Jess (Aphmau)

Jessica Bravura
Appearance YouTube Icon
Full Name	Jessica Bravura
Alias	Aphmau
Pronouns	She/Her
Youtube Information
Date joined	August 13, 2012
Channels	Aphmau Aphmau Shuki MyStreet: One Last Time (Aphmau Fantasy) Jessica Bravura
Characteristics
Gender	Female
Birthdate	October 16, 1989
Age	34
VA Roles
Character(s):	Aphmau (all Aphmau characters) Celestia (MyStreet) Ava (My Inner Demons) Megan Manly Lady Irene Urla (Minecraft Diaries)/Urla (MyStreet) Michi (previously)
Professional Status
Affiliation(s)	CatFace
Occupation(s)	YouTuber
Personal Status
Relative(s)	Jason Bravura Joseph (Son) Julia (Daughter) Jennifer (Daughter) Jessabelle (Daughter)
Media
Twitter	Aphmau
Instagram	Aphmau_
Other	Merch Twitch Wiki Fandom

“	Hey guys, Jess here...	”
―Jess, Video Intro

Jessica Bravura, better known by her online alias Aphmau, is a female YouTuber with 20 million subscribers, best known for popularizing the genre of Minecraft roleplay videos. There is a distinct split in content between her cinematic roleplay series and modern-day roleplay videos more decisively catered towards a younger audience.

YouTube

History

Jason and Jessica had discussed the idea of starting a YouTube channel with a group of friends at the start of their careers. The channel, Challenge Accepted Inc. was founded in August 2012, with four members (including Jessica and Jason). After two members left due to personal issues, the channel was reduced to Jessica and Jason.

They renamed the channel Aphmau Gaming and Jess and Jason have grown the channel exponentially over the years. Jessica then co-owns a company called CatFace with Jason in 2020. The company's primary goal is to assist her in producing YouTube content.

Subscriber Milestones

• 1 million subscribers: November 11, 2015
• 2 million subscribers: July 14, 2016
• 3 million subscribers: September 10, 2017
• 4 million subscribers: October 3, 2018
• 5 million subscribers: March 17, 2020
• 6 million subscribers: August 5, 2020
• 7 million subscribers: November 2, 2020
• 8 million subscribers: January 26, 2021
• 9 million subscribers: April 5, 2021
• 10 million subscribers: June 13, 2021
• 11 million subscribers: September 21, 2021
• 12 million subscribers: January 8, 2022
• 13 million subscribers: April 28, 2022
• 14 million subscribers: August 2, 2022
• 15 million subscribers: December 10, 2022
• 16 million subscribers: March 11, 2023
• 17 million subscribers: May 21, 2023
• 18 million subscribers: September 4, 2023
• 19 million subscribers: December 24, 2023
• 20 million subscribers: March 27, 2024
• 22 million subscribers: October 6, 2024

Channels

Aphmau: Her original gaming channel that posts a variety of gaming and roleplay content from 2012-2024. Her focus has mostly been Minecraft, but popular videos have been a mix of Snipper Clips, Minecraft Roleplays, Minecraft Mini-Games, Human Fall Flat, and Animations.

Aphmau Shuki: The channel contains Roblox videos. However, there are some videos that involve other video games, but those are few and far between. These videos have lighter production and aren't as heavily scripted, if at all.

Mystreet - One Last Time: This channel was first named Aphmau Fantasy and has been inactive since 2017. During 2020, it has been rebranded to Aphmau Stories. It has now be changed back to Aphmau Fantasy. Aphmau Fantasy contained Dreams of Estorra and Minecraft Diaries Season 3 reuploads before new episodes started airing on the channel instead of the main one. However, they all eventually became unlisted, with them only being available to watch through playlists. Upon MyStreet Season 7's announcement during VidCon 2024, the channel rebranded again to Mystreet - One Last Time and became active once more, with it to be the home of the season in late 2025.

Jessica Bravura: This channel was Jessica’s vlogging channel and was created in 2015. Her last video was her third child pregnancy announcement in 2019.

Aphmau's "Favorite Gamer" Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards nomination art by Elain C

Early and Personal life

As said in her Draw My Life, Jess, born in Houston, Texas on October 16, 1989, grew up in a family with both parents and an older half-brother she fondly referred to as her brother. Her parents' marriage ended a few years after her birth due to irreconcilable differences. Following the divorce, Jess, her brother, and her mother moved in with her grandparents, aunt, and numerous cousins. Although her brother and cousins had gaming consoles, she didn't. Nonetheless, she had a strong passion for video games.

