[ellanotenchanted93]

Anyone think of Mother Gothel when they listen to Mother Gothel? Just me? Just the shift from "loving innocence" (1989) to the "fine make me your villain" (reputation) attitude

I'M NOT SAYING MOTHER GOTHEL WAS NOT AN AWFUL PERSON. SHE WAS.

[ellanotenchanted93]

The Folklore Trilogy

I know TSwizzle has pretty much already dispelled my headcanon, but here me out:

Betty: James during the Summer Scandal (”Betty I’m Here on your Doorstep”)

This is Me Trying: James Talking to Betty on her Porch (”I don’t know what to say/but I’m here in your doorway”)

Cardigan: Betty Reflecting on what James Did (”Chasing Shadows in the grocery lines”)

The One: Betty reflecting closer to when the James event happened (”I thought I saw you at the bus stop/ I didn’t though”)

August: Augustine reflecting on her Summer “love” (”meet me behind the mall”)

Illicit Affairs: Augustine in the present living the James summer (”what started in beautiful rooms/ ends with meetings in parking lots”) 

This is all I can think about, even though I know it’s inaccurate 

[cuppa-studies]

Why is this so accurate…

[incorrectranmaquotes]

A small idea

So i’ve been throwing around this idea in my head, that I’m sure a hundred people have come up with before, an AU idea and such as that. It’s not fleshed out for the life of me, but I have been thinking about some of it none the less.

A life swap Rumic AU

Things like, make Ranma deal with Lum and her space crazy, Make Ataru deal with four crazy fiancées, make Sakura a shrine maiden in the feudal era like Kagome. Make Kagome take Sakura’s role in No Rinne. Or even make her a shinigami too.   

idk in my free time when I’m procrastinating with this blog, I think up AU’s. Maybe I’d write some of these out and make it more fleshed out one day. I personally love making Ranma with crack ships so having him deal with Lum sounds like fun to me. 

Or maybe I’m a crazy person to all of you and I should stay in my lane with my trash shitposts. 

or maybe I’m the crazy guy the fandom needs. 

a true hero, a Paragon.  …. insert idea for a Ranma superhero AU here. 

[ellanotenchanted93]

#reputation is killing me. The spoken part in This is Why we Can't Have Nice Things was fantastic. I Did Something Bad? Fucking addictive as shit . @taylorswift is a fucking sassy queen and I'm totally digging it

[ellanotenchanted93]

New Car Game

My new favorite game is listening to @taylorswift songs in the car and switching the I's You's and Me's around I.E.:

You've got a blank space baby, and you'll right my name

New money dress and heels, you can read me like a magazine

It's a great game to help me stay awake and alert while driving

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

I’ve decided to tell you guys a story about piracy.

I didn’t think I had much to add to the piracy commentary I made yesterday, but after seeing some of the replies to it, I decided it’s time for this story.

Here are a few things we should get clear before I go on:

1) This is a U.S. centered discussion. Not because I value my non U.S. readers any less, but because I am published with a U.S. publisher first, who then sells my rights elsewhere. This means that the fate of my books, good or bad, is largely decided on U.S. turf, through U.S. sales to readers and libraries.

2) This is not a conversation about whether or not artists deserve to get money for art, or whether or not you think I in particular, as a flawed human, deserve money. It is only about how piracy affects a book’s fate at the publishing house. 

3) It is also not a conversation about book prices, or publishing costs, or what is a fair price for art, though it is worthwhile to remember that every copy of a blockbuster sold means that the publishing house can publish new and niche voices. Publishing can’t afford to publish the new and midlist voices without the James Pattersons selling well. 

It is only about two statements that I saw go by: 

1) piracy doesn’t hurt publishing. 

2) someone who pirates the book was never going to buy it anyway, so it’s not a lost sale.

Now, with those statements in mind, here’s the story.

It’s the story of a novel called The Raven King, the fourth installment in a planned four book series. All three of its predecessors hit the bestseller list. Book three, however, faltered in strange ways. The print copies sold just as well as before, landing it on the list, but the e-copies dropped precipitously. 

Now, series are a strange and dangerous thing in publishing. They’re usually games of diminishing returns, for logical reasons: folks buy the first book, like it, maybe buy the second, lose interest. The number of folks who try the first will always be more than the number of folks who make it to the third or fourth. Sometimes this change in numbers is so extreme that publishers cancel the rest of the series, which you may have experienced as a reader — beginning a series only to have the release date of the next book get pushed off and pushed off again before it merely dies quietly in a corner somewhere by the flies.

So I expected to see a sales drop in book three, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, but as my readers are historically evenly split across the formats, I expected it to see the cut balanced across both formats. This was absolutely not true. Where were all the e-readers going? Articles online had headlines like PEOPLE NO LONGER ENJOY READING EBOOKS IT SEEMS.

