Milkshake Hearts

Chapter 146: Candyland

Smosh usually breaks for Christmas on the Friday before the actual day. Given December 24th is a Friday this year, however, they end up filming until midday the day before Christmas: they'd tried to avoid it, but a few scripted shoots had run over time the previous week and bled into the week of Christmas, leaving them with less time to cram all their unscripted shoots that needed to be capped off before the holiday break into their shooting schedule.

"Today's going to fucking suuuuuck!" Courtney sings, lugging a duffel bag over her shoulder at 7:30am to carry to her car in the garage, Shayne following behind her wheeling a small suitcase. The Friday shoot day hadn't exactly worked well for them: they were doing Christmas in Seattle at Chris and Julie's place, so they were going to have to go straight from work to the airport to fly out.

"Yup," Shayne agrees, deadpan, "but at least it's easy pit stuff."

"And games," she reminds him, Shayne nodding as he gently takes the duffel bag off her shoulder to deposit into the trunk of her car.

'Easy' pit stuff ends up being a little too generous. They have an Eat It Or Yeet It shoot up first, and given the theme is that every food they're served is some kind of stuffed banana, Shayne is certainly involved in the shoot, although it's not the worst food he's ever experienced on that show. The two of them are also both involved in a Games shoot a little later in the morning, following behind Damien and Saige – who are chatting brightly about their own holiday plans – through to the studio.

"Hello and welcome! Today we're diving into Youtuber land, AKA Candyland with Youtubers," Saige intros, as they start filming. It's a continuation of a series that they know their writers had been having a lot of fun with – turning board games Youtube-themed, complete with a sufficient amount of shade to all the Youtube drama (including, of course, their own).

They explain the game as they continue their intro, at the same time as Saige prompts them to go around and self-identify their type of Youtuber.

"Skincare, skincare," Courtney volunteers her own response immediately, pointedly flipping her hair back off her shoulders as she does.

"I'm like... commentary, one of those commentary ones," Shayne adds, after a moment of consideration. Truthfully, he doesn't actually watch much Youtube himself, and he doesn't feel like identifying as and playing up the more dramatic sections.

"I mean, it'd be easy to go gaming," Damien volunteers his.

"Okay, so you're gaming?" Saige responds, but Damien quickly shakes his head.

"No! Too easy. I'm the ignored older child in a family vlog," he nods, determined.

"So basically your character from LaMace family?" Shayne laughs.

"Well, if you're not gaming, I'm a Minecraft Youtuber- oh, wait! I want to be Ian. I'm just Ian," Saige confirms her own, after some deliberation, before they start moving into the game as the finishes explaining the rules, "So, the purple spaces – you gotta answer some Youtuber trivia. I'm nervous!"

"I'm excited!" Courtney adds.

"I'm- I feel very confident, I know a lot about Youtube," Shayne deadpans, smirking as the other three look at him with some level of disbelief and rolling eyes, before he bursts into laughter, "no, no I'm going to fail so hard, I know nothing."

Candyland is, overall, a game of chance as much as anything, and chance has Damien and Saige pulling ahead, constantly swapping between first and second place with each turn as they land on a relatively even numbers of red, green and purple spaces, and get roughly half of the youtuber trivia wrong. Courtney fares a little better with the trivia, but not so well with her dice rolls, while Shayne manages to land himself on a red space almost every time and make approximately zero progress.