Thorough Preparation

After that, I ran through all kinds of tests.

The classic virtual streamer skillset — every talent that counted as table stakes.

I sang. I drew. I put on trending dance videos and tried to follow along. I fired up popular games and played them.

Once I was done, I had a rough estimate of where I stood.

Did I just get a straight port of my male stats?

Shockingly, they were almost identical to what I'd had as a man.

Strip away the gender change and the looks buff, and everything felt familiar.

"This is a win."

Singing and voice work were a little underwhelming, sure — but having even one solid weapon was something. Gaming in particular might not hit with the same one-shot impact as a great vocal, but it was the ultimate comfort-food talent in streaming. Nothing melted hours quite like a good game.

As a guy, mid-tier game skill wouldn't have meant much. As a girl, it's a different story.

On the streaming scene, a man had to compete with ex-pros just to be called good at games. A woman only needed to be decent to get applause. Dance was the same — next to singing, the competition barely existed. Used right, these were abilities with real upside.

"Alright. Now I've got a read on things."

I sketched out, in my head, what I needed to sell viewers on in the debut stream. Flashy video, a clean, polished PPT — the whole package would land completely differently from those early virtuals who'd just muddled their way onstage.

More than anything, I need to lock down the major talking points first.

This October was exactly when Pangea TV's virtual wave would truly start to rise. Put another way: the easiest window to build a fixed fanbase. Miss this chance, and I'd be stuck in a much uglier fight against the flood of virtual "new girls" that came after.

Prep hard, land one big score. Let's go!

Four years of amateur streaming pride lit up inside me.

It took exactly one month and ten days.

That was the moment I scraped past my own debut pass mark — a self-administered evaluation, of course. Call a shut-in keyboard-warrior viewer arrogant for grading herself if you want, but I had future intel on my side.

The first thing I reached for was the avatar.

Time and money both ruled out a full original, so I made the call: a Ttu-tta avatar based on Yume, the hottest base around the audition period. For the artist, I went to Bebe-ttang — one of the three big-name creators who would later be known as Kim Ibe.

— Originals: Kim Choco.

— Facials: Lee Jiyong.

— All-rounder: Bebe-ttang.

Three years from now, their waitlists would be so packed you could barely get a reply. But right now, with the virtual market still unformed, pay them well enough and you could even expect friendly after-service.

The avatar really does matter. Seriously.

From 2023 on, as virtuals took off for real, everyone and their mother started debuting as one. Not just rookies — plenty of existing small-time streamers tore down their whole brand and re-debuted virtual. That meant a lot of people just grabbed free avatars dumped in the avatar booths, and every time the galleries saw one of those, the boards filled with rage posts.

I held roughly the same view. An ugly avatar in the thumbnail was a high barrier to entry all by itself. Even during the auditions, streamers with pretty avatars and perfectly matched facials pulled serious popularity — even when their singing, the supposed core of the audition, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was garbage. People lean hardest on sight out of all the senses, so for a virtual, the avatar was the top priority, full stop.

Avatar next, then gear.

A computer as the baseline, plus an iPhone for facial tracking, an audio interface, a mic, and so on. Ideally I'd have bought top-of-the-line everything, but available funds had limits. Computer first priority; everything else, value picks. I even put soundproofing up in the room.

Honestly, the gear shopping was nothing compared to the hell of audio setup.

I finally understood why the job "sound engineer" existed. Come to think of it, plenty of audition contestants had blown it on audio settings too. On that front I shelved any half-baked stubbornness and paid for a pro. When you invest, you invest properly. Audio setup was treated as a skill in its own right in the streaming world — a hypersensitive issue — so I had it done clean.

By the time I'd gotten that far, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my account balance had plummeted to eighteen million won in a blink.

Ugh… I still needed an original avatar and a full-body tracker if I wanted those…

Income: zero. Expenses: everything. My hands were shaking.

Next on the list: vocal lessons.

Not some dreamy plan about building from the fundamentals, step by careful step. I was an efficiency maximalist. I signed up at a vocal academy with one goal: finish exactly two songs over two months. For the audition, two songs were all I needed.

Singing's drowning in natural talents. I'm not overwhelmingly good, so keeping the song pipeline open forever is just bad efficiency.

Sharpening broadcast charisma was the smarter play than singing. That said, I needed the material, so I filmed and edited every vocal lesson. Whew — editor fees were no joke either. And the costs during the audition itself wouldn't be light. All of it was an investment in the future. With that thought, I soothed my burning stomach and kept prepping the debut stream hard.

The studio was already built and decorated too.

"Everything's good… except the promo."

September 2022. Pangea TV was still a wasteland for virtuals. Star University was burning through its last spectacular blaze. Even the word "virtual" itself felt unfamiliar. A handful of streamers would play YouTube clips of famous Rabbit TV virtual groups on stream, but that was about it. So there was nowhere obvious to promote.

Pan-beo-gal didn't exist yet, and I couldn't exactly drop promo for a Pangea TV debut into Rabbit TV's virtual-related galleries.

"No choice. FM Community it is."

If the galleries were the underground, FM Community was the sunny side of the streaming world. Call them both just communities if you want — I wouldn't argue — but the scale difference was night and day. Popular-post view counts alone ran dozens of times higher.

Dig a little deeper and the difference was this: FM Community was real-name verified, so people still played dress-up with personas; the galleries had none of that, free-range from NSFW to parental insults. Depending on the gallery admin's temperament, some still ran with a "line" they wouldn't cross — the Pan-beo-gal I'd been active in was one of those.

"Tch. First promo post in a while."

What was this unfamiliar feeling? Still, my fingers started moving almost immediately. Just the promo posts I'd written after Lucy's transfer would fill several pages. Every time anything happened, I'd run to FM Community and drop a promo. Along the way, my aggro-baiting skills had leveled up massively. You had to hook people hard first — that was how even one more person would actually read the post.

Short, sharp aggro title and body. Pangea TV stock had been falling for five straight trading days, printing new lows. All-in market-open buy on a stock like that? Of course it pulled aggro. Views spiked in seconds; upvotes and comments multiplied.

"Nailed that one."

In under a minute, my post was locked in as a popular thread. Three years of promo posts hadn't been wasted. My skills weren't dead yet!

I browsed the comments racing in for a while, then realized it was Lucy's live time and headed over to Rabbit TV. Fired up the IP-spoofing program and connected to Lucy's stream.

For the past month I'd clocked in to Lucy's stream without fail, slowly building familiarity — the classic "parasocial grind," basically. Something a streamer was supposed to avoid, but Lucy was still a broadcasting rookie barely past her hundred-day mark, so she couldn't tell the difference. Her handful of viewers also shrugged it off once I revealed I was a girl prepping my own debut.

Thanks to that, we'd gotten close fast. Of course, that was only possible because I'd spent three pre-regression years watching her streams and mastering her personality and tastes. Lucy was painfully shy with strangers — this was no small achievement. Through steady effort, we'd even started chatting on Discord off-stream now and then.

The second I mentioned a Pangea TV transfer, chat went wild. For a room with barely ten viewers, the chat firepower was impressive — a clear measure of how much hostility Rabbit TV viewers held toward Pangea TV. Rabbit TV's growth had been built by streamers and viewers peeling off from Pangea TV in the first place, so ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it was only natural.

Not easy. Still — Lucy transferred early next year before the regression, so persuasion isn't impossible. I just need to give her a reason to trust me that much.

If my stream locked in successfully on Pangea TV, convincing Lucy would gain real momentum. That was why tomorrow's debut stream mattered more than anything.

For me.

And for Lucy.