#there are parts of this that are extremely poetic prose and I don't know how to explain how it formed but it did

[unseelie-grimalkin]

Updating the Record

Another "Episode" of Triona in Skyrim

So last time Saarthal happened and uh, it KEPT happening to our short Breton-

Book research about Saarthal is something Triona's very comfy with, and she starts to make some leads, going to confer with Tolfdir. He notes his observations to her, and she pens them down alongside her own notes when Ancano bursts through the door to the Hall of Elements

He's pissed beyond belief that someone from the Psijic Order wants to talk to Triona, specifically! How dare! Tiny mage, are you PLOTTING

no sir, no plotting not a plotting bone here-

come with ME, and we shall make this monk ACCOUNT FOR HIMSELF THEN

quick scrambling to follow this angry pointy elf and not trip on his long cloak up the stairs, past the Arcaenum, up to the Arch Mage

Now, last time, I didn't really...decompress or explain many of Triona's feelings about the Psijic vision in Saarthal. That was on purpose because they hit you like a drive-by hit, just out of nowhere, and tell you you're the only one who can save the world because of circumstances outside your control.

And remember, that like. Triona ran away from Whiterun the minute a guard called her Dragonborn, a prophesized hero?

But the difference between now and then is that, like...she's overcome many unique challenges since then, even outside of this. I haven't recorded every brawl and fight, but Skyrim is toughening Triona up, making her find a backbone that is kind of really fascinating to me wrt Triona's characterization: in a lot of timelines, unless she's fussing over someone else or encouraged otherwise, Triona's usually very...meek. But there's something about an environment constantly out to get you. Still, you have people to get home to, people that do care about you in some capacity (the College members do care, in their own ways, about Triona: she let another apprentice experiment on her to help them with their independent study, she retrieved a family heirloom for another, she brews tea and sits with you and lets you talk about everything and anything. They care about that warmth returning, and they've made it known, in their own ways) that just...tempers you, takes you from raw vulnerability to something same-but-different, not quite stronger. But. Something has seeped in the cracks of your wounds, and that bond and healing is stronger than who you were specifically because you've healed. And that's done something interesting to someone whose personality is usually passive and submissive and a wallflower and turned her into someone with teeth, entirely just by the idea alone of "The world is full of dragons and undead and gods know what else that would all take a swing at me, and the only two ways I'm going to live are swinging back or running away. And...running away doesn't solve the problem in the long run."

So when the Psijic Order rep gives Triona a very grounded set of very vague instructions in another time distortion...she's ready not to run this time.

She finds the Augur and stands before it, playing into its knowledge and its speech and finding out two things:

(1) they need the Staff of Magnus

(2) Ancano came to the Augur about the Eye himself

From there, a lot of it is a blur: the investigation, Mirabelle giving Triona the lead for where the Sinod were looking for the Staff of Magnus, Triona getting to these Dwemer ruins and experiencing the sheer horror of running/skulking through the dark, knowing you are on a timer, facing horrors of not one but two different, extremely distinct varieties (dwemer constructs, powered by soul crystals older than most histories you've studied. falmer, fallen and outcast and hateful in their evolution from their fall. both are damn near inexplicable to you, but you have to fell them the same way you did your first draugr, the same way you did your first dragon: flames first, questions later).

And you finally, after finding bodies strewn about, bitten into, you find another living being who is guarded towards you but at least won't try to kill you on sight: the sole Sinod mage who locked himself away in the orrery of the ruin, slaving away over it, preparing it for a focusing crystal he didn't know his contemporaries would be able to bring back. But you just...stumbled on it. Showing it to him makes him lower his spell-ready hands and lead you inside.

He gloats and glowers at you as you do all the work to finish his damn project: getting the starlight to show you where powerful magical artifacts are. And...unfortunately, the very thing you're terrified of (the Eye) is what's pissing in the results, making it hard for the Sinod to see where the Staff is. And what makes him...aggressive towards you, an apprentice of the College who he views snubbed him and his (honestly, rightfully so, if Mirabelle spoke true: if the Sinods were more interested in politicking than magic, Triona has little sympathies for them. Politics don't exactly save you when you're stuck in the cold dark with things skittering about, after all). And, well...all that time in the dark, he outright attacks, just to try to keep the information you helped him unearth all to himself.

