Kara Corvus

Kara Corvus (birthday: August 23),^[1] formerly known as VRChat Monika, is an American gaming YouTuber, Twitch streamer, actress, cosplayer and microbiologist.^[2]

Personal life

Kara was born in Augusta, Georgia and raised in nearby Aiken, South Carolina.^[3] She has Turkish origins.^[4] Her family moved to the Tri-Cities WA when she was in her early teens.^[5] She attended the University of Washington, initially majoring in Engineering but switching to Evolutionary Biology. She moved to LA with her boyfriend, Jeffrey "Riot Lyte" Lin, after graduation with a Bachelor's degree. She worked on a postgraduate degree at UCLA but dropped it to work for research labs instead.^[6] The relationship was toxic and when she got out, she struggled with homelessness. She briefly shared a two bedroom apartment with five other girls.

In LA she did modeling work and acting, primarily in commercials^[6] and as a fit model.^[7] She was a background extra and a double for Hayley Williams in Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" music video.

From early 2022 to early 2023, she and HBomb94 lived in the same apartment complex. As of August 2023, she lives with friend and colleague CaptainSparklez.

Content

Kara's content primarily consists of gaming where she does:

• Among Us: Kara will do videos where she plays Among Us, Some examples include "AMONG US THE MUSICAL, BUT ALSO WITH KILLING", "WE KILLED AS EACH OTHER", "Going Back in Time to Stop My Own Murder!", and "Cheating on My Lover in Among Us".^{[8][9][10][11]}
  
• Unban Requests: Kara will do videos where she looks over her Twitch unban requests.^{[12][13][14][15]}
  
• Minecraft: Kara formerly did videos where she played Minecraft, some examples include "Showing Hafu the MONOLITH on the Crewfu MC Server", "Cow Return Grass: Miscommunication Part 1", "Confusing My Friends with the Building Game" and "Among Us But Its Actually Minecraft".^{[16][17][18][19]}

History

Kara was a cosplayer and convention goer and though that had contacts in the gaming industry. In late 2015 she was hired as a team manager for a League of Legends team,^[20] Ember.^[21] She was convinced by members of the team to start streaming herself.^[20] Her original plan was to stream with a team herself, where every player would stream certain days of the week. The other players but didn't honor the schedule so she left and started for herself in February 2016.^[6] She was one of the first cosplay creators who used the Creative category and filling this niche gave her enough viewers to become Twitch partner in June of that year. The moment she became partner, she left her old scientist job and became a full time streamer.^[20]

She used her old private channel, renamed Kara Vlogs, to upload clips from IRL streams. Two weeks into streaming, she was banned after a hate raid from Ice Poseidon.

She started her main channel on February 7, 2018 and uploaded her first video on the same day.^[22] It was called VRChat Monika after her persona in VRChat. Her early videos were edited from her VRChat streams. She stopped uploading those in late 2018.

After joining SMPLive in June 2019, she rebranded her main channel to KaraCorvus. She also made the second channel KaraGames for vods. For the first months, she almost exclusively played Minecraft. She retired the Vlogs channel.

She was banned on twitch on January 18, 2020 for an undisclosed reason.^[23]

MC Championship

MC Championship is a Minecraft tournament for YouTubers and streamers run by the Noxcrew, in which ten teams of four compete in a series of eight minigames decided by the participants. A point multiplier makes each game worth more as each round passes, incentivizing teams to vote for games they might be bad at early on in the event. In the end, the two teams with the most points face off in a round of "Dodgebolt" to decide the winner of the tournament. This makes it possible for a team to win despite potentially having fewer points than the runner-up.

