Baeginning – On Fall Guys, Goal Setting, LGBTQIA+, Mental Health and More

Tell us your history with video games 

Back when I was 4 or 5 years old, I had a psychiatrist diagnose me with ADD and ADHD. One of the suggestions that my doctor said was, “Hey what might help them focus and have something to keep attention for a while might be video games.” Ever since then I’ve been spending my life around video games. I grew up mainly playing Pokemon, which I still adore and play in my free time. I had most consoles when they would come out but I remember spending the most time on Sonic Adventure 2 and all the Pokemon games. I remember I got a PS2 when I was 7 and how annoyed my dad was because my grandmother got it for me for Christmas, but that's how it was for me. One parent was not happy with me spending time on games while the other (and my grandmother who was like a 3rd parent) didn’t mind me playing them. Being ADHD as a young child in the late 90s early 2000s, a lot of kids misunderstood me for just “being an annoying kid.” A lot of the time I did not have many friends so games were a great way to keep my interest and gave me something to do after school.

By the time I got into high school, I started playing League of Legends in my free time. I had been going by a bunch of different in game names at that point, but during season 3 of League they announced they were going to do a wipe of inactive account names. I had been watching esports at that point and remember seeing all the names people had, they were shorter, easy to say names. I wanted to try to get something like that too because I was like “oh maybe one day I’ll go pro.” So I took the name Beginning and I used it for years up until I got affiliated on twitch, to which we slightly altered to Baeginning.

I think what mainly sparked the passion for gaming growing up was again me kind of not having friends, and games were a way to escape and spend hours doing something. Anytime I made a friend growing up it was always due to video games. I was super casual with gaming up until high school, not knowing what esports were, that there were competitive online games. Once I heard about that, oh boy did that open the floodgates for me. Here we are now, 24 turning 25, just as passionate as I was when I got my first Game Boy Color.

What’s your backstory and how did you get into streaming?

Let's go back to Summer 2017. That's when I really sat down with myself and came to terms and accept that I'm a transwoman. I would fight myself for months, and then felt really alone, because I did not feel comfortable sharing this with others, and if I did it was very few. So in person, still in college, I was at a school where I wasn't able to be myself. I met this one streamer, her name is Tori. Tori at the time was rather small. I was follower 600, and I remember this because she made a big deal about it way back and I never forgot it. She was someone who would let me game with her on Overwatch, and it made me realize just how nice it could be to have a community, have people who want to support you. I wanted to create that myself, I wanted to create a community where people could feel like they could be themself and feel comfortable with who they are, because if I didn’t have that back in 2017, who knows where I’d be.

I honestly forget the exact date of my first ever stream. It's sad to say, but I think it was August 16, 2017. I had an MSI gaming laptop, no camera, a TV as a second monitor and streamed League of Legends because I knew it was easy on a computer to run. I remember not knowing if I was even going to be cut out for streaming because I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to talk for extended periods of time. I decided that was time though for me to try it and just see how it went. I didn’t have any background knowledge with streaming outside of what my friend Tori had told me and what I Googled.

I actually like to say these days, I’ve had 2 chapters (now 3 with getting partnered) in my streaming career. I say this because I took a year off from streaming back in August 2019. After trying to see if I could manage to make enough money to live off streaming. I had to get a job since I couldn’t. I ended August 2019 around 800 followers, averaging 13 people. I took a year off, then COVID hit and I quit my job due to COVID. Sitting around, I didn’t know what to do, and then a game came out that sparked my interest. The game is Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get into it, turns out, I quickly realized through talking with others, I was pretty good at the game. With that knowledge I picked back up streaming. Trying to get better at the game. I had 3 goals with Fall Guys back in September:

1. Get into Twitch Rivals.
2. Get into Fallmania (at the time, the premiere Fall Guys tournament hosted by GrandPooBear)
3. Wear a skin that is unique and fits me, only that in-game skin that people would see it and know it's me.

October comes around, one of my best friends, Sleepingbear gets a captain spot in Fall Guys Twitch Rivals and asks me to be on his team. Goal 1 accomplished.

Later that month I got an invite to Fallmania. Goal 2 accomplished.

At this time of the interview, I am currently known as “the egg queen” in the Fall Guys community. People see my outfit and 90% of the time assume it's me. Goal 3 accomplished.

