u/LemonKindly6715

I'm not pissed because Marella has negative character traits or says dumb stuff. Is it understandable for her to resent Sophie for "abandoning" her in book 3? Well, she was a 13 year old going through stuff at home, so yeah.

But dear Lord, the stuff this girl says afterward.

"Why didn't you invite me to run away with you?" after you literally told her she's too dangerous and everyone who hangs around with her will die.

"Oh Sophie how dare you forget me" every time, like YOU PUBLICLY HUMILIATED HER, what did you expect to happen??

After Sophie almost dies and is in the ICU for weeks Marella doesn't call or visit once. Then she turns around and has the audacity to say "you never told me about battle training, don't you care?" Girl, don't you??? Sophie had basically NO HAND BONES for WEEKS and you couldn't spare 5 minutes of your day to check on her???

And the worst part is that the story acts like she's right to be mad. Sophie's out here apologising like she's the one who broke off their friendship. Hello?? Stop telling her you'll be there for her more often! You already tried to help and she pushed you away!!

All I'll say is thank GOD Sophie grew a spine in book 9 and stopped acting guilty about it.

I know the obvious answer is the unlimited birth fund, but let's get creative. What little annoyances or problems would a Lost Cities item solve in your life?

Personally, I'd just want a branch of the Pures (the trees that purify air) to carry around in my pocket. There's a lot of old diesel buses and trucks where I live that quite literally spew black smoke in your face when you're walking. Also, I hate having to walk behind people who are smoking/vaping so a free purifier would stop me from crashing out...

Is anyone else a little tired of EVERYTHING being decreed by fate and the ordained declaration of StarClan?

For starters, half of them literally spoil the endings of their arcs. You're telling me three must become four to stand against the darkness? Gee, I wonder what's going to happen in the rest of OOTS. It makes me wonder if these guys even have free will - like, what would have happened if Alderheart never went to find SkyClan? Would everything else not happen? If so, why didn't StarClan just say "hey, don't go there, and if you do, don't trust this Darktail guy..." and save everyone a lot of trouble?

Also... like... the characters will get a prophecy foretelling death and destruction, and proceed to do basically nothing for pages or even entire books (save for whatever plot-mandated twist or cliffhanger happens in the meantime). It's a coinflip whether they even tell anyone else about the possible END OF THE CLANS (for real this time, we mean it!)

I don't know. Can we have an arc that doesn't tell us who the important character is and how it's going to end? It doesn't actually help the tension of the story.

A lot of people have talked about how the Sanctuary is a very shaky concept. There are a lot of reasons:

• Many animals are obligate carnivores, i.e. they can ONLY source certain nutrients from meat. A T-rex like Verdi can't just go vegan and would likely be dead of malnutrition by now.
• It's a rather simplistic treatment of extinction. Some species evolve into other ones, would the elves count that as an extinction? Do they have the ancestors of humans somewhere in the Sanctuary?
• Um. Timeline issues... yeah it's the dinosaur thing. I don't even know where to start with the dinosaur thing.
• As far as we've seen, the Sanctuary is more of a zoo than an animal reserve. Animals don't get whatever biome or ecosystem they're best suited to.

So how can we improve it?

What if the elves only stepped in when they could prove an extinction was unnatural, i.e. interference from sapient species? This would include a lot of ancient megafauna like giant sloths, who were the earliest victims of human-influenced extinctions. And for more fantastical beasts, the ogres or dwarves or whoever were overhunting them. If you really need dinosaurs, say there was a surviving underground colony being culled by trolls. Idk.

Then the Sanctuary becomes a place where the elves try to perfectly reconstruct the ecosystems of these species, instead of whatever it is right now.