“Hi, everybody, I’m Sam, and welcome to another episode of Let’s Play Dire Straits. Last time I talked about us trying to mine the riverbed for runes. The riverbed, for those of you who don’t know, is another level of the game. It’s very treacherous; all sorts of new monsters and things just waiting to try to kill you. It’s a great challenge! I always have a lot of fun in the riverbed. But in order to go mining, we do have to prepare. I want a good bundle of supplies to take down with me in my pack, which means we’ll be wanting to make food, take some pre-crafted shelters and firepits, all the comforts of home, you know?”
Sam yawned, trying to cover the sound from the mic. “Goodness, excuse me. It was a long day at work and I was up rather late last night reading.” And talking to Dovid again. “Excuse me one moment while I take a sip of tea, here.” This time he moved the mic away from his face to drink, moving it back after he set his mug back down on his desk. “Mm, delicious, delicious tea. Anyway—oh! I almost forgot, I’m sorry, I wanted to welcome all my new subscribers. There are, well, there are quite a lot of you apparently. Thank you to those who watched my other videos and decided to stick with me, as well as all my subscribers who have been with me for a while. You’re all lovely people, and I’m glad I’m able to provide some semblance of entertainment.”
He talked and played his game, and was almost half an hour in before he remembered that he had some questions he’d meant to answer. He sometimes had subscribers ask him questions and he tried to respond to them in comments or in video when he could. Now, with so many new comments, he wanted to maybe try to give some of his older followers a little more attention.
“Right, sorry, let me just kite this lamprey eel for a moment, there you go—ahah! Beat you.” He grinned and reached for the pad of paper he’d jotted his notes down on. “Anyway, Meganbeginagain, I wanted to reply to your comment about our pet vulture Clarissa McBeakbird. Because first off, it’s always nice to see a familiar icon and username. Yes, she is still laying eggs as far as I know, but I haven’t fed her in a while. And oh dear, that sounds really awful to say aloud, isn’t it? I’m sorry, Clarissa! I’ll go home and feed you right away. Or, well, not right away; I’m still in the riverbed. But soon, I promise. So, erm, yes, with the latest patch, the pet birds don’t die if you forget to feed them for a while, they just stop laying eggs. You have to start feeding them regularly again, and then after a couple days they’ll start producing eggs again.
“So you all know,” he added, “pet bunnies can die now, if they’re left alone too long and aren’t fed. That’s half the reason why I haven’t tried to get one. I’m away from my base so often now, doing advanced quests and building, and I can’t stand to think that I might accidentally let a creature starve to death. Even if it was a virtual creature. I’ll admit it, I did play about Neopia when Neopets was a thing, and I couldn’t ever bear the thought of my pets starving and my not tending to them, but I also didn’t want to put them up for adoption in case their new owners ever stopped playing the game and forgot about them. So I gave the entire account to my little cousin, who likes the game very much and keeps it up as a hobby. I still might check in with her once in a while, just to see how they’re doing.”
He cleared his throat, feeling a little silly. Somehow he always tended to go off onto tangents like that. Oh, well. His viewers stuck around for a reason, he supposed. “But back to the game, I also wanted to address selkiesummers’s question about why I’m not just farming sheeples. That is to say, why I’m not creating sheeple farms, as opposed to just leaving them in wild herds—”
Before he knew it, his hour was up. It had been a good run, he thought. Even if he had been a bit silly in what he talked out that wasn’t in-game. Then again, he was always like that, and people still watched him.
Slightly more people, now, actually.
Anyway, he didn’t have to reason why; he’d just continue to make let’s play videos. Speaking of, he set his video to render, pulled up the cozy mystery novel he’d just started, and settled in for a usual Friday night.
Dovid buried his face in his hands. Sam cared about his virtual Neopets so much that he had made sure they’d gone to a good home and he still checked on them.
God, he liked Sam so much.
This was such a problem.
Rachel nudged him. “Would you stop pausing the video every time you think he does something cute?”
“I can’t handle him. Rachel, I can’t handle how cute he is.”
“So, let me watch in peace, and you can watch some other time and stop interrupting.”
“Nooo, I need you for support.”
“Support for what?”
