Welcome to Streamers on the Rise, where we find streamers who are growing their channels, content, and audiences in extraordinary ways. Each week we’ll talk with a creator about what goes into livestreaming–both on and off camera.
KiwiOnTheSticks grew up with video games.
But at first, they were always “for boys.” She and her three much older brothers were raised by a single mom–a single mom who, btw, is a Chapman University and AFI alum filmmaker, screenwriter, and director–so a lot of the time, they were babysitting her. And they loved to game.
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“As my sole form of entertainment, which was video games, I got to watch my brothers and go along with them on their journeys while they were playing Final Fantasy VI, Resident Evil, and Castlevania, which all scared me. I would never play them on my own, but it was so much fun to watch them play it,” she says.
Her first exposure to video games being for people other than boys was a sleepover at a friend’s house. That friend had the game that would change everything for Kiwi: Kingdom Hearts.
“That was my first time playing an RPG by myself,” she says. “That was like my chosen game instead of watching my brothers play something. Kingdom Hearts really proved to me that I love video games myself, but also that I would be able to play them and I didn’t just have to be the spectator at this point. I was capable of figuring out how to solve these riddles and fight the bosses and figure out what the story means. Kingdom Hearts was a pivotal, pivotal game for me.”
As she got older, she kept gaming, getting into tournaments and community events like LAN parties. It was through those events that she found Twitch.
Now, she’s a full-time streamer with over 20,000 followers, and has plans to do more in 2024. She’s thinking hosting, voice acting, merch, and more.
“I still want to stream,” she says, “but I want to elevate and push forward.”
Check out our chat with her below.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tubefilter: Hello! I’d love to start with, I’m familiar with you and your channel, but the goal for these pieces, generally, is to give people who already know you a deeper insight into you behind the camera, and then also introduce new people to you. If we could start with some background, like imagine somebody is reading this, they have no idea who you are. Give me some background about you and where you’re from and everything that led to you getting on Twitch.
KiwiOnTheSticks: Okay. I grew up in a single-parent household. It was just me and my mom my three brothers and my Cocker Spaniel, whose name was Tuesday.
Tubefilter: Wait, how did the name…
KiwiOnTheSticks: Tuesday?
Tubefilter: Yes. Where did Tuesday come from?
KiwiOnTheSticks: Just one of my genius ideas because we got the dog when I was like five or six. My mom came and surprised me with just this big black floof in the middle of the night. I was so excited. It was just the first word that came to mind. I was like, what day is it today? Where am I? Because my mom woke me up in the middle of the night. I’m like, what day is it? What’s going on? She’s like “Tuesday.” I’m like, well, there we go. It made sense to five-year-old me.
Tubefilter: Okay. Sorry to sidetrack you. That was just fascinating.
KiwiOnTheSticks: I know. I know. That’s always a question people ask when I tell them that. I’m originally from Chicago, but my mom is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and director, and all these things so we moved to California to pursue that for her and kind of have a new beginning for us all. I got more involved in that aspect of creation behind the camera. I also got into acting and doing all sorts of things with my mom. She went to Chapman University and also AFI, which are both prestigious film schools. I spent a lot of time with her there in the computer labs, messing around.
Along the way, I found out that I really liked it and it was kind of cool. Eventually, I went off to play volleyball at university and I got a chance to do the Disney college program and I was like trying to find my way.
KiwiOnTheSticks: Oh, wow.
KiwiOnTheSticks: Yes. It was really fun too. I got to drive the safaris at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
Tubefilter: Very cool.
KiwiOnTheSticks: Yes, it was so fun. That was one of my favorite jobs. It definitely took out the routine of, like, Ugh, I have to go to work. It took that out of it completely because every day was like so much fun. That was the job that I realized that I need to do a job that’s fun for me every day, that offers me something different. It’s the stability of knowing that I will be working the job, but also the surprise and the excitement of not knowing how the job is going to go that day–in a good way.
It was just finding my way and into my adulthood, I figured out that streaming was actually a thing. I didn’t even know. Growing up with three older brothers, a lot of people who’ve had older brothers have experienced their interests and by proxy become interested in those. As my sole form of entertainment, which was video games, I got to watch my brothers and go along with them on their journeys while they were playing Final Fantasy VI, Resident Evil, and Castlevania, which all scared me. I would never play them on my own, but it was so much fun to watch them play it.
My brothers are so funny. Hearing their commentary and seeing how they responded to playing games, that was like my thing. Not to mention all three of my brothers are 10-plus years older than me
Tubefilter: So you were the baby baby.
KiwiOnTheSticks: Yes, so I was like the spectator while they were exploring games and they were old enough to like get these games on their own where I was still a kid.
