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Limelight Permissions
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Maomao (Catherine)
TEAM
The Forge
The Forge
AGE
21
21
HEIGHT
155 cm
155 cm
PRONOUNS
She/her
She/her
Appearance + Pings
Normal girl, no pings! Looks very similar to these icons, just a bit older. She also goes by the names Catherine Marsh, C. T. Marsh, and her writing pseud WORLDMAKER. Her birth name is Baozhai, last name Tian.
Limelight Info
Powers
Power 1
Ehe
Power 1
Ehehe!
Power 1
Ehehehe?!
Ehe
Power 1
Ehehe!
Power 1
Ehehehe?!
Limelight AU
All this girl wants to do is write. Her special interest is fantasy but she understands market trends and has a lot of feelings about happy endings in media, so she writes romantasy. She is self-publishing a series named The Last Shapeshifting Dragon's Legacy under the name WORLDMAKER, currently on the seventh of ??? (available on ebook only!). It has a strong female lead and a harem of several love interests of all genders that she steps on, all the time. Mostly figuratively. Haters call her pen name pretentious and her books kinkantasy but WORLDMAKER legitimately just wants to focus on the worldbuiding aspect and is bad at writing normal human interactions so things end up being what they are lol
She was doxed and that's how she ended up here. Catherine's AU family owns this huuuuuge marketing empire, companies you know and/or have worked in probably hired them for stuff. It was founded by her grandmother and helped to grow by her extended family because she married like 474583 times and had like one child with each man, so she ended up with like 8 sons and daughters, each of which went on to have their own children and work for the family business. The grandmother has been dangling the possibility that anyone can be named her heir to make everyone give the extra. Whether this is real or not, no one knows, her thing is marketing and by saying this she's marketing a thing, but, you know. People have hopes.
Catherine's mother is one of her daughters. She only had one daughter (Catherine) with the man she loved because what she wanted was to make him marry her, and she is her mother's daughter, so instead of confessing she got herself pregnant. Once she had Catherine, she had one mission: to make Catherine useful by having her become the perfect heiress, just in case. She hates that her husband ended up becoming one of Those Dads, he just loves his daughter so much and she can do no wrong and he enables her whenever his wife is not around. The problem is that when she IS around, this never happens.
Anyway, as a whole, the Tian family will not play by anyone's rules and they're proud of not doing so. They refuse to adhere to anything other than their personal interests and they kind of made it into a point of pride. WE HAVE NO BLESSINGS HERE. WE'RE ALL HARD WORKERS. ONLY PASSION AND SKILL. Maybe one of the grandmother's children joined a Family at some point and now no one talks about them. But whether things turned out this way because the grandmother loves being "blessing-less and self-made" or because she got mad that Families didn't want her is a mystery. Whichever the case, Family talk became anathema to everything the Tian family stands for, and so Catherine grew up looking down on blessings as a cheat.
SO. Catherine was raised by her mother to fight to become the family heiress. She was made to do small marketing-related things since she was a child, and then when she was twelve her mother started charging her for rent and food (a symbolic amount) to force her to learn the family business. So she did!! She also had to wear expensive clothes and make-up that she never liked or appreciated, her diet was always extremely balanced fancy food but it was always someone else's choice, etc. AND SHE DID. Basically, Catherine's life sucked because she was micromanaged to the extreme and also closely monitored in all aspects of her life, so she became good at the thing she was expected to become good at so she could finish quickly and go back to her writing cave where she could be herself and explore her interests instead of the shitty reality of The Real World. (No, she never wondered how that wasn't discovered, she assumed she was just being masterfully stealthy. But no, it was her Blessing that made it so what she wrote couldn't be seen by her family she wrote it)
This all changed when she turned 18. She was put into college while also having an internship at one of her family's branch companies, and this claimed 100% of her time. Her internet filters and parental control stuff were still on even though she was an adult. She was given 0 money for herself. That's when she confirmed to herself that anything she did would never be enough for her mother, and that her father would never speak up for her either. And of course the rest of her extended family hated her because she was Too Competent. So Catherine made plans. Spoiler spoiler. And as soon as everything was in place at 19 y/o, she disappeared and never came back.
She honestly believes her family hasn't found her and she is a master of subterfuge!
