitely writers / other dark romance creators out there who know their shit is fantasy only and warn the audience appropriately! and there's definitely writers who bleed into YA without warning, acting like their characters are the model of healthy relationships when they're horribly abusive (and yet justifying this somehow. no layer of fantasy should justify abuse as right).
read dark romance and unusual things but holy shit. realize it's fictional and don't endorse actual situations that are like this.
and writers should realize this shit too!! this applies in and out of romance. i write horror. the nastiest shit happens to my characters. horribly abusive (romantic or nonromantic) relationships, dangerous scenarios, contrived plots. i don't wish for anyone to experience these things in real life. i put warnings. i write these horrific things to process what's happened to me and to displace my feelings, not to promote the experience as aspirational.
Like, one of my favourite romance tropes is the evil king/mob boss etc. taking in a more naive woman into his power. Because it's a fun-ass power fantasy to be the centre of adoration of a powerful person who will smite whoever disrespects you and makes you his equally evil queen. Make Isla *into* all of Grim's BS and I would have been for it, but what's the point of having an evil love interest when all he does it make *his love interest* uncomfortable, attack *his love interest*, while the love interest isn't into the evil for him or herself?
@@jessip8654 I’ve always disagreed with the idea that the media you consume doesn’t affect you at all. Someone might not be able to directly say that one specific book led to them being in an abusive relationship, but they *could* say that the normalization of certain tropes can lead to the development of an unhealthy mindset, like how fatphobia in media can lead to someone internalizing fatphobia ideas or, more on topic, how the normalization of adult-teenager relationships in media targeted towards teenage girls can lead to them being more accepting of adult-teen relationships in real life. I think there’s the extreme that we need to censor all media because of how it could affect us and then that media doesn’t affect us at all and neither are true. Like let people enjoy what they enjoy, but also people should be aware of what they’re creating and what they’re consuming
The most horrifying thing in this entire review is the information that you read this book IN PUBLIC in its entirety. Praying for the recovery of your retinas Crow 🙏🙏🙏
Gods I hate how they throw out what little interesting traits they give isla for the sake of fitting tropes better. She’s horrified at grin’s abuse even though because of her background it should seem like training. And the author could have shown off her character here and how her past shaped her. But no, it’s thrown out to have her comfort him. Same with her being shocked by nudity. We can’t have a consistent character shaped by their world and environment. It’ll get in the way!
I feel like if she wanted her main character's name to be pronounced that way, she could have slapped an "e" onto the front of it.
so something ive seen in online dnd communities is that you occasionally find a dm that is super railroad-y and totally unwilling to give players agency in their dnd games. and the advice given to these dms is "you dont want to play dnd, you want to write a book". hearing you compare the book to pathfinder, my current theory is that the author of these books was given that advice and actually followed through o.O
I just can't imagine aster is hip enough to like ttrpgs.... I just can't
I was just thinking that the flashbacks sounded like someone’s dnd campaign notes mixed with their erotic fanfic.
oddly enough, Lightlark 2 reads very similarly to the Phantom of the Opera/Bible fanfic I wrote when I was 12 😭 Crow, it included QUITE a few angels
Very............ Intriguing
I actually like Sara j Maas’s stuff. Not bc it’s peak literature or whatever, but because it’s easy to read and fun. I know it’s not like… good literature lmao
That being said, copying that general vibe and template is a shit idea, because unlike hunger games rip offs, SJM rip offs don’t have a solid base to copy off of. It’s like trying to build a good table by looking at a broken one and using that as your basis for what a good table looks like, with no other instructions.
This is all a long winded way of saying lightlark sucks
Edit: I should add, I haven’t read ACOTAR. I’ve just read throne of glass and that series. So hearing about what goes down in ACOTAR got me AGHAST
I love your outfit styling! You look like a celestial ruler, it fits the theme so well.
I didn't know Lightlark had had a sequel/rewrite, oof.
Just last month!
Only with hearing this, my suffering mind immediately create an imaginary scene. Where instead of refusing to kill Grim when he found out that Isla and Grim tied up in life, Oro just straight up "Fine, I'll marry you too!!" to Grim
Gotta increase the genocide counter from 3 entire people's over one romance to 4 entire cultures over a love triangle.
