I Like This Song As Sung By Women, But I Love How Ramin Kept In The Gender Of The One Who Left. Also

I like this song as sung by women, but I love how Ramin kept in the gender of the one who left. Also this feels very intimate. 

Ramin singing I dreamed a dream

More Les Mis + Wolfpupy Tweets, for absolutely no reason and I'm sorry

The Bishop: you have to be cruel to be kind, no wait the other thing, you have to do nice things. phew, could have caused a lot of problems

Javert:my disregard for gravity was the true cause of my downfall

Tholomyes: irreparable damage has been done in that i cant be bothered to fix it

Thenardier: as the number one spiritual figure in your life my spiritual guidance and advice is to send me money

Gavroche: cant live in ribcage of dinosaur skeleton at the museum, cant live in giant inflatable gorilla at the caryard. no place for me in this world

Gillenormand : in a way aren't we all responsible for my actions

Mabeuf: hoping birds dont notice your coin purse is just a hot pocket with the filling emptied out

Marius: looks like it is going to be smooth sailing from now on for me and some eggs i have put all into one basket

Theodule: some say i am so shallow and vapid in life but i literally just love to be that like all the time right now its so true

Eponine:if you want something done you have to just forget about it and move on with your life, theres no point in expecting anything from anyone

Montparnasse: my street gang has been walking down the street snapping our fingers in unison for like 3 days, we all forgot why we were doing it

Enjolras: i am too busy living an important life to care about the solstice

Combeferre: some say killing people is the answer to the problems, me personally i think killing people is bad to do because im not a horrible monster

Jean Prouvaire: dead people taking up all the good graves, some of us alive folks want to be in the grave too you know

Feuilly: i could sit on power lines too if the world would stop keeping me down

Courfeyrac: it happens to the best of us, the best of us such as me, out of both of us im the best one, probably too great to give you usable advice

Bahorel: if the bible has taught us anything its that you have to fight for your right to party. a song? oh then i guess it taught us nothing then

Bossuet: there should be a limit to the number of curses and hexes you can have put on you, this is getting ridiculous

Joly: back in the frankenstein times you could make a monster whenever you wanted, these days you have to have a license or something i guess

Grantaire: everything is going to be ruined so just dont worry, have a relax

Louis Phillipe: when the sun goes out, the air turns to fire, and the streets run red with blood, i am probably to blame for it

National Guard: stop being so defensive i am just trying to hit you with weapons

Cosette: i am a big fan of all the famous internet cats and hope they live long and happy lives

Valjean : my whole life has lead up to this moment, being dead in a grave

aND THEN FIRE! SHOT DOWN! FROM THE SKY IN BOLTS! LIKE SHINING BLADES OF THE NIGHT!

“There’s a Greek legend—no, it’s in something Plato wrote—about how true lovers are really two halves of the same person. It says that people wander around searching for their other half, and when they find him or her, they are finally whole and perfect. The thing that gets me is that the story says that originally all people were really pairs of people, joined back to back, and that some of the pairs were man and man, some woman and woman, and others man and woman. What happened was that all of these double people went to war with the gods, and the gods, to punish them, split them all in two. That’s why some lovers are heterosexual and some are homosexual, female and female, or male and male.”

― Nancy Garden, Annie on My Mind

Before there was Tinder, there was the Victorian notebook

In 1860s Manhattan, young men and women in search of some excitement could duck into a little stationery shop uptown, open the unmarked notebook on the counter, and scribble a message to all the other strangers who were in on the secret. When the New York society writer George Ellington managed to get his hands on the book, he opened it to find page after page of people talking about themselves in the third person:

“Miss Annie B—, a young lady of high family (fourth floorer), probably highly accomplished and of a sweet temper, desires to exchange cartes de visite with a ‘nice’ gentleman.”

“S.J. A—, a handsome young man, but full of fun.”

“Blanche G—; a very pretty girl, aged twenty; full of fun. Object in corresponding, fun, and to gratify a curiosity as to how many gentlemen will be foolish enough to answer this.”

“James P—, a very homely gentleman, of thirty-five, wishes to correspond with a blue-eyed, light-haired young lady. Must be tall, not younger than twenty-five nor more than forty. A homely person preferred to a beauty. Must be stylish.”

And you better believe people are just as freaked out about women pursuing hookups now as they were then.

congratulations to Minerva McGonagall on her pending retirement today, who is going to look down at her list of first years and see “James Sirius Potter” and just call it a fucking day

Tumblr: I have a million asks about whether or not I’ll be going on tour for the Raven King next spring, and if I’ll be going to x city or y state. 