Tubefilter: Your formative years.
KiwiOnTheSticks: Yes. My mom was in school, dual enrolled in university, so I spent a lot of time with them. Also, we didn’t have like a ton of money growing up, so I didn’t have cable. I wasn’t like really watching TV or anything. It was that. That was my entertainment. It was fun. That was a really good bonding experience for my brothers and I as well. Yes, eventually when I got to middle school, I believe, one of my best friends invited me over to spend the night, and she had Tekken, which we would always play. Then she had Kingdom Hearts. I was like, ooh, I love Disney, but what is this?
When I turned that game on and I played it for like an hour, I was like, ah, this is amazing. This is like Final Fantasy and Disney in one thing. That was my first time playing an RPG by myself. That was like my chosen game instead of watching my brothers play something. Kingdom Hearts really proved to me that I love video games myself, but also that I would be able to play them and I didn’t just have to be the spectator at this point. I was capable of figuring out how to solve these riddles and fight the bosses and figure out what the story means.
Kingdom Hearts was a pivotal, pivotal game for me, coming of age and trying to figure out do only boys play video games or what? Because that’s all I’ve seen, are my brothers playing. Yes, Kingdom Hearts helped me push it forward there. I played games pretty much my whole life. That was the one. Into adulthood, I figured out I love playing Splatoon. I had a competitive team that I co-founded with a couple of my teammates. We used to play in LANs and in competitions and tournaments. One of them started streaming. I was like, What’s that? Then we found Twitch. Mixer was also around at the time, but I think Twitch was like the streaming platform.
I decided to start streaming on Twitch shortly after. I streamed mostly Splatoon 2. It was so much fun. It was a great way to learn more about the game and connect with people, which is exactly what I wanted to do. Here we are almost five years later and it has blossomed into something else entirely for me. Initially, I was just like, I just want to learn about the game and make friends. I’ve done that and so much more now.
Tubefilter: I’m curious how you were able to grow your audience over the years. Anything that you’ve noticed that’s had a big effect on your discoverability?
KiwiOnTheSticks: Yes, so I’m a firm believer that finding your people as quickly as you can and as genuinely as you can is kind of the way to go here. I definitely had to make sure that I was just being myself as much as possible. I didn’t want to have to pretend I’m family friendly and not curse when I know I curse all the time. I had to shed these things that I was afraid of. I was afraid of being perceived as anything other than like, safe. I didn’t do too much in the beginning. I didn’t curse.
I used to wear this hat. This was like my safety hat. I don’t know what it was, but I was…I just didn’t want to be noticed too much or stand out too much. Which is so funny, because streaming exposed my insecurities to me as well. That was how it was for the first few months. Then I started gaining the confidence and the courage to stop pretending. I took my hat off finally, that I used to wear every single stream, and I started to just be, and just relax, and understand that I wasn’t being critiqued or there wasn’t a set of guidelines that I had to follow and that I could actually design this for myself. I figured out what I wanted to design it to be. What kinds of things did I want people to feel? Because I think at the end of the day when it comes to entertainment, it’s all about feelings, and if you’re able to inspire a certain feeling in someone, then maybe they might appreciate that feeling and want the feeling again in return.
I try to be very, not careful, but more aware of what kinds of feelings am I cultivating in the work that I do. I think that’s a really huge part of building a community is making sure that we have a variety of feelings, making sure that we’re addressing what our real-life concerns are, but also making sure that we can have a laugh, but also making sure that we understand that people care about each other and it’s okay. Things are okay. You’re okay how you are.
Also understanding we can strive for more. Along the way, I’ve been able to establish that people are so different and so versatile and we have different emotional needs at any given time, and it’s okay to maybe not be as happy that day, or it’s okay to not be as educated on a certain topic or whatever. Over time, my community has come to appreciate that and has come to expect that acceptance of self. Being able to do that, being able to post stuff online…I’m definitely not someone who posts TikToks all the time, posts YouTube videos. I think that diversifying your content is only as important as the quality of the content, and I realized that I’m a person who loves to make sure that this thing that I’m putting out is crisp and nice and exactly what I want to say, more than I care about just casting a wide net with it. I think I’m getting to the point now where I might be more comfortable doing all these different platforms, but for me, it’s really just been Twitch streaming consistently.
I have a Discord server, community-building is my main goal there. I think community-building is the number one thing outside of just being entertaining and happening to attract people who like your personality. Community-building is the thing. Making sure that people feel that sense of community is what makes them want to return. It’s what makes them feel like they have a place there, and a lot of people are looking for a place to be as well as for a place to be entertained. A place to belong.