Really?

There was another new phenomenon with Blue Lily, Lily Blue, too — one that started before it was published. Like many novels, it was available to early reviewers and booksellers in advanced form (ARCs: advanced reader copies). Traditionally these have been cheaply printed paperback versions of the book. Recently, e-ARCs have become common, available on locked sites from publishers. 

BLLB’s e-arc escaped the site, made it to the internet, and began circulating busily among fans long before the book had even hit shelves. Piracy is a thing authors have been told to live with, it’s not hurting you, it’s like the mites in your pillow, and so I didn’t think too hard about it until I got that royalty statement with BLLB’s e-sales cut in half. 

Strange, I thought. Particularly as it seemed on the internet and at my booming real-life book tours that interest in the Raven Cycle in general was growing, not shrinking. Meanwhile, floating about in the forums and on Tumblr as a creator, it was not difficult to see fans sharing the pdfs of the books back and forth. For awhile, I paid for a service that went through piracy sites and took down illegal pdfs, but it was pointless. There were too many. And as long as even one was left up, that was all that was needed for sharing. 

I asked my publisher to make sure there were no e-ARCs available of book four, the Raven King, explaining that I felt piracy was a real issue with this series in a way it hadn’t been for any of my others. They replied with the old adage that piracy didn’t really do anything, but yes, they’d make sure there was no e-ARCs if that made me happy. 

Then they told me that they were cutting the print run of The Raven King to less than half of the print run for Blue Lily, Lily Blue. No hard feelings, understand, they told me, it’s just that the sales for Blue Lily didn’t justify printing any more copies. The series was in decline, they were so proud of me, it had 19 starred reviews from pro journals and was the most starred YA series ever written, but that just didn’t equal sales. They still loved me.

This, my friends, is a real world consequence.

This is also where people usually step in and say, but that’s not piracy’s fault. You just said series naturally declined, and you just were a victim of bad marketing or bad covers or readers just actually don’t like you that much.

Hold that thought. 

I was intent on proving that piracy had affected the Raven Cycle, and so I began to work with one of my brothers on a plan. It was impossible to take down every illegal pdf; I’d already seen that. So we were going to do the opposite. We created a pdf of the Raven King. It was the same length as the real book, but it was just the first four chapters over and over again. At the end, my brother wrote a small note about the ways piracy hurt your favorite books. I knew we wouldn’t be able to hold the fort for long — real versions would slowly get passed around by hand through forum messaging — but I told my brother: I want to hold the fort for one week. Enough to prove that a point. Enough to show everyone that this is no longer 2004. This is the smart phone generation, and a pirated book sometimes is a lost sale.

Then, on midnight of my book release, my brother put it up everywhere on every pirate site. He uploaded dozens and dozens and dozens of these pdfs of The Raven King. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting one of his pdfs. We sailed those epub seas with our own flag shredding the sky.

The effects were instant. The forums and sites exploded with bewildered activity. Fans asked if anyone had managed to find a link to a legit pdf. Dozens of posts appeared saying that since they hadn’t been able to find a pdf, they’d been forced to hit up Amazon and buy the book.

And we sold out of the first printing in two days.

Two days.

I was on tour for it, and the bookstores I went to didn’t have enough copies to sell to people coming, because online orders had emptied the warehouse. My publisher scrambled to print more, and then print more again. Print sales and e-sales became once more evenly matched.

Then the pdfs hit the forums and e-sales sagged and it was business as usual, but it didn’t matter: I’d proven the point. Piracy has consequences.

That’s the end of the story, but there’s an epilogue. I’m now writing three more books set in that world, books that I’m absolutely delighted to be able to write. They’re an absolute blast. My publisher bought this trilogy because the numbers on the previous series supported them buying more books in that world. But the numbers almost didn’t. Because even as I knew I had more readers than ever, on paper, the Raven Cycle was petering out. 

The Ronan trilogy nearly didn’t exist because of piracy. And already I can see in the tags how Tumblr users are talking about how they intend to pirate book one of the new trilogy for any number of reasons, because I am terrible or because they would ‘rather die than pay for a book’. As an author, I can’t stop that. But pirating book one means that publishing cancels book two. This ain’t 2004 anymore. A pirated copy isn’t ‘good advertising’ or ‘great word of mouth’ or ‘not really a lost sale.’

That’s my long piracy story. 

[ellanotenchanted93]

TSwizzle Fandom

My favorite thing about the @taylorswift fandom is just how much we love her. We defend her like our lives depend on it, obsess about the meanings of songs endlessly, and fangirl hardcore each time a new single drops. That's true love in my eyes.

