YouTuber Gamer Sheridan’s Soulmark Reads… Gamer - Polygon

Man this is almost humiliating. I can’t imagine getting a fucking gamer soulmark. That’s just cringe incarnate

And i thought my friend’s Waitress Of soulmark was bad

Who tf is Kari Callisto

Wat do u mean i cant ship gamer and carlos anymore :( 

Gamer knew the old adage by heart, almost like tattoo. Never read the comments. Don’t look yourself up on social media. And yet, they laid in bed, scrolling for… how long had they even just been laying in their bed? They didn’t know or care. Their finger swept through clickbait articles one after another, leaving no comment unread in the process. Their headphones played out a podcast that came out mere hours after the leakage.

Was this helping them? No. No it was not. Gamer knew this. They weren’t stupid.

Gamer didn’t know who to be most angry at. Kari, for being so cold towards them? Carlos, for not stopping the former mod while he was still awake and able to? Thrill, for her act of sheer selfishness and hunger for attention? Or themself, for not handling this any better.

It didn’t matter, in the end, who they should be angry at.

Thrill reached out to Gamer pleading for their forgiveness with a bunch of pleading face emojis, but Gamer swiftly blocked her. At least Thrill was getting some slack from the more sensible parts of the internet for doing what she did.

Understandably, texts bombarded their inbox, calls that were sent to voicemail, every relevant media outlet having reached out to them and their PR crew for comment. Of course, they offered none. All of Gamer’s team was instructed to stay quiet as well – not that it would have helped, but at least it would keep the fire somewhat contained.

Gamer wondered what Kari was doing right now.

Well, Gamer hadn’t been blocked or unfollowed. Which was a good thing, considering there was no getting rid of the mark. But she hadn’t posted anything. Gamer did notice that Kari hadn’t responded to any pings or mod messages, though they couldn't really blame her. She did, after all, abandon all electronics. Gamer only wished they could do the same.

One last comment caught Gamer’s eye.

It’s fake, who tf has a soulmark that says gamer? Like wtf does that even mean LMFAO

Gamer groaned. They wish they knew. They threw their phone across the bed, silencing the podcast, leaving themself in disarray, confusion, and grief. Gamer closed their eyes, but sleep wouldn’t welcome them no matter what they did. So Gamer just sat there, almost in a meditative state. That’s what they got for drinking yet another energy drink at 3am.

More time passed. What day was it? Gamer reached into their bedside drawer, topped with empty cans, napkins, and books they never read, and grabbed a cheap journal they purchased months ago and couldn’t use.

A sigh escaped them. What were they even going to write? What were they even going to say ?

Gamer promised to fix this.

The first instinct they had was to write an angry letter to Thrill. Gamer did have her address, after all. But that wouldn’t help anything except for Gamer’s own ego.

So they wrote something actually productive.

It’s rare for me to speak seriously, but I want people to know this is not ironic or a joke…

…

…

… 

…The news came to myself and Kari very recently. We are still processing. Neither of us intended for it to be leaked, and it was done so with malicious intent. While I cannot remove that knowledge from the internet, I ask that you all please give myself and Kari some privacy.  I do not and will never condone the harassment my Soulmate is facing, and anyone caught will be swiftly banned from my community. In the same vein, anyone harassing either of us at the upcoming convention will be swiftly removed.

I cannot control the internet’s bizarre ways of functioning, however I ask you all to use your common sense and stop these immature violations of privacy. Thank you.

-Gamer Sheridan

They looked over the statement once, twice, three times. Then they looked it over a billion more times. It was rare for them to write anything without leaving it to their admins. Vulnerability was never their strongest point, but what else could they do?

Gamer groaned. They hated this. They hated being… being tied to someone so intimately. Moreover, they hated how responsible they felt for this catastrophe. They hated that they didn’t know what to do. They hated that they couldn’t just put a middle finger to the situation and forget about it forever.

Nothing about this situation was particularly pleasant. And yet.

With a deep sigh, they held their breath as they posted the plea for privacy to all their accounts.

Gamer exhaled.

The messages instantly started popping up. They supposed they couldn’t expect anything else. With not much else to do, Gamer stared blank-eyed, slack-jawed at the screen as they read the chaos that ensued.

Carlos and the other mods with an ounce of maturity stepped in quickly to monitor. Curling up into their blankets, they read a message from the mod chat— “Leave this to us, just take care of yourself.”

It was shocking that people actually cared about them. Then again, it was most likely a farce.

