Sylvia Upadhaya from The Butterfly Dragon and A Full Glass, A Piano And The Disappearance Of Time...

This is how I envisioned Sylvia Upadhaya, one of Alicia's inspirations from the first book The Butterfly Dragon I: Heroes Of Our Own. She is also mentioned by her peer Bryce Maxwell in A Full Glass, A Piano And The Disappearance Of Time.

When Alicia aged sixteen happens upon her, Sylvia has been left as a forgotten relic in an old age home. Sylvia who emigrated from India with her family when she was young much like Heylyn, studied molecular biology attaining her masters degree at the age of twenty six, later going on to work on projects for a number of large research firms. She plays a key role in inspiring Alicia in the extended version of the full edition book.

I just thought I'd upload this as I'd worked on it today. Just thinking about when I'm living in a place where it's not so difficult to work on things without having them "taken" from me. If things fare well this week, there might be two new stories for Halloween. One for The Butterfly Dragon which will bring together the whole team, Heylyn Yates, Monique Defleur, Alicia Westin and Valerie Aspen for a Halloween adventure with a twist.

There will also be one for A Lady's Prerogative which too, Mila Rendebelle, Yirfir Lacharme, Nelony Ardbloem and of course Shaela Sheowellyn for the Wytching Hour. Oh, and Jasmer and Barris too ;-) Look for some cameos from some of my other stories as well in this one.

In the image above, I must thank Laboratory Tools Stock Photography and University Of South Florida Department of Cell and Molecular Biology. Thanks to the Canadian Health Care system, researchers world wide and of course the Fashion Industry who are highly active in fund raising. They've all served as an inspiration for the characters of The Butterfly Dragon. I'll probably be spending a good deal of my weekend cleaning, apartment maintenance and gaming. If you're a gamer, you might find me on Elite Dangerous, Star Trek Online or Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic. Some time in the near future, I'll actually leave my account handles so you can contact me if you'd like.

Update October 23, 2016:

Likely there will be no Halloween stories as my harassers just wouldn't let up. So I'll be continuing the books after I've relocated to a new community that I've picked. If I change my mind before then, you'll be the first to know.

Brian Joseph Johns

Butterfly Dragon Cancelled...

Thanks to the abuse and efforts of very nasty cult in Toronto and elsewhere in the world, The Butterfly Dragon will no longer be continued.

Mostly this is based upon the actions of an abusive cult in the Toronto area and the fact that this cult believes that my book is not original. I believe that the motives are more based upon the activities of a racist cult that is prevailing in many parts of the world against Oriental culture.

The book that I wrote is original and I believe that a criminal gang conducted illegal surveillance or used a keylogger to steal my book as I wrote it. I reported this concern to the authorities several times but was never assisted on the matter. Not to mention that a criminal gang seems to be operating in strength in the area that I live, and seem to be in control of this form of spying and using it for such theft.

The same fate will affect A Lady's Prerogative and for the same reasons.

Most of my efforts will be focused on a legal battle against the group responsible and getting an official investigation in place into this activity in Toronto and elsewhere.

Much of it was racist as well targeting the race of my character Heylyn Yates because I created her as a Mandarin Chinese character. Instead the gang responsible seemed to want the character to be Italian, and for that culture also to be my real life love interest and not my current Mandarin Chinese love interest. So this was deliberate racist sabotage by an organized criminal gang whose activities I will never keep quiet about.

Perhaps when law enforcement takes reports seriously in such matters, low income earners like myself won't be compromised by criminal operations with the ability to spy illegally upon private citizens for the purposes of theft of creative property.

I will post the exact same message on Tales Of The Sanctum which will signal a cessation to any further work on either property.

Keep in mind as well that while this activity was going on, I was also being stalked and abused by neighbors, members of my community and other people in the city of Toronto in a sort of love/hate competition. It has been a very unnerving experience and right now if I was offered the chance to leave my country and go to Korea, Japan or China and work shoveling ditches for a living, I'd take it in a heartbeat and never return.

That's how betrayed I feel.

I will continue to write though I will never work on The Butterfly Dragon or A Lady's Prerogative characters or stories again as a result of this ordeal.