The real reason why her family let her live her life until WORLDMAKER was doxed:
1) Her father assumed she's going to just come back one of these days having amassed a fortune on her own terms. He was just so proud of her!! And he missed her!! But he wanted her to prove it to everyone that she can succeed on her own. And if she did her own thing, he figured that would okay too. He gave the order to not look for her. "Let my daughter live her dream, she knows we're here for her." (NO SHE DOESN'T but that's a different problem)
2) Her mother knew what she was up to, and she was so ashamed that her daughter was out there writing "porn for pennies" that she didn't want her to be found. In fact, she paid to have her current information wiped from records so that no one could find her easily. Disappointment of a daughter.
3) Her grandmother had a pretty clear idea of what was going on, but even though she was supposed to be impartial, Baozhai was secretly her favorite. So she also let her be, and pretended she didn't know anything. (If and when she came back, Baozhai would be will be MADE TO GROVEL though)
Anyway, Catherine is very normal. Thank you for reading
She was doxed and that's how she ended up here. Catherine's AU family owns this huuuuuge marketing empire, companies you know and/or have worked in probably hired them for stuff. It was founded by her grandmother and helped to grow by her extended family because she married like 474583 times and had like one child with each man, so she ended up with like 8 sons and daughters, each of which went on to have their own children and work for the family business. The grandmother has been dangling the possibility that anyone can be named her heir to make everyone give the extra. Whether this is real or not, no one knows, her thing is marketing and by saying this she's marketing a thing, but, you know. People have hopes.
Catherine's mother is one of her daughters. She only had one daughter (Catherine) with the man she loved because what she wanted was to make him marry her, and she is her mother's daughter, so instead of confessing she got herself pregnant. Once she had Catherine, she had one mission: to make Catherine useful by having her become the perfect heiress, just in case. She hates that her husband ended up becoming one of Those Dads, he just loves his daughter so much and she can do no wrong and he enables her whenever his wife is not around. The problem is that when she IS around, this never happens.
Anyway, as a whole, the Tian family will not play by anyone's rules and they're proud of not doing so. They refuse to adhere to anything other than their personal interests and they kind of made it into a point of pride. WE HAVE NO BLESSINGS HERE. WE'RE ALL HARD WORKERS. ONLY PASSION AND SKILL. Maybe one of the grandmother's children joined a Family at some point and now no one talks about them. But whether things turned out this way because the grandmother loves being "blessing-less and self-made" or because she got mad that Families didn't want her is a mystery. Whichever the case, Family talk became anathema to everything the Tian family stands for, and so Catherine grew up looking down on blessings as a cheat.
SO. Catherine was raised by her mother to fight to become the family heiress. She was made to do small marketing-related things since she was a child, and then when she was twelve her mother started charging her for rent and food (a symbolic amount) to force her to learn the family business. So she did!! She also had to wear expensive clothes and make-up that she never liked or appreciated, her diet was always extremely balanced fancy food but it was always someone else's choice, etc. AND SHE DID. Basically, Catherine's life sucked because she was micromanaged to the extreme and also closely monitored in all aspects of her life, so she became good at the thing she was expected to become good at so she could finish quickly and go back to her writing cave where she could be herself and explore her interests instead of the shitty reality of The Real World. (No, she never wondered how that wasn't discovered, she assumed she was just being masterfully stealthy. But no, it was her Blessing that made it so what she wrote couldn't be seen by her family she wrote it)
This all changed when she turned 18. She was put into college while also having an internship at one of her family's branch companies, and this claimed 100% of her time. Her internet filters and parental control stuff were still on even though she was an adult. She was given 0 money for herself. That's when she confirmed to herself that anything she did would never be enough for her mother, and that her father would never speak up for her either. And of course the rest of her extended family hated her because she was Too Competent. So Catherine made plans. Spoiler spoiler. And as soon as everything was in place at 19 y/o, she disappeared and never came back.
She honestly believes her family hasn't found her and she is a master of subterfuge!
The real reason why her family let her live her life until WORLDMAKER was doxed:
1) Her father assumed she's going to just come back one of these days having amassed a fortune on her own terms. He was just so proud of her!! And he missed her!! But he wanted her to prove it to everyone that she can succeed on her own. And if she did her own thing, he figured that would okay too. He gave the order to not look for her. "Let my daughter live her dream, she knows we're here for her." (NO SHE DOESN'T but that's a different problem)
2) Her mother knew what she was up to, and she was so ashamed that her daughter was out there writing "porn for pennies" that she didn't want her to be found. In fact, she paid to have her current information wiped from records so that no one could find her easily. Disappointment of a daughter.