He wasn't Triona's first sapient life taken: there were Stormcloaks who would not be reasoned with in the middle of a supernatural disaster (Alduin attacking Helgen), and there were bandits who would've killed her first, but...he's the first one that feels like it matters? No, not matters (all of them mattered, in some shape or another), but the first to give her a haunted train of thought, as she exited and headed back with information in tow. Had he not attacked, she would've left him alone and maybe he'd healed from his experience, but he was greedy for reputation and glory, and that always makes for a bad mindset.

She comes back to Winterhold and it's all gone to shit: Ancano's messing with the Eye, the Arch Mage quickly dies in a magical explosion, Mirabelle is injured to the point she cannot walk, arcane wisps are attacking civilians in Winterhold below, and to top it all off: another dragon attack.

After everything was settled, the college just got accessorized with not only the first dragon skeleton (from last time):

But also now the second dragon skeleton from now:

Fuck's sake.

[highsocietyhq]

"The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable."

ADMIN E here, writing one stupidly long love letter to the group ! so this is it, hshq has come to its end. this is a very bittersweet moment but it still feels oddly right. i would have loved to see hshq thrive indefinitely but once every story has been written out, there's not much to expand on. i'm laughing at the fact that we really closed on april fool's day: very poetic, don't you think ? when i think about hshq, i sort of imagine it as this sanctuary that has remained the same at its essence thorough the years. i joined the group as a high school freshman. back then i had bounced from group to group, always losing muse or the group closing before it had even properly even opened. little did i know i'd find myself adminning the group for almost a decade !!!! we've seen so many plotlines and characters, the level of writing in this group has always astonished me. some pieces of writing have even stuck with me and it's been amazing to see how much everyone has matured over the years. one-liners ended up getting forgotten, which was both a good and a bad thing: i liked how every reply had more substance but i was saddened by the fact that easy-going and quick back-and-forth interactions disappeared because of it. i've laughed at the silly threads, funny quips, and awkward interactions. i've genuinely shed a tear or two having read the most heart-breaking or self-loathing texts. i don't know if it's a good thing that i've become so invested in the fictional lives of these fictional royals but i really hope to read how their stories end. it almost feels like saying a goodbye to dear friends.

ADMIN J here, embarrassingly emotional to say goodbye ! when i first joined this group, teen wolf and reign fcs dominated the rpc. starters with no prose, bar the text on gigantic gifs, were horrifically rampant. and, on the opposite side of the spectrum, rarely would you ever see muns over the age of 19 ( imagine being old and writing about a silly little fictional royal ??? ). i never would have pictured that we'd still be here, all these years later, on the other side of it all. many of us weren't allowed to legally drink when we'd first joined, and now we're finishing up degrees and at our adult jobs ?? this makes me sick. it's so insane to think about how much we've all grown in our time with hshq. eve put it perfectly – it's been a sanctuary over so many years and it's brought me such joy to refresh my dash to keep up to date with my favourite otps – and the list is long. the rpc wasn't kind to my timezone, but you guys have made my late nights extremely worth it. from the wild events, to the crazy outfit posts, to angsty paras, and silly one-liners, you've kept me sat. it's been an absolute joy for us, over the past decade or so, to have built a world with such a rich history and complex characters – wiki pages for fictional characters ? i will never not be impressed by the sheer talent in this group. thank you for sharing your stories with us and letting us be a part of it.

