There are a lot more guys than girls here, as usual, though as I think that, a girl glides past in an intricate black and red shadowlady dress that drapes over her shoulders, then somehow skips her exposed stomach before flowing down to the floor. Her curly red hair spills out all over the place in perfect chaos.
By the left wall, a couple of white guys in jeans and T-shirts whip out their phones and snap pictures of her as she passes without even attempting to ask her permission, which is so against convention etiquette—against general human etiquette, really—that it makes my blood boil.
I whirl around to complain to Legs, but it turns out Legs has been spotted.
A teen guy with spiky black hair and warm beige skin is asking him for an autograph. We just walked a dozen blocks in downtown Toronto and no one we passed even gave Legs a second glance, but here at LotSCON, he’s basically royalty.
Legs finishes signing the guy’s foam sword. “Be awesome!” he tells the guy as he walks away. He turns back to me. “What’s got you looking like you smell a rotting corpse?”
“What?”
He scrunches up his face in what I realize is an imitation of my own.
I force my own facial muscles to relax. “Oh, just some guys taking pictures of a girl in cosplay without her permission.” When I glance back at them, one is taking a picture of the other standing under the huge photo of my brother. Of course they’re Codemeister fans. Cody did the exact same thing at PAX; he took a picture of this girl in a skintight Gamora costume without asking her, and when I told him that’s against the rules, he said, and I quote, “That’s garbage. A girl who wears a costume like that wants to be looked at.” The elastic band that exists inside me stretches tight and angry just thinking about it.
“Those guys over there?” Legs juts his perfect chin in the direction of the guys. “Let’s go tell them to cut it out.”
“Really?” That doesn’t feel very Legsian. Legs is the best human I know, but like he said by the water, confrontation is not his strong suit. He once worried for a week about sending a fan an email telling her not to release her turtle into the wild.
“Yeah, I mean, Brian was right. I’ve got to be less afraid of doing stuff like that. What’s the worst that could happen? Come on.” And with that, we’re marching over to the two guys, who look to be about my age. They’ve put away their phones and are flipping through their programs.
“Hey,” Legs says once we reach them, and they both look up. The one guy’s face lights up with recognition immediately, and Legs smiles at him. “We happened to see you guys take a picture of someone in cosplay without asking her permission, and we wanted to make sure you knew that’s against the rules, so you don’t get in trouble.”
“You should never take a picture of someone without their permission,” I add, feeling suddenly like a television PSA.
I expect them to bristle like Cody always does when I try to call him out on stuff. But instead, the Legs fan grins. “Oh, I didn’t know that,” he says. “Thanks, man. Hey, could I have your autograph?”
Is it the fact that Legs is clearly his hero that made the guy listen? Or is it something about Legs himself, and the way he spoke so calmly and kindly? I get too angry to talk like that.
Legs signs one’s tote bag and the other’s program, then tells them to “Be awesome!” before we walk away.
“They were surprisingly happy to be told they screwed up by a superstar YouTuber,” I say to Legs after we’re out of earshot. The realization makes me unexpectedly sad. If Cody didn’t spend so much time being a dick, I could be encouraging him to make positive change like this. With his millions of subscribers, he could do so much good. “Thanks for doing that.”
“With great power comes great responsibility, I guess.” Legs laughs with relief, and I have to push away the desire that bubbles up to lean right in and kiss him on his beautiful, laughing mouth. “That was a lot easier than I expected,” he continues.
Which gives me an idea. “Hey, you should talk to Cody! You’re so good at it! Just tell him the stuff I said yesterday. Maybe he’d actually listen to you.”
Instead of lighting up with excitement, Legs’s eyes darken. “Talk to your brother? I don’t know, Lainey. I’m not sure that’s a good idea. You’re better off asking Z or something.”
Why would he be willing to talk to these strangers, but not be willing to talk to my own brother about something that matters to me? I want to argue with him. I want to tell him that I bet he didn’t think these fans would listen to him either. I want to say that he’ll never know unless he tries. But I’m too disappointed in him. And I hate feeling disappointed in someone I usually think of as one of the world’s best humans.
