#Last seen online

[gottiewrites]

Preorder Last Seen Online, the novel of An Unauthorized Fan Treatise, to get a signed postcard goody bag, with bookmarks, bookplates and a letter from the author! Sign up here!

Open to anyone in the UK who preorders the book before 1st August 2024.

Last Seen Online is a contemporary YA murder mystery set in sun-drenched LA, for fans of Malibu Rising, We Were Liars and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. The novel of Lauren James’ hugely popular online story An Unauthorized Fan Treatise. When Delilah meets Sawyer Saffitz (son of the Anya Saffitz, aka Hollywood royalty), she becomes hooked on a decade-old scandal. In her quest for the truth, Delilah uncovers blogposts written by the mysterious “gottiewrites” and is soon caught up in a world of greed, fandom conspiracy theories … and murder. And the deeper Delilah digs, the more dangerous it becomes – because someone is willing to kill to hide the truth.

Word count: 75,000 Aimed at ages 13+

Publishing in August 2024 by Walker Books in the UK and Australia

Goodreads

Amazon UK

Waterstones

Anyway, hi tumblr, I haven't been on here in an AGE because I was off working out I'm non-binary, changing my name to Wren and locking down the world's cutest girlfriend >:) >:) How are y'all doing?

Come follow me on Insta where I post much more often than once a year, including about my Heartstopper work!!

[nvmxlonely]

I'm afraid of forever...

[the-forest-library]

Excited to start this one. I love books with epistolary/mixed media elements in them.

[crackheadcola]

Totally not gonna make an SMG4 AU based on the game "Last seen online"-

(I recently played it and I loved it- )

[isneezelikeamouse]

That last scene with Lawson giving up on Liz was so fucked up like youre telling me all she could do was watch as the one person who never gave up on her announced that he’d leave her alone for good like omg

[iregreteverythingpleasehelpme]

[anemoiawithatouchofobsession]

(A little different content than usual!)

I am not a gamer but the gameplays of this indie game called "last seen online" caught the algorithm and I was HOOKED from the beginning. I watched a few more videos and the decided to play it myself - and what should I say, what a masterpiece.

This game and it's themes freaking BROKE me. Like, I just felt so down the next few days. I remembered Liz's anguish, agony, her situation... and I just saw so many parallels to when I was that age. I saw what she felt when she was alivei n this world.

It made me think about what my culture tells us about eternity and death and souls - we believe a person lives on through another for of life. Death is just like changing clothes, and it's the soul that changes it. It is nothing to be afraid of. Life is just temporary.

Just makes this whole game story even more interesting to me - because a soul being trapped in a game, uploaded and basically stored as a destructible file, is stuck there forever and cannot go through the normal cycle. It is just such a haunting thought.

Also, what exactly happened? How did the sould get uploaded, and what happened to her body? Did she disappear? Was it an euphemism for her taking her life? Was the prerequisite for OtherWorld to be dead? And how did Liz

Her fear of being alone. Her fear of being forgotten - which resulted in her being stuck in this file system of a game. We still don't know how exactly you can "upload yourself" into the game, and the fact that the physical body just disappears or dies while the soul and consciousness just stays the way it was, forever, until everyone else leaves... and you're waiting and waiting in anguish, passing your time, regretting and regretting again...

It filled me with a LOT of existential dread and some sort of emptiness. Good job, dev team.

Another cool thing is the graphics. The disco place especially was so so eery and melancholic, and the Windows XP vibes with the use of the pop ups, pixel graphics, custom wallpapers and "creepy font" was very nostalgic.

[impeerpressure]

sometimes owning a pc is just scaring the shit out of yourself with steam horror games.

[nezumithewriter]

getting trapped in an mmo would suck actually especially if the devs abandon it and never shut down the server

yes i am talking about last seen online by sochin studio

[darcyolsson]

started wren james' new novel last seen online and the usernames on the social media posts are such a fun little detail but they also give me psych damage bc theyre just a reminder i spend too much time on the internet 😭😭😭 "cascodeddeangirl" "teamromangerri" "villanelleswife" "stanjackmaddox" these phrases would mean nothing to the average person but I know everything they're referencing and also probably all of the people who use those usernames in real life

[novafloofeatsbirds]

JUST FINISHED LAST SEEN ONLINE. Like for myself I've seen playthroughs before. Oogh. Yknow having people's emails and discords is crazy. Back in the day we used to meet on mmo/rpgs and if someone lost interest then we never saw them again. I should turn my desktop into a puzzle that tricks people into learning about me,,,, hm

[hispersonalchokehold]

she just like me frfr. this game was amazing, the amount of personality they fit into a mere desktop screen is amazing. Like you could just tell shes the type of girl to rot in her bed all day just to be chronically online on forums like myspace. I just wished they added more traces of trauma, like the part about her mommy issues 😭😭it was so real. also the concept felt like i was serial experiments lain, like literally going through lains pc or smth

[deleuzedelrey]

[bookofmac]

Gottie you will always be famous

[sapphicspaceart]

just read all of Last Seen Online in one sitting

delilah was a fun character; her emotions felt real despite the kind of awkward teenager setting. this very much feels like an evelyn hugo situation though, the POV characters are far less interesting than the big names. to be perfectly honest, i'd have preferred a one-for-one unedited print version of the gottiewrites blog over LSO.

the story is clearly different in a lot of places compared to unauthorized fan treatise. imo, AUFT flows better.

as ive seen other reviews say, i think i might have just gone into LSO with different genre expectations. bless wren james for getting gottie published!

anyone have thoughts?

spoilers/rant under the read more

the big twist that it was anya the whole time-- i feel like it was unrewarding. her whole big villain speech was really uninteresting to me. i have mixed feelings about anya and rob being co conspirators; i feel like the unauthorised fan treatise had a more realistic tone and it seemed that robs friendships were fairly sincere despite the secrets. perhaps thats the point? that the fandom was so yaoi brained that even the girlboss murderer skipped off into the sunset?

i should probably also reread the Mom parts again; delilahs mom being gottie was a fun twist [carmens her name now....? i suppose anya Must have met her before] but i feel like that whole plotline was super underdeveloped. after rob gets out of prison does he?? forgive gottie?? pfffff haha delilah you are smooching my godson

[gottiewrites]

Last Seen Online is out today!!! I hope you enjoy finding out more about Gottie, Rob, Nathan and co. 😈

I celebrated with a Malibu Barbie X Pink Pony Club launch at Waterstones Birmingham.