Zenith of Desire: The Hollywood Incubus

So first things first, yes, Marvin does plan to enter the world of sports eventually. By now, though, you should already know he craves attention he is attention whore. He wants his name known across the entire world. The only reason he hasn’t jumped into sports yet is because of his age, and because he prefers fields that don’t consume all his time like football or basketball. He’s far more interested in quick sports like running, swimming, martial arts, chess, and other pursuits that still build prestige while leaving him time to expand everything else he’s creating.

And honestly, sports are part of his ambitions. There are big plans ahead for sports alone—sports things to push his name into everyone mouth. Some of you can probably already guess where all of this is heading.

Second, I’ve seen a lot of comments saying Invincible is ”too gore-heavy” for Marvin’s age early on, but have people actually read the beginning of Invincible? The first arc was relatively upbeat and felt like a normal superhero comic before things gradually became darker later. I thought that was obvious enough that I didn’t need to explain it, but apparently I did. Also, I still can’t properly reply to comments here, so don’t stop commenting and Join my Discord to get quick responses and participate in future polls and future of the book. the Discord link is in my profile and here as well.

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******

The two men shook hands warmly. They had met previously at a sprawling Malibu charity gala hosted by an A-list director, a brief exchange over champagne that illustrated just how small and incestuous the upper echelons of the Hollywood circle truly were.

”The pleasure is mine, Jeff,” Peter spoke, respectfully escorting the agent down the baffled hallway. ”Right through here.”

It wasn’t a standard corporate office; it was a state-of-the-art mixing suite. Peter tapped the security code into the keypad, turned on his heel, and retreated down the hall, leaving Jeff to step inside the sanctum..

Jeff had assumed James Horner would be the only person in the room. The composer had been practically hyperventilating on the phone the previous week. But the moment the door clicked shut behind him, Jeff realized the stakes had just been raised.

Horner wasn’t alone. He was standing near the SSL mixing console, deep in a hushed conversation with another middle-aged man.

Jeff recognized him instantly. Everyone in Hollywood knew that face, though currently, it looked significantly worse for wear.

It was James Cameron.

”Jeff,” Horner announced, stepping away from the console and exhaling a heavy breath of relief. He walked over and shook Jeff’s hand firmly. ”Thank God you’re here. Let me introduce you—though I suspect you don’t need an introduction.”

”Jim, this is Jeff Raymond from CAA,” Horner said.

Cameron turned around. The director looked remarkably scruffy, physically worn down to the bone. He was wearing a faded t-shirt, his hair was unkempt, and dark, heavy bags hung beneath his bloodshot eyes like bruised luggage.

The exhaustion was justified. The industry rumor mill surrounding Titanic was no longer just a pot of mess; it was a boiling cauldron. Cameron’s overall cost for completing the epic had officially ruptured the stratosphere, reaching an unprecedented, jaw-dropping $215 million. It was the most expensive film ever financed in the history of human civilization.

Although many studio yes-men had tried to reassure him, Cameron was a pragmatic man. He was well aware that if a film with a budget exceeding two hundred million dollars failed at the box office, it wouldn’t just be a flop. It would permanently impact his directing career. It might even end it entirely, exiling him to the cinematic graveyard alongside the directors of other mega-flops.

Consequently, the crushing, Atlas-like weight of the world was resting squarely on his shoulders, and he seemed to have aged a decade in the span of six months.

Yet, despite the apocalyptic pressure, Cameron was here.

Cameron was a man of exacting, obsessive perfection, and he possessed a profound love for the architecture of music. After hearing the sweeping, chart-dominating tracks of Marvin 1, Cameron had not settled for a compressed radio edit. He had personally dispatched an assistant to purchase the limited-edition vinyl copy of the EP just to experience the uncompressed analog warmth of the boy’s voice.

Cameron had listened to the record in the dark of his own home, completely captivated by the wordless sorrow woven into the tracks—especially the hypnotic, psychological labyrinth of Song of Enchantment.

Because of that profound, isolated listening experience, Cameron harbored no doubt about the eleven-year-old boy’s terrifying ability to comprehend human emotion.

If Marvin could compose something with even eighty percent of the emotional gravity he had poured into his EP, he might just create a miracle. Cameron was here because he needed a miracle to save his sinking ship.

”Jeff,” Cameron said, extending a calloused hand. His grip was like a vice. ”Horner tells me your kid is a monster. I left a rendering bay full of three hundred visual effects artists waiting for my approval just to be here this morning. I want to hear what he came up with.”

