 Hello friends, and I'm back to talk about Lightlark again, because I, you know, I reviewed it months ago, around the time it first came out, and then I talked about it a little bit on my last World Building Analysis video. And now I just figured, eh, why not? Let's do another rewrite, because so many people have already done really long in depth, looks at why this book doesn't work on any level, and I don't feel like I could add anything new to that conversation, but I can do a rewrite just like before, you know, I did this with the Onision trilogy a few years ago, I did it with Trigger Warning not that long ago, and now I'm doing it with Lightlark. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. For those unfamiliar, basically this is going to be me taking the same basic story and trying to leave as much intact as possible, like as many of the major plot points and as many of the major character decisions and personalities, like leave all that as intact as possible, but tweak it to make it, you know, not terrible. And if you want a really in-depth summary of Lightlark, there's like 50 other really long videos that can go over that, so check out one of those, because this is going to be a pretty brief summary, and there may be some details that don't make much sense. If you have not read the books yourselves, but also even if you have read the books, the book, there's details that aren't going to make sense because Lightlark is incoherent. That's just, if I had to describe it in one word, it would be incoherent. Like people have been hating on it for months and not without reason, but honestly I can't bring myself to hate it because like it's more just incoherent than bad. You know, it's nonsensical. Nothing in it adds up, but there's nothing in here that really makes me angry or anything. And I think that's why this isn't as infamous as the other books I've done rewrites on before. Partially because, you know, it's more recent. It's only been around for a couple of months and been stewing that long. I think after a couple of years more and more people are gonna be familiar with Lightlark and how awful it is, but also because on the surface it seems like a typical fantasy young adult story. And I suppose it is in most ways. It's just not completely insane like stuff like Trigger Warning is. As I said, this book is more incoherent than it is bad. Think of like Reapers Creek if you want to know what I'm talking about there. But where Reapers Creek was just like 18 different stories that couldn't decide what they wanted to be about and so they just kept getting dropped partway through. Lightlark does at least have a solid premise and it is enough for me to work with and for me to say, okay, I think I could probably write that better than Alex Astrid did. Basically the story is about these seven kingdoms and the people on each kingdom all have their own special power, but a couple hundred years ago they all also got afflicted with horrible curses. And the story is basically about these kingdoms trying to find a way to end the curses by having something called a centennial where every 100 years people from all the kingdoms congregate on this central island which is called Lightlark. That's where the title of the book comes from. And then there's this again a weird tournament which is not explained very well. There's no real reason for it to be there. And then enter the super special main character who for whatever reason has no curse and she comes in and she saves the day. There's like you know there's something for me to work with here you know and from this point forward there will be a lot of spoilers so just just be aware of that. So a couple of things to mention before we get started like these are just going to be things to keep in mind throughout the whole summary and everything of the plot. These aren't like major things that I can mention at every point they become important but just stuff that if I don't mention them just assume it's being done. Like number one just better prose you know the actual writing of the book should be better like Lightlark's writing just isn't that good and it could use some improvements that's about it. Number two integrate the powers and the curses into society better like for example one of the kingdoms is the kingdom of the moonlings and their curse is that the every full moon if they go near the ocean the ocean kills them and I don't know if it's ever explained exactly how I'm just imagining like the water comes to life temporarily like grabs them and pulls them under maybe I don't know but and it says that dozens of them die every month because they go near the water and you'd think that they would just have that circle on their calendars say like oh hey stay away from the water so like it would be a bad curse but it wouldn't be killing dozens of people every month you know like that that's a detail uh another detail would be the sunlings their curse is that they can't go outside during the day so they would probably fulfill a different niche in society and my first thought was like okay they'd be like night guards you know while everyone else is sleeping they would be like patrolling the streets to make sure criminals aren't up to any good and they'd be guarding warehouses to make sure stuff doesn't get stolen you know like they would have to fulfill a different niche in society like just stuff like that you know a lot of small details like that would help the world just feel more real and more lived in number three just less explicit sex you know like you don't have to get rid of it entirely I think having it there is fine but end of the day this is still young adults and I don't think that those should have explicit sex scenes like if you're going to write for just a full-on adults then sure go for it but like not when you're writing for teenagers that's just that's just weird I don't like it and it feels almost like it's just trying to cash in on thrown of glasses success but whatever not important number four uh make some bigger social divides between the kingdoms because lightlark is an unusual island in that it's the only place where all the kingdoms regularly congregate but even after being isolated for a hundred years at a time these people haven't like merged into one big culture there doesn't seem to be much overlap between them they all seem to be their own thing like the sunlings still associate mostly with sunlings the moonlings associate mostly with moonlings the skylings associate mostly mostly with skylings and all that and like they've maintained their