39. The World Adjusting
“I think I’m getting the hang of this VTuber stuff,” said President Dodson, circling a finger around Rippin’ Rippa’s avatar.
The cartoon girl was frozen in mid-motion on his tablet, eyes half-closed, mouth wide-open.
He leaned back in his chair. “But why her specifically?”
Mr. Ciceron, the White House Chief of Staff, shrugged and eyed Rippa’s acrylic stand on the windowsill. “Absolutely zero information. Guys have combed through her videos, but nada.”
Indeed, many men and women had spent long hours going through the backlog of Rippa’s VODs. Everyone thanked Google for YouTube’s automatically generated transcripts feature. Otherwise, they would really have had to sit through an entire VOD, listening to every sentence the cartoon girl said in the hope of catching any mention or implied mention of her kid friend named Buttons.
With the help of LLMs that went over copy-pasted VOD transcripts, they had managed to pinpoint the first time Rippa had mentioned Buttons. But as to why the kid and her butler specifically chose Rippin’ Rippa, that was still a mystery.
“For all we know, she could be Chinese,” said the Homeland Security Advisor.
“Come on! She’s white. She’s ginger,” Ciceron rebutted. “I mean… if the woman at that Walmart indeed was Rippin’ Rippa,” he added.
“Could be a Uyghur,” the President suggested.
At this moment, the Secretary of State walked into the Oval Office. “I talked to the Chinese Foreign Minister on the phone,” said the Secretary right away.
“What do the Chinese say?” the President asked, sitting up in his chair.
“They say they don’t really have much to ask of Goggles.”
Ciceron butted in. “Not even Taiwan?”
“Aw, come on, they don’t need a god to deal with Taiwan,” said the National Security Advisor, dismissing the idea.
President Dodson frowned. “The Russians said the same thing.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” said the Secretary of State, recalling his conversation with the Russian Foreign Minister a few days ago.
The Russians, and now the Chinese, had independently reached the same conclusion. Bringing the gods into the equation was too much of an undertaking, especially when the price and the consequences were unknown. Hence, they seemed happy to take the conservative position. Keep calm and carry on. They were going to mind their own business unless Goggles had something to say to them.
“Well, but do we have anything to ask of Goggles?” Dodson wondered aloud.
The National Security Advisor answered. “We could always use some help in dealing with China, Russia, Iran… Oh, and Israel needs some help, too.”
“Hmm…” the President drummed his fingers on the desk. “That’d make us look like we are the bad apple of the bunch.” He stood up. “Keep digging. I want to know who this Rippin’ Rippa is. Then we have something to work with. But until then—”
“We stall?” Ciceron suggested.
“Yeah. It’s not like Goggles is actively posing any threat or anything. Let the kid waltz around.”
***
“—so, yeah, let’s not make it about race. It’s divisive and plays into toxic rhetoric,” Press Secretary Choi was telling the reporters. “For more details, I’ll have to defer to the District Attorney.”
A reporter then asked if America was under threat.
“The fact is, neither the child nor Mr. Goggles actually threatened to hurt anyone, nor have they done anything that could be deemed a threat to American interests.” Choi then flashed a smile. “To be frank, my son says worse things than ‘You are welcome to die’ to his Overwatch teammates. So yeah, you could say the girl was more or less running her mouth. Nothing more.”
“There have been multiple sightings of the child,” another reporter asked. “Any comments on that? Should we be alarmed?”
Choi shook her head. “She’s not hurting anyone, and she doesn’t seem to have any ill intent. Just be civil and nice. And for the love of God, please don’t try to mob her.” She then smiled again. “I’m sure she will soon discover how great a country we are, so let’s make her feel welcome.”
Another reporter got her chance. “There is a growing concern that Mr. Goggles associates himself with VTuber Rippin’ Rippa, who is a known fascist and transphobic white supremacist—”
***
“Fucking bitch!” Rippa slammed her desk so hard her mic boomed. “Chat, is she CNN? She’s CNN, right?”
‘Rippa, she’s British. BBC,’ a viewer clarified.
Rippa was fuming. She checked the clip’s upload time. Six hours ago! She had been labeled a Nazi in the mainstream media, but had no idea about it for six hours!
“What is wrong with these people?” Rippa lamented. “I played that stupid game one time, and they make it my whole identity? We are talking about literal gods, and that’s the shit she brings up?”