Both the series' books are my creative properties and my creation, though a group of very nasty people tried to steal them. So I did not take them down because I had done any wrong in any way at all. I took them down because I'd been done wrong by an abusive group of people. I am not on the blue team and never will be.

With regret,

Brian Joseph Johns

Yesterday

Time is so baffling. I mean we think we know it and then it blows us away. Kind of like space. We all really think that we know it but... When it comes to really knowing, both time and space just kick our collective... Something.

I mean yesterday, I was fixing toys. In kindergarten. They thought that I was a miracle. A healer. A doctor. Healing their dolls. I mean I was smart and convincing but I never pulled one over on them. No. Because I believe in something.

God? I can't answer that as surely as I think that God couldn't. Did Einstein believe in God? Maybe that's an obvious answer. How about Oppenheimer? A bit more difficult. Planck? Now we're talking...

My father grew up during a time that I can't even understand. So did my Mother.

Hippies at Woodstock representing human consciousness through music. The revolution. The righteous after all would rule the world.

The meek. Those who'd rise up to claim it. Who invented that?

No meek ones came. They'd all ended. They're kind of predictable that way because meek people never conflict. It's absolute with them.

We're present after all. Like attendance in class. Oh! I can't get this diary!

Alicia leans her head down on the page.

Heylyn sees her from the corner of the room.

It's a classroom after all. They're all free.

So, You Think You Know The Inspiration For The Witch And The Butterfly Dragon...

If that title doesn't get your attention then I don't know what will.

I'm a comic book fan in case you don't know. I've been as such since my early childhood. Part of a multicultural revolution a bit before my time (Woodstock,  Trudeau, United Nations, Comic Books, Star Wars). Get the picture? I've never been in a time where heroes weren't represented in just about every culture.

Some of the action superhero action figures I had from the order I had them thanks to my parents:

Superman (x5 over my life)
Spiderman (x5 over my life)
Hulk (x4  over my life)
Batman
Iron Man (x3 over my life)
Falcon (x2 over my life)
Thing (x1 over my life)

My friends and I were avid gamers. Video games hadn't really matured because most computers were card based (punch cards I mean) or video games just didn't exist.

Women superhero figures just did not exist.

That may sound a bit sexist but I was one of the fortunate guys to live around a generation of Women who were really heroes. Hence heroes of our own referring to Women heroes of my time who stood beside, not behind the male heroes.

I lived in a time where roleplaying games (Dungeons and Dragons, Marvel Heroes were the two main role playing games we'd play) were the means of expression of this idea. However! While we were playing pen and paper and pythagorian dice based games, we knew real life Women who were actually living what we were playing!

Miranda was one such Woman, who is amongst the inspirations for the real life Butterfly Dragon. She's a real life mixed martial artist ahead of her time and rightly beside Tamela an inspiration for all Women. Miranda has been as such for as long as I've been taller than 4 feet. I mean literally that she's a real life superhero much like Tamela Hutchinson and Kelly Hu. While we were playing role playing games, they were Women who were really out there doing what we were imagining.

Between them (Miranda, Tamela, Katrina and a plethora of other Women that really did it! They became superheroes!). My Mother was a costume designer as a hobby and seamstress, designing outfits for her stage performances (she's a Juno nominated vocalist) eventually designing outfits for multicultural visual artists. Between Miranda, Tamela, Katrina, Kelly Hu and my Mother, and the Woman of my dreams (Yi Chen), the Butterfly Dragon emerged.

So for superheroes, my friends and I played via pen and paper for years before the onset of computer games. Pen and paper games allow for a lot of great characterization and interaction not to mention one of the greatest arts: thespian arts.

When I see the Marvel and DC universe emerge before my eyes as envisioned by their creators, I am absolutely amazed and inspired. I mean we saw and played heroes of incredible proportions in ways few could imagine long before they became manifest on the big screens.

It is incredible to be inspired by such heroes now whether through pen and paper, video games or a real dojo where heroes are inspired constantly.

If you are a parent raising children. I would highly suggest martial arts training through an official Sensai. The Women that I've known in my life have literally become such heroes of training etching a path for the humble to follow to become the enlightened and heroic.

