Work Text:
From North Shore University’s Instagram: a photo of a grinning Kevin Gnapoor, Tim Pak, and Cady Heron dressed in a blue-and-yellow sports jersey with the NSU’s logo splashed across the front. In the next photo in the carousel Cady stands with her back to the camera, her thumbs pointing at the back of her jersey, where it says squacco.
The caption reads:
We are so excited to announce that Cady Heron, also known as squacco, has joined our NS Farmletes esports team. Best known for her prolific YouTube career, Cady will be a valuable member of the team and we wish her and the rest of the NS Farmletes the best of luck during their upcoming season.
It starts with a comment on one of Cady’s YouTube videos.
I have no idea what I just watched, but I do have an idea about why it was compelling 👩🏻🦰
Cady learned the hard way that she’s not the type of person who should have her social media notifications on. Before the One Year of Farming video blew up, she could spend hours switching between the various platforms she posted her content on to read the comments and interact with her followers whenever she could. Back then she didn’t need statistics to tell her which videos did well and which flopped, simply from obsessively refreshing the page every five minutes. Now there are simply too many people interacting with her posts to keep up, unless she wants to stop eating and showering and doing anything that is good for her mental and physical health.
Which is why she misses the first couple of comments.
How do you make a game about farming seem interesting?
Picture this: it’s Saturday night. I could be at the club. Instead I’m watching a cute redhead driving a digital tractor on a digital field planting digital crops
Because of this channel I know more about farming than I ever thought I would
They’re all from the same account called RGeorge2000, which has four subscribers despite the lack of published videos, and the profile picture is a blonde girl so stunning she can’t possibly be a real person. Like, okay, technically it is a real person, but she doesn’t look like the type of girl who would repeatedly watch Farming Simulator videos on YouTube—so it is clearly a bot.
It only makes sense. Cady’s comment sections have increasingly become filled with AI-generated comments, to the point where there’s just no fighting them anymore. She has explicitly stated in both her videos and other posts that she’s against generative AI and won’t ever use it in her content, but they just keep coming. Usually their comments are much less accurate in responding to what actually happened in the video, but bots can do a lot of things these days. Cady’s Discord server has a bot that detects accidental haikus and formats them in lines, and so it’s not hard to believe that some bots are actually analyzing the video they’re commenting on.
Committed to not falling for some kind of elaborate scam, she is determined to not pay too much attention to RGeorge2000’s comments and likes them the same as everyone else’s when she goes on her comment-liking-spree about twenty-four hours after publishing her videos. It’s not like she has much time to think about it anyway, with her rigorous one-video-a-day schedule and training for the next tournament.
The annual Farming Simulator Esports tournament is one of the biggest events in college esports, and when Cady peers through the curtains obscuring her and the rest of the team from the public she finds the arena packed to the brim. After struggling through the season, the North Shore Farmletes are back on home turf for the epic finale against the Marymount Crusaders—who have so far obliterated all their opponents like it was no big deal.
If they lose the finale on their own campus, Cady might have to drop out of school and become a hermit.
No, she can’t think like that. They’ve trained for this. They stand a fair chance. They can definitely win. They did not spend weeks practicing against Marymount’s signature Bottleneck strategy only for Cady to throw in the towel before she can even get the first bale in. Which she could do in her sleep, at this point. And sure, there is always a chance they get bad drops or they don’t get to their favorite equipment in time or they fall into the moat, but all that hard work has to count for something.
They gather backstage, on the opposite side of where Marymount is glaring at them, to discuss some final strategy before they enter the stage. On the other side of the curtain, the commentator, Marwan Jitla, is hyping up the crowd.
Kevin clears his throat. “Okay, we’ll have first pick, so I’m banning the John Deere. Then Marymount will ban the Claas harvester, and we’ll go all-in with Big Haul on the first round. If they don’t ban the Claas, I’m obviously going to fight for that one. Is that clear?”
Cady and Tim nod. They’ve discussed this countless times before.
Cady’s heart beats in her throat. Her hands feel clammy. Thankfully they’re not the type of sentimental team to hold hands before each match.
“Let’s kick some Marymount ass,” Kevin says, a little too loud to be polite.
They form a line on their side of the stage. Cady wipes her hands on her jersey—not her pants, because they are beige and will definitely show a dark spot if she does that.
Marymount’s team goes first. Despite being on a different campus, the crowd goes wild. Clearly a lot of people traveled here to see their team play, and, hopefully, lose.
After a minute of applause and cheers, Marwan manages to calm everyone down enough to start announcing the Farmletes.
