update: i'm on comradery now! and other updates (Patreon)

hello, patrons!

so the fine folks over at Comradery, the leftist crowdfunding co-op meant as an alternative to sites like Patreon, saw fit to bring me on as an early member while they're working out the kinks in their site! my page is live and ready for donations as you can see right here. for the time being, the tiers there are the same as the tiers here (minus the $25 tier, which btw i've got the next letter drafted, sorry it's been SO LONG since the last dispatch). eventually i'm going to shift things around a bit, but i want to wait until we're a few videos into The New Era of ltas. i'll get to that in a sec, but first i want to pre-emptively answer some questions about Comradery.

Comradery won't replace Patreon any time soon. i fully intend to switch over to Comradery & close this page down SOMEDAY, but part of the reason they brought me on is because my perks and posts are relatively traditional and low-impact, which is perfect for a site whose tools are still very much in the Alpha phase of development. it's so in Alpha, in fact, that you can't even manually edit your own campaign page yet! i don't mind this in the least. the devs over at Comradery are taking their time to make sure the site works reliably and does what it needs to do, rather than rushing it out to market as fast as possible. and since it's a co-op, the whole process is extraordinarily transparent.

i've got a lot of experience at this point with leftists starting companies that quickly turn into self-cannibalizing capitalist nightmares collapsed under their own weight because they didn't put the hard work into actually decentralizing the organization & enshrining that decentralization in legally binding contracts. thusfar i've encountered none of the red flags those projects taught me to be wary of. behind the scenes, everything feels very practical and pragmatic. who can say how things will progress, but the fact that they're taking development so slowly is perhaps the single best sign i could hope for.

anyway, the upshot here is that it will probably be more than a year before i'm comfortable switching over fully to Comradery. so if you want to drop your pledge here and repledge over on Comradery, go right ahead! but don't feel any immediate pressure to do so. for now, everything is gonna be cross-posted and there won't be any benefits posted there that aren't posted here & vise-versa. that will change eventually, but not for a long time and not without ample warning. my priority at the moment is getting back on my feet creatively, and i am not looking to add financial card-shuffling to that mix, especially not when i am literally doing my taxes!

speaking of getting back on my feet creatively...

i've got a vid about Horizon: Forbidden West shot and in the editing process. this will probably be a backer-exclusive vid for a while. maybe i can trick myself into not being such a perfectionist by treating those closet vids as backer-exclusive?? damn that's actually not a bad idea...

i've also got a vid about Tunic most of the way scripted. the reason that Horizon vid isn't out is because i set it aside to rush this Tunic vid, and then some more life happened and everything got put on hold again. but Molly's working on the soundtrack for it, and i think it'll be a fun one.

i might do another closet vid about Our Flag Means Death just to gush about how gay it is. it's up on my whiteboard, at any rate!

Everyone Is Wrong About LOST is still, in my mind, The Next Video despite the fact that other videos are definitely going to come out before then. these smaller projects are filed away in my head as Stepping Stones Towards Smooth Production. practice runs to grease the wheels, as it were. my initial estimate that this would come out in March was as laughable then as it is today. realistically it probably won't come out until much later in the year. it's an important video for me on a lot of levels, and it's going to be much more complicated than you'd probably expect from the title. not to mention it will probably be over two hours long! it's hard to estimate the length because the latter sections are very much in flux, but i promise you it'll earn its keep.

otherwise: i spent the latter half of march realizing just how much last year took out of me. how much the last few months took out of me. i haven't taken the time to actually rest in years i think, not really. i may have a lot of experience with grief, but it turns out i've actually never been very good at processing grief. maybe no one is. so as i approach my 33rd birthday this friday, april 8, i'm trying to set things aside and actually RECOVER. despite living in this new place for a good five months, i've barely gone outside to experience the wonders of living In The City. i'm so used to being trapped in the suburbs that the possibility of experiencing Normal Things kinda intimidates me. doesn't help at all that covid and the eviction have scrambled my brain like the egg it used to be. but some friends have started dragging me out places and the result has been... wouldn't you know it? kinda rejuvenating.

every day i put a new piece of myself back into place, and with it i recover a partial vision of the future. it's hard to believe in any future right now, but i'm starting to remember what it means to be optimistic in the face of annihilation. i've got ground under my feet again, a ceiling that feels like it's gonna stay familiar for the foreseeable future, and friends who give a shit about me. i'm so close to being back, y'all. just be patient with me for a little while longer. i promise it will be worth it.

take care of yourselves!