Twitch and Makeup

So recently, I saw and shared an article about female Twitch.tv streamers not wearing makeup and the ensuing drama that unfolded as a result.

I decided not to post it with any kind of caption myself. Not knowing how I really felt about it, I kinda wanted to see if any conversation ensued. 

It did. 

Opinions from women streamers who are completely conflicted. "Is this what we report about female streamers?" "Is there really no other ways for girls to support each other than to use their appearance?" Opinions from guy streamers who think this whole thing is ridiculous that it's getting this much attention. "What's the big deal?" 

I, too, am conflicted. Mostly because by the time I get home, my makeup is gone from when I applied it for work. If I were to stream or pop on to the stream with Breaky, I would probably do my makeup. Why? Well, in case you haven't heard, internet trolls are the WORST. 

We have had our fair share of trolls with Breaky's stream, and especially when he would cast for HoN or Dota 2. So much so that I don't watch chat when he's casting. If there's a WOMAN on stream? Trolls make everything about their appearance. The very few times I pop on to stream on camera on Breaky's stream, comments were made about my weight. I know, I am not a small, tiny woman. Especially now that I'm post-baby, my body is a little, well, mushy. But outside of like 2 individuals who <3 me and I <3 them on his stream chat, that was the only interaction/question/comment directed to me. Is this a fair example? Probably not, as I am not the greatest gamer, and would never claim to be good enough to get paid to do this in my free time, let alone as a full-time gig.

I asked some wonderful ladies who are better at the whole streaming thing than I am.

Current streamer Trulte from twitch.tv/mtrulte.

A mom friend of mine, NaCl_Queen

A good friend and former streamer. She wishes to remain anonymous. We will call her A

And current twitch streamer, Mandy https://www.twitch.tv/teawithmandy

Do you get a lot of appearance-related questions on stream?

Trulte:"I used to get it a lot more when I started streaming. I would have people come into my stream commenting how ugly I supposedly am and I would have people telling me how good looking I am. After streaming for quite some time, and having developed some sort of a community (even tho its very small) , I don't get more than the normal "you look good today" kinda comment."

Mandy: Every single stream there are many comments about my appearance. They range from, you/your makeup looks really pretty today, to wow you look tired, or woah your face looks so serious."

A:  "Absolutely. I think that's the nature of having a webcam involved with the stream. Though in ways it allows me to feel more connected with my viewers, it also opens the doors to commentary about my appearance (good or bad)."

Do you wear makeup on stream?:

Trulte: "I rarely wear makeup on stream to be honest" 

NaCl_Queen: "I had a dual stream with my best friend. We both wore make up. I'm not a full face kind of girl but for stream I would always wear make up. Why? Because that's the norm on twitch. If you don't look nice you get brutalized. On weekends I started streaming with my husband and we would drink and play scary games together. Again, always put on my face. I vividly remember the first time I didn't wear make up to stream, well I probably had some make up on, just not to the extent I usually did. No one said anything. We had quite a few regulars at this point and I don't think one person mentioned my face. It blew my mind. I realized it wasn't necessary for the type of stream style we had going. However, when my best friend and I would do dual streams I was always referred to as 'the ugly one' regardless of my make up so I guess it doesn't really matter in the twitch /streaming world."

Mandy: "I always wear makeup on my stream, but sometimes I wear just a little bit. I’m shy and I know that because of my fair features, bright lights make me look very different and I don’t feel as comfortable streaming that way."

A: "I usually streamed right after work, so whatever I wore to work would carry over to my stream. This meant, I usually was wearing make-up. With that said, there were days I came home and would switch to PJs to relax or weekends I would just roll out of bed and start playing. I definitely received various comments about my appearance doing this - with or without that make-up - compliments and insults. My goal of streaming was never to have people's approval though. In full sincerity, I do not care if someone finds me attractive - I simply want to create an environment where I can enjoying gaming with the community."