ADMIN EVY here and i want to start by saying thank you. i know e and j have already said it but truly the predominant feeling when it comes to this group is gratitude. it was your dedication that kept hshq going for the better part of a decade ( and if you've been here since chambord, pretty much an entire one ). thank you for plotting, not only with me but with each other, this group is unique in a sense that even the tiniest of plotlines ties into a major web and could develop into either a huge dramatic outcome or one of the best inside jokes ever. lawn chairs still make me chuckle sometimes. opening the dash to me always felt like therapy, every single day it left me in awe of your creativity and talent, of the amazing group of writers we managed to collect over the years, the storylines you've created, developed and put into words in the most brilliant of ways. even the silly threads that would get us all opening our laptops at ungodly hours because someone created a funny joke and we all wanted to be a part of it. those are moments i'll remember fondly and actually feel heartbroken that they won't happen anymore. having been here for so long i feel like we didn't just create a little writing community or are a group of people with a hobby and an interest in common, this group really is a little family that i'll cherish forever, regardless if we'll stay in touch after this or not. for eight years you all and this space were a safe haven for us and each other, a lot of times reading your threads was the best part of my day, brought a smile to my face or made my heart ache. we were so invested in these characters that we felt how they felt and that's a product of your talent, your dedication and our bond to you and this group. i will forever be thankful to you all for being a part of this group and staying with us for so long and until now.

[loelett]

Lestat Niki Louis Gabrielle Armand

Louis- my sweet cheese my good time boy... i joke about him because he's silly but he's just... so important to me. his constant melancholy and general pathetic demeanor is probably exactly what i would be like as a vampire tbh. he feels the most real and tangible to me, and also the most classic vampire. but he's not like the other GIRLSS!!!! i love how everyone is just so crazy about him, describes him in long poetic prose, and is just in a general agreement that he is the best ever. i will read the paragraphs where the others describe him over and over. meanwhile he is just this Guy with big wet eyes. i love that he is covered in dust. i love reading abt how he adjusts to the modern world but still kind of sticks to the time he was born in (aesthetically/in his mannerisms). i love that he does not try to get involved with vampire drama. he is quiet and thoughtful and nice :) BUT HE SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i hate him

Armand- my relationship with armand and lestat is kind of weird, i feel like in some books i am more of a lestat fan but in others i am insane about armand way over lestat. armand is always staying at a constant place in my heart, meanwhile lestat kinda dances around that? he is a tentative 2nd ig? i love his ominous demeanor. he is both so in control yet so insecure. he's untrustworthy but he loves sincerely, and in the most vice-grip kinda way. his quiet manipulation and desperation for love feels like it's introduced very well in iwtv and fleshed out so amazingly in following books. he's pretty consistently written, which is just really satisfying and nice when almost no one else is UHHHHHHHHHHH

Gabrielle- i just really like her... idk i'm always so excited to read about her... i want to be her i want her gender

Lestat- sorry sorry i'm really weird about lestat GHJJ. i don't know if this is an unpopular opinion or not in the fandom but i do not love how he is characterized post iwtv. i understand ar's desire to turn him more likeable in order to be a main character, but i also think it could have been done better. i think he could have been developed slowly. i HATE. the fact that he's retconned into only killing criminals??? absolutely not. i started tvl extremely excited to see the development of the character from the first book and instead it kind of feels like an entirely different guy. i don't dislike every part obvs! i love how he flips the vampire trope on its head. i love everything he stands for. i love him. but i don't agree with the retconning even if it made the story more digestable or lestat more likeable. we were not supposed to like him in the first book, so why not give us a legitimate reason to like him in the 2nd book instead of saying "nah louis lied haha. love me." for this reason i'll always put louis' FACTUAL description of events over lestat's, whereas the parts like where he describes louis begging him to stay and all that actually do make sense. adding to the story instead of subtracting. anyway i do like him!!! i swear i love lestat. um but he kind of makes me mad.

Nicki- tbh i really need to reread tvl but i do remember loving him, i just can't remember enough of him to rank higher lmfao. i like his comparison to louis, and the fact that he kind of can't get over his jealousy for his own boyfriend. i like how his fall into madness was described, and how lestat basically loses all interest in him. also armand fucked up arc (still has not ended). thinking about him makes me sad (in a good way). top ten reasons to reread tvl

[dogstarblues]

20 Questions

got tagged by @artemis-devotee. seemed like fun! ty botan!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

i have 11 works and i can tell you four of those are poetry.