“He’s talking to me, Rachel! We are exchanging conversation. And he’s so nice, and genuine, and—”
“And cute, yes, you have said. Multiple times. We’ve covered this. You have a massive, massive crush on a Let’s Player who lives in Ireland.”
Dovid didn’t even try to deny it at this point. “Hey, you like him too.”
“Yeah,” she said. “But I’m not head over heels in love with him.”
Okay, that he’d deny. “That’s an exaggeration.”
“Sure.”
“I just like him a lot.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Rachel, Rachel, I want to talk to him more. What can I do? Am I allowed to just DM him? Will he think that it’s weird?”
“I don’t know. I mean, you’ve already talked to him. I can’t see there’d be anything wrong with saying hi. You could let him know you watched his video and whatever.”
That was a great idea. He could do that. “I could do that.”
“Yes, you could. Now, in order to tell him the truth about watching his video, you need to finish it. By which I mean let me watch his damn video now.”
Grumbling, Dovid pressed play.
Dontlooknowdovid: Hey! Just wanted to let you know that I watched your recent video. I thought it was great. You really know what you’re doing in the game. And it was cool to learn that thing about sheeple farming. Also liked how you talked to some of your fans in-video. I do that too, and it’s always appreciated, from what I’ve found.
The reply came early Saturday morning, around eight o’clock. Dovid was half asleep when his phone beeped, and he fumbled trying to find it and set the message to play. It was only once it started that he realized the DM was from Sam, and that made him sit up, now more alert.
Playitagainsam: Thank you very much! I’m glad you liked it. It wasn’t too much, you don’t think?
Dontlooknowdovid: Too much? No, of course not. Your videos are always really genuine sounding. I really like listening to them.
Playitagainsam: Oh, I’m so glad to hear that. And if you don’t think they’re too much, I’ll defer to your YouTube experience.
Dontlooknowdovid: Anytime.
Dontlooknowdovid: What are you up to today?
Playitagainsam: Nothing too exciting, I’m afraid. I’m quite a boring person, actually.
Dontlooknowdovid: I’ve got a hard time believing that :)
Playitagainsam: Really! I’ve spent the day drinking tea and reading, and playing more Dire Straits. I have a few personal runs that aren’t YouTube related. I went out for a walk to my grocery store as well, though it was too cold to really enjoy being out of doors.
Dontlooknowdovid: See, that sounds like a nice day to me.
Playitagainsam: I do find it quite nice, yes. After a workweek, I tend to use my days off to decompress, when I’m not running errands. It can be hard, being on with other people all the time.
Dontlooknowdovid: I won’t pretend I know exactly how that feels—I’m definitely an extrovert, and my whole life is about letting people see exactly who I am. But I can get needing to take a break from it. Some days I’m just tired, you know? I don’t feel like filming.
Dontlooknowdovid: Or I guess it’s more that I don’t feel like letting people in.
Playitagainsam: I think that’s perfectly reasonable. It sounds exhausting quite honestly, bringing people “with” you everywhere you go! I couldn’t imagine being in front of the camera like that, much less all the time.
Dontlooknowdovid: You sound like Rachel. She wouldn’t be caught dead in front of the camera.
Playitagainsam: How in the world did she become half of a YouTube duo then?
Dontlooknowdovid: It’s actually half her fault. She had to make a presentation for class about an underrepresented minority. Which, I mean, her twin brother is LITERALLY BLIND. I’m not sure what her teacher was expecting.
Dontlooknowdovid: Anyway, she’d always liked making videos on her phone and stuff—she’s a Snapchat/Instagram wiz, so she decided to film the presentation instead of doing a PowerPoint. And guess who was the star guest speaker?
Playitagainsam: I can’t imagine.
Dontlooknowdovid: Hahaha, right? Anyway, we had a lot of fun, and then sort of came to the conclusion at the same time that we should just keep making videos like this; stuff that lets the world see that I’m just your average guy. I’m just missing a couple of parts.
Playitagainsam: I’d hardly say you’re average.
Dovid had typed you’re sweet and was about to hit send before he came to his senses and erased it.
Dontlooknowdovid: Thanks, man! ’Preciate it. But no, yeah, we got a pretty good response, and had a pretty loyal, if small audience. Then we got it into our heads to film “Angry Blind Teen” and—Can I tell you a secret?
