How Ironmouse\u2019s subathon brought VTubers to the forefront of streaming Twitch: Ironmouse \/ TwitchVTubing was once considered a fringe part of streaming, sequestered into its little corner of the internet. VShojo star Ironmouse changed that in 2022 with her record-breaking subathon. Reaching hundreds of thousands \u2014 if not millions \u2014 across the world, this mighty mouse from Puerto Rico brought VTubers to the forefront of streaming. Projekt Melody, one of Ironmouse\u2019s sidekicks at VShojo, remembers the first time she ever saw her. \u201cI saw this little pink character sing the most beautiful song \u2014 that classic opera Ave Maria, and my heart exploded into a million pieces,\u201d she reminisced. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen a beautiful anime girl sing Ave Maria and I was tearing up. \u201cShe had 50 followers [at the time]. Having 50 people be in the same room as you and agree with you and think you\u2019re awesome is already an achievement. Two years later and she has over a million. How unfathomable, mind boggling, is that?\u201d As unfathomable as it may seem, it\u2019s a rather poetic description of Ironmouse\u2019s journey. Her entire VTuber career \u2014 her entire life \u2014 has been this remarkable quest. The Puerto Rican streamer might have a relatively unassuming presence on Twitch. Yes she\u2019s the embodiment of Satan in this cute pink demon-slash-mouse, but she\u2019s never really been one for the limelight. That all changed, though, when suddenly tens of thousands were tuning in watching every second of her life for 31 days straight. Ironmouse had taken on the challenge of a subathon in February 2022. Popularized by Ludwig Ahgren, who broke (and still holds) the Twitch subscriber record with his own nonstop broadcast in 2021, it sees streamers stay live for as long as their viewers dictate. Every donation and subscription adds time onto the clock \u2014 anything from a second, to five seconds, to a whole minute. The stream doesn\u2019t end until that clock hits zero. It was a novelty thing at the time on Twitch. The flavor of the month, the meta. For any regular streamer, they could just click \u201cStart Streaming\u201d in OBS and go for as long as they wanted. But Ironmouse had more preparation to do than most. The VTuber has a chronic illness called common variable immune deficiency (CVID), as well as a lung condition. She has been living within the four walls of her bedroom almost non-stop for years, on oxygen and away from the outside world. However since she started streaming \u2014 behind her virtual avatar back in 2017 \u2014 she always had one goal. \u201cFor a long time, I always wanted to do a marathon stream,\u201d Ironmouse explained to Dexerto. \u201cWhen I first started streaming I could only stream for an hour, two hours, as I was still having a lot of health issues. \u201cI\u2019d see people do these long streams and I wanted to do that so bad. I\u2019ve had this desire to always want to do that but it never seemed to happen for me. \u201cSuddenly after [the global health crisis], I started growing a lot more and more opportunities started coming. I started making more money and taking better care of myself and I realized that slowly but surely my time online would increase. I would start at 1-2 hours, but then I could go for three hours, then four, and it wasn\u2019t until my birthday [in 2020] that I realized \u2018holy crap I could maybe do this.\u2019 \u201cThe longest stream I ever did was seven hours and I thought maybe I could do more but I was afraid. I wouldn\u2019t call it training but I kept slowly increasing my time and then finally the desire to do a subathon overtook me.\u201d When Ironmouse put her ducks in a row to make the subathon happen, she wasn\u2019t expecting much. Maybe she would be live for a few days, a week at most. If only it was that merciful. Ironmouse ended up being on stream for a month straight. Viewers followed her every move with very little privacy beyond the avatar. She had to dip off stream from time to time, but otherwise she was at her computer playing games, singing karaoke-style, chatting with viewers, or sleeping (she even had a little bed asset made for her model instead of just standing there motionless). Friends dropped in, saying hello in an open Discord call which was active basically 24\/7. There were some regular faces there: voice actor and Twitch star in his own right Connor \u2018CDawg\u2019 Colquhoun was a popular figure, and so too other VShojo girls like Silvervale. \u201cIt felt like a constant podcast,\u201d Silver said. \u201cIt was always really interesting what people were talking about. The conversations were crazy. \u201cIt was funny when she would be sleeping and we would try to be really weird and affect her dreams \u2014 at one point she actually had a dream about something we were talking about which was kind of funny. It was nice to always have people around.\u201d The subathon wasn\u2019t all smooth sailing. Being live for that long is bound to have its ups and downs. One unconsidered side effect of the megastream was seeing her other work pile up. Collaborations had to be postponed (or pulled onto the subathon), voice recordings delayed; the list was growing alongside her subscriber count. \u201cAfter time started passing and it was X day I was like \u2018oh my God\u2019,\u201d Ironmouse laughed. \u201cIt\u2019s funny because at that point I was like \u2018whatever happens, happens\u2019. Around the 28 day mark I realized I had so many projects I needed to work on that I needed to find a way to end this.