This is why the nightlings forbid their rulers from having sex with the same person twice, not only power stealing but they could all be killed if the ruler marries someone and they fall down the stairs.
21:24 something I'm super thankful for with Sanderson's Stormlight archive is that the MC Kaladin was chronic depression and its not a thing he can just conquer. Like it's acknowledged in the text that it's a thing that is and will be with him he can and does however get better at managing it and learning how to avoid being sent over the edge and spiraling. Learning to work with and live with his mental illness actually is pretty important for learning and growing with his powers but it's not just like ok I leveled up and depression is gone
The sheer pain in your voice at "Panthers don't have pointed ears" was a delight. I'm sorry you had to go through this, thank you for writing this review.
books like this make me want to write a series with an evil shadow boy. i don't know if it would be good but it would at least be better than [gestures at grim, rhysand, all other YA evil shadow boys]
I think the issue is with evil shadow boys is that the authors try to make them the ones in the right
Instead of just what they are
I want a good shadow boy god damn it. Nico from Percy Jackson barely counts, and I literally cannot think of another example
And you'll never know if you never try! Go for it! I bet you'll surprise and impress yourself.
Oh my goodness. Isla is such a Mary sue, and it feels like the author is making all of the characters circle jerk her by saying “no you’re wonderful, you’re the best thing ever!”
I’m only like 30 minutes into the video but oh my god the dialogue is AWFUL
Gives me Marked vibes with everyone constantly reminding the main character how special she is
It reminds me of the house of night series where everyone keeps reassuring Zoe that she's so special and doing everything right, even when she isn't.
@@strangeaelurus ahhh yes yes yes, that was the series name! I could literally only remember the first book 😂
Lightlark reminds me a lot of RWBYY, worldbuildingwise. New powers and new enemies in ways that increasingly don't make sense.
Now that I'm thinking abt it, ur right 💀
Because the writers of both are hacks
@@guggelguggel7491 It's a similar type of hackery, though. Adding on more and more and not explaining or overexplaining the wrong parts iinistead of focusing on what you already have.
I think Grim's voice is just permanently Crimson Rouge's dramatic male lead voice to me. Because every time you read one of his lines I can hear it lol
I knew that the sudden urge to rewatch the first review should’ve been a sign
I guess Aster took the, "black cats are mini panthers," literally with that pointed ear line. LOL
Edit: I'm also baffled that Grimm is just slaughtering people for the smallest thing and Isla just doesn't seem to be bothered at all. If I had a boyfriend that so much as yelled at a dog I wouldn't stay with him. This sounds like a 12 year olds first fanfiction with excessive death as making it sound more serious. Like who's so unbothered by this? Lol it's not like she was raised in carnage.
Panther is a blanket term that refers to big black cat. Hence why black jaguars are also called panthers. If a tiger were to have a completely melanistic cat it would also be referred to as panther.
@@GrumblessA) they insistintly call lynx a dark leopard, B) tigers also have round ears?
@@guggelguggel7491 A!) I called my rats cat and dog. B!) Last time I checked panthers weren't 10ft tall. C!) Bears don't have antlers either. D!) It's a fantasy animal in a fantasy world.
@@Grumbless you must be fun at parties. When did I ever say fantastical animals Have to be realistic? I just complained over a spot of semantics regarding the ears, because a fantasy panther mount being Large isn't weird, but having a panther not be a panther (the ears) and seemingly never even looking up a picture of the animal you're taking inspiration from is, in fact, lazy. If she wanted this mount to be, say, a dark lynx (since its named Lynx and has pointed ears), why didn't she do that? She doesn't have to follor irl rules, but she did take a real animal and ✨fantasyfy✨ it while seemingly not knowing what the animal even looked like in the first place. Excusing it as "its fantasy shut up" is boring, because if she wanted Lynx to be similar to a panther but with different traits, why isn't that clear from the start?
