\u201cYou are streaming this, aren’t you.\u201d Alice suddenly looked and felt very very tall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo,\u201d he said, as he shrank and turned round, \u201cwhat?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They both rushed over to the corner (well ok, she went and he followed) and the perpetrator stood there, still recording.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBruv got pwned hard and bitched her out lololol\u201d as he commentated to his audience, he waved his free hand around for extra ummmm hype<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d protested the confessor, \u201cyou told me you wouldn’t stream!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAhahaha, look he’s crying now, this is delicious, the salt is real!!!\u201d As this rather annoying person swung the camera around to put himself in the picture, Alice noticed the back of his head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShouldn’t you be more salty about your hair,\u201d she said with a restrained glee, \u201cit looks like your mum didn’t tell you her hand slipped.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow do you know my mum, hey wait, what? No, no, hey guys help me out here, there’s nothing wrong, is there something wrong? Oh shit!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alice grabbed her still burbling confessor by the arm and walked off, as the streamer made excuses to end the stream and go find a hat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Turning back to the bike sheds, she met her friend around the corner, who had also been filming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “What the fuck Candice,” making a point to screw up her face, “maybe you could have stepped in with a little back up?”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Candice met her look, restraining the urge to laugh and stood firm “Well I was recording the evidence! That’s good back up, isn’t it?”\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Candice definitely wasn\u2019t going to keep this material just in case it came in useful.\u00a0 She deflected quickly by turning to this random dude:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “And you, what was that about, is this a prank or what?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “My dog died,” he half mumbled “I\u2019m not, I don\u2019t even know what I\u2019m doing. I\u2019m sorry.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n They were silent. Candice knew she couldn\u2019t win from here without looking like a horrible person. Alice had totally forgotten about being called a bitch and now was trying to figure how the voices would react.\u00a0 Would they support her or troll her?\u00a0 She wondered about going offline for a while.\u00a0 The boy had resumed blubbering, so it seemed only right to take him to the soft drinks machine, and have him buy a round.\u00a0 And this was how Vindy found himself lucky enough to talk to two girls in real life at the same time who were not his cousins, for more than five minutes to boot. He described how he had seen the situation in anime before and the two girls burst into laughter.\u00a0 He decided to laugh along with them, as the tears returned.\u00a0 It then became a discussion on romance and chivalry and Vindy learnt in those five minutes that everything was a lie and nothing made sense as people were still successfully doing the things the girls advised not to do.\u00a0 The topic went a bit sideways as they discovered they shared tastes in anime and they shared contact details (Alice and Candice were like: yeah ok cool whatever, sub to my channel), <\/em>and in the end, the two girls considered him decent enough to friendzone.\u00a0 <\/em>And, later on, by following up on the topic and listening rather than bragging, Vindy became one of the three.\u00a0 As he walked back home, he continued to sniffle as he came to the conclusion he had no choice but to kill his dog to make sure his story was airtight.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a year ago now, and Vindy hadn\u2019t needed to end his canine companion, it had coincidentally ran out into the road, into the path of a car while the driver was looking at their phone, not that they would have had time to do anything, not even the voice assistant could have warned them in time, although the AI had seen the movement, predicted the outcome and had started the sentence, ending with reassurance that the event had been recorded and no blame would be levied. The phone had recorded game interaction at the time of the accident but as the voice assistant and the game were produced by the same company, certain domains were excluded from evidence, unless demanded by the courts.\u00a0\u00a0He mourned his old friend but not really until decades later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alice had started her channel, and while she bounced off the reactions to that original cringeworthy livestream and gathered up a following, she hadn\u2019t done anything in particular, bar the occasional comment on life. She had around half a thousand followers (and still wasn\u2019t sure why). She continued to look for something good she could stream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While she planned to be a streamer, Vindy still planned to marry her. Until then, he was happy to be the best friend he could, as nice as he could, and tolerate all the discussions about dating hot guys that often played out in front of him. He’d watched a lot of movies; a lot of romantic comedies. His mum said he was quite mature for his age. He would make a great husband, she said. His father slapped him on the back and reminded him to be nice, but not too nice. But that didn’t make much sense. What did make sense was being patient, being good, being reliable. She could get married and have kids and get divorced, he\u2019d still be there for her. She\u2019d figure it out. It was just a matter of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Candice just wanted to get through this life without any fuss, the sooner people left her alone to watch anime, the better. She didn\u2019t see the problem, she just wanted to chill out and watch anime. What more did she need from life? Anime is love, anime is life<\/em>. She often whispered this mantra to herself, more often than wondering about putting a gun to her head and pulling the trigger, where a stream of red butterflies burst forth from where blood and brains should have been. Who’s to say who would be free and how it could be achieved. The problem was how to verify it. How could anyone be sure there were free spirits sitting around right now without a care in the world, not needing to eat or sleep, just watching anime all day. Pure bliss, and that, that<\/em>, was the objective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nobody wanted to ask about real feelings about life and the future, it just seemed so intangible. Even when they did, they gave an answer they thought the others would accept, throwing out references to the injustice of the world and asking why couldn\u2019t everything simply be free. It seemed simple and it felt right; they refused to think in any other way. It was just too terrible to consider the alternatives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Nobody asked Alice in particular, while they sat on her bed in her nice house. But she was thinking, thinking about how nothing was certain now, but being this popular (500 followers I remind you) meant she could do whatever, but she should only fuck with attractive people for more media reach (she had done her research), which would give her the power so that when she found