script progress: TUNIC and the Art of Obscurity (Patreon)

hey folks! business first: the Tunic script is so close to done i can almost taste it. i've just got a little bit left to pull together at the end and i think she'll be ready to fly. in the meantime, i figured you would like some proof of my progress, so: here's the script as it stands currently, including a ton of tangential stuff i've written and discarded in the process of figuring out what this vid is about. if you read this update and then read through the script doc, i think you'll get a sense for why it's taken me so long to get this thing out.

here's that link again: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YOCRSKSBQFKyCUnfGzc_o8-WgLrTrDTtkKbQfuNLCR0/edit?usp=sharing

my thoughts are a tangled web of cross-cultural connections. it's increasingly difficult to talk about anything without talking about everything else.

this Tunic video is taking me so much longer than i anticipated. a lot of the delay comes down to interruptions (many friends moving, trying to find jobs, having breakdowns under the enormous pressure we're all struggling with rn), but a lot of it also comes down to motivation. it's hard to write a video about a funny little fox game when the state of Texas, where many of my trans friends live, where i went to high school, is openly discussing seceding from the union and making out trans people to be de facto predators punishable by law. it's hard to feel like this counts as an excuse considering we're all living in this world together, we all see what's coming, but unlike a lot of people i know i have the latitude to stay home and sit on a project like this instead of getting my ass into hussle mode. that pressure, in itself, only makes the work that much harder.

then there's the fact that godfeels 3 part 2, the next bit of my homestuck fanfic project, has entered the production phase with an eye towards a late summer start date. it remains so difficult for me to spend the time necessary to chart out critical pathways through media analysis when this story about queer alienation and building a genderfucked communist utopia is just right there. writing godfeels comes as naturally as a heartbeat for me, whereas critical writing remains (as ever) an act of truly gruelling dentistry.

lately i have been thinking a lot about the shape of my days, the life i am leading, the life i wish i could lead. if i had my druthers i'd be a professor at a small-ish college lecturing about film while writing weird fanfic on the side.

i'll admit, i wish that i could quit youtube formally. doing so, however, would trigger an exodus of financial support at just about the worst possible time. there's no place in academia as it exists now for someone like me. maybe i could make it work, but doing so would require putting myself in friction with unmoving bureaucratic and financial systems that see no value in education outside of strict numerically quantifiable job training. and fanfic, obviously, can't be monetized.

and you might say, well, just write original fiction then. there's a lot i could say here, and i will do so in a video sometime down the line. short version, though: there is no such thing as original fiction, and i want to write what i want to write. if you have read this far and think that i have any capacity whatsoever to productively negotiate with my creative drive, i don't know what else to tell you.

the thing is, i like making videos. i do. but they take SO much work, and generally speaking it's work that i have to do alone. i can't afford to rent a studio so i have to film in my own space, and because i worked in film i can't just *not* light it well, which means making a mess and spending a couple hours on setup. there's editing, there's algorithm testing, there's publishing and promoting, and then you gotta turn around and jump right onto the next one. it's an exhausting, endless cycle, and each phase of production requires a different kind of work. and for what? i'm not even convinced youtube will exist anymore by the end of the decade, if not sooner (universal on-demand digital video in general is quite literally unsustainable imo. i think we should return to something closer to a broadcast model online, but that's a subject for another day). if i make artsier videos for my channel i can't even submit them to film fests, because they all have fucking exclusivity clauses. i abandoned academic explicitly because i hated how disinterested the institution was in making its knowledge accessible. and sorry, but i just don't think the value of a film fest comes from exclusivity! SIGH

what's the fucking future here, man? i genuinely don't know.

i look back on the days when i was more consistent with my video work, and the difference is that i was in college talking about movies all the time, and i had a job that kept me busy. so here i am now thinking, maybe i should get a part time job, maybe i should find a moviegoing community to get involved in-- hey i really don't want to catch covid again!!! that's the fuck of it, man. there's no right answer here. the path i'm on is precarious, but every alternate path is equally precarious in ways that are often worse. the thought i keep circling back on through this process is that there's just no place for me in this world, institutionally or bureaucratically. jenny durkin nuked public broadcast tv in seattle and no one seems remotely interested in picking that torch back up. i can't be an employed educator without wearing approximately fifty other back-breakingly heavy hats. i could go back into crewing films and have zero free time or energy to do anything else, not to mention the long-term health effects that come with doing such physically intensive work 12 hours a day for weeks on end. i could get an office job evicting tenants of a corporate landlord for a living. i could get a retail job where i'm yelled at by contagious customers and harangued by rabid bosses all day. i could fucking emigrate to china lmao

it's pretty fucking astonishing how undesirable life under capitalism is, actually, when you just lay it all out like this? all this "opportunity," unless you have morals and a desire to do your own thing. god, i dream of living in a weird apartment above a cafe that i work part time at. i dream of not always worrying that i am wasting my time by doing things that don't directly contribute to my "job," such that i can even be said to have one.

i dream so often of a life with lower stakes than these, and every day the stakes just get higher. this is not a conducive work environment, especially not when the options in front of me are nonfictional analytic media and fictional escapist media. gee, i wonder why it's so much easier to write lesbians flirting with each other in space than it is to write media analysis!

anyway. don't take all this as an "i'm quitting," okay? because i'm not. this is just how i feel today, and i need to express it before i can swallow it and get back to work. my gf and i are slowly developing a better structure for our lives. trying to get out (safely) more, trying to log off and enjoy things, trying, trying, trying...

if nothing else, it's been good for my brain to record trans q consistently again. i missed doing the show more than i realized and i'm excited to keep going.

thank you as always for your patience and support. i hope this script goes some way to convincing you that i'm not just sitting on my hands over here. take care of yourselves.