Nice Posture Nonsense | One Shots

Reality (Ben-Centric)

warning- there's death. lots and lots of death, including mentions of suicide.

<Ben's POV>

"See you guys later!" I said, exiting the call. I was exhausted, but seeing everyone enjoy the first episode of Troll Pack Season 2 was completely worth it. Of course, there were still some bugs that needed to be worked out, but the majority of the work was done. I fell asleep easily that night.

I was woken up by the incessant sound of Discord messages and Twitter DM's going off. I glanced at the time, nearly 6pm East Coast time. I grabbed my phone to look at the messages, the last of which went along the lines of demanding me to open some link from Alex with a link to an article attached. The headline sent chills down my spine.

19 year old killed in hit-and-run.

Last night at 9:30 pm John Ryan Phillips was hit by an unidentifiable vehicle. Phillips was a YouTuber with over 400,000 subscribers. He leaves behind many friends and his mother and father. We could not contact his family, but we could contact one of his friends and fellow YouTubers, Jerome Aceti. "He loved what he did." Aceti said. "It was his dream job. Ryan was one of my closer friends, and I- and everyone else he worked with- will miss him tremendously."

The phone fell out of my hand onto the bed as my mouth hung open in shock. No." I muttered. "No no no no no. This can't be happening. No."

Ryan's funeral was a few days later. Jerome had me watch over video chat. Everyone from Nice Posture was there, and some of Ryan's friends and family. Ryan's Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and everything else were being flooded by comments and sad messages, saying how they were going to miss him so much, and that he had helped them in some sad time. It wasn't just fans, either. It was other YouTubers, ones he had recorded with before, ones that knew him personally, ones that he had only talked to once or twice, ones that never even knew him.

A few months passed. Slowly, we all got over his death. Everyone except Alex. Alex wasn't quite the same after Ryan died. He had lost one of his best friends, his fellow meme-king. He stopped streaming as much, only streaming once or twice a week.

Then one day, he was gone. He missed Ryan, and I suppose he couldn't deal with a world without him. I couldn't understand it, but Ryan and I's friendship wasn't like his and Alex's. Our friendship was more based on banter with each other, while his and Alex's was... I dunno, different.

The same thing happened: there was a funeral, many fans were very sad, but people eventually got over it.

A year passed. The hole of Ryan and Alex was great, but pushed to the back of people's mind, as best they could. Comments would sometimes come up along the lines of "His laugh sounds just like Tewtiy's" or "Alex would've loved that." Their names also sometimes came up in streams in conversations.

Over the course of a few weeks, reports of a brewing hurricane heading towards Florida flooded in. A state-wide evacuation was issued, but not everyone made it out. Jerome and Steve were unfortunately among that group.

Jerome's death was probably the biggest deal to the rest of the world, and many more people. His funeral was huge. All of the Pack was there, many members of Team Crafted, all of Nice Posture, including myself, and many other people he recorded with often or was close with.

Steve's funeral was of a smaller scale; a few friends, Nice Posture, and Jess's parents and I came.

Some months passed. Nice Posture now only consisted of myself, Austin, Andrew, Dasha, and Blade. Mitch would also play with us sometimes. It wasn't really the same without Jerome, he was really the driving force of Nice Posture. Without him, I was suddenly the biggest channel in group, and I became the main channel we streamed on. We lost a lot of viewers after Jerome's death.