I am so confused by the Spellfyre timeline and I can’t pretend otherwise anymore.
Because it’s winter now—seemingly just begun—but we had Veilfall ages ago, and I thought Veilfall was in late December, because 👇🏼
The winter solstice, which is around December 21, is the longest night of the year. Even if they don’t call the day “the winter solstice” in the Spellfyre universe, it stands to reason that the longest night of the year must be in winter, so I therefore thought when they say “term”, they’re talking in semesters and that the period between the Dawnslight Gala and the start of the new term (the month-long break CG took from releasing) corresponded with winter break even if it was wonky. But if winter is starting now during the second term, “term” here must be a shorter span of time than a semester? Maybe quarters? And that’s really fucking up my perspective of when the Ch 9 midterm was, since I was placing it around October because, assuming that school starts in August, students learning magic for the first time would need more than a month to learn before they’re capable enough to do a mission like that, especially when part of their education is just theory and not even practice (I definitely get why so many die now, but even then, they can’t possibly be sending out students who’ve barely been learning for a month; in any case, shades, even the big mutated ones we've seen, appear way less of a threat if they can still be defeated by arcanes who've only been doing magic for like a month and a half, if indeed a term is just about three months).
I guess that goes toward explaining my confusion as to why Andros died around what would amount the start of the first term once Elderwood was established (he was killed when MC was a week old and MC's birthday is right before the term starts—I can't tell you exactly how many days before, since MC was in a coma for part of the trip to Elderwood) but his rebellion isn't deemed ended until what I thought was several months later on Dawnslight. I thought it must've just meant that that's the day the Order signed some treaty or declaration after rounding up all the surviving rebels making the end of the rebellion official and that's why there's such a gap, but maybe the gap wasn't as long as I'd originally thought, though still a couple of months.
And on a side note, I am now more confused than I previously was by the Bardric fight in his last quest chain, especially as someone who romances him, because he mentions in his letter being “months” into the term. (Disclaimer: the following is based on the timeline if you take the quests when they're offered.) Even while I was conceptualizing semesters, it didn’t sit right with me that he was thinking of MC the way he did when they met while the progression of the story made it seem like they started becoming friends during their second month or something like that, but if the plot has been moving on a slower schedule that I previously thought, it means he was supposedly thinking that way about my MC when they were already in their basically-dating stage (not to mention after regularly putting his life in my MC's hands because I always have him in my trial squad), when we know from the way he talks and interacts with MC that he clearly did not feel that way anymore by then, so it's inconsistent, and now more than ever I feel like we should've addressed that in the make-up, since there's even a dialogue option that implies MC believes he only befriended them to get in close to kill them.
See, that potential dialogue didn't used to make sense to me for MC to think because Bardric only has two modes, which he's very transparent about: (1) hates MC blindly and refuses to tolerate them, and (2) friendly with MC because he's overcome the anti-MC prejudice—he's never actually friends with MC while hating them (even if there's a moment in the main story where he regresses to mode 1 after it seems like he's going 2—suspecting MC of being the FK after kissing in the pasture) because letting go of his prejudice is a prerequisite for him seeing MC as a person and a friend and someone he'll deign to be around, but I can now give MC grace for wondering given that Bardric was apparently spewing vitriol about them and musing about their death while they were actually friendly with each other.
So I'm just confused all around and wish the story were clearer on the timeline (these ally quests that aren't tied to a specific point in the story are also not helping) because I thought we were already about to start February or something and I was wondering why they didn't address winter break or anyone going home to their families, but apparently not. And also the writers potentially created a world where the longest night of the year is in mid-autumn and neglected a heads up, leading to my basing my entire perception of the Spellfyre timeline around a lie (is Iridessa even a winter baby?? I don't know what's real anymore). In any case, if anyone has noticed any other plotpoints they're managed to put a general date on to anchor the timeline, I'd love to hear them, since mine's clearly no good.