So I drop it.
“Want to go check out a panel or something?” I ask, changing the subject, even though I can’t imagine there’s anything I’d be interested in seeing other than that girl gamer panel Legs mentioned that I apparently just missed.
He shakes his head. “Think I’ll hide away somewhere. I’m not in the mood for telling people they’re awesome right now.” Right, he’s still sad. Maybe if he wasn’t so down, he’d be up for talking to Cody. I want to believe that.
I can’t help but wonder, though, if it’s not the sadness but just who Legs is. Is it easier for Legs to talk to strangers like those fans than to his friends like that homophobic Steve guy? Is this the part of the story Legs isn’t telling me? That even after Brian asked him, Legs still wouldn’t call his dickhead friend out?
“You don’t always have to tell people they’re awesome.” The words come out harsher than I intended.
“It’s my catchphrase. I kind of do.”
“I thought your catchphrase was ‘To the rift!’”
A group of guys passing us must catch my last few words, because they pump their fists and echo, “To the rift!” They grin at Legs, who’s forced to grin back.
The grin falls off his face as soon as they pass. “I think I’ll go chill in the VIP lounge like last night.”
I shrug. “Okay. I’ll join you.”
“Oh, no, I’d feel bad keeping you from the convention.”
“Yeah, because I’m such a LotS fangirl and would be devastated to miss even a minute,” I say, and Legs laughs, the tension falling away between us. I enjoy playing LotS, but I play maybe once a month, if that, and I haven’t even bothered looking through the schedule in the program. My gaming expertise is . . . low. At PAX, I referred to LotS as a MMORPG, then had to endure a rant from Noog about how girls know nothing about video games and how MMORPGs are games played with thousands of people online in the same world at the same time, not smaller multiplayer games with private servers like LotS, or something like that. I was too busy trying to keep myself from punching him in the face to pay proper attention.
Cody, of course, agreed with him.
So after spending several days at PAX East with those idiots, I’m a little conventioned out. “Honestly, it’d be nice to have a bit of quiet before I have to deal with Cody and the gang.”
“All right, then. Let’s go be hermits together,” he says.
As we head off, I glance over my shoulder at those two guys, wondering if they’ll actually start asking permission now. “Legs, do you think people can change?” I repeat the question I asked Willow last night.
He considers as we round a corner. “I have to believe they can.”
I frown. If that’s true, why wouldn’t he at least try to make a change in Cody by talking to him? Well, regardless, I have to believe it, too. I have to believe that Cody can change.
I’m not giving up on Cody like Brian gave up on Legs. And if Legs won’t help, I’ll just find someone else who will. I’ll just keep trying.
@LumberLegs: If I finally started selling merch, what should I start with: shirts, phone cases, or hand towels?
[1.4K likes]
@LumberLegs: Why do so many of you want to dry your hands on my face?
[2.2K likes]
Eight
SamTheBrave
WHEN THE GIRL GAMER PANEL FINISHES, BEFORE THE CLAPPING HAS COMPLETELY died down, the Asian guy sitting next to me leans over. His arms and face are a little pudgy, like he never lost his baby fat, and his beige Team Meister shirt has been worn so many times that it’s starting to fray along the collar. “Do you know when the Team Meister panel is?” he asks. “I lost my program.”
I’m 99 percent sure it’s at one o’clock, but if they’re his all-time favorite gamers, 99 percent doesn’t feel like enough, so I simply hand over my own program.
“Thanks.” He starts flipping through the pages at a leisurely pace. “Do you think they’d give me a new program if I asked?”
I want to try to get ShadowWillow’s autograph as she’s leaving, but she hasn’t even gotten up from her seat onstage yet, so there’s still time. “I don’t know. They’ve got all the info online, though.”
