Sky Musings: Dark Plants
Written March 4th, 2024
←← Take me back to the writings directory!(I don't know if this will become a series, but my Sky Musings series of writings will be dedicated to odd theories about Sky: Children of the Light which I don't really feel like organizing. As per usual, these are just my headcanons and I in no way claim that this is the canon.)
- It is obvious that plants grow in sunlight, but there are areas without/lacking light where dark plants may grow instead.
- Two of the prominent places where dark plants grow are the Hidden Forest and the Golden Wasteland, both of which feel the effects of pollution due to dark stone.
- Because dark stone was used to store light, I believe dark plants grow where there is dark stone because they feed off of the light stored within. Dark plants in the forest feed off of the light trapped within dark rain water, and plants in the Wasteland feed off of the light trapped in the pollution.
- The Sanctuary Islands seem like a sunny place where dark plants shouldn't grow, however the presence of the crashed ship by the polluted geyser might suggest a shipment of dark stone was brought to the islands, and was somehow scattered around the environment. Because tropical vacation spots are high candidates for pollution and littering, it's possible that darkness spread thanks to the Spirits of the island, thus allowing dark plants to grow.
- Dark plants feeding off of dark stone / dark stone-polluted material could also explain why they give light once burned. That light within is light that would've otherwise remained trapped in dark stone or dark water.
- Some dark plants in the game release butterflies upon being burned, and I think this could be because some plants have taken a carnivorous approach to getting light. I'm not sure how this could happen, but perhaps one explaination is that butterflies are trapped in the "bulbs" of the plant. Perhaps the bulbs once took the appearance of flowers, tricking the butterflies before closing in on them and trapping them.
- The above theory doesn't extend to things like mantas or larger creatures in general. I think those just get ensnared in the dark plants the same way sea turtles get caught in plastic bottle wrappings.
- Dark plants usually take on a blue hue, but in the case of shard events, they are red. In lore, this could possibly be for a few reasons.
- These dark plants seem to just pop up as the shard lands, as opposed to other dark plants which are presumed to have grown over a little bit of time. The red coloration is the result of rapid growth not usually seen in dark plants. Or...
- The red coloration is a result of heightened light. The shards in shard events are sourced with Eden, possibly from the giant crystal, which seems jam packed with light. The red color dark plants take on, then, could be a reflection of light concentration within the stone. Or...
- Dark plants take on the color of their light source. Normal dark stone is mostly grey with a kind of blue hue, so normal dark plants are blue. The shards from Eden are often red, so the resulting dark plants are red.
