Gamer Gurl

'gg everybody!'

I typed in the comment and leaned back, looking into the camera with it’s red all seeing eye blinking at him. “Whelp, that’s it for today guys. We’ll do better at Boulders Port 4 tomorrow. Trust me, my ogre paladin is going to get to get that next level armor and then we’ll be ready to take on Inrin the Blue. So, if you’re new to the channel be sure to subscribe, that way you don’t miss out. Signing off, this is your hero, Nicholas tha Great!”

With a quick tap to the Streamer Deck my system stopped the live stream on Tremble, backed up my feed, and published it to UsTube. Leaning back, I pulled my expensive Sanhouser headset off and looked at my final numbers. 40 streamers, 10 subscribers, $15 in tips. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Getting up I stretch, take a big drink of water… gotta stay hydrated… and head into my small kitchen. I can’t help but chuckle as my stream setup with all the lights, nick nacks, shelving, collectibles, and random computer part boxes that all scream ‘Stream Me’ cost more than everything else in my apartment. I mean, my gaming rig alone cost seven grand.

Popping the bowl of Chef Boyardee Ravioli in the microwave I check my phone to see if my student loan check has been deposited yet. I know I probably shouldn’t have splurged on that 4190 video card, but it was the best out right now and made sure I could both game and capture at high resolution with frame rates over 120. Once I got a big enough audience, it would be worth it. BUT, that put me behind on rent that my student loan check would cover.

After sitting down and working on my advanced lit homework and finishing up my Calculus 201 quiz for the week, I try to veg in front of the TV. After flipping between service after service, I finally accept that I’m not in the mood to passively watch something. I’d rather do my favorite and loathed activity… watch other streamers.

It was always great to see how others performed. And unlike most, I realized that playing games on camera WAS a performance. Sure, my long mousy brown hair looked unkempt but that’s only because it was the current style. Sure, my clothes looked wrinkled and in need of a wash, but that’s what brought in the viewers. I still smiled, I still chatted with my audience, I still made jokes. And the more people that watched, the more that subscribed. The more that subscribed, the more that watched. So on and so forth.

Heading over to Tremble, I start with my favorite streamer. DragonGirl069. I’d heard that she was local, but had never seen her around campus. Then again, it was a big school and with almost all of my classes online only, it’s not like I spent a lot of time there. But she’d stand out. Long platinum blonde hair with pink all along the bottom, cute face that’s always made up perfectly. Big breast that she was always pressing into the camera ‘accidentally’. She almost always streamed in a school girls outfit but she’d probably wear regular clothes around town.

Regardless, she put on a good show. We’d started streaming around the same time in my freshman year, and she had more than five times my subscribers and even subscriber to subscriber, she made WAY more money than me. I still had to work at that stupid computer repair shop PC Master Race Relations. Funny name, no customers. Once I’m onto Tremble I see that’s DragonGirl069 is on and streaming her current favorite game, DateDateBoyBoy. I smirk, knowing that while she’ll eventually get to a AAA title, she tends to cater to her audience by playing these cutsey games. It’s even kind of a tease. I’d never even tried a dating sim before, but watching her play them for hours and hours, I realized they can actually get kind of hot. DateDateBoyBoy was Japanese, so it had the likelihood of getting really hot.

As much as I hate lurkers, I eventually log in under my lurker account and toss DragonGirl069 a two dollar tip. She’s worth more, but I have to make more money to tip more money! Finally around two am, I log off and catch some much needed Zs.

When my phone’s alarm goes off I look at it and realize I’d already snoozed it six times and would now be late if I didn’t rush out to drop off my Chemistry Lab notes. After a quick sniff to my shirts pits I agree they are clean enough for this venture into the world and slip it on along with my jeans and adidas. Once my phone is in my pocket and my bag is on my shoulder I rush out and catch the bus to campus.

After living in the freshman dorm last year, it was really great to live in off campus housing. Freedom of room mates if you wanted them, more space, not nearly as crowded, more accepting of parties and having entrance and exit at any time of the day and night. But for every advantage there was a disadvantage, and today that included being ten miles from campus.

When I finally slipped off the bus I rushed over to the chemistry building and up to Mr. Bank’s office. He wasn’t there, but looking into his window, I could see that there were a lot of envelopes that had been slipped under the door. Pushing mine under I let out a big sigh of relief as once again, I had made it just in time. Now I wouldn’t need to be on campus for another week as this week’s chem lab was canceled.

