26. Big Drama! Drops Enabled! Q&A with Buttons
‘Big Drama! Drops Enabled! I can explain - Q&A with Buttons’ was the stream title across all three platforms. Yes, Rippa could have dropped the drama and the ‘drops’ memes, but it was too good an opportunity to troll the masses for her to pass.
Rippa bit her nails, watching the countdown approach zero. Despite the members-only mode, her YouTube chat was scrolling too fast for her to read anything. Memberships were pouring in like a landslide.
Three hundred thousand viewers on YouTube. A hundred and fifty thousand on Twitch. And ten thousand on Kick. This was too big. She had never had that many eyes on her in her life.
“Asmon is watching,” Dad texted her.
Great. That was another fifty thousand pairs of eyes on her.
Rippa was in her room. At her desk, in front of her streaming setup that had made her who she was today. The camera was tracking her, and the anime Rippin’ Rippa on screen appeared nervous as hell.
Mom and Dad were downstairs, in the living room, watching on the TV via Chromecast. Dad had taken the day off. He sure didn’t want to miss his daughter’s big day. After texting Rippa about Asmongold, Mom and Dad looked at each other. Yeah, it was a good idea not to tell her that CNN and FOX were also watching.
The countdown reached zero. Rippa took a deep breath and waited.
‘She’s late!’
‘She hates us!’
Even the first-time members who had absolutely zero idea about VTubing joined in. ‘She hates us!’
“Ripripripriprip— oops, I’m muted.” Rippa unmuted herself. “Ripripripriprip! Hello, hello! My name is Rippin’ Rippa! For those who are watching for the first time, I’m a VTuber. A VTuber is… chat, why do we have a Hype Train on Twitch? Knock it off!”
Rippa cleared her throat and continued, “Anyway, a VTuber is a streamer like me. I’m a forty-year-old man using a voice changer, hiding behind a cute anime avatar. And, BeenSalmon! Motherfucker, stop gifting subs! This is not that stream!”
Her chat was dying. Less than a minute in, the stream was already cinema.
Rippa cleared her throat again. “Ahem, so now we know who I am, let’s get straight to the point.”
She displayed the first slide. It read, ‘Q&A with Buttons.’
“I know why you are here. You know why you are here. And my regular viewers are here because they are degenerates. Well, without further adieu, and I know it’s ado, but let’s go with adieu, let me bring in my two special friends. The Racist Taco Truck Girl and her butler!”
Rippa shrank the slide and brought two frames showing Buttons and Goggles to the center of the screen. The kid looked adorable with the cat-ear headphones.
Rippa’s regulars were spamming in the chat. ‘Buttolls!’ Even newcomers were signing up for a paid membership just to spam Buttolls.
The Twitch chat was, unfortunately, restricted to emote-only mode, but the viewers soon found a way around it. They spammed a donut emoji.
“Alright, guys, could you introduce yourselves? Buttons, please go first.”
“Ahem,” Buttons cleared her throat dramatically. “Everybody, everybody, make sure to like, comment, and subscribe to—”
“Buttons, shut up.”
“Sorry.”
“Now, please introduce yourself.”
Buttons looked into the camera with a big smile and waved. “Hello, everyone. I’m Buttons. Please call me Buttons.”
Goggles did the same, but without the big smile. “Hello. I am Goggles. Please call me Goggles.”
“Right, Buttons, you look too young to be getting beaten up in public in broad daylight. How old are you?” asked Rippa.
“I’m eleven.”
Now Rippa was starting for real. The setup so far had been very good. “And how long have you been eleven?”
“Goggles, what year was it?”
Goggles stepped in. “She’s been eleven since 1268 B.C.”
Chat exploded, but Rippa did not plan to give them a chance to settle. This was her stream, and it was going to be fireworks.
“And why is that?” asked Rippa.
“Eh? But you know it already, Rippa.”
OK, Buttons being dumb wasn’t something Rippa had baked into her interview strategy. She took a quick sip of soda.
“Buttons, please pretend I don’t know anything. I’m asking on behalf of our viewers.”
