#boogleboot

[puddle-books]

"how strange, but how lovely, to have a favourite book that is so full of unread stories."

fateheart: a starless seaquel - boogleboot

[nablah]

wait do you hate Puccini???

ok I'll be honest. I don't hate puccini. I'm not against his works being staged or performed, even Butterfly and Turandot which are rife with imperialistic and orientalist tendencies, because they are important pieces of work.

But, having said all that, I dislike him to a degree where I would rather not listen to his music at all. It boils down to the fact that if it composes music like a racist and writes libretto like a racist... you can fill in the rest.

I'm not a music major or particularly involved in music in my studies/career, so I see no personal loss to just not experiencing his works (though he has written some nice operas, I won't deny that). It's that I'm already living the reality of postcolonialism where Puccini's more racist operas are Real Life Experiences. They're not interestingly packaged stories, they're painful and they still affect whole societies, not to mention individual women, to this day. I hear Madama Butterfly with half the old women I encounter. Turandot happens anytime some white guy orders a Filipino mail order bride. These operas are real to me.

His music is free for other people to experience and his stories are free for others to inspect but why would I want to inspect some story when I have studied, when I have known, when I continue experiencing the effects of his views?

also i keep saying this but using 茉莉花 as Turandot's theme is shoddy research at best and intentional in its message of "welcoming the foreigner" at worst which 🤨

TL;DR I don't hate Puccini, but I avoid his music because it serves as a reminder of postcolonial reality I already live in.

[beenovel]

Starting a new tag game, which cryptid are you? Blank images under the cut!

@tolkien-fantasy @dandan-theberserker @ospreyonthemoon @oldrags @oldfashionedmorphine @ohmeowmy @thoughtsoflastnight @void-of-unparalled-chaos @runawaymarbles @raven-romanoff @errruvande @erosofthepen @kermits-cup-of-tea @jtownraindancer @howlonghaveyoubeenseventeen @hissterical-nyaan @fashionstatement-deathwish @frootchinator @sabertoothwalrus @sundustingdryads @splintered-emotions @schmoolius @scyllas-revenge @aechlys @messypeaches @my-darling-haldir @messiambrandybuck @merriadoc-brandyfuck @nondescripthumanperson @blueberryrock @bananzer @boogleboot @thatwasntlikeridingabikeuasshole @bugsoda @celestine-stan

[the-harbour-official]

Harbour Drabble Event 2024 coming soon!!!!!!!!!!

Hey everyone! So brilliant news...July is coming up and I've been thinking about the drabble event we hosted in our server last summer, and how much fun it was and how batshit insane i went on it lol, and I've decided it's a good idea to host it again this year! so this is the post with all the important info for the Harbour Drabble Event 2024 <3333333

"what is this even anyway roo???"

you may ask! if you were not here a year ago! it's a very lowkey event, low commitment for anyone who wants to participate- basically the idea is that you write drabbles about The Starless Sea during or before the month of July and submit them, and I'll post them on this blog!

if you don't know what a drabble is!! it's a very short piece of fanfiction- we're going for this event with the traditional definition meaning its exactly 100 words of fic, usually capturing just one small moment! i highly recommend going for it if you've never written drabbles before, it's a really fun creative exercise and way to write fic without spending a huge amount of time! i had never written a drabble before we did this event last year and i became. quite prolific lol

"ok but what do i do with the drabbles tho????"

some options! you can:

post them to your own tumblr blog and tag us so i can reblog them!

submit them to this blog so i can post them!

if youre in the server and more comfortable with discord you can dm them to me and i will post them here!

"ok fine so what do i write drabbles about then"

the starless sea! lol

last year i gave myself a theme for every weekday (because i was posting AT LEAST once daily god that was unhinged id be like posting two drabbles from an airplane or some shit) but anyway i thought id use these as optional prompts for the event this year! these are not mandatory just some ideas of what to write!

More Drabbles Monday - anything lol

Time and Fate Tuesday - drabbles about Mirabel and the Keeper or their previous incarnations!