3) Her grandmother had a pretty clear idea of what was going on, but even though she was supposed to be impartial, Baozhai was secretly her favorite. So she also let her be, and pretended she didn't know anything. (If and when she came back, Baozhai would be will be MADE TO GROVEL though)
Anyway, Catherine is very normal. Thank you for reading
Permissions
SHIPPING
Hardest mode
Hardest mode
SMUT
No
No
VIOLENCE
Discuss but yes
Discuss but yes
KILLING
Discuss but yes
Discuss but yes
Player Comfort Notes
I'll come back to this.
code by puddings
Character Canon
The Apothecary Diaries
The Apothecary Diaries
Player
A n k a r i
A n k a r i
Contact
a n k a r i | a b u s h u
a n k a r i | a b u s h u
DM Policy
HMU for specific things only please, my social energy is null
HMU for specific things only please, my social energy is null
About WORLDMAKER
Internet search: WORLDMAKER
If you add writer to your search, you get WORLDMAKER's site with:
- Full list of published books (up to book 6)
- Links to purchase them
- Join WORLDMAKER's mailing list!
- Content warnings/trigger lists
- A link to her free weekly serialization on WattNovel
A web search will also show her Goodreads, IG and TikTok, a random FB post from 3 years ago about Book 2 of The Last Shapeshifting Dragon's Legacy, and some blog posts.
On her social media, she replies to all comments at least once. She's super enthusiastic and kind to positive people and very internet-nasty to haters.
Re: Internet search: WORLDMAKER
Re: Internet search: WORLDMAKER
Her newsletter style is casual and a bit rambly but she promises not to spam your inbox! There's also a link to a secret page on her website with extras where you can find links to prolificwriters to download the extra that started the whole Hunters' Hunters thing (you need to confirm that you're 18+ and create an account to do that but then you can download it on mobi ebup pdf) and also an extra about Aquila and the Prince and Coral trapped inside a room for one night by the mage princess because she was tired of dealing with them which is very obviously also 18+ and also described as "AU?". AND there's also a link to WorldAnchor for those who want to learn more about the inner workings of the Last Shapeshifting Dragon's Legacy book. It's basically her world's bible but there are no spoilers there, only extra detail about everything you've never wanted to hear about including festivities and customs for each of the countries that have ever been mentioned in the books, very bad drafts of traditional clothing, timelines that go all the way back to the times when dragons roamed the world freely, family trees for all the main characters, specific information about insects, plants, medicine, religions, different ways in which Aquila has ruined food in her life, you get the idea]
Internet search: The Last Shapeshifting Dragon's Legacy
There are very few entries about it on T*mblr, and only random mentions on it on Tw*tter and such. There's more on TikT*k, mostly memes like the "A single phrase can't make me read a book" with horny quotes from the books.
There's also a fandom wiki! This was made last year. It's been updated recently with info from the seventh book. But it's character-centric and doesn't have in depth entries about the plot or the world itself.
The Last Shapeshifting Dragon's Legacy
Book 1
This book follows the heroine, Aquila: the daughter of a family of food caterers who work for rich people in the Kingdom of the Stars. Her twin brother Caelum is an amazing chef but she sucks at it, and she's supposed to cook while he's supposed to go out into the world and study swordfighting in the Kingdom of the Seas because that's what the crown had promised the family: an opportunity for their heir to make something of himself and advance their family in society by giving him the chance to join the Dragons, an elite fighting force. So the family doesn't know what to do with these two disasters. In this book, it's time for him to leave the kingdom, so Aquila is like, you know what, fuck this let's SWAP. Most of this book is swapping shenaningans and shippy moments between Aquila and her brother's best friend Leo, who used to be her best friend too as a child but she was forced to stop playing with them because she kept bossing them around and riding Leo like a horse because he was bigger and, just, the adults were like, Leo is from a rich family mfg why is my girl a monster. Anyway the book ends when she leaves with Leo and other young students, posing as her brother.
