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.

In late 2012, 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.

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.

I was getting tired of my disability being so front and center on cam as most people aren’t patient enough to wait for me to even use my text-to-speech. So, I decided to change to a Vtuber in November 2022. As a VTuber, I feel like people are more patient. That’s something I noticed immediately. Some people are still impatient but it is by far nowhere near as bad as it was/is in the flesh.