#mirabel the starless sea

[just-anotherrandomartist]

finally got some more portraits done this was surprisingly difficult idk what was up i’m having funky burnout

[snowfolly]

Commission for @mj-bites of Mirabel (Fate) and the Keeper from the Starless Sea, thanks so much, friend!

[purple-cray0ns]

Star waltzing Mirabel and the lil guy that inspired it!

[onaloyveonce]

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

🐝🗡🗝

[derrypubliclibrary]

maybe family can be some guy who found a book in a library, his boyfriend who gave away his name and now has a new one, a captain of a ship who was a former bunny, and her lost in time boyfriend. maybe family can also include a collage student who likes to bake and knit and is trying to get smells into VR and a fortune teller who lives in a farm house and throws yearly winter solstice parties. maybe.

[the-harbour-official]

NEW HARBOUR FIC EVENT!!!!!!!

okay y'all listen up. we were having a lovely discussion in our lovely discord server about zachary and dorian visiting each of our favorite local bookshops/libraries- or just our favorite ones we'd ever visited- and we've decided to make a BRAND NEW FIC EVENT out of this!!!!!!! SO here is The Deal:

write a fic where Zachary and Dorian (and any other TSS characters you want to include!) visit your favorite bookstore or library! it could be a local spot that you frequent or a place you've visited traveling that stuck with you!!

the fic will end up being a chapter in a large anthology of such fics so keep that in mind for length! it can be a long chapter or a short chapter but it will be a chapter

you can write as many fics like this as you want!

submit the fics by DMing a google docs link or file attachment of some sort to either this tumblr account or my discord if you have it! for this event i will not be posting the individual fics on tumblr so please dont send fics as submissions/post them and tag me (i mean you are free to post them and tag me but if you want them included in the mass ao3 post please also send a doc!)

information you should include with your submission: a name you go by + an account of choice to be credited with- ao3, tumblr, doesnt matter, just something i can use to give you credit! AND, optionally, the name+location of the bookstore/library in the fic- this isnt required bc i dont want to make anyone dox themself, but if you feel you can safely share where the fic takes place it will be a great way to give people bookstore/library recommendations!!!

i will take submissions until december 1st and probably post the finished product within a few days of that. idrc how else you post or share your fics! but they will be posted, with credit as mentioned above, in a big ao3 fic that is just a bunch of zachary and dorians bookstore and library adventures :))))

anyway thats all yall gET WRITING!!!!!!

[thehauntedair]

I think you can really understand the role of Fate in the Starless Sea by looking at the characterizations of Zachary and Kat, Fate’s successors at the end of the novel.

Essentially we have Zachary, the “heart”- inevitability, trust, mystery- and Kat, the “body”- agency, will, forcefulness. Fate needs both to fill her role in the story because that is the nature of fate- both passive and active, inevitable and a series of branching choices.

In Zachary we see someone who, for better or worse, wholly believes in fate and continuously puts his life in its hands. Zachary is fairly passive, and follows the role expected of him beginning to end. The signs of his personifying fate are seeded constantly- from the very first story (son of the fortune teller), to drawing mystery books from the library, to continuing to follow breadcrumbs of a story seeded for him even when it brings him to mysterious strangers and threatens his life. Not going out of his way to make friends or meet people but rather letting them approach him- his connections being chance encounters. The way he describes novels as basically like a video game where someone else has already made all the choices for you. The way he is constantly treading old ground- rereading old books, replaying old games, seeking out meaning in things that have already passed and looking for them in other works. The way that- when he reads himself in that book- his first thought is that someone has predicted him- that he comes from the story.

And then there’s Kat- and Kat being forward progress. Kat changing how stories are told by making games with more branching lathways, more choice, more agency. Kat who approaches Zachary, Kat who doesn’t ignore his disappearance when everyone says she should but keeps pushing. Kat doesn’t wait to see what happens- she makes things happen- she happens to other people. She sees the paths and follows them, but is always seeking out new ones, unexpected ones. Kat wants to change things, to make something new. Kat wants to make stories more real, more vibrant. Takes what has happened before as inspiration. Kat understands that Fate is also a choice in how the story moves and breathes.

