- 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.
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.