2. What’s your total AO3 words count?

17,831

3. What fandoms do you write for?

on ao3? used to write for the ch**tiverse, still write for Victoria Goddard's Nine Worlds. well, okay im on hiatus from participating in fan stuff bc i got too much going on and i have complicated feelings abt fandom. but. on ffnet? naruto, inuyasha, bleach, fairy tail, danny phantom. i think.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

we have time (love this one - much needed natural hair content in that fandom, much needed)

you can't even see how much you're mine (i'm really proud of this one)

before we have time

just for now

gazing at the sun

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i respond to everyone's comments if i can remember LOL

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

you can't even see how much you're mine. really exorcised my polyamory baggage with that one LMAO

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

mmmmm none of them end poorly but they end heavily, if that makes sense? but also they don't. like most of my fanfiction as an adult in my 30s is discussion of wants and needs in a relationship and hashing out things that need to be talked abt

8. Do you get hate on fics?

i have on ffnet when i was a teen and giving every naruto character in my biopunk fanfic like 4 codenames SDKVDFLVMS

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

yuh. "just for now" is smut (old man yaoi). and there's another i think. i wanted to really confront my sex repulsion and explore my own boundaries around what i write.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

naur i never understood crossovers v well. i love an AU tho

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

probably not. on ffnet it was SO goth edgelord and now it's extremely poetic prose. (and when i say POETIC prose i mean it tend to be concise and abstract, not that its purple) who wants that LOL

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

naur

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

yes! my first fanfiction was with my childhood friend Sunshine and we posted a double-self-insert absolute MANIC fanfic set in the world of Inuyasha posted to ffnet. one of my fondest memories. i dictated, she wrote.

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

i don't have one these days but i shant say what it used to be only that it made me insane from the time i was 14 to the age of 25.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

i had an old man yaoi urban fantasy au wherein a character who used to be the chosen one had been imprisoned and was surviving the trauma of that as a music teacher and i read a ton of prison literature for it and watched documentaries and watched interviews and spent WEEKS researching trauma from incarceration and what it means to be incarcerated (part of this was because my birth father was about to be incarcerated and i was trying to write through my understanding of what he'd be going through) and researching what town councils do. and then a (now former) friend had torn apart the fic paragraph by paragraph during beta and wrote how boring parts were and no one wanted to hear abt me talking abt poetry in the fanfic and it was my FIRST fanfic since i was in my early twenties and i basically deleted the whole thing out of embarrassment and hurt. iykyk who it was. idk if i can ever go back to that. i just don't. i want to but. even strangers in workshops aren't that cruel LOL

16. What are your writing strengths?

i'm a pretty/poetic writer good at relationship shit i think. i'm good at grounding the reader in a sense of place and my writing is very tactile. it's embodied.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i am a pretty/poetic writer

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

i know some spanish and a little french and even less russian (i'm like learning that one through osmosis) but it's not v applicable. hmmmm i wouldn't try unless i was fluent.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

inuyasha

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

either the naruto biopunk fanfiction on ffnet (i turned that one into a fanfic from a biopunk short story i had written in high school it's v close to my heart even if edgy) or "you can't even see how much you're mine" bc i put a lot into that or "we have time" because your partner doing your natural hair IS a love language.

if yall wanna hop in i'm tagging @toopunkrockforshul @cadencekismet @markeyverse

[adventism-atheism-orthodoxy-me]

Part of a Response that I want to ponder over a bit more. I thought I'd make it it's own post.

There are a few propositions that I keep in my back pocket that I should probably lay out on the table.

I believe strongly in an expanded reality, something beyond our senses. Some people laugh at Cryptids, for instance, until they run into one. Same with ghosts, same with poltergeist activity. I'm not saying I believe everything that comes my way, and if anyone flatly reject such things then I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise. I just think there's a lot we don't know and I am open.

Who knows how much of the Bible is true history. I know a lot of Protestants who tie themselves up in knots trying to flesh everything out literally with bizarre results. A lot of the Bible is Myth, a lot is a specific tribe's Origin Story. But my question is, why have these particular stories mattered for so long, well past their initial reason for being? Nobody understands The Kavalla as inspired scripture, the same is true with the Prose and Poetic Eddas. The same could be said about the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and of the Sumerian Epics including Gilgamesh. It is done with the Veddas, but unfortunately, given my proclivities, I'm uninterested in really trying to deconstruct Hindu theology in the way I do Christianity. So, while I see the Bible as an attempt to touch the face of God, I also understand that that whatever is written will be distorted by many things.

