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Jeongin’s Wednesday stream starts how it always does: with him sitting in silence waiting for his viewers to join.
Luckily he’s gotten big enough that there’s always people in the offline chat hanging out, chatting and waiting for Jeongin to hit the go live button. It’s a pretty nice feeling. He always catches them talking about the oddest shit though, but hey, offline chat isn’t for streamer’s eyes. At least that's what they tell him when he occasionally brings up the offline chat during a stream.
The timer beneath his stream hits the two minute mark and Jeongin switches scenes, his vtuber model popping up on stream with a big smile mimicking Jeongin’s own and the chat going wild with messages saying hello.
“Yes, hello, bread hi,” Jeongin chuckles at the messages saying ‘bread-something’ back to him. “Hey chat, it's that time again.”
He ignores them for a moment, switching his subscription goal to something a little bit higher and playing the ‘YAY’ sound effect he keeps on his soundboard for solely this reason.
“For those of you who might not know, or who don’t follow me on twitter,” Jeongin sees his moderators spam the link for his twitter account in the chat for him. “Since we hit the sub-goal at the very end of stream last time I put up a poll for you guys, my lovely chat, to decide on the theme of today's stream.”
Jeongin hits the drum roll sound effect.
“Presenting today’s theme,” he pauses dramatically. “React Andy time!!”
He keeps his voice excited, his avatar copying his as best as the rig can. Inside, he’s dying though. React streams are sometimes the bane of Jeongin’s existence. His chat always sends the same things he’s seen a million times, and if he laughs at one thing they send sixteen other videos just like it to try and make him laugh again, to have the satisfaction of having sent in the video that made him actually react positively.
“Don’t send weird shit,” is the only warning Jeongin says before he switches scenes again, this one a split screen so that his vtuber is on one side of the screen and the other side is blank, soon to be filled by videos sent in by his viewers. Usually they’re pretty good about following the rules that pop up before they’re allowed to submit, but you can never be too careful.
His mods get to review the queue before anything plays as well, and Jeongin has it set up so that he can skip a video at any time.
It's the usual stuff at first: clips from his friends' streams that their shared viewers found funny, cool Overwatch clips, and popular tiktoks. Then it turns into crazy drama moments, funny drama moments, romantic drama moments. He manages to quote a lot of those ones in time with the clip actually playing, and he’s sure the clips channel on his discord are going to be flooded with those later on. Then chat decides to move onto older videos, stuff from vine and musically that catapults Jeongin back to highschool. He makes sure to comment on most of the videos, and thank everyone subscribing and donating during what he's sure is a less interesting stream than usual. The more videos that get sent the more some of them make him react in such a way that he’s glad his vtuber is only partially modeled to look like him, because the faces he makes are not pleasant.
They’re just over an hour into the stream when somebody sends a sand cutting video. It happens right in between some very clickbait like youtube shorts, and it sends chat into a tizzy.
“Guys it’s just a little bit of ASMR, don’t go too crazy because of it.” He says. “Calm down, calm down. There are worse sounds than metal traveling through packed sand.”
Slowly but surely the queue fills up with ASMR videos after that. Some of them Jeongin really likes, like the sand and soap cutting ones. Others are absolutely vile in his opinion, like the mouth sounds video that someone sent. He skipped that one. A few mukbang videos get sent, but nobody talks so it’s really just watching somebody else eat.
“Chat, please, you're making me hungry. Actually while the asmr videos are playing I’m gonna go refill my water. I’ll be right back chat!” And with that he mutes his mic and leaves them to babysit his vtuber. He keeps his headphones on as he runs out to the kitchen, the sound of bubbles popping filling his ears for a short moment before they’re suddenly traded out for a voice. After almost half an hour of videos without any talking, it comes as quite a shock, especially because this voice is deep , deeper than anyone Jeongin’s ever spoken to. He can’t even focus on the words being said, just letting the sound fill his ears and swirl around his brain. He runs back to his desk, water half full and the lid precariously loose. He gets the barest glimpse of blond hair and a white t-shirt before the video runs out of time and switches to sand again.
“Chat, who was that?” Jeongin scours the chat for an answer. Most of them have no idea, but a few people call out names. He has no idea which one is right. “Okay well if you know, can you send more videos of him? His voice is so deep, holy shit!”
He gets a few salutes, and he’s sure the chat will go wild trying to figure out who this guy is.
Soon enough there’s another video with the blond guy. He’s talking quietly into the microphone about the games he played over the weekend, a hot plate of what looks like tteokbokki in front of him. Jeongin watches and listens as he talks about Animal Crossing, picking up a piece of food to eat before the video runs out of time. In the ten seconds he has before another plays he asks his chat the important stuff.
“Chat, is his voice real?? Like he doesn’t use any voice filters, right?” The chatters that know the answer flood the chat with what they know. He watches as some of them get timed out. Oops. “Don’t spam guys, you’ll get timed out. Don’t worry, I can see your answers just fine.”
Jeongin reads some of the explanations and nods along, making a noise of understanding. “Ah okay, thank you chat.”
The video queue is just full of the cute blonde, who chat tells him is named Felix. Jeongin watches completely enamored as each new video pops up. There’s a lot of ASMR, but Jeongin finds he doesn’t mind as much when it’s Felix. Other video topics trickle in as well, a get ready with me, a vlog of Felix at a dog cafe, a clip of him and his friends on the pirate ship ride at an amusement park. There’s even clips of him playing animal crossing. Jeongin gets so lost in watching that he kind of forgets that he’s even streaming. He still reacts to the videos, but it’s less animated than he usually would be.
