Head Pats and Houndooms: Inside the 'Team Doom' Twitch Community
A conversation with Twitch streamer 'Little Miss Houndoom' about streaming, Pokémon, and her unique Twitch community.
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There are a lot of ways to cultivate a following on Twitch, the massively-popular, Amazon-owned streaming platform.
For some, it’s a gruelling endurance event where they stream 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week, in the hopes of gaining followers from seemingly always being online.
For others, their success comes adopting and adapting to the streaming meta, whether this means playing the most popular games or participating in genres of streams such as ‘dance streams’ and ‘hot tub streams’.
But there are those create a space for themselves simply by playing the games they love, and offering a unique community for their fans. We’ve looked at a streamer in this category before, when we spoke to Jazzalene about Girls Gank Squad. And today, we’re going to sit down with another.
Let me introduce you to Little Miss Houndoom.
(Cue upbeat theme song) 🎶 Meet Miss Doom 🎶
Meet EJ, better known to the internet as ‘Little Miss Houndoom’ and affectionately known as ‘Miss Doom’ within her community.
Before the pandemic struck, EJ was a entertainer, primarily working as a professional cosplayer, radio host, and singer. But with the cancellations that came with Covid, she turned to Twitch:
"So I started doing the Twitch thing back in September/October time? I had done the odd stream here and there, but that was mostly to try and gain confidence...But I started streaming properly after I built my gaming PC because I'm a Mac user primarily, and I was like, "if I build a PC, I have to justify building a PC"
Little Miss Houndoom streams typically feature Pokémon as the game being played, though she does also feature titles such as Yu-Gi-Oh. However, Pokémon is a franchise that Doom has been with since it began in 1996, and one that has had a deep impact on her life.
"Some of my closest friends are people I would have legit only met through liking Pokémon. It's given me a sense of belonging and community I could never have imagined. I could not imagine my life without Pokémon…I've done some really unique stuff in my life because of Pokémon. And it's really given me a sense and understanding of who I am. I love that something like Pokémon can bring this great community together. Like when I was at school, I had this moment where it switched over from Pokémon being something cool and you were kind of bullied for playing Pokémon. And I became really ashamed for playing Pokémon and I had to try and hide it."
Doom modelled her online persona and the visual representation of such after Houndoom, a hellhound-inspired Pokémon who first appeared in the second generation of games (1999’s Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver).
As can be seen in the visual representations of the Little Miss Houndoom persona, she took the curved horns and color scheme of the dog-like Pokémon. However, her affinity for the Pokémon is a more recent one.
"It's kind of actually the Gym Challenge that did it for me. As a kid, I didn't really pay much attention to Houndoom because it was locked to Kanto so I didn't know it existed. But then when I got into cosplay, I needed a cosplay that I could quick make for the type I was repping at a con because I got last-minute called in. So I designed a character based on Houndoom with the horns and it was very very VERY similar to the way my VTuber looks if you can't believe it. So that's cowinky-dinky."
And then came to her Pokémon-centric rebrand, there were a few factors that made her choose Houndoom:
"But went it came to deciding what Pokémon to name myself after, I was like doggo is cool, Houndoom is cool. I am very dog-like - I'm a little cheeky, I'm very excitable. And because of how important that Houndoom cosplay was to me, I chose Houndoom.”
Houndoom also serves in part as tribute to Jasper, EJ’s black lab support dog who passed away last year.
“My community created this unique Houndoom design for me, so it’s like he’s always part of my work”
The rebrand of her online image into that of Little Miss Houndoom, which was done by EJ in order to create something of a disconnect between her real life activities and her online persona, has also opened up new opportunities in the cosplaying world that she hopes to return to after the pandemic.
"I wanted the VTuber to be something I could look like and dress like. I want to be able to take the Miss Houndoom character to cons when cons become a thing again"
Now streaming full-time, Twitch fits into a busy schedule of content.