Nowadays, I’m one of the more prominent figures in the Fall Guys community, hosting my own tournaments and modding for most of the friends. I’ve even been called “The Fall Guys Mom” because I support everyone and try to be there to help others succeed.

Tell us about your channel and community

I pride myself on being an all-inclusive community, but also a safe haven for all LGBTQIA+ people. Like I said, I care a lot about having a space for people to feel like they can be themself, having a welcoming and safe community is needed to be able to accomplish that. I want my community to be a reflection of my personality, and I care about everyone so I want my stream to replicate that.

Typically you can find me playing Fall Guys, however now that I am partnered, I want to look into other avenues and try other things while still *mainly* playing Fall Guys. I  might dive into some Pokemon challenge runs, or story games, who knows! Right now the sky's the limit for me and I wanna stretch my creative wings. If I wasn’t streaming I would probably still play Fall Guys, but I think if I didn’t have the “grind” of a game I’d probably lose interest in games more, part of why I can stream as much as I do is having a game to spend hours getting better at.

In Fall Guys anyone can queue up and get into your game if they time it right. I rarely have dedicated stream snipe days but if viewers get into my game feel free to say hi! We have a signal in game that if you spin around next to me its because you recognize me, and that’s become our thing as a community.

Tell us about your brand and how you’ve been able to obtain success

So funny story with the brand. I didn’t exactly come up with the name, a friend of mine when I came out as trans jokingly started calling me bae (I was “Beginning” before that) and right after affiliate we checked to see if the name was available and it was so I took it. As far as the “persona” I’m just me. I’ve always felt I would not like being a character as much as being honest with myself and giving people someone or something to relate to, whereas if I was a character I’d be there strictly from an entertainment standpoint. Being true to myself was the whole point. I came out on Twitch and had a reason to stream so it did not make much sense for me to act a different way than I normally would.

Growing on Twitch, if I’m being honest, there's a certain skill you need. But at the end of the day it's a lot of luck to be found and clicked on randomly for a viewer. Every partnered streamer and even some affiliates will tell you, you need to be creating content in other ways, whether it be Twitter, YouTube, TikTok (especially TikTok these days the growth on there is insane). While I say these things I will say outside of Twitter. My social media presence and content creation aren’t that huge. I’ll probably just sound like a hypocrite but again, as I was saying sometimes it's luck to be found. I think what's always helped me was being talented in the games I streamed. I was the highest rank outside of top 500 in Overwatch. When I streamed Dead by Daylight I was in “red ranks” which were the higher ranks. Now with Fall Guys I’ve competed in at this point probably 2 dozen tournaments, commentated half dozen and hosted two. Overall, I think what’s helped me grow is people seeing when they do discover me, that I’m good at a game and subsequently watching to get better at first then sticking around for my personality. So what makes you, you? Are you entertaining first, are you a competitor, are you bad at a game, are you here for first time experiences, etc. Find that thing and stick with it to start yourself off.

I’d say my biggest accomplishment that really set me on the track to partner would be entering my first Twitch Rivals for Fall Guys back in September. While I didn’t get a huge following from that, it was my first major tournament I entered, which opened up the door to other tournaments. One of which was “Fallmania” hosted by GrandPooBear. His tournament allowed me to meet some of my friends that have helped me a lot today. Because the Fall Guys community was rather tight knit, once you met someone it was easy to make friends. After that I just kept entering more and more tournaments and soon most of the community knew my name.

I’d say the hardest thing for me is the consistency for streaming. I’ve always had to battle mental demons especially with the dysphoria I face with my body and comparing myself to others. I took a year off of streaming because I’d beat myself up over not streaming, which in turn put my mental deeper until I just didn’t stream for a year. It’s okay to not stream everyday, it's okay to take care of yourself, it's not worth trying to force a stream if you don't feel like you can do it, but it's important to recognize that in yourself.

What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve ever received from a viewer?

Honestly, it’s easier said than done. But the best thing I’ve always been told is, just turn off the viewer numbers, don’t look at them while starting out, you’re only going to hurt your mental health more and in turn make streaming less fun.

What’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to you because of your streaming?

I’d say for me the most interesting thing was being invited to Fallmania. Like I said earlier one of the things I wanted the most was to get into that tournament. It was slightly unexpected because despite knowing I was good enough just because I’m always hard on myself and so its hard for me to believe I deserve the things I have happening. That tournament really was the “I made it” moment and I felt I could really belong in this community, which is something I never really felt until this moment.