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: how extensively Scholastic tours me for the series has to do with how profitable a tour/ the series will be. I don’t pay for tours. Scholastic does. Most authors don’t get to tour; the privilege of having your butt sent on the road is hard-won. Tour costs add up fast, even for someone who travels lean as I do — avocados eaten in the front seat of my own car sitting outside of an airbnb shack I’ve rented in lieu of a hotel.  As an author, seeing my readers — whether or not they’ve bought the latest book — is nice: it feels like a way to reward literary devotion. For a publisher? A tour is not a reward. They cannot afford rewards. They can afford business decisions. 

The TRC fandom here has grown hugely in the last year: my sales numbers haven’t. The tags are full of pirate copies. I’m tagged in posts with pirate copies. Guess what publishers look at when they make decisions? Not favs on Tumblr.

I make a buck or so off each copy sold. Scholastic uses the rest to run a company. And send me on tour. There’s a difference between selling enough books for me to pay my mortgage and selling enough books to make it profitable to send me on tour. I should bold that. I am going to bold that. Because I’m not trying to tell you that the future of the series is in your hands, buy! buy! buy! I’m only telling the readers who ask to see my face in Arizona, Boston, California, Minnesota, Maine, Florida, etc etc etc, that if you want this series to be huge enough for me to tour, you’ve gotta pay for your books. Because I run on whatever money comes to me and the joy of readers’ delight. Publishers run on numbers.  

Every week I get Google alerts of new sites that are offering illegal free downloads of my books. How nice of Google to alert me where I can find them.

If you ever hope or dream that you might be a professional author or artist you should care a great deal about this problem.

No money to buy books? Free copies available at your public library.

I tried using a service to take the links down; it was impossible. It was like a future where people decided it was okay to steal forks from restaurants; too many people, too many links, too many unwatched corners. Imagine trying to stop people from stealing forks. Would you have to establish a system to watch people as they ate? No. It’s easier to assume that people generally understand that if lots of people took cutlery from Denny’s, Denny’s would have to raise their prices or otherwise adapt for the loss. The process runs on ethics, not policing. A developed society runs on ethics, not policing. On people choosing to consider consequences and empathy rather than being forced to act in a way that protects others. 

That’s what I ask of readers. To recall, simply, that just because it’s easy to put the fork in your backpack — just because you need a fork at home — doesn’t mean there are no consequences. 

I hate to be the person who adds unnecessary commentary to posts that aren’t mine, but I’m going to anyway. If you have a library card (in the US, at least, not sure about the rest of the world), even if you don’t have ready access to a physical library and/or have a very low threshold for delayed gratification like mine, there’s a service called Overdrive that most library systems subscribe to, that you can instantly borrow ebooks from just about any device with an internet connection. I know for a fact that at least 2 of my 4 libraries (yes I have four different library cards, leave me alone) have all three of the Raven Cycle books as ebooks. You check the book out, read it, and when your rental runs out, the book just goes away, and you don’t have to do anything. No overdue fees, once in a while you might have to contend with placing holds and waiting for a week or two, but it’s good for you, gives you something to live for. 

It’s perfectly legal and all of these public libraries have rights to the books they have, and you don’t have to pay a dime. So yeah, please give Overdrive a shot instead of being mean to authors. This is an important thing. 

except this commentary is good because yes, do that.

I have lots and lots of thoughts about ethics in capitalism, the right to ownership and the history of books as luxury items; but when there are services like Overdrive, it’s crucial to use them not only for your own satisfaction but also because these services are still seen as controversial, experimental and always, always on the chopping block. It doesn’t matter how beloved or popular or potentially useful something is (just look at PBS); budgets are cold, ruthless and based entirely on statistics and figures of real-time use. Otherwise, these need-based accessibility features go away.

For those who prefer to handle a physical copy, Worldcat can provide a list of library locations where your book is available; libraries may be able to provide inter/intra-state or international library loan services. (For those who want to hone up on their Welsh before tackling The Raven Cycle.)

Additionally, Open Library is supported by the non-profit Internet Archive; it’s an incredible resource that meets readers who may not have access to local libraries, but do have internet access and shares data directly with the library community. (Note, this is an open community collaboration project that works closely with libraries but is not directly affiliated with any unique library system.)