@@guggelguggel7491 you're the one that initially got rude with me. Why would I be polite to you? Again. I'll try to explain this simply for you. A black panther literally means a big back cat. So any black cat that's big is a panther. Understand? "You must be fun at parties." Says the person who is upset they are wrong 🤣 why do you want to die on this hill? Why are you so mad you're wrong over such a little thing?
"She should say dark lynx." A black lynx that is ten foot tall would literally be classed as a black panther. I know this may be hard for you but again, big cat = panther. Black big cat = black panther. Here, funnily enough this UA-camr recently made 16 minute video that might make you able to understand ua-cam.com/video/0dJzhnejrF4/v-deo.htmlsi=CWGrtIjVqJByHtpK
there’s just so much bad stuff in the flashbacks but they really could’ve just had two different names for the same flower. Like regional language differences happen all the time
It being not named at all is still so weird. Extremely most important special Wildling flower. Isla doesn't know if it has a name and it seemingly doesn't
I was trying to figure out the whole “comparing Isla to Nightbane” thing because it really makes no sense. She never really does anything that could be considered morally dubious out of her own will. Yeah she bothers Grim but that’s a him problem. She’s not a curse or a cure or ANYTHING as a character, but then I realized it’s not *her*. It’s Oro and Grim. Her only notable character trait, the thing everyone uses to describe her, is just “Ooo! Which boy will she chose!!” And for a book that seems to be trying to have any semblance of a strong female protagonist type character that just kinda sucks.
A great step to Isla being an actual character (not necessarily a independent strong woman) would be for her to go into like a blind rage or psychosis and kill Grim after she finds out that he protected her abusers. And now she has to come face to face with the fact that she was indeed an abused child but tried to act like that didn’t happen. But unfortunately Aster seems to really like the idea of having a MC that’s terribly flat. Like even Cleo is a better character than her.
@@ladytopaz6358The problem is if she killed grim shed die and you cant lose your precious bad boy and your very flat mc
"im not going to download tiktok" suddenly my respect for your opinion has multiplied by a thousand
realizing this sounds mildly sarcastic, ITS NOT I MEAN IT THATS INCREDIBLY BASED OF YOU
1:28:16 Aster really was like 'and Grim said "I will procure you exactly one heart. Specifically the heart of Crow Caller." Since you love asking so much...'
I got jumpscared irl by a copy of Lightlark in a local independent bookshop recently, taking this as my way of healing from that lol. Thank you so much for exploring these books, I frikkin love your work
lightlark jumpscares are the worst, i spotted it in a local bookshop a number of months back which is especially annoying bc im dont even live in an english-speaking country . someone had to translate that. someone got paid for translating lightlark and i hope they got paid enough
I was looking at the new acquisitions sections of my library, and wouldn't you know the Teens Room now has a copy of each. I was very startled. You're right though, the fact somebody has to translate it is worse. There's also an audio book, which means people had to read it out loud.
It's strange seeing a book you've only seen youtubers mock out in the wild, I saw ACOTAR at an airport bookstore...
right next to Tolkien and Terry Pratchett.
Fourth Wing and Iron Flame are eeeeeverywhere where I am rn literally cannot turn a corner without seeing it in a bookshop window
Ah yes, I absolutely LOVE the "asexual but YOU'RE the exception" /s
To be serious, I don't mind a story being about someone who's on the ace/aro spectrum discovering having feelings for someone or whatever, but I feel like way too often it's not used as a way to explore acespec/arospec experiences (with microlabels like -flux and gray- etc.) and instead used as an excuse to just "ignore" their orientation.
As an aroace person myself I'm real upset that while ace people can be all of these things (including people who have sex) I find it frustrating that you so often see portrayals where it's "I'm ace but you're special uwu" like pls
It feels like an insult as someone who tries to take a lot of care to how I portray ace people in my writing, including the ace characters I have who ARE in active sexual relationships like fuck dude what am I going through all this effort for D:
Yeah it's all very dumb. Again really I guess we're just lucky Oro ISN'T asexual at all because he'd be such a bad rep if so. But it's very weird half hearted inclusivity to bring it up at all
@@Crowcaller Yeah it's absolutely puzzling genuinely. It feels like such a throwaway point and at that point you could've just shut your mouth HAHA
I want to point out that the rebels who wear brown and beige, their leader is named Marron which is french for a brown color.