own little subcultures and shit it's it's weird but in this they also just they how do I put this even like they get along pretty well but in this version they there would be more stark divides and they would more clearly not always get along you know there'd be things like riots and there'd be occasional pogroms and possibly even civil wars because this has been going on for hundreds of years and these people might not necessarily like each other or get along and they might be fighting over things like resources or they might blame each other for curses you know like things like that and number five there would just be more contact between lightlark and the other islands because like I said it is isolated for a hundred years at a time which is just really strange like I'm not sure how that would be basically that I mean it's essentially the capital of all these kingdoms I'm not sure how that would work if it's you can't get to it for a hundred years at a time because there's a storm raging around the island 24-7 and it only lets up during the centennial so I would just say remove the storm thing at least make it so they can occasionally interact with each other and this is your final spoiler warning we're getting into the summary now so the start of the regular book the original book is that the main character Isla Crown amazing name by the way I I don't know why young adult characters have such strange names but they do she comes to lightlark for the tournament now in the original book there's really no explanation for why this tournament exists or at least not a good explanation it's basically just people congregate during the centennial when the storm lets up every hundred years to try and find a way to end the curses and there's like a really weird vague prophecy which says something about how one of the rulers of the kingdoms has to die in order to end the curse it like the the prophecy doesn't make sense and it doesn't honestly play that big of a role in the story but basically they just congregate and then the rulers of all the countries have this series of contests where like they show off their magic powers and they have a couple of fights and they just show off how good they are decorating shit it's like it's dumb and it doesn't make much sense so I'm saying we should change a lot of it so instead of that instead of having the centennial be every hundred years so that the people who competed in it last time are long dead by the time the next one starts or at least most of them are because some people are magically immortal in this series for some reason but instead of that have the tournament be every 10 years and this is the key bit whoever wins the tournament until the next one so for 10 years their kingdom does not have any curse so like if the sunlings win then for the next 10 years they can all go out in the sun no problems if the starlings win then they can like their curses that they all die when they're 25 and so for the next 10 years like they can live as long as possible but then if they lose the next one and somebody else gets it then the curse comes right back and the contestants can't just be anyone from these kingdoms they have to be members of the ruling families like the royal families of these kingdoms like so that would be an explanation for why it's nothing but royals and I mean I know this is sounding kind of similar to the Hunger Games and kind of like you're ripping off the Hunger Games but I mean the original book is already trying to market itself as fantasy Hunger Games and it was kind of similar to that so I mean just lean into it you know just just be honest with yourself about your intentions and in the original book the characters did not know where the curses came from which is makes it extra weird why they're doing this tournament in the first place like you'd think they would just search the island for a while and search for the origin of these curses or something I don't I don't know exactly but in this version we'll have it so that the characters just know where the curses came from and that can be pretty much the same as it was in the original book basically hundreds of years ago there was this girl named Aurora who found this flower which is like the heart of lightlark and her boyfriend was cheating on her so she was really upset about it and misused the power of lightlark but also she killed her friend and like that was the real reason why the curses happened because she killed her friend in cold blood it's I I know I'm not explaining that well and it doesn't make a lot of sense but it's not explained well it doesn't make sense in the original book either so like that's that's the best I can do but anyways the point is people would know where that came from and they would know where it came from because Aurora the person who did the curse would still be alive and in the original book she is still alive but she's like in disguise whereas in this she's still alive and she decides okay I hate all you people because X which is part of why she did the curse or something like maybe she knew that the curses would happen if she killed a friend I don't know like there's so many little details which come together to make this just a hot mess so some of them I just have to say and then shit makes sense for a while but in this version Aurora will you know still be alive and everyone will know who she is and what she's done but she's immortal so they can't kill her and she's doing the tournament and keeping the curses and everything because she just hates everyone and is toying with them like this is her entertainment for hundreds and hundreds of years and she is also the judge of the tournament so she's the one that sets up the rules sets up the competitions and makes sure everyone follows the rules and if they like cheat or something then she kills them or inflicts some other harsh punishments now in the original book Isla had no curse and she also had no power she's from the kingdom of the wildlings and they actually have two curses like they have to number one their curse is that they don't eat regular food they have to eat human hearts and they eat like one per month and then they're good but in their second curse is that if they fall in love with someone then they're guaranteed to kill that person and in the original book she has no curses but also doesn't have any of the wildling powers where like they make plants grow and stuff and I think the reason for that is because the author realized that they they would notice that she had no curse that she needed to eat hearts like