Page 88 of Cosplay & Consequences

I only had an inkling what that meant, but it seemed to mollify Sebastian. His cross expression turned warmer. He turned to the crowd and shooed them away. “All right, people. The show’s over! Go on! This isn’t the Royal Mile in Edinburgh! If you want to stick around, you’ll need to pay for admission!”

“What do we do now?” I asked.

Danny smiled. “We’re getting pancakes.”

“Oh, no you are not!” Sebastian declared. “Paige has been calling me every fifteen minutes for the last hour and a half trying to get a hold of you.”

Danny let out a sigh of frustration. “Reuben was calling me. I shut off my notifications and ringer.”

“Well, turn it on, dimwit!” Sebastian scolded. “She has news.”

He pulled out his phone and held it up. There were thirty-five missed calls and more than two hundred unread text messages. Danny blinked at the numbers and frowned. “What the hell?”

I peered over his arm at his phone. The calls were from “Criminal” and “Reuben - Studio A-Hole.” The texts, however, were mostly from a new message group. Opening up the chat revealed a massive communication sprawl between Paige, Faye and two unlabeled numbers I recognized as Bray and Bennet’s. As he started to scroll through them, a single text from Paige came through. “Hey! Dumbass!”

He tapped on the message for the full text:

Criminal: Hey! Dumbass! When you FINALLY look at your phone, read your FUCKING messages. Check these links out and then get your butt back to the room! Text me if you find Jess. Marv called back and the publisher’s lawsuit is bullshit. It doesn’t cover any of JKC’s personal work that wasn’t meant for publishing.

I heaved a giant sigh of relief. I would have cried, but at this point I was out of tears.

“Should I click on the link?” Danny asked.

I nodded. He tapped his phone, and the MeTeeVee app opened, showing Bennet on his D&D set, Megaverse20.

“Hey there, my chaotic adventurers!” He said, a wild grin on his face. “Bennet Risengard here with a special PSA for you all! Hey! Do you know what’s worse than toxic masculinity? Ruthless corporations who will do anything to make a buck.”

He leaned back in his chair and smirked. “Now if you guys are Tyrant fans, and I know you are, you know there’s a whole lot of dog crap being thrown around in the fandom today. I’m telling you right now, it’s all false. Bullshit. Ca-ca. About as worthless as a press release from the government.”

He stood up, leaning down on the table and gazing into the camera. “I’ve known Jess Richards forever, and she’s as clean as they come. Is she involved with Danny Finnegan? Yes. But I’ve been a part of this entire story, and I’m telling you here and now there was nothing underhanded about what happened. Jess brought me on set to watch Danny that night the trailer was filmed so she could remain impartial. Bray, too. And, yes, she is the granddaughter of JKC Richards, but that had nothing to do with them getting together. It was fate. Kismet… No, sorry Danny, not kismet, but whatever forces there are in this universe brought them together. There was no coercion. There was no plan to get viewers or drum up publicity for Danny. It’s two people coming together. It happens every day.”

He pulled himself up to his feet and crossed his arms. “And now it’s all in jeopardy. Here’s the thing. You all know that MaxFlick is going to use this hubbub as an excuse to cancel the show. They’ve said as much. On top of that, they’re going to ruin the lives of two people I’ve grown to care about very much. So, this is what we’re going to do.”

He slammed his hands down on the table. “Stick it to the corporate bastards where it hurts! Cancel your MaxFlick subscription! Go. Do it right now. Hit those jerks where it does the most damage. Share this video. Get the word out. Even if you don’t like Jess or Danny, it doesn’t matter. If MaxFlick has one excuse, you’ll never get to see Tyrant content again in your lifetime. That’s all I’m going to say. Thanks, everybody, and share this with your favorite Tyrant compadres!”

Danny and I shared a look of disbelief. He went back to his messages. The next link led to a livestream on Glitch with Bray talking live to fans.

“-Okay, you Brandon lovers can fuck off right now if all you’re going to do is rant about Jess. She did absolutely nothing wrong. Yes, she is involved with Danny, but the whole thing with her original stream where she called him ‘meh’ was the truth. She and Danny were in cosplay when they hooked up. They didn’t know each other! She didn’t even recognize him in the interview the next day! Hell, I didn’t recognize him myself until he posted the con photos.”

She paused to take a sip of water and then scowled at a comment we couldn't see on the screen. “Okay, Call BS if you want, but it’s the truth. Even then, let’s talk about Jess. Yes, she is the granddaughter of JKC. She never played that card, because it was personal to her. Do you think she really manipulated a corporation to make this happen? No. Listen, if you don’t believe me, MaxFlick tried to sell her a portion of the media rights back if she said some nice things about Brandon’s portrayal of Tyrst’an. She effing refused! Do you think that-”

My heart melted listening to my two friends defend us. I motioned for Danny to stop the stream. He went back and tapped on the next link. We both gasped at what we saw: a video of Isla Coppola on her social media page.

“Hey gang, like you, I’m throwing my support behind Danny and Jess.” She flipped her camera angle, showing her MaxFlick account on her laptop. She clicked the unsubscribe button, and the view flipped back around and she smiled. “Danny, if you’re seeing this, it would have been lovely to have you as Tyrst’an. And if it does work out… Well, I look forward to having you as my loving servant.”

The image flipped, and now Miles Mueller, the actor who portrayed Oderan the Red Tyrant, appeared. His grey beard was unkempt, but he had a wide smile on his face. “Daniel! You would have made a worthy Tyrst’an and colleague. While our characters are opposed to each other, I am your ally in this cause. However, since I do not have a MaxFlick account–”

He held up a sheet of paper that had a crude drawing of an unsubscribe button. “–my support for you will have to remain metaphorical. I will not be a pawn to the powers that be, and neither should you!” He tapped the fake button, and the video stopped.

“Oh, my god. I love them so much,” I gushed. Danny laughed as he went to the last link which was another MeTeeVee account. His body tensed when we saw who made the video. It was Faye, sitting in her hotel room and smiling at the screen.

“Hi everyone. You don’t know me, but I’m Faye Finnegan, I’m Daniel Finnegan’s niece. Don’t believe me? I brought receipts.”

She pointed over her shoulder. Images of her and Danny from age one to fourteen flew by. “Uncle Danny has been watching over me since I was one. A lot of you have been bashing him today, but I’m here to tell you my uncle is a stand-up guy. All of the stuff you heard about coercion is BS. I’ve been watching Danny and Jess for the last few days, and I can tell you they are the real deal.”

On her other shoulder my endorsement video appeared. “Jess didn’t even promise to endorse Danny until after he did the trailer. Even then, she brought other Tyrant fans to make sure she wasn’t impartial on the whole thing. I also know for a fact that she didn’t even know it was Uncle Danny in that cosplay outfit until the interview the next day. And for those of you who think my Uncle Danny isn’t worthy of Tyrst’an, let me show you this.”

She pointed over her shoulder and a new video appeared. A time lapse video of Danny reading all the Tyrant books. “He’s read five of the books since Jess emasculated him online. He’ll have read all of them before filming if the MaxFlick boycott works out. Trust me, you’re going to love Uncle Danny as Tyrst’an, and there’s no one who loves the Tyrant books more than Jess Richards. She wouldn’t approve of anyone to be Tyrst’an if he wasn’t worthy.”