See The World With New Eyes
Fergie McFernie is nervous about his first day on the job as the new Fakist intern, but when he gets access to a Vicario headset and Jake Stein’s “life stream,” he’s the only one who can warn Paul DaFoe! Can consumer reporter Martin Zendler get the NanoSD card to The Fakist in time?
All that, plus three witches from Fakist stories past unite to offer Paul a wicked deal, in the fifth chapter of The Fakist: One Last Day, a standalone story set in the world of The Fakist.
Back in 2012, I was at a crossroads. I’d been running a freelance business online for several years. I used a platform called Elance, for the most part. They made me a “Premium Provider,” and I still have the iPad 2 I won in their video contest. Unfortunately, in late 2011, they got bought out and changed a lot about how the site worked, encouraging low bids and poor quality. To be honest, by the time
Brian Brushwood called me one warm August afternoon, things were looking grim. I was losing passion for the creative side of things because the business side sucked so much. I yearned to start over… Try something new.
I met Brian through his work on the
TWiT podcast network. The comedy show he hosted with
Justin Robert Young, NSFW, was a creative refuge for me after days spent creating explainer videos and marketing plans. I’d hop in the chat, the Adobe Creative Suite in-hand, and whip up Photoshops, animations, music videos, or just silly one-liners, and paste them in the chat during the broadcast. They guys supported my shenanigans, which is why when Brian needed somebody to shoot three episodes of his YouTube show
Scam School in Indonesia, he thought of me.
It was a fantastic, if stressful, trip. My first international adventure, complete with mild food poisoning! A highlight of the trip was one night at the hotel bar with Brian. He kept the beer flowing, which kept me talking about all the things I wanted to accomplish in life. He gave me a lot of key advice that night, most of which we covered in our
I Made This interview. The big takeaway? If you want to do the impractical, break up your big dreams into smaller goals, and don’t rest until you cross every goal off your list. Then add new ones.
When I got back from Indonesia, I took the advice to heart and dug in on two goals. The first one, our Greetings From Storybrooke fan podcast, quickly turned into seven years of producing successful fan podcasts under the Universe Box banner.
The other,
Dogboy Adventures, wasn’t as successful, but it found its fanbase. They still ask me all the time when I’m going to finish it. Dogboy might not have taken the world by storm, but it awoke my love of dramatic storytelling in a big way.
The Fakist is a natural extension of all that. Unlike Dogboy, it looks like I’ll actually finish it. I also got hired by AT&T so I didn’t have to freelance anymore, but that’s a story for another day.
So, if you know me online, you probably know me because Brian Brushwood told me to follow my passions that one night in Indonesia.
I’m very excited to have Justin and Brian and Tom return for the last season of The Fakist. They’ve been involved since the start. Justin even wrote a piece for Season 2 featuring his character Jake Stein, who loves almond milk. This episode, a techno-thriller about the new Fakist intern and a fancy new VR headset, is a functional standalone story set in the world of The Fakist, but it’s also a bit of a love letter to these guys, their fans, and what being a part of their community means to me personally, creatively, and professionally. It’s also pretty funny!
I hope you enjoy Vicario. NSFW. <>
