Rera Tapaten

Her costume is a mix of idol costume and sailor uniform. Color pattern is thoughtfully mixed, and consists of shades from white to black, light blue to dark blue, and some golden and silver details. Outfit is asymmetric and has different details at each side.

On her feet she wears high boots, with a little four-point star drawing that could be seen on top. On her legs there is fishnet (probably pun intended) stocking with a single garterbelt, held by a golden pin that could be seen at other parts of her costume. On her right leg there is striped stocking.

Hands are always covered with black gloves. Looking at her second swimsuit outfit there could be seen human hands with long and sharp manicures. Glove on the right hand is a lot shorter than the one on the left. Wristbands on both hands have two golden four-point star buttons, and the wristband on the right hand is a little more puffy. On the left hand there are golden and black stripes above the elbow. Top body consists of a wavy skirt with two blue stripes at bottom, skirt is lifted up to the belly button. You could tell that by looking at her swimsuit costume in comparison. Skirt is put on top of a corset-blouse. The Corset is dark-blue with wide white stripes on the sides. Then there is another wavy skirt for her chest, that is probably sewn only in front. Chest is covered by a bra with blue and golden stripes at the edge of the bra. Corset and blouse pieces are sewed together. Left shoulder piece is short, and has a golden five-point star pin. Right hand piece is the same blouse, but longer, reaching to her wristband. Then there is a one-hand jacket with a second straight skirt. It is held in place by two belts, one goes below the jacket and probably comes up at top behind her back. The other goes at the top of the jacket. Jacket is put inside-out at the top, revealing a cell sewing pattern. Outside part of the jacket is dark blue at top. On the right hand there could be seen a wide wristband, located just above the elbow. Wristband is blue, with black and golden stripes in the middle and two silver four-point stars.

Collar looks like one that could be seen in idol costumes. It's blue and white, with two golden chains connected to the collar in the same places. Half of a white piece goes below the blue frill. There is also a dark blue scarf below all that, and a small blue kerchief pinned to a frill by a silver four-point star pin. Ears are dressed with pearl-looking earrings. There is a five-point star hairpin and black wavy hairpin on the left. On her head she wears a sailor beret with a blue stripe at the bottom, and a small white ribbon with two narrow blue stripes, pinned to the beret by black four-point star pin.

The only cloth Rera could take off during the stream is her beret. Range of switchable emotions is greater.

On 30 December 2024 Rera revealed her swimsuit model. Although revealing a swimsuit in the middle of winter would seem to be strange, she was on a vacation in Egypt that time, somewhere at the coast of the Red sea. During her debut she said "I am wearing a swimsuit 80% of the time right now". Model and rig was made by the same authors as her main model. Rig became more flexible, hip movement was added. Model received more switchable parts: two T-shirts, a captain's hat, hand with a beer mug and her second mascot swimming inside that mug, plus she could switch her hairstyle to the same that main model has.

Feet is naked, showing blue pedicures. There is a golden ring on her left leg and barefoot anklet on the right. Anklet has pearl looking pieces, the same as her earrings. Left leg also has a tight garter belt with a gold five-pointed star on her tight. Tail received an armament of two golden chains with stars.

Long and sharp blue manicures are seen on both hands, reminding viewers that she is a seal. White frilled cuff is on the left hand, and two bands are on her right hand above the elbow. One is looking like a sailor's cable, the other consists of square pieces with golden four-point stars inside.

Blue bra with white stripes at top and small bow in the middle is fighting for his life. Two rectangle silver holders for the shoulder strap are trying to help him with that.

Collar changed a bit. Dark blue scarf was removed, the blue frill was replaced with a bow with a golden four-point star in the middle. Earring also received some changes, which included a single five-point golden star and some white strings. Hairpins stayed the same. Sailor's beret was replaced with captain's hat, as Rera said "As soon as I entered the sea my mascot swimmed away and left his hat to me". She doesn't have the ability to hold her mascot in hands with this model and the mascot is nowhere to be seen. On the stream loading screen the mascot is seen swimming away. Even if she said all that the one hat that her mascot wears is different than the one she wears on her head. Both in looks and size. Hairstyle was changed to two twintails held by sailor's cables with blue tropical flowers ornament.

