After the sprint ends, Glitter posts a link to her short story on both Caro’s and Legnica’s Discord servers, believing that both streamers’ followers would have a vested interest in reading the work of their fellow followers.
But, at the same time, because Caro gets asked some questions about hockey, about waiver wires, the different classes of assets a hockey team has to build its roster, along with its prospect pool, and the trading calendar, she feels the need to upload clips from past streams about these items on YouTube.
Not now, Caro, don’t upload these clips just yet! As much as my new followers might be willing to watch me talk about these things, I have yet to hit the 1667-word limit! Caro’s conscience nags her, while she wonders when to start writing the next passage, potentially with Gustavs’ first kiss, and how long to make the time skip between the time they set boundaries and the first kiss.
About Emma telling him beforehand at which bar she will spend after hours at some point before the Constellations’ road trip for the holidays. Especially since he knows that he must make the most of each opportunity to meet each other in person. Of which neither really had a whole lot.
The cheesy part is that, even when that information, even with the boundaries they set beforehand, they only talked about each other’s lives away from each other up to this point. That they don’t really feel much, but obviously Emma saw something in Gustavs. My teammates often bring their own WAGs on nights out if they are in town, and sometimes fan out to different places.
She even starts writing another scene the following day, when they are back in their locker room before a dryland practice. “Looks like you got a new girlfriend, Gus! It was about time!” a teammate on defense makes him feel a little… indifferent.
But at the same time, it reminds her that maybe she could leave traces of a past breakup, or worse still, break up when he’s claimed off waivers by Montreal. Which makes her go back and add another chapter after the first one about the past breakup itself.
“Now I have a better idea of how him being claimed by Montreal influenced him off the ice! However, there will be more hockey!” Caro tells her viewers.
“It took you a while to realize that, for players without star power, you know, the kind of player with the kind of cap hit you gave Gus, can and do break up when that sort of things arrive!” Lagado comments as she watches the writing of the breakup scene right after the announcement that Montreal claimed him.
“To this I say, to hell with the daily target!”
At the onset, Caro was, like, this book is going to be an epic mess, but, if you compared her to how I wrote when I first competed in NaNo, or anyone else in their NaNo debut, you would realize that she’s actually a serviceable writer. Not that she’s great, but internal consistency is her greatest writing strength, characterization or themes, Capitolium reflects on what he saw in her book as currently written, and sees that she overshot the daily par by over 400 words. However, he still has some way to go before the end of the stream, still needing around 400 words himself to hit the daily par. As smart as she is, however, she mustn’t get too confident. And certainly not in learning however quickly she wants.
But Capitolium, whose clock is ticking on him, rushes to get as many words out when he sees the threat of Caro overtaking him for the global word count, as they sit within just a few hundred words of each other.
“You do realize there is a fine line between slow burn and being oblivious to love, but they overlap!” Glitter warns the streamer on air. “I get that your love is not instant, and they both have a lot going on away from each other, but you made the book a little tropier than you would care to admit, in that they cherish their precious few moments with each other”
Even as he writes a romance book, I wonder how familiar Capitolium is with how ageless his issues are. It’s one thing to want to read near-identical books, and how one’s pattern of reading can be pretty telling about the reader, but they made me realize that perhaps I had too much on my plate in my personal life, Glitter also starts reflecting on her possibly being unhinged herself. I guess, I know going into a romance book of any kind that the ending will be happy, despite knowing that getting there will often not make any sense.
But, by the end of the night, the word count, both daily and global, come in for all 3.
“How can you two write so much in just a few hours?” Glitter asks, looking at her manuscript containing not even half the words required to get to NaNo’s daily par. “You’re not writing formulaic books…”
“You saw the consequences of us writing that fast last night: we both needed to buy Bengay and hope that it will last us for the rest of the month!” Caro tells her followers.
“Something’s not right: how could you have played MAA at a high level and not need to use Bengay as you did tonight?” Sampoong asks her.
“Even if you get the rotations down cold, it’s not like typing five hundred eighty-nine words in fifteen minutes. It drains you when you’re in the race to world first, just not your wrists. On top of that, you watched reclears”
And I’m less than 500 words away from the 20k-word mark, which Capitolium reached, Caro seems to have a new target appearing in her mind: beating Capitolium’s word count.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“I have more experience of writing romance, so writing comes more naturally to me” Capitolium explains himself. “Caro, on the other hand, seems to be driven by a gaming-like approach to writing”
“Even I could have seen it coming from a mile away, from the day she announced she would one hundred percent NaNo this year!” Lagado lashes out at Capitolium in the VC, before the stream ends.
At the end of the stream, Marie-France joins Caro’s Discord server and starts discussing with her about what she feels is the defining moment of the night: this whole discussion of setting limits in a relationship. She wishes to continue it with Caro in Discord DMs.
Caroline: Est-ce que placer des limites trop vite dans une relation amoureuse est une bonne ou mauvaise chose? (Is putting boundaries too early in a romantic relationship good or not?)
Marie-France: Veux-tu que ces limites empêchent leur relation de grandir? (Do you want these limits to prevent their relationship from growing?)
