Welcome to Millionaires, where we profile creators who have recently crossed the one million subscriber mark on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. There are creators crossing this threshold every week, and each of them has a story to tell about their start and their success. Read previous installments here.
Queen Astraea had just gotten a cool internship when COVID hit. Not long after, she found herself unceremoniously laid off.
“They didn’t bother to give us two weeks’ notice, nothing of the sort,” she says. “Everyone’s dying, no one is hiring, and I’m thinking to myself, I’m going to maybe lose my home. Oh my god.”
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In the midst of panic and grief, one of her friends rang her up and asked if she’d heard of TikTok. Both she and her friend are LARPers (if you don’t know what LARPing is, do yourself a favor and watch this), and their group was considering uploading some videos with their characters and costumes. And, as an artist and cosplay queen, Astraea has a lot of costumes.
She didn’t really get TikTok yet, but once her friends said it was “Vine 2.0,” she downloaded it and almost immediately it was “down the rabbit hole, Alice,” she laughs. For about six months, she just watched videos.
“Finally, I plucked up the courage to make [my own],” she says. It was a quick, lo-fi thing featuring one of her costumes. She posted it and went to bed, thinking her friends would probably see it and that would be that.
The next morning, that video had 700,000 views.
In the three years since, making TikTok content has become Astraea’s full-time job. It’s allowed her to turn her beloved hobbies into a career–and helped her find a community of creative, like-minded people who love LARP, cosplay, the Ren Faire, and so much more just as much as she does.
Check out our chat with her below.
@queen_astraea Too Much Labor… @parispalomaofficial #internationalwomensday #queen #royalcore #medievaltiktok #toomuchlabor ♬ labour – Paris Paloma
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tubefilter: I’m familiar with you and with your videos, but I’d love to get like a little bit of background. Pretend somebody’s reading this, they’ve never seen your stuff. Give me a little bit of insight about where you’re from and your journey up to getting on TikTok.
Queen Astraea: I got on TikTok because of losing my job right on the onslaught of the pandemic. I’m born and raised in New York City. Originally, I was a graphic design intern for a company. It was a great opportunity and I was having a great time. I was bottom of the barrel. I think I was making a little less than $15 an hour at the time. I think I was on my last like $200 when I got this internship. I really needed the money for this.
Then suddenly, boom, pandemic happens. My company immediately decides that people obviously need to work at home, but it’s hard for you or anyone for that matter in an internship level to be learning anything if you’re not exactly with anyone to learn from. Very quickly, as the pandemic progressed, the company lost just way too much money too quickly. They fired all of the interns. They didn’t bother to give us two weeks’ notice, nothing of the sort. Everyone’s dying, no one is hiring, and I’m thinking to myself, I’m going to maybe lose my home. Oh my god.
In the process of having a panic attack and crying, one of my friends just goes, “Hey, how are you doing?” Meanwhile, I’m like a teary mess just being like, “Not great, but…”
Tubefilter: It’s fine.
Queen Astraea: “It’s fine.” Everything’s on fire. They go, “Well, listen, do you know something called TikTok?” Again, mid-crying, I’m just like, “Yes, it’s like Vine 2.0, right?” My friends are like, “RIP, Vine,” I’m like, “RIP, Vine.” They said, “Well, listen, a bunch of us from our D&D and our LARP groups, you’ve got great costumes. We’re thinking of putting our characters or something on TikTok and making some fun videos. This way we can all have fun while we’re all being stuck at home. Why don’t you give it a shot?”
I was like, “Well, I don’t know, but I’ll download it. Why not?” I did. I did download the app and it was down the rabbit hole, Alice. For I think six months, I was just a consumer. I was just watching TikToks and scrolling heavily. I was just like, “Wow, this is really funny. I like this app.” Finally, I plucked up the courage to make a TikTok. I think I stacked like several books, my old textbooks on top of one another. I had a desk lamp shown on me, nothing fancy. I made a TikTok.