Deciding to take advantage of my time on campus I head over to the main cafeteria. Even off campus students have access to the caff and whenever I’m here I grab a meal. Yeah, it’s not the best food and I complained about it all the time last year, but now that I pay for almost all my meals, I no longer as so critical of ‘free’ food.

Getting an empty table I pull out my school Chromebook and start going through email and looking over assignments for this week. When I hear a cute girls voice ask if she can have a seat I don’t even look up. “Free country, right? Give yer feet a rest princess!”

Out of my peripheral vision I see a girl sit down across from me. What catches and keeps my attention isn’t her tray of mostly fruit, her pink bag with video game patches, her long pink fingernails or even her t-shirt that says ‘Daddys Lil Gamer Girl’. No, what catches and keeps my attention is her long, almost white, platinum blonde hair that ends in pink tips. It’s not all primped and preened like on her live steams, but as I look up I can easily confirm. It’s DragonGirl069!

Looking at her a little closer, I see she’s casually reading from an iPad. There’s a big pink piece of half chewed bubble gum stuck to the corner as she eats from her bowl of grapes, cut apples, and berries. She has a pair of glasses on that I’d never seen and almost no makeup on. If it wasn’t for the hair, I could have walked by this girl on the sidewalk and probably not recognized her. As is, with the hair braided and hanging over her shoulder, it’s still not the easiest to identify.

I take a moment to calm myself not wanting to look like some slack jawed fan boy. Although that would be difficult as I honestly was a bit of a slack jawed fan boy. After several deep breaths I look up and try my best normal ‘nothing to see here’ smile. “Oh, hey. Aren’t you that streamer? Dragon Girl?”

I see her stop chewing and remain still for a long moment. Long enough for me to consider that I’d gotten it wrong and have now just embarrassed myself. Eventually she looks up at me with a half-smile. “I play games online as Dragon Girl sixty nine. Is that what you mean?”

I nod, hoping it’s not as fast and urgent as it feels. “Yeah, I watched you play Call of Battlefield 4 two nights ago. You kicked ass!”

She seems to relax, her smile growing to cover her whole mouth and even spread into her eyes. “Then yes, I’m that Dragon Girl! Are you a…” she seems to pause and consider her next word more carefully than it requires “…Fan?”

I nod again. “If you mean subscriber, then yes. To both your Tremble stream and your UsTube account. You know, I stream a bit too. We started around the same time.” I see her eyebrows go up a bit and hold my hands out in a ‘whoa whoa wait’ gesture. “I’m not nearly as popular as you. But I’ve got a loyal fanbase going and I plan on eventually making the same money you’re making. I think I have it in me to make a living at it!”

She shakes her head as she finishes chewing the last grape of her lunch. “Umm… I don’t want to rain on your parade. But it’s tough to make real money at this, let alone a living. I mean, I’m taking a few classes here but beyond that I do streaming full time. Just about everything I do rotates around how to maximize my time and audience buy in.” She looks me up and down and her smile returns. “Hey, I think I actually recognize you. You stream under... Nick the Great, right? But I don’t remember you being one of my subscribers.”

On the one hand, I’m surprised she knows me even if she’s not getting the name quite right. On the other, how could she possibly know if I was one of her subscribers? ”Yeah, I mean, it’s actually Nicholas the Great, but you got it. And true, Nicholas the Great doesn’t subscribe to you but I have a burner account I use. It’s mainly for lurking on channels. You know, to spy them out and see how they’re being successful.

I sit bolt upright realizing how that sounded. “NO, wait! I’m not watching you just to find out what makes you tick. I like watching you! I mean, your entertaining. Not just that, I mean… you’re cute and fun to watch!”

Cute? Fun to watch? Entertaining? I like watching you? There goes the whole idea of not sounding like a fan boy.

Surprisingly she seems genuinely enterained by my blubbering. “Aww, that’s cute. You’re my demographic! Well, one of them anyway! I’m happy to have you, even if its on a burner account.” She seems to consider for a moment before reaching her hand across the table “I’m Sarah. Sarah Brahm. Pleased to meet you!”

