Declaration of War
The interview content was already barreling toward its final stretch.
The next person up was already the tenth applicant, after all.
And that person was the one I'd been watching more carefully than anyone else in today's interviews.
Na-ro-si — the hexagon talent of the Minecraft scene.
So after sending off the ninth interviewee, I used a ten-minute break as an excuse and quietly picked up my phone.
Time to snoop on the FM Community's reaction.
Most of the posts coming up were positive. The viewer numbers backed that up too, so I was clearly doing something right.
But from here on out was the real hurdle.
Looking at how the community sees her, it's obvious…
Na-ro-si's incident had been fully cleared up, and yet the number of people who actually knew the details was painfully low. The moment she left Freeca, she'd already slipped out of the public eye. Even with the problem resolved, there was no going back to Freeca — and so even her explanation stream had barely drawn any attention, watched by only a tiny handful of people.
Which meant the truth had never properly gotten out.
That was why today's interview mattered. At least right now, over five thousand viewers were watching this seat. I needed to put a clean, definitive end to that old incident and move on. Only then could I bring Na-ro-si into V-Live Company without a storm of backlash trailing behind her.
"Mayo, tell the next person to come in."
"Ugh… Mayo did not show up today expecting to play errand girl, geosida. Mayo was gonna yell at the interviewees and throw her weight around and lock down the discipline for real, geosida."
"Enough with the nonsense."
"Tch!"
With Mayo's grumbling still hanging in the air, someone stepped into the Discord channel.
"Hel…lo. I'm Na-ro-si. Thank you for having me today. I'll do my best."
A voice that sounded slightly drooping, almost cowed. Going through that public pile-on had clearly gutted a lot of her confidence on stream. Nearly a month had passed, and she still sounded like this.
Yeah. For a woman in her early twenties with barely any real-world experience, that kind of thing is no joke.
Still — today, for her own sake, she had to dig deep and push through. I'd talked her into showing up, sure, but I hadn't guaranteed her a pass. That was only natural. I recognized her talent, but talent and public opinion were separate problems. A streamer always had to keep one eye on the court of public opinion. If Na-ro-si couldn't cleanly explain the ugly mess she'd been through on her own, right here on this stage, I'd have no choice but to think twice about recruiting her.
I've helped enough. The rest is on her.
Over five thousand people watching. Just building her this stage was, in my book, the full extent of what I could do.
"Alright then… let's begin."
Each interviewee got five to ten minutes. Fortunately, Na-ro-si seemed to have steadied herself. A little tremor still clung to her voice, but she started working through her prepared material step by step.
First up: a self-introduction via PowerPoint. Most of it leaned hard into her Minecraft career and skill level, with a few cover song videos from her YouTube channel sprinkled in. She'd transferred platforms relatively early, so she understood the Pangea TV vibe well enough to put together something clean and polished. Above all, her long Minecraft track record was a clear standout compared to the other interviewees — and as the presentation went on, she shook off the nerves. Her voice and diction got sharper by the minute.
The fans' reaction was positive too.
Good. If it kept going like this, we'd sail through without a hitch… and that was the exact moment it hit.
regjireojg donated 5 Candies
In an instant, the air around us felt like it had frozen solid.
A username so random you could tell at a glance it was a throwaway alt. And that slimy malice dressed up as "just sharing information" — it made my skin crawl.
Were there plants in the chat?
In seconds, additional "information" started flooding the chat window — and every scrap of it was wildly one-sided and distorted. Just like that, Na-ro-si was branded as the person who'd been forced out of Freeca after getting exposed as a feminist.
In that moment, I was certain.
The Pangea Broadcast Gallery scumbags had been lying in wait, and now they'd made their move. These disgusting cockroach bastards.
The real problem was that viewers who knew nothing were getting swept up in the agitation and starting to pile onto Na-ro-si. And the Pangea Broadcast Gallery trash didn't stop there. They casually pointed out that she and I had both come out of the same Wooga-dol audition — that there was no way Seo-a wouldn't have known about an incident like that. That unless I shared the same "ideology," there was no reason I'd accept someone like her as an interviewee. Now they were aiming at me too.
Their so-called evidence: Na-ro-si hadn't been one of the ten people selected by upvote ranking — she'd been one of the three wild-card picks I'd chosen myself. From that single fact, they spun conspiracy theories about backroom deals and pre-existing personal connections.
These scumbags really are professionals when it comes to framing people.
Watching how fast the situation escalated, you could honestly call them pros in this particular field. I hadn't confirmed it yet, but they were almost certainly running the same operation on the FM Community at the same time — uploading maliciously edited materials through alts and stoking the fire. You could tell just from the viewer count climbing in real time. Growth this unnatural only made sense if something had gone viral on the community boards.
A whole wave of people were pouring in and immediately dropping weird messages — clearly having just come from whatever smear posts were circulating on the FM Community. Watching that, furious fans started hurling insults in chat, and the stream descended into pure chaos. Before long, the viewer count broke ten thousand.
"Ah— n-no, that's… um—"
Faced with a situation deteriorating at breakneck speed, Na-ro-si couldn't string a sentence together. She started trembling. It looked like the PTSD from a month ago had come roaring back.
I let out a short sigh.
I'd wanted this to go smoothly, if at all possible. But of course the Pangea Broadcast Gallery garbage had to go and start something.
No — actually, this was better.
Better to end it with real impact in front of over ten thousand people than to half-ass an explanation and move on.
I cranked the volume all the way up and hit play on the "magic song" — the one guaranteed to silence a screaming chat.
Baam—ba-baam-baam-ba—baam-ba-ba-ba—!
A thunderous reveille trumpet blast that snapped every last person awake. The chat window, mid-PTSD spiral, fell into dead silence all at once.
"Ahem. Mic check. One two three. Can you all hear me? I'm going to say a few words now. To all you pieces of trash who came here to stir up shit."
I drew the blade for a declaration of war.