Page 2 of Cosplay & Consequences

I returned my focus to my stream and shrugged. “I don’t know. A guy whose main gig was a soap opera for ten years? He’s thirty-one, so at least the age range is right. I mean-” I paused as I clicked on another part of his IMDB entry. “Wait, he did win an Emmy… Well, a daytime Emmy back when he first started. Let’s see what else we can find.”

A few more clicks brought me into old news items, and I laughed. There was a big picture of him smiling next to a famous pop star. Yep. He was definitely in the douchebag classification of actors. The kind who would hook up for the exposure.

“I remember this guy. He and Kismet Sizzle dated for a hot second, and then she wrote the song “Dead to Me” about him. Do you guys remember that?”

I pulled up the song and played a clip of it.

I heard you left for someone younger than me.

If that's the truth, then you're history.

Is she so great? Is that your scene?

If that's the case, you are dead to me.

I let out a laugh and shook my head. “Yeah. Not going to lie, people. If this is the MaxFlick choice? I’m ranking him as a solid ‘meh.’ I mean he’s hot, I guess, but a soap opera star to Valley of the Red Tyrant? Let’s be honest, he probably doesn’t know the first thing about the Tyrant series, let alone the books. I’m not impressed.”

My eyes rested on the viewer counter for the stream and was shocked. Somehow this whole casting leak had boosted my normal viewership to twice its normal number. Dang. Talk about good timing.

“Anyway, enough about Marlin Sinbad. Let’s get into what I wanted to talk about today. Will we finally get to see if the character of Roderick Galfast will be added to the cast? Especially since Brandon’s not around to hog up all the good moments of the show.”

I watched as the stream chat went bananas. Finally, something the Brandon Battalion, gamers and the book fans could agree on.

Danny

“They’re calling me meh?”

I dropped my forehead onto the desk and let out a long, muffled groan. The room was otherwise silent except for the incessant tapping of my sister Paige’s thumbs, and the soft swoosh sounds of her endless text messaging. Somewhere next door, my costar flushed the toilet. The sound reverberated through the walls. It felt oddly fitting. An unspoken commentary on the news I’d received less than a minute ago.

“So, everyone hates me?” I asked.

The room and the zoom call got very quiet. Even Paige’s tapping paused. Not the response you wanted when you’re asking for reassurance. I had spent weeks prepping for the rushed audition. I went on a crash diet and hired a sadistic trainer to get the physique I needed. I did a deep dive on the lore behind the series. The constant callbacks. The intrusive questions. The endless table reads. I thought when the studio called with the news I had the part, I was done with the entire process.

But thanks to some influencer, I was now ‘meh’ and everything had gone to hell.

On the zoom call was my agent, Stella, and my publicist Britta. Stella’s camera was ill-focused so that you could only see her eyes and the grey roots of her dyed hair. She got me the job on As The Minutes Tick By and had been my agent ever since. Stella was seventy-five and way past retirement. Quick-witted for her age, there was nobody better when it came to salary negotiations and finding roles for me when I had downtime from my show. However, I’m pretty sure I was her only client at this point in her life.

Stella did what she did best: reassured me. “Don’t worry, Woobie. I’m sure this will pass.”

Britta Klein, on the other hand, with her massive black bob and oversized eyeglasses, wasn’t offering any support. “Daniel, this is a catastrophe,” she snapped in her nasal voice. “I’m trying to get ahead of this, but I’m pretty sure the studio leaked this to test the waters for the convention.”

I frowned, letting out an exasperated noise somewhere between a sigh and a groan. “It was Reuben, wasn’t it? That guy is a complete snake.”

Britta scowled. “I wouldn’t be talking trash about one of the studio execs,” she warned.

“Whatever! I thought we had a signed contract!” I complained.

Paige, the one person I could always count on to give me the unvarnished truth, whether I wanted to hear it or not, was sprawled on the couch in her signature outfit: a sleeveless t-shirt and sweatpants. Her eyes were glued to her phone, in constant communication with everyone involved in production.

She wasn’t just my sister. She was also my personal assistant, a role she had taken on ever since I launched my acting career. Paige was, without question, the only woman in my life who could keep me in check, though her methods often involved humiliation, sarcasm, and punching me very hard.

She paused and glanced up from her phone with an unimpressed expression. “Sure, the contract is signed,” she said, shaking her head, “but they probably have a clause to buy you out for cheap and replace you with someone else, or they’ll do the typical MaxFlick move and kill the series.”

“Oh, yeah, the buyout clause is totally in there,” Stella agreed with a wet cough.

“Doomed. We are simply doomed,” Britta said, shaking her head.

“I mean, what’s the big deal here? Can’t we talk about my credentials? I’m an Emmy award winner!”