Back to an expanded reality. I do believe in a Universal Celestial Order. I also believe that humans are part of a subordinate Earthly Order. We wanted to be gods? Fine. There's a certain collegial respect God has given us in our domain. We've been made custodians of it, and, in my opinion, we're failing miserably.

Pain and death in this world, suffering. Yet how would anyone do any better? With creatures whom they love, who they endowed with free will (if you believe in that, I know some don't). Would they go around being a tyrant destroying some of their creatures and not others? Picking and choosing their targets based upon their personal whims day-to-day? People talk of lightning bolts and all sorts of powerful destructive forces, and yet, on an interpersonal level - does attacking everyone around you make you happier and more fulfilled? Does your hatred for everything you disagree with make the grass greener, the sky bluer, or the sun warmer?

God sent his son as an example of extreme humility. When someone lets the anger and the hate go, when they look for the good in all of God's creatures - not because of some esoteric formulation of rules - but because they are trying to see the good in them, they will come closer to the God I believe in. Rain falls on the just and on the unjust equally, not because they deserve it, but because God is good, and he loves mankind.

I've been castigated by fellow Christians because I call "bull" on an active Heavenly judgement. I see a courtroom type of justice as an antithesis to everything I see around me in the natural world. No one brings lions up on charges for eating too many deer in the woods - except maybe very human Game Wardens who relocate problems in the best cases. Grasses don't meet height quotas on the land they grow on. Rivers flow through their natural watercourses without any help from anybody, and are directed by the land and gravity - both natural, self regulating features of our world - though once again, human dams impede these natural processes both for good and ill. I have started casting my "Heavenly Judgement" critics a bone by saying "God will know his own", but I really think these people who criticize me are afraid someone might try to "get something by" God, when I don't think it really works that way. So, I think God gave us a good world. Something for us to manage, if we wanted to. But People would rather be destructive - so we live in "Hell" lite.

Back to suffering. Christ suffered. Humans suffer as part of our dominion. Just as he needed to suffer as part of his. We hoe our gardens, we weed, we do our best to make our pockets of the world better, and to do so, we sweat and grow tired. And remember, we wanted to take the quick way, not the way the Bible said he'd planned for us. Meaning that we fight each other's egos, back and forth - this also results in suffering. Because our stewardship is somewhat lacking, even the Bible states - "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8:22)" It's been a common, though maybe not universal, understanding that thorns on roses, animals hunting animals, and human disease comes from our initial desire to be "like God".

So, I am happy to carry on a conversation with anyone regarding any of these points. We may not agree on even one of them, but, "God knows his own". 😉

[hotchley]

For later: B, G and H from the fanfic asks? <3

It's definitely later!

B: Any of your stories inspired by personal experience?

Ish? I think little pieces of myself end up in all of my stories. Specifically:

two men, saying goodbye was inspired by the relationship I had with my granddad in the sense of the whole coming to terms with the idea that someone you didn't like played a role in who you are, and letting go of that desire to know who you would've been without them.

the clock never stops (but maybe it ticks a little quieter) was inspired by my experience with grief counselling, because it worked and it helped. I lied a few times in the assessment- that much became clear in my final session but it was still good. And the whole part with Carlos realising he was good was also my life, only there was nobody there with me.

In both powerless to do, powerless to save and haunted by the ghost of you, we see Eleanor try to help someone who doesn't want it and her struggling to not take it personally and accept that. It was much less extreme, but that continues to be my life and I was essentially projecting a lot.

So yeah! Fun </3

G: Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

It depends on the individual fic.

Some, like fear, disproven and balls fair in love and war, stemmed from very specific images I had so the scenes were written out of order since I got what I was seeing down and then worked from there. Others including like blood underneath your fingernails and lauren were completely written start to finish since I couldn't work out how to get from A to B without doing it properly. Since those were different, things had to be done in order so they made sense to me from writing.

Now, I tend to write what's in my brain and then work out how to get from the beginning to there since I never have a beginning in my head.

H: How would you describe your style?