Book 2
This whole book is about the trip to the Kingdom of the Seas! There are fights on the way because this world is very unsafe and she is completely useless so Leo is like uhh Aquila I didn't want to say anything because like, I'm glad you're here with me and I'm glad Caelum is doing what he wants but you ARE aware that you don't know the first thing about swordfighting right? And she's like I'll worry about that later now snap snap get hunting we need to eat. They end up splitting up from the rest of the group and they kiss but before they can take that further we meet A NEW MEMBER OF THE PARTY this is a girl named Coral and she's from the Kingdom of the Seas, she's a mage! She's also flirty with Aquila from the start and Leo is extremely confused. She helps them for a while, the three of them are cute together and Coral teaches Aquila some things about magic (that she can't use) and the book ends on a cliffhanger when Leo is taken prisoner.
Book 3
Coral tries to convince Aquila to leave him, because he was caught by a Dragon Hunter caravan, a group that is known for recruiting or killing Dragons and Dragon hopefuls, but Aquila slaps her for being a bad friend and a quitter, dresses up as a merchant and sneaks inside the caravan while Coral leaves to find her original party and help them both. This is where we learn that parties in this world are traditionally made of one tank, one rogue, one healer, one attack mage and one agility type. Half of the book is spent with the Dragon Hunters and their caravan, which is very luxurious honestly. Aquila meets Orion, who is also from the Kingdom of the Stars but joined the Dragon Hunters years ago when his family was killed by the Dragons. Aquila basically stomps all over Orion's sensitive feelings and promises him that she'll help him discover the reason why that happened if he helps her and Leo reach the Kingdom of the Seas. We get some extra info about how bad the Dragon Hunters are, Orion agrees, and Orion and Leo become rivals but they also have chemistry between themselves. Coral's help never arrives, they escape the caravan when Aquila offers to cook for the whole caravan and people actually take her up on it because she knows so much about food. No one could have imagined her character quirk of making the food she touches poisonous.
Book 4
Orion, Leo and Aquila arrive at the city Kingdom of the Seas!! Aquila has Orion pose as Leo's attendant, which both Orion and Leo hate, but no one doubts that because Leo's family has money. But Aquila and Leo have to prove they are who they say they are to gain access to their scholarships. Leo proves it without an issue, but Aquila is supposed to be Caelum. So she has to cheat, because she still has learned nothing about swordfighting or magic or. Anything. And what she does is she pretends she's a maid and sneaks into the Prince's chambers and learns that the Prince is a bard, which is one of the worst things a Prince can be, especially one from the Kingdom of the Seas, where the Dragons are trained. Obviously, she blackmails him, and obviously, they have intense neg CR but he is super taken by her. In this book, the Prince, who vouched for "Caelum," makes it known that "Caelum" will become his personal bodyguard to make up for arriving late instead of actually studying. Orion and Leo are like, what the hell, but the Prince is actually smart and he has Orion take Aquila's place and be trained. Orion has a big meltdown over this and Leo has to calm him down and their relationship improves a lot and becomes a little ????????? hello????????? there's a scene where Aquila and the Prince walk in on them and Orion is on his knees in front of Leo in their room and Leo is almost naked and Aquila covers the Prince's eyes and leads him out of the room and both she and the Prince are both like LOL obviously they were not doing that but it'll be so funny to mess with them. Spoilers. They were doing that. It's in a short story you can get if you join WORLDMAKER's mailing list. Anyway this book ends when the Kingdom of the Seas is attacked and it's revealed that they're being attacked by an actual dragon.
Book 5
FTR we never had more than like 2 or 3 training scenes in the last book and now we will have ZERO!!! Because we get to learn that real life dragons are not big and imposing, they are human-shaped magical diplomats who should never reach the people in charge because they can sway anyone. And the reason why the Dragons are a military force is that actual dragons are more dangerous one-on-one because that's when they can focus their efforts on a single person, so obviously the human way is to send a whole ass army after a single dragon. When Aquila hears this she's like this is the stupidest thing I've heard, my Prince. And he's like AWKWARD HAND GESTURES anyway meet my head mage! And his head mage is his kid sister who is super cute. Aquila finally asks where the King is and the Prince is like oh my father is busy, he's always busy, I run this country, and Aquila like I DON'T BELIEVE THIS so she sneaks out while the Prince is in a meeting to find the king and tell him to do his job and let the Prince rest because if he doesn't rest then SHE doesn't rest either apparently! And so she puts on her merchant clothes and is ready to sweep the floor with this slacker they call a King having absolutely no idea where he is or how to get to him, but she's mistaken for the Head Diplomat and taken to meet the King! The King turns out to be a smart bohemian man who has fully embraced his nature as a bard. When Aquila asks him, he's like oh yes, bards can't be kings. But my son is very silly, he should simply let his position go but he's too proud because he doesn't like his cousins, so he's pretending he's not a bard like me. I stay here to let him live his life, because if I abdicate my brother will come back and take over. Aquila mind-blown because she was expecting something like the King being bad or sick or something but he's actually legit?? But then there's a commotion and THE DRAGON COMES IN, and we have a very interesting scene where the King fights with background music and the dragon, who is very nonbinary and has a lot of confidence and swag, tries to compel the King to walk out with them, but Aquila stops them and engages in verbal dueling with them by driving the conversation to topics she knows. And the dragon can't win against them together. And when a dragon is beaten in a duel it becomes a cute dragon mascot while they regain their energy.