What kind of articles would you like to see get a lot more attention in regards to female streamers/gamers: 

Trulte: "I would love to see more articles about girls being good at the games they play, or genuinely funny girls that enjoy what they do. I don't see it as empowering to not wear makeup, not at all. Of course its not easy for everyone to not wear it as they have made it a habit and a mask, but that to me is not empowering. I loved the clip of the girl streamer that has tourettes, and just laughs at it with her viewers. That's what I love the most. Taking what you have, and make the best of it, and not taking yourself so serious all the time. 

Most of the female streamers I follow are usually really good at something. Be it cosplay or gaming. Either is amazing to watch for me and I would love to see more of it. More about the female side of esports too. Few know it exists, and all we always see are these girls using their appearance in some way to gain viewers, and so that's what girls think they have to do. And the few that work hard to actually learn and get good at the game, like myself, end up not being taken seriously which is very frustrating. "

NaCl_Queen: "I feel like if you see articles on female twitch streamers it's always about their appearance. Are they 'titty streamers' with low cut shirts or egirls that got big by screwing some big name male streamer. I wish there were more articles about interesting streams with a good community. I want to find quality female streamers I can relate to. I want articles on up and coming streamers that have sub 500 viewers and why they're interesting that DOESN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH HOW THEY LOOK."

Mandy: "I would like to see much more focus on the streamers and their content, rather than how they look. This mostly goes for female streamers. It’s very belittling to be focusing your energy on making awesome content, only to have that content be ignored in favour of focusing on you’re appearance. It makes you feel that people don’t care about what you do, just how you look. Which isn’t right (or true) at all. I think that the more we discuss the impact of focusing on appearance rather than personality or content, the less content we’ll see that focuses on the former. "

A: "Honestly, it truly bothers me that a women choosing to go without make-up on a stream would cause such a spark. This conversation should not be about women being comfortable with or without make-up (because honestly, we should be comfortable wearing whatever we want) - it should be about how close-minded, selfish, and ultimately insecure people still are. What happened with Geguri is another great example of the sexism that exists. Media should aim to represent females roles in the gaming community and support the conversation instead of discussing stereotypes"





Overall, I think the consensus is that we would all love to see female streamers celebrated and watched for content they create and games they are good at. As with the rest of the world, female streamers are all unique and have differing opinions on makeup, which is perfectly normal. They should do what they feel comfortable doing. Should this topic be the most newsworthy when it comes to female streamers? No. I don't think so. Am I glad this article happened? Yes. Hear me out, would we have had this conversation if it hadn't? Sometimes we need a little spark to get the big conversation started. Now that it has, maybe we can start to concentrate on the quality content of all streamers.

I hope that by the time my daughter is old enough to make her own decisions that if she wanted to stream her gaming skills online that she would be applauded and encouraged based on her skill level of the games she plays and the content she creates and not how she looks. I hope she looks back and is grateful that these conversations happened, but thankful she didn't have to be a part of it.

So let's go out there and support our fellow female streamers and enjoy the wonderful content they worked so hard to create.

My Journey Into Azeroth Part 1

Whispers to husband: It's Azeroth, right? Do I have that right? That's not the name of the place we started though. Azeroth is the "big picture" place yes? 

So, that will give you an insight in to how my journey in to playing Blizzard's World of Warcraft. I will break it up in to different parts, so hold on to your hats, we are going on an adventure!

DISCLAIMER: I am no expert in World of Warcraft (WoW). This is written from a "noob" perspective. I will call things the wrong name. I will make assumptions that are wrong. It is meant to be a good read.

To give you a little insight, I am mostly a first-person shooter game kind of gal. I do thoroughly enjoy Hearthstone though, so many characters and items/objects I recognize.

So one night, after years and years of pestering, I finally got a trial version of World of Warcraft. Why you ask? Well Hearthstone was running a promotion that if you reach level 20 on a new character in World of Warcraft, you get a new hero in Hearthstone: Lady Liadrin, a paladin.