He taps his pocket. “I’m out of data. And he’s grounded, so no phone.” He points to the scrawny white guy beside him wearing gray sweatpants and a baggy black shirt with a shadowdragon on it. His brown hair is combed to the side, except for one rebellious strand in the middle that sticks straight up.
“The schedule’s at the very back of the program,” I say to the first guy. Then to the second, “Should you be here if you’re grounded?”
“I’m not grounded,” the white guy says—or at least, I think that’s what he says. His voice is quiet and the room is loud. The seats have mostly emptied, but there are still lots of people milling about. Shadow is still onstage, chatting with the other panelists. I lean in closer so I can hear the guy’s response. “Mom just took my phone away and replaced it with some antique that doesn’t even connect to the internet. For emergencies or something.”
“Why’d she take it away?” It might be rude to ask, but I’m curious. The only rebellious things about this guy are that stubborn cowlick and the fact that he’s wearing sweatpants in public. (Not that I’m one to talk, since I almost did the same.)
He shrugs. “I stayed up all night doing rift raids the night before my great-grandma’s birthday party.”
“One o’clock,” the Asian guy reports before I can react. “The panel’s at one.”
“Okay.” His friend pulls a pen out of his sweatpants pocket and scrawls the time on the inner part of his right arm.
“Thanks.” The first guy hands the program back to me. “I’m Mark, by the way. This is Leroy.”
“No jokes about the name,” Leroy spits out.
I throw my hands up in surrender. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Good. Can I borrow your phone?”
He’s looking at me. “Oh, uh . . .” I’d never ask a stranger to use their phone, unless I was calling 911 or something.
“I want to look up some stats for our tourney.”
Then again, spending only a couple of hours at Opa and Oma’s house without my phone is torture, so I can’t imagine spending a whole weekend without it. I pull my phone out of my pocket and unlock it. “Yeah, I guess that’s—”
Leroy takes the phone out of my hand.
“Who’s SamTheBrave?” Mark asks, looking over Leroy’s shoulder at the Twitch page I had open to show Code.
“Oh, that’s me. I’m Sam, by the way,” I add, realizing that I haven’t actually introduced myself.
“That’s so cool. Are you famous? Should I be asking for your autograph?” Mark stands and Leroy follows suit and I do too; I guess I’m going wherever they are, since Leroy’s still got his face buried in my phone. As long as they don’t go too far, because I still want Shadow’s autograph.
“Nah, my channel’s really small,” I say as we start winding out of the row. “I’m actually hoping to convince Codemeister to check it out this weekend. If he even just tweeted about it once—”
“That’d be epic!” Mark says, jumping in excitedly. “What’s your pitch?”
“My pitch?”
“Yeah, like say you only have ten seconds to convince him. Hang on. . . .” We stop in the aisle as he pulls his own phone out of his pocket, then presses a few buttons. “Okay . . . go!”
“Oh, um . . .” I pause for a moment to think, then remember his timer’s running. “Well, I’m SamTheBrave . . . and I have a Twitch chan—”
“Time! You need some practice.”
Shoot, that went fast. We start moving down the aisle again. “I’m sure I’ll get more than ten seconds.”
“Maybe. But I’ve heard those autographs go by really fast.”
Why didn’t I think to practice a quick pitch? I want to reach for a fidget ball in my pocket, but I don’t want to have to explain what it’s for, and I have a feeling these guys would ask.
“Okay, 27 speed and 43 attack,” Leroy says, handing me back my phone. “27 speed, 43 attack,” he repeats to himself, then pulls his pen out of his pocket and writes it on his arm beside the 1 p.m., though in smaller letters this time.
I glance back at the stage before we exit the room. Shadow is still up there. I can see her purple hair shining out from where she’s talking to GrayscaleRainbow and Aureylian.
“So, can I get your autograph?” Mark says as we step into the hall, and it takes me a moment for me to realize he’s talking to me again. “Maybe Code’ll make you super famous, and I’ll be able to prove that I knew you when.” He pats his pockets. “I don’t have anything for you to sign, though.”