Her parents shared custody of her, so she alternated living with her father every other week, which provided her with occasional relief from the chaotic household. Her mother eventually moved back in with her father for a period of time. During this period, Jess received her first gaming console, a Nintendo 64. The memory of her parents blindfolding her and then revealing a shelf full of Nintendo 64 consoles in a store was etched vividly in her mind. She was so excited that she cried when the blindfold was removed. She recalled the humorous incident when her parents had a comical argument while setting up the console, and her mother's celebratory dance when she managed to connect the wires by accident.

During elementary school, Jess made many friends who shared her interest in video games. However, her kind and generous nature led to her being perceived as "too nice," which sometimes resulted in bullying and caused her to become introverted. In the aftermath of the September 11 Attacks, her father grew concerned for her safety and security, leading to her being homeschooled for a year during her middle school years.

Upon her return to middle school, Jess decided to wear cat ears and navigated an awkward relationship with a classmate, which ultimately ended with a breakup in front of their classmates when the situation became uncomfortable.

During her transition from middle to high school, Jess discovered online gaming, particularly a game called FreQuency on the PlayStation 2. However, the game that truly changed her life was Final Fantasy XI. In 2005, she met a fellow player named Dom, whose real name was Jason. Over time, their friendship evolved into a romantic relationship, and they became a couple. Jessica made frequent trips from Texas to New Jersey to see Jason.

In 2012, Jess discovered she was pregnant, the same year that Jason planned to propose to her. They decided to marry earlier than planned and celebrated their wedding at Disney World. They moved from their apartment to a larger house they had saved for. With the intention of being a stay-at-home mom, Jess and Jason discussed starting a YouTube channel. In July 2012, Jess gave birth to her first child, a boy named Joseph, delivered via C-section.

After adjusting to parenthood, Jess and Jason launched a YouTube channel, initially joined by high-school friends Calvin (Castor) and Chris (Satiel). Due to personal reasons, each of them eventually left the channel, but they still played games together at times. Running a small channel for a while, CAinc even operated an Iron & Coal server to complement one of their series. However, this server had to close due to Jess's pregnancy and financial constraints.

Aphmau and her colleagues at VidCon 2023

Jess and her family currently live in Bellevue, Washington. She moved there in early 2019. Jess and Jason also run their own studio called Cat Face. The Aphmau brand has partnered with Night Studios to bring Aphmau skins to the Minecraft Marketplace.

Jess adopted a corgi puppy named Jet and a cat named Jax, continuing the J-trend in her family's names (Jess, Jason, Joseph, Julia, etc). She currently has four children. In 2024, Jess adopted another corgi named Jiggy.

Content

Jess's content on her channel has evolved over the years, ranging from group content to solo content, roleplays to unique Minecraft styles, and a variety of games. Roblox and occasionally other games are uploaded on Aphmau Shuki.

She began creating Minecraft roleplays in 2015, with a significant shift in her channel's direction lasting until 2019. Unfortunately, due to the impact of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and declining interest in Minecraft roleplays as a genre, her roleplays ceased. These roleplays included story-roleplay and roleplay-themed minigames, with Jessica actively involved in their creation. Most of her roleplays were discontinued by 2019, as she mentioned the need for fan support to continue production. MyStreet was a series that could fund new roleplay projects, but its status was uncertain due to possible production halts caused by COVID-19.

Following the indefinite hiatus of roleplays after Phoenix Drop Days at the end of 2019, Aphmau stuck to just daily minigame and episodic SMP roleplay videos in Minecraft with sporadic uploads to Aphmau Shuki.

In 2024, Jess had began teasing the announcement of a new project, promising to bring an old series back. At VidCon June 27th 2024, they had revealed the first trailer of MyStreet: One Last Time.