“You know them, you love them. Give it up for the North Shore Farmletes! Here are kevinG, squacco, and timtheprotractor!”
If the crowd was loud before, they are deafening now. As soon as they step out from behind the curtains, people jump up out of their seats in a sea of blue-and-yellow. One guy in the front row even has a blue foam finger emblazoned with a lion—North Shore’s mascot. He’s waving it around, almost hitting the girl standing next to him. She swats at him, but she doesn’t seem genuinely mad.
She’s beautiful, with blonde hair cascading down her shoulders and a faux-annoyed frown on her face. Despite the tournament having drawn a lot of attention the past few weeks, she doesn’t seem like the type to come here. The guy next to her is probably her boyfriend who dragged her to this thing…
There is something familiar about her.
Wait.
“Oh, shoot,” Cady whispers, the words slipping out before she can stop them. The crowd is loud enough that nobody but her team could have heard her, but Kevin and Tim look up with concern. She tries to pull her face into a non-worrisome expression. “Remember when I told you guys about RGeorge2000? That commenter with a super pretty girl as a profile picture?”
“The bot?” Kevin, whose PC is next to Cady’s, asks.
Cady chews her lip, hyper-aware of the fact that there are probably multiple cameras pointed at her right now. Hopefully the viewers will cast it off as general nervousness. She hides her mouth behind her hand. “Not a bot, apparently. She’s in the front row next to the guy with the foam finger.”
And, like, Cady loves her fellow Farmletes. They’re great guys, if a little awkward and nerdy, and she would definitely at least consider walking through fire for them. But they’re also the least subtle people in the whole world, proving this point again when all their eyes snap towards the girl in the front row immediately.
“Oh my god,” Cady whispers to herself. She exaggerates putting on her headphones and double-checking her equipment, in hopes of drawing the attention back to herself instead of her teammates ogling at a pretty girl.
Still she also finds her own eyes pulled towards the blonde girl—RGeorge2000. And wow. She’s real. And even more stunning in real life. How is that even possible? And she’s here! Based on her comments, there’s a non-zero chance that she is the one who dragged her foam-finger-boyfriend here, instead of the other way around.
Her foam-finger-boyfriend, who is currently grinning and pointing his foam finger at Cady.
Cady smiles at him despite the circumstances, and he says something to RGeorge2000, who suddenly looks up. Her eyes meet Cady’s and they stare at each other for a moment.
Then Kevin says into his mic, “Africa, I know she’s fucking hot, but you gotta stop eye-fucking our audience and focus on the screen. We’re not about to lose this tournament because you couldn’t keep it in your pants.”
“Ew,” Tim says.
Cady just rolls her eyes, glad that nobody can hear what they’re saying over their headsets.
But Kevin’s right, and she tears her gaze away from RGeorge2000. Maybe she will come to congratulate Cady on the win later—if they win. That thought is enough to motivate Cady even more, and she flexes her fingers.
Marwan is explaining the rules of today’s game. They’ll be playing best of five. Captain perks can only be used once, unless they have to play the fifth match, since there are only four perks. Whoever wins today will get a trophy and a couple million dollars. No biggie.
The screens flash and the banning phase starts. Kevin and Marymount’s captain predictably ban the John Deere and the Claas, determining that they will be playing with telehandlers the first round. It’s standard procedure at this point, both teams playing it safe while also maximizing their own chances. By the time they’re circling around the starting area to get a running start on the equipment, Cady feels confident that they can win this round using their usual strategies.
The countdown starts, and the audience fades to the background until Cady only hears her own focused breathing and her teammates wishing each other good luck.
Cady’s in her favorite tractor—a Case IH Magnum 400 Powerdrive. Over the months since she joined the team, she has finetuned her settings to respond exactly the way she wants to. Her streaming and recording setup is different from the single mouse and keyboard setup she has here, sitting in a dedicated room in her apartment with an ultrawide screen, full steering-wheel and joystick setup to simulate a real tractor as much as possible. Her camera and mic have been strategically built into the setup to minimize it getting in the way of the game, but she does like to keep a smaller second screen to read running commentary on Twitch whenever she streams. On days when it gets busy in the chat, she’s glad she picked such a laid-back game to build her career on and not some fps shooter where every pixel counts.
As the countdown reaches zero, everybody rushes out of the starting area. It’s a quick drive to the equipment that’s waiting for them and Cady rushes towards the baler set out for her.
Through her headphones she can vaguely hear the excited cheers of the audience and the commentary from Marwan, who is explaining their current Big Haul strategy and how it stacks up against Marymount’s Bottleneck, but all it does is help her focus on the game at hand. Most of all, she hears Kevin calling out how fast his harvester is filling up, and Tim responding, “Affirmative,” every time.
