Karon

Karon (茶冷) was a female Chinese Virtual UP (bilibili content creator)/Virtual YouTuber affiliated with VirtuaReal's independent VUP partnership program, VirtuaReal Link. She is considered an unofficial member of VirtuaReal's tenth generation (aka 1076) along with Isabella. Karon is also an artist who drew models for various Vups.

Karon streams in Chinese, but she can also speak English and Japanese at a conversational level. Her bilibili content is diverse, and it includes such things as song covers, speed painting and playing video games.

Profile
"A human researcher, usually through not very good drawings"

- Karon

Karon is a demon who founded her own human research institute. She likes drawing, singing, making animations, and roleplaying activities that humans like. Often she is excessively busy with interests and hobbies, to the extent that she has been jokingly called by the research institute’s researchers “Head of garbage level academics”. One day, because she was egged on by the research institute’s staff, she began her own livestreaming journey. Why does she not look very similar to before? Because she is a demon, shouldn't her body transform according to her wishes without any problems?

Personality
Karon is laid-back and she often jokes with her viewers about her mistakes. She is often modest.

Appearance
Her appearance is of a high school demon girl. She wears a white sweatshirt which is not zipped. On her right hand, she wears a black wristband with a pink text that spells out HUMANITY. She wears a black dress, that is fastened with a pink belt on her chest. She also wears a pink tie with a crystal heart on it and black boots.

Karon has yellow eyes and long pointy ears. She has short dark blue hair with pigtails and white hairpins. She has a pair of black horns on the top of her head. She can also be sometimes seen wearing pink-white headphones or/and pink glasses.

Background
Prior to becoming a VUP, Karon was an artist creating anime related artwork. Her earlier work can still be seen on her bilibili page. She officially debuted as an independent VUP on the 4th of March 2020.

2020
After becoming a VUP, she continued to upload her speed painting videos, but she also started to cover songs and playing TRPGs.

On the 19th of September, she became a member of VirtuaReal Link. She also showed her updated 2.0 model that day.

On 30 September, Karon participated in a debut relay alongside the tenth wave and Isabella. She was the second last of the new VirtuaReal (Link) members to debut on stream. An edited version of her debut stream exists in place of the full archive.

2021
On the 13th of March, she made a YouTube channel, where she uploads some of her bilibili content.

On the 27th of March, she did her first NIJISANJI collab outside of VirtuaReal. She played Phasmophobia with Nijisanji ID members: Nara Haramaung, Amicia Michella and ZEA Cornelia.

On the 6th of November, she did her first stream on YouTube, where she did a short introduction and a karaoke stream right after.

2022
On 3 February 2022, Karon revealed her new Traditional Chinese outfit a few days after the start of the Chinese New Year.

On 30 May, Karon announced that along with her friends, she would be developing her first indie game.

On 6 June, Karon reached 7,000,000 total plays on her bilibili channel.

On 24 August, Karon announced that she would be going on a general hiatus from streaming, effective immediately. She expected her hiatus to last at least three months or until the end of October or in November. Karon also expanded on her decision with further details:

On 31 December, Karon announced she was returning from hiatus and did a short stream.
 * Karon emphasized that this hiatus did not indicate she was graduating (from her Virtual Liver activities).
 * Due to the combined, intense, long-term workload of her PhD studies (beginning five years prior), contract work, and streaming, Karon had developed some physical health problems that would require some time for her to recuperate from, hence, the streaming hiatus.
 * The nature of self-disclosing on social media had also pressured Karon mentally. Combined with her intense workload, this led to negative impacts on her mental health that she had been experiencing for a long while. Thus, Karon would also be distancing herself from social media to adjust herself.
 * Should she recover from her physical and mental ailments, Karon would likely use this time for activities that she had wanted to do before, including "learning to draw [sic]", learning to dance, and exercising again.
 * Karon also felt that her streams had become stagnant; a hiatus would give her time to think of ways to move forwards afterwards.
 * Although Karon was taking a general break from streaming, she would still appear in collaborations. She also stated the possibility of a few casual, solo streams to talk to her viewers. In other words, Karon was not going to completely disappear during her hiatus.