I have a mediocre Murloc Paladin deck. Not necessarily the level of my Dragon Priest deck, but it was reason enough to dip my toe in the waters of WoW.

So for weird reasons, I folded. Told my husband I wanted to try it out. 

Logging in, we had some connectivity issues, which we will find out why later. Once logged in, we decided to go with Night Elf for our ..... race (asks husband...it's race right?), yes race. I decided to be a Priest class. Meaning I do the healing and damage stuff from a distance. Plus, got to rep my priest and stay consistent across most Blizzard games as a healer (I play Mercy in Overwatch).

Now this does mean my husband is playing as Alliance instead of Horde, which, considering he wanted to burn an Alliance shirt I owned when we first started dating, is a big frickin deal.

So we started. Since there is no tutorial, but instead hints and help as you start, I relied pretty heavily on my husband to fill me in on how to play. First and foremost how the hell to make my character move. Clicking, right clicking, left clicking etc... on top of the usual up, down left, right key bindings. I found myself often getting stuck because I couldn't figure out how to adjust my view and making my character do what I need her to. 

First impression? A crap ton of things going on. Lots of things to read, if you want to follow any kind of story line or get history/lore. Since Breaky has done this already, it was kind of go-go-go. Often times I had to be like, "Hakuna your Ta-Tas dear". I want to read why we have to pick these flowers to get experience. Although, in that "quest" I did figure out that we can swim! Which, I must confess, I did for a good few minutes. It was just fun. I think on that quest I lost my husband having too much fun swimming. 

I found that my biggest challenge once conquering the whole getting my character to move the right way, was binding spells and items accordingly. There just seemed like there was soooo much to read and consider and little time to do it. How was I supposed to know I can't use leather and plate? If my husband wasn't around, I would be picking up everything and be completely lost. Where is it said that it was a leather object? Do I need stamina? What's the difference between stamina and intelligence? The learning curve is intense. Or we went through everything far too quickly, which is possible. Actually attaching things to me (I believe the word is "bind" it to me, but I could be wrong) took me a long time, because I'm the kind of gal that wanted to sit and read and figure out what would be best, strategically. Look below, those are so many things I don't know what they do. 

(NOT MY BAG! Picture from the internet)

Visually, the artwork and the characters, the landscape, the animals, etc... were all very well created and appealing. Lots of fun to take a look at all the different artwork representing the different mechanics. 

I finally got the basics and Breaky and I did a great job of working together. Eventually. In the beginning, I would get annoyed when I wanted to kill something and he jumped in and did it for me. Mind you, we were on the same "team" or what ever, but I wanted to learn dammit! Anyway, we did find, however, that because of the promotion (we believe), there were WAY too many other people where we were. Everyone trying to level a new character super quick to get the Hearthstone promotion (again, we speculate. It's not like we asked anyone). We would get to where we had to defeat someone and there would be like, 4 people waiting to do the same thing. Because this is the internet, it wasn't exactly like they were going to wait in line according to who got there first. So that was fun. Honestly, it had more to do with me still figuring out how to target people and missing than it did with the amount of traffic for that one quest. 

The next step was going to another location. We flew on hippogriffs -PS, why did auto-correct want to change it from hippogriffs to hippodromes? What is a hippodrome anyway?

I couldn't tell you where we flew to, but the view was stunning. Such detail to the landscape. We did a few more quests, which usually involved me being about 10 paces behind my husband, healing him and doing some damage from afar. Fine. With. Me. 

My takeaways: 1. The art and the landscape and the characters were all very well created and visually appealing. 2. The actual play took some getting used to and sometimes caused me some frustration. 3. thus-far was playable and fun when we weren't waiting for other people (who have obviously played a ton already) to do what we were trying to do. 4. I am no expert in what certain things are called and we should have written down some of my attempts to communicate with Breaky what I was trying to say. It was hilarious, I'm sure. 