Playitagainsam: Sure, if you want to. I won’t tell.
Dontlooknowdovid: We were so, so drunk when we filmed that. Our parents had gone away for the weekend and we thought it’d be a good idea to see what it was like to get drunk off our asses. But we were underage at the time, and then it went viral on YouTube and we REALLY couldn’t tell people we were drunk. Our parents still don’t even know. And everyone on YouTube who’s watched that video just thinks I’m a big whiner. Which is true, I sort of am, but being drunk didn’t help.
Dontlooknowdovid: You are now the third person on this planet privy to this information, by the way. Counting Rachel and me.
Playitagainsam: I won’t breathe a word.
Dontlooknowdovid: :)
Dontlooknowdovid: So yeah, after “Angry Blind Teen” got people actually looking at our videos, our popularity skyrocketed. It was like...we’d been making these really great videos, but now people knew they existed. Rachel was having a blast filming and figuring out sound and shots and whatever, and we both had a good time deciding what to film for our videos and editing them together.
Dontlooknowdovid: We always say that Rachel does the heavy lifting, and I’m the pretty face.
Playitagainsam: Oh I’m sure that’s not true.
Dontlooknowdovid: Aw, you don’t think I’m pretty?
Shit, flirting, this was probably flirting territory—
Dontlooknowdovid: But no, it’s kind of true, haha. She’s definitely a huge driving force behind everything. I’m just the guy who invites people into his life. She’s the one who makes it possible for them to really look and listen. I mean, I’ve got a hand in editing and everything, but filming is a lot easier when you’ve got someone telling you where to point your face xD
Playitagainsam: Hahaha. Alright, that makes sense. But sounds to me as though you’re both very important. And both very good at what you do.
Dontlooknowdovid: Thanks. We try.
“Hey, guys, this is Don’t Look Now with Dovid and Rachel. I’m Dovid, Rachel’s behind the camera, and today we’re going to be baking chocolate chip cookies! Well, I’m going to be baking them. Rachel is going to follow along with the camera and not get anywhere near the oven. Or any of the ingredients. Rachel’s kind of a mess in the kitchen, guys.”
Sam watched, grinning, as Dovid listed all the ingredients and took his viewer through a step-by-step instruction on how to make chocolate cookies, with the addition of all his little tangents and stories. Rachel’s only job really was to hold the camera; Dovid even had a talking scale that told him how much of each ingredient he was measuring out, so he didn’t have to worry about that sort of thing. And meanwhile, Sam hadn’t even had any idea that talking scales existed.
He wondered what else he took for granted, as a sighted person.
Well, that was half of why he had started watching Dovid’s videos. And besides being educational and fun, he seemed like such an interesting person, and genuinely very nice, if how he was interacting with Sam (and on his channel in general) was any indication. Sam had only watched a few episodes here and there, picking things sporadically based on title or presumed content, but he’d enjoyed all of them. Dovid had a wonderful personality, as did Rachel, and Sam had a lot of fun watching their dynamic. No wonder they appealed to such a wide audience.
It also, well, it also didn’t hurt that Dovid was in no way difficult to look at.
Which...was that fair on Sam’s end? He couldn’t help that he found Dovid attractive. That had just...happened through talking to him and then watching his videos. And then even more talking, because Dovid talked to him, and acted as though it was no big deal.
That was indeed a big deal to Sam. That this famous YouTube star would even give him the time of day, much less express interest in Sam’s own videos and then offer advice on how to deal with a sudden onslaught of popularity. Sam couldn’t summon up the courage to initiate conversation that didn’t have to do with YouTube questions, and, well, he could admit, at least to himself, that he might have started wracking his brain to come up with said questions as of late, but Dovid didn’t seem to mind at all. He often kept talking to him after the question had been answered. Asking Sam about his day, or talking about his own.
Dovid had even started asking Sam questions about whatever he was reading at the moment. Asking for recommendations and then, a couple days later, striking up a conversation about the book because he’d started to read it himself. Sam had begun to start making sure any new books he chose to read had audio versions out.
Sometimes Dovid got stuck on a video and they brainstormed together. Dovid made Sam feel as though his ideas and opinion were worth listening to.
Which did not, exactly, help Sam’s crush.