The LMH Extended Universe
There is a lot of Little Miss Houndoom content across various platforms. Her official TikTok, which has just over 34K followers, has become the home of ‘Things That Forgot to Work Like They Should’, a series that showcases video game glitches and spawned out of a running joke in her YouTube content. Meanwhile, she has multiple projects running on Twitch and YouTube that we’re going to break down separately.
Twitch
The Gym Challenge
The Gym Challenge was initially started by EJ’s long-time friend as a convention event. Attendees would have the chance to pit their team of Pokémon against a ‘gym leader’, mimicking the format of the games.
After the friend moved to America and conventions became unviable due to Covid, The Gym Challenge became part of the Little Miss Houndoom experience on Twitch. Each Gym Challenge stream typically features one of the gym leaders as a guest, and viewers can try their best to defeat them in a standard 6v6 Pokémon duel. While successful challengers are currently recorded on a manual leaderboard, there are plans to provide a more tangible reward come the end of the challenge:
"People who do the gym challenge will get the badges they've won sent out to them when the challenge ends. Like, we're having actual gym badges made. But we've also got this virtual gym badge case that's been coded from scratch just for us and can be downloaded so there’s this cool visual thing that people will be able to have”
Exhibition Matches
Away from the Gym Challenge while remaining in Pokémon, there are also viewer-inclusion Exhibition Match streams. Viewers will be invited to try their luck against Miss Doom, who will come with a special team for each stream. Sometimes she will be working to a theme, sometimes she will be using her ‘villain team’.
As we will see in more depth later, community is such a crucial part of the Twitch experience for EJ, and for the Miss Houndoom brand:
"The whole Twitch channel is community vibes. Everything I do is community driven."
Yu-Gi-Oh
EJ has a love for another trading game card and its various iterations - Yu-Gi-Oh. Also taking the form of matches against viewers on stream, there are big plans in motion for how Yu-Gi-Oh will be further implemented into Little Miss Houndoom.
Partnering with her friend and fellow VTuber Hasher_Brown, the pair will be premiering The Fortress of Duel. In a similar vein to the Gym Challenge, viewers will pit their decks against both Doom and Hasher. Anyone able to beat the two of them will receive a special, and very exclusive, prize provided by Konami, the publishers of Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links.
YouTube
How Broken Is…
Described as the “the series that defined me and kickstarted everything” by EJ, the How Broken Is… series is the flagship content on the Little Miss Houndoom YouTube channel. Simply put, each video sees the Miss Doom explore the oddities, glitches, and broken aspects of Pokémon. Initially starting with the Generation I games, the series has gone beyond with the main series games (Gens I through IV have been released, Gen V is in the works) and has looked at things like Pokémon Snap, various rivals and champions, even the Pokedex.
"I remember playing this really broken randomizer of Gen I? It randomized everything, the sprites, the Pokémon, everything. Like my mum was a Pidgey, that kind of thing. It was utterly bizarre but so funny. But that made me nostalgic for Gen I so I went back and I played actual Gen I and I was like "this kind of buggy"…So I wanted to poke fun at it, but I never do things in a negative way. I spent so much time when I was younger being negative about myself that now, I aim to be the opposite and approach everything with positivity.”
Each entry in the core ‘How broken is each generation’ series has been more ambitious than last, incorporating more and more levels of editing, voice acting, and overall production. But core goal is always the same - a quirky love letter to the series that means so much to her.
“Doing this sort of thing, it makes us love the games even more.”
EJ did not reveal too much about the work-in-progress ‘How Broken Is Generation V?’, which will cover both 2011’s Pokémon Black and Pokémon White, as well as their 2012 sequels Pokémon Black 2 and White 2. However, she did speak to the scope of the video:
"It's so ambitious. It's got the most voice actors we've ever had in a video, it's got the most sketches we've ever had. It's got so much going on in the background and it's just taking a while to edit, because I do all the editing myself currently. I have to do a two-year time skip [in order to bridge to the sequels]. It's just so much work, it's the most ambitious thing I've done for the series. But it's going to be worth the wait."