Trivia

• Aphmau's Roblox username is Aphmau_Mimimau.
• Jess is 4'10" in height.
• As part of the 2023 Vidcon Q&A panel hosted by Aphmau, Jess confirmed that she still wants to finish MyStreet and Diaries Rebirth, and wants to conclude Minecraft Diaries in another medium such as a book. This was approximately the same answer Jess delivered during the "Diaries Season 1 Remake!" Livestream on June 24th, 2019.
  During the 2023 Q&A panel at VidCon 2023, Jess gave the following statement;
  Audience: "Are you ever going to finish the remakes of Diaries and MyStreet?"
  Jess: "That's a really good one. I absolutely want to. So, MyStreet - I don't know how you follow that up, and I've been working for years trying to figure that out. There's plans! There's plans. And MyStreet will have a final season - at some point! At some point. But I can't promise any time soon, so just keep an eye out, eventually you'll get one conclusion season. Some point coming up. So, for Diaries, I'd like to do something a little different, and... thinking about ways to do it! So I don't wanna spoil anything just yet - but just wanna figure out if that's possible, so, we'll go for it."
  Audience: [unintelligible question]
  Jess: "Book... Maaaybe..? We'll see! No promises, but!"

• Her two favorite female characters in MCD are Katelyn and Lucinda.
• Jess really wants to join in on the Minecraft Diaries fandom, but due to her being the creator, she can't risk giving out secrets (She jokingly ships Zanemau into the fandom). Jess has revealed on her twitter that she ships Aarmau.
• Her alias, Aphmau, comes from the character Aphmau from Final Fantasy XI
• Everyone in Jess' household has names starting with "J": Jessica, Jason, their four kids Joseph, Julia, Jennifer, and Jessabelle, their corgi Jet, and puppy Jiggy. They had a cat, Johnny, and a kitten, Jax, but Johnny ran away around Christmas 2015 and Jax was given away to their landlord due to Jax not getting along with their kids.
• As stated in a twitter post, she suffered severe depression as a child and suffers from post-partum depression when she became a mother. Hate comments and death threats from fans at the time worsened her mental health, and she was subsequently hospitalized after a severe breakdown in August of 2016.
• When at conventions, she avoids giving out too much info on her location to avoid mobs.
• If she wasn’t a YouTuber, she would’ve taken part in either child education or being a nurse.
  • She did in fact take part in a program in high school that gave her experience in the latter.
• She seems to base Aphmau's attire on her own wardrobe.
• She was involved in YT Creators Summit 2018 in New York City.
• She was involved in a YouTube Creator Panel at PAX East 2019.
• She revealed that she will be a playable character in the indie game "Mowin' & Throwin"'.
• Jess appeared in the 15th episode of the Wonder Quest as Akila.
• She was in a video on Minecraft's YouTube channel that celebrated one trillion views on the platform.
• She sometimes makes appearances on the YouTube channel Jkrew as either herself or a custom NPC.
• Jess used to stream on Twitch, in which she was able to swear, but she later switched to streaming on YouTube on Mondays. She stopped a few months before the switch in content creation. Afterwards, all of her Monday streams have either been hidden or removed. Currently, only twelve past live streams are available to watch on her channel.
  • There were some Monday streams that became unarchived as soon as they ended, most of them being for unknown reasons.
• She used to have a Patreon, in which people could watch exclusive videos and streams as well as receive gift boxes. However, only one gift box was ever distributed to the patrons, which contained character stands as well as an exclusive water bottle and t-shirt.
• In 2024, she was nominated for "Favorite Gamer" in the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. However, she lost to Kai Cenat.
• Jess' Tumblr account deactivated May 9th, 2024.
• Jess confirmed while competing in the Ender Cup that her mom doesn’t know that she makes Minecraft content for a living.

Quotes

“	Why does Lucinda have boobs?	”
Aphmau Bloopers | Roleplay and Minigame Bloopers

“	celestia my baby I-... YOUR SUPPOSED TO BE MY DOG!!!	”
Beach Puppy | Love ~ Love Paradise MyStreet [S2:Ep.2 Minecraft Roleplay]

“	My eyes are up here. Stop looking at my kitties.	”
DO NOT LAUGH! - APHMAU'S TRIGGER WORD

“	My specific instructions were to make sure that when she falls, she doesn't die!	”
Aphmau Bloopers | Roleplay and Minigame Bloopers

“	I know you're sad, but you're not that sad!	”
Aphmau Bloopers | Roleplay and Minigame Bloopers

“	AM I BEYONCE?!?!?!?!	”
The Teen Heartthrob - Minecraft Who Am I

“	Oh, right. Also, I'm not a furry.	”
A Fluffy Announcement