At the top of Cady’s screen is the score—currently still 0 – 0. She’s dutifully driving behind Kevin, watching her own machine fill up with straw until she’s finally gathered enough to make a dash towards the barn.
“I’m on my way to first bale,” she says into the mic. Without taking her eyes off the screen and keeping her fingers glued to the keyboard, she races towards the barn at slightly faster than forty-three miles per hour. With her finger hovering over the I, she manages to drop the bale at just the right time to score the first 147 points of the game.
A loud cheer goes up on their side of the audience, while a groan ripples through the other half. From the corner of her eye, she catches a glimpse of a blue foam finger waving back and forth.
But there is no time to celebrate. Now that they’ve scored the first points, it’s of the utmost importance that she keeps her head on straight and continue baling straw. By that time, Tim has his first load of grain ready to overload, and he’s running back to use a second harvester to farm more grain while Cady gathers straw for more bales.
It’s a tight balance between Cady turning around to drop off her bales and Tim maximizing the multiplier, and by the time Kevin is lifting the bales onto the transport belt Marymount is in the lead in terms of raw points.
But the Farmletes have the Big Haul advantage, and Tim has sold all his wheat. The multiplier is on their side.
Somewhere to her left, the Marymount players have fallen silent, and Cady knows that they’ve got this round in the bag.
While Kevin continues to feed bales onto the transport belt, Tim and Cady rush back and forth keep the steady stream of bales going.
By the time the game clock ticks down its final seconds, North Shore is over a hundred points in the lead, and there is nothing Marymount can do about it. Still, Cady doesn’t relax until the timer hits zero and VICTORY flashes across her screen.
The second round is a lot tighter, with both teams picking Unstoppable and identical equipment setups. The Marymount baler swerves to pick a different baler, not wanting to battle Cady for hers, the New Holland Bigbaler 1290 HD, and they both land a good first bale. Cady scores 145 points, Marymount 143. The points continues to be close until the last second, with Marymount seemingly copying everything the Farmletes are doing, up until the point where the multiplier returns to a solid 2x. In the end, North Shore wins by two points—the ones Cady scored with her practiced first bale.
There is a short break before the third and possibly last round, and Marwan tells everyone to be back in five minutes. From the other side of the stage, the Marymount players are staring daggers at them. Cady quickly averts her gaze, accidentally—honestly!—meeting RGeorge2000’s eyes instead.
RGeorge2000 stares at her for a moment. Her eyes are a piercing blue, contrasting the pink of her lip gloss. Something swirls in Cady’s stomach. If someone were to ask she would blame it on leftover adrenaline, but she knows better.
Cady tears her eyes away from RGeorge2000 follows Kevin and Tim backstage to discuss the round. Cady half-listens to them as she pulls out her phone and opens Instagram.
If RGeorge2000 is not a bot, she will probably have Instagram, right? Someone who looks like that must want to share that with the world.
Somewhat narcissistically, Cady starts by going to her own followers and typing “george” into the search bar. A slew of men named George pop up, but among them one profile stands out.
Regina George.
Her profile picture is different from the one she uses on YouTube, but it’s definitely her. Her bio says, “Pre-law at NSU” with a pink heart, and while she only follows around a hundred people, she has over a thousand followers herself. Her profile is filled with pictures of herself in flattering outfits, sometimes with friends, most of the time alone.
The guy she’s with is in quite a few photos, tagged as shane_oman. His profile says he’s on the North Shore football team. There is a post that he made on Valentine’s Day where he’s biting into a burger almost the size of his face with the caption celebrating with my one true love. Regina is not tagged in the photo, but that doesn’t have to mean anything.
Except for the fact that when she goes back to Regina’s profile, there is a post from April 26 where she is dressed in orange and pink with the caption Maybe if I was visible 365/365 days of the year I wouldn’t have been hit by a bus #LesbianVisibilityDay.
So Regina and Shane are probably not in a relationship.
That’s a normal thing to be relieved about when it comes to a girl you literally never talked to before except for a throwaway thank you comment back when you assumed she was still a bot account…
In hindsight a lot of her comments make a lot more sense.
She taps Regina’s profile picture to check out her story—a nondescript #OOTD photo which, logically, is the outfit she currently has on. Nothing about attending the finale of the largest event in college esports on the North American continent to date. It’s not until the story ends and she’s back on Regina’s profile that Cady realizes her mistake. She doesn’t follow Regina back, and she’s definitely on her public account.
Maybe Regina won’t notice that she watched her story.
