Miho's Idea
"We should probably put together a crew collab stream one of these days."
"Yeah. Doing something together would make the fans happier, and it'd actually give us some crew solidarity."
"LoL! Definitely LoL! Wait—but then we're four, so we're one short."
"Mayo, when Seo-a is talking, you listen properly first and then answer, okay?"
"Ugh! Lucy unnie is so boring. Total square!"
"H-how could you say something like that…"
Miho finally had a day off stream, so we managed to squeeze in a meeting even though it was late. After all the grinding and chaos we'd been through together, a real sense of camaraderie had started to settle in among us. Just listening to Mayo and Lucy talk was enough to show how much closer they'd gotten compared to the beginning.
"Lucy unnie's main is Olaf."
"What does that mean?"
…Or maybe the whole "closer" thing was just my imagination.
Ahem. Still, everyone agreed on one thing: the crew needed to do content together. Putting the crew name out there without ever actually collaborating would just be asking to get laughed at. The problem was deciding what to do.
LoL was a non-starter. Ranked needed five, and we only had four. Suggesting PUBG just to match the numbers didn't work either—aside from Miho and me, nobody had any experience. And neither of us was skilled enough to carry two complete beginners while teaching them on stream.
Just like that, the two biggest mainstream games got knocked out of contention.
"Then how about variety games? There's a ton of fun four-player stuff out there if you look."
You'd never guess it from looking at her, but Lucy actually enjoyed variety games more than expected. The problem was that she was a connoisseur of the kind of garbage titles even a stray dog would spit back out. If we were going to do variety games, we needed famous new releases or stuff already proven popular on YouTube. Every time Lucy picked some cursed abomination that would make Satan himself shake his head, our fans had no choice but to log out with blood coming out of their mouths.
"Uh, well… ahem. Maybe we should do something other than games?"
Hearing Lucy's bright, cheerful voice as she no doubt browsed for the next trash title, I hastily suggested we change the type of content entirely. Right—we didn't have to play games. There were plenty of collab formats a crew could do without touching a controller.
"Then how about a drinking stream? I've wanted to do one ever since my Rabbit TV days."
"H-huh? A drinking stream?"
"Ddoon-nyang already did one with the Wooga-dol audition dropouts and it blew up. I think it's a solid idea. Concept-wise, lightly tipsy crew members spilling their real thoughts… how does that sound? Honestly, I've been thinking about turning this into a regular show. Invite guests, share a drink, have honest conversations. Working title is Miho's Pocha. Hmm, is that a little too old-fashioned?"
I never would have guessed Miho had been sitting on an idea like that. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. A Rabbit TV-style half-cam drinking stream carried image risks and could blur a virtual streamer's identity—but that culture hadn't taken root on Pangea TV yet. The virtual scene here was still relatively new, which made the atmosphere a lot more conservative than Rabbit TV. And considering even Ddoon-nyang had run her drinking content with a virtual avatar, there wasn't much to worry about.
"Whoa! Then Mayo can drink too? Is that what this is?!"
"Mayo. You're still an intern. Okay? Let's behave."
Try anything stupid and I'll cut you off cold, no hesitation.
At least her instincts were sharp—she must have caught the murder in my voice, because Mayo flipped her attitude in a heartbeat. A few more suggestions floated around after that, but nothing beat the drinking stream. When we put it to a vote, the drinking stream took the most yeses by a comfortable margin.
"Then everyone post your notices properly, and how about tomorrow at 8 p.m.? Any later and it'll mess with the next day's streams."
"Sounds good. I'm in."
"Yeah. Let's do that."
"Mayo's a loser intern who can't even drink, but Mayo votes yes!"
And just like that, the crew's first collab stream was locked in.
It was a drinking stream, sure, but there was nothing particularly spicy about the concept. It was just a chance for the crew to have the honest conversations we'd been wanting to have. Alcohol would probably loosen a few tongues more than usual, so I made sure to warn everyone ahead of time.
Do not forget your own alcohol tolerance. I stressed it hard—prepare only about half of what you can actually handle. One drunken slip of the tongue and we'd be looking at a full-blown disaster.
Come to think of it, I don't even know my own tolerance. I've never had a drink in this body.
Back when I was a man, before the regression, two bottles of soju were nothing. Sales jobs don't exactly let you skip drinking sessions. The more frequent the dinners, the higher the tolerance climbed on its own.
This body's a complete first-timer, though. Half a bottle of soju, maybe? No—that'd be gone before the stream even hit its stride.
Beer would be smarter. Something low-alcohol and sweet, with fruit juice mixed in. As I started thinking about matching snacks, a little hum slipped out of me without permission. After days of grinding through headaches and stress, the thought of finally having a drink had loosened something in my chest.
Natural is good, but we can't just freestyle the whole live. Let's put together a light script.
There were bound to be topics that needed to come up in a setting like this. I messaged the crew and had everyone draft scripts for the important points so we could share them ahead of time. Just because it was a casual drinking stream didn't mean a free-for-all chaos would be fun for viewers. At the very least, we needed a solid skeleton to work from.
The moment the notice went up, the reactions came in hot. Crew collab content had a way of uniting the fans regardless of whether it ended up being fun—proof that the crew was actually active, which gave people a sense of stability. And the satisfaction rate tended to run high, too. Collabing with a complete stranger left you with nothing to latch onto, so immersion dropped. Crew members, on the other hand, weren't your oshi but you'd still catch their streams now and then, pick up bits of info through the fan cafe, and build up a baseline of goodwill. Your favorite streamer doing content with streamers you already like? Absolutely impossible to sit out.
The cafe was already buzzing with posts about how excited everyone was.
Come to think of it, maybe I should check Pan-beo-gal for the first time in a while.
I'd been running around so hard lately that I hadn't even had time to take the temperature of the bottom-rung public opinion. Skimming FM Community was about as deep as I'd gone. But a person should never forget where they came from.
Just reading that last post was enough for me to know exactly what Ori-koong's big announcement was.
So it was finally starting.
The Poko Server.
A gift prepared especially for Blueby.