Part 2 will be about my travels into "Dungeons" which, from my experience thus far are "caves" not dungeons. And yes, I'm being pedantic. Sue me. Well, don't *actually* sue me. I don't have money. 

Till next time! FOR THE ALLIANCE!

A Whole New World: An Introduction Post

"A Whole New World"



Means something a little different when Aladdin and Jasmine sang it in that one Disney movie, but the overall idea is about the same.

When I started dating my now-husband, I had very little to no knowledge that "competitive video gaming" was a thing. At all. Heck, I didn't really understand the really big picture of video games in the first place. I thought I did! I played a ton of Halo and Super Smash Brothers in the dorms at my university. Even beat the boys in a Halo tournament my sophomore year.

I didn't understand the lore, but appreciated that some did. I didn't spend every second on the computer playing games, though realized that some did. What I did not understand, however, was that when you have a group of individuals who make it their life to create, research, play and breathe video games, a very specific and identifiable culture emerges.

I had dated a gamer before. He played WoW and a few other games while we were dating. We had a tricky break-up but remained friends. But I digress. I thought I was prepared.

I was wrong.

When BreakyCPK and I first started dating (how we met will be a separate blog post. It's too cute not to be), I was relieved I finally found someone that I was entirely compatible with. A self-proclaimed "geek" who was also a bit of an extrovert and had many similar interests that I did. It helped that he was my type and very attractive.

For those of you reading this who may not know who BreakyCPK is, let me explain super quick. He came from California, where he started delving in to the new world of "shoutcasting" or broadcasting video-game sporting events. He did this independently, while going to school for sports broadcasting. People started to notice, and really long story short, was hired by a video game company in Michigan to do this full time. Eventually, he would become the Video Production Lead for a video game called Heroes of Newerth, where he not only continuing to "shoutcast" but to produce marketing videos for the company. (TL;DR He works for a video game company)

My first glimpse in to the culture that revolves around video games was actually on our  second date. He took me to a movie, where a bunch of his friends showed up. I could tell he was embarrassed and didn't arrange for that to happen, but I found it so endearing. I met an eclectic group of folks around the same age, and even younger than me who were so supportive of Breaky and his new love interest. I couldn't help but plaster a huge smile on my face. Very interesting people and I knew and hoped I would see more of them soon.


Some brief things I found out about the culture of those in the video game industry.

1. You will not find a more passionate group of people in any other industry. Arguments could be made for many different fields and I know many fields have very, very passionate people. However, those in the field of video games are hard-working, pseudo-obsessive individuals who spend their work time and play time revolved around their craft. Not just their craft however. Once they find a topic they find interesting, they become the experts on that. Politics, music, board games, etc. Makes for absolutely fascinating conversations

2. The stereotype of the "gamer introvert" is false. So many video game professionals have outgoing personalities and are extremely social and involved with the community. As with any group of people, you will have both extroverts and introverts, but in the video game industry, regardless of which you are, you are family. Many social events revolve around work friends, and include everyone.

3. The lingo is.... different. Because of the sheer amount of time spent with others of their craft, video game enthusiasts of all professions have created a sort of new language. I can say with pride that I have caught on to this and even find it leaking out while in "normal" situations. I may do a blog post on that one.

4. You find and make forever friends. About 80% of our wedding party were from the "video game industry." Many others actively play the same games we do, creating a sort of family. I could not have asked for a better wedding party on our very special day. Many of my female friends are either working in the video game industry or are girlfriends/fiances/wives of those in the video game industry.


There are so many other little nuances to this world and culture. Way too many for one blog post. When I started dating Breaky, I didn't realize how different my world had been. I also didn't realize there were others in my position who were new to the whole professional video game culture, but wanted to belong.

That's the basics of what this blog will be. Also recipes that many have demanded I share, as well as I'm sure, insight in to the ever changing and evolving world of competitive video games, and maybe life in general.