We never discover the cute dragon mascot's name because Aquila decides to name them Scales. The King can't stop laughing at the dragon's indignation. The Prince finds out that this was happening and joins them there and Scales antagonizes him immediately and actually gets him to leave the room, after which Aquila gags them even though the dragon was about to say something very important. This becomes a recurring joke and this is where most of the haters started canceling WORLDMAKER because oh my GOD THAT'S A MASCOT??????
This book ends with the news that Orion and Leo have disappeared, the king's brother and his daughter are back, and the Prince's little sister traps Aquila and Scales in a dungeon.
Book 6
This book opens with Coral letting Aquila and Scales out of the dungeon. Aquila screams at her and she flirts back instead of replying, and soon they're both back to flirting and Scales calls them out but they don't pay attention. Coral tells Aquila (who is walling her as she speaks) that her party was hard to put together again but now they're back to serve the King and sorry that she couldn't help but surely Aquila used her magic teachings? And Aquila like lol I can't do magic. And Coral and Scales groaning loudly, and Coral saying well obviously you've been using illusion magic from the moment I met you, and Aquila like what? Coral like did you think your make-up skills were that good? You don't even know how to put on eyeliner. And Aquila like a.
Coral sneaks Aquila and Scales back into the palace because the princess apparently orchestrated all of this. Scales admits that they were helped all the way there by the princess, and Coral also heard that the princess sent a letter to her uncle so he would come back. They find the Prince
The king's brother is surprisingly decent, which Aquila also didn't expect, but his daughter is awful and treats everyone like trash, especially the little mage princess. So Aquila decides to put her in her place and poses as one of her maids to hear all the gossip and find a way to do that. That's where she discovers that she's not actually the daughter, that's just what the people say, she's actually a priestess from the Kingdom of the Forest and the real daughter has been kidnapped for over a year now. The king's brother doesn't actually want to become king either, but he needs to so that his daughter will live. And the mage princess knows all of this, and she knows that her brother is the only one who wants to fight instead of give in, so she wanted to get Aquila out of the way so he could be swayed. The idea was that the dragon would get him out of the way peacefully, her brother overworked her anyway so let him go away please and thank you, he needs to chill out and relax and play some music. Aquila to Scales like, were you going to eat the Prince if you took him? And Scales like, we have more use for a magical bard than for human meat these days. And Aquila and Coral nodding to themselves like, oh, so it would have been worse than death.
The rest of the book is all about how Coral and her party help save the Prince and the King from the mage princess and the priestess, which once again features Aquila's horrifying cooking skills (Coral like see Prince, you shouldn't marry her, she'll just poison you, and the Prince like, she'd never cook again if she married me, and everyone like please marry her to the Prince and Aquila like HEY). And then when everything is happy and good, Scales saps the lifeforce from the priestess and regains his normal form, uses the gag Aquila had put on him on her, and talks all five people in Coral's party, the mage princess, the King, the King's brother and the Prince into letting them go, giving them Aquila, and also the Orb of the Seas. This book ends with Aquila looking at her hands and noticing that she's growing scales.
Book 7
I will come back to this, but the first third of the book is a long prologue in the POV of other characters (Aquila's brother Caelum, Orion, the Prince, Coral, and the kidnapped cousin)
Ranking information
So WORLDMAKER keeps her eye on the overall rankings. Which is even worse because it means she's competing with everything ever, and that is ridiculous. The ranking I'm referring to here is specifically for Am*zon ebook sales.
