It’s another rainy day in the middle of December. I wish it was snowing, but we get most of our snow in the later months of winter. Maybe I’ll get lucky around Christmas.

I stuff my face with leftover sushi from yesterday as I shuffle about my private apartment getting ready for today’s stream. Day-old fish is probably on the lower end of healthy meals, but I can’t get sick, so who cares? The salmon is still delicious.

The nice thing about streaming under transformation is that I don’t actually have to get dressed for the stream, or do makeup or anything like that. I can trundle about in sweatpants and a Memento t-shirt and magic will fix up my appearance before the camera rolls.

I hear that’s a big part of the appeal behind vtuber rigs. Despite Visage’s hard pivot, virtual streamers actually ended up pretty popular on the whole. They don’t have the instant celebrity status of being a lady who can do magic, but there’s actually a couple of independent magical girls who’ve given it a try. Even with transformation giving you free costume updates, there’s a certain appeal to hiding your face completely and not needing to manage any of your microexpressions. Visage streamers, of course, aren’t allowed to use rigs; being a real magical girl (or witch) is part of the branding.

I don’t mind, really. Having to control my face for a wider audience keeps my skills sharp, and besides, lying is fun. I’ve been single-mindedly fixated on Sophia for so long that I’d almost forgotten how enjoyable it is to manipulate people.

I move a bundle of laundry from the washer to the dryer and text my friends.

Alexandria: stream in SOON be there or please be there actually i do in fact need more moderators than my sweet prince automod

Alexandria: dont tell him i said that

Mordacity: I will

Alexandria: treachery most foul

a single femur: Yeah I’m around

Mike Trout: me too! yippee!

Alexandria: poggers gamers let’s get this rolling. gonna do like. an hour or two of chat. then probly gonna draft the ff set.

Mordacity: you should set chat to anarchy mode 🙂 that would be fun

a single femur: My liege, that vizier whispers poison in your ear. Heed not her lies

Alexandria: this is so hard for me because i do love lies but it’s also very funny when mordacity suffers. hmm.

Mordacity: mean to me! mean to your most loyal vizier

a single femur: How dare you grasp at my title

Alexandria: alright viziers it’s time for me to get set up. on in 5

I polish off the last of the sushi and scramble upstairs, transforming as I go. I shrink my wings so they’ll fit in the closet I’ve converted to be my streaming room. It’s actually fairly spacious, but I’ve filled the entire back wall with shelves of Visage merch and I don’t want to keep accidentally knocking down anime figurines.

I really wanted to get cat ear headphones for the e-girl look, but that would obscure the elfin ears I have in this form and Visage is very, very particular about preserving visibility of all obviously magical traits. That means I have to put up with earbuds, which I will lament at every opportunity so long as no one is around to hear it.

Software’s all working. Lights are green. Manager-chan is watching. The clock is counting down. Chat’s waking up.

Deep breath. I was born for moments like this.

The countdown hits zero, the camera fades in, and I’m live.

I tap my chin, lean back in my chair, and muse, “Y’know, I was debating whether to start the stream with an overwrought ASMR voice or a really bro-y gamer voice, and I’m still not sure which would be funnier to hear calling everyone in chat ‘my little pogchamps.’ Alas, my indecision has cost me, just as the old woman in the back alley carnival tent forewarned. Sup, chat? Who wants to talk about magical girls?”

We spend the next hour and a half doing just that.

“Did you see Pearl Princess in the previews for the next Fast and Furious movie? I don’t usually care about car movies but there’s no way I’m missing that one.”

“Oh my god, Dusk and Dawn’s latest vlog exchange was so cute. Dawn’s bunny might be the cutest animal alive, sorry to everyone else’s pets.”

I laugh at clips of my fellow witches—Kira raging at Souls-likes, Sweet Tooth causing mischief on the Minecraft server, Glamour impersonating other Visage members for prank calls—and get my viewers to send in their favorites. I scroll through a Radiance fashion shoot to gawk. Mako—a magical girl with a love of swimming who likes to style herself as a mermaid—activates the horny lesbian unga bunga part of my brain, because how else am I going to respond to a hot girl in a bikini rising out of the water?

“Sonata’s latest music video went hard, that was like, actual big leagues stuff. Who else is going to her concert next month?”

“I own so much Memento merch, you have no idea. I was literally wearing one of her shirts before the stream. Check out this limited edition hoodie I snagged!”