Cheese Wednesday - not actually one of my themes last year but kristin @boogleboot wanted a cheese day so a cheese day you will have my dear <333

Monday Part Two Thursday - anything again

Fateheart Friday - drabbles focusing on characters, events, and/or the new Harbour from Fateheart! (the greatest known work of tss fanfic if you havent read it you should)

Sad Times Saturday - angst <3333

Son of the Fortune Teller Sunday - drabbles about Madame Love Rawlins and her children <3333 (yes dorian and kat are her children be so fr)

more prompts may be to come! but yes submit drabbles any time from now until the end of July <33333 love you all peace out

[purple-cray0ns]

Finally done!! This is a scene from a fan made sequel and i can’t get enough rggh characters left to right are Zachary Dorian Lenore and Simon

The fanfic is Fateheart by BoogleBoot :D

@thatwasntlikeridingabikeuasshole @boogleboot @fateheartblog

[fateheartblog]

Another little Starless Sea ficlet!

This is a scene exploring Dorian in the early days of his relationship with Zachary. A little bit hurt/comfort, a little bit reflective, a little bit heavy on the boat imagery.

But I love me a gimmick.

Set, as ever, during the events of Fateheart

[fateheartblog]

NEW FIC

This one's a real honk-fest I swear.

Love Dorian. Love putting him in the wok and stir-frying him for all he's worth, god bless.

[the-harbour-official]

ON BEHALF OF THE HARBOUR I WOULD LIKE TO SAY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEANDER!!!!!!!!!!

Leander may not appear in the starless sea even once but through all of the love he has gotten in our fandom I think its fair to say he is definitely canon in our hearts!!!!!! from @boogleboot's fan sequel Fateheart (and its sequel coming At Some Point to ao3s near you) to AUs like my Rollins au and kristins pern au, Leander has become one of the core cast of characters that our fandom holds dear and I could not be more proud of him and of Kristin for it. Hes my favorite little guy and honestly I just want you all to know how much I love him and to read Fateheart if you haven't so you too can experience the joy of Leander 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

[fateheartblog]

Welcome to Fateheart: The Extended Canon

I have now written enough Starless Sea mini-fics (all set in or around the same timeline as Fateheart: A Starless Seaquel) that they warrant having their own collected series - so here is the link to that.

None of these have substantially character-altering plot, but some of them are fun, some of them are lovely, and some of them might even venture into the territory of being well-written! (Looking at you, Asset of Loneliness, decidedly not looking at you, Hockey Kids)

I initially was just going to post extra bits of writing as headcanons on this blog, but then the headcanons I was jotting down in my notes app became full scenes, too big to just dump on tumblr, and then those scenes started to draw themselves together into stories. So now they're up on Ao3.

I am also working on two much longer stories - both Starless Sea fanfictions, both continuations of the Fateheart timeline - though neither will come close to Fateheart itself - in significance, quality, or length. But in the meantime I will post links to any Zachary/Dorian and Kat content on this blog, and they will appear on my Ao3 account in this collection.

If you're a fan of Erin Morgenstern's The Starless Sea and you're encountering this post, this blog, or these fanfics cold, then may I first point you towards the main fic itself:

Fateheart: A Starless Seaquel

(having said that none of the future stories will hold a candle to Fateheart, watch out for The Lotus Flowers. If I can get the damn thing where I want it, it will blow Fateheart out of the water. possibly.)

And if I never post anything again, just know it is because I have been forcibly subsumed into an amorphous, sentient dust-cloud in the Middle East, and not because I have decided to stop writing The Starless Sea fanfiction. Because that's not going to happen. Apparently ever.

To seeking x

-- Boogleboot

[fateheartblog]

Flowers

More post-Fateheart extended canon development! Yay!

Set a year after the events of Fateheart, an NSFW story focusing on Zachary and Dorian and what life looks like a bit now that things are settling down. Also Mario Kart. Also sex.

[fateheartblog]

New Fateheart-canon short fic!

Zachary, Dorian, Kat, and Leander play boardgames sometimes - but not World Domination Risk anymore, because this is how it went last time.

