Photo Provided by Miss Shadow Lovely
I had the great pleasure of interviewing Elizabeth “Miss Shadow Lovely” Sweet, a Youtuber and voice actor who specializes in waifus. Ms. Sweet has been a Youtuber for 6 years and has 58,000 subscribers. If that was not amazing enough, she also writes all of her own scripts.
Waifu is a fictional character that an individual would want to be their wife; they typically form strong emotional attachments to them. There is nothing in her work that would suggest that ASMR is sexual in nature. ASMR stands for Autonomous sensory Meridian Response-in layman’s terms, noise and sounds which make you feel good.
When I asked Ms. Sweet why she focuses on waifus she replied:
“I decided to focus on waifus on my channel because there are so many different tropes (i.e.Tsundere Waifu or the Yandere Waifu). I really loved the different options that they gave me to make new characters of my own that really pushed the boundaries of what those tropes are.”
Waifus typically are based on anime tropes but technically could be any fictional character that an individual loves. Sweet said:
“I’ve always really, really enjoyed listening to audio dramas, audiobooks, etc. and they’ve always helped me relax. My storytelling allows me to combine my love of anime, voice acting and my desire to bring other people entertainment and an escape from reality.”
This makes her channel a little unconventional by ASMR standards. In most ASMR, videos are focused on noises or hand motions in order to give “tingles” to people so they can relax.
Sweet’s Channel is different in that it is focused on voice acting and storytelling. Her scripts draw the audience into her story by breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience. This gives the individual watching her video a sense of belonging. Her favorite genre for doing waifus is Yandere; she mentioned having a particular fondness of Yuno Gasai from Future Diary.
People outside of the ASMR community might mistake it as being sexual or pornographic. While some cam models in recent years have made the transition to doing ASMR it is not the same thing.
Sweet’s channel combines anime storytelling and archetypes with AMSR sounds to create an immersive story that relaxes the audience. Anyone who is interested in ASMR should have a look at her channel. She loves her audience and enjoys making waifus that make her audience smile.