By the way, heroes of role playing like Gary Gygax are inspirations etching paths in ways that few of us (Women and Men) have ever dreams despite our culture. They've broken down cultural doors that few of us even knew existed.

Anthony Mackie is an amazing Falcon by the way just as had Toby Macguire been the most amazing Spiderman. Toby until this day has been the Spiderman I'd seen in the comics. Sam Raimi took Stan's vision from it's innocence into a mature graphic interpretation of the web head. I so wish that Sam's Spiderman had visited the Secret Wars but maybe that will occur under Marvel's universe. Andrew Garfield evolved Spiderman into the Tod Rungdren penned Spidey that we'd all known in the post Spawn era.

Secret Wars? I mean Secret Wars the original. You don't know about Secret Wars? The Beyonder? The real and I mean real origin of Spiderman's black suit?

So thanks to all those thespians and actors performing our childhood with such incredible imagination and performance.

That's what makes it an art.

Thanks Mir, Tam, Kat and Rita (my Mom!) for making Women into heroes!

Brian Joseph Johns

PS: If Scott and Rob and I have to live through this again, I'd suggest following Lucas's vision because he had it right. Listening to Disney because they are concerned with reminding us all that we're all heroes of every background. We're all a part of this wonderful and conflicting world.

Most of all. Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. Ancient history has reminded us of this again and again.

Thank you Disney and the great thespians that have realized the vision.

I'll bet that they'd make great! role players in a role playing game like Dungeons and Dragons or Marvel Heroes.

PPS: Buzz, Miles, Pete, Darryl Olsen (the best DM I've ever heard of), Eric Weisengruber (the best DM next to Pete Borav and Miles Hutcheson that I've ever played). Steven Sampson, Darrell Haines and many others of epic creativity.

Why then does the Aerth Mother of A Lady`s Prerogative have that look in her eyes?

I hope that Disney and other media conglomerates look into what it is that makes such great story tellers as my friends. They'd realize that I grew up in a time and place where we could all be heroes and inspirations. Women and Men of all origins and cultures alike.

If they look at my stories, well that's a bonus but not required.

After all, I'm a product of great family and friends. :-)

The Butterfly Dragon is a Mandarin Chinese female character who has emigrated with her family from China at a young age. She symbolically is the concept piece behind the motif of the books which essentially is about East meeting West. Her family name in the book is Ai Yuanlin Ying. Her Father gives her and her family a new name upon their arrival in North America of Heylyn Yates in order to avoid stigmas that might affect her development in her new home.

Chances are in person you'd never hear me talking like this. I'm a much harder character than I etch onto the digital or paper page, and very different than the person I started out as but suffice it to say that this is the real me. Unchilled and unarmored and way different than the person I have to be in my daily struggles. Most of those struggles are against people who'd much rather paint me in a different light.

Brian Joseph Johns



PS: There have been a lot of attempts to steal my identity or my creative works by impersonating my computer and some of my online accounts from other computers. In other words, someone operating under one of my online accounts but using that account from another computer other than the two that I own. Mostly so far that I have seen this has occurred with some of my gaming related accounts (possibly my Steam account and perhaps one or two other accounts). So no official communication has been made by any identity thieves through my social media accounts as far as I can tell but they've been trying to impersonate my computer activity from other computers. In my city I live in 200 Sherbourne Street in apartment 701 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. All of my computer activity should only originate from within that place and from one of two computers in that apartment. I operate both via a VNC client and server within my residence.

Recently one of the reasons that I have not posted any new material for The Butterfly Dragon or A Lady's Prerogative was to investigate these occurrences which have seemingly been used in effort to steal some of my intellectual and creative properties. I don't mean like a VPN (which I've used maybe three or four times myself), but rather someone purposely trying to make it seem like that accounts associated with my computers and identity were coming from somewhere and someone else in another location other than my living space in Toronto.

The first Butterfly Dragon book was actually published online as I wrote it from August of 2012 on http://poetryandfiction.blogspot.ca. There has been many attempts by a cult to steal it and even to associate it with other cultures (to steal it away from its relation Chinese culture).

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