Suddenly, the Discord call sound rang. Gamer jolted up from their seat, throwing their blankets off of themself, quickly switching their attention. If the call wasn’t immediately silenced, that meant…

Sure enough. It was a call from Kari.

Gamer closed their eyes and breathed out slowly. At least they could say they tried to Kari, if Kari wasn’t pleased.

They answered. “Hey Kari,” they kept their tone as serious as they could.

“Hey.” Thankfully, Kari’s voice only showed a fraction of her previous fury and indignation. Either she wasn’t as angry or she was just keeping it well-controlled. At least, that’s what Gamer thought. “I saw your post. Thanks.”

“Of course,” Gamer sighed. “I know it won’t fix everything.”

Kari murmured something incomprehensibly before responding, “well, people stopped harassing me. Actually, some people expressed sympathy for my situation, or talked about similar experiences. Some are even watching my videos – without making fun of them. So… it did something.”

Gamer nodded, knowing Kari couldn’t see them. She was off video for one reason or another. Gamer stayed off video, too. “I’m… I’m glad about that.”

“Yeah. Me too.” She paused, before sighing and continuing, “I know what happened wasn’t your fault. I know you wouldn’t have done something like that intentionally. At least, I hope you wouldn’t. Again we… don’t actually know each other. The… the attention just made me freak out. Like, I have fans and viewers and stuff but it wasn’t like I got a fraction of bad attention like I did yesterday.”

Gamer curled back up in their blankets. They weren’t sure how much of themself Kari could see, but at least she knew they were present.

They wanted to reply, but paused to give Kari an opportunity to continue. She took it. “I mean I… I guess I thought it would be different. But it doesn’t really matter. I just hope it doesn’t follow me too closely into the real world.”

Gamer still avoided the eye of the camera. “I can give you some tips for how to stay, like, unnoticed in public. I mean, if you want.”

Kari chuckled lightly. “I’d love that a lot, actually. Probably helps that I don’t have neon green hair.”

”You should have seen it at the Soulmates office here on the other side of the planet. My rideshare guy asked me if I was the Fortnite guy. I wanted to die right there.”

Another chuckle from their soulmate. Maybe things were going to work out after all?

”Right. Oh, yeah, that reminds me…” Kari shuffled behind herself, turning away from the microphone. Gamer perked up, straightening their back and trying to look a tad more presentable. All things considered, the call wasn’t going terribly. It was a good sign there was a call in the first place. As Kari pulled out who-knew-what, Gamer’s eyes glanced to the side hesitantly. Sure enough, their notifications were still blowing up.

Kari sure was taking a while… was she looking through her desk or something? Gamer grabbed onto their feet and stretched. “When the attention first—“ Kari looked up, but was still searching for whatever. “When it first got me, it was kind of out of nowhere too. Actually, another larger YouTuber made a whole video mocking one of my first videos.” Kari hissed, shooting a sympathetic look. “That was his whole spiel. He would find new content creators and rip them to shreds on his videos. Mostly for bullshit reasons.  For me it was because I used a recording pen as a microphone, one I got as a Christmas present years ago.”

”Huh. I don’t remember that video,” Kari mused.

”Yeah. I actually deleted it shortly after that. But the trolls were already flooding in, so to speak.” Kari paused her searching — or maybe she found it? “It was honestly kind of funny, in a way. This guy, whose parents paid for everything, including all his recording stuff, got his views making fun of other people. Like god forbid people be poor and not pour their life savings into a new hobby. At least when I make fun of other people, it’s because they’re transphobic in my Twitch chat or — or whatever.”

Kari paused, trying to choose her words carefully. Gamer briefly thought they shouldn’t have spilled all that, but they were sleep deprived and not thinking clearly.

”I’m sorry,” Kari eventually replied, “I didn’t know any of that.”

Gamer shook their head. “S’fine. Sorry for spilling all that on you.”

”No, it’s — it’s good to know. The fact you’re being so… vulnerable. It’s weird. It’s nice. I guess I just didn’t expect it.”

Gamer cracked a smile, letting out a small chuckle. “Well, I’m happy to not meet your expectations in this case.”

“Hopefully you don’t go back to disappointing me.”

Gamer bit their lip - was now a good time for a joke? ‘Oh babe, at some point, you’ll want me to disappoint you.’ Probably not now. But some day. “I’ll try my best not to.”

“I’m holding you to that forever.”

The call fell silent. It didn’t seem like that was much else to talk about. But they did. Both of them knew that they had much to talk about — and that they’d be speaking for a long, long time — but who the hell even knew what to say at the present moment?