”It’s an honor to meet you, James,” Jeff replied smoothly. ”And I can assure you, the wait was worth it. Marvin didn’t just give you some quick work. He completely rewrote the rules.”

Jeff hoisted the silver briefcase onto the leather sofa and popped the steel latches. ”I didn’t just bring a rough cassette demo, gentlemen,” Jeff explained, his voice echoing with undeniable authority in the quiet studio. ”Marvin took your foundational theme, James. He wrote the lyrics. He structured the vocal melodies. And then, over the course of a two-day marathon at Wolf Cousins Studio, he completely orchestrated it.”

Jeff pulled out a stack of pristine DAT tapes and a master CD, laying them carefully on the console.

”These tapes contain the fully mixed master track for the end credits, as well as the isolated stems for your editing team,” Jeff dictated, pointing to the labels. ”He personally tracked and separated the weeping violins, the rich, resonant violas, the deep, groaning cellos, and the foundational thrum of the double bass.”

Cameron’s bloodshot eyes narrowed in disbelief. ”He played the strings himself?”

”All of them,” Jeff said without blinking. ”As well as the woodwinds. He laid down individual stems for the flute, oboe, and bassoon. The heavy brass: French horn, the soaring trombone, and the guttural punch of the bass trombone. He programmed the ethereal atmospheric synthesizer pads, arranged and layered his own choir vocals, played the acoustic guitar and the grand piano, and tracked the booming strikes of the orchestral timpani.” Jeff was a salesman and always made sure to sell his artists.

Jeff pulled out the final tape, holding it up to the studio lights.

”And most importantly,” Jeff whispered, ”the haunting, breathy trills of the traditional Irish tin whistle that opens the track. He built an entire symphony from the ground up. He calls it ”My Heart Will Go On”.”

James Horner stared at the tapes, his mouth slightly open, looking like a man who had just been handed undeniable proof of extraterrestrial life. Cameron simply crossed his arms, his jaw set.

”Talk is cheap in Hollywood, Jeff,” Cameron said roughly, nodding toward the mixing board. ”Put it on. Let’s hear the symphony.”

Horner scrambled to the console, expertly patching the master CD into the studio’s high-fidelity, million-dollar playback system. He handed two pairs of professional-grade studio headphones to Cameron and Jeff, before sliding a pair over his own ears.

”Ready?” Horner asked, his finger hovering over the glowing play button.

Cameron nodded once.

Horner pressed play.

The studio fell into silence.

For a second, there was nothing. Then, out of the dark digital ether, it began.

The crisp, haunting, and beautiful trill of the Irish tin whistle pierced the silence. It was a lonely, sweeping sound that instantly evoked the freezing, vast expanse of the open ocean. It was followed almost immediately by the gentle, rolling foundation of the grand piano—played with such heartbreaking precision that it felt like raindrops falling on a glass window.

And then... Marvin’s voice entered the track.

”Every night... in my dreeeams... I see you... I feeeel you...”

The moment the vocals hit the premium drivers of the headphones, Cameron’s entire body went rigidly still.

The supernatural magic that Marvin had woven into the very fabric of the recording bypassed the cables, bypassed the digital format and flooded directly into the minds of the men in the room.

Marvin had deliberately utilized a subdued, tragically feminine, Celine-esque vocal register, but it was laced with the heavy, consuming sorrow of a creature that had lived a thousand lifetimes. The voice was impossibly pure, carrying a devastating, shattering intimacy.

”That is how I know... you gooo ooooon...”

Cameron forgot about the $215 million budget.

He forgot about the articles in Variety predicting his downfall. He forgot about the visual effects rendering errors and the studio executives breathing down his neck.

The music actively hijacked his consciousness. In his mind’s eye, Cameron didn’t see spreadsheets; he saw the exact, tragic soul of his own movie. He saw the grand staircase of the Titanic submerged in freezing, black water.

He saw the clinging hands of Jack and Rose. He felt the paralyzing cold of the North Atlantic air, and the overwhelming, beautiful agony of a love that was forced to endure long after the body had perished.

The song swelled. The weeping violins and resonant cellos that Marvin had tracked swelled into an oceanic crescendo, perfectly lifting the vocals higher and higher into the stratosphere.

”Near... faaar... wherever you aaaare... I believe... that the heart... does go oooon...”

Horner, standing at the console, had his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Tears were freely leaking from the corners of his eyes, soaking into his collar. The composer was experiencing the ultimate, euphoric vindication of his career. The boy had taken his skeletal, fragile melody and transformed it into a towering monument of musical perfection. It was beyond genius; it was divine.

”You are safe... in my heart... And my heart... will go on... and ooooon...”

...

