Weekly Update: Solutions were found (and everything else I've been trying to get done) (Patreon)

Hey Saucy Ones,

So About Last Week...

The bad news is that I got essentially nothing done video-wise aside from labelling some clips and a bit of outlining.

The good news is I have not only solved my problems with the potential for tariffs but in the process have also opened the door to potentially having NEW patron rewards for Halloween in July in the future: enamel pins, shirts, hoodies, stickers even. Just to streamline things into bullet points this involved me:

• Double-checking my previous suppliers that by some act of God are all US-based

• Discovering new suppliers, including one that's not only opening the door to me potentially being able to do shirts and hoodies but is also a day's trip from my home which means I won't need to pay shipping

• Doing more research on the hardware I need and learning that not only is there a better option for my sublimation printer that will save me A THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS purchasing that instead of what I had originally planned to get, but will also save me thousands more over the years in ink costs. Turns out that thing about printers being cheap because the companies that make them wanting to milk you for ink is totally true: if you go through a 3rd party that exclusively does ink the cost is way, waaaaay lower. I'm talking going from $130 per color cartridge of ink to $10 per color of ink. I am literally going from expecting to pay $520 for a set of ink to 40 bucks. Holy Shit. HO-LE SHIIIIT!!!

• I've set up some deadlines to make a few orders before that 90-day pause ends so that I can get enough patches for what I can expect based off last year and then if I need any more, I can just take that on the chin.

• Also, it turns out my patch place does enamel pins which'd cost about the same as a patch. how do we feel about pins?

All this boils down to me not only solving my tariff problem but also being able to potentially make my aprons cheaper than I have before thanks to finding wholesale suppliers of the same stuff I'm already using. Who knows? thanks to these cost savings I might be able to still offer the full yearly discounts like I normally do, but no promises on that. I'll tell you all how it shakes out closer to June when you guys are up for renewal.

What about videos?

Well I've been taking advantage of how the next video I want to make for the present moment being Skin Deep which comes out at the end of the month to try and catch up on HiJ videos. As you know I'm using streams (more on them later) to help capture the games I need to play and as I type this I've got three out of four games captured, labelled, and outlines made. My goal for the next week or two is to get the Aliens: Colonial Marines script written since that's gonna be a big one.

Aside from Skin Deep while I was planning on trying to do that Arx Fatalis video, I tried to get it running today with the modernization patches and it's still a mess. That'll be some more work for later: while Arx Libertatis is almost as old as the VTMB unofficial patch and therefore a trusted element in my book, I need more stuff that runs out of the box so to speak so I can keep things moving. Perhaps I will end up making a video about Schedule I since I've been having fun with it on stream.

Do ya'll have any indie ImSims that you can think of for a video in the interim while I'm waiting for Skin Deep? Like heck it's probably something I've got installed but just forgot about, lol.

Speaking of those Streams...

Streams have been going great! Better yet, enough of you have been kind enough to let me have you Prime sub that I'm actually gonna get a payout on my first month as an affiliate! Like I said before I'm going to be reinvesting all the money I earn off streams back into streaming and the first order of business is to buy a proper overlay. No more hokey stream layouts!

I think the next thing on the list is an updated webcam as that'll also help with videos and then maybe some commissioned emotes, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Hey, whatever happened to the cooking segments?

MAN HAVE I BEEN WANTED TO DO THOSE SO BADLY! I've actually been stockpiling a list of things I wanna do for videos in the next future. Here's what I've got so far:

• Spam Musubi

• Onigiri (yes, I got a rice cooker)

• Gorditas

• My Chicken and rice for weight training

• "Philly Fries" a delightfully cursed thing I ate at a county fair

• The return of BIG SOUP

• Chicken Katsu sandwich

• Steak Fritte

Oh and the store had these lovely lil 1-pound bags of jalapenos on sale so I got those and I'm gonna do jalapeno poppers for the next cooking segment. The problem I'm having now is that with the faster production style of videos cooking segments are a bottleneck: they usually take a day to study and formulate a recipe, a day to go to the store and get everything I could possibly need, a day to shoot, and then a day to edit the segment into a video. Sure, a lot of these days can be combined like making my recipe and shopping, but usually the fastest I can get a cooking segment into a video is 3 days: Prep, filming, editing. With how much I do on editing days for videos now that's also a lot that'll get in the way of the video itself.

I'm thinking my new workaround for this is not to have cooking segments specifically for a video, barring a theme like this year's Halloween in July, but to instead operate on a mindset of going "hey, this seems like a good idea!" and them making a cooking segment which can just be inserted into a video later when I need one. The Jalapeno Poppers are going to be the trial run for these as I plan to film myself making them today or tomorrow well before I'm ready to start making the Skin Deep video. Fingers crossed this works.

Oh! before I forget, this is the tentative lineup for HiJ's vegetarian challenge:

• Doritos Cheese Sticks

• Eggplant and Mushroom lasagna

• Curry

• Caprese sandwiches

And if I end up going beyond the initial four videos I might try French onion soup and some good old fashion bean rice and cheese burritos.

Whew! this was another long one!

Okay I think this is everything I've been meaning to tell you about for a while now but got distracted with thanks to recent events. I'm hoping to get back on track for HiJ and while we've got that reprieve in releases and then get to making more videos about more weird little games.

Stay Saucy!