Her hope lasts for approximately thirty seconds. Kevin and Tim are done strategizing for the next round, and the three of them are dragged back onto the stage.
As soon as Cady steps out from the curtains, Regina’s head whips up and she raises her eyebrows at Cady with an amused smirk on her face. She wiggles her phone in the air, and Cady has to look away lest she die of embarrassment on the spot and leave her team without a baler.
The third round goes considerably worse. It’s not even that Cady is distracted by Regina. It’s just that everything goes wrong. They can only use Big Haul once, so they’re forced to switch to a different strategy anyway, but then Marymount inexplicably picks Herbicide, which nobody ever does, and it becomes apparent that their whole strategy will revolve around farming the most grain. Which means that North Shore has to counter by producing more bales before Marymount can finish their field.
It goes bad from the start, with Cady being beaten to her favorite baler and having to reroute to a different one. She loses important time, and while she lands a good first bale Marymount has at least twenty points on them by then.
They bravely trudge on, but the North Shore side of the audience is noticeably quieter, even when Tim lands a perfect sixty-point toss with his telehandler—affectionately dubbed the Tim Toss. Cady even manages to come very close to matching Marymount’s amount of bales pressed, but with Marymount being able to use their whole field to make straw without slowing down there is just no fighting against their multiplier.
They lose the match 537 against 493.
Before Cady has time to process the loss, they’re thrown back into the lobby again to start the banning phase for the next match. It’s North Shore’s turn to start and Kevin follows the standard procedure of banning the John Deere, but Marymount bans Tim’s telehandler. Kevin, confused, bans the Claas harvester, and Marymount rounds it out by banning Cady’s Case tractor. On top of that, they are able to pick Big Haul against North Shore’s only option of Herbicide.
Marymount’s captain grins wickedly at them, and Cady flexes her fingers against the keyboard as not to flip him off on a livestream that’s being watched by multiple hundreds of thousands of people.
“I’m just going to harvest everything,” Kevin says into his mic. “Tim, help Cady press bales. After I’m done harvesting I’ll start loading them on the belt. We just have to work faster than them.”
Work faster would be a fine strategy if they weren’t driving virtual tractors that maxed out at forty miles an hour.
They spend the next ten minutes doing their absolute best, but Kevin’s strategy to harvest the whole field doesn’t end up panning out. Yes, their multiplier is higher and they have more bales, but there is no way they can actually get them up the belt in time to score the points. And then, as if the 100 point difference isn’t enough, their belt stops and there is no way to get it moving again.
Cady slumps in her chair as soon as DEFEAT flashes across her screen. She’s not the type of person to get easily tilted, but it does suck to have all your efforts thrown back in your face for twenty minutes straight.
There’s another five minute break before the final round. The one they have to win or lose the tournament. That’s fine. No pressure.
Her eyes drift to the audience. Marymount’s side is exaggeratingly chipper, and North Shore’s side is much quieter than before. In the front row, Regina and Shane look as defeated as Cady feels. Shane has even stopped waving his foam finger.
As if she can tell Cady is staring at her, Regina looks up. Their eyes meet and Cady’s heart flutters in her chest. She still can’t wrap her head around the fact that someone like Regina would watch her streams and videos, let alone come to an event like this. Farming Simulator esports may be big, but so is college football and Cady has never been to one of those games. Regina being gay, leaving semi-flirtatious comments on her videos, and coming to watch Cady play in real life has to mean something.
Regina doesn’t look away as she reaches into her purse to grab her phone, only then glancing down to type a message. Cady wiggles her phone out of her pocket—an upside to the baggy pants that are part of her uniform—and reopens her Instagram app. And surely enough, between the multitude of notifications of people tagging or mentioning her, is a message from reginageorge. The rest of their thread is mostly Regina reacting to stories Cady posted, dating back since the start of the season a few months ago.
Regina: Have you considered not losing?
Cady frowns. Not quite the heartwarming support she was expecting. When she looks back at Regina, however, Regina is smirking.
Cady: The thought hadn’t occurred to me yet
Regina: I can see that
Cady: :(
Across the room, Regina laughs. She’s pretty when she laughs. Cady wishes she could hear it, too.
Regina: Are you picking big haul for round 5?
Cady: Are you a spy?
Regina: Yes, my boyfriend is on the Marymount Crusaders
Cady snorts. Even if she hadn’t seen that Regina is a lesbian on her profile, the notion of her dating one of the Marymount players just feels ridiculous to her.
Cady: So you’re into losers?