I don't actually know and I think people who have read a few of my fics would probably be able to explain it better than I can lol.

It's not purple prose, but I don't know what the middle ground of that would be called, so maybe like more to the point and less poetic than purple prose without becoming dull.

I love a good metaphor, especially those that extend through the whole piece which I usually can't do (it'll run for a few paragraphs or be mentioned in various places) but it's always cool when it works.

I definitely prefer description to dialogue, but I find that I end up using more dialogue than descriptions since I prefer doing inner monologues and feelings to settings.

I think my style is chaotic and dependent on the fic since my hotchniss ones tend to be more poetic and everything else follows a more simple description, some poetic lines and a lot of dialogue especially if they're on a case. So yeah... that's the very long-winded explanation I guess?

the fanfic ask game

[licncourt]

I forgot if I already left an ask for you, but if I didn't here goes!

Begin Again: 2, 4, 5, 9

Ooh, okay Sofi already sent me 2 and 9, but:

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

That's extremely hard to answer for a 100k+ fic because I don't even remember my own lore half the time, but I really like how their ch 9 philosophical debate came out in general. If I had to pick something more specific, I'll say Lestat's speech about Lucifer. It was definitely one of my favorite things to write.

“Lucifer was not always the devil. He began as the poetic herald of sunrise, a radiant son of Rome’s Aurora, the rosy-fingered Dawn of the Greeks, and he was so blessed with beauty that it rivaled that of Venus. He was the light-bringer. The Morning Star."

"Lestat!"

Louis' arms jerked in his grip, fighting physically against what he had no mental defense for. He was still weeping, but audibly now, shaking his head again. Lestat did not stop. He could be cruel now in the knowledge that it was a disguised mercy.

“The Morning Star shines brightly in the sky from dusk until dawn, but the glow of the sunlight washes it out before it reaches the apex of the celestial sphere. The sun casts it from the highest point of the sky, and so when the prophet Isaiah’s Satan was cast from Heaven, the faithful looked upon the beautiful light-bringer and called him devil.”

Louis was trying to interject, to stop the flow of words with teary babble, but Lestat tightened his grip just slightly, giving a gentle shake. The objections halted. He paused, imbuing his words with as much meaning as he could muster, with memories of a flaming lantern and the hate-filled curses of a woman in nightclothes.

“They did not know what it was they saw.”

5: What part was hardest to write?

It's always dumb stuff that takes me the longest (I can bang out an ethical debate in a sitting but it took me two weeks to write a date scene once), but the main things that came to mind were Lestat's kind-of-accidental suicide attempt because it was much harder than I anticipated to capture dissociation in prose (I still don't know if I'd consider it a total success) and the 80s politics from the last chapter because I didn't know jack shit about the Cold War or Reaganomics until I started writing it. I bit off way more than I could comfortably chew with that. Honorable mention to writing not-depressing porn from Louis' POV.

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Okay, I did already answer this, but I've made so many changes from the original outline that I could probably answer again.

Aside from the NYC thing, it's really just way longer and way less structured that it was supposed to be. If you read from the beginning, you can see that the original (ten chapter) fic was supposed to have two scenes per chapter, one from each POV. This only lasts until ch 4 and then I just start going by vibes only. Also I added some scenes that kind of took on a life of their own. Louis' post-sex meltdown went from a scene to a full chapter, as did the political satire from the last chapter, and both the ch 11 sex scene and the adult store + motel scene were added on the fly but ended up being major chapter events.

[morphedphaseblog]

The starless sea by Erin Morgenstern

Goodreads version

The introduction

This is just to warn everyone that I'm not a literature student, an English major nor a native English speaker, so I'm sorry in advance if this is a jumbled mess. I tend to ramble a lot but I've really tried to keep this as short as possible. (Short meaning a little bit over two thousand words for one review, I've never written a review this long.) I wrote this for self indulgence and for my lovely book club @readerbookclub

The first impression

This book pleasantly surprised me, it was like a very long dream that you don't want to wake up from. The moment I finished it I wished that I hadn't because I couldn't part from it just yet. It would feel almost like cheating, I wanted the intertwined stories to continue and for me to remain in its trance, lost in the beautiful writing and bizarre world.