• MC Championship 1: Team Purple Pandas. Teamed with King Burren, Michaelmcchill & Krtzyy. Placed 12th individually and her team placed 1st overall.
• MC Championship 2: Team Green Guardians. Teamed with Krtzyy, Eret and Mefs. Placed 22nd individually and her team placed 6th overall.
• MC Championship 3: Team Pink Parrots. Teamed with King Burren, Michaelmcchill and Eret. Placed 20th individually and her team placed 6th overall.
• MC Championship 4: Team Red Rabbits. Teamed with CaptainSparklez, Krinios and Krtzyy. Placed 20th individually and her team placed 4th overall.
• MC Championship 5: Team Red Rabbits. Teamed with CaptainSparklez, Krinios and Krtzyy. Placed 20th individually and her team placed 4th overall.
• MC Championship 6: Team Purple Pandas. Teamed with CaptainSparklez, King Burren, Michaelmcchill. Placed 27th individually and her team placed 5th overall.
• MC Championship 7: Team Krimson Krakens. Teamed with CaptainSparklez, Krinios and Krtzyy. Placed 21st individually and her team placed 3rd overall.
• MC Championship 8: Team Purple Pandas. Teamed with Fundy, Krinios and Sylvee. Placed 29th individually and her team placed 7th overall.
• MC Championship 9: Team Cyan Creepers. Teamed with PeteZahHutt, CaptainSparklez and Captain Puffy. Placed 25th individually and her team placed 3rd overall.
• MC Championship 10: Team Cyan Creepers. Teamed with CaptainSparklez, Sapnap & Sylvee. Placed 23rd individually and her team placed 6th overall.
• MC Championship 11: Team Cyan Centipedes. Teamed with Captain Puffy, Technoblade and TapL. Placed 32nd individually and her team placed 6th overall.
• MC Championship 12: Team Blue Bats. Teamed with Captain Puffy, IlluminaHD and Punz. Placed 28th individually and her team placed 7th overall.
• MC Championship 13: Team Purple Penguins. Teamed with PeteZahHutt, FalseSymmetry and Grian. Placed 29th individually and her team placed 2nd overall.
• MC Championship 14: Team Orange Ocelots. Quig, Shubble and Eret. Placed 37th individually and her team placed 8th overall.
• MC Championship 15: Team Lime Llamas. Teamed with Fruitberries, Solidarity and TheOrionSound. Placed 40th individually and her team placed 10th overall.
• MC Championship 16: Did not participate.
• MC Championship 17: Team Aqua Axolotls. Teamed with CaptainSparklez, Antfrost, Eret. Placed 32nd individually and her team placed 8th overall.
• MC Championship 18: Team Pink Parrots. Teamed with 5up, PeteZahHutt and PearlescentMoon. Placed 37th individually and her team placed 6th overall.
• MC Championship 19: Team Yellow Yetis. Teamed with CaptainSparklez, Michaelmcchill and Quig. Placed 32nd individual and her team placed 8th overall.
• MC Championship 20: Team Purpled Pandas. Teamed with Krtzy, Ponk and Sneegsnag. Placed 37th overall and her team placed 9th.
• MC Championship 21: Team Krimson Krakens. Teamed with CaptainSparklez, Krinios, and Krtzy. Placed 35th individual and her team placed 9th.
• MC Championship 23: Team Blue Bats. Teamed with SB737, Sneegsnag and CaptainSparklez. Placed 25th individual and her team placed 3rd.
• MC Championship 25: Team Cyan Coyotes. Teamed with HBomb94, Tubbo and KryticZeuz. Placed 25th individual and her team placed 5th.
• MC Championship 26: Team Cyan Centipedes. Teamed with Krinios, Krtzyy and Ryguyrocky. Placed 25th individual and her team placed 3rd.
• MC Championship 27: Team Green Geckos. Teamed with Foolish Gamers, Sykkuno and kkatamina_. Placed 11th individual and her team placed 5th.
• MC Championship 29: Team Lime Llamas. Teamed with PeteZahHutt, Seapeekay and SolidarityGaming. Placed 33rd individual and her team placed 3rd.
• MC Championship 30: Team Green Geckos. Teamed with jojosolos, PeteZahHutt and Michaelmcchill. Placed 33rd individual and her team placed 5th.
• MC Championship 31: Team Orange Ocelots. Teamed with Mythical Sausage, Firebreathman and Seapeekay. Placed 27th individual and her team placed 4th.
• MC Championship 32: Team Aqua Axolotls. Teamed with Eret, Purpled and Ryguyrocky. Placed 24th individual and her team placed 2nd.
• MC Championship 34: Team Orange Ocelots. Teamed with Smallishbeans, CaptainSparklez and Punz. Placed 30th individual and her team placed 5th.
• MC Championship 35: Team Purple Penguins. Teamed with TapL, PeteZahHutt and Sneegsnag. Placed 23rd individual and her team placed 3rd.
• MC Championship All-Stars: Team Purple Pandas. Teamed with King Burren, Krtzyy, and Michaelmcchill. Placed 37th individual and her team placed 8th.
• MC Championship Pride 2022: Team Purple Pandas. Teamed with CaptainPuffy, jojosolos, and Nihachu. Placed 28th individual and her team placed 8th.
• MC Championship Scuffed: Team Orange Ocelots. Teamed with InTheLittleWood, Ranboo and Sneegsnag. Placed 28th individual and her team placed 4th.
• MC Championship Pride 23: Team Lime Llamas. Teamed with OllieGamerz, Sylvee and Gee Nelly. Placed 32nd individual and her team placed 10th.
• MC Championship Party: Team Red Rabbits. Teamed with CaptainSparklez, Krinios and Kratzy. Placed 29th individual and her team placed 4th.

Controversy

Riot Lyte Incident

Kara posted on social media that her previous romantic relationship with Riot Lyte was filled with abuse and that he had done psychological damage. As the story is explained, Riot Lyte convinced Kara to move from Seattle to Los Angeles. She gained several prospects while hunting in the job market, after which Lyte convinced her to turn down a $40K yearly salary in lieu of a part time job making $17/hr; this would create a codependency, a classic psychological trick. Kara would only realize that after several months, her relationship with Riot Lyte was incredibly unhealthy. She had spoken in her video, saying that he convinced her that members of her family were toxic and they didn’t understand their relationship. He would say things such as, “I don’t like when couples complain to their family about each other, because they don’t understand what they have in a relationship”. This is another psychological tactic to create further codependency and remove an individual from their social safety network. Among other things not detailed in this article, the psychological damage had already been done to Kara, as the influence of Riot Lyte continued to affect her after their relationship, citing that, “I would habitually hide my phone and my messages and calls from everybody because no matter what text or call I would get, I would be chastised by him thinking it was a man or thinking I was cheating on him”. She would reveal in a Twitlonger post that, “he would not let me interact or hang out with male friends. I had to delete all male friends from all social media, and I eventually disguised the phone numbers of my male friends to female names to keep him happy”.^[24]

Trivia

• Her username is a combination of her real name and the genus Corvus. In college, she witnessed a crow dip a cracker in a puddle and recognized it as an intelligent animal.
• She used the name Kara Corvus before she began streaming, during her modeling career.^[25]
• She was named after Kara Milovy, the Bond girl in 1987's The Living Daylights.
• Her former Minecraft skin was Monika from Doki Doki Literature Club, a character she also played on VRChat.

References