Progress Report - Week of June 9, 2024. (Patreon)

Hello, all! And welcome to the weekly Explanation Point progress report! I'll admit, this was a slow week, and that's entirely my fault. With the most recent Minecraft update launching on Thursday, I got a little caught up in my excitement and didn't work as much as I should've, but I think I'm back under control now, plus I have a plan to make this week much more productive! Here's what I've got for you:

RESEARCH: This week's research time got a little bit scuffed! I started watching Undead Unluck, since it was winning the poll the last time I checked, but it turns out I should've checked again! Apothecary Diaries overtook it when I wasn't looking! So I had to go back and watch Apothecary Diaries from the beginning. I remember watching the first episode of this a while back, and I thought it was going to be okay. It didn't particularly catch my eye, but it seemed like a good show. Now that I've seen the whole thing, I'm glad I did! A great series of personal mysteries and court drama wrapped up in a Mystery of the Week format that. . . mostly works. I've got my criticisms, but for the most part I had a great time with the series.

AUDIO RECORDING: Got the first OP recorded for Apothecary Diaries. Right now it's just a rough draft, but I don't expect I'll be doing too much more to it before I post to Patreon. That said, the Patreon post might be the only place this song gets released, because. . .

SCRIPT WRITING: This script is fucking killing me. Nothing about it is coming together the way I want it to, and I think it's because it wants to be a real video. An actual, analytic deep dive (if not two  actual analytic deep dives) on The Apothecary Diaries. That would mean (mostly) scrapping the OP recording I worked so hard on, but to quote one of my favorite crafty Youtubers, "Don't defend a mistake just because you spent a long time making it." I spent five hours working on this script, and while there are parts of it that turned out well, I think it's mostly an unfocused mess. So here's the plan:

THE PLAN: The community voted for an Apothecary Diaries video, and the community is going to get one! Maybe two! My first idea was to make a video on the structure of mystery stories, which I spent a lot of time talking about in the awful script, and which would make a fine video. But that topic doesn't excite me, and it doesn't relate specifically enough to Apothecary Diaries for me to feel like I fulfilled my obligation to you all. (I would be fine with releasing a video that doesn't excite me or with betraying my obligations, but not both). Instead, what I want to do is make a video analyzing the specifically feminine storytelling in the show. I think Apothecary Diaries does something very impressive that not a lot of shows do. It's a story about women, featuring an almost exclusively female cast, and delving deep into female-facing social and personal issues, but it does that in a way that I don't feel would be off putting to #Men. Obviously, shows have no obligation to be palatable to #Men, but this one is, and I think that's very hard to pull off and I'd like to examine how it manages that. Hopefully that's a topic that you're all as excited about as I am.

The problem with that is that it requires a full rewatch of the series with that idea in mind, so it's not something I'm going to be able to put out by the end of the week. Instead of rushing something, I'm going to skip this week's video and move straight to making the next one, which will be a review of Delicious in Dungeon. I have a sponsor who wants a video in early July that's specifically tied to that anime, so this is one that can't be moved. Which is fine, because it was automatically going to win the first poll for its season anyway (since it was erroneously included in the first poll I ever did despite the fact that it wasn't finished yet. . . and it won). The plan is to spend the next two weeks making the Delicious in Dungeon video (which means you all will have access to it by the end of June with an early July launch on Youtube), then immediately get to work on the "real" Apothecary Diaries video(s). After that, we get back to voting for review-based content. Let me know if you have any problems with that!

OTHER STUFF: The weekly game hangout happened! Scrub and I got together to play some Magicka 2. I really enjoyed Magicka back in the day, and I think this was my first time playing the sequel. Had a great time! Curi even showed up for a little while, just to hang out and talk. Looking forward to the next one! I also spent about half an hour cumulatively negotiating sponsorships, cleaning up my workspace and deleting everything related to the Frieren video, and updating the channel banner. Not much more to say!

That's it for this week! Sorry it was a slow one, but next week should get things back on-track. I'll fix up the Apothecary Diaries OP and get it posted here as a bonus for you all, just in case I don't wind up using it in the analytic video. Have a good week!