Other YouTube projects
YouTube is much more of a place for experimentation for the Little Miss Houndoom brand. Alongside How Broken Is…, there is a collection of other content that appeals to a variety of viewers.
There are more light-hearted videos where Miss Doom explores what Houndoom would look like if they were a different typing or builds an all-dog Pokémon team. There are more specialized videos where Doom utilizes her competitive Pokémon experience to analyse viewer-submitted competitive teams.
The range of content, plus EJ’s infectiously bubbly demeanour, has led to the formation of a dedicated and wholly unique fan community.
Team Doom
"I adore my community. They've got me through so much bad stuff. They're just very loving. I think it's just amazing that we have this community that we can just rely on."
It was in fact the community themselves who decided on the name ‘Team Doom’, stylizing the moniker after the way in-game Pokémon villains are presented (Team Rocket, Team Aqua, Team Plasma, Team Skull etc.). Miss Doom quickly adopted the idea and adapted her online persona slightly to incorporate the aspect of being a ‘Villain Team leader’. She now welcomes new followers to ‘Team Doom’ and as mentioned in the previous section, has a team of Pokémon she refers to as her villain team.
As she explained to me, many aspects of the stream and accompanying Discord server came from the community itself. A majority of the animations used as stream elements were designed by in-community artists. Core features and functions of a Little Miss Houndoom stream started as community suggestions.
One of the best examples of this is the Head Pat.
In 2019, Twitch implement a feature called ‘channel points’. Channel points were earned primarily by just watching someone stream and each streamer can determine their own rewards for ‘spending’ these points.
For 50 points, you can give Miss Doom a head pat, in which an animated hand performs a gentle patting animation while her VTuber (a 3D model that can be used in place of a camera setup) reacts happily.
“Someone in the community suggested that it would be fun to have a head pat thing, and that worked really well with the VTuber model. And people loved it. That became the spamming head pats to end the stream thing because on stream, someone was like “let’s break the bot!” and so they all started redeeming things all at once. Everything about it is because of the community.”
However, Team Doom is much more than just artists, animators, and head patters. It is a dedicated, self-sustaining group of genuine fans.
"A great example is that we had someone in the community who wanted to create their first competitive team. And so there was someone who helped them breed the entire team, and I helped them team plan. And then they joined the Gym Challenge a couple of weeks ago and they ended up winning their first gym badge. But the whole chat was just cheering them on and supporting them"
During the first Little Miss Houndoom stream I attended, there was someone in chat lamenting that they will probably never get a girlfriend for a litany of reasons. Almost immediately, several members of chat were calmly explaining the reasons why that was untrue.
"They're very good at moderating themselves. Spreading positive vibes is a big thing in our community, and the chat is very very good at it. And if there is someone being bad, there are so many people who are just ready to shut it down. They're quite vocal if they're not happy with the vibe"
Twitch, as with any place on the internet, can sometimes be an incredibly toxic place. But EJ has never experienced this from her audience in any meaningful way, and isn’t afraid to remove toxic elements:
"I think one of the rules you have to follow as a streamer, I think something a lot of people tend to do, is that you have to let things slide because they want the growth and they want the follower. But what you have to understand is that what you accept into your community is what represents you. If someone is crossing the line and really not respecting you, you don't need that person in your community. We're not afraid to lose a follower for the sake of keeping our community good and vibey."
EJ and the Real World
Away from the Miss Houndoom brand, EJ is someone who looks to live her life unapologetically:
"I like my rock clothes. I like the leather, I like the lace, I like the jackets. The hair is really important to me…I wear what I want to wear. So I'm out and about in fishnets and these really funky outfits. I think I have a disconnect to what "normal" people should wear. I don't really clock that I need to change it because I don't need to change it."