How do you balance streaming and your day-to-day life?

So again, I talk about mental health a lot because I’ve already learned from my past. One of the biggest things for my day-to-day is understanding it's okay not to stream 5 or 6 times in a week. Yes, less days in theory would mean less revenue but when you're starting out of growing you shouldn't be streaming for the money. In all honesty you are more likely to see me stream every other day than doing a back-to-back day.

A typical day for stream is to wake up at 10:30am. Get up, determine if I’m ordering lunch before the stream that day or making something. If I’m busier than usual in the morning it's typically ordering lunch strictly so I don’t have to add another thing to my morning routine. I stream from my bedroom so I need to make my bed and decorate it (I put a ton of plushies in the background to look cute), fix up my hair, get my makeup on, which if I get out of bed a reasonable time puts me around 12:30pm. I stream at 1:30pm so that gives me about an hour to relax before starting things up. Post stream process is ending, wash my face, and typically have dinner as by the time I end it's around 8pm.

I’d say overall I work around 30 hours a week, 24 minimum of it is me on camera. The other 6 is doing background work and thinking of ideas of what to do going forward. While also talking to my closer friends who are also my mods. Honestly, I should be doing more than that. I thankfully can afford to pay for an editor until I can upgrade my graphics card, so I don’t have to edit any TIkToks or videos for Twitter myself.

As far as social life and family, well we’re still in a pandemic so I willingly choose not to go out much. I live with my parents and sister still so I get some sort of human interaction on my days where I am not streaming or stuck in my room/office all day working on things. I’ve never really had a lot of IRL friends, partially out of choice, my genuine friendships I’ve found are more on Twitch than anything.

Tell us what tools you use for your stream

I use OBS Studio for my broadcasting software. I feel those who use Streamlabs OBS typically complain a lot more about it which leads me to not want to use it. For awhile I used the most standard Nightbot for chat but earlier this year I changed over to Fossabot because they have better auto moderation in my opinion. I have a Discord (which I’d like to shamelessly plug. I'm trying to get discord partner by year end so if you want to join it come by the stream!) In terms of extensions accessibility is such a HUGE thing for streaming, I’d highly recommend some sort of closed captioning software so for those who might be hard of hearing or have to mute the stream for whatever reason can still be active in the stream and chat. Also if you’re not talented in art or don’t feel comfortable doing art, I would very much recommend commissioning graphics and overlays as they will make your stream look that much more professional and honestly sometimes graphics and overlays alone wow me enough to stick in a stream longer.

Which 3 streamers inspire you the most?

1. Tori_talks - I’ve already talked about her but she’s the biggest reason why I stream, and her community when I first met her was super supportive
2. Sleepingbear - One of my best friends on this platform, one of the reasons why I came back to streaming was because of him
3. Dangers - Dangers was the one of the first real friends I met through fall guys. I very much appreciate him and his community and honestly I look to try to replicate a lot from him

What are your top 3 streaming tools? 

1. A quality microphone
2. If you’re going to use a camera, good lighting, this is something I’m still struggling with
3. Water, it sounds silly, but when you’re on camera and stream for 6 hours all day, you're gonna be talking a lot and get dehydrated. Stay hydrated y’all.

What advice would you give to small channels trying to reach Partner? 

• Don’t be afraid to try new things, when I left Overwatch I thought I wouldn't be have a community behind me. While I lost some viewership it was still for the best not only for the stream but my own sanity. 
• Remind yourself it's okay to show emotion on stream. I always feel bad if I cry or get sad on stream because I don’t want to “kill the vibe” but you're human, you're allowed to express emotion.

If you could change one thing about Twitch, what would it be? 

I would change its discoverability. This website truly does not do any favors for small streamers and favors you growing on other platforms to help grow your following here, outside of the LGBTQIA+ tag and making friends, I really did not have anything to help me grow from twitch.

What are your plans for the future? 

I want to obviously keep growing my stream and continue being a safe place for women, LGBTQIA+ people and also being a community that people love to be a part of. I want to be able to live off the money I make from Twitch eventually. Right now I still do not do that and I’m trying to save money to move in the future, likely cross country so it’ll be an expensive move when the time comes. I’ll keep doing twitch as long as I have fun with it, because when I stop having fun is when it becomes a chore which I don’t want it to be.

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