Rise

Su Xue was dealing with problems of her own for the past two days. Ughh… this is so bad, why can’t I do this! I didn’t think it would be this hard! She’d just finished recording her voice over for the recent Nasus game Lin Feng had played and recorded for her. But her commentary, it just wasn’t as good as she thought it would be. The quality of the whole production was far less than what she wanted it to be, at least compared to the average standard of other popular gameplay videos. It just didn’t feel right. And her commentary, it was boring. Uninteresting and dull. She knew it wasn’t good enough, she didn’t even need to show it to other people and ask for feedback to confirm that.

But what if…? Hm… no that’s no good. Su Xue’s plan was to take a more comedic approach with her commentary. She couldn’t really provide interesting insights that would engage the people watching her videos. But she could make them laugh! She thought it over more, tried to come up with jokes and witty banter. But the natural charm and wit that came so easily to her while streaming, it was completely gone. The few jokes and bon mots that she’d come up with and recorded fell completely flat now that she was watching the video. If she couldn’t even make herself laugh, how would she make other people laugh?

You know what? This isn’t that bad. Cause it's all in my head, I think about it over and over again, I keep picturing it over again. And that’s driving me crazy! I’m being too hard on myself for no reason! I’m funny! My jokes are funny! It’s probably all in my head. I’m being too hard on myself! I’m funny. My jokes are funny! I’ll show it to Lin Feng. See what he thinks! Su Xue went to get Lin Feng from his room, then sat him down in front of her computer and made him watch the video.

Ten minutes later, Lin Feng finished watching the video. He turned to Su Xue and said, “Wow! That… it was something. Hm. Um… I don’t know how else to say this but it was really bad. The best thing I can say in this situation is that I think you’d set a record for dislikes if you made your viewers watch this.”

“What? Record for dislikes? Y-you...” Su Xue gasped out the words before falling speechless. She genuinely had no words, no thoughts, nothing. Lin Feng had used brutal oblivious honesty on her, and it was super effective! I-i showed him it, and he... he roasted me for it! WHAT A LITTLE SHIT! Her mind slowly started working again as rage overwrote her embarrassment and cringe. Her face flushed red and she lunged at Lin Feng, intending bloody murder.

But Lin Feng had quick reflexes and mechanical skill. He ducked around her just before she reached him and ran towards the door. Then he stopped and turned around to look back at her. He was about to open his mouth to say something, but quickly changed his mind when he saw Su Xue charging at him. He ran out the door and around the house, trying to find some safety.

Su Xue returned to her room after she burned off some energy and stress chasing Lin Feng around the house. She sat down at her desk and stared at her monitor and the video, still breathing heavy from all the running. She stared at the video, thinking and frowning. Well, that was a nice breather, but now I gotta get back to this again… What am I going to do with this video? If I upload this the way it is right now, no one will want to watch it… Am I actually going to need to do something as cheesy as falling back on dirty jokes here…?

She started smoothing out and adjusting her shirt when another thought occurred to her. Maybe I coul- WAIT! WHAT? NO! Su Xue smacked herself in the face and shook her head. She was flustered and stressed, worried that no one would like her videos. That turned into the catalyst for some dangerous thoughts and a terrible pivot in her content creation strategy. The ideas floating around in her mind right now, they were genuinely dangerous and scandalous. I won’t do it! I’m better than that!

Su Xue cleared her head and tried to think up what to do for the video for a little bit longer. Then she came to a decision. She’d put the Nasus video aside for now. There was no point trying to force something that just wasn’t coming to her right now and recording another subpar voice over. The best thing to do right now was for her to play some ranked games and record her own footage. Since it was going to be her game that she was playing, she didn’t think there would be any issues with putting emotion into the commentary when she recorded it. It was an experiment worth trying!