"Is there a reason games night is no longer allowed to happen in the Harbour?” she asks. Zachary chuckles but Leander answers as he enters. “Yes, Madame Love. Because when it inevitably comes to a fight the Harbour itself sides with Kat, and that gives her an unfair advantage.” “There was a fight?” asks Love, watching Zachary and Kat disappear into the dining room and start to set up the board. Dorian enters the room wearing a characteristically grave expression. “There was a fight. Many fights. War, dearest Love. Allegiance and compromise, empires toppled and crises resolved and disputed in a matter of hours.” His eyes glimmer with amusement that sets his solemn expression off nicely. “There was strategy, recklessness, bloodlust-” “And a fair amount of regular lust,” Leander grins. “-And it all ended in fire,” Dorian finishes, opening his arms to greet his mother-in-law. “Sounds like a blast,” she says as he kisses her on both cheeks. “Oh, I had the time of my life.”

A fun family-dynamic fic set during Fateheart about the fact that all of these people (except maybe Zachary) are incapable of reigning in the theatrics long enough to be normal about board games.

This one was mad fun to write. Family dynamic fics are good for the soul and this one made me laugh. Enjoy x

[phantomwisestory]

The chapter six spread

It’s been a while since I did a reading, so I just sat with the cards for a bit, shuffling and turning, glimpsing them as I cut the pack over and over. I shuffled for a good long time - several uninterrupted minutes - cutting the pack and adding to the pile in my hand from the second pile until it dwindled and dwindled down to one card, and that was my first card.

The five of swords - the card which first introduced the man who now has the sword from the watcher. A character I did not think would be very significant, but here he is. That seemed a straightforward representation. And then I drew The Hanged Man after another good few minutes of shuffling, and thought instantly that this card was the second death of the glickerlocks. Not because the person is significant, or because someone else was found hanging - but because the first life taken by the glickerlocks was the man who was found hanged, and this card was placed down next to the first, in a distinct second position.

I hadn’t planned a shape for this spread. I drew the first card and decided then that maybe I wanted five, maybe all in a straight row. My brain is very tired at the moment so I wanted to keep it simple and quick. But then the next card, the chariot, made me smile, drawn after much more shuffling, and then I caught sight of the three of swords - a card I don’t believe I have drawn yet in this story - and really really wanted it to be in the draw. So I just took it from the bottom of the deck. And then took the one directly beneath it as well, which was the sun.

Because it felt significant somehow that I had made a choice, so the three of swords was the end of the row, and then I added as the fifth card the one immediately below it in obedience to the idea that we must sit with whatever our choices reveal. So the sun, the fifth card, was played in the position beneath the other four.

Which is reflected in the language of that card. This chapter was roughly three sentences per card again, but I didn’t sick to it much and not at all for the three of swords, which seems to be a card which is behaving entirely outside the bounds of my own strictures, employing my petulant fancy instead. It wanted to be described in great detail. It was stubbornly insistent on being included in the first place. It wanted to be the end of the row. It wanted more than three sentences, it wanted significance. And it wanted to be literal. Actually Im not sure literal is the right word, but it is fascinating to me that it kind of demanded its way into just being described as is as a vision that the watcher has - as if its imagery is so blunt that it does not in fact represent anything. Also interesting that I was feeling its imposition - the language used for that vision is visceral and uncomfortable - a vernacular of things taking up space they shouldn’t - tumours, engorged, swollen, huge, consumed.

And then I was going to start writing, considering ways in which the sun can be beneath everything. Except as I wrote “phantomwise chapter 6” in my trusty notes app I realised the draw wanted a sixth card, in the top positions above the row of four, complementing the posture of the sun - a position of holding the story, of being context, or scenery, or world-building. So I pulled the top card off the deck on a whim, and there was death.

I’m coming to love death. Which you can see, because it turns out she and the Queen might be a lot more familiar than I had anticipated.

I’ve missed this place.

Boogleboot

--Master-post of chapters here

[phantomwisestory]

Phantomwise: chapter 6

20230323 0015 - 6 cards in total

The young man grips the sword nervously, wishing he had a hand free to fiddle with one of the many buttons of his coat. He looks back down at the shrinking world below him. He has never left the coastal city of Clandestire before: he is not sure he is supposed to now.

