Zog didn’t know why. Maybe it was because handsome Longlongs don’t have bad luck.

When he woke up today, he received a message from Elsa. Craig had brought a script and was looking to partner with Zog.

Young Hero Craig was about to become a Zog Film Studio production.

What a situation. Zog wasn’t trying to create a Magic Shadow Drama monopoly or anything, but now his one decent rival had come over to his side.

It’s all thanks to the competition for making him look good.

He heard there were "artistic differences" with the original production team.

A reason like that was best taken with a grain of salt.

Every production team that broke up said the same thing to the public. It sounded very fitting for people in the arts.

Artistic differences.

It sounded so professional. It never specified who was right in the end, because with something like this, anyone could claim they were right.

The ambiguity was a way of saving face for both sides.

Only the parties involved knew the real, messy reasons.

But since Craig wasn’t talking, Zog didn’t feel the need to dig into it.

As for Young Hero Craig, Zog genuinely liked the story.

It had the feel of Don Quixote, but without the underlying tragedy hidden beneath the absurdity. It was a bit lacking in depth, but much more entertaining.

That made it much more suitable for a Magic Shadow Drama.

To show how much he valued Craig—a loyal customer of his conglomerate and now a partner—Zog assigned a top-tier team to reshoot the rest of the series.

Huan, who happened to be available, took the director’s chair, and a whole slew of relatively experienced actors who had been in other Magic Shadow Dramas were cast.

He was striving to make this show the studio’s third pillar, besides those two toy commercials.

The only unfortunate part was that while the plot was absurd, it was fundamentally a realistic story, which made it difficult to develop ancillary value.

This was the same problem Tom and Jerry was facing now.

IP development was a huge undertaking. Zog’s idea was to try and emulate that "game with a cult following," Pocket Monster.

It started with a game, but game revenue only accounted for a small fraction of the total; the real money was in licensed merchandise.

However, he discovered it wasn’t so easy when he actually tried it.

Although this new form of entertainment was widespread, acceptance of merchandise wasn’t high. It was only popular in niche circles, and the consumers who bought it were all the Doudou type.

In the public eye, Doudou and his ilk were all classified as "gross shut-ins."

The term "two-dimensional" wasn’t used in that sense yet, but there was a specialized term: "Fantasy Mouse."

It specifically referred to people who stayed home all year, lacked social interaction, and whose only hobbies were reading comics, watching dramas, and playing games, completely immersed in a virtual world.

Like the word ’otaku,’ it was usually used for self-deprecation or insults; it wasn’t a compliment.

Whether it would also have its stigma removed and be reclaimed in the future, like ’otaku,’ was anyone’s guess.

Of course, Feilin’s "mice" weren’t quite so shut-in by comparison, because sponging off your parents in the current economic climate was a luxury only the extremely well-off could afford.

Most of them could only work in factories during the day and return to being lonely "mice" at night.

In any case, under these circumstances, the IP development work was not going smoothly.

Not every show, like the Yo-Yo and Mechanical Armor ones, had something so distinct and prominent that you could just sell it directly.

For Tom and Jerry, they had made dolls and clothing. The dolls were fine; they didn’t break out of the niche, but sales were decent.

As plush dolls, big, soft versions of Tom and Jerry were quite appealing.

The clothes, however, were a complete flop.

For people of this era, clothes with a giant cat or mouse head printed on the chest were still a bit too avant-garde.

Zog scratched his dragon scratching post in frustration.

’What was I thinking, making this kind of merchandise clothing?’

The dyeing process was so intricate that with current garment-making technology, the cost was already quite high, even without the typical markup for fan-targeted merchandise.

Yet, for most people, this clothing line was completely unwearable in public.

People who bought them were purely treating them as collector’s items.

And that wasn’t even the most radical idea.

Zog had even released Tom and Jerry onesie pajamas, which sold even worse than the clothes.

The only thing that comforted the Dragon was that there was no shortage of rich people among the "mice."

One Knight had custom-ordered a full suit of armor in Tom’s color scheme, with a cat-head emblem carved on the chest.

According to the man himself, his family crest was a blue cat anyway, so his family wouldn’t see anything wrong with him buying such armor.

Such special cases couldn’t reverse the overall loss-making trend of the Tom and Jerry merchandise plan.

Two and a half years into his business career, Zog had suffered his first loss.

The amount he lost was almost negligible as a percentage of his total revenue.

But that didn’t stop him from feeling terrible.

"Am I just not cut out for selling things?" Zog had been repeating this question over and over.

"No," Elsa replied for the umpteenth time.

"Then why did I lose money?" Zog pressed.

’The amount you lost isn’t even worth two days’ profit from the other product lines.’

Elsa really wanted to call Furin over to deal with him.

’No, wait, Furin doesn’t ’deal’ with Zog anymore. The moment the two dragons see each other, they start billing and cooing.’

’They’re both right here in Twin Tower City, but they always act like they’ve been separated for ages.’

’It makes the office atmosphere so unbearable you don’t even want to be in there.’

"Here," Elsa said, handing him a newspaper.

Part of Elsa’s job as his assistant was to summarize any noteworthy recent news and show it to Zog. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

A manual news feed.

"Anything big happen?" Zog asked.

"Something that should cheer you up," Elsa said.

She had seen someone in the newspaper who was perfect for the role of a villain right now. When you don’t know how to get your boss’s motivation back, you find something for him to do.

A villain who suddenly popped up with a provocation was perfect.

Zog took the newspaper and opened it.

"Seven-Year-Old Child Attempts to Make Flying Suit from Curtains, Unfortunately Breaks Both Legs, May Never Stand Again."

"Who Caused This Tragedy? All Signs Point to That Cartoon."

"Huh?" Zog was suddenly energized.

’They’re pulling this crap on me.’

The sense of déjà vu was overwhelming; scenes were already playing out in his mind.

Green blood, suddenly added scraps of cloth, novels you paid for but were suddenly banned from reading.

’Hatred meter, maxed out.’

’Blaming a cartoon for something like this instead of holding the parents responsible? What kind of twisted logic is that?’

’It’s clearly the guardian’s fault, though of course, the little brat has to take about ten percent of the blame.’

Zog looked at the name of the reporter who wrote the article. It was a little familiar.

He remembered now. Wasn’t this the scriptwriter for Young Hero Craig?

He was a classmate of the director who had already terminated his partnership with Craig.

’So this is a targeted media attack, and he even put his name on it.’

’Well then, he can’t blame me for fighting back.’

Just as he was about to arrange for someone to investigate the situation, he suddenly saw the next news story.

"Famous Playwright Attacked, Suffers Multiple Injuries, Assailant Has Been Arrested..."

Zog compared the name of the beaten playwright with the author of the article above.

It was the same person.

’What’s going on? Did karma strike that fast?’