they would notice hey wait a minute she wants to eat regular food and she doesn't have to subsist on hearts the curse is gone with her but they would not notice that the curse of her killing whoever she falls in love with wasn't there because they would probably just assume that she hadn't fallen in love with anyone and they would just assume the curse was still there and so rather than just tweaking the curse or something like that the author just decided add another one on there even though it completely throws the world building into whack so in this alternate version we'll just get rid of the heart-eating thing entirely we'll have it so that the wildling curse is just that they kill the ones they love and Isla still does not have that curse but she doesn't know she doesn't have it she just assumes that okay I haven't fallen in love with anyone which is why I haven't felt the urge to kill any of the boys that I've been kind of into I guess that wasn't true love and the reason that her she didn't have a curse was because her parents were actually from two different kingdoms her mom was a wildling and her dad was a nightshade as they're called and at the end of the book it's meant to be like a big twist you know like it it's a big twist oh your father was a nightshade it like it's a secret or something even though you think that would be somewhat well known and the thing is that's really stupid because you would think at some point over the hundreds of years like two people from different kingdoms would have had children together and they would have noticed hey wait a minute they don't have any curses but also like the book contradicts itself and it just says that they only get the powers and curses from one of their parents instead of just being cured I don't know again this book is just such a mess man I think there's only so much I can do but yeah Isla not knowing that she doesn't have a curse would make it more of a twist when they reveal okay your parents were from two different kingdoms and if you want to make it even more of a twist you could have it be that people from different kingdoms just cannot have children at all like if they try then nothing will happen like it's part of something Aurora did to them in order to because she knows that if they crossbreed then that then the curses will be gone and she doesn't want that happening so she just makes it okay none of you are able to have children with each other but Isla's parents found some way to do it and then rather than dying because the curse suddenly came back and they weren't able to suppress it anymore then they just have it so that Aurora killed Isla's parents and maybe tried to kill her but she was like spirited away or something because she didn't want the word of this getting out you know like again there's just there's so many details that just don't quite add up but I mean there's only so much I can do with this guys now from the beginning part a lot of the plot of this will be similar to the original book you know like there will be the tournaments Isla will be there trying to search away for a way to end the curses and like because I mean she doesn't know that she doesn't have the curse but she'll be thinking for whatever reason that it is possible to end them like maybe she searches for a way to kill Aurora or something you know again not important the devil is in the details and I like I can't just go over every small plot point of this and try to fix that because we would just we would just be here all day I can't do it but over the course of the story just like in the original she will fall in love with Grim and Oro now Oro is the king of the sunlings and Grim is the king of the nightshades and we find out later that she actually knows him but her memory is gone we'll get to that a little bit more later and she mostly falls in love with Grim again just like the original book where they like actually are sexually active with each other and stuff but uh just you know there there is a love triangle there we'll leave that intact now we will cut out most of the scenes where it's just like a fancy ball where they get to wear really nice dresses and dance and look at pretty boys and stuff or Isla just enjoying chocolate and walking around the town on lightlark and it's really quaint and nice and not like shitty how you would expect it to be like you know we'll we'll leave out most of that and we'll replace it with time devoted to simmering political conflicts because again remember every time somebody wins this tournament they are actively fucking over all of the other kingdoms and in the process of the tournament they're probably killing some of the royal family members of other kingdoms as well because I mean if we're gonna make this tournament seem like a big deal like at least some of the contestants have to die you know it doesn't have to be like hunger games last one standing wins but at least some of them have to uh and so this would cause some resentment among the populations and among the leaders of those populations like I said there would have been like civil wars and stuff in the past however aurora would have prevented them from like killing off any of the other peoples entirely because I don't know maybe she would say okay if if uh representatives from every kingdom doesn't come to every tournament then the curses are just gonna keep going on forever or maybe she'll say if a representative doesn't come to every tournament then you will all be inflicted with all of the curses simultaneously or you know something like that you know uh so these people like don't really like each other and they don't really trust each other and they do fight sometimes but they can't completely get rid of the others you know they're they're forced to be together uh and one of the biggest sources of conflicts would be between the night shades and the sunlings because one of them can't go out during the day and the other one can't go out during the night so the people there would just rarely interact with one another and so there'd just be a lot of distance between them they would probably occupy different niches in society and they just they wouldn't trust each other now in the original story there's a twist about how grim and isla actually knew each other for years and they actually like fell in love and grim took her virginity and you know things like that but then uh when they were going to the tournament he basically he didn't want to distract her from her goal so he erased all her memories of him without her permission and he didn't ask her because