#this is always something that makes me happy to be a dsmp fan as cringe and lame as that sounds

[croustitrans]

A love letter to a streamer

This is probably the most parasocial thing I’ll ever write but I’m sure I’m not the only one experiencing this feeling. 

I started watching streamers in my native language a while ago, a bit before quarantine. It was nice, it was new. And as a lot of us did, I fell into the dsmp when covid hit. I was a little late to the party, fell in love with SAD-IST animations, talked about the lore to any and everyone. I was so amazed by this new way of telling stories ans this amazingly creative community surrounding it. 

I always believed in this narrative that in order to be an insane fan of something you had to be lonely. I was so certain that I wasn’t. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m so so grateful for the people surrounding me. I have been so lucky to have the most supportive group of friends and a family that always tried their best. But somehow, I felt like something was missing. 

I remember the first time I watched a ranboo stream. To be completely honest, I cringed so hard at first. I don’t really know why, I think i somehow I saw my younger self in them. But something made me stay. Probably the way I felt more at home watching them ranting while mining for hours than in my own bed. 

For the first time, I felt this warm feeling of comfort. This strange happiness of being alone with so many people. We joked a lot about all of us being queer, and as stupid as it may sound, even tho I was already out and proud irl, it felt new. 

But it is so much more than this. I liked a lot of creators before, and I’ve always been very aware of the dangers of feeling like you know some of them. I’ve grown a lot since then. But there I am. Writing a fucking essay about someone that I’ll never meet. Maybe I’m being too naive, but as long as I don’t have a reason not to, I will let myself love them. 

I am so incredibly grateful that I stumbled upon them during my life. I am so happy to see them grow and learn to be happier, to be a bit more themselves. I know I’ll never truly know them, and it’s ok, i’m just happy with the parts I got the chance to know. But it’s a strange feeling. Sometimes it keeps me awake at night, wondering if it’s healthy, if it’s normal. I think it is. I think even if I tried, I wouldn’t be able to kick them out of this weird place in my heart. Not a friend, not a celebrity I look up to, just someone I feel close to. 

Because yeah, they’re just someone on the internet. But they’re also the person that helped making some of the darkest parts of my life bearable. They’re the first representation of a gay non-binary person that I ever saw. They’re the one that kept me going when I didn’t wanted to, when I though I didn’t had it in me. They’re that stupid knowledge that even tho everything may sucks, I’ll always have a laugh at the end. They’re that quiet comfort when I don’t have the strength to cry for help.

I am way happier now. And I think they are too. But even tho I’ll never really be able to explain the part that they had in my recovery to anyone around me, I’ll always know. And now I’m here. Stuck with the genuine affection I have for a stranger. 

And I’m so okay with it, I’m so grateful for it. 

[dwter]

this clip and the clip of tina talking about how dream and other dsmp creators brought an entirely new and diverse audience to twitch will never not fail to make me emotional. theres few creators that want to actually acknowledge dream and the dsmp for the magnitudes they did for the streaming and gaming community as a whole, but poki and tina truly get it and them speaking publicly about it makes me really happy. dteam and the dsmp deserve so much more credit for completely changing the culture of twitch in less than a year. it's ridiculous that there's so few people that recognize how crazy the influx was and how drastically they changed the streaming landscape for women and diverse content creators. i hope later down the line someone writes about the shift because it truly is so groundbreaking

ive never seen thos omfg thank u so much for showing me anon !!!!! its so nice to hear, esp from someone as big (and also sadly, as targetted) as poki, that the influx and change in the demographic of twitch was not just not a bad thing with a bunch of “annoying” blue haired girls with pronouns, but a genuinely GOOD thing and made her experience on twitch better and just made twitch in general a more inclusive space is seriously just so awesome to hear. like u said, ppl very rarely like to acknowledge the good that came from dream and the dsmp in general but their influence is undeniable and while u get a couple thousand dnf 💚💙 spammers, you also got an new set of people who have an entirely new world now open to them that is so much more approachable for so many different reasons. and it all circles back to the crafters and the way they completely changed the culture and created space for women and minorities in general :)))