Hollow VA
is a Youtube channel begun in August of 2019 that makes ASMR videos centered around roleplay with unique characters that interact with the listener. While the main goal of the channel is to relax the listener, the creator also puts emphasis on coherent storytelling in his work, with several videos being part of ongoing storylines (primarily high fantasy in nature) or at least being hinted to take place in the same worlds.
This channel provides examples of:
- Bittersweet Ending:
- The "Arrogant Prince" storyline ends with one that's more sweet or bitter depending on how you interpret the listener's feelings towards Pharos, the titular prince. The magic-persecuting tyrannical empire he established is crumbling and the listener has a chance to be reinstated on their throne. However, an incalculable amount of damage has been done to the mages and magical artifacts in the kingdom. And if the listener actually does care about Pharos by this point, their options are to either flee with him and have nothing, to hand him over to the people to enact justice, or let him go and never see him again, all of which are bleak outcomes.
- The "Strange lands, stranger people" series involving the listener and Jackal has the listener finally reuniting with Jackal, along with recovering their precious magical books, and the two plan to run away together. Unfortunately, Jackal tells the listener that there's no way to kill Thalvich, who previously was established to be able to track the listener through their blood. So when they run away together, they will have to always be on the run from him.
- Call-Back:
- The "Yandere Blood Mage" videos feature a character named Thalvich, who mentions having tasted the listener's blood in a past life. This references the very second video uploaded onto the channel, where a presumably different listener becomes the apprentice of a warlock whose "pet" named Thalvich is required to taste some of their blood.
- In that same series, Jackal is able to rescue you from Thalvich's basement using the magic tome you gave him as payment for his services in a previous video.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Ornvyr of the "Strict Elf" series. It's obvious by the second video that he loves the listener, but can't bring himself to confess. Ironically, he had previously wondered why another elf, who was pining for a married man to the point that it was making her sick with infernal bloom, didn't just say something.
- Canon Welding: The main draw of the channel, where different, seemingly unrelated video series will eventually reference each other and reveal they take place in the same, usually fantastical, world. One example of this is the "Romantic Necromancer" series which mentions Honeywood from the "Headless Horseman" video. The Romantic Necromancer himself, Ortas, is mentioned in several different videos as his influence has spread due to the devastation he caused, and the Mad Emperor Pharos from the Mad Emperor series is often referenced similarly.
- Cat Boy: One of the male leads for the "Strange lands, stranger people" series is a catlike mercenary named Jackal, whose art depicts him as just a Little Bit Beastly.
- Downer Ending:
- The "Strict Elf" video series ends with the listener being ordered to flee the village by a tearful Ornvyr, who is to be executed for falling in love with you. A later video even confirms that he was burned at the stake by the village elders.
- Already implied by the title, but the "Fatal Tea Party with a Cute Ghost" video ends with the listener being poisoned by the ghost.
- Forced Sleep: Often done to the listener by Yandere characters at the end of their videos, like Thalvich from the "Yandere Blood Mage" series or the leshen from the "Yandere Leshen" series. This is partially because the point of the channel is relaxation and helping viewers to sleep.
- From a Single Cell: Much to Jackal's horror, this is how Thalvich the Yandere Blood Mage's immortality works. Even being literally torn to pieces by a deadly sandstorm isn't enough to stop him forever.
- Hanahaki Disease: The "Strict Elf" video series features this as a plot point, where the speaker Ornvyr mentions a disease called "Infernal Bloom" where flowers grow in the lungs of elves with unrequited love. The second video in the series has him repeatedly coughing while talking to the listener, and he eventually admits he caught it for them.
- Hell Hotel: The setting of the "Hotel Sanguine" series, which has the listener checking into a hotel for strange and macabre people and then learning that there is no clear way to check out.
- Reincarnation Romance:
- This is implied to be the goal of the Necromancer in the "Romantic Necromancer" series, with him mentioning that he must die and the next time he and the listener meet, he will be a better person.
- This is what the "Yandere Blood Mage" Thalvich claims about himself and the listener, but given his treatment of them a darker interpretation is that he has always one-sidedly pursued the listener in their past lives.
- Start of Darkness: The "Arrogant Prince" video series serves as one for Emperor Pharos whose persecution of magic kicks off the "Strange lands, stranger people" storyline. In the series, his father and brother are killed in a magical attack led by those who resisted his family's imperial rule, and the nobles take advantage of his grief to poison him against all mages.
- To Be Lawful or Good: The conflict of Ivy, one of the two elf brothers in the "Twin elves" storyline. He reveals that he looked up to Ornvyr of the Strict Elf series, finding him the pinnacle of how an upstanding elf should behave, and was deeply unsettled when his service to their society was rewarded by being burned at the stake for the small crime of falling in love with a human. After that point, he's lost faith that the Elders' law represents real justice, but he can't see himself going against it.
- Yandere: A reoccurring character archetype for the channel. One of note is the blood mage Thalvich, who kidnaps the listener in the "Strange lands, stranger people" series before they're eventually rescued. His obsession with the listener is implied to have applied to several of their past lives, as well.