“You could sign my arm,” Leroy says, holding it out.
“Maybe we’ll run into each other after you guys get new programs,” I say, and Leroy thankfully drops his arm. “By then, maybe I’ll have convinced Code to check out my channel and I’ll basically be famous.”
“Maybe you will!” Mark says, and the fact that he’s serious instead of laughing somehow makes me more nervous. “Practice that pitch, though. Ten seconds!” Leroy is already wandering down the hall. Mark starts walking backward after him. “Nice to meet you, Sam. Catch you around.”
“Yeah, see you. Bye, Leroy!” I call after his slowly retreating back.
Leroy raises his ink-scrawled arm in the air and gives a not-unfriendly wave but doesn’t look back, which for some reason makes me laugh.
With the two of them gone, I head to the doorway closest to the stage. I finally pull a fidget ball out of my pocket and roll it between my fingers so they don’t wander to my face or arms without me noticing. It’s not only when I’m nervous that I need them. My fingers are just as likely to slip out of my control when I’m bored or distracted or concentrating on something. Though admittedly I am the tiniest bit nervous. I mean, she’s ShadowWillow!
When none of the panelists appear right away, I pull out my phone and check my YouTube comments to distract myself. There are three new ones.
Lololololololol
Stumbled across this video, and it’s hilarious. Checked out some of your other videos, and your recent ones are all top-notch. I’ve subbed and followed your Twitch channel, too! Looking forward to more.
this is so dumb your an idiot. I bet your face is as ugly as this video and that’s why you never facecam
I blink at that last message. It’s just a troll, one of the internet’s joyful spreaders of hatred and bile. I get the odd comment like this, and like Jones would say, you haven’t made it as a YouTuber unless you get grammarless hate spewers commenting on all your videos.
It’s just garbage that doesn’t matter, and I should ignore it. I force my hand away from the pimple it’s found on my face and read through the two nice comments again, trying to fill my brain with them instead. When that doesn’t work, I shove it all out of my head and message Dereck and Jones instead: I’m going to try to get ShadowWillow’s autograph right now.
Dereck’s probably sleeping, since it’s the middle of the night in Australia, but Jones’s little face bubble pops up right away.
Ooh, are you going to ask her to show Code your videos?
My stomach twists. T
he thought didn’t even occur to me. All that occurred to me is that I want her autograph, and why wait until her scheduled signing, if she’s even doing one, when I could get it now? It didn’t occur to me to wonder whether she might be connected to Code. I hadn’t even realized all that shipping was still going on until people asked questions about it at the panel.
Before I can reply, I catch a blur of purple out of the corner of my eye. Shadow! She’s coming out of the hall with a few people.
“Shadow! Could I have your autograph?”
She turns toward me, and for a moment, I wish I could be in my LotS skin instead of in this big, bumbling body that doesn’t feel like mine, with the face that troll could sense through the internet is ugly. What if she thinks I’m too fat or too ugly or too gross to be worth her time? What if she thinks I’m rude for interrupting?
But when her eyes settle on me, she only smiles. “Of course.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a Sharpie in one smooth motion. “What would you like me to sign?”
I should have thought of this before! Why didn’t I buy that magnet in the vendors hall? In my bag, I do have that cyan clay diamond that I found in the vendor’s tent. It’s big enough for multiple signatures, but if I had someone else sign it first, I wouldn’t be able to tell Code that I got it specifically for him to sign.
The only other thing I have on me is my program, so I take my own advice to Mark and Leroy and hand it to her. The LotS logo, with its shiny diamond over a red and orange shield, takes up most of the cover, but there’s plenty of room around it for signatures.
She takes it, smiling. Her purple hair is sort of shiny and mesmerizing. Her friends have fallen back, and instead of checking over her shoulder every few seconds to make sure they aren’t leaving her, she’s looking right at me. “What’s your name?” she asks.
Fan the Fame Page 8