Marvel: Emotion Farming System

Here is the bonus for 4.5k.

The next one is at 5.7k.

After that is the sacred 69.

Have fun.

...

Sighing for the nth time, he knew Gwen would bounce back tomorrow like nothing ever happened. But how much of that energy would be real?

That remained to be seen.

After a quiet moment, John looked at his computer. Before leaving the house, he had scheduled Chapter 3 of Fight Club for release. And it seemed that Chapter had done quite well.

After looking through the reader’s reactions, he turned to four brown envelopes he had found in his room’s mailbox on his way up.

They were all from the court. Thankfully, this wasn’t for some criminal case or something like that. The envelopes had papers that recognized his, John Doe’s, ownership of the works he had released so far.

Your Name, 5 Centimetres per second, Look Back, and Fight Club too. He had legal documents stating he owned them and had the rights to reproduce them in any capacity. It cost him $500, but it was necessary.

So far, he had found comfort in the automatic rights he had as the one who published the work first in this world. But the copyright was a crucial document he would eventually need.

He had put it off till now because the court would ask for his ID. And he didn’t want to be associated with the published works as John Grayson, especially with the hacking attempts made almost every few hours now.

So, how did he get them done now? And won’t someone be able to trace the documents to his house?

"This system knows what’s up." John looked at the upgraded website dashboard on his system.

When his bank balance hit $40k, he had paid the 10k needed for the upgrade. The result of that was this new copyright section below the income window. The brown envelopes were delivered by the system.

All it took was one click, and the copyright was applied for under the name John Doe, and it arrived at his house in less than 24 hours through an untraceable route.

How this system got books printed before the copyright, or how it even managed to get the copyright done, John had zero clue.

"This is some serious magic." He repeated Gwen’s words and placed the copyrights in the training room’s locker.

As long as this ID didn’t break under any investigative force, he didn’t care how it happened. The only problem was that, if it could be counted as one, he could only copyright 10 works right now.

The next update would cost $100K, and it would come with a major rework of the website, increased copyright slots, and the ability to design and sell merchandise.

"That’ll get me a phat profit." As someone who had lived in an era where people went crazy over every limited drop, even something like Labubus, the ability to make merchandise for the released works was unreal.

Most of the animation studios used it to recoup and make several times more than the initial investments. It even made up to 50-60% of a good manga series’ lifetime revenue. And as someone who had no contracts with any companies and had no plans on making any, all the profit would go to him.

’Animation is important for a larger reach, but there is no great anime boom here.’ John decided to put a pin in that topic for now.

If the merchandise section was anything like how the system delivered books, John knew he was in good hands for the quality and customer service. Still, he needed to save enough money first, and for that he had to write more.

’I’ll check the John Doe app later; time to work on the storyboards again. But before that, a shower.’

John stood up from the chair languidly, but before he could take off the shirt that smelled like Gwen, a new system notification popped up before him.

[Norman Osborn is looking for you. +50EP]

"You gotta be fucking kidding me." He let out a dry chuckle. "Good thing I didn’t jump the gun on the copyrights."

***

It had been 6 months since Norman Osborn was ousted from Oscorp by the board members. Although it pained him greatly to be discarded like this after all that he had sacrificed for the company.

When he returned home and started drinking away for days, he understood exactly what he had sacrificed.

’Sorry dear, I haven’t been the best father.’

It was only after he had seen Harry, the only family he had, tremble before him as he drilled into him for not getting into ESU that something snapped into place. In pursuit of money and power, he had become just like his father; no, in a way he had done something worse.

Neglect was the worst kind of abuse, and he finally saw how it affected his son.

At least his father focused enough on him to get the urge to hit him, but Norman had thrown himself into work after his wife passed, not even looking at the undeniable proof of her existence.

Even if the company was gone, Norman had enough money to last several generations, even if they spent money like water. Harry also seemed happier now that he talked with him during breakfast and dinners instead of drinking day and night.

And he had picked up another few things to keep himself occupied enough to not look at the TV and see news of Oscorp. It was his way of leaving behind something that would have more value in the future.

"No way, Pierre, you have to get me this sofa in beige. The designer doesn’t like to work with beige? Pay him more." He spoke into the phone, the catalogue in his hand landing on the ebony, hand-carved table, with a heavy thud. "Just get it done, I am really close to completing the collection."

Norman ended the call and picked up another catalogue; this one had cars. It wasn’t for him; the only time he left the house was when he stepped onto the balcony for some sunlight.

It was a Lamborghini. He didn’t read the specifics abut it was a special edition. Only two of these existed right now; Tony Stark had one, and Norman wanted to get the second one for Harry’s coming birthday.

’Maybe if he has this, he’ll finally ask out that MJ girl.’ A small smile appeared on Norman’s lips as he picked up the phone again.

That’s all he did these days. Calling art gallery directors, antique brokers, luxury goods manufacturers. Previously, he didn’t care much about the house decorations.

But now, he had handpicked everything. The Celadons from China, the kintsugi artwork from centuries ago, paintings from the Renaissance, and even the carpet on the floor. All of this had value, something that would pay back several times more a few decades from now.

From morning to night, that was all he did. And it wasn’t so bad. That was until one night, when he couldn’t sleep, he heard Harry crying while sneaking out of the bedroom.

His initial thought was to ask what happened. But he noticed the book in Harry’s hands. This kid was crying over a story.

’Oh well...’ Norman returned to his bed and lay awake till morning.

The next day, when Harry had left for university and he was alone at home, Norman found the book in question on Harry’s desk.

"Look Back?" Norman understood that this was a manga, and just ending his call with another broker with the entire afternoon empty, he decided to give it a read.

When he saw the double-page spread, he understood the reason his son cried. This book played with the reader’s feelings. The reason a reader cried wasn’t because of what happened to the character in the story; it was because they could relate to the character’s loss in one form or another, drawing out their most painful memory or a similar event they feared would happen in the future.

Even as Norman was thinking about this, he couldn’t help remember his wife and the last smile she gave him. If he could kick away her illness like Fujino kicked the attacker, he would do it 100 times out of 100. That’s what the story was about: the ’what if you could change one thing in your life’.

For Fujino, it was saving Kyomoto from the attacker. And every reader had that one or several similar moments in their lives. Or they simply feared that when such a day would arrive, they’d be powerless.

"It’s a good work at the end of the day." Norman placed the book back where he found it and went to his computer.

He searched on the net and found out that this was only available in Manga form. No signed version, no special edition or something similar. Which struck him as odd.

’This could make a good movie.’ Norman was thinking of reaching out to the author and see if they would accept a personal investment to make the movie.

He had the connections and the money to boot; this could be a good pastime and another thing he could leave to his son. However, no matter where he looked, there was no clear way to contact the writer.

The book had no publishing house info, not even a word. All he found was a website where the writer, John Doe, kept posting his works.

In the end, Norman had to shuffle through the card he had to get in contact with someone from the writing industry, someone he had briefly met at a gala.

"Oh, that spawn of Satan? Don’t even speak about him."

"Spawn of Satan?"

...

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Change the @ to ’a’ first, though.