...

...

...

The final, soaring note faded, carried away by the haunting echo of the tin whistle, before dissolving into a long, resonant, and absolute silence.

The track ended. The digital timecode on the SSL console blinked: 04:40.

For a long time, nobody in the studio moved.

Cameron slowly reached up with trembling hands and pulled the heavy headphones off his ears, letting them drop to the floor with a dull thud.

The notoriously hardened director was staring at the blank wall of the studio. His chest was heaving. His bloodshot eyes were completely glassy, shimmering with unshed tears that he refused to let fall.

Suddenly, Cameron broke the silence. He raised his hands and began to clap.

The applause was slow at first, then frantic, echoing loudly in the acoustically deadened room.

”That... that was...” Cameron stammered, his voice thick, rough, and overwhelmed by the profound emotion the Incubus magic had cast upon him. He spun around to face Jeff and Horner, a manic, and incredibly relieved smile breaking through his exhausted features.

”That was magnificent! Absolutely fantastic!” Cameron shouted, his voice booming with the explosive energy of a man who had just been pulled back from the edge of a cliff. ”Jeff, James... I’ve made my decision! There is no debate. There is no alternative. We are using this song, this demo as Titanic’s definitive closing theme. I don’t think it can be done any better!”

Horner let out a shaky, triumphant laugh, wiping his face. ”I told you, Jim. I told you the boy was a conduit.”

”It’s perfect,” Cameron paced the floor, running a hand through his messy hair, his brain firing on all cylinders again. ”It perfectly matches the tone of the film. It doesn’t cheapen the tragedy; it elevates it to myth! I want this integrated into the final sound mix and in theme score and background score immediately. I believe we should have the master cut done before the Venice Film Festival. This song... this song is going to be the anthem of the decade. I don’t want to wait another single moment.”

For the next hour, the three men did not leave the control room. They acted like obsessed musical archaeologists, meticulously tearing apart the DAT tapes Jeff had brought, utterly fascinated by the scope of what Marvin had accomplished.

”Load up the isolated string stems,” Horner commanded, leaning over the console.

He soloed the tracks on the board. The room filled with the isolated, weeping groans of the cellos and the resonant violas.

”Listen to the vibrato on that cello,” Horner whispered in awe, pointing at the audio waveform on the monitor. ”That isn’t a synthesizer. That is the sound of a bow scraping across raw catgut. The boy played that with his own two hands. The emotional weight... it takes principal cellists twenty years to learn how to make an instrument cry like that.”

Cameron leaned over the desk transfixed. ”Isolate the brass section. I want to hear the horns.”

Horner muted the strings and brought up the French horn and the bass trombone. The guttural, soaring punch of the brass filled the room, carrying a rich, cinematic warmth that vibrated in their chests.

”It’s flawless,” Cameron muttered, shaking his head. ”He took your basic background sketch, James, and he built a cathedral out of it.”

”Play the tin whistle,” Jeff suggested, a proud, shark-like smirk permanently etched onto his face.

Horner isolated the first track. The haunting, breathy trills of the traditional Irish instrument played in pristine isolation. Without the heavy Incubus vocals masking it, the men could hear the microscopic intakes of breath, the delicate, flutter-tonguing technique that only seasoned Celtic musicians truly mastered.

”He’s eleven years old,” Cameron repeated, pacing the room again, as if saying the words out loud would somehow make the reality easier to digest. ”An eleven-year-old kid from California wrote the lyrics, composed the melody, played fifteen distinct orchestral instruments, and sang with the emotional devastation of a widow.”

Cameron stopped, looking directly at Jeff Raymond.

”Jeff,” Cameron said, his tone shifting back to the demanding director who conquered Hollywood. ”You tell your client that he just saved my movie ending. You tell him that I owe him a personal debt.”

Jeff closed the silver Halliburton briefcase, the sharp click of the latches echoing like a gunshot in the room.

”I will pass along your gratitude, James,” Jeff smiled, picking up the case. ”But Marvin already knows exactly what he delivered. He doesn’t just want gratitude.”

Cameron nodded slowly, a deep, profound respect settling in his eyes. ”I know. The legal department at Fox is going to scream bloody murder when they see the publishing demands. But I don’t care. Give him whatever he wants. Give him the publishing. Give him the composer co-composer, lyricists, Orchestra, or whatever in that credit. Give him the moon if he asks for it.”

Cameron looked back at the mixing console, staring at the DAT tapes holding the masterpiece.

”Because when the Academy Awards roll around next year,” Cameron murmured softly, ”that boy is going to be sitting on the same row right next to us.”

*****

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