And while she doesn’t view herself as a role model per say, there is a hope that the way she is seen to live her life rubs off on others.
"I wouldn't necessarily say I saw myself as a role model. I would never give myself that high of a title. I like to stay very grounded. But I definitely think I put out the "hey, it's okay to be you, it's okay to be who you are". I do a lot of body confidence stuff. [The Instagram content] That was me saying that I didn't accept myself the way I looked and I wasn't very confident in myself and I wanted to put myself with my community and grow. So we would do shoots that put me out of my comfort zone and that would give me confidence and I would spread that confidence to my community."
EJ uses her life experiences to further this message for her community.
"I spent a lot of time not feeling good about myself. I definitely know my teenage years, I spent many years, maybe like 17 to 21, not liking who I was and it sucked. So I try to take what I've learned by coming through those experiences and projecting it into the community"
She holds a similar mentality when it comes to the pressure of following trends:
"I feel like some people might feel pressured to jump on trends like that? [things such as the hot tub stream trend]. I think for a lot of younger people, especially younger girls, they get shown so much through mainstream media of what they're meant to be, what they're supposed to look like, what they're supposed to do etc. and for me it's important to always be pushing that you don't have to follow the trends. Just because it works for some people, and kudos to people who have that working for them, I don't know, I feel like sometimes there's this pressure to go on trend? And I just hope I can be a counter-role model because I don't follow trends and I'm never going to follow a trend. Trends are not my vibe."
Away from gaming, one of EJ’s greatest loves is music. Taking inspiration from the glam rockers of the 1980s, EJ is a talented singer and pianist.
“I’m one of those creators who doesn’t really unwind? Everything I do is impacting or improving my work in some way. But when I do need to take a little break away from editing or whatever, I’ll usually just go and play a few sets on the piano”
EJ also performs lead vocals for the band Perfect Vanity, who hope to release a special project this year to mark the 25th anniversary of Pokémon. However, singing has also had a very real impact on her life:
“I’ve been singing since I was like 5 but it’s also helped me. I was in danger of permanently losing my voice and I didn’t like speech therapy. I went through some really bad stuff and I got out of that bad stuff but my voice was really tense and I’d lose it really quickly. But I went hardcore on a full year of singing lessons with this really great teacher and yeah, that’s not a problem anymore.”
And as the world begins to re-emerge from Covid, EJ is determined to find a way to keep everything going:
“Everyone knows me now for the Twitch stuff, and the YouTube stuff so for me, it’s just going to about finding the best way to integrate that alongside the cosplay and going to cons. Like I want to try and bring the Gym Challenge back to cons. It’s just going to take some work but yeah, I don’t want to give anything up when we starting back to pre-pandemic things”
TLDR
The pandemic wasn’t a good thing. If you want to argue the opposite for whatever reason, maybe fucking chill? But those in the entertainment sector were hit especially hard.
Cosplayer and singer EJ, with cons and other events cancelled, turned to Twitch, and discovered a community like no other.
Thousands of people watch hundreds of people play Pokémon every day on Twitch. But day in, day out, there is a vibrant and animated audience watching Little Miss Houndoom.
And it’s the community that makes those streams what they are. Almost everything function and feature started with the community. The name they adopted, Team Doom, came from within the fans.
This is exactly what EJ, who works under the name Little Miss Houndoom online, wanted:
"I am so grateful I can build a place where people don't have to feel like I felt. I remember being 16 and wanting to watch a Pokémon movie that was on TV and my mum was outside mowing the grass so I could watch it but every time I heard the back door open, I'd change the channel and pretend that's not what I was doing. I just want people to know it's okay to love the things they love."
If you want a wholesome and energetic Twitch experience, you can watch Little Miss Houndoom here. And if you want to take the next step and join her community, I am sure they will welcome you with open arms.
I’ll talk to you next week. Till then, stay safe and happy sporting.