A Contest to Stop the Révolution
Revolution. Révolution. The Lie Down emote flooding the fan cafe. A lawless zone….
It had not even been a month since the one-hundred-thousand celebration stream, and Marchen's NewTube was already staring down two hundred thousand subscribers.
…Too fast!
Even granting that the pledge buff had rocketed her to a hundred and fifty thousand, this was absurd. The growth had finally seemed to be cooling, and then the Techsecular First Clear video went up, and the slump took off again as if someone had jammed a stimulant into it.
Fast growth was good. Of course it was good, but….
"I haven't even gotten my Silver Play Button yet…!"
She had not even done the Silver Play Button unboxing stream…!!!
Hitting two hundred thousand subscribers before the Silver Play Button even arrived. Something she had never imagined had gone and happened anyway.
…It'll show up before three hundred thousand, right? Surely. It has to, right?
Either way, two hundred thousand was close enough that one good stumble would land her on it, which meant she needed celebration content for the milestone. She needed to prepare something, and yet….
Of all things, the VR dating-sim content she had earmarked for two hundred thousand had already been burned on the First Clear celebration. And lately it had been boss First Clears, song practice, this and that—her head a complete mess. She had no ideas at all.
…Should I just skip it this time? Three NewTube subscriber-milestone streams in a single month does feel a little excessive.
I closed my eyes and started imagining how the viewers would react if I announced I was simply letting the two-hundred-thousand celebration pass.
"Revolution. Révolution. The Lie Down emote on the fan cafe. A lawless zone…."
…Yeah. I was going to have to prepare something, even if it was simple. What should I do? What would actually stop the révolution?
Thinking that, I turned NewTube on.
"THIS IS IT!!"
I had successfully scavenged a decent piece of content.
The fan cafe had originally been built to collect contest submissions. After the fan-art contest, though, not a single proper event had been held, and by now it had all but lost its original purpose.
"For the two-hundred-thousand-subscriber celebration, I'm thinking of holding a contest for the first time in a while."
With that, I declared that the fan cafe would finally be used for what it was made for. The viewers' reaction?
Exactly the fiery response I had been hoping for. First, a light pass over the important questions popping up in chat.
"Ah, this time I'm planning a contest that doesn't need all that much preparation."
In other words, there was no need to hand out a month-long deadline the way the last fan-art contest had.
"And it is not a Raider contest. The Raider contest is for later, once I've burned through all the Raider content and I'm in nothing-left-to-do, scratch-scratch, bunny-girl mode."
For the record, if I could actually pull a Raider contest off, I was open to borrowing a little help from AY Entertainment and scaling the thing up. The dream scenario was backing from WorldMaker and an official stamp on it… but my manager had already mentioned that landing Raider-related work would not be easy, so it was probably right not to expect much on that front.
…Still, a contest hosted by Raider's inaugural champion. Wouldn't they at least be a little interested?
"This one's actually pretty popular content, you know? The moment I reveal it… gasp! Hipster redhead Marchen does this kind of content too?! Mainstream enough to get you a reaction like that."
"That would be…?!"
I cut myself off there and let the pause breathe. Rice needs to rest before it tastes right, and ramen needs to rest before you can greet those springy noodles. Words, too, only get their flavor if you let them sit for just the right beat.
…Now!!
"The Viewer Room Voyeur Contest!!"
Perfect timing.
And a perfect reaction…?
"…Ah."
There had been words like observe and look around.
"…All roads lead to Rome. The meaning got across, didn't it?"
…That's how you're going to read it?!
"STOP THE FAKE NEWS!!!!"
There was a minor uproar over the contest's name, but it quieted once the title was changed to the Viewer Room Tour Contest. Good. Then, once more….
"All right! The two-hundred-thousand-subscriber Viewer Room Tour Contest! How do you enter? It's really simple! Post a photo of your room on the contest board and add a description, and you're done! Not hard, right?"
A wave of blazing enthusiasm rolled out of chat to greet me.
…The chats I sent are still part of the chat window, so there was absolutely nothing wrong with calling it a blazing enthusiastic response.
"Now, since it's a contest, there'll be rankings, right? So how are we deciding those rankings? What are the judging criteria? Before I explain the criteria, we're going to have a little audiovisual-materials appreciation time."
Saying that, I uploaded the post I had saved as a draft to the newly made contest board.
"You can treat this post as an upload example. Oh, and for the record, every photo used in it is of my room."
Lines hyping me up, paired with bits pretending to be paid shills. On a normal day I would have played along, but it was about time to keep the show moving….
"No, that's just because I'm a bed enthusiast."
Cleanly shut down. If this had been baseball, I could have swung for a home run, couldn't I?
And so the audiovisual appreciation time began. The visual material was a photo of my room, the merch lined up so neatly it worked as genuinely excellent interior design. The audio material was an explanation delivered in a voice so lovely that even a nightingale would bash its own head in out of respect. Put the two together, and you had an audiovisual package nobody could refute.
"Like this—you take one shot that shows the whole room, then photograph the points in your room you especially want to highlight, and upload those."
I said it while scrolling down, at a pace careful enough that nobody would miss a photo. But all things end, and the scroll was no exception. I rolled the mouse wheel and the page refused to move any farther. Once I confirmed it had hit the bottom, I dragged it back to the top, then clapped a couple of times.
"It's my room, so I can explain it well enough out loud, right? That's why I didn't bother writing a separate description. But I know my room, and I don't know yours. So adding a description to help people understand would be the icing on the cake, wouldn't it?"
That finished the basic explanation. What remained was the photo limit, the judging criteria, and how much prize money had been prepared…. Something like that, probably.
Of course my viewers were far more interested in my merch than in the contest rules.
Look at that passionate sight—people who couldn't hold it in and spent a donation just to ask about merch. How nice it would have been if those questions had been about the contest. But I was a professional streamer with roughly sixteen months on the job, so I tucked the disappointment away and answered diligently.
"The Deungsindae takes up as much space as it takes up, so I displayed it in the living room. As for Raider merch, I want to fill that out with official goods if I can, so I'm waiting with my neck stretched out for news that official merch is going on sale."
…But once I actually buy Raider merch, where would be a good place to display it?
To settle that question on the spot, I slowly scrolled down again and looked over the photos of my room once more—a room neither excessive nor lacking, a room the words the golden mean suited almost embarrassingly well. What could I take out of there to make room for Raider merch…? No. Better to buy a new display case and put the Raider merch in the streaming booth, so the place felt like a Raider hotspot. I gave a light nod, then opened my mouth.
"All right! Now that the audiovisual appreciation is over——"