How Is A New Lie Unveiled Every Week? Compulsive Liars Are Terrifying

the archer // reharmonised in a minor key

james herondale and cordelia carstairs

requested by anon

please do not repost this art anywhere without giving me the credits

May my identity be deeply woven as the rocks in the river so no current can sweep it away

“The world can burn if my family lives” -Lord of Shadows

Do you ever see a character and instantly think, that’s the one…the one I will die for.

“Because I am from Terrasen and believed my queen dead. And now she is alive, and fighting, so I will fight with her. So that no other girls will be taken from their homes and brought to Morath and forgotten.” - Elide Lochan, Empire of Storms, @therealsjmaas

🍃

Don’t ask why Elide is barefoot in a forest. She just is 💁‍♀️. Worked on this while I prolonged the last few chapters of Kingdom of Ash. Just finished listening to it on my way home from work 😭

Daisy chains 🌼

Let me tell y'all punks something about ACOWAR (spoiler FREE I promise)

I LOVED this book for one glaring reason (that goes beyond how much more Azriel we got, but I digress).

That reason is the gray area. There is SO. MUCH. moral gray area in ACOWAR. Characters that I admittedly thought were PERFECT and could do no wrong did wrong. Characters I thought were pure evil did right.

SJM portrayed a beautiful picture of humanity in a fantastical world. Not one of us is morally right or morally wrong, point blank. We are MESSY, and so was every character in ACOWAR. MESSY. And she didn’t shy away from portraying them as such. The characters moved all over the spectrum of right and wrong and that’s just LIFE.

The gray area is a GOOD THING. Now is it going to incite a million and one arguments on this platform concerning the age old argument of “oh so and so did this when they should have done this because I say so and since they didn’t they’re A PURE EVIL ABUSER SATAN WORSHIPPER BLAH BLAH BLAH.” And that part sucks. But real people are messy and all over the spectrum. And so is ACOWAR and I LOVE IT.

It's the way there's a Taylor Swift song for literally every ship out there.

For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in. I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future. I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past. Music I wrote on my bedroom floor and videos I dreamed up and paid for from the money I earned playing in bars, then clubs, then arenas, then stadiums. 

Some fun facts about today’s news: I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world. All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years. 

Like when Kim Kardashian orchestrated an illegally recorded snippet of a phone call to be leaked and then Scooter got his two clients together to bully me online about it. (See photo) Or when his client, Kanye West, organized a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked. Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.

This is my worst case scenario. This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it. 

When I left my masters in Scott’s hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them. Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter. Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words ‘Scooter Braun’ escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to. He knew what he was doing; they both did. Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever. 

Thankfully, I am now signed to a label that believes I should own anything I create. Thankfully, I left my past in Scott’s hands and not my future. And hopefully, young artists or kids with musical dreams will read this and learn about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation. You deserve to own the art you make.

I will always be proud of my past work. But for a healthier option, Lover will be out August 23. 

Sad and grossed out,

💔

Taylor