In the two of them we see a balance. Fate is inevitable. If you do nothing to stop it, fate is something that happens to you whether you like it or not. But fate is also a decision tree, where your choices Do matter in telling the story, in making the story different, yours. Iteration with modification. If you do nothing your choices will be made for you, but that is in itself still making a choice. Fate can happen to you, and you can happen to it. If you move in certain ways, fate can simply be how a story moves, not all that it is.

And I like this.

Zachary fills the role of the fate who lives in the harbor (the story), loving time, moving across predestined paths, retreading old ground and finding meaning and purpose in it. Kat fills the role of the fate who is reincarnated and comes to the harbor new, over and over again, in different bodies, playing new, different parts in each story and becomes a part of and shaping them in her turn.

Zachary becomes literal bosom buddies with Fate, meeting her, seeing her, following her wherever she goes. Fate leads, Zachary follows. For Kat, Fate has been here the whole time, watching, shadowing her movements with curiosity. Turning the paths that Kat walks down towards where she needs her to go, but the paths themselves being choices Kat is taking on her own. Kat leads, Fate follows. If you take them together, Fate can live in the center, or, as she wishes, at the beginning and the end.

[thatwasntlikeridingabikeuasshole]

AHEM! STARLESS SEA FANS!

I HAVE AN INVITATION FOR YOU!!!!! please keep reading, god, if you love the starless sea enough that you're even seeing this we want YOU!!!! are you a long time starless sea fan who has never found anyone else who wants to talk about this book as much as you do? have you always wanted to write/see starless sea fanfic or fanart but didnt think there was a fandom? or have you just finished the starless sea like twenty minutes ago and have been scouring tumblr for anything you can find? WELL I'VE GOT THE PLACE FOR YOU!

WE HAVE A STARLESS SEA DISCORD SERVER!

LINK

reasons why you should join and why this server is the best:

we are all literally just obsessed with the starless sea

and the characters

we draw fanart and write fanfic and even have events with prompts to inspire you to do the same

we have a super cool minecraft server with the inn at the edge of the world and a cherry blossom forest around it with honey and candles and shit

we do storytime where we read to each other in vc from tss, fanfic, or other books and it happens all the time and its really lovely and soothing and fun

we have movie nights and movie afternoons and random impromptu movies but theres a movie every weekend

we have endless headcanons

and a whole channel dedicated to dorian hurt/comfort

i co-run it with @boogleboot who is just the coolest and if you havent met her youre missing out

and theres a bunch of other cool people there too who i love so much

we have a limericks only chat (for which i blame mod boogle its so fun you have to talk only in limericks there)

YOU LIKE THE STARLESS SEA. WE LIKE THE STARLESS SEA. COME JOIN

go click that link girl (gendy neuch). we're so excited to have you. see you in the harbour!!!!!

[halleyys-comet]

You know how Allegra made the painting of Zachary and Dorian before she left the Harbour. I wonder when she realised that Dorian was the man she painted. Like, did she know from the start or did she just meet this kid and at some point went “you know who you really look like…”

[phantomwisestory]

"I shuffle them compulsively more than I read them," she says. "I'm surprised there aren't more down here, they're basically stories in pieces that can be rearranged."

-- Mirabel on tarot cards, from The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgnestern

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Adult SFF Books Bracket: Round 1

Book summaries and submitted endorsements below:

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians—it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose—in both the mysterious book and in his own life.

Fantasy, portal fantasy, metatextual, adult

The Heretic's Guide to Homecoming series (Book 1: Theory, Book 2: Practice) by Sienna Tristen

Endorsement from submitter: "Part travelogue, part coming of age, this has a really intense focus on the main character's personal growth, with a backdrop of an entire continent's worth of new cultures to explore."

“Life is transformation. You change or you die.”

Ashamed of his past and overwhelmed by his future, Ronoah Genoveffa Elizzi-denna Pilanovani feels too small for his own name. After a graceless exit from his homeland in the Acharrioni desert, his anxiety has sabotaged every attempt at redemption. Asides from a fiery devotion to his godling, the one piece of home he brought with him, he has nothing.