someone stupidly rich, their looks wouldn\u2019t be an advantage over her. She would use her history as leverage and they would have to settle (as she wasn\u2019t as pretty and rich herself, and needed to marry above her status, as she had seen on a chat stream). Then she could lay around the house and pool and just do whatever the hell she wanted, and create her own charity for dogs with cancer. That\u2019s the plan, yes, she would be fucking awesome, and do even better than the girl who won the singing competition at school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And now they sat all together, on the bed, watching an anime, keeping an eye on their devices, laughing at dumb people, people doing dumb things, quickly, rapidly, as the future continued to darken at an increasing pace, while other feelings slowly burned brighter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The assistant measured the components of the excreted sweat and recommended reducing his sodium intake. It also recommended installing a partner device in the toilet for more accurate results, sponsored by New! Reduced salt Crispy Crisps<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYeah, yeah, we get it\u201d, said the coach, aloud to himself, but not really. \u201cThe advertising is just so blatant these days.\u201d He knew the assistant wouldn\u2019t answer. But the intentions were fair, arguably; the products that were thrown in his face did actually match his interests. He still hated advertising in general, but didn\u2019t mind the discount coupons. \u201cI don\u2019t mind the coupons though\u201d, he reiterated aloud. The assistant didn\u2019t seem to do anything in response, and there was no light or sound to betray it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It occurred to him to get up and wipe his behind but the smallest room in the flat was warm and quiet. There was nobody waiting beyond this door, nobody aggravating him, no demands, well, there was the cat, but she was already dozing off in the underwear and jogging bottoms draped between his feet. Surely it stank but she seemed happy enough. So yeah, even less reason to move. He swiped open the feed and tried not to lean his neck forward, he had enough physical issues to deal with already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was the continued talk of the next GAFY game and what should be in it and how it should work. He noticed the trough of beta testers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is obvious\u201d he fed, to anyone who would eat, \u201cthat the players should get priority. It\u2019s all about the players, not those frauds who make one video and then move onto another game.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no immediate gobble of this feed but he continued, a little disheartened, as usual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt makes me sick when GAFY gives some random person beta access to the game when they have no idea how to fucking play it and just make it look shit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This got a few gobbles, but Coach remained disheartened as he guessed it got reach due to the expletives rather than anything else. He pressed onwards, like a soldier, into the jungle, in the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey better give keys to us, we know the game, we know what to test-\u201d a notification interrupted his post. Someone had replied to his sick<\/em> post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey should give Mr.Beardy99 a beta key. He\u2019s funny.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus<\/em>, he almost wept, is everyone on the net this stupid?<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI just bloody well told you, that prick\u201d – he deleted and started again<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSure he\u2019s funny but does he know how to play? Does he know the series?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As he tried working on his draft, there was another notification: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe\u2019s played it a few times, it\u2019ll be good lol.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The reply made Coach claw at his own face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They just don\u2019t get it. And why is he laughing when there\u2019s nothing funny in his sentence?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, he had assumed this poster was a guy. He waited for people to nominate himself as a choice for beta tester. None came. He checked his followers, all one hundred and twenty nine. Perhaps they were sleeping or the stupid network algorithm hadn\u2019t shown them the feed. He just had to wait. No, fuck that. \u201cThere are people in this community, like myself, who know and love the series, we would do the game justice, we know exactly HOW to test the game.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He tagged the community manager into the discussion. He knew he likely wouldn\u2019t get a direct response but he was fairly sure to read it. Good Lord he was going to be pissed if they made the wrong choices. He tried not to think about what he could do in retaliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Charles mulled one more time over the list while Dapi started to worry about other things, the notification vibrated in his pocket. Pulling it out, Charles looked over and verbally announced there might be another candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He cast the gobbling to the main screen in the room. They could clearly see the recommendations and Coach\u2019s reasoning, which started to look more like ranting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSee,\u201d said Charles, \u201cthis is the problem with giving it to the hardcore community, I mean, usually, these fans are going to dig through the game and find out everything very quickly if we give them early access. And they don\u2019t have that reach with new players. MrBeardy99 sounds like a good idea actually.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dapi nodded in agreement. \u201cOk, we don\u2019t have time so let\u2019s get going, to start, let\u2019s choose that crazy kid, he still seems like a good kid, and that woman with the huge\u2026 following, and MrBreardy90Nein.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Charles wanted to correct him but it just wasn\u2019t his place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cYou are streaming this, aren’t you.\u201d Alice suddenly looked and felt very very tall. \u201cNo,\u201d he said, as he shrank and turned round, \u201cwhat?\u201d They both rushed over to the corner (well ok, she went and he followed) and the perpetrator stood there, still recording. \u201cBruv got pwned hard and bitched her out lololol\u201d as… Continue reading 002.2 The Beta<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-glassinthesnow","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orochinagi.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orochinagi.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orochinagi.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orochinagi.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orochinagi.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/orochinagi.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24,"href":"https:\/\/orochinagi.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orochinagi.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orochinagi.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orochinagi.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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