Eventually, Gamer got restless being so quiet. Leave it up to them to not know how to shut the fuck up.

Kari had the same idea, it seemed.

“Oh. Uh, I also wanted to mention,” Kari cleared her throat. Gamer couldn’t tell how, but it felt like Kari had turned away from the microphone. She cleared her throat, and she spoke in a much more muted tone — “The paperwork went through on my end too, surprisingly quickly. Thanks… thanks to you going out and doing the work yourself, too.” A light pang reverberated in Gamer’s heart from the inch of validating from their soulmate. “So… we’re official, I guess you could say. For better or worse.”

Gamer grinned, tightening their hoodie strings as they played with the ends, “awww, that’s so gay, Mod.”

They could swear they heard a low growl from Kari’s end of the microphone. “Don’t try your luck, dumbass.”

Gamer tapped their large toe against their house slipper. “You acting all tsundere doesn’t make it sound less gay.”

“Yeah? You practicing for when you try to sound smart in front of me?”

In front of Kari… they would be meeting soon, after all. A couple of days ago, soulmarks weren’t even remotely on Gamer’s radar. Fate has a funny way of working out, it seemed.

“Please,” Gamer brushed off their fleeting moment of surprise as fast as they realized they were surprised. “When we’re together, only one of us is going to sound smart, and—“

Kari rolled her eyes. “Come on, this is the oldest joke in the book.”

“They are a super sexy sex demon—“

“You look like a fucking goblin, come on.”

“Named…”

Silence.

“Gamer… Sheridan,” they spoke their name into the microphone as slowly and sultrily as humanely possible. Or at least, as possibly for someone of Gamer’s demeanor.

After enough of an agonizing silence, Kari continued following a long sigh. “You know, you can be pretty cute. When you’re not constantly trying to do a bit, that is.”

“Awe, you’re so sweet. I know I’m hotter when I’m being funny,” Gamer winked.

“Don’t test your luck.” Kari’s response was not necessarily a threat. It was more like a playful retort. “I’m… going to go to sleep. You going to be okay?”

Even through her cracking voice, Gamer could sense the sincerity in her concern. A pang of guilt rang through their chest. Were it anyone else, they would have given their usual response of “okay? Me? I don’t know her, sorry.” It took them a moment to even process that Kari’s worry wasn’t coming from an artificial heart.

“I will,” Gamer strained to respond, “thank you for… for asking.”

Kari exhaled through her nose. “Okay. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

”I’ll be here,” Gamer said.

”Bye.”

Before Kari actually hung up, Gamer’s mouth opened as if to add something else. But a million words crossed their mind before Kari hung up, leaving Gamer back in their uncomfortable, lonely silence.

The anvil of guilt on their consciousness had lifted just a little, but it didn’t mean they were any more comfortable. Gamer’s eyes twitched to their browser, and they had to hold back the urge to scroll through essays of mockery and criticism. Their eyes moved back to Discord. Dozens of notifications flashed across their screen, but Kari had already signed off.

Gamer should probably take a page from her book and try to fall asleep too. They turned off their computer for once in their damn life and walked the 100 feet from their desk to their bed, and flopped in.

Their body didn’t toss and turn as it usually did, but their mind sure did. They tossed and turned for what felt like hours and was more likely only a few minutes. Fuck, they needed some noise to sleep to, and they never replaced their shitty white noise machine that they broke while flailing in sleep three months ago. Gamer didn’t want to open YouTube, knowing they’d be flooded with notifications, and yet, it was almost certainly their only option. They sure weren’t going to stoop lower than they had to and listen to a podcast .

Come to think of it, they never gave Kari’s videos a good listen. And they felt Kari hung up before Gamer could really let her voice sink in. That day she showed them the Zero Escape series was the most they talked, just casually. And that was all their mind went to.

Gamer sighed as they reluctantly went to her profile. When did they become such a sappy bitch?

Maybe they always were. Ugh. No. That was gross and Gamer felt gross thinking it. Shoving that impulsive thought away, Gamer pulled up Kari’s YouTube page and scrolled through her playlists. Even though Kari was a hobbyist, she seemed to put heart into her work — more than Gamer assumed she did at first. Sure enough, she had a 999 let’s play from… 3 years ago?

They turned it on. The moment Kari’s voice came through (in a much lower quality mic), Gamer felt a tad more peaceful. They didn’t know when exactly they fell asleep, but at least they did. For once.