The glickerlocks have taken their second death. The life dangles from one world before dropping into the next, and the gleaming star-metal of the glickerlock clamps around the moment of passing, capturing the momentary spasm in the fabric of the universe as one life punches through it. The hole remains open, caught in the contraption, bleeding light from this world into that, bringing the earliest scent of a dragon’s roar from that world into this, glowing beneath the coat of the star-watcher who carries it.

The balloon chariot carries the new bearer of the sword, the Queen’s best sky rider and her gryphon, back over the royal plumes of the dust storm. They are high enough to see the stars. The gryphon keens, adjusting its wings uncomfortably, sad to see the stars so close yet not allowed to ride among them. The sky-rider soothingly scratches at its neck, bare feet planted firm in the basket, wondering at the fire in the heart of the balloon - wondering if it isn’t also a type of star in its own way.

The watcher has given the sword and now returns to her post, moving quickly over large distances the way ideas are able to skip politely over the non-dimension of a flat page edge. in no time at all, she is at the gate before her residence, where she is usually met with the sight of the house at the edge of the world where she keeps her watch, where the void and the next and the deep and all the other words people have for it in all their other languages is usually visible from behind the unstained glass of this world’s last outpost. But the lock of the gate is loose, and the house and garden are all swallowed. The very edges of the world bleed raw, into a startling darkness of infinite depth. The watcher stands in the gate and witnesses the dance, and the dancers part, and in their midst is a vast, monstrous, pierced heart. Not a human heart but a symbol more real than any living organ. The dance of the darkness has brought three swords - or perhaps the same sword three times - to meet in this eternal middle, and over the point of centre grows the heart, sized like a mountain, suspended but growing there in the void, the way the inevitable grows like a tumour in the heart of the future.

The head of every sunflower has turned, and has not had occasion to look away. For the sun has not left this end of the valley in quite an unusual length of time. He has worked his way beneath the threshold of the storm, so that far above him where the chariot rides there are still stars to read for those who need them. He does his valiant best to pour enough light that the dust does not consume every living thing, like the sunflowers, whose adoration beams back at him, though even now they are choking.

And above the castle grounds, in the high tower of the keep, in the heart of Otherlande, death pulls down her umbrella and shakes out her hair, her thighs bare above her boots, below her shorts. The Queen, who had heard her coming, and who even know has felt the second hole punched through the world in her name, looks up and grimaces. But she meets her embrace all the same, and neither woman has to clarify much, as she touches her lips to the Queen’s in a light, familiar gesture of greeting, whether or not the Queen isn’t a little bit secretly pleased that death has come to stay.

By Boogleboot

– Introduction to the Phantomwise story blog here

– Master-post of chapters here

– Link to a post about the chapter six spread here

[fateheartblog]

Welcome to Fateheart: a Starless Seaquel blog

'Fateheart: A Starless Seaquel' is my fan-sequel to Erin Morgenstern's 'The Starless Sea'. You can read it here on Ao3. This blog is building upon both books as part of a unified canon - and I will post about them here as if they are a continuum of the same world.

I already have a blog devoted to Zachary and Dorian (link below), but I wanted a place to collect things which resonate with the imagery and world of Fateheart more widely. So here you will find posts which remind me of the new Harbour, poetry which contains flashes of the world beneath the world, excerpts of Fateheart itself, many, many references to both books, and occasionally headcannons which build upon the story told in Fateheart. I will attempt to avoid spoilers, but can't promise anything.

If you have not read Fateheart but you have read The Starless Sea, some of the leaps might seem strange - but I implore you to give Fateheart a chance if you're curious. If you have not read The Starless Sea either, then really what are you doing here - go treat yourself to the most magnificent novel you'll read this Tuesday.

Here's to seeking, and to finding, and to stories which yield new life in the hands of the people who love them.

We rise, we fall

-BoogleBoot

(My main blog is here, my Zachary/Dorian blog is here. Fateheart itself, once more for the people in the gallery, is here)

[zacharydorianaesthetic]

Many a Harbour has fallen. With them the old myths sink like great statues into the wretched storm-torn deserts of time. And the new myths rise, to step from the returning ship into the new dream, with the story branded into their skin, carrying the legacy of what has been into the hope of what could be next.

Fateheart: A Starless Sequel, by Ao3 user BoogleBoot