Just Eat Shit
The volume bar on the streaming software jumped once.
Then the chat window erupted in a wave of text, as if every viewer had just mainlined a shot of dopamine.
That was the filtered version. The actual vitriol had been worse.
Most of the people who'd gathered for this stream were here to kill one VTuber.
Right about here…
Click.
I flipped the tablet on to play along with their little song and dance. A cute girl appeared over the black screen, face crumpled into a pout.
"I almost said V-sniping—"
Whoops. Close call.
"…Someone I know told me that yesterday's stream blew up into a whole controversy."
The moment I layered on the teary voice, the toxic bastards only got more excited.
They were putting on a whole parade among themselves. At this point my stream wasn't even mine anymore.
Not that I was panicking. I'd seen all of this coming.
"People on the communities were looking at my play and calling me a ringer, a V-body uncle, so…"
"When I heard that I couldn't even sleep… I was scared to turn the stream on…. But there was something I absolutely had to say to those people, so I found the courage and went live."
Whatever the chat was screaming, I moved to the next step.
The asset I'd prepared ahead of time. The second I hit the button to put it on screen—
—a middle finger flipped them off.
"Just go eat shit."
At the exact same moment, the avatar bloomed into a dazzling smile.
Ah…! So this was catharsis?
The satisfaction of smacking the back of the head of every bastard who'd been lining up nails for my coffin was almost too good to be real.
"I played that on pure skill, so what's all this ringer, V-body uncle nonsense. Whew. Saying it out loud feels so much better."
A bomb of a statement. A nuclear bomb, detonated at the absolute peak.
No one had seen that attitude coming, and the chat dissolved into pure chaos.
At this point I was half-worried the chat would actually explode. Then again, after a move like that, if they didn't go wild I'd be the one left embarrassed.
And then the donations started flooding in!!
The dizzying chat plus the TTS on top of it painted a scene that could only be described as hell.
"A-a hundred dollars!! Thank you so much!!"
Had to do the job. I bobbed my head in a series of bows, then guided the mouse toward LoL.
"And people keep saying turn on the cam, but Mom said I'm still too young to show my face carelessly."
A lie, of course—but any ordinary parent would say the same thing. Maybe for an official broadcast it'd be different, but what parent would be happy about their kid putting their face or even their hands out on an internet stream full of ugly rumors?
"So if anyone's mad about it, come on in."
The client that appeared was logged into an account that had just hit level thirty. I'd set it to the level where you could queue ranked, and that number alone was proof of a complete newbie.
This was a game that had been around for well over a decade, after all.
They'd start screaming about smurfs later, sure—but I had no intention of entertaining that either.
Click.
Next up: create a custom game.
"Nicknames for people who want to 1v1."
At that command-like invitation, nicknames poured in like they'd been waiting for the cue.
It was still a 5v5 team game at its core, but AOS had a whole culture of pure skill lane matchups. First kill or first turret push took the win.
"NotA… Minion…."
I snagged one of the nicknames that stood out from the rapid flood and sent the invite. A viewer joined immediately.
Gold tier was stamped next to the nickname. Back in the day that had still meant you were somewhat decent; these days the rank points were so inflated that any dog or cow could get there.
"Wow, Gold is pretty high, right?"
Play dumb first. Right now I was an unranked player who'd just hit thirty.
One sharp comment in the middle got buried under the firepower. Well, I could always say "I looked it up yesterday" for that kind of thing—but with a big event running, there was no need to answer every little detail.
Clang—
I hit the start button without hesitation, and the pick screen appeared with the sound effect. Champions had to be bought with cash or in-game currency, so of course a newbie account only had a handful.
And what did that mean?
Even if I wanted to go easy, I couldn't.
Every single one of them was a champ I was good at. Buying your mains first was just standard, after all.
"I'll pick first, so counters are welcome."
Even in a game this close to pure skill, matchups existed. Tanks you couldn't kill no matter what. Champions weak to CC. Of course, in the face of overwhelming skill, that kind of thing became meaningless.
5! 4! 3…
The countdown began.
Just looking at those chats made me smile.
Wipe the Gold first.
Farm some Bronze who didn't know their place.
Shove the turret against a Diamond who kept stubbornly hanging on.
"Pfft… Try a little harder, okay?"
As natural as water flowing downhill—the result was so obvious I was yawning. As if any of them were going to be a match for me.
Even at the pro level, the moment I pulled out Amelia, the other team would just write that lane off from the start.
If you could visualize the viewers right now, every single mouth would be hanging open. The performance I'd shown today was on a completely different track from what I'd put up in Laso yesterday.
Being a real-time multiplayer game, the pure skill aspect couldn't help but stand out more.
"I'll take one last person."
I couldn't just sit here doing 1v1s for hours straight. Figuring I'd shown enough, I sent the final invite.
"Oh!"
The one who walked into the lobby was Master tier. Even in a season that handed out points like free candy, Master and above was still a realm you couldn't reach without solid fundamentals.
Same as always—Amelia pick. The opponent watched my champion through the stream and locked in late.
Just as expected.
What he'd chosen was Jax, famously a hard counter to Amelia. A champ that could beat auto-attack-based fighters like a rented mule.
But maybe the nerves got to him.
"…What are you even doing?"
A level-one fight. Barely a minute into the game. The opponent forced a fight, got reverse-toured, and bailed at light speed.