NOVEL WEB Sub Count: 30
BigGoron5 sighed as he stared at his sub count. It continued to sit at 30, which wasn’t terrible but wasn’t great either. Certainly he wouldn’t be able to quit his shitty fast food job anytime soon.
He heard a knocking on his bedroom door and turned to see his mom enter carrying an empty laundry basket.
“Hunter, honey, do you have anything you need washed?”
“Mom, I thought I told you to wait for me to respond before coming in! You’re lucky I wasn’t streaming.”
“Sorry, hon, I’ll try to remember. Is all this stuff on the floor dirty?”
Hunter grunted an affirmative.
“You know, you could put your dirty clothes in the hamper I got you instead of just leaving them on the floor.”
“I know, Mom, I was just busy with my stream.”
“Well, you know I don’t know much about your video game streams, but I’m sure if you keep working hard you’ll do great. Don’t push yourself too hard though, sweetheart. Sometimes I get worried about you when you forget to eat or drink for most of the day.”
“That’s only happened like once Mom and that was because I was doing a speedrun, okay? I’m fine, I promise.”
“Well, just make sure to let me know if you need anything, okay?” And with that she left bearing his unwashed t-shirts and sweatpants.
What are these other streamers doing that I’m not? he wondered, staring at his analytics. Switching over to look at the current streams with the most viewers, he got a quick answer. I’m not a dude with dyed hair who’s super good at whatever battle royale is currently the most popular or a hot chick wearing a skimpy outfit and chatting with viewers.
Unfortunately, the chance of him becoming either of those were next to zero. Although he loved video games and spent lots of time grinding, he mostly played older games, and direct competition and fast-paced action just kinda stressed him out. Besides, he was basically way behind the curve in terms of skill level, because until his parents got divorced when he was 14 he wasn’t allowed to play any video games unless they were “educational”. Although he was kinda a beast at Math Blaster
Well, and obviously he wasn’t gonna become a hot girl.
Looking more at the popular streamers, though, he had to admit they were all at least decently conventionally attractive, with symmetrical features and even skin tone. In contrast, he was extremely skinny, pale, and his cheeks were dotted with acne scars for the ravages of his teenage years. At least he’d gotten his braces off last year, and switched to slightly less terrible glasses.
He opened a new tab and searched “how to look good on camera”. A lot of the results said things he already tried to do, like “maintain eye contact” and “have good lighting” and “have the camera slightly above your eye level” and “emote”. But there were a few things he wasn’t doing.
One of the wikiHow articles recommended using a matte foundation to help even out your skin tone and help conceal blushes. He had to look up what “matte” meant but overall it seemed reasonable, even if he did feel a little awkward about the idea of wearing makeup. But he knew that kind of thing was normal in show business--even politicians in debates got spruced up a little!--and it made a lot of sense to try and make his face more pleasant to look at and with fewer distracting blemishes or highlights. It went on to also suggest highlighting your cheeks with blush, contouring with bronzer, and using matte, neutral tones to help your eyes and lips stand out.
If he had scrolled down a little more, he would have seen the illustrations of women wearing dresses and flowy tops and posing for an imaginary camera. But sometimes that’s just how things go.