Book 4 fought the long fight and eventually made it to the top 80 of the fantasy ranking for a little while thanks to a meme!
Book 5 was boosted by that meme and made it to the top 100 of the fantasy ranking the week of its release.
Book 6 made it to the top 150 of the fantasy ranking organically thanks to the previous two! WORLDMAKER did 0 promo for that one due to personal reasons (read: she was too overworked and got sick).
Book 7.................. made it to the top 10 of the overall rankings for one day, and the top of the fantasy ranking for like 3 days.
But how dirty ARE these books
Orion has 0 interest in her and makes it clear from the start. She also steps on the priestess but that's more humor than anything, the priestess is straight.
The sex descriptions aren't too horny though, but people who think that's not on purpose are surprised when they read the mailing list extras or the Supporteon content. THAT'S where WORLDMAKER shows her true form as someone who has ghostwritten erotica. This is why the real fans laugh when people complain that the main books are too smutty.
The Hunter's Hunters (spin-off, online serialization)
It's basically a mystery of sorts, rivals to lovers with emotional slowburn because they never kiss, but sex is heavily implied (and it exists textually! but is paywalled on WORLDMAKER'S Supporteon). And it's much more focused than the main series because she's writing arcs like short stories instead of an overarching thing where you don't know where the next book will lead or what will happen. In one arc they take part in a tournament, in another arc they become lifeguards in a beach city because they heard stories about a mythical being showing up in the water, in another arc they have to solve a mystery in a closed community. That sort of thing.
One chapter goes up every week!
About editors
The weekly serialization has no editor. It doesn't show THAT much because the structure doesn't require someone to tell this girl to not do a thing.
Fan favorites
As for The Last Shapeshifting Dragon's Legacy, the fan favorite is the Prince. There's fanart of him everywhere and he's often wearing casual clothes (he has never worn casual clothing in the books) and playing the lute (he has never played the lute. it was just mentioned to exist in a sea of other instruments that belong to his dad). And also of him bantering with Aquila. WORLDMAKER has been known to sneakily like some of these on social media sometimes. Another fan favorite is the mage princess, who people like to headcanon doms the hell out of Aquila. WORLDMAKER was trying to write a cute and innocent girl so she pretends this fan take doesn't exist.
About WORLDMAKER's writing in general
also it's very important to mention that there are whole-ass tangents about things like
flowers
specific foods
regional customs
clothing choices
makeup, jewelry, hairstyles, shoes, fabrics, tailoring
accents
and other similar things. sometimes she hyperfixates on a thing and will infodump about it for pages or make it recurrent
How The Last Shapeshifting Dragon's Legacy shot to the top of the rankings
This happened 2-3 days before the Night of Reminiscence (day 260):
- WORLDMAKER posted a teaser for the 7th book in the series with a Solar Circle song in the bg
- Fans of the books began to theorize that one of the main love interests who is a fan favorite (the Prince) would die, so fans of Totality showed up there to explain to every single person several times how actually, no, this character might disappear but not die. This spiked this post in the algorithm due to all the interactions
- A Solar Circle (not Totality) fan group got super angry because these were filthy porn books that sullied the band's reputation and how dare WORLDMAKER ride the Totality hype and use the band's music for this!!
- WORLDMAKER always replies to everyone at least once. Catherine may have stayed with the haters for a while. WORLDMAKER fans might also have decided to whiteknight her and mock them relentlessly
- All of this made the teaser go relatively viral
- The SC fan group retaliated by massively reporting WORLDMAKER's account, except someone shared the URL wrong so they reported luxury sports shoes brand WorldMakers instead
The night before the book launch (the Night of Reminiscence), Catherine queued up a video for upload. It was a promo teaser with another Solar Circle song. She hadn't been sure whether to upload it or not, but she made the decision to upload it at the festival because she was a little drunk and also annoyed due to a certain conversation she had with producer Dokkaebi about book rankings and marketing. And then she was off to a love hotel with Yue lol and simply turned off her phone.