That is, until he meets Reilin. Beguiling, bewildering Reilin, who whisks Ronoah up into a cross-continental pilgrimage to the most sacred place on the planet. The people they encounter on the way—children of the sea, a priestess and her band of storytellers, the lonely ghosts of monsters—are grim and whimsical in equal measure. Each has their part to play in rewriting Ronoah’s personal narrative.

One part fantasy travelogue, one part emotional underworld journey, The Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming is a sumptuous, slow-burning story about stories and the way they shape our lives.

Fantasy, metanarrative, secondary world, series, adult

[virtualsoup]

I am not normal by the way about The Starless Sea. I am not normal about Zachary and Dorian. I am gnawing at the bars of my enclosure about Mirabel. I am wondering if everything is a sign and if signs are up for interpretation. I want to write a handwritten letter to Erin Morgenstern but I can't find any way to send her a letter. What really separates a story from real life and who is to say I am not in a story right now. For the love of God someone needs to kiss me so I know that it's better than books describe it

[normalfaerie]

She pulls a cigarette case from her bag and opens it, offering it to Zachary and before he can clarify that he doesn’t smoke he sees that the case is filled with small round candies, each one a different color. “Would you like a story? It might make you feel better and they’ll only work while we’re on the elevator.” “You’re kidding,” Zachary says. He takes a pale pink disk that looks like it might be peppermint. Mirabel smiles at him. She puts the case away without taking one herself. Zachary puts the candy on his tongue. He was right, peppermint. No, steel. Cold steel. The story unfolds in his head more than in his ears and there are words but there aren’t, pictures and sensations and tastes that change and progress from the initial mint and metal through blood and sugar and summer air. Then it’s gone. “What was that?” Zachary says. “That was a story,” Mirabel says. “You can try to tell it to me but I know they’re hard to translate.” “It was…” Zachary pauses, trying to wrap his head around the brief, strange experience that did indeed leave a story in his head, like a half- remembered fairy tale. “There was a knight, like the shining- armor type. Many people loved him but he never loved any of them in return and he felt badly about all the hearts he broke so he carved a heart on his skin for each broken one. Rows and rows of scarred hearts on his arms and his legs and across his chest. Then he met someone he wasn’t expecting and… I… I don’t remember what happened after that.” “Knights who break hearts and hearts that break knights,” Mirabel says. “Do you know it?” Zachary asks. “No, each one’s different. They have similar elements, though. All stories do, no matter what form they take. Something was, and then something changed. Change is what a story is, after all.” “Where did those come from?” “I found a jar full of them years ago. I like to keep them on hand, like always having a book with you, and I do that, too.”

- the starless sea by erin morgenstern

[do-you-ship-this-book-couple]

Do you ship...

[phtalogreenpoison]

Starless Sea posting part 11

In which I interrupt my poetry and analysis to assign DPR Ian songs to each character of The Starless Sea!

Allegra Cavallo - Miss Understood, No Blueberries

Dorian (I project onto him SO BAD) - Sometimes I'm, Ballroom Extravaganza, Don't Go Insane

Eleanor - Merry Go

Elena - MITO

Kat Hawkins - Peanut Butter & Tears

Jocelyn Simone Keating - No Silhouette

Simon - Famous Last Words

The Keeper - So Beautiful, Seraph

Lexi - Bad Cold

Mirabel - Dope Lovers, So I Danced

Sarah - 1 Shot

Madame Love Rawlins - Violet Crazy

Zachary Ezra Rawlins (my beloved) - Scaredy Cat, Nerves, Avalon

bc the lovely @hearth-of-olympus was interested!

[thetypedwriter]

The Starless Sea Book Review

The Starless Sea Book Review by Erin Morgenstern 

This book made me feel like I was drowning. 

In honey. 

If you don’t get that reference, don’t worry. Morgenstern will beat you over the head with it every single chapter until you can never see honey the same way again. 

Now, I feel like I’m in an odd camp where I actually haven’t read Morgenstern’s famous masterpiece The Night Circus. I’ve always wanted to get around to reading it, but it always seemed to slip right past my to-be-read pile. 

So when The Starless Sea came out, I thought yes! This is my chance to get in on a Morgenstern book early. 

Too bad I didn’t like it. 

The Starless Sea starts off really interesting. There’s a series of vignettes that hook the reader right away, including a pirate and a girl, an acolyte in training, a dollhouse village, and a fortune-teller’s son. The fortune teller’s son turns out to be the main protagonist of the novel—Zachary Ezra Rawlins. 