So she looked for digital artists to draw her model that could be used for rigging. And that was a long road, full of scam or lazy artists. She changed her model artists from two to four times, each time Rera tells about them it's a different number. First one was inexperienced in drawing VTuber models and did his job for over a year. Nothing is known about payment for this work or name of the artist, but that strongly delayed model development.

Second one did something unasked for, and turned Rera into loli. Cooperation ended shortly.

Somewhere in between all of that was another artist that Rera mentions sometimes, and he just disappeared after receiving payment in advance without doing anything.

After all of that she finally had enough but did not give up, and started looking for trustworthy artists. That means that she had to wait for commissions to open and then get in the line with other customers. Her final artist that did his job well was Aniroud. She drew Rera's main model and later, swimsuit model.

Next day after debut, following hololive traditions, Rera streamed the thematic seal indie game Seal World. From that stream her online popularity dropped and was kept at around 20 viewers online for the first two weeks. But then it started to grow, allowing her to reach companion status on Twitch on her 7th stream, which is the minimum number of streams needed to reach that status. That was followed by a celebration karaoke stream.

In March, her 8th stream was a collaboration with a big (we are speaking Russian community number, not worldwide) Russian VTuber AlexstraWho with average online of 150 viewers at that time. She probably met him even before her debut. Maybe followed by that she started to receive raids from bigger VTubers that finally knew that Rera had debuted and heard about her before her debut. In a span of two weeks her average online audience rose to 50-70 average viewers with 120 viewers at peak, while her subscriber count did not even reach 1000.

Somewhere in May, a small Russian YouTuber (Frank Canadian) made a review about Russian VTubers on his channel. That review described Rera along with other VTubers as his favourite Russian VTuber at that time. That video somehow was sent to Stintik, a big Russian twitch streamer, while he was streaming watchalong stream. He watched this video with his 3500 viewers online and commented on Rera that "She sings good". That was enough to immediately raise Rera's average online from 50-70 to 110-130. She also reached the 1000 subscribers milestone in two weeks, followed by another karaoke stream. At that time she had donation goal of "Bying RTX 4070" filled to the third. A single donation received during karaoke stream finished that goal. Minutes later she received even bigger amount of donation, allowing her to buy two RTX4070. She only bought one shortly after.

One and a half month later she streams "2000 subscribers celebration" stream due to rapid subscriber count growth. Next milestone of 3000 subscribers was reached in October, showing an end of rapid subscribers growth.

Rera is a graphics designer, up to middle of November 2024 she used to work remotely in some foreign company, making some sort of content. But due to sanctions raised against Russia her company lost any ways of transferring salary to her. That’s why she lost her job.

Rera never wanted to turn streaming into her main job, because “My hunt for perfection, donation expectations and stress would make me hate it. I don’t want to live a life where I would have to actively look for ways to take money from my viewers each stream”. She said that she is going to find another job after her yearly vacation.

On 3 December, Rera streamed her goodbye stream. She was leaving for a long vacation in Egypt. She promised to stream using her laptop, which she bought using money raised on the goal of buying a gaming laptop. But she could not tell when she was going to settle down and if Egyptian internet speed would be enough to stream.

On 22 December, AlextraWho held a big show for the Russian VTuber community with an average online audience of 1100 viewers. That show was the RuVtuber Award, an analog for Filian’s VTuber Awards which aired on 14 of December. She was nominated in two categories: “Best streamer of 2024” and “Rising star”. Being nominated in the first category along with Nyamuras, Sati Akura and HiganBanBan meant that she took her place in the top 4 of Russian VTubers according to that show. Yet competition was too strong. Sati Akura, for example, started her youtube cover channel before VTubers existed at all. Yet, Rera won a Rising star nomination, which was described as “The one VTuber that may surpass everyone soon”. During that time Rera was on her vacation and did not yet have a proper Internet connection on her laptop. She said her “thank you” by making posts using her phone.