Caroline: Non
I know, deep down, that these limits ultimately won’t prevent their relationship to grow, but that’s it otherwise. For some readers, people seem to want to read about the relationship unencumbered by life outside of it, nor by boundaries. And certainly in contemporary. It’s also why some people seemed to prefer, in historical romance, to read about courtesans, especially those with high nobility titles, because they think they live decadent, idle lifestyles, whereas I know it’s simply not true, Marie-France reflects on boundaries set in her past readings of romance books.
They keep discussing about how some books set boundaries early, especially when one side proves to be controlling later, or when breaking one could cause internal issues, while others tended to set boundaries to set up a third-act breakup.
Marie-France: Tu veux que le non-respect de ces limites cause une cassure? (You want a breach of those boundaries to cause a breakup?)
Caroline: Mon plan était qu’un échange à la date limite fasse partir Gustavs, donc non (My plan was a deadline deal causing Gustavs to leave, so no)
And I want this trade to be motivated by hockey reasons, and not by relationship ones, so I want to show Gus improve his game. This makes the next game against a possible trade partner a key one for me to write, Caro is also reminded of how people often tended to center conflict in romance around the couple itself, when lack of satisfaction in life outside the relationship could also drive someone to dive deep into one. In fact, if I want to have game scenes before the trade deadline, to set up said deadline, my hands are tied by the draft day scene. This has given me a lot to think about.
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Meanwhile, back in Daegu, Sampoong receives a text from his love interest, while the latter is at the grocery store (translated from Korean): Something’s going wrong with our relationship! We need to talk!
When Sampoong’s love interest returns home, she sees him playing Caro’s game as he attempts to move up the beginners’ quest chain by winning a game in the arena. Speaking of which, he is queued, but the game’s queue lasts for 10 seconds at most. If the player is not matched against another human player at the end of the 10 seconds…
“Honey, you’ve been playing all weekend! That’s enough!” Sampoong’s love interest yells at him in Korean.
“Na-joong-e!” (Later!)
“We had no intimacy for months, I was willing to tolerate it for a while, because you work from home, and you always said that, if we had appropriate time for ourselves, away from each other, we should stay together. But no amount of jeyuk bokkeum, bibimbap or japchae is going to replace intimacy!” Sampoong’s love interest fumes, in Korean, while Sampoong is focused on playing against an AI opponent.
Sampoong’s love interest yelling at him made him lose focus and hence lose the fight. That, even though he already accomplished the other sub-quests of that tier, that is, performing an upgrade of the home base, leveling a character to 20 and clearing Ch5 of the main campaign. That’s what happens when I can’t stay focused on the game! Also, I really hope that she doesn’t think life in a relationship is anything like these K-dramas! All it takes is one win in the arena, one freaking win! Then I can talk to her.
Yet, as Sampoong feels that his privacy boundary is breached, he feels nothing but anger towards her. And it starts to degenerate: his love interest starts with the books he read in English, demanding explanations for these. Especially when that book in question is about how the MMC spent so much time getting the FMC to improve her sex.
“If only you understood that I read some of these books to get clues about how to solve issues in our own couple…” Sampoong pleads with his love interest in Korean.
I really, really hope that she won’t interpret watching Caro, Legnica or other streamers as being signs that I’m cheating on her! a nervous Sampoong shakes as he is still clueless about what to look for in a marriage and family therapist. However, he feels like he needs one because she makes him feel like there’s nothing left for them to do on their own.
“As ashamed as I am to admit it, we’re due for couples therapy!” Sampoong’s love interest scolds him.
“Couples therapy? Do you even know where to get it? And how much does it cost?”
To this, unfortunately, his love interest draws a blank, and then goes around to shop for couples therapy in the Daegu region, on her own. Pre-pandemic, we met in college, but now, even when I’m working from home… it made my life different.
He then proceeds to ask for advice on how to shop for marriage and family therapists in both Caro’s and Legnica’s Discord servers. To which Legnica responds because Glitter is asleep:
Legnica: It’s not my place to give relationship advice, but if you feel like you need couples therapy, please make sure the therapist you plan to go to has MFT accreditation valid for your area and inquire about their views on relationships as well as their track record
Sampoong: What does track record mean for couples therapy?
Legnica: For example, you can ask about what percentage of couples have seen improvement with that therapist, and what improvement means to them
Sampoong: What else should I look for?
Legnica: Just because your therapist has a doctoral degree doesn’t mean they are better than another one who doesn’t, for a given experience; also, more expensive doesn't mean better
Often, it seems like couples needing therapy do so as a last resort measure, but there are times when I saw people around me realize their relationships cannot be saved. And, of course, it’s not a silver bullet, Legnica muses about her own social circle’s experience with couples therapy.
Sampoong then goes around looking for couples therapists in the Daegu area, and realizing that, on average, these couples therapists charge around KRW150k per session, and then give these therapists’ contact info so that she can process the information. And, of course, since she already has a sense of when he can be with her for therapy, they can plan their time together around it.