I’m playing the game Caro is playing, and the game is slow as molasses. Usually, the kind of players who somehow become good enough to make what amounts to a national team for raiding RWFs in a game like MAA thrive on fast reflexes and processing speeds. I guess, years of high-end raiding wore her down, Sampoong installs the game Caro plays on air, and starts reading the manuscripts Legnica’s viewers are writing on the side. Oh: because I started the game with the battle pass well underway, and my starter units aren’t that great. So I wonder how the hell I’m going to get to the good stuff of that game, how fast and so on…

And, of course, at the inn, which is used mostly pre-endgame to get more units, for a price, Sampoong gets bombarded by ads about stuff such as premium units, resource packs available for a limited time, and/or limited on a per-account basis, and so on, with account-wide weekly spending limits.

A pay-to-win game, but where buying one’s way to power has its limits. So he feels like he needs to make some headway into the game before he can decide before he’ll like playing a game where chess is the order of the day, and has the pacing of chess.

“Hmmm… if this is the kind of game where I have no time limit to wait to make a move, I guess, I could adjust to it. But from what I heard, cash shop units are no better than high-tier units one can get in regular gameplay” Sampoong sighs, while he feels this game is a game he could play when doing other tasks.

Battle pass is perhaps the best way for noobs to get high-tier units, he starts getting a feel for the game’s mechanics. He is left wondering how much time he can save by buying battle pass boosts, seeing that the rewards from the battle pass are significant enough to compel Caro to play every week.

So for now, he’s playing the game’s first stage of the campaign, and, as the campaign progresses, players get new characters for them to go on adventures with, as well as send on dispatch quests to earn more money.

Between campaign stages, which he plays on normal because he’s new to the game, he reads a manuscript of a historical harem romance. Which, to him, allows for “why choose” kinds of tension, provided the writer doesn’t make the people in the harem feel robotic.

It's already bad enough when you have a romance book where you have a female lead whose core flaw is being a doormat, has no other personality trait and her backstory is trauma-ridden, sometimes when you want a large number of love interests, you have no choice but to cut corners, Sampoong reads the manuscript, whose writer makes him feel like his MMC just wants to collect as many love interests as he can afford. The key word here being afford; after all, the MMC, as an Ottoman sanjak-bey, wasn’t among the richest.

But after reading about an Ottoman sanjak-bey struggling to keep his harem together, and realizing that his harem was a burden on his sanjak, he resumes playing the game’s main campaign. He finally reaches the first story boss, and realizes that perhaps he forgot something important upon returning to his home base, before attempting the boss.

“Oh crap!” Sampoong realizes there were red circles with exclamation marks left unattended that he must cash in.

Cashing in the red circles, one by one, gives him more resources, which he puts to use for upgrading the home base. And he also cashes in the daily battle pass quest, before reviewing the one-time chain of beginner’s quests.

By this point, Caro is asleep and hence he can’t ask for her help just yet. I guess, I should get a guide for specific things in that game I get stuck on. Like hiring a unit, since it’s the final step missing in that beginner’s quest. I might also want to know what to expect from units and review the units I have beforehand.

He is eyeing a specific type of unit, and units available have their prices. More expensive units have a higher probability to be of a higher grade, but even then, a grade cannot be guaranteed. And yet, one of the most disliked aspects of unit hiring through the inn is the luck component of doing so.

In these types of games, a healer is always appreciated to some degree. So I guess, I should hire one, Sampoong pulls the trigger on doing so, and hires a low-grade healer with his current budget. Which he manages to replenish a little by cashing in the reward from the final step of the first beginner’s quest. And yields him his first high-grade unit. I guess, I owe it to Caro since I learned so much from her about a different facet of romance, as well as about the transactional aspect of North American pro sports. Especially the NHL. Until I watched her, all I knew about romance was sex being expected to be part of the deal, and people being in love with each other. And Glitter showed me what can go wrong in love.

Speaking of which, he attempts to kill two birds with one stone, by re-doing the first map of the main campaign, and having his shiny first high-tier unit run it, alongside his new healer. In the end, he feels ecstatic by the rewards earned from accomplishing sub-tasks of the beginners’ quests, as he accomplished 2 sub-tasks of that quest.

To accomplish the third sub-task, he dispatches one unit on a “dispatch quest” asking him to kill 3 enemies before he gets the unit back for the boss fight. Which he does by running the second story map again with his other units.

Prior to running the boss fight, Sampoong DMs Glitter on Discord about how grateful he is for her.

Sampoong: Thank you, Glitter, for showing me in what ways romance isn’t all roses and sex

It can’t be all non-abusive, nor can it be all abusive. However, I don’t think Glitter is going to respond just yet, Sampoong sighs before fighting the first chapter’s boss.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Which is actually more manageable than he believed it to be, but then again, he is subtly reminded that it’s still the beginning of the game. That games of this kind start out easy, then get progressively harder, and rewards, while bigger, are also spaced farther apart in time. With that said, he has a better idea of whether he could want to keep playing that game in the long run.

The next beginner’s quest asks him to clear chapter 2 of the campaign, which takes a bit longer because he needs to level his units some. And also to undertake basic tutorials on certain core gameplay aspects, infuriating him.

“Does that game’s manufacturer act as if everyone is new to the game? Looks like the manufacturer shoves that down players’ throats so they can get players to conform to a playing style!” Sampoong screams at the screen.

