Rewind With A Superstar System

<🎧 Song Recommendation: SNAP by Rosa Linn>

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[...Ultimately, music in the modern era is a multi-sensory experience. Julian West has proven that he understands the assignment. Until Varley can produce visuals that match the aggression of his audio, he remains nothing more than a passing internet fad]

"What the fuck is even this view?" Von couldn’t help but question the sheer absurdity of the article he was reading, tossing his phone onto the bed.

It was one of their rare free days, a brief pause in the relentless cycle of gigging and traveling, but there was no peace to be found.

Newspapers, blogs, and major media outlets had broadcasted Julian’s late-night claim everywhere, treating it as if it was a meaningful, intellectual challenge to the industry.

To Von, it was clear as day that Masquerade was by far the better song. Julian was just losing the audio war and desperately trying to switch the goalposts to visuals.

Emily swiveled her ergonomic chair to face Von. It was a new addition to the apartment, alongside a sleek coffee maker, a proper dining table, and a few other useful appliances and furniture.

They had racked up some good cash already from the recent surge in bookings, and Emily had firmly insisted that Von couldn’t continue living like a squatter in an empty brick box.

"Well, the media don’t give a fuck," Emily said flatly, crossing her arms. "They can take any bullshit and spin it however they want. The West team is more than capable of buying the narrative. They spoon-fed Colin Gork that setup, and the press ate it up for breakfast."

Von flopped backward onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. "So what now? Do we have to create a music video?"

"Well, I wish it was that simple, Von," Emily sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"But we’re still broke. Maybe slightly better off than before, but in industry terms, we have nothing. Your streams haven’t begun giving payouts yet. So for now, all we have is the liquid cash from the shows and gigs. And all that money won’t really do for a music video that’ll challenge Julian’s."

"Oh..." Von muttered, thinking about her words.

He had made an extra twenty thousand dollars in these past few weeks alone. It was more money than he had ever made firsthand.

Although he had already sent out most of that money to Naomi and Zack, he still had a decent sum left. But listening to Emily, it was a harsh reality check.

To imagine that he was making what felt like a fortune, yet was still considered at the absolute bottom of the industry food chain, was sobering.

"So... we just give up?" Von asked.

"Sadly, yes. At least on the visual front," Emily admitted, leaning back in her chair. "A music video would do us great right now, but we literally cannot afford it. The basic lyric video we launched on InkTube only racked up 40,000 views. That’s what we have, and we can’t magically summon a film crew."

She paused for a while. "But honestly? I’d be more worried about our dominance instead."

"What do you mean?"

"In the past twenty-four hours, we’re still No. 91 on the Musify Daily Hot 200," Emily read from her tablet, swiping through the analytics. "But we just experienced a four percent reduction in daily streams. On the other hand, Julian charted as Rank 197 just from mentioning your name on television."

Von had his mouth wide open. He was being used as a stepping stone. That was never supposed to be the case with him! He was the one who had crushed Julian in the revenge narrative.

His mind began to flood with intrusive thoughts. Were Julian’s words actually true? Would the general public forget about Masquerade the very moment TickTock moved on to the next viral dance or audio clip? He didn’t want that to happen. He didn’t want to be a flash in the pan.

Emily seemed to sense his spiraling woes.

"Yeah, you should be worried," she added in a sympathetic but pragmatic voice. "I haven’t checked the social scape as of recent, but this is the exact type of manufactured controversy that serves as the perfect opportunity for your fans to turn against you... I’ll be hoping against that, too."

Emily’s concerns triggered a deep knot of anxiety in Von’s chest. Needing some sort of concrete grounding, he mentally summoned his interface to check his panel.

[Fan Count: 73,850]

From the previous day when he had last checked, the number hadn’t decreased. On the contrary, it remained on a steady, upward growing curve.

It seemed all was positive for now.

***

Unbeknownst to them, the internet was currently going through a massive stir.

Meters away in her own apartment, Sasha, the energetic neighbor who had bumped into Von a few weeks prior sat cross-legged on her bed, furiously typing on her keyboard.

Ever since that fateful day when she managed to snag a selfie with Von in the hallway, she had used it to their leverage.

As promised, she had carefully cropped the background to ensure she didn’t reveal his location or compromise his privacy, but that didn’t stop her from utilizing the photo as irrefutable proof of her credentials.

With it, she had founded a dedicated fan club on SubVerse, a massive, forum-based social media platform that functioned as the front page of the internet.