2023
On 23 Jan, Karon officially returned with an hour-long drawing stream.

On 1 February, Karon held a "official return press conference"

Doxxing, Harassment and Graduation
On 27 March, 2023, Karon made a post about her opinion on AI art. She was of the opinion that until laws and regulations were in placed, she would not use any AI product and derivatives as an artist.

Hours after, Karon reported that she was doxxed, and someone has been sending spams to her phones. Later it was revealed that attackers have also used her information to blackmail her at her university. And training AI image of her as a cruel joke. Many of these harassment are documented and reported on Reddit, and then a tweet shared widely.

On 9 May, Karon announced that she will graduate on 17 July of the same year. Uploaded content will be kept.

On 19 May, Bilibili's Community Management team announced progress on the investigation into Karon's case. One of the perpetrator in the harassment, who was a minor, has been found by police and required to formally apologize to Karon.

It is worth noting that before her post about AI art, there had been less serious cases of harassment or attacks against her. Some were related to the male vups whom she collabed with, some were less clear. But none had been as serious as doxxing.

Fans

 * Karon calls her fans 研究员 Researchers. Her fan medal is 大章鱼 Great Octopus. According to Karon, she chose this because someone once told her "tentacles" is a symbol of being great artist, which is not completely false as there is a Chinese internet expression for great artist, "大触", lit. Great Tentacle.

Relationships

 * 1076 - Karon, Sirius, Reve, Shaun, Yua and Isabella. VirtuaReal's tenth generation, along with unofficial members Karon and Isabella.
 * K.R.T. - Karon, Reve and Tanoshiba
 * Petra Gurin, Amicia Michella - They had a drawing collab together.
 * Raisai - Karon is his artist. Later, Raisai taught Karon how to play Apex Legends.

Trivia

 * Color: #00A8BD
 * Species: Demon (Yellow-eyed Demon)
 * Place of origin: Demon world
 * Special skills (as in her VirtuaReal profile): Drawing, singing, making animations
 * Her Chinese name 茶冷 literally translates to "tea cold".

Likes and dislikes

 * Likes: Humanity, strawberry doughnuts, double-cooked pork
 * Karon insists she doesn't eat people. Her favourite food is double cooked pork and she prefers it over human souls.
 * Her favourite thing are humans. She especially appreciates their art skills.
 * Dislikes: Insects

Lore

 * Karon is a researcher from KHRI (Karon Human Research Institution), who joined VirtuaReal Research Institution. She is a demon who is taking a holiday and does human studies for her own interest. She became a VTuber, because her colleagues told her that this way she will be able to collect more samples for her research project.
 * The story behind joining VirtuaReal: One day when she was walking down the street and passed VirtuaReal headquarters, she accidentally made eye contact with a female with black twin tails (Tokimori Seisa) and she suddenly blacked out. When she woke up, she found herself here.

Miscellaneous

 * Her old, unofficial YouTube channel's specified location is the United Kingdom.
 * She has illustrated Live2D models for numerous VUPs, including but not limited to: Herself, Raisai of bilibili e-sports, Twiggy and WeiSteria of Croven, INA, Remiel, GasWang, Lilililier, tomoya, miggy and ORYSAL.
 * She also did the illustration for VirtuaReal's mascot VR-ge (VR哥), which is rigged by Tanoshiba.
 * She has a PhD in sociology. Her thesis was on migration study.

Media

 * Karon's corporate profile on the official VirtuaReal website
 * 茶冷_Channel - bilibili channel
 * 茶冷Karon-VirtuaReal - Youtube channel (current)
 * 茶冷Karon Ch. (Has moved to new official account) - YouTube channel (old)
 * @Karon_vtuber - Twitter account
 * @karon_vtuber - Marshmallow account
 * 茶冷Karon - Tape account

Unofficial

 * 茶冷研究所事务委员会 (Karon's Research Institute Affairs Committee) - bilibili channel for 二次创作 (derivative works)

Bilibili hashtags

 * #茶冷研究所#- Fan art and fan writing tag
 * #你好茶啊# - Voice and voice pack review tag

Twitter hashtags

 * #Karonstream - Stream talk
 * #カロン研究所 - Fan art
 * #Croissantdemon - Memes