December Update: Winding Things Down (Patreon)

Hey team! Let's put this year to bed, yeah?

Protagony Update

You've probably noticed that there haven't been any videos this month. Sorry about that. A mixture of the usual holiday whirlwind, getting my winter cold, and some Normal Life Shit got in the way, and December has been a wash, as seems to be the custom. Missing December's video is never great, but not the end of the world. But in a year where I've missed so many months already, and have such a video debt built up, it's frustrating. I'd understand if you're feeling frustrated as well!

I'm not terribly worried about playing catch-up in the new year. I'm getting happier and happier with the Protagony scripts, and can either release a bunch in a row to catch up, release one a month alongside a more traditional video, or go back and forth on different months. The bit of extra time will be put towards polishing each script til I'm as happy as I can be with it, and, hopefully, that will make the wait worth it.

But, still: apologies, and thank you for your patience. It's been a tumultuous year, but I'm feeling some optimism about 2020.

Winding Down The Alt-Right Playbook

I'm not sure if this is doable, but I've crunched the numbers and I think - I think - 2020 might be the year we finish The Alt-Right Playbook.

I've gone through my list of topics with a critical eye and determined that there are six proper videos left to release. That doesn't include any Endnotes I come up with along the way, a proper conclusion, or any "here's what we can do about the Alt-Right" videos (of which I have a few planned). So it may be 2021 before we can call it truly complete. But I think we could be in the denouement by this time next year.

In my dream scenario we'd get it done before the 2020 election in November, but the odds of that are pretty dang slim.

Wrapping TARP is, frankly, a little nerve-wracking. I owe my career to this series. It's the reason most of y'all are here. I can't help but wonder how many of y'all will check out once it's done. I mean, this used to be primarily a video game channel! And, while it still is sometimes, the difference in popularity between my videos about games and my videos about politics is an order of magnitude.

I also feel really weird about wrapping it up because it's been such a big part of my life. Beyond financials and viewership, ARP has been my whole universe for over two years now. Most of my work hours have been spent on it. Most of my reading has been research for it. A lot of my professional connections exist because of it. If I give a talk or go to a conference, it's what people know me for. It's pretty much always on my mind, what I'm thinking about, what my gears are grinding on. The idea of not knowing what 8 of my next 10 videos are going to be is alien. I'm gonna feel some kind of way about letting it go.

To be clear, I'm not going back to only talking about adventure games. I'm probably never going to stop making political videos and have a number of topics in mind for after ARPB is done. But it's gonna be weird for all of us. I hope you'll stick around.

Next Year's Projects

2019 was going to be a year of tackling a bunch of projects, and, for various personal and logistical reasons, that's not what happened. Some of it was my own life throwing me for a loop. But a big part of it is that The Alt-Right Playbook keeps getting bigger and more complicated with each video. These are the most labor-intensive videos I make - I actually forget how much work it is until I do something about a movie or a game and am amazed at how fast the edit goes when I don't do 300 drawings. There's a lot I enjoy about it (and, I admit, it could be less laborious if I were less anal), but it leaves so little room for other things.

Some of these are channel- and Patreon-related: I still owe you a podcast (that I genuinely want to make!), and I want to do the book club and possible Discord server, and I have some original research I want to do to help the videos. There really hasn't been time for any of that this year. But I'm also itching for time to work on projects not even related to the channel.

I've hinted at a work of fiction that I was hiring artists for, and I haven't touched the script for it in months. I recently got really excited about a screenplay idea I had, and have been sneaking time to plan it wherever I can, but actually writing it would take a lot of time I don't have, much less ever actually directing it. And I have ideas that have been kicking around for years for games and webseries and fun little animated goofs, and passion projects are just not feasible as long as I'm doing hundreds of slides for every video. Some of these are things I couldn't do without putting the channel completely on pause - like, obviously I couldn't do videos essays while directing a feature film - but I want to make room for some of it.

I love making video essays, but it has overtaken my entire artistic practice. And this is a year where I could have really used some less analytical creative outlets, stuff I could put more of myself into. I went to art school, and a lot of major life events got processed by making art out of them, from new relationships to breakups to family drama. And that's not what Innuendo Studios is for, and I wouldn't want it to be. (Like, smack me if I ever become a vlogger.) But I'm left without an outlet for that type of creativity. And it's something I need to make a little room for.

I don't know what that would look like yet, if it's stuff I would share with patrons or stuff I'd keep to myself until it gets released. Probably it would vary project to project. But, much as I love making the videos, they can't be my whole life.

So, it may take a while, but we're gonna bring The Alt-Right Playbook to a close. And then we'll just see what comes next.

Reflection

For all the ups and downs and inconsistencies of 2019, I will say that How to Radicalize a Normie is probably the most important video I've made so far, and the third Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood was one of the most fun.

In spite of everything, I'm proud of the work I made this year.

See you in 2020,

-I