A lot of people are in search of that, especially on Twitch. It’s nice to have a place to belong. I think most of us can agree on that. Having somewhere comfortable where you’re accepted and even valued is a nice thing to have. I try to make sure that we work on that in my Discord as a whole and we do stuff together all the time to encourage that. I also talk on Twitch about streamer help things.
Tubefilter: I saw you did a thing on taxes.
KiwiOnTheSticks: Yes.
Tubefilter: Which is important. Very, very helpful to people. Because I think especially newer creators do not realize how much income the IRS will take from freelancers.
KiwiOnTheSticks: Yes. They don’t realize it. I learned a lot too. I didn’t even know you could make payment plans the year before. There was so much that I didn’t know, but I also wasn’t expecting streaming to be what it is for me now, and I think last year– Was it last year? 2022. It was a huge year for me.
Tubefilter: What happened in 2022?
KiwiOnTheSticks: 2022 I ended up being featured on a billboard in Times Square by Twitch, which was amazing.
Tubefilter: That’s very cool.
KiwiOnTheSticks: It was so cool. I went to New York and I got to see myself on Broadway. It was the huge billboard right above the McDonald’s. It was so cool. I got a chance to be featured for Black History Month. Then I also got featured for Women’s History Month that year. I signed with the Epic Games Store that summer to be an ambassador and partner, so I got a chance to feature games from the Epic Games Store for three months. They were doing these short pockets with different creators and I ended up being selected for that, which was amazing.
I got to cover all types of games that summer and that was also the summer that I got signed with Elgato. It was such a good year of solidifying my place in the industry and having some big girl partnerships and contracts and really helped me prove to myself. I had to prove to myself that I’m doing okay.
Tubefilter: When did you go full-time on streaming?
KiwiOnTheSticks: I want to say once I got partnered in 2021. That was when I was like, okay, we’re going to just hit the ground running with this because this is what I love to do. Honestly, 2020 and 2021 were really strange times for anybody who was in tech.
Tubefilter: It was a rough couple of years. Things are still rough.
KiwiOnTheSticks: It seemed like a fever dream because there was a lot of growth because of the pandemic and everybody– The prices of things were crazy because everyone was trying to stream or whatever, but way more people were on Twitch, in general. It was like everyone felt like, “Wow, content creation is ballooning.”
Tubefilter: Now we’re hitting all these layoffs.
KiwiOnTheSticks: Twitch layoffs just a couple of weeks ago, and also a year ago. At this point, it’s been over a year, maybe a year and a half. It does suck, especially because I feel like Dan [Clancy] cares.
Tubefilter: He certainly seems very involved as a CEO. It’s been very impressive to see how much face time he is putting in with individual creators.
KiwiOnTheSticks: Yes. That’s refreshing. It’s really good to see. I know he has an undertaking because of the state of Twitch that he inherited.
Tubefilter: Yes. It’s funny, a couple of weeks after he became CEO, he was on somebody’s stream and he was like, “Pre-roll ads suck, actually.” I was like, “Ooh, okay. We might be getting somewhere with this guy.”
KiwiOnTheSticks: He seems like he gets it and it’s nice to have a CEO that seems like they watch streams, do streams, understand streamers. Even though all of this is going on, I still feel like it’s important to have someone who at least understands the climate and what it takes to be a streamer. I did read online that there were a lot of former Twitch employees and stuff that had never watched a Twitch stream and they didn’t care at all. They were bragging about it. They were in the Slacks and whatnot, bragging about not knowing and not watching streams and whatever. It’s nice to have him there and feel like he’s for streamers.
Tubefilter: He does seem to care.
KiwiOnTheSticks: That’s really good.
Tubefilter: Clearly, a lot of big things are happening for you. What is your current stream schedule right now, and are you working on any cool projects for this year? What are your overall plans for the next year?
KiwiOnTheSticks: It’s really interesting. All of this has been such a journey, but basically all of 2022, I felt very sick. Toward the end of it, I found out that I was pre-diabetic. I had a severe vitamin D deficiency, as does like 80% of the New England area. I found out I have a blood disorder called alpha thalassemia. Every single day. I was like, “Oh my god, I feel like shit. I’m vibrating.”
Tubefilter: I wonder why!
KiwiOnTheSticks: Yes. Then I finally went to the doctor and they told me all this. I spent all of 2023 in doctor’s offices trying to rectify this, taking medication. I had a seizure. It was a mess.
Tubefilter: Hopefully you’re feeling better?
KiwiOnTheSticks: Oh my god, yes. Last year was my under-construction year of just trying to stay alive. That was all I could really focus on. It wasn’t necessarily a year of going after work, pursuing things.
