Rachel Hofstetter (born January 8, 1992) aka Valkyrae, is a streamer and gamer from Washington State. Beginning her streaming career on Twitch in 2015, she signed an exclusive contract with Youtube in 2020, and has been streaming exclusively on the platform ever since. She streams with a regular group informally known as the "Amigops", including Sykkuno, Corpse Husband, and Disguised Toast. She was named Content Creator of the Year at the 2020 Game Awards.
The first female gamer and content creator for — and current co-owner of — the 100 Thieves e-sports brand, Rae is an advocate for women in the industry, and has played competitively on all-female e-sports teams.
Some of her forays into live-action acting have included Broken Bonds, and most recently appearing in the music video for "Daywalker" by Corpse Husband and Machine Gun Kelly, and "Build a Bitch" by Bella Poarch.
Games Valkyrae Has Played:
Valkyrae and her videos provide examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny: Rae is characterized by her ability to laugh at herself, to watch reactions to her videos and share the humor in them. Following the "Babushka Incident", she was so amused by one animator's animatic
of the event that she actually hired them to do artwork for her channel. - Berserk Button: Her height, although she usually deliberately overdoes the reaction and plays it for laughs. Good-natured ribbing about her petite size abound with the Amigops and her larger friend group.
- Blood Knight: She is merciless in competitive play.
- Catchphrase: "THE AUDACITY!", with "First of all…" in a close second. "This bish" will also inevitably be heard a lot, especially when interacting with fellow streamers and friends.
- Cringe Comedy: Just as she can laugh at the things she says, she can also feel embarrassed at them in equal measure. Of particular note is her reaction to a moment where she has some particularly strong coffee:Valkyrae: Oh my God, shut up…
- Evil Laugh: Possesses a surprisingly creepy maniacal cackle, which she shows off often during Among Us.
- Genki Girl: Extremely perky, goofy and excitable.
- Heroic BSoD: Suffered a brief one when her endorsement deal with RFLCT skincare products fell apart, amidst claims of fraud and scientific quackery. She took a brief break from streaming to deal with the legal and PR fallout, and to get her head back together.
- Large Ham: Hoo boy, is she prone to dramatics. When she gets going, it's hard to stop her.
- Like Brother and Sister: With Sykkuno. Both of them have spoken of their relationship in such a way, and the two have been known to go from sweet-natured friendship to rival competitors to mercilessly trolling each other to a dangerous effective team in very short spans of time.
- Must Have Caffeine: She is known to voraciously devour coffee, and some of her most manic moments come after having large quantities. Even she is often shocked at herself when she sees footage of things she does while on a caffeine high.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Has quickly become one with the reclusive Corpse Husband, to the point where he asked her to be in the video for "Daywalker" on his behalf. Awww...
- The Smurfette Principle: Is the only woman of the Amigops.
- Verbal Tic: Her recurrent hiccups, to the point that some of her videos have a split-second clip of one spliced in at the very end.