However, I did not realize TikTok’s settings. You see, on Meta’s stuff, it’s friends of friends first and then public. TikTok is opposite. It’s public first and then friends of friends. I don’t know if these settings have changed, but that’s what it was in the beginning. I’m like, “Okay, that was fun.” I posted the thing. I went to bed the next morning. I wake up. I’m making coffee and I’m just hearing brrring, brrring. I’m like, “What the hell?” I’m thinking there’s an emergency that happened. I pick up the phone and it’s my friends.
They’re like, “Dude, you have to check out your TikTok. It went viral.” I’m thinking, “Huh? That can’t be true. I just posted it to see it for you guys to see.” I go on the app and suddenly I see that this video, I think, at the time had 700,000 views.
Tubefilter: Oh wow.
Queen Astraea: Most people would just be like, “Oh, that’s really cute.” No, I actually had a panic attack. I actually threw my phone as a visceral reaction. I was like, “Oh my god, who are you people?” They kept saying, “Do another, do another, do another.” I thought, “Oh, this couldn’t possibly happen again. Oh, hell no. There’s no way.” Oh, ha ha, you know that one time you went viral? Real funny. I make another one. I just failed forward since because they just kept going viral. Now I’m here and I still don’t know what I’m doing.
@queen_astraea I’M TIRED 💀💀💀💀 #queen #medievaltiktok #imdone #💀 #whendidienlist ♬ original sound – KLA
Tubefilter: Was there a point where you were like, “Okay, this is a full-time thing now”? Is there a point where you were no longer looking for another job?
Queen Astraea: I think when it finally dawned upon me that I could actually do this for a living was I think when I reached 100,000 followers at first, but I reached it inhumanly quickly. I should probably preface this that I got stupidly lucky in this app to a degree. When I reached that first 100,000 followers, I was reached out to two or three companies that really somehow really loved my work. They decided to have me work with them on a monthly basis. I was making a sustainable income. That was when it finally dawned upon me that I could actually do this for work, for a career and for a job.
Tubefilter: Were you making sponsored content with them, or?
Queen Astraea: Yes, sponsored content. It was extremely organic style content of doing crown unboxings. I have a huge love of history. I tied my love of history to talking about crown designs. People were really interested in that. From there, I was able to create a sustainable income from that. That’s when I realized, wow, people not only tune in to see my work, but this is actually fun.
At the end of the day, a career for me in this field is more about how much fun I’m having. If I’m not having fun, then I’d rather not be doing this type of job. I thought that my whole entire trajectory for my life’s career would be in graphic design. I love art and I love to finick with graphic design, but the fact that it transferred over into videography, I was having just an insane amount of fun. That’s how it has been ever since.
Tubefilter: How did you originally get into LARPing?
Queen Astraea: It was completely on accident as well. I was first like hugely into the Renaissance Faire, the New York Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo, New York. It was just a stone throws away for most people. I used to go to that very often as a child. I had no idea that LARPing existed. At first I was getting into thinking I would like historical costuming. I was looking up at the time, I think, some groups as to do historical costuming or historical costuming groups via Facebook, I think.
Out of nowhere, my YouTube obviously liking my search history recommended me something called Bicolline. Bicolline is like the largest LARP in North America. It’s got 10 to 15,000 people that show up in the middle of nowhere in Quebec, Canada, in the mountains to do a huge battle called the Grande Bataille. I saw photos of that thinking that it was a medieval reenactment group.
I was like, “Oh, that looks cool. Then I click and I’m like, “It’s a LARP.” I’m like. “What’s a LARP?” Then I went down a Google search from there and then I was like, “Oh, that’s a LARP.” I found one that was localized near me. It’s out in the New Jersey area. That was my home base. I had a lot of fun from it.
Tubefilter: How have things changed for you? What are your plans and goals professionally now?
Queen Astraea: I don’t really know, actually, I think. I often get asked this question, and I’ve only been three years into this, and I can’t exactly answer that. People say, “You should do a business.” Some people have said, “You should go into YouTube.” Other people go you should do this or that or that. Everything sounds so exciting. I’ve never considered that this would have happened to me. I’m sort of testing the waters.