Using ancient Egyptian prayers and burning a couple of houses due to power outage Rera managed to stream again with a whopping 1.11 Mbit/s upload speed at top. The only ISP service available at the spot was 4G modem. She had to drop her resolution to 720p, change bitrate to VBR with 3500 kbps at top and turn off a lot, if not all, stream interactions because sending a meme to her stream could crash it, which happened three times. Despite all of the Pharaoh curses she came live on 30 December, right before New year celebration. That stream was her swimsuit reveal, since she was on Vacation at the coast of the Red Sea somewhere in Egypt. She also said her thanks to everyone who voted for at the RuVtuber Awards and wished everyone a happy new year. She continued streaming from Egypt after that, switching her content drastically. It became travel vlogs and chatting streams from IRL telling about her adventures in Egypt. She is showing around 2 to 5 videos about local riffs and fauna, which is shot underwater on her action camera.

Her online audience rose to 170 viewers average while peaking somewhere around 350. She also reached the 4000 viewers milestone and again, started to gain subscribers rapidly. The Reason for that is probably her winning a “Rising star” nomination and revealing a new spicy model.

On 31 January, Rera celebrated 22 years in Egypt. She got sick a couple of days before her birthday and the stream on 31 January was postponed to 7 February.

First one is “Pluh-Pluhich” (Плюх-Плюхыч). “Плюх” in Russian means “plop” in English. He is a seal, usually seen sitting in Rera’s left hand, wearing white collar and captain’s hat. Rera says that “he is in charge here”.

Second one is "EGG." Another seal that looks like an egg. But he was called that way because of a youtube video where the seal keeps making noises that sound like “EGG”. He is sitting either at top of Rera’s head in her main model or swimming drunk in a beer mug in Rera’s swimsuit model. He could also sit at the top of Rera’s chest in the swimsuit model.

• First name (Rera) comes from the roaring sound that seals make. It is tied to her lore, that name was given by polar explorers when they heard nothing but Rera's roar.
• Second name (Tapaten), which is rarely used, comes from the tapping sound seals make when tapping their belly. It was given by one of the icebreaker crewmates.
• During her 1st of September collab, Rera took the role of a school teacher, wearing glasses. In Russia, when addressing politely (teachers, elderly, bosses, etc.) you have to tell a person's name + patronymic. Since Rera has no patronymic, her collaborants changed her second name into patronymic, which has created the meme of "Rera Tapatenovna", which is used to describe Rera in glasses or any formal attire.

• Rera is either not punctual or cursed to have technical difficulties. Each time she starts streaming 30 minutes past scheduled time at best, usually it's 1-2 hours late.
• When talking about her life goals and achievements she mentions that she did all of that despite having a terrible headache, caused by a tumor. That's the topic she does not like to talk about a lot, but cannot just pretend that this part of her life does not exist at all. The main reason why she doesn't like to talk about, is not to make anyone sad. Right now, she has a tumor in the pituitary gland that appeared after she operated on the other tumor in the same place before. That's not the same tumor, it's not worth operating on it right now and her doctors said "If you suddenly become blind, you will have 48 hours for us to remove pituitary gland or you will become blind or worse". Doctors said that it's better to have a partially functional pituitary gland than to remove it completely. As for the past couple of years her medical state could be called stable, compared to what she had before. She said that "If I would stream right now in the state I was back then you would see me cry 95% of the time because of pain. I still have occasional headaches that disappear with the change of climate but at least now I can live". No drugs would help her with that headache, and she tried all types of medicine. Worst of the drugs she used to take was Pregabalin, and she kept getting prescriptions for that for 2 years, even though it's only prescribed for half a year max. She also complains a lot about prices for drugs she has to buy right now to keep her stable.
• Her vocal range is high soprano. That was designated by her catholic choir teacher. She was a part of catholic choir in her childhood, for 8 years, and used to perform across Europe as a part of choir.

• rera_seal - Twitch channel
• @rera_seal - YouTube channel
• rera_vtuber - Telegram account
• Тюленье Лежбище - Discord server
• rera_vtuber - VK account

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