Celebrating and uplifting LGBTQIA+ voices should happen year-round, but Pride Month is also a great time to highlight LGBTQ creators on Twitch. Pride is celebrated in June to commemorate one of the most pivotal moments of the Gay Rights movement, the Stonewall riots. Without POC trans individuals and drag queens fighting back against police at the Stonewall Inn from June 28 to July 3, things could have been very different for LGBTQIA+ individuals today. Pride Month is a time to celebrate how far the community has come, but also acknowledge how much more work there is to be done until true equity is achieved amongst LGBTQ individuals.
Pride can be celebrated in many different ways, especially when it comes to streaming on Twitch. Game Rant has done a series of interviews to highlight LGBTQ streamers on Twitch during the month of June to spread awareness for Pride and marginalized creators that viewers should pay attention to. Katie, better known online as PikaChulita, is a member of the LGBTQ community and a Twitch variety streamer, who has been streaming since 2014.
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Though Katie has been streaming since Fall 2014, she’s played and loved games for even longer. Her love for gaming started when she was about five years old and found Pokemon. Katie loves animals and cute things, and Pokemon was the perfect mix of both and enough for her to fall in love with. Her first “large” console was the Nintendo 64, and then her love of gaming continued through the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. Katie has gamed pretty much her whole life, making it one of her biggest hobbies before she started streaming in 2014.
In 2014 when I was actually still in college, I can't remember how, I think I may have just seen it on Twitter randomly because I've been on Twitter for like 10+ years, I found out about Twitch and Maximilian Dood. I watched some of his streams and I was like, "Wow, this is a really cool concept.” And I was like, "Well I love video games, I'm pretty good at them most of the time, and I think I'm pretty entertaining." So I was like, "Why not try it?"
Not long after that moment, Katie went live from her new PlayStation 4 with Infamous Second Son and it took off from there. As for her username, Katie “really just combined two words.” Pikachu is one of her favorite Pokemon and a nickname she used to be called in high school was “Chula” or “Chulita,” so she combined them and thus PikaChulita became her Twitch username and social media handle.
Katie is pretty much “the textbook definition of variety” because she plays such varied games online. The only games she stays away from are things like military shooters or sports games—everything else is pretty much fair game, so to speak. She plays a lot of Apex Legends and Fortnite, but also games like God of War and other farming, simulation, and indie games. In fact, in more recent years she’s found herself gravitating more toward indie games than any other genre.
I would have to say within the last year or two since I started gaming on PC, I've been really drawn to indie titles. My top 3 games last year were all indie games. So, I'm noticing that the larger sort of AAA titles, the really meaty games that are super long and RPGs and open worlds, I just don't have the capacity to [play them] anymore.
Her top three games of 2020 were Hades, Later Daters, and Spiritfarer. Katie has actually put in at least 40 to 50 runs of Hades in her spare time, making it one of her more recent offline go-to games. Online, she’s enjoyed getting into games like Knockout City and It Takes Two. Of all time though, Katie says that Sly Cooper is her favorite offline game (and the only one she’s ever platinumed) while Left 4 Dead is her favorite online game. She’s also excited for the upcoming Back 4 Blood.
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Streaming on Twitch has been full of good and bad experiences for Katie, but her favorite part of it all is the community she’s cultivated during her time on Twitch. Viewers are able to visit her channel for a bit of reprieve from everyday life, and she can find joy in interacting with them, especially when she’s having an off day. Her time on Twitch has also helped her find other Black women streamers, especially in communities like Black Girl Gamers.
Obviously, I don't want to make it seem as if my experience as a Black woman on Twitch has been strictly negative. I think I have to mention the positives I've experienced, and majority of that falls in with the fact that I've met so many amazing other Black women through the platform that also just game and create content. They're all amazing and some of them have become my lifelong friends and feel like family at this point. They've really given me the support I've needed to sort of navigate these spaces more confidently.
Unfortunately, not every experience on Twitch has been as heartwarming or fulfilling. When Katie wasn’t partnered on Twitch, she noticed a lot more race-based harassment than she currently deals with now. Instead of harassment regarding being Black, she deals with a lot of harassment based on being a woman. When it’s not a regular stream day, like maybe streaming during Black History Month or Women’s History Month, Katie has to put more security measures in place. This includes things like having extra mods and even turning on AutoMod to help filter things.
Like those days with heightened traffic, oh it's the Wild West. You'll see everything. It'll be an equal mix of, unfortunately, various forms of harassment, slurs, offensive language, etc, etc. But I've got a really good community and a really good mod team behind me, so when that sort of stuff happens, they're able to keep me and my community safe.
As for how she deals with the harassment, Katie likes to flip the script and take the power away from the trolls. Once, during Women’s History Month, a troll came in and said that the Nineteenth Amendment should be repealed, also known as the amendment that granted white women the power to vote. Katie turned the rude comment on its head, saying “Jokes on you, I'm Black, I didn't get the right to vote that year.”
I generally try to sort of like, weaponize their own behavior against them. Sort of like a, "Hey, well guess what, I can do this too." And I just laugh at it because I have that satisfaction of knowing that they're doing this behind the anonymity of a computer screen and none of this would be said to me in real life. So I kind of have that little internal last laugh for that exact reason.
Katie has decided to stick to a no-schedule stream setup because, in her case, she works a full-time job outside of her time on Twitch. Streaming can feel like a second, part-time job, and switching to the non-scheduled approach has helped her immensely regarding feeling guilty about canceling streams, but also avoiding what she thinks is one of the most difficult things about being a streamer—burnout.
A lot of times I'll be low on energy, and more recently within the last couple months I switched to a non-scheduled approach because I just realized I could not have a set time that I could dedicate to streaming because I have work, I have a relationship, I'm engaged now, I have time to spend with family, we're in the middle of a pandemic—there's so many different factors going on that can take up your time. And even if it's not a bad sort of exhaustion it's just, like, fatigue.
Besides playing games like Apex Legends, Fortnite, or a litany of indie games, Katie also does many different charity streams. In her own words, “it’s literally one of my favorite things to do on Twitch.” She likes helping and making a difference where she can, and while streaming isn’t the only way she tries to help people, she loves raising money for charity. She’s even got a St. Jude tattoo that was done as a reward for one of her St. Jude charity streams.
Katie can be found on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram at PikaChulita. Anyone looking to join the PikaCrew can typically catch a PikaChulita stream in the afternoon or evening. If viewers are looking for a space to get away from the bustle of life and have a few laughs, PikaChulita’s Twitch channel is the place to be.