\u201d There were some smaller things too. She ran out of content ideas quite quickly, which saw her subathon transform and evolve over time. And while she considers herself an \u201cextrovert\u201d and her number one goal on Twitch was to \u201cmake friends\u201d, her social battery was pretty drained. There were criticisms among all the praise. Some labeled the stream boring, and once you hit 28 days of repeating the same things over and over it makes sense \u2014 even Mouse agrees. But the actual content of the subathon didn\u2019t mean as much as two things: the person (or avatar) who was on it, and the audiences it was capturing. \u201cI was terrified in the very beginning because there were so many people there,\u201d Projekt Melody said. \u201cShe knew the same fear \u2014 more now because she was getting attention for being her authentic self as well, killing it, and showing the world \u2018hey I\u2019m this very niche thing, I\u2019m hilarious, and we\u2019re just as valid as any other entertainer. \u201cShe took [her] situation and she turned it into something beautiful and made her dreams come true because she\u2019s this powerful force of a person,\u201d Nyanners added. \u201cGetting to see her reach those heights in front of everyone and see how happy she was and accomplish something she deserves a million times over. \u201cSo many people got converted to the dark side of VTubing because of her.\u201d It got to the point where you couldn\u2019t help but cheer for her, donate a little bit to raise the timer, and see her live out her dream of that on mega marathon stream against the odds. \u201cI remember when we first met back in 2020,\u201d Zentreya recalled. \u201cIt was near the end, she was this super shy girl who just really wanted to make some friends. She had told me about her health and stuff and it really reminded me of my mom when she was fighting her sickness. I saw a lot of my mom in her, and seeing her just push forward with her life at that moment, still being able to have fun, being scared somewhat, but still wanting to do what she wanted to do was amazing. \u201cWatching her slowly grow and grow and grow into this huge idol for so many others. Some of who have the same sickness or have an illness or disability, they cheer her on too. That\u2019s something that really just opens your eyes and you want her to succeed. You want her to be up there and pushing past the stars and becoming one.\u201d And as the records came tumbling down \u2014 first KKatamina\u2019s record for the most-subbed to woman on Twitch, and then 100,000 subs before ending at around 170,000 \u2014 so did the tears. \u201cIt was really emotional and I was really proud of her,\u201d Silver said. \u201cI was on at the end of the subathon when we were saying goodbye and crying. It\u2019s really special and it was nice for people to realise that VTubers aren\u2019t a fad, we aren\u2019t just weird anime people.\u201d The impacts of Mousey\u2019s subathon were felt just as widely as Ludwig\u2019s back in 2021 too. It sparked a new wave of streamers, specifically VTubers, going live for as long as possible in their own marathon streams. \u201cI think Mousey started the subathon meta in the VTuber community,\u201d Veibae explained. \u201cSo many streamers are doing it now, there\u2019s like 20 streamers I know who had a subathon right after Mousey because of how successful it was. I\u2019m pretty sure every VTuber has done a subathon after Mousey\u2019s, everyone was on at all times. It was fun. \u201cIt was so cool because you could literally click on one stream to another and see them all. Even timezone wise, some would be sleeping, some would be hanging out, others playing games. It\u2019s VTuber Big Brother.\u201d There\u2019s these broad strokes about how Ironmouse\u2019s subathon helped VTubers get off the ground in the Western market on Twitch \u2014 one look at the VTubers tag nowadays and you\u2019ll find thousands of streamers behind their wildly-varying avatars live at any time. Yes, anyone you ask will unanimously say Ironmouse\u2019s subathon put VTubers out there more than they already were, and that the scene is slowly getting destigmatized. \u201cI feel like a lot more eyes were on us after that happened,\u201d Ironmouse stated. \u201cI see a lot more VTubers around, interacting with the community and it makes me happy because I know it\u2019s different what we do, but at the end of the day we\u2019re still streamers and we\u2019re all the same. Above it all though, the subathon is ultimately about one Puerto Rican girl who had a dream of making friends and sharing her life with them. There was no obligation to be there, but thousands were, and it made for an unforgettable month. \u201cI cried a lot,\u201d she continued. \u201cI know people that watch me, they care and they like me. I like them too, I\u2019m happy that they\u2019re there. I\u2019m honored people take time out of their day to spend it with me because time is very valuable and you don\u2019t have to be here but they were. It touched my heart so much, especially people who were very enthusiastic about keeping me online and it was a surreal experience and it was wonderful.\u201d Just don\u2019t ask Ironmouse to pick a single favorite bit: \u201cMy favorite moment\u2026 all of it! It was all great. Every minute of it was great. I had so much fun, and it was just incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How Ironmouse\u2019s subathon brought VTubers to the forefront of streaming Twitch: Ironmouse \/ TwitchVTubing was once considered a fringe part of streaming, sequestered into its little corner of the internet. VShojo star Ironmouse changed that in 2022 with her record-breaking subathon. Reaching hundreds of thousands \u2014 if not millions \u2014 across the world, this mighty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}