Regina: Only if they’re cute redheads
Cady’s face burns, and she has to remind herself that even though they’re not currently playing, there is a high chance the livestream is still broadcasting. And since she’s the only player on the stage right now, everyone’s eyes would be on her.
Cady: Too bad I plan on winning today
Regina: I can be persuaded
“Who are you texting?” Kevin asks, materializing next to her and sitting back down in his seat.
“RGeorge2000,” Cady says. “Her name is Regina.”
Kevin looks over to where Regina is staring intently at them, waiting for Cady to text back. He lets out a low whistle of approval. “Gamers get girls.”
Cady rolls her eyes, but she can’t deny that somehow she managed to convince a girl like Regina to show up here today. Who knows if they would’ve even met if it weren’t for Farming Simulator.
Cady: Do you want to come with me to celebrate if we win today?
Regina: Depends on where you plan to take me. I don’t do well in real life fields
Cady: Cocktail bar?
Regina: What if you lose?
Cady: I’ll need your company to console me
Regina: At the cocktail bar?
Cady: If you want. We can also go to a corn maze
Regina: I pick cocktail bar
Cady: It’s a date
Cady doesn’t even bother to hide her grin for the cameras as she meets Regina’s eyes again. Regina honest-to-god winks at her, and makes a thumbs-up.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Cady can already see herself winning next year’s tournament, Regina running up to her to kiss her senseless while she’s struggling not to drop the trophy.
She shakes her head. She has to win this year’s trophy first.
As all the other players find their way back to their seats, Cady puts her phone away. The thought of getting to know Regina and taking her out on a date has bolstered her resolve, and she cannot fathom losing now.
From where she’s sitting, she can just barely see Regina’s face as they move through the pick and ban phase, glaring at Marymount as they pick Unstoppable again and cheering with the rest of the Farmletes’ supporters when Tim chooses a telehandler that will allow him to perform his Tim Toss to counter that.
The stakes are higher than ever before, but as soon as the countdown starts Cady feels nothing but calmness spreading through her body. This is the game she knows through and through. She has built her livelihood on this game, and the North Shore Farmletes brought her onto their team for a reason.
She lands a perfect first bale, scoring 151 points as she zooms past the barn opening. The crowd bursts into cheers, and from the corner of her eyes she sees Regina and Shane jumping out of their seats to do a celebratory dance.
Meanwhile the Marymount’s baler misses his bale and has to drive back, setting them back a good 27 points on North Shore.
It gives the Farmletes the confidence boost they needed. Kevin chows through the wheat like his life depends on it, Cady presses a record amount of bales, and Tim skillfully hurls over a hundred points worth of bales into the top door of their barn like it’s no big deal.
They win the match by a landslide, and while Marwan hands Kevin the trophy, Cady’s eyes find Regina in the crowd and she is rewarded with a kiss blown her way.
A red Grimme Ventor 4150 potato harvester trudges through a field of sunflowers, its header dutifully gobbling up a few rows of potatoes at a painstakingly slow pace. In the left corner of the screen is a video of Cady sitting at her home setup, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on a Thrustmaster FarmStick. On the right side, the live chat moves rapidly across the screen. Every now and then Cady squints her eyes at it, laughing or replying at something someone said.
Cady’s microphone picks up a door opening off-screen, and a moment later Cady looks up and she slips her headphones off her head, her face brightening. A second person steps into frame, blonde hair flowing down her shoulders.
Immediately, the chat explodes with variations of regina!!!!!
“Hey, I’m heading out—oh my god, are you still on the potatoes?”
Cady sighs, leaning the side of her face against Regina’s stomach. “Release me of my burden.”
Regina laughs. “No way. You got yourself into this mess, even though everyone told you to never do potatoes again.” She bends down and points straight at the camera, “Don’t let her fool you, chat. We’ve had a note on the fridge for weeks saying Never do potatoes again. She brought this on herself.”
“I wanted to make French fries with the new mod,” Cady says, exaggerating a pout.
“I’m deleting this game off your PC while you’re asleep.”
Cady looks straight into the camera. “I’m being threatened in my own home.”
Regina rolls her eyes affectionately and she whispers something in Cady’s ear that’s too quiet for the mic to pick up, before pressing a kiss against Cady’s mouth. Then she waves at the camera and leaves the room.
The live chat goes wild.
ugh my otp
literally relationship goals
when is it my turn to find a gf in a twitch chat
Cady puts her headphones back on, cheeks a little flushed. She leans forward to read the chat. “She’s going to run errands, but she said that if I’m still on potatoes when she’s back she might come hang out for a bit until I’m done.”
Then, with a smirk, she takes the foot off the gas and lets the harvester slow to a crawl.