I think goal-wise, I would like to go into YouTube more full time and do more long form content. I just love traveling and I love being able to be a part of a lot of amazing experiences of working with fellow nerds. I’d like to be able to go to like Comic-Con. I think a personal goal I would like to do one day is to just, I don’t know, have a booth at a Comic-Con and meet people who like my work a lot and just at least thank them. Long-term goals, I would like to be able to sustainably do this and still continue to have that kind of fun in my life.
@queen_astraea The Knight tosses the Queen their spare ax3 to face their newest foe: ✨2023✨ #dingdong #queen #medievaltiktok #2023 #dnd #larp ♬
Tubefilter: Have you struggled at all with your hobby becoming your job?
Queen Astraea: Oh, of course, everyone does. I have a lot of my other fellow creators who are my colleagues, I guess, is the best way to call them. Some of them, maybe, are just starting out themselves and they’ve asked me what it’s like making your hobby your job. I said, it comes at a cost because you feel like suddenly there’s a severe expectation that you need to always be on top of everything in your hobby and that if somehow you don’t post every day or post as much as you should, suddenly you’re less than.
Unfortunately, with social media, it’s very numerically based. We have a tendency as humans to put value to numbers. Suddenly if people see my numbers of having two million, they have a tendency to assume that I’m better than other people, which is never the case. At the end of the day, I try to tell people that there’s like a pedometer to fame. The more you grow in fame, the less likely you’re going to be considered a person. You’re now considered a commodity of entertainment.
From that, you’re removed from having personhood. It’s very easy for people who love your work may not think– they think they know you, but they know a version of you that you have shown. I try to say to my other creators and my colleagues that we’re a very tight-knit community. We’re a really strong group with each other, but you have to make sure you do your mental health check and try to remember that you are in fact a human being.
Tubefilter: Absolutely. Very important. I did want to ask, how is your production side of things? Are you doing everything on your own? Are you aiming to put out a specific number of videos per week?
Queen Astraea: Right now, I try to work towards putting out a video every other day. Even then to a lot of my friends and my colleagues, they think that’s too much. I used to post every single day for nearly three years straight, but I realized how unsustainable and of an expectation that is to put on someone. I dialed back a lot and I switched to making some more longer form content on TikTok and they’ve all done really well. People oddly enough now are like, “Yes, you got a strange personality, kid, but we like you.” I’m just like, “Wow.”
Tubefilter: When you say longer form on TikTok, what length are you shooting for?
Queen Astraea: Again, I’d like to consider myself stupidly lucky while doing this. I’ve posted so far anywhere between four- to nearly seven-minute-long videos on TikTok and they’ve all done really well.
Tubefilter: It’s cool you’re having success with that. I wasn’t sure how long-form would do on TikTok.
Queen Astraea: Yes, maybe it’s my editing style. I don’t know, but it keeps people stay tuned and maybe that’s why they like it other than the fun little quips and jokes that I put in along with my videos. I think I have my phone right here. My most recent long-form video that I posted, it’s got 369,000 views. It’s over six minutes long.
Tubefilter: Huh. Have you posted any of this longer stuff to YouTube yet?
Queen Astraea: No, I haven’t because it dawned upon me, like, it’s the vertical form. YouTube is standard 1920 by 1080 horizontal. I’m like, “Oh, wait, this won’t actually translate well. “And uploading to YouTube Shorts, their maximum length is a minute.
Tubefilter: I don’t know why they still have that.
Queen Astraea: I don’t know either, but YouTube and TikTok, they run parallel with each other. They’re obviously in competition, but it’s almost as if they have this agreement and handshake with each other. TikTok has uploaded long-form content to compete with YouTube and YouTube has YouTube shorts to compete with TikTok, but they just run parallel with each other. They’re cohesive.
Tubefilter: We’ve talked about your future plans already. Do you have any cool projects you’re working on? Anything you want to talk about?
Queen Astraea: Hmm. Cool projects. I just actually finished one just this weekend. I was with my friend who is a phenomenal photographer. We just finished a really big passion project of hers that I also was like, “Oh, my god, this is great.” We’re going to see the results of that later. I hope to do long form content in something more cinematic. I have a lot of, again, really great creative friends in videography. I’m hoping to do more collaboration style projects that involve more cinematic style videos.