I will be the first to admit that when someone says the story is written almost poem-like, in prose, and similar, I will immediately think of meaningless quotes that are there just to look pretty. Characters saying things just to sound deep, frilly writing that leads nowhere, and dragged on descriptions that had no place being that long and boring. Those are the first things I think of when I'm confronted with someone explaining those kinds of books to me, and that's completely my fault. This book was none of that, it was captivating from the first page to the last.

"There is a pirate in the basement. (The pirate is a metaphor but also still a person.) "

I can tell you, when I first read this, on the first goddamn page, I was hooked. This book has a strong bizzare sort of setting, one that almost reminds me of Neil Gaiman, distinctively Neverwhere with its underground society and twisted perceptions of reality, and yet this book stands out on its own as an individual. It's definitely a unique book, one that I'm still hesitant to part from.

The writing

This book has a very unique writing style, one that is extremely consistent throughout the book. There's nothing I hate more than an inconsistent writing style that changes without a reason. The author plays around with words and describes things simply yet poetically. There were only maybe two instances where I thought the writing was a bit pretentious, but ultimately the good outweighs the bad.

I don't know what exactly it is, but I will try and explain through the next few quotes:

"The book is mis-shelved in the fiction section, even though the majority of it is true and the rest is true enough"

(This really gives you the sense of vague foreshadowing in the book, where even though the description tells you sweet sorrows is mostly true you don't realise how true it actually is. I never saw the fact that the characters in that book would be actual people that interact with our main characters. Plus the writing is really pretty)

"It's binding has been cracked a handful of times, once a professor even perused the first few pages and intended to come back to it but forgot about it instead."

(Is it just me but these small detailed descriptions really give you a sense of real world happenings and that the story is really set in the real world. You can imagine people passing their fingers over the spine of the book before glancing around and getting distracted with something else. The professor taking it into his hands and skimming it but ultimately forgetting all about it later, and finally Zachary reading the whole book from top to bottom.)

"His dark hair is grading at the temples, framing a face that would be called handsome if the word rugged or unconventionally were attached to it."

(Now I'm in love with this kind of mental visual, it's fun and it almost plays with your expectations. I just really like small things like these, they immediately make my reading extremely entertaining.)

"Someone in the corner is dressed as a highly recognizable author or, Zachary thinks as he gets a closer look, it might be that highly recognizable author."

(Again as before, this is the kind of writing I like. It plays with your imaginary visuals of what's happening and making them ten times more fun, especially when we confirm a bit later that that had indeed been that highly recognizable author.)

"He walks over bones he mistakes for dust and nothingness he mistakes for bones."

(Yet another example of those fun visuals, I didn't even realise how many of these I had marked until I had to go through them for this review. I just adore this writing style.)

I have so many more of these so here are just a few more to really make this review even longer:

"A portrait of a young man in a coat with a great many buttons but the buttons are all tiny clocks, from the collar to the cuffs, each reading different times."

"His face is so much more than hair and eye colour, she wonders why books do not describe the curves of noses or the length of the eyelashes. She studies the shape of his lips. Perhaps a face is too complicated to capture in words."

"There are dozens of giant statues. Some figures have animal heads and others have list their heads entirely. They are listed throughout the space in a way that looks so organic that Zachary would not be surprised if they moved, or perhaps they are moving, very, very slowly."

"The figure in the chair is carved from snow and ice. As her gown cascades down around the chair the ripples in the fabric become waves, and within waves there are ships and sailors and sea monsters and then the sea within her gown is lost in the drifting snow."

"Allegra watches him with studied interest from the other end of the table, the way one watches a tiger in a zoo or possibly the way the tiger watches the tourists."

"It sounds strange and empty now, in her head. Rhyme can hear the hum of the past stories though they are low and quiet, the stories always calm once they have been written down whether they are past stories or present stories or future stories.

It is the absence of the high-pitched stories of the future that is the most strange. There is the thrum of what will pass in the next few minutes buzzing in her ears- so faint compared to the tales layered upon tales that she once heard- and then nothing. Then this place will have no more tales to tell." .

(Probably one of my favourites, it really highlights everything I like about this style of writing.)