She had been mad for a good hour, but it got worse. Her next react video of today’s stream was about how it was unlikely that the savages who had nearly killed Buttons would be charged.
Not human.
When Rippa heard that, something snapped inside her. She became even madder when the video went on to point out that animal cruelty also could not be applied to… well, Buttons.
Rippa wanted to scream. Was Buttons a threat? Was the kid a Nazi? Was the girl a human? Was she an animal? ‘She’s just a kid!’
She remembered what Goggles had said in the kitchen.
‘She’s been here for three thousand years and endured all that! Not human?!’
In the eyes of the judicial system, a group of unruly teens had gathered in one place and savagely beaten up… something. The worst they could face, according to the video, was attempted assault, taking only the intent into account.
“Fuck!” Rippa slammed the desk again. Her chat was also on her side, outraged by the likelihood that the mob who had kicked and stomped their beloved Buttolls would get away with it.
What was even more infuriating to Rippa was the fact that Buttons didn’t care. The Godzilla. The chicken poop. The kid just brushed off all the suffering she experienced walking among humans as… inevitable.
But then, the next video on Rippa’s react-stream playlist talked about how Buttons could be considered to have Aboriginal Title, or be given personhood and citizenship under something called the Registry Provision, in which case the gangs would be seriously fucked.
Rippa had to look them up. Basically, Buttons predated the government and was also eligible for a Green Card, in which case she’d be considered a 3,000-year-old senior—
“Wait, what?”
Rippa and her chat agreed that it would have been better if the two videos had been merged into one.
***
After ending her stream, Rippa browsed X’s For You page. Apart from the topics related to Buttons, everything was business as usual. Feuds between streamers, check. Typical VTuber dramas involving groundless accusations and harassment campaigns, both real and alleged, check. Fortunately, being uncancellable came with perks. While Rippa still made it onto lists such as ‘Nazi VTubers,’ ‘Do-Not-Follow,’ or ‘Bigot-VTubers’ by default, nobody really bothered to specifically target her alone. Other than the fierce and ever-escalating condemnation for using AI to generate stream thumbnails, she had not been directly involved in any non-Buttons-related drama lately, which was good. As for the AI stuff, Rippa was just going to sit it out until the haters eventually moved over to their Bluesky echo chamber so she wouldn’t hear from them ever again.
But a recent uptick in ‘#rippArt’ fan art had been bothering her greatly. By now, everyone had reached a consensus that the ginger-haired woman at Walmart was indeed Rippin’ Rippa. If she googled ‘Rippin Rippa Face’, photos of her anti-doxx DLC skin face from various angles would pop up.
Of course, there were dissenting voices. Mainly citing the statistical odds of both Buttons and Rippa being ginger and looking alike. But this was largely brushed off. The counterargument to that was surprisingly simple. Maybe Buttons related to Rippa because she was also ginger? Although that logic required assuming that Buttons had known Rippa’s IRL appearance before becoming her fan, it was widely accepted as a reasonable explanation. Another, less popular, explanation was that Buttons had tracked down descendants of the original Scottish girl’s family and discovered one of them was a VTuber. This was a bit ‘meh’ in Rippa’s opinion.
Rippa’s concern was that this anti-doxx face was making appearances in #rippArt posts, drawn in an anime style.
Now, some of them were quite good, and Rippa had liked them and reposted them, yes. But the real issue was the #rippArtNSFW posts. Her 2D anime avatar being lewded was one thing. But her DLC-skin face being drawn in an anime style and put into hentai situations… that was disturbing. Precisely because the face actually belonged to Buttons. Had it been Filippa’s face, Rippa wouldn’t have felt as horrible.
She fought the urge to let people know that what they were seeing was not her but an adult version of Buttons. That’d be opening a Pandora’s box. There were systems in place that ruthlessly dealt with any depictions of kid Buttons in… unsavory ways. Oh, but if the internet learned there was an adult version of Buttons? ‘Oh, that’d cause a rule34 apocalypse,’ Rippa was sure.
She sighed. Discussing the matter with Goggles would require her showing some samples to him, and that was going to be super awkward if not outright enraging to the cosmic butler. Provided, of course, that Goggles wasn’t already aware of #rippArtNSFW through his omniscience. And if he was aware, it would make things even more difficult for Rippa to approach him. ‘Hey, have you been ogling lewd fan art of me?’ No, that wasn’t going to go well.