he thought she would say no which which is like a horrible a horrible thing to do but it's also dumb because he doesn't want to distract her and then he still spends all this time with her and still falls in love with her and basically takes her virginity a second time which is like such a creepy thing to think about it's dumb it's creepy but so in this we will change it so that grim still erases her memories of him like they still fell in love before and he still erases her memories of him but he does it because he finds out that oro the king of the sunlings has some sort of plan to genocide all the nightshades like again it's never been done before because it was against the rules but oro seems to think he has found a loophole you know maybe he has found some sort of spell or something that will prevent the curse from spreading or maybe he thinks that if he just kills everyone except the sunlings then the sunlings will be cured of their curse and so he thinks okay we just need to win this tournament and then our curse will be gone for 10 years and over the next 10 years we'll just wipe out everybody else like you know something along those lines like grim finds out he has some sort of plan about that and so grim says okay i am a nightshade and as much as i love isla i have to protect my people so he just erases her memories of him but he still knows all about her that way he can when the tournament starts he can get her to like him and he can also manipulate her more and without having to worry about her manipulating him or anything in return so in this instance like his motivations would be sympathetic and we would understand why he would do something like that it's still pretty bad though like it's still an absolute betrayal of easeless trust and it granted the original book like seriously i hate this thing so much but the original it seems to imply that grim is going to continue being the main love interest from this point forward because there is heavy sequel baiting at the end and i don't i don't like that because like how and why would she ever get past that but in this version at least maybe isla could forgive him for it and they could move past it i would still say in the sequels have her say like you know what i get why you did it and i forgive you for it but at the same time i can never trust you again so like whatever romance they had is just it's just over now forever like that's how i would do it and we'll have the ending be kind of similar like maybe there'll be one last contest in the tournament where characters are fighting or something maybe it's just a fight to the death but whatever the case maybe isla and the others finds the heart of light heart of light lark and then they kill aurora and they defeat all the curses the curses are all gone and it's not happily ever after because again there's heavy sequel baiting they find like a magic door and walk into it but you know that that's the end of this story at least and it's hard to say where things would go after that because the sequels have not been written yet but i don't know it like if i had to continue it based on what i've come up with this so far i would say maybe just have some conflict between all the kingdoms take up the rest of the series you know like the curses are gone but like they have old scores they want to settle and people are trying to get used to life without the curses and everything so that just causes strife and conflict between people like just things like that you know i think you could write a series about that sort of thing and i know a lot of that is vague and i apologize for that but like so much of this book is just pretty dresses pointless fights and bad exposition you know like and i wish i could talk more about the characters and try to make them a little better as well but most of them are so ill-defined that like they're not even two-dimensional you know a two-dimensional character would be like a villain who just kills people because he likes being evil and he strangles puppies and throws uh ties women up in train tracks and stuff like that just for fun like he doesn't have any deeper reason for it but that that's two-dimensional but because he at least has some dimension you know you can point to him and say yes he has that which defines him whereas most of the characters in light lark don't even have that like they're they have no personality they have no motivations they don't do anything in the story there's like there's just nothing to say about them uh only things i can think of to improve upon it would be like maybe make grim and oro not immortal you know maybe have it so that they're younger and closer to isla's age and that they've both uh only recently taken over their kingdoms and so they're like feeling like they're in over their heads and they're kind of impulsive and just things like that which might cause them to act irrationally the way oro does in this version of the story i don't know uh i would also say uh let isla keep her powers you know let her keep her wilding powers because it's just kind of weird that she was able to hide them or to hide the fact that she didn't have any for that whole story uh but also get rid of her teleporting star stick or whatever the fuck it was called i like it's literally right i could literally check it right now but i refuse to do so this thing has taken up enough of my life uh but yeah the teleporter she has like just get rid of that because that's too much of a get out of jail free card and also just describe her training a little better because like at one point when it's describing how strong her arms are it mentions that one time like literally just one time when she was like 12 her trainer had her hang from a tree branch for several hours and it really hurt her but now her arms are super strong because of it and like that that just doesn't make sense you know doing that once wouldn't make you strong forever like maybe if she hung from a tree branch for an hour every day and then did sword training for another two hours like you know something like that like just describe her training a little better and make it less dumb um and then some other like smaller details about the world and stuff we could make it so that the skylings might be sort of a neutral party who are sort of friends with everybody because you know the skylings their powers that they can't fly and their curses the powers that they can fly and their curses that they can't fly excuse me uh so they probably wouldn't care all that much about lifting the curse like they wouldn't put as much