IT IS??? GOD
1:22:28 "In the middle of the night, in my dreams, you should see the things we do, baby" I see you quoting Taylor Swift, Alex Aster, I FCKING SEE YOU 😭😂
HELPPPp thats not subtle at ALL
LMFAOOOOOO WHATTT??? SHE IS NOT SLICK
I’ve been following Crow since the first Lightlark video came out so this feels like a fun little bit of nostalgia 😂
A BIT OVER ONE YEAR MY PAL
@@Crowcaller yeah but it feels like it’s been at least two haha
SAME
Books like Lightlark and Fourth Wing both excite and terrify me as a writer. Like excite me because the bar is on the floor so I might make it, but terrify me, because what if my books are as bad as them? Is constant dread.
Fourth Wing, at least, is baseline competent. It's very paint-by-numbers. It's like the literary equivalent of a song made by one of those studios who can make a hit every time because they've algorithmically figured out what our brains respond to and target that.
The worldbuilding and plot is more than a little crazed because of their insistence on trying to blend as many features of Eragon, Deadly Education, etc, as possible but
Oh, I think I get it now! See, it's really quite clever (if you have a high enough IQ to get it): Isla, our protagonist, is both the poison AND the cure, which is a very subtle connection to the Nightbane flower. And see, that's why that is the title! Pure Brilliance!
The pocket world lore you mentioned sounds like it’s ripped straight from the 2018 she-ra reboot.
Which, ironically, was a far more mature story.
I ended up reading Lightlark after watching your first review because I was curious to see what elements of the book stick out to me and I'm fond of death game/fantasy stories. Considering my least favourite parts of the book were the parts not centred on the Centennial, especially masquerading Grim's disrespect and borderline sexual harrassment as romantic, and one of my favourite parts was how wiping her memories without consent was actually treated like a dealbreaker.... I don't think that curiosity carries over
It's a shame to know the author hasn't improved that much. They feel like first drafts considering the issues that any proper editor should have pointed out and changed
"romantic fluff serving no other purpose than to give me dark hot air balloon based memories"
Brand new sentences like this is what keep me coming back to this channel (despite having no interest in YA romance novels).
Wait wait wait, bonded animal companion? I know what YA book this pulled from. It’s three dark crowns. I read that book and was deeply unimpressed by it (The lead girl didn’t even get her animal) and while this is a whole trope I couldn’t help but flash back to that specifically
Another tick in the “what did Aster steal now” column
There is other one. I don't remember it's name but I do remember that it had a game.
1:16:25 I thought the “ball interruption” was going to be about grim’s nuts 🫣
Ah yes, Lightlark 2, also known as 2 Light 2 Lark. Can't wait for the rest of the series- The Light and the Lark: Tokyo Drift, Light and Lark, Light Five, Light & Lark 6, Lark 7, The Fate of the Lark, L9 and LarkX.
how did they make grimm worse... he sounds like characters i intentionally write as abusive in a lot of these scenes?? and like that'd be fine if it was intentional books can have sensitive themes but like it just so clearly isn't. i don't even know how you can get that far from ur intent
Love it when Isla said “it’s nightbaning time” and and both night and baned/lifed and deathed all over the place. Truly one of the curses and cures of all time.
