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“That’s fine, you can’t always have good games. Anyway, what did you learn from that?” I asked, trying to refocus her on the game.
“That getting counter-picked fucking sucks,” she whined, then got serious. “And that you can talk me down when I get super tilted. How do you do it? Like stay so calm and collected even when everything is going to shit?”
“You’ll see now that you’ve started playing in a higher-ranked bracket that games are a lot less one-sided. It’s usually just a slight edge that decides the outcome of a game. Instead of focusing on making fewer mistakes yourself, you need to shift your mindset to recognizing and exploiting other player’s mistakes,” I explained.
She nodded along and eventually queued up for another game. And another. And another.
When we finished streaming for the night, Emma got a little serious again. “I won’t be able to come to do any extra streams this weekend. I have some personal stuff I need to sort out,” she said and was about to go into more detail when I interrupted her.
“It’s alright, I’ll see you on Monday then?”
She smiled. “Yeah, I’ll see you on Monday, for sure.”
And then I walked her home.
While I was on my way back to my place, it started raining. The wetness quickly soaked through my clothes, sending shivers down my spine. I got a call from Lauren just as I stepped into my apartment. I answered and put the call on speakerphone as I peeled off the wet clothes and got changed.
“I can't catch a break, now can I? First you get injured and find a stray gamer girl to play with you on stream. I have to write contracts, set up bank transfers, and pay extra mods. And now, out of all the Carries in the world, Ryan had to choose MalfRage. I swear he did it on purpose to spite me,” Lauren whined. “I can’t work with him, Alex. Team Solid will have to bring someone else for him because I refuse.”
I had to muffle a laugh. I was glad to hear from her.I couldn’t remember the last time she called me to rant instead for a scheduled work call. “No way. You’re kidding. You’re the guy’s biggest fan, and instead of being excited to work with him, you’re refusing to?”
“Yes. I can’t be his manager. I have a full roster,” she said, trying to convince herself more than me. “Just because you’re not playing doesn’t mean I’m not managing you. Actually you're even more effort now that you’ve brought in someone to stream with you.”
“What else are the powers that be piling on to you?” I asked.
“Nothing else, thankfully. The others are still on holiday.”
“Good, because I’m not exactly giving you a break this off-season. What do you really think of Emma? I hope ‘stray gamer girl’ isn’t your final verdict.”
“Hm, no. She’s actually pretty good. Entertaining. She’s good looking so that’s a big bonus as well. I’m honestly tempted to sign her before someone else swoops in. We could use some more fresh blood. Lisa would love to have another woman streamer in the org.”
“That way you’ll also have an excuse for turning down Dan. You have a new pet project,” I threw in for good measure.
“If you wanted me to sign her, you could’ve told me straight off you know?” Lauren said with a sigh. “I’ll see what I can come up with. It makes a lot of business sense.”
“You’re the best, Lauren.”
“Stop sucking up to me. I’m still mad at you for getting injured,” she said, clicking her tongue.
“You know I’m sorry about it, I’m trying my best over here.”
Lauren sighed again. “I know. And I know you can’t control getting injured. I’ll see what I can do about Emma. Take care, Alex.”
“You too, Lauren.”
I didn’t stream on the weekend because streaming without Emma would be boring. And most importantly I wasn’t contractually obligated to do so. I didn’t need the extra money either.
I thought about texting Emma and seeing if she wanted company. I assumed she had errands to run or something equally as mundane. I decided against it. I didn’t know if I could even call us friends yet, and this would be a touch too familiar. I was still curious about what she was doing but if she wanted to share it with me, I knew she would on Monday.
And to be honest, I was glad we hadn’t made plans because the rain Friday night had given me the chills, and while I wasn’t quite sick, I wasn’t a hundred percent healthy either. The dampness seemed to seep into my bones, leaving me sluggish and tired.
Overnight, the hand and brain NLA game exploded on YouTube, and it was doing better than any of my videos from the past year with nearly double the views.
But I was getting worried. While I did my best to keep my community positive and inclusive, people who weren’t fans of me found the video as well and they had awful things to say about Emma. Just because she was a woman and because she dared to play NLA publicly. Probably because she played with me in particular. No one was making them watch it at the end of the day. They were probably jealous that she was better than them or were just sexist pigs. Either or. I’ve known guys in the past who viewed video games as their thing. And if anyone except the guys were playing it they felt threatened. They felt the need to gatekeep their game and I never understood it. If I liked something Iwanted everyone else to have the chance to try it and maybe like it as well.
So I decided to do something about those comments. I was chained to my computer for most of the day, deleting hateful comments from the video. Some comments weren’t hateful, but they felt distasteful. So many comments were about the fact that I had called her my girlfriend at the start of the video and were weaving storylines about us being in a secret relationship. As much as I wanted that to be the case, it wasn’t, but I left those comments alone.
At one point, I decided to check Emma’s accounts and saw she was getting harassed there too.
