Hey, I'm ShouraiLive on Twitch, although I just tell everyone to call me Shou (pronounced "Show") to make it easier, hence my Twitter and Discord name as well as my hashtag, ItsShouTime.
I was born with cerebral palsy, which has rendered me unable to walk (so I'm in a wheelchair), non-speaking (so I use text-to-speech and soundboards), and only able to use my right hand, hence why my streams say "One-Handed." In reality, though, I mainly only use my thumb and middle finger, although I do throw in my index finger sometimes. Along with some JRPGs, I stream games that you wouldn't think could be played with two or three fingers.
From 2001 to 2004, I made anime music videos, which are inherently fan-made, thanks to my spending the last 2 periods of most days in the A/V room. During my junior and senior years of high school, I spent more time there than I did in my actual Visual Arts major. It is there that I found my fondness for video production. In those 4 years, I created over 40 anime music videos.
Tipped off by a post on LiveJournal, I was in the 2006 Troma Entertainment horror musical, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. It was an enjoyable experience and I forged a friendship with one of the leading actors, Allyson Sereboff. Thanks to Allyson, I was in the 2008 Pure West Films documentary, Second Skin, about Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games and their positive and negative effects on their players. Afterward, I helped promote the film's DVD release and was on the lookout for illegal uploads of it.
Due to my disability, I have always written/spelled/typed to communicate, so writing has always come rather easily for me. In 2008, I had the privilege of writing a guest editorial that was featured by Wired on the GameLife section of their website. In early 2009, I wrote another guest editorial, this time featured on The Escapist. Starting in June 2009, I teamed up with Pure West again as a regular contributor on their community website, PopTen. At first, I was a Video Games Columnist, but I later transitioned to the role of Reviews Editor. In 2011, I was lucky enough to write a guest review for Kotaku.
In 2012, I had my very first actual job, for just shy of 6 months. I worked in Aspire of WNY’s Technology Today program, where I helped teach individuals with physical and intellectual challenges how to use the computer, internet, and technology in general. Later that year, I started uploading videos to my YouTube channel.
In May of 2013, I won a video contest for which the prize was a video capture device (“capture card”). These devices capture HDMI video inputs to your computer. You can then either save the content or stream it online so others can watch it. 99% of the time, I do the latter. Using this capture card only served to rekindle my passion for video production. I’ve been broadcasting, or “streaming” my gameplay live on Twitch ever since. When I first began, I even used an audio mixer. It may just be linguistics, but I refuse to call myself a disabled streamer. To me, I'm just a streamer who has cerebral palsy. Is Joe Shmoe who wears glasses and streams, a "disabled streamer"? Or is a guy who knits, a "male knitter"? No, that's just ridiculous.
Two months later, I left PopTen and started my own website, SaltyAccess. This site was focused on reviews, but not in the usual way. As I’m disabled and can only use my right hand, I decided to also review games and products from an accessibility point of view. I received several things to review because of my standpoint. SaltyAccess lasted for 2 years before I decided not to renew the domain.
I took a 3-year hiatus from writing and focused solely on my streaming career, which ultimately paid off. After some severe grinding, I became a Twitch Affiliate in June of 2018, which means I can now make at least a little money from streaming. Over the years, I’ve made upgrades to my streams, including new capture cards. I also decided to not only return to writing but also create one central hub for everything I do. This new site averages anywhere from 700 to 1000 unique views per month.
In February of 2018, I released a song after 5 years of discussion. I describe it as the anthem for the warriors and the survivors. It was a joint project between Omega Sparx, DJ Optimus Prime, and myself. It's a celebration of my life and those in similar circumstances. I've had to constantly adapt to situations as they arise thanks to my disability, regardless of whether it's in games or real life, I adapt and push on. Fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken have always been a love of mine. As such, of course, I watch the Evolution Championship Series (EVO) every year. I reached out to Omega Sparx after his first EVO (which was in 2013). We talked for a long while and he was interested in my poetry, so I sent him some. The idea was then thrown around about him turning one into a song. With that very idea in mind, I wrote a whole new one in the vein of a hype song for fighting game tournaments, and my other friend, DJ Optimus Prime made a custom beat for us. As of this writing, the song has 6672 plays on Spotify.
In late 2021, I started backing up my streams to my external hard drive rather than just uploading the archives to YouTube. The reason I started backing them up is that I wanted to make a highlight reel but had nothing locally. As a result, I had to download everything from my YouTube channel. Never again. That was such a pain. In hopes of supplementing my income further, in addition to Twitch, I started my own Patreon in January of 2022. Fast forward to May 2022, I find an input remapper called reWASD, which allows you to connect your remapped controller to consoles via Bluetooth. Because it’s opened up so many games for me, reWASD has become such an integral part of my gaming experience. So much so, that in August 2022, I officially became a reWASD Affiliate.