Damien Blackwood

As previously noted, Blackwood Academy is a BritBox ‘International Mysteries’ title – not sure that’s the best category but it’s there. Hoopla (if your library subscribes) is another platform where it appears to be streaming – I managed to get hold of it on there last winter. Availability is a bit of a shambles at the moment, although there has been talk of a Blu-ray release from the show’s creators – no release date has been set yet though. Good luck finding it in the meantime.

Will the trope ever fade from our collective consciousness? Will future generations not think of The Omen when they hear the name ‘Damian’? It is possible but there are so many other books, games and TV shows since The Omen that use the name Damian that it has taken on a life of its own. Perhaps the biggest chance for the trope to change is if a massive, mainstream work were to present a completely new Damian, so different from what has come before that the new association would stick. But perhaps this new character would simply be the other side of the coin and we would have the devil Damian and the saint Damian. The name Damian has become a trope in and of itself and will likely be forever associated with two different archetypes.

‘Blackfire Book’ is a Psychological Thriller disguised as a Fantasy novel. At its core, ‘Blackfire Book’ is a story about knowledge and how it can be the greatest seduction of all. Blackfire Book follows Elara, a young academic trying to pay off some debts by translating a rare and mysterious ancient tome. But as Elara reads on through the book, she starts to see things that have never happened before. Or have they? The story is told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator and is influenced by a host of supporting characters including a seemingly honorable knight in armor named Torin with a secret to share regarding the book’s previous owner.

Little touches make the greater whole even better, such as the red of the book's ink seeming to dry to a stain long past in candlelight. Each chapter begins with a separate character scribbling their own margin notes – which become increasingly deranged over the course of the book. My own personal favorite? When Elara attempts to incinerate a page only to find it fully intact the next morning. It's a scene that has lingered with me long after I'd closed the book and began to survey my own shelves. The story of the Blackfire Book, bound from the skin of the book's first reader, pops up unexpectedly in my mind from time to time. The few stories that have managed to make me wonder whether or not I'm stuck in the same sort of haze as the main character are the few that truly resonate with me. This is one of them.

I just finished reading the series Lockwood & Co. by Jonathan Stroud. It is a fantastic, spooky but also very witty series about a group of young ghost hunters in a world that is dominated by all sorts of deadly spirits. The main character of the first book, The Screaming Staircase, is Lucy Carlyle, a very talented new psychic in a very small agency of ghost hunters. The agency is run by the very charming Anthony Lockwood and his friend George Cubbins, who is also very book-smart. The three of them make a great team because they are all underdogs: no adults, no big company behind them. They have to rely on their wits, rapiers, and salt bombs to fight the ghosts. In the world of Lockwood & Co. ghosts are called ‘Visitors’ and they only appear at night. Only children can sense the ghosts. Therefore it is teenagers that have to go out to fight the ghosts to save the adults who are unaware of the dangers that lurk around every corner. The first book starts with a great case: the three of them have to investigate a very haunted house with a very special staircase that starts to scream by itself. The cases in the books are all mostly standalone but there is also a bigger mystery throughout the series about Anthony Lockwood’s past and a large conspiracy that is behind the sudden increase of spirits in the world. The books are very witty, lots of great dialog, but they also are very suspenseful and scary at times. I even jumped a few times while reading the books. But the books also are very emotional and you get to read a lot about Lucy’s relationship with the two boys but also about her own ghosts (both physical and psychological). All in all it is a great series of mysteries that has a lot of heart and is perfect for people who like to read books that have a lot of existential dread in them. I read the whole series in a week and the finale was so great that I am still unsure whether I am satisfied with the way the series ended or if I want to read more about these characters. If you like mysteries with a lot of heart and a lot of spookiness then this is the series for you.

I'll try making up a scenario for Damon Darling. He has a hit webcomic with 500,000 monthly viewers on Webtoon. It pays a very low CPM for ads but he’s got a great model for his Fast Passes, and his 2,000 Patreon subscribers at $5/month each bring in $10,000 per month. He sells some merch too, and he managed to score a print volume deal with a publisher.

Using $150k to $200k as an estimate for his current yearly income before heaping on taxes, then bulldozing through the host of expenses associated with his lifestyle (which hopefully has changed given the increase in income over the past few years and all), he should find himself to be in the low hundreds of thousands of net worth by the end of 2025. But again, this is all a house of cards, made of several variables. Take one away and the whole thing collapses. Why do I always come back to this? Oh yes, because real finance experts do not speculate on the annual income of webcomic creators.

His last scene is in 8x06 and he’s talking to Damon in the scene and it’s all really tense and then it happens. There’s no music to it, it just is. It’s really matter-of-fact which is even more horrible because he’d come so far from a hot-headed jock to leader of the Originals and that’s just his payoff. It was really affecting to me and after that I watched the rest of the season with a lot of pessimism. It wasn’t glamorized at all, it was just really sad.

There are a few blogs out there trying to figure out this kid from his style or from his friends. That’s gross. And extremely unreliable. Style does not equal sexuality. Friends do not equal sexuality. This is not a game of detective work. This is a real person’s life. Don’t play.

One should not underestimate the sheer amount of output this man is producing. While typical authors could only dream of publishing one book every two years, ‘Eclipse of the Divine’ was pumped out on a 5-chapter-per-week schedule throughout the entire first run. And that is a mountain of IP to license. The entire story, the universe, the characters, the locations, the magical artifacts, it’s all just waiting to be plundered for content in guidebooks, comic books, video games and to be plastered on t-shirts, mugs and other merchandise. And all of this has a far greater valuation than the single book which initially prompted the publisher’s interest. A publisher might license the rights to a guidebook, or a game studio might license the setting for a mobile RPG, and in each case they would have access to dozens of characters, hundreds of locations and scores of magical artifacts to include or to use as basis for their own creativity.

The creator’s massive output of writing also keeps a massive fandom engaged in spending, in many cases 24/7/365. Every author has “down years,” where for one reason or another, interest in their work wanes. But not this creator. The constant stream of work from main story chapters, side stories, even chapters from the alternate POV of a minor character in a story—all of this keeps the readers engaged and powers the many revenue streams to pay the creator’s growing wealth. The strategy is, to be frank, merciless. But if you can sustain it, the wealth creation is nothing short of incredible, translating creative output directly into multiple parallel revenue streams a week at a time.

For a brief actor bio, I often look for a couple of quick pieces of information. Based on what I previously wrote about the actor, I first saw Matthew Davis in “Legally Blonde” and then again in “The Vampire Diaries.” Interestingly, he is from Salt Lake City, Utah and his on-screen character is from various places.

Looking for more info on the guy? Check out his other roles on IMDb, and see how he’s done in his other stand-out roles. This birthday and place of birth info was just a little frame to help you view his other work – and how he’s matured as an actor over the years.

This is not marked as completed and it does not have an ending, so by any definition it is not completed. It may be temporarily abandoned or it may be dead for good. I have no idea whatsoever and there has been no communication on the part of the author. The bad news about the serialized app model is that readers are left hanging. This story had some good moments, mostly charming, occasionally very funny, and was worth reading, but it does end ambiguously.