“Aha, I see,” Buttons finally got it. “OK. So, this girl died when she was eleven. Her papa was very sad. So I made a copy to make him happy again, but I was too late. So, I’m living so she lives the life Papa wanted her to have.”
Rippa blinked a few times. That was more than she had already known.
“I hope I worded it very easy,” added Buttons, unsure.
“Yes… that was… quite clear.” Rippa glanced at her chat. Texts and emojis were flying up in blurs. ‘OK, to the next point.’
“So, you are not the girl.”
“No. I’m Buttons.”
Rippa resized the frames. The slide page changed to the first question, which read, ‘Who Are You?’
“So, basically, you are controlling this… empty body that you made… three thousand years ago. Like Evangelion, yes?”
“Correct,” Buttons nodded.
“You know—,” Rippa was then distracted by Dad entering the room.
“Ad on Twitch,” Dad whispered and went back downstairs.
‘Fuck!’ Rippa face-palmed. “OK, guys, let’s take a breather for twenty seconds. Sorry, I thought I turned off monetization, but it seems ads are running on Twitch right now. I don’t want them to miss out.”
Come to think of it, this was a good opportunity to clarify the chat policy.
“OK, while we wait for Twitch, you might have noticed the YouTube chat is members-only.” Rippa then explained the reason behind the policy. “So, don’t feel bad about canceling membership after the stream. I won’t mind… But I’m sure YouTube will. Fuck them, that’s what they get for banning me.”
“Miss Rippa,” Goggles immediately objected, “Buttons is in the call.”
“Bruh, she already watches my stream every day.”
“Fair enough.”
“Yeah!” Buttons grinned. “Shit, ball—”
Goggles blinked, and Buttons’ mic was muted. However, everyone could still see the kid mouthing a series of foul words.
By this point, the ad break had ended on Twitch. It was time for Rippa to resume the show.
“So, Buttons, the Buttons I’m talking to is actually the pilot, yes?”
Buttons mouthed her response.
“Kid, you are muted.”
The camera showed Buttons trying to unmute herself but failing.
‘Wait, this is a good chance,’ Rippa thought. “Hang on, I’ll go help you. Chat, gimme a second.”
Rippa put down her headphones and rummaged in her drawers. She found a rubber horse mask and put it on quickly. And then, making sure her mic would pick her up clearly, “Goggles, beam me up.”
Bless the man, Goggles knew exactly what he needed to do. On camera, Rippa appeared behind Buttons. The horse-masked girl leaned in, took control of the mouse, and unmuted Buttons.
“Goggles, beam me down, please.”
Back in her room, Rippa took off the mask and went back to VTubing. She deliberately ignored the chat going mental on all three platforms. The casualness of the teleportation was the punchline, and she wasn’t going to ruin it.
“OK, I’m back. Buttons?”
“Right. So, to answer your question, yes, you could say I’m the pilot.”
Rippa made the question slide deck slightly larger. “Papapin thinks you are a brainworm.”
“Rippa!” Dad’s voice rose from the living room downstairs.
As Buttons was laughing her ass off, Goggles did the ‘actually.’ “Just to be clear, Miss Rippa, the replica body does not have a self. So, a brainworm, but not in the parasitic sense.”
Rippa took a deep breath. ‘Here we go.’ She waited for Buttons to calm down, then asked the question everyone had been waiting for.
“So, Buttons. What are you? Are you like an… alien? An X-Men mutant? A visitor from another dimension?”
Buttons took some time to gather her thoughts. Then she beamed. “Rippa, you play shooter games, right? In NA servers?”
“Yeah, but how does—”
“So, if you were somehow matched with someone from the Asia server, that’d be like meeting an alien.”
Rippa’s chat slowed down.
Buttons continued, “Now, if you were a Switch player but got matched with a PC KBM master race, that’d be like meeting someone from another layer. Another dimension.” Buttons’ expression became serious for a brief second. “You don’t want that.”
Rippa gulped. “Are you like… a GM? A developer?”
“I’m the AWS.”