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a hermit-like young man in his mid-20’s studying game design. He ends up finding an old book at his university’s library in which his real life childhood memory is one of the chapters. The other chapters of this old novel? All chapters that we as readers have been consuming since the first page. Very meta, Morgenstern. 

Understandably baffled, Zachary Ezra Rawlins sets on a quest to uncover the book’s secrets, leading him to the very real underground world of the Starless Sea, including its inhabitants, puzzles, and magic. 

Throughout the journey, Zachary Ezra Rawlins meets other characters connected to the Starless Sea in some capacity and finally gets the answer to the question that has plagued him since childhood: what would have happened if he had opened that door? 

I genuinely wish I could go more in depth about this book’s plot, but there’s only one main problem—this book doesn't have a plot. Go ahead and read that sentence again. I’ll state it once more for good measure: As an objective third-party outsider with absolutely no stakes in the matter, The Starless Sea contains no discernible plot to speak of. 

I can say that the plot was a convoluted mess that didn’t make any sense. Zachary Ezra Rawlins (yes, it does get annoying repeating this again and again, yet Morgenstern opens every chapter with it) goes deep down underground past the Harbor into the Starless Sea for…reasons. 

He encounters numerous puzzles and magic and lots of rooms that Morgenstern likes to describe in excruciating detail, mainly that they’re dripping in honey and occupied by cats. The other people he encounters don’t answer most of his questions, leaving the reader bewildered and frustrated. 

One character in particular is a man that Zachary Ezra Rawlins falls in love with for seemingly no reason at all. They have about three stunted conversations, including one where the other man whispers menacingly in his ear in the dark about bees and owls and swords for ten minutes, and then Zachary Ezra Rawlins is risking life and limb in the abyss of the Starless Sea to rescue him. 

Another character is trying to blow up the Starless Sea for inane reasons that don’t make sense, but essentially get boiled down to she’s trying to protect it.

The other characters include Zachary Ezra Rawlins’ college friend who gets way more page time than she needs to, the keeper of the Starless Sea that answers nobody’s questions, Mirabel who is apparently the embodiment of fate, and her parents, who have been trapped in time and space for…a long time? 

None of these characters called to me. None of them were awful, but all of them outside of Zachary Ezra Rawlins were either too brief, underdeveloped, or abstract for me to connect with on any kind of emotional level. 

I wanted to connect to Zachary Ezra Rawlins, but none of his actions held much depth, his thinking was too shallow, and his commitment to his love interest Dorian actively didn’t contain any kind of logic or understanding. 

You might be wondering: if she didn’t like the nonsensical story or the characters, did she like anything?

Indeed, I did. The setting of The Starless Sea was really incredible. I’m always in awe of people’s creativity and imagination, both qualities Morgenstern seems to have in droves. The descriptions of the rooms, the Harbor, and the Starless Sea itself were all intricate, beautiful, and extremely symbolic. 

I wish I could say that I liked Morgenstern’s writing, but it really grated on me. What started off as moving writing, well-crafted sentences, and intentional symbolism turned into a repetitive slog that drove me up the wall. 

I like symbolism as much as the next person, especially subtle symbolism, but Morgenstern’s symbolism is the opposite of subtle. 

Morgenstern’s symbolism wants to beat you over the head with a key. Or a bee. Or a sword. Or a crown. Or an owl. You get where I'm going with this. What could have been a really cool series of motifs turned into a pretentious drone that aggravated me more and more as I continued to read. 

Overall, I was really disappointed with The Starless Sea. With a little more plot direction, tightening of the characters, and less symbolism, The Starless Sea could have been an alluring and fantastic read to rival the everlasting fame of The Night Circus. 

As it stands, however, The Night Circus would only need to contain a recognizable plot to be better than The Starless Sea for me. 

Recommendation: If you are a Morgenstern fangirl and will be reading The Starless Sea regardless of what I say, fantasize about the incredible setting of The Starless Sea and hope to forget about everything else. If you’re like me and haven’t delved into Morgenstern’s worlds just yet, start and end with The Night Circus. 

Score: 4/10