Tubefilter: Understandably. Like, please.
KiwiOnTheSticks: Yes. I did end up becoming a Twitch ambassador last year, which was amazing. I cried like a baby when they told me I was accepted into the program. That was one of my long-term goals and I finally was able to accomplish that last year in October. That was my big thing from last year. Although I feel like, oh my god, I peaked. What do I do now? I have all my dream things. I dreamt of being a partner with Elgato. I dreamt of being an ambassador. There’s still some things I want to do. I definitely want to be featured for a TwitchCon campaign. I want to have my giant face on a TwitchCon campaign.
Tubefilter: There we go.
KiwiOnTheSticks: I’m putting that out there.
Tubefilter: That’s the next step.
KiwiOnTheSticks: Yes. I made my little vision board of things I want to accomplish. Basically this year, I’ve settled my health issues and have a better understanding of that. I’m able to actually get up every day and feel like I can have the room and the bandwidth to be creative and put my best effort into my work. Right now, I’m trying to make sure that I’m able to pursue the things that I want. I have learned how to speak for myself, how to handle my business logistically. Now I’m on the front-facing end. What do I need to do to branch out more? Is it merch? Do I need to start hosting more? I’m trying to push. Do I need to start voice acting?
That’s what I’m gunning for now is growing in the sense of my capabilities and how I’m working. I still want to stream, but I want to elevate and push forward. I already have something lined up that I’ll be hosting, hopefully. We’ll see.
Tubefilter: Interesting. No spoilers.
KiwiOnTheSticks: Yes, I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about it. It’s another gaming showcase, but I’ll be interviewing creators and doing that thing. I did get selected to be part of the Black History stuff for Twitch this year. I’m mainly just trying to see how to combine all of my things and parlay into more things. I’m just in the process of figuring out how to position myself now that I’ve gotten these huge things that I’ve been looking forward to. It did take me a little while to get out of ambassador mode because I’ve been there for like four years now. Now that I have it, I’m like, okay, trying to maybe brainstorm and like, is it time to maybe refresh my plan?
Because what I thought was going to be maybe a five, six, seven-year plan turned into like four. Then I’m like, okay, that moved a little faster than I thought it would. Yes, it is a great thing. I’m glad I’m able to do stuff like this as well, to be able to talk about my story. Even like, this is helping me flesh out what my intentions are. Yes, that’s what I’m doing this year is making my intentions known, making sure that I’m doing everything involving streaming with purpose because I really do love it here.
I’m just having a hard time balancing the state of things with pursuit of such a career that involves me being like happy and entertaining and self-centered, in a way.
Tubefilter: Also, you were dying last year. This is a problem.
KiwiOnTheSticks: Seriously. Yes. That was just terrible. I have this, which is my gratitude tree. I have these little leaves where I would write down something I was grateful for each day and put them on the tree. That was like, you would not believe how much that saved me from having such a negative outlook and just feeling like everything is crashing down around me. Because when you’re in pain every day, when you have chronic pain, yes, every day sucks ass.
It’s hard. It’s hard to continue on. You’re dealing with that at home and then you look outside and all this other stuff is happening. I’ve been just grappling with how to maintain my integrity as a content creator without feeling like I’m being selfish and superficial. In the face of all these things, the face of COVID and all these terrible things that are going on right now. Obviously, that doesn’t have anything to do with my career necessarily, but it is something as a content creator, I feel like I wish we were more comfortable talking about how disorienting it is to have to put a certain face on and not allow those things to show through the cracks.
Especially for me, because I’m a pretty happy-go-lucky, giggly person, I’m more the class clown than maybe other streamers would be. Yes, just, again, maintaining those expectations of we can be wherever we are when we show up that day with my community has helped me so much. Every time I tell them, even this week, I told them I’m striking for Gaza and Palestine, and that I think that would be the right thing for me to do.
Even if people don’t agree with my stances on things, or don’t aren’t as educated or don’t understand what’s going on, they still understand what I’m saying, they still accept the fact that I’m saying, okay, I think it would give me a clearer conscience, if I actually put some effort in to this thing that I say that I care about. I can’t just tweet it, I care about this thing, I have to, actually try to do something to help, or, my actions have to align with my words. If I want to be the woman of my dreams, I don’t ignore things when I’m clearly wanting to talk about them or address them.
I told them that and they’re like, Good. Let’s do it together. Let’s get together in Discord and we can all just be there with each other while we make calls to our representatives. It’s just that, it’s just amazing to have a community that like, I work technically for them and with them. It’s also just such a nice collective effort to be able to be myself at the same time.