Namely, the rock-paper-scissors weapon mechanism and movement per unit types. He grudgingly runs them, just so he could move to more advanced stages in the beginners quest. Time to hit the open world, I guess, he sighs. I think I should be able to function in the early game and not just because of how I learned about the game through Caro.

Speaking of Caro, he DMs her, knowing that she lives in a different time zone, after clearing an open world stage as well as the second campaign chapter:

Sampoong: I am a noob at your game, I wonder if the rewards from the beginner’s quest line and the battle pass are worthwhile

Glitter’s response comes in the dead of night, Daegu time (or high noon, Glitter’s time):

Glitter: You must also realize that a lot of romance readers will attempt to self-insert

And also that some writers tended to give one side as little personality as possible for this reason. Mostly female, but a few M/M romance writers fall into this trap, too. The blank slates if you will, Glitter muses while on lunch break. Some of them want to read what romance lovers refer jokingly as “the same book in a different font” while others read or write books with a specific trait or plot line/point. And romance readers can get very, very specific, to the point of pushing them to write their own if they can’t be satisfied.

Such as wanting, for example, a plus-size lead, or a lead of a specific race, with specific traits to either lead, along with a specific relationship dynamic and/or setting.

And yet, Glitter begins to realize that requests for hockey romance books with actual hockey in the plot are recurrent. Even though they both acted as if fitting the hockey into the plot properly was more important than the relationship, maybe I was a little too harsh on Capitolium and Caro…

Which pushes Glitter to post the following remark on both Caro’s and Legnica’s Discord servers:

Glitter: There are times where romance readers want to read about a specific relationship dynamic because they experience it themselves

I wonder if it’s a healthy coping mechanism... I don’t assume any given romance reader would have issues in their respective relationships that bear any resemblance to what they read, and, really, it’s not my place to ask anyone about that. You would think that, when you are in an unhealthy relationship, you wish for a healthy one, but, at the same time, sometimes I feel like obliviousness to love is the only way Caro can even write a healthy relationship. I’m not actually opposed to reading non-abusive books, it just seems like newer releases lean more towards abusive behaviors, or other kinds of problematic behaviors, Glitter starts her inner monologue. Others still want to get, in writing, what they couldn’t get in real life.

To which a surprised Caro responds, using her cellphone while in the bathroom, clueless about that aspect of romance readership motivations:

Caroline: How could you tell whether someone reads romance because of real relationship issues vs escapism?

Glitter: Those who read for escapism usually focus on character traits, or plot lines, but could be open to read about a variety of relationship dynamics, whereas relationship dynamics carry the day for people reading romance because of their own relationship issues

When Sampoong awakens, right before Caro’s stream starts, he reads Glitter’s explanation of how one’s relationship could shape one’s reading habits. I guess, Glitter hits the nail on the head. It didn’t occur to me until now that I judged romance books by the quality of their sex scenes because of my own lack of sexual satisfaction.

However, he is a little puzzled by what he’s seeing in Legnica’s server. About the wish fulfillment aspect of romance books. About how some readers, unable to obtain something they desire by themselves, or their characters even, must obtain it vicariously. About the dangers of using books for escapism. At the mention of which Legnica made, a few hours ago, of a book recommendation, in a chat room of her server.

Legnica: It might be a little dated, but Madame Bovary is a reminder of the dangers of delving too deeply into romance books

I wonder if Glitter or Legnica are, in the outside world, couples therapists. If Korean regulations allowed the use of foreign couples tele-therapists, and they are, in fact, couples therapists, I might consider them, Sampoong is left wondering, upon these two mentioning that, while some people attempted to have relationships with bad people, of the kind portrayed in romance books, and almost all of them ended poorly. But wait! I might need to exhaust what I have access to locally first!

When the stream begins, Sampoong begins by telling Caro’s viewers about how he started playing her game, while entering the VC.

“Today, I started playing the game Caro is playing on air” Sampoong announces.

“Sampoong, how do you feel about playing this game?” Caro asks him, while she opens the game herself.

“I didn’t go far enough into the game to determine whether it’s satisfactory to me. It might be easy now, but I know it won’t last forever”

“What kinds of games did you play before?” Caro asks him.

“MAA, but I wasn’t nearly as good at it as you” he answers with some apprehension.

“When I started playing this game, I embraced its slower pace because, as good as I used to be at MAA, years of playing it at high levels drained me. But getting good at it wasn’t instant, even for me; part of the learning curve was adapting to another genre”

Day 6, after having played her daily quests, Caro is left wondering how would Emma react if Gustavs approached her to get help learning French. Especially when he feels like she owes him a favor for the ticket to the Backcrackers game.

“You mentioned there was a learning curve” Lagado slips a mention of learning curves when Caro resumes writing Player Masher, after her daily dose of the game is taken. “How does it feel to learn about creative writing on air?”

“I used my stream as a source of feedback, but what I’m really learning on air is about whose feedback to trust and who not to”

“Better learn that than nothing at all, I guess…” Lagado sighs.

I sure as hell would take much longer than a few short weeks to be as good a writer as even Caro’s current self… not that Caro is that great, mind you. It seems like she’s relying on her knowledge of hockey to see this challenge through, and has a somewhat decent grasp of characterization, Sampoong reflects on Caro’s nearly 15,000 words of WIP at the end of the stream.