[alexiethymia]

some older!Bluesey/Glue headcanons (The Raven Cycle)

(keeping in mind I haven’t finished The Raven King, but I think there’s a happy ending?)

- Gansey decides early on that he wants to marry Blue. He plans really elaborate proposals, but keeps getting cockblocked…by Blue. Pretty soon he just decides to just ask her out of the blue (haha pun totally intended), but despite Blue swearing that she has no drop of psychic power she can still somehow tell when he’s about to pop the question and constantly interrupts him with a kiss, or for more drastic measures..sexytimes. 

- Turns out Blue is totally doing it on purpose. It’s not that she doesn’t want to marry Gansey, it’s just still hard for her to swallow becoming part of the distinguished Gansey family. 

- Eventually she says yes though. I mean Gansey loves her family, and she loves Gansey and that means loving what makes Gansey, Gansey. She keeps her last name though (she was a bit afraid that the Ganseys might have been offended, but no worries there; Helen even approves!). Gansey totally agrees that ‘Blue Gansey’ doesn’t sound nearly as pleasing as ‘Blue Sargent’.

- On the other hand, they could also choose not to get married. I mean they’re true loves! They practically have the approval of the universe and as Gansey explains after a party guest comments on how he and his wife have such a cute daughter: “Oh, no Madam, she isn’t my wife.” *sees guest’s confused apologetic look* “My..(girlfriend and fiance don’t work, true love is perfect but he only calls Blue that in his head) person believes that marriage is an institution meant to subjugate women and thus refuses to participate in it. Oh, and I forgot to thank you. Yes, our daughter is simply adorable isn’t she?”

 - He still sometimes slips though and calls Blue his true love with a completely serious face with authority figures like the Aglionby Headmaster after they got called to his office due to reports of their daughter leading a strike. “With all due respect headmaster, my true love and I believe that extracurricular activities are integral to a well-rounded education for our daughter.”

- The top dog at Aglionby Academy (after it becomes co-ed in later years) is a student named P.J. Gansey. Freshmen are always surprised to discover that said student is a tiny girl with a piercing attitude and a sharp smile. 

- P.J. = Persephone Jane Blue calls her Percy sometimes or just Perce or Perse. Same with Gansey but sometime he calls her Jane and both her and Blue will just turn around at the same time. “Jane?” “Yes, father?” “What is it Gansey?” “Er..no, not you daughter, I meant my true love.” “…Eww Dad, why do you have to be so cheesy?” (P.J. doesn’t believe the story of how they met and fell in love. “Dead kings? Talking trees? Father you can’t expect me to still believe in fantasies. I am already ten, hmph.”

[ellanotenchanted93]

New Idea

Harry Potter characters as Magic School Bus kids

Dorothy Ann= Hermione

Ralphie= Ron

Arnold= Neville

#idontthinkanyofthekidsarestupidenoughtobeharry #isthereaboyontimslevel

[ellanotenchanted93]

Akane: Okay, I'm gonna picture Ranma without his personality...

Akane: Woah. Ranma might be hot.

[ellanotenchanted93]

Akane: Okay, I'm gonna picture Ranma without his personality...

Akane: Woah. Ranma might be hot.

[ellanotenchanted93]

My Theory

Alright TSwizzle, here’s my theory (I already know it’s wrong)

If fans posited that Wildest Dreams was a continuation of Tim McGraw, and now say that ...Are You Ready for It? Is a continuation of that. Does that mean we’re watching the relationship start and stop and get darker?

[sprousetwinsblog]

[ellanotenchanted93]

T.I.L. *Today I Learned*

What I learned from my textbook today:

Astronauts in space can’t cry because the tears won’t fall from their eyes in the low-gravity environment

[ellanotenchanted93]

Sooo Hold Up

Things We Know From The Raven Cycle:

1) Time isn’t linear in Cabeswater (maybe circular?), plenty of evidence. “Have we been here minutes or hours?…Time is weird here.” –Piper

2) Trees in Cabeswater bleed black sap (with terrifying nightmare things in the hollow trunks)

3) Demons unmake the forest (”Let it be thus, or whatever”–Also Piper)

4)When the trees are being unmade, they ooze black sap

So my questions is: If the trees are bleeding black sap when they’re being unmade, and time isn’t linear in Cabeswater, Did Piper unmaking Cabeswater happen before they found the tree and now we’re seeing what caused it? You have a lot of explaining to do, Stiefvater. @maggie-stiefvater

[ellanotenchanted93]

Henry Cheng. What the Fuck.

So I get everyone’s obsession with the kiss in the raven king, I do. It was cute and awkward and adorable. But did everyone just skip over the scene with Henry Cheng and Gansey? Like…WHAT THE FUCK. That was WAY more than I was expecting to read while trying to take a relaxing bubble bath.

@maggie-stiefvater