The community, officially named s/TheUncrowned, had exploded in popularity. What started as a small gathering of hardcore Project: Star viewers had quickly swelled, and the community of "V-Stans" already boasted 2.8k highly active members. Sasha, naturally, remained the undisputed leader and head moderator.

As the internet underwent a storm following Julian’s condescending late-night interview, Sasha’s forum was ground zero for the counter-attack. She had pinned the popular, infuriating article to the top of the community board and left a scathing comment to rally the troops.

[THE PRESIDENT 😏: 🔗 They’ve come again. 🤦🏼‍♀️ Julian and his daddy’s PR team are working overtime to bury our boy. Read this garbage.]

The comment section beneath her post was a rapid-fire warzone of indignance and loyalty.

[imma_rage_quit: This is absolute bullshit. How dumb does the internet have to be to buy this corporate spin? Julian’s acting like renting a castle makes his generic pop song a masterpiece.]

↳ [kiss-my-axe: Exactly! Didn’t Von live in a tiny apartment? How do they expect an indie artist without a label to make a million-dollar music video out of thin air? The playing field isn’t level.]

↳ [suck_my_popsicle: Julian is such a spoiled brat lol. He’s just mad his track is plummeting on the charts while Masquerade is literally everywhere. He can’t buy hype, so he’s crying about visuals.]

[ima.robot: Okay, raging is fun and all, but what’s the plan? We can’t just let West World Records control the narrative and label Von a TickTock fad.]

↳ [THE PRESIDENT 😏: So I was thinking... why don’t we get him a music video?]

↳ [iNeed2p: How exactly would that be done? Even if we set up a ComeFundMe right now, it won’t suffice. Good cameras, editing, sets... it costs tens of thousands of dollars minimum.]

↳ [THE PRESIDENT 😏: No, a ComeFundMe won’t work. It’s too slow. But we all know how good Masquerade is. Don’t you think a big corporation can help him get the video he deserves? It’s happened many times in the past. Brands sponsor indie artists who have massive hype.]

[Hot Name Here: Smart idea tbh, but how will it work in practice? We don’t have industry contacts.]

↳ [THE PRESIDENT 😏: Simple. We’ll spam every big corporation out there to show their support. Energy drinks, clothing brands, streaming platforms everyone! Surely when they see our dedication and what we can pull, someone will realize it’s the marketing opportunity of the year. Something can happen.]

[LOWERCASE GUY: I’M LOVING THE IDEA OF THIS! JULIAN’S GONNA GET HIS ASS KICKED FOR THE THIRD TIME MUA HA HA]

***

The V-Stans weren’t joking. From that very day, they formed a highly coordinated digital movement.

The hashtag #GiveVonABudget launched from the SubVerse forums and immediately trended across America and beyond.

The V-Stans were just too loyal to Von, to the point it was genuinely scary. They operated like a digital army, swarming the social media accounts of major youth brands and media conglomerates.

As the hashtag climbed the trending pages, surely other loyal fans who didn’t even know about the SubVerse community joined in.

TickTock editors began watermarking their viral videos with the tag. Thousands of users flooded Julian’s Instagram comments with #GiveVonABudget, drowning out his promotional material.

It was an absolute Online Takeover. The sheer volume of the outcry was so overwhelming that even Julian began to panic, his carefully constructed PR narrative backfiring and mutating into a massive spotlight on Von’s underdog status.

The internet loves a rebel, and Julian had inadvertently painted Von as the ultimate rebel fighting against a billion-dollar empire.

The online movement lasted for almost a week. They achieved incredible metrics and even coverage from secondary pop-culture blogs marveling at the sheer force of Von’s fandom.

But even then, the corporate world moved slowly. Despite the deafening noise, there wasn’t any official news coming in.

Von, himself, was silently observing everything from the confines of his apartment. He spent hours scrolling through the hashtag, completely blown away by how much his fans were willing to go to support him.

They were fighting a war on his behalf, spending their free time organizing campaigns just to see him win.

The profound dedication shifted something deep inside him. He no longer just wanted to succeed for himself or to spite Julian; he wanted to succeed to validate their belief in him. He wanted to give them the victory they were fighting so desperately for.

However, as time rolled around, the hashtag began to naturally slip down the trending charts. The internet’s notoriously short attention span was beginning to wane, and it seemed like there would be no silver lining to the week-long crusade.

That was, until Emily got a certain call from an unknown number on an otherwise average Monday morning.