He tries to focus on being a good streamer again when one of his mods messages him on discord asking if he’s still alive.
“Chat, I’m sorry, streamer is still here,” he says, looking over to see chat calling him a deadbeat dad, whining about how he isn’t paying attention. “I did not go to the convenience store to get milk guys c’mon. Felix’s videos are good, okay! You’re all just like me, you can't make fun of me for getting lost in the sauce!”
He gestures to the screen where Felix is talking about making brownies, the video soon transitioning to him with baking supplies at the ready.
“Just look at him!! Have you guys ever seen someone so perfect?” He waits a moment until chat reluctantly starts agreeing with him. “Exactly, now let's sit here and watch a very pretty boy make sweets.”
Messages filled with ‘simp’ start scrolling by, some chatters calling him down bad and others giggling like children saying ‘ooooh streamer has a crushhhhh.’ He ignores them, he does not. It’s just the truth, Felix is pretty.
They finish watching the brownie video, the finished product looking too good to be real and Felix’s taste testers all giving him five stars out of five stars.
The next clip has Jeongin almost rocketing out of his chair. Felix is playing Overwatch.
“CHAT!” He shouts, and is immediately reprimanded for trying to deafen them Oops. “Chat, why didn’t anyone tell me he plays Overwatch? And as DPS? C’mon guys, it’s like you hate me or something.”
He watches as Felix gets sniped before getting anywhere close to the payload, his character respawning as he grumbles curse words. He gets back to the team and starts assisting, only to do solely that. Assist. Jeongin watches, horrified as Felix gets assist after assist after assist, but no kills of his own.
“Uh, chat… is it possible for someone to be this bad at a game?”
His chat screams at him that he doesn’t get many kills when he plays Overwatch either.
“Because I play heals, that's normal.”
They grumble that he’s being a hypocrite. A few of them laugh and say that if he really wants to see Felix rage they should queue up a video of him playing league. Jeongin laughs as they watch Felix get destroyed, his sweet face twisting in anger and his hands leaving the keyboard to cover his eyes as he shouts at the end of the game. He picks something up off his desk and squeezes it in his hands, a stress ball. Jeongin and his chat watch as Felix's face goes confused and then shocked as he shows his stress ball to the camera. It’s fallen apart in his hands.
‘Minnie,’ he whines, dragging out the last syllable. ‘Minnie, I broke my stress ball!’
Jeongin and his chat hear an exasperated ‘What?’ come from off screen before the clip switches again.
There are two boys on screen this time, Felix and the aforementioned Minnie, or Seungmin, his roommate. Chat fills with messages of doubt, quoting that one vine repeatedly ‘oh my god, they were roommates.’ Jeongin’s chest feels heavy all of a sudden, but it lightens when Felix mentions that they’re making pancakes for the first time because of Seungmin’s boyfriend.
“I’m excited to see how the pancakes turn out chat,” he says, watching as the boys get to work mixing and measuring. “They’ll probably be pretty good, Felix seems like a really good baker.”
Jeongin speaks way too soon. He watches them put giant globs of butter into the special pan they bought. He and his chat exclaim in horror as they watch Seungmin stir the pancake batter they pour in like it's a scrambled egg. The two in the video just keep repeating ‘too much butter’ and cracking up. It’s a disaster, and Jeongin heaves a sigh of relief when it ends. The next video also has Seungmin, and from the looks of it, they’re baking again. They’re wearing bungeoppang hats. Jeongin prays for whichever poor soul they’re cooking for this time.
“Chat, surely they do better this time.” Jeongin is setting himself up for disappointment.
It starts well, and then predictably, it ends badly.
Jeongin watches as the two guys on his screen turn the bungeoppang iron around to show the camera. Their faces are expressionless, which says more about the state of their pastry than words ever could.
It’s a mess, the bread has split apart in the middle so that one half is stuck to each side of the iron, and batter is spilling over the sides.
‘Guys,’ Felix says, his voice somber. ‘I think we effed up.’
‘Maybe it was a case of too much butter,’ Seungmin suggests, and Jeongin bursts out laughing at the call back to their earlier video. Chat laughs along with him, peepoGIGGLEs, ‘L’s and KEKWs filling the chat as they watch the two start to argue about where they went wrong.
The video ends with them finally succeeding, managing to get two bungeoppangs fully cooked.
Jeongin’s stream timer goes off as soon as the clip ends, and he gets ready to end. He switches the scene and chat starts to ask him to stay longer.
“Sorry, chat, it’s that time again.” Anguished ‘noooooo’s start to fill the chat along with some reluctant ‘see you later streamer’s. “Today was actually really fun though. Next stream we can watch more of Felix’s videos before we play something okay?”
His promise seems to calm the chat, and he goes through his usual goodbye spiel. Once he’s officially ended and triple checked that he’s really no longer broadcasting, Jeongin moves out to the living room to laze on the couch until Minho and Chan come to collect him for dinner. His twitter timeline is flooded with clips from today’s stream, his viewers mostly posting his reactions to Felix’s videos. He sends out a tweet thanking everyone who participated and asks for people to leave game suggestions for next time.
It’s only when he’s ready to stop scrolling does he see he’s gained some new followers. He even has a message request, which is a little odd because nobody messages him on twitter. Ever.
yong.lixx wants to send you a message!
Jeongin is going to faint. Holy fuck.