Taking her hand I give it a soft shake. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Sarah! I’m Nicholas Oaks, but you can call me Nick.”

We end up chatting for hours. I don’t realize just how long we’re in the cafeteria until I smell the new food being put out and realize while we started at lunch time, dinner is now being served. We’re both having a fun enough time that we end up eating dinner together before agreeing to call it a night. I’ve already missed my normal streaming time frame and Sarah admits she’s coming up on hers.

When we walk out together, I see Sarah turn toward the main parking lot instead of the bus stop. She notices my different trajectory and smiles. “Need a ride? I have my car here and its no problem.”

“Yeah, that’s be great.” I’m a little taken aback. I’d looked in getting a car this year and it was just nowhere near possible. Between the actual price of a decent car, the insurance, parking and registration fees at the university, parking fees at the apartment, and gas, it was pie in the sky thinking. But here she is with a car already. I guess maybe her family could be paying for it? But then again, if her family is paying for stuff like that then why would she need to be so serious about her streaming?

When I see her car, its easy enough to pick out as it’s an old fox body mustang painted pink with anime characters all over it and her Instagram account in the back window, I slow down a bit. Its not like I play the manly man or anything, but her car is over the top girly girl. And I’m going to be seen on campus getting into it and then seen again getting out of it at my apartment.

One glance at Sarah though ends the mental debate. She’s cute as all get out, fun, and actually down to earth, and she’s looking at me expectantly. I shrug, and step into her pink ride.

I give her directions to my apartment and we head off. We both notice the smoke rising on the horizon as soon as we pull out of campus and figure there’s a fire at one of the big factories a few miles down from my apartment complex. But as we get closer and closer, I have a sinking feeling in my stomach. The angle isn’t right for the factories. And while there’s a lot of buildings near where I live, being a suburb and all, there’s only one that’s really big.

My apartment building.

My fear is confirmed as soon as I see the flashing lights of the police barricading the road. When we get close enough we can see that not only is it a fire, the entire building is ablaze. All four stories. What windows don’t have flames flying out actively have smoke billowing from them.

Sarah pulls into a nearby parking lot, seeing my horrified expression. Without asking, she takes a few minutes to put on some makeup, unbraid her hair and pull it up into her normal high ponytail and pull her phone out. “Look, lemme sign off to my audience so they don’t wonder where I’m at and I’ll help you out tonight, okay? This won’t take but five or ten minutes.”

I nod, numb to anything she’s saying. When she sees that I’ll be quiet she turns until she has the right light and turns her phone camera on to her face. “Hey guys, I’m afraid I’m going to miss streaming tonight. Sorry, I know we planned on getting that second date with Brad, but he’ll still be there tomorrow. I’ll make it up to you by having an extra long session but for now I need to help a fellow streamer that lives near me. Ta ta!” She gives an air kiss and a peace sign, her normal sign off, and stops the stream.

I figure that’s what she meant by signing off, but she actually does similar sign offs several times. When I look at her questioningly she shrugs and says “Hey, I told you its hard work. You follow me on two of my services. But I stream on Tremble, UsTube, Coffee and Cream, FaceDeck streaming, Mobrush, and occasionally on a few others. I need to sign off one more, post an update to the gram and FaceDeck, then we’ll get you going.

She again sets up, but this sign off has a completely different vibe. Where she was her normally bubbly gamer girl self in all the other sign offs, she seems less intelligent, less engaged in this one. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was a bimbo by the way she talked. Frankly, especially as she lowered her voice and gave it just a bit of a lisp, she sounded damned sexy. “Hiya boys! Umm, I’m sorry but I’m gonna like miss tonight’s stream. I know I like promised to play with that special controller and all but I met a new streamy like friend and they need my helpsies. Anywho, I’ll try to get on later tonight to say goodnights for a least a minute, but if I like um don’t, then I’ll see you y’know, tomorrowsies! Byyyyeeeeee!”

Sarah’s air kiss goes all the way to the lens of her phone this time just as she hits the stop button with her thumb. I can only imagine how that would look on screen, her pink lips filling up all the space.

When she posts that video she sits and make some quick normal posts to other services before starting her car up and driving off. “I assume you had everything there and at least need a place to stay. I won’t make you ask as it’s just awkward and I honestly don’t mind. You’re staying with me tonight, Nick.”