We recently connected with Veronica Ripley and have shared our conversation below.

Veronica, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I’m a trans woman, and back in 2016 when I started streaming to Twitch there just weren’t any other trans creators. I felt it was necessary for the sake of community support to provide an example of a trans person doing something creative and fun like streaming, especially at time when our existence was becoming (and remains) so controversial and politically fraught.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a content creator, primarily on a livestreaming platform called Twitch under the name Nikatine. My content is focused on roleplay – both tabletop roleplay (TTRPGs), and video game roleplay (Grand Theft Auto roleplay, etc.) I wrote a TTRPG called Issliss, and frequently write episodes of TTRPG content for my secondary channel, Fablescraps. I also co-own the roleplay community PurpleRP, which itself operates a fully-custom GTARP server and has seen an explosion of growth since opening whitelisting applications several months ago. PurpleRP is now consistently ranked among the top 3 whitelist GTARP servers. Additionally, I founded Transmission Gaming, a community for trans gamers and the associated Transmission Gaming Twitch Team which has raised over $100,000 for trans communities in need at the time of this writing.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

The goal that began my career as a content creator has remained my goal to this day: to ensure that there’s positive representation for trans people, to show that we enjoy things in life like video games. I do this for the trans people who aren’t out yet who need (as I needed) to see some positive example of a trans person enjoying something, being free to exist and accepted and able to express creative interest.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

There are a lot of rewarding moments for content creators like myself. We all have stories of our first subscribers, the first people who believed in us before anyone else. The moment where it first seemed feasible to make a living in this new and uncertain field stands out as particularly moving to me. However, these personal moments of clawing out success in streaming pale in comparison to the DMs I occasionally receive from people who express relief, joy, or appreciation because my content showed them that being trans is normal and accepted. I receive these messages with some regularity from people who have recently came out as trans, and to me there is no greater reward.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nikatine.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikatineprime/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/nikatine
• Other: https://bsky.app/profile/nikatine.bsky.social

  https://PurpleRP.com