This video came at a perfect time, as I’m working on my own fanfic about the main love interest having memory loss and getting it recovered and this was an absolute great checklist in what to Strictly Avoid if I had any doubts about how it should progress! fantastic video as always, never stop putting out videos on books I’ve maybe vaguely heard of because I will always listen to several hours of YA lunacy. If you’re in need of another series to cover, i’ll suggest “Hidden Wings” by Cameo Renae- I only read the first book when I was a kid but it’s about angels and Lucifer and forbidden paranormal romance and I would love to hear your thoughts on it
Thank you! And Intriguing book. Not heard of it which is semi rare and it is up my valley
On Isla's mental health plotline, I'm someone who has been able to recover a lot from a pretty bad depressive period by telling myself essentially that I was just going to stop, I didn't want to live like this and I was going to try living and thinking more positively. But it wasn't just a one and done type deal, it was a lot of effort at first. It took time to see the potential goodness in my future, to see myself as anything more than a waste of space, to see the good in the world. It took time, and even now I still slip and go back into that mindset but I have the tools now to dig myself out. It's easier now only because I've kept it up for years. As a complete resolution to a plot about mental health, where it seems it wraps up fairly quickly, it feels sort of disingenuous to me? If only because I've been there, I used those tools, and it took me years to be where I am now. It's not an instant fix
THANK YOU for bringing up the age gap thing. ACOTAR and SO many other fantasy books do this and I'm sick of it. I get that it's like a mark of the loss of innocence for these characters but... why is it always at the expense of young girls? It feels weirdly misogynistic to me. Also, if these girls were like 17, people (readers) would have something to say about it and feel uncomfortable (rightfully so). But they're 19/20 so it's okay? I mean, what's the REAL difference between a 17 year old brain and a 19 year old brain? Yeah... virtually nothing. It's weird. Age gaps are not what I have a problem with. It's authors always making the female characters the young/innocent ones and having 500+ year old dudes take full advantage of it/prey on it. I'm over it.
My headcanon 'star stick' is either a Wii Stick or a really whimsical vibrat*r
I really enjoy the image of her using it as a magical girl transformation wand. But with a Wii remote
In a way, the potato necklace being a nightshade thing is kinda clever... because potatoes are in the nightshade plant family
The visual of the literal ocean unlocking a door and beating some rando to death with a bat like a Looney tunes cartoon literally sent me into cardiac arrest
7 year old in bad media: I must honor my father by showing no sign of pain, I will not betray him! Torture me all you want, I will be stoic! This is the most important thing in my life and I am very composed, incredibly proud and definitely understand grown-up concepts like "honor".
I really felt it when he said “you were the bane of my existence”, because it’s like the title. Cause night bane? BANE?! But I think it overshadowed the even more eloquent “you are the bane of my existence”, because I just love how it alludes to nightbane, the poison or the flower or whatever, which is ALSO the title of the book, so it’s just so cool and I don’t know how the author came up with it because it’s just the most clever thing I’ve ever heard ever and oh my god BANE, NIGHTBANE it’s NIGHTBANE like the title of the book NIGHTBANE
It's actually a quote from Bridgerton😅
i mean tbf the phrase "bane of my existence" far predates bridgerton. the use of it in this book is just so unnecessary and on-the-nose it's like 🙄 guess the author really thought it would be clever, lol
The whole "I'm not going to explain myself to you, but I am right, and eventually you're going to see how right I am and admit that you want me" shtick would be gross enough without all the over-the-top "threatening to torture someone to death."
just realized that the ruler immortality thing follows the exact same set of rules as the boss monsters from undertale LMAO
This is such a perfect timing for the premiere for me. Was literally *just* scrolling through my recommendeds for a video that I can listen to while I get some work done. Thank you Crow, for saving me from ADHD boredom once again
You look so delighted about your books! They look very nice for selfpub, you should be proud! I'm definitely going to give them a look.
"Eloquently said, Dumbass" plays forever on repeat in my brain, it's going to fundamentally change my speech, again, I can feel it
with the whole religion thing (dunno if this was addressed again in video i am only an hour in) but she kept calling grim a demon and it made me so Angry because where did you get the word demon??
Honestly? Im betting that the "old world" is just (more) Earth Lite and there's Fantasy Catholisism (or at least what the author imagines catholisism to be like) or something. Either that or there exist some dark ancient Creature (of which this book has a large assortment of random critters, so it wouldn't shock me) and calling him a demon is essentially like calling someone a feathered beast.
I loved this whole review, but please know that your whole Seductive Haunts section actually killed me 😂
SEDUCTIVE HAUNTS
I just learned that alex aster blurbed an ali hazelwood book, so your comment about her taking inspiration from the love hypothesis giant enormous men feels even more likely true
oh man you can tell by the power systems this shonen has been running for at LEAST 9 season
I no longer want to ruin Grim's life. I want this man to be forgotten and to disappear forever. Trying to make him into poor little meow meow was a mistake. Now he's just boring.