Agatha, of course, merits a rewatch of our fight, a trip through her clips channel, and various wistful sighs to build interest in our storyline. Maenad, the iconic drunken party girl of Visage, hosts a Jackbox night every month that I excitedly daydream about getting in on. Narcissa’s League games, on the other hand, I cannot even pretend to be interested in.

Chat gets in on the action. I’m still developing a sense for my audience, still shaping them in the right direction with signals, praise, and bans.

Maisey197: lol sorry this is kind of weird to say but i feel like you have short person energy do you agree

ForestPup: narcissa is so pretty!!!! i want to put my face. well.

SomeoneNew: hey babe are you from heaven or did you fall from hell cause so hot

Eldritch_Feline: VisageClap NarcissaSmug DawnBunny DuskHmph MementoHeart

SeaFlower: dusk and dawn… uwu

1loveEm0jis: OMG!!! pearl princess is the cutest PearlHeart PearlHeart PearlHeart

nothingeverhappens: It’s all fake, you know. Everything is fake. It’s bullshit.

<M> YouAreTheDodent: And now you’re fake! Enjoy the ban 😀

GothicCatalyst: dae still thinking about archon and agatha??? that look…

When I’ve exhausted all the recent Visage news to talk about, I transition over to gaming. I’ve been chewing over my options and trying to strike a balance so that I’m perceived as a variety streamer and not just a Magic streamer, though that is my primary interest. I played a few gacha games last week, focusing on games with Visage crossovers. I have a few ideas in the works for the Visage Magic cards, in particular seeing which other streamers I can rope into a themed commander game where we all build decks around magical girls.

Tonight, however, I’ve already done my due diligence when it comes to emphasizing my love for the Visage icons. My brand, my niche as part of Visage, is that I’m just like my followers. Sure, I’m a smoking hot witch that can do magic and gets to hang out with other smoking hot magic users, but beneath that, I’m just a nerdy fangirl. Relying only on the Visage connection is cheap, it’s obvious; it’ll work for some, but there are people in my audience who will see the shallowness of that bond and fail to attach. I need more. I need to be the nerd girl of their dreams, the one who will laugh at all their references, the one who gets it, the one who’s real.

You look lonely. I can fix that.

I boot up MTG Arena and start explaining. “So, for those of you who don’t know, Magic is a very cool card game that I have spent a perfectly normal amount of hours playing. But we’re not just playing Magic! We’re going to be playing Final Fantasy.”

I’ve never actually played a Final Fantasy game, despite Mordacity’s exhortations to try the MMO—as a gateway drug to get me to play WoW, she’s made quite clear. RPGs just aren’t really my thing. I have, however, lived on the internet long enough to absorb a shitton of memes about Final Fantasy, and that should be enough to fake familiarity. I can enjoy playing with Magic cards while pointing at any given card in a pack and dropping a line about saving up Ethers or Aerith coming in with the steel chair. The people in my audience will either get those references from playing the games or from the same pop culture osmosis that I went through. Either way, we’re all nerds who like nerd things.

“Oh hey, it’s the bunnygirl. That is one hell of an outfit. Not worth drafting outside my colors, but still.”

“Yeah, I’m not a big fan of the bonus cards with the video game stills, they look really jarring. I wish they’d gone for more concept art instead, like the Amano drawings.”

“Okay, what kind of villain name is Rufus? Like, ‘yes, it was me, the corrupt heir to the sinister corporation destroying the world. My name? Rufus Shinra.’ Alright, buddy.”

“So what’s everyone’s favorite Final Fantasy game? Personally, I think the characters in VI have the best aesthetic. Terra is, like, absurdly pretty, and Kefka’s such a funny-looking freak. The alt art for the Celes card is really nice, too.”

Chat takes the bait, of course.

crowsdanger: bird hype!!!! chocobo chocobo chocobo

Phallicies: aerith and tifa i love them so much LesbianPride

pix: Did you know that Final Fantasy XV was originally supposed to be closely related to XIII as part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis subseries? It went through such a troubled development that by the end of the cycle it had a completely different name and only kept a few vague thematic connections to XIII, with all of the mythological connections completely removed, to the point that some fans argue it shouldn’t be part of the subseries at all.

