The Rise of Dakota Cleveland

In many ways, Dakota Cleveland is a normal human being. In many other ways, she is not. Her name, for instance, is composed of two completely separate locations. She is also British, so it makes even less sense than it did before. 

“It’s a family tradition”, her father, Austin, once told her, when she was old enough to understand the meaning behind her name. Even after it was explained to her, she still didn’t get it. But she just went with it, as she did with most things. That was a fundamental aspect of her character: she just took things as they came. When she was 5, she had accidentally been locked in a cupboard, only to be found 3 hours later, as she had simply decided to not shout for help. When her parents had quizzed her as to why she had been so calm, she responded that she was in no particular danger, so there was no need to worry, or worry anyone else by causing a fuss. 

At 15, she won the “Most Improved” award for her local football team, presumably because, as the award suggests, she had improved the most. She thought it was cool, and a validation of her efforts, nothing more, nothing less. Her parents had drowned her in praise. 

“You are a credit to the Cleveland name, my darling!” Her mother had said, who was called Georgia, which really solved a problem from her husbands point of view. It feels important to add that they are happily married, and their marriage was not forced due to this one inescapable requirement of place names. 

Dakota couldn’t quite get to grips with her mothers statement, as by that age she was old enough to understand that the Cleveland name wasn’t exactly exclusive to the Cleveland family, and that by winning the award all she had really done was alert the local public to the fact that there was a family named only after locations. 

But awards were not the only thing Dakota was credited for. People often remarked at the indifference of her character; her amiable nature; how she spoke her mind, and yet seemed to despise nothing and nobody. And so as she grew into a mature young woman, Dakota Cleveland discovered that she was relatively at ease about most things in life, and that the only thing she had ever really hated was her name. This made the nature of her rise to global stardom a complicated issue. 

It started with a spontaneous appearance on television quiz show ‘Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?” Dakota’s mother had applied on her behalf, and Dakota had agreed to the application on the basis that she couldn’t see a reason why not to do it. And so when the letter came back that she had been accepted as a contestant, she dutifully fulfilled her mothers wishes and appeared on the show, 3 days after her 19th birthday. 

Almost immediately, it became clear to Dakota that someone high up in the show's production team had taken a certain fascination to her name, as that was all the host seemed to want to talk about. 

“So Dakota, tell us a bit about yourself, and maybe start with how you got that name!” Dakota really disliked the host to this particular show, but she responded anyway, in her usual matter of fact way. She explained how it was a family tradition that she had no control over, and that she didn’t really like it either. The audience, including the host, had then laughed at this remark, as if she had said something funny, even though Dakota was fairly sure that she had merely answered the question he had asked her. 

Once the laughing had died down, the host tried a different line of questioning. 

“So why do you want to be a millionaire, Dakota Cleveland?”

“I don’t.”

Dakota didn’t take very long to think about that question, because she realised very quickly that she didn’t want to be a millionaire, and that this was a completely pointless exercise, and a poor excuse for a day out. She then came to the conclusion that she could end this experience as quickly as it had begun by simply getting the first question wrong. 

So, when the host asked, for £100, “Who wrote the Harry Potter books?” Dakota responded instantly with “C, David Copperfield” and that was the end of that. The entire studio was stunned by this blatant refusal to take part, although some were left wondering if she was just horrifically misinformed on modern literature. 

Rather naively, Dakota presumed that that was the end of her brief television career. However, she couldn’t have been more wrong. In fact, her appearance on the show had gone viral, and she was now the focal point of a media frenzy.

She received a flurry of interview invitations, and her mothers initial disappointment at her actions had been replaced with budding excitement for her rising social media superstar. Dakota, true to her character, was unperturbed by these developments, and theorised that she may as well make everyone happy and appear on a talk show to discuss her abnormal behaviour.

She joined TV personality Max Galloway on his late night talk show ‘Late Night Talk with Max Galloway’ for what was meant to be a brief 5 minute interview. She ended up talking with Max for 25 minutes. Once again, she felt as though her name was being discussed for far too long, and every time she answered one of his many questions, he would laugh, and the audience would laugh too. If Dakota had been more self-conscious, she maybe would have felt that they were laughing at her, but she genuinely believed that they found her funny. She wasn’t going out of her way to be humorous, she was just speaking her mind, and apparently people liked this. 

Every time she appeared on a talk show, she was asked to appear on another. This cycle repeated over a month or two, with Dakota answering the questions she was asked, and the global audiences taking great interest in what she had to say. She was approached by multiple talent recruitment agencies who wished to “sign her” in order to get her on more shows, but she didn’t really see the point in that, as if someone wanted her on their show they could just ask her. 

But then Dakota stopped being asked to appear on talk shows, and started to be asked to host her own show. But she was unsure about this, as she wasn’t really bothered by what other people were doing, and she only talked about herself because people kept asking her too. Various studios asked her to write her own content, her own comedic material, and she constantly refused. She only told people things if they asked her. That was how she lived her life. 

Naturally, her refusal to further her television career led to a small decline in her popularity, and the natural buzz that had come from her many successive media appearances had gone as quickly as it came. 

But just as Dakota was preparing to move on with her life, she received a letter in the post. Addressed to her, the letter contained 2 pages worth of a written invitation to an awards night, but Dakota thought that only the first two sentences were really necessary. 

Dear Ms. Dakota Cleveland, we are delighted to inform you that you are the deserving winner of the ‘Global Community Comedian’ award, becoming the awards youngest ever recipient. We hope you can join us to celebrate this historic moment at our awards night, on the 22nd of February at the wonderful O2 arena in London. 

So that is how Dakota Cleveland found herself standing on a stage in front of a live audience of 20,000 and a global television audience of over 4 million people. She had shook hands with the host, accepted the award, and presumed that was the end of proceedings. Only when the host stopped talking and the audience stopped clapping did she realise that she was expected to make a speech. Now the issue that she had with this was that nobody had asked her a question, so she didn’t really have anything to say. She was also annoyed at herself for not anticipating this scenario, as of course people gave speeches when accepting awards.

It was quite the predicament. But if anyone could handle it, it was Dakota Cleveland. She took a deep breath, and started to talk. The words just seemed to flow out of her, and as she thought things she said them, with the audience hooked on every word. At one point when she mentioned the fact that she never meant to make anybody laugh with the things she said, the audience laughed, and Dakota, appreciating the irony, started to laugh too. So her speech to millions ended in her laughing hysterically at everybody's reaction to something she had said, which was quite poetic really when you think about it. 

And so concludes Dakota’s rise to global stardom. At present, she is speaking to the media as part of a panel of award winners from the evenings show. The question burning on every reporter's lips was asked almost immediately.

“So, what’s next for Dakota Cleveland?”

Dakota smiled, and did what she always did. She thought about it for a moment, and then answered the question. 

“I don’t know.”

But most importantly, she didn’t really care.