Give me horrible toxic disfunctional garbage man eho cannot be fixed or give me nothing!
"All girls want is a giant panther to ride into battle"
Sudden realisation: All girls want to be Drizzt Do'Urden 😮
At this point I think you should pronounce her name different in every video.
Options you’ve used and could use are:
Eye-la
Eee-la
Ice-la
Eye-zla
Eee-zla
Eee-sla
Ihs-la
Ihz-la (like “is”)
(Basically any combination of the ways you’ve pronounced the first vowel with any way you’ve pronounced the “s” including ignoring it)
And because I’m a linguistics nerd I’m gonna try to put them into ipa.
[ailʌ]
[ilʌ]
[aislʌ]
[aizlʌ]
[izlʌ]
[islʌ]
[ɪslʌ]
[ɪzlʌ]
You could also probably say it’s an [aɪ] diphthong for the “eye” sounding ones but I was being lazy typing at first cause I have to copy nonstandard characters. Also unsure if it’s actually [ʌ] at the end, since I pronounce [ʌ] and [ə] the same in my dialect.
“is Los Angeles”
Eye-slaw is such a terrible way of saying isla. I know not your choice, still much piss
Finally. I'm back.
7:11 - Upon hearing this again I realized with horror that "Immortal unless killed or unless they have a child" SPECIFICALLY the part about the child... that's how boss monsters in Undertale work. Alex Aster I'm coming for your knees.
9:30 - I'm not just an Izz-la truther because your Lightlark video was the first one I heard (and possibly what got me into Bad Booktube), but also because Aster had it coming.
12:07 - A groupchat with the intent for power sharing is such an Idea. And- god dammit didn't this happen in Mortal Instruments.
15:18 - Is intelligence a flair?
28:23 - I'm picturing Isla with an unawareness on the level of the British Monarchy, holding a ceremony to be crowned while there are still Problems.
28:48 - I'd be very concerned knowing that my ruler could portal anywhere. Wildlings checking their closets to make sure she's not in there before they talk about her.
34:00 - Oro sighed and turned to her. "Isla, you are my favorite little pogchamp."
40:30 - The vagueness of all of this is... well we don't need to talk about how Aster can't write, but "uses of ability" makes me want to eat drywall (derogatory)
44:39 - New headcanon: Oro does not have friends. He just needed people for a council and these people are being paid.
46:15 - Zed? Why is his name Zed? Aster I'm going to bite you. This is the worst name, and that includes Lynx.
48:05 - Now, this might be stretching. And I understand that. But I think Feyre was called "cursebreaker". I know this isn't particularly unique, curses are a fantasy thing, and being The Person Who Broke The Curse isn't exactly original. But.
50:49 - I like to think that "the ocean" came through the plumbing and drowned him in his toilet.
55:49 - Give us the AU where Grim dies right here. I want to read that.
1:08:26 - The bar is so low it's Under The Mountain.
1:17:05 - "Couples were coupling" has been living in my head rent free for the past three days I am not even kidding.
1:25:55 - This is actually interesting, yes! I'd also like to pose the idea from last time that you mentioned about black-room mystery sex for the Wildlings. Grim could just stick his starstick through a hole in the wall and women could line up to ride it and boom. Heirs.
1:28:25 - Wait, I thought the curses were broken. Do they still need to eat hearts? Or is this just a... yummy snack thing?
1:41:55 - Whenever I have small potatoes for dinner now, I think of them as Lightlark Potatoes.
1:43:37 - Aster coming for my character's arc now, poorly.
1:46:27 - Isla gets abused by two women: Grim sleeps. Isla gets touched by another man: GRIM WAKES.
1:56:29 - Just realized, that he's not teleporting. He's portaling. I feel like that implies a physical portal, which can't be that subtle and must be less convenient in battle in comparison.
" Is intelligence a flair?"
If it is, it is very rare.
"Wildlings checking their closets to make sure she's not in there before they talk about her."
Imagine them turning around and there she is, holding a glittery 🌟🏑 in one hand.