Northernlion

"Stupid, stupid damage."

- Northernlion, multiple times during his The Binding of Isaac Let's Play

Ryan Letourneau, better known by his username Northernlion, is a Canadian with a love for independent video games. Rising to prominence through his Let's Plays, his videos generally consist of gameplay while providing amusing live commentary. A "Machinima Director and Let's Player Extraordinaire", Northernlion is a highly charismatic individual best known for his distinctive voice and sharp wit, as well as his usage of a variety of puns, idioms, and vague references to pop culture.

Aside from his Let's Plays, Northernlion has also made various video series, consisting of "Let's Look At", "Let's Hate", "Don't Play This", "Only in Korea", "Indie Game of the Week", "Poison Mushroom" series on Machinima, "Check Your Privileges" and "#NLSS".

Personal life
Northernlion is from Kingston, Ontario.

For about a year, Northernlion worked in Daegu in South Korea as an English teacher for children. He returned home to Canada on 1 December 2011.

He was unemployed after returning home, but now makes money through YouTube, which he calls "a dream job", and he once jokingly described himself as "funemployed".

In October 2012, he moved across the country to live with his girlfriend Kate Kim (and cat Ryuka) in Vancouver. They married in late May 2014, which artist DraculaFetus soon parodied in episode 59 of "The Northernlion Story".

Northernlion Live Super Show

 * See also: WhenIsNLSS.com

Northernlion hosts a triweekly livestream event on YouTube called the "Northernlion Live Super Show". Each show is three hours long, from 3pm PST to 6pm PST, and is scheduled on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

Northernlion usually spends the first hour discussing recent gaming-related news and reading fan mail, and the other 2 hours of the stream playing other games. Common games are Spelunky, The Binding of Isaac, and Family Feud 2010. There is also a trivia section 2 hours through the stream in which Northernlion asks five questions and fans tweet him the answer in hopes of winning a free game from him. RockLeeSmile and JSmithOTI converse with Northernlion through Skype for the entirety of each livestream and compete with each other in answering trivia questions. Other YouTubers such as michaelalfox, Ohmwrecker and Alpacapatrol have also joined. Each show is uploaded to Northernlion's YouTube account the following day as a VOD.

Because each show is hosted on YouTube, rather than TwitchTV (a website dedicated to livestreaming video games), the Northernlion Live Super Show has suffered from a few technical difficulties, such as screen flickering and slowdown. However, the show recently started to be streamed onto TwitchTV as well fixing these issues into 2013 and on. Furthermore, because YouTube's comment system has not been adapted well for live streaming, viewers could not converse with each other or with Northernlion effectively; Northernlion asks viewers to instead contact him by tweeting him "@NorthernlionLP". While TwitchTV chat is much better and is now available to Northernlion audience members, Ryan still uses Twitter as his favored communication method.

Trivia

 * Northernlion once started a Let's Play of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, but had to abandon it after a few episodes due to legal issues. The Let's Play was notable in that it wasn't an indie game.
 * Northernlion is a YouTube Partner through his partnership with the Machinima Channel (where his "Poison Mushroom" series is posted).
 * Once had a cat named Lexington.
 * First mentioned in an episode of his Let's Play of Cave Story, he is afraid of deep-sea creatures, specifically tentacled creatures such as jellyfish.
 * Had a pet hedgehog named Allegro (it may have also belonged partially to his girlfriend), which as of 2013 has been sold.
 * As of May 2013, owns a white kitten named Ryuka.
 * Northernlion's birthday is on 28 November, 1988.
 * Northernlion is 5'10" tall.
 * Northernlion has very smelly poops, which has caused him anxiety in both the past and present.
 * Northernlion has a really bad case of the motion sickness.
 * Northernlion has a hairy asshole.
 * Northernlion can only run at night so his head doesn't reflect the sunlight.