Deerlibeloved: when will you play Outer Wilds

MsKittycore: I love seeing everyone full of nostalgia MementoHeart PearlHeart RadianceHeart DuskHeart DawnHeart 

MsKittycore: My favorite was IX, I love my boy Vivi so much DawnSob DuskHeart

yticadroM: Final Fantasy XIV is the strictly inferior MMORPG to World of Warcraft and anyone who thinks otherwise is a brainwashed simpleton deceived by flashing lights and rising orchestrals into thinking a mediocre story can make up for an abysmally slow GCD and a complete lack of any gameplay customization system comparable to talent trees

yticadroM: FURTHERMORE

<M> 13thousandClavicles: Okay, into the timeout corner with the other children

GreenPotato: you should have picked blitzball shot over sazh chocobo way higher rated

SinisterEvilFlower: what are you talking about it’s literally two tiers lower on draftsim

GreenPotato: you still use draftsim? amateur

I indulge chat in their nonsense. I don’t trophy any of my drafts—I don’t get seven wins, the maximum you can get in an event—but I do alright. I play up performative rage about not drawing enough lands, insist I could have won more of my games if I’d only made completely different decisions at multiple points in each, and generally act the part of the typical player.

With my last game of the evening finished, I set my camera back to fullscreen and sign off. “Thanks for joining the stream, everyone! Really great to see so many new people, and I hope you all had a lot of fun watching me lose terribly at Magic. I won’t be streaming again until after Christmas, so, see you then! Happy holidays! Byyyyye!”

The chat fills up with emote spam before I close the window, stretch, and let out a sigh of relief. That went alright. Room for improvement.

I leave my streaming closet behind and immediately open up my phone to harass my nerd friends in the group chat.

Alexandria: smh terrible work your salaries will be cut by 400%

a single femur: Our glorious queen, we are banning 60 users per day as you commanded, all sacrificed in your name.

Alexandria: okay but how many of those are mordacity

Mordacity: I’m helping!

a single femur: She is a very illustrative example of what not to do

Mike Trout: “a very illustrative example” is distinctly on the Dracula side of the Femur-Dracula scale

Mordacity: would dracula have opinions about twitch users?

Mordacity: i wonder if phage has opinions about twitch users. i should ask her

Mike Trout: I think that you should not do that

a single femur: As if you could

Mike Trout: and I think that if Dracula were made of nanomachines, which he is, he would be inherently interested in all technology that can be coopted into the nanomachine cloud responsible for his supposedly supernatural abilities

Alexandria: when did you freaks get obsessed with dracula

Mike Trout: alex I have always been obsessed with vampires and I am frankly offended that you are just now noticing

Mordacity: smh it’s like we don’t even exist to you outside of these conversations

Mike Trout: like we are… philosophical zombies. of the fish variety.

a single femur: As opposed to the human variety? Why are we fish?

Mike Trout: I think that fish would make for more efficient p-zombies

Mordacity: how do you get more efficient? it’s a binary state

Alexandria: okay i’m super fucking tired from all that so i’m going to crash thank you for all you do for me

Mordacity: ofc

Alexandria: not you

Mordacity: wow! whore!

a single femur: Good night, Alexandria. Sleep well

I am exhausted after that stream, but I’m also weirdly exhilarated, so sleep might not be in the cards. I want to run a mile. I want to stare at the wall for an hour.

I want to kiss Sophia and run my fingers through her hair and down her back to undo her bra and—well. I want to do things to her.

Christmas is almost here. My next chance to tell her how I feel.

Still, for all that the holiday weighs on my mind, it’s actually not what I spend the evening thinking about. I have more ideas for streams, ideas for how I can shape my audience and build my brand. I know it’s all just infiltration, but I’m taking it seriously. I want to be popular. I want to be adored.

For too many years, the only attention I ever cared about earning was Sophia’s. Now, there are thousands of people tuning in every week to watch me dick around playing card games or gushing over magical girls. There’s something intoxicating about that kind of interest. I want more followers, more fans, more fanatics. I want people to talk about me the way I talk about Sophia. I want them to love me. To adore me. To worship me.

I think I’m beginning to understand what it means to think like Venus.

[commentary]

We should all think more like Venus. I can see no problems with that.

A special thank you to my Grandmaster-tier patrons, whose support has kept food on my table: Adrian CC, Ashlyn, CaosSorge, Crows Danger, Demi, Lirian, M, Mgbm, Mhai Wind, Morrigan, October, Paige Harvey, PR4v1 Samaratunga, and Selacanis. Wow that’s a lot of you! Thank you so much!

If you like this story and want to see more of it, please go to the RR page and leave a rating or review! Web serials live and die on audience support, and this one is no exception. The better the story does on RR, the more people click through and read, the more motivation I have (both on a mental health level and on an “able to pay rent” level) to keep writing and to write faster.

The next scheduled break week starts on the 7th of December. It’ll be another double length break as I work on my second writing project and some outline rewrites for TMGM.

[/commentary]