The day after the Night of Reminiscence she wakes up to EVERYTHING ON FIRE:
1) Fans of the series were buying the books and leaving reviews (this was normal)
2) The fan group that hated her decided to mass buy the books to review tank it. But some of them left comments like Think twice before messing with us and For Totality, which made it obvious what that was about
3) Many other reviews had personal insults and were removed, but those book sales still counted towards book rankings
4) Other fans of the band and fans of Totality heard of this whole thing and were like WTF you're making us look like we're all crazy, so they also began to buy the book to counter the book tanking and give it solid 5 stars (without reading it)
5) Music fandom on several social media began to talk about this and bring attention to it
6) Other music fans heard of this and it became this whole topic of conversation about how a single group can make everyone look bad, which also made some other people buy the book and leave reviews like "Friday fans represent <3" and "Treasure♡Heart fandom is here for a strong female lead!"
7) The book shot to the top of the overall rankings...
And then this happened between 261 and 266:
1) Book influencers picked up what was going on and everyone started talking about it. "I don't like the books, but" or "The truth is, I haven't read them, but" or "They're fun. You know I only cover tradpub normally, but"
2) This brought in a SECOND influx of readers, and these were people who read books and who were specifically interested in romantasy
3) Over the next three days, WORLDMAKER's back catalog also shot up in the rankings due to these book readers gaining an interest and wanting to start from book 1
4) Seeing the rankings firmly over 4.2 in spite of doing everything they could, that one fan group managed to dox WORLDMAKER and got a big book influencer who was very vocal about hating the books to cover how WORLDMAKER was actually a marketing ploy by the Tian family, a marketing empire, and it was obviously written by ghostwriters to cater to the basest romantasy market. They showed how they had fabricated the name Catherine T. Marsh as well, a supposed freelance writer who worked for EmpEnt, which made it obvious that EmpEnt was pushing this persona's books and clearly engaging in unfair business practices. Obviously WORLDMAKER should be canceled
5) EmpEnt came out with a public statement saying that they did not operate in the self publishing business at all, that all of their dealings with the Tian marketing umbrella were as a client, not as a service provider. They also said that their relationship with Catherine T. Marsh had been amicably terminated over a year ago (a blatant lie, but technically impossible to disprove because she hadn't signed any contracts with them since then)
6) Someone else made a 30-page-long document informed by friendquaintances of WORLDMAKER as well as former employees of the Tian family and EmpEnt where they explained how she was actually a real person, Tian Baozhai, and although she had been referred to as a "marketing princess" in previous press coverage (sourced), she had actually been forced to do child labor (sourced). The short version of that doc was "You'd CANCEL a RUNAWAY who was ABUSED BY HER FAMILY???????"
The following part is not openly available but information diggers may be able to find out and/or maybe she can tell you about it:
7) Thanks to all of this, the whole Tian family discovered exactly what Catherine was up to. Her grandmother was pleased by the rankings but the rest of the family just discredited her due to the content of the books. So Catherine's mother was like I AM BRINGING MY DAUGHTER BACK RIGHT NOW. VACATION TIME IS OVER. THIS HAS TO STOP. I WILL NOT LET ALLOW HER TO MAKE A FOOL OF ME AND MY HUSBAND. (Her husband was soooo proud of those rankings too.) And so she basically sent family security people to kidnap her from her apartment.
8) Catherine expected something like that when she saw the doc. She packed her things and tried to get out of the city, but she recognized one of the family bodyguards there so she went to the only place she could think of.
Inventory
Her luggage (carried from Port Manteau)
- a wig (brown)
- platform shoes
- sunglasses
- a bulletproof vest
- a very big hoodie
- baggy pants
In her suitcase:
- 2 wigs (blond, redhaired)
- full make-up set and make-up removers
- her favorite nail polish colors
- toiletries
- underwear, socks
- two sets of pajamas
- a set of normal people clothes
- a very expensive-looking dress
- a cute dress
- her office lady clothes
- high heels, expensive sneakers, cheap sneakers
- a cheap set of handcuffs+blindfold bought at the shitty love hotel
- the object from the dream event: an ox bezoar
- a piece of paper with her memory from the night of reminiscence event
- cold pizza
- half a bottle of whisky (from Booker)
In her waist bag:
- her wallet
- her immortal phone
- kleenex, toilet paper, hand sanitizer
In her tote bag:
- money, in cash (enough for people who see it to be rightfully concerned)
In her backpack:
- laptop
- tablet
- two sandwiches from the convenience store
- her calling cards
Gained
- a rose with a short stem that can be worn in her hair (from Snow, day 266)
Day tracking (this is a time-bending friendly zone)