Another kind of writing style I noticed in the book was an abundance of making things literally feel alive, giving human emotions to objects, personification. I don't come across this too often in other books, and when it happens it isn't repeated as often in that same book,since it tends to get old, but as we have already learned Erin Morgenstern never makes this boring. She plays around with this and never seems to stop, adding another layer to her writing cake. I love how she gives these characteristics to even the smallest of crevices hidden in shadows, something just people wouldn't even think of.

"He takes his torch and explores the shadows, away from the doors and the tent, among jagged crystals and forgotten architecture. He carries the light into places long unfamiliar with illumination that accept it like a half-remembered dream."

"Outside the inn the wind howls, confused by this turn of events. (The wind does not like to be confused. Confusion ruins it's sense of direction and direction is everything to the wind.)"

"The wind howls after him as he leaves in fear of what is to come, but a mortal cannot understand the wishes of the wind no matter how loud it cries and so these final warnings go unheeded."

"If the sword could sigh with relief as it is taken from its scabbard it would, for it has been lost and found so many times before and it knows this time will be the last."

One more thing that caught my eye in the writing was also the composition, where we technically start with in medias Res. We find out by the end of the book that everything that has happened was one big ass story wrapped in stories and overlapped with other stories. So Zachary literally comes in not even in the middle of the story, but at the very end that has been overdue for quite some time. This makes for a very interesting storyline as all the other storylines intertwine into eachother, it makes for an even more interesting read as our MC comes in only when the plot is at its end, tipping over the very edge.

(I also got the feeling that the entire book is almost told through the perspective of the story, if that makes any sense whatsoever. It's almost like the story, that is bound together like the most complicated twister game, is alive and is smiling over our characters smugly waiting for everything to run its course. Like an omnipresent god, that's at least the vibe I got reading the book. )

The world building

Now in my opinion the world building goes hand in hand with the writing in this book. Every detail I mentioned before builds the atmosphere and the base of all the world building in this book. The way the plot is written is written also contributes to the world building, as all the stories overlap and meet at the very end. The looping plot line is actually my number one favourite thing in the entire book.

There isn't that much to say except 'what the hell is going on?' in the best way possible, to the world building, because as confusing as it can be it's amazing to read and I think that it's one of my favourite aspects of the book.

The Characters

Now is time for the weakest part of the book, its characters, who even though I think are amazing, are definitely flatter than everything else in the book.

In my opinion most characters personalities I just can't pinpoint, and even though this personally doesn't take away from my enjoyment too much, I know a lot of people love well defined character personalities.

For some characters I can understand the constant change in character, like Mirabel, whose multiple lifetimes make it so it makes sense why her personalities overlap and make little sense. She constantly felt a bit inconsistent to me, but again I personally didn't think it ruined the book.

The most well developed personalities I could feel were Kat and the keeper, and at times Dorian. Zachary is a weird gray area for me, because even though I loved his character, I can't really tell who he is besides the son of the fortuneteller. I think that most of the character building was sacrificed to make the plot and the world feel alive. As I said before, it feels like the omnipresent god and the world is more developed than any of the characters personalities.

I usually love marking all 'character moments' where I feel like I can understand what kind of person the character is, their sense of humour, friendship, socializing, thinking and so on. But I found myself marking basically nothing of that kind in this book, just the beautiful descriptions of the world. The story was just more alive than the characters in it.

I liked all the romances even though they all lacked some depth, but the fairytale style writing of the romance definitely made them extremely enjoyable. If it weren't for the fairytale vibe all the romance would have been just flat, and I  wouldn’t be invested at all.

The Conclusion

I wouldn't reccomend this book for everyone, as I think great many people wouldn't be fans of the writing, and so the lack of character depth wouldn't help either and there would be no good to outweigh the bad. I truly think this book is a perfect 4 starts but to me personally it is 5 stars. I am just such a big fan of the looping storyline, I still haven't gotten over that. To finish it all off here are a few extra quotes that I liked:

"No one takes responsibility. Everyone assumes someone else will do it, so no one does."

"It is critical to steep the tests in ignorance to result in uncorrupted responses."

"They all 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."