I hope to one day be able to put that into use because my degree is in illustration.
Tubefilter: Oh, really?
Queen Astraea: Yes, I have a BFA in it, but my specific degree was in storyboarding. I would like to be able to use my skills that I have accumulated in my college days and be able to put it towards a passion project that I can actually make come to life.
Tubefilter: So wait, so you went for illustration, got into storyboarding, and then you went into graphic design as a job.
Queen Astraea: Yes.
Tubefilter: Now you’re here.
Queen Astraea: Now I’m here. Like I’m saying, this career is very like a ping-pong effect.
@queen_astraea The Queen and The Duchess investigate the cursed Pirate. #medievaltiktok #queen #royalcore #buzzfeedunsolved @Shane Madej @Ryan Bergara @Watcher ♬ original sound – Naomi Fenton
Tubefilter: Do you design all your costumes?
Queen Astraea: Some of my costumes I’ve designed myself and have made. Some I’ve been given and others I have designed and then submitted to a company to make for me if I feel it’s out of my skillset. I’m now at a point in my career stability wise where I want to highlight other fashion creatives and put a spotlight on them and put them on the map. So far, it’s been quite successful and it’s very cohesive. I have a very staunch rule of thumb that if it’s an individual designer, or a very small company, I’m not going to charge them for a video. It’s just something I heavily feel that if it’s a very small company they deserve advertisement. If they’re going to make me something, that’s the payment.
Tubefilter: That’s really cool.
Queen Astraea: Yes. If it’s like a medium, mid-tier company, I’m talking like they have like standardized employees of more than 15, then they can provide an income. If it’s a mega company, then obviously, yes, I’m going to have them charged up the wazoo. Part of how now I’m able to make this even more sustainably is that I got representation. My team is extremely sweet and they really pay attention to my likes and dislikes and the kind of things that I want to go for in my videos. I’ve always been given the final say in my projects. I’m given a lot of creative freedom and I’ve got to work with really amazing companies.
I got to work with like STARZ on-demand. I got to work with Hulu. I’ve been with HBO. I’m like, “Wow.” At one point I got invited to a red carpet event from STARZ. They had their show called Dangerous Liaisons and I’ve always loved the book. It’s a beautiful 18th century novel. If you ever feel like picking it up, it’s got so many twists and turns. I was invited to that red carpet event and I was bamboozled because I’m wearing this like giant puff ball, selkie dress. I already stick out like a sore thumb.
Apparently what had happened was the main actress, I think perhaps it’s because we’re both blond and maybe we just have the same nose.
Tubefilter: Oh no.
Queen Astraea: People thought I was her. They’d be shaking my hand randomly and be like, “You did really good up there.” I’m just like, “I don’t think you think I am who you think I am.”
Tubefilter: No, just take it, just take the compliment. It’s you now.
Queen Astraea: Then I met her and then I was just like, “Oh, that’s why.” She looks at me and she’s like, “Oh, holy shit.”
Tubefilter: That’s such a wild coincidence.
Queen Astraea: Yes. Do I think I look like her? No, absolutely not. I thought that was a really funny story.
Tubefilter: It is! Last question: What has been your favorite part of this whole being on the internet adventure?
Queen Astraea: Feeling like I’m not alone anymore. I think ever since I was a kid, I knew I was a very strange kid. I have a very overactive imagination and I’ve always known that about myself. I’ve always been encouraged to be that very strange little kid. That comes at a cost of a lot of loneliness because you realize very quickly as you grow up that there’s just not a lot of people who you think like you.
When I started to upload on to TikTok, I started to realize that there were just so many other people who were just like me. The only thing that came out of this experience was knowing I’m not alone anymore. I have so many friends and colleagues who are just as weird and as enthusiastic in their own niche subjects. I think that is the best thing I could ever ask for in this life is that I have great friendships and I get to work and do things that I love with the people that really inspire me as well.