time and energy into uh trying to win the tournament as everybody else so they wouldn't you know be killing people in other royal families and they wouldn't be screwing over other populations as much and they wouldn't be like you know backstabbing and dirty fighting and you know all the stuff you would expect to accompany this sort of thing the skylings wouldn't be doing that and so everyone wouldn't really have much reason to hate them and they'd be you know sort of good at being liaisons between everyone you know like just just a small detail and i would also say that rather than having this endless storm which just cuts off lightlark from everyone else uh just have the storm be like around all of the kingdoms and have them cut off from the rest of the world but they can still see each other all they want like you know that that would just make more sense because like the idea that there's no communication between lightlark and anyone else but they they still like maintain similar cultures and everything it's just i don't know it's just it's just weird uh and then we can also have like each kingdom or the members of each kingdom dominating one area in society you know like maybe one kingdom uh makes up the bulk of the sailors in the world one kingdom makes up the bulk of the army and also the army would probably have to have something to fight like monsters or something that are wandering around maybe aurora put them there maybe they're there before i don't know but it would make the world seem at least somewhat dangerous uh and then we'd have one kingdom that is makes up most of the merchants and like maybe the wildlings make up the majority of the healers in the world because you know they can like grow medicinal plants and stuff really quick just things like that you know make make it so it seems like each people is taking advantage of their specific powers and trying to find a way to overcome their specific curses and so they just each fill a role in society and they wind up leaning on each other like that and i'm sorry this this book just gives me so little to work with you know even though i do like the premise i think the premise is pretty good like a magical island that's only available every hundred years and you go there to end a curse and everything like it's it's it's pretty good but like there's just nothing for me to work with here and it's a very good example of how the devil is always going to be in the details you know it doesn't matter how good your premise is if you cannot uh do anything with it and you can't find a way to make it make sense and you can't find a way to properly build up to it and execute it like if you can't do that then your your good premise means nothing you know like the only big character moment that i can think of that i i could even add here for any of them would be like isla deciding to do whatever it takes to stop the genocide of the night the nightshades like you know like even though they're not her people she just decides okay i have to do whatever it takes to stop this like i i don't like grim much right now but i understand why he did what he did and so she like in some way depending on how the final contest is set up she will prepare to sacrifice herself uh but then she'll like have an epiphany or get an opportunity or something and she'll finally defeat aurora i i don't know like again it's impossible to go into a whole lot of detail about it without just essentially writing a different book you know i i can't make this thing good like i i just can't know i spent many hours thinking it over and coming up with different ideas and then scrapping them because light lark is just too powerfully incoherent there there's just there's not anything for me to work with here so i can't make it good without essentially changing the whole thing you know like i would have to completely change the uh world and set up for the plot and a lot of the characters and their personalities and everything like i would be changing it so much it would essentially be a different book which is really not the point of this exercise like i can't make it good i can only make it coherent mostly coherent even though i don't hate light lark the way i hated all the other books i've rewritten so far at least the authors of the other books i i've done this rewrite exercise for uh they at least understood that there have to be like powerful character emotions and big character moments and stuff you know like jake rivers in um trigger warning is not a good character but he has moments where he like decides okay i'm gonna go save the day like he doesn't just default to saving the day or anything you know like just as an example like he has uh some aspects to his personality same with all the uh protagonists from the onision trilogy like they they aren't likeable people but they are at least definable people and isla just doesn't even have that you know like they understood that for a story to have any sort of point to it there have to be like big moments like that and i don't mean big moments as in like like explosions and fights and everything but like just big moments for the characters and for their own personal uh both physical and emotional journeys so otherwise there's just no point to it and i think that really is where light lark fails the most is that it feels like there's no point because the characters and everything else is just so undefined like not even bland just undefined like i can't point to what they are or what they're supposed to be and i don't know that's the biggest shame of it all but i have nothing else to add i'm rambling for too long please like the video and comment on it and subscribe to my channel subscribe to my other channel as well it's called the other james and um yeah it's about it goodbye wow you you're still watching i i mean i guess i appreciate it but i'm not sure why i mean at this point all that we have left is all these names here these are my patrons and including my ten dollar and up patrons aposavalanan olivia reyan brother santotes buffy valentine carolina clay dan ancelia vich dark king don deo echo flax carcat kitsune lexie delorm lisa rudakova lord tiebreaker micah phone mist boy peep the toad roby reviews sad martigan sillier the vixen stone stairs tesla shark vei victus and wesley these are all great people you know let me let me just let me tell you if you want to get your name on here then consider donating to me once a month become a patron or if you don't feel like doing that or you just can't 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