State Of Things (May 2021 Update) (Patreon)

Hello! Emily here. As you may or may not know, it's May. A brand new month snuck up just like that. Wow! Exciting! To celebrate the occasion, I figured it was worth it to go ahead and put out a update and let you all know everything going on behind the scenes at the Lady Emily headquarters (AKA my computer desk). I want to try to be as transparent as I possibly can regarding everything, especially since there are a lot more of y'all now. 

So with that in mind, I'm sure there's one question you're all asking...

Where Is The New Video? 

If you are someone who looks at your bank account, you might have noticed that you weren't charged for the month of April. And that means, well, a video essay didn't come out. Believe me, I am as disappointed about this as you are. I know that I said I was going to have one done and released by the end of the month and I hate missing deadlines like this. I'm very sorry. Let me try my best to explain what happened here. 

Essentially, April was a lot busier than I expected it to be. I went from working on Sarah Z's All or Nothing video and my own Save to Win video simultaneously to working on the Homestuck video for Sarah's channel directly afterwards, which was a lot. Then there was the, um, aftermath of the Homestuck video. I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to talk about publicly yet, but... if you know, you know. That, along with the Q&A, family things, getting my second Covid vaccination, and personal matters left me very exhausted. 

I fully intended to create a shorter video to ensure I still had an essay out in April and I was actually able to write a draft of the script and had it essentially ready to go for recording. However, said script, while still shorter than my previous two essays, ended up way over my predicted length and would be a lot more complicated  and time consuming to put together. By the time it was finished, it began to hit me just how burnt out I was feeling. And I began to realize that the only way to get it done on time would be to half ass it, which I didn't want to do, or go into super crunch stress mode, which I also didn't want to do. Instead, I made the executive decision to shelf the script for now and set it aside and spend those final few days in April resting and prepping for May's video. I hope you all can understand. 

Said script will be made into a video at some point. I'm not sure exactly when. It'll just be whenever it happens to fit in the schedule and when it makes sense to do it. It'll probably be, at the very least, a few months from now. Because of this, and because I want to give you all something until the next essay is out, $5+ patrons (AKA The Super Supporters Tier) will get access to the script early. That will be uploaded soon. I hope this can help tide things over until the next video. Speaking of...

So What Is The Next Video Then?

Good question! I happen to have the next three months of videos planned, meaning I know the three videos I plan on making between now and July. I'm hesitant to reveal all of them because, to be honest, things are always subject to change depending on the circumstances. But considering how progress has already started on May's, I feel confident going ahead and talking about that one openly.

In my 10K Subscriber Q&A video, I expressed a desire to make a video about the various adaptations of Berserk if enough people were interested. I figured it would be something I would potentially do way further down the line. To my surprise, a lot of people in the comments seemed to really latch onto it and asked for me to do it. And, well, Berserk is my favorite series and the prospect of getting to talk about it on the channel excites me so with that in mind, I went ahead and bumped it up in the schedule and made it the video for May. 

I've already begun my re-read/re-watch of the series and have started writing the script. Considering that this project involves me reading (at least) 30 volumes of manga, watching two 25 episode anime series, and watching a trilogy of movies just to cover the research portion, I can't necessarily give an estimated release date for this beyond "hopefully by the end of May. " But this is going to be the next video and progress is underway and I'm so excited for you all to see it. 

While I have you here, there are some other things I should talk to you about regarding the Patreon. Some of you may be wondering...

What's This New Patreon Goal?

So if you look on my Patreon page, you may notice some Patreon goals that have been set up. The first has been here for a while: if we hit $1000 per video, I will do a feature length analysis video on all the Kingdom Hearts games. Surprisingly, we are already 1/4 of the way there. That's super cool! Terrifying, but also cool! 

The second one, however, is new. I semi-jokingly expressed on Twitter the other day that I would eventually do a comprehensive look at all 23 mainline They Might Be Giants albums and people seemed way more into the idea than I thought they would be. So, after some consideration, I decided to make it a Patreon goal for if we hit $1500 per creation. That's... probably going to take a while, I know. Sorry for anyone hoping I'd have that out soon. At the very least, this should give me time to figure out the logistics of how I want to do this, since I'm pretty sure the subject matter and the amount of music clips I would need to use wouldn't be friendly in the Youtube algorithmic machine. But we will see! It's definitely exciting to hopefully one day get to talk about one of my favorite bands for way too long! 

Speaking of way too long, I should try to wrap this post up soon, huh? But before I do, one last thing...

What Other Patreon Things Can We Expect? 

I'm going to be honest when I say that I didn't expect this Patreon to take off quite the way that it did. There are so many of you and I'm so grateful for y'all. Thank you. Because this caught me so much off guard, though, there's a lot of housekeeping to do here and a lot of work I need to put in to get this thing up to shape. Essentially what I'm saying is that expect something of a Patreon overhaul in the coming weeks. 

Nothing super serious! It's basically going to be things like new tiers or additional/changing benefits and rewards. Things I can add and do to make the most out of this page and make sure you all are getting the best bang for your buck. I'll be giving out more exact details later on, once my brain isn't focused solely on Berserk and the new video is out and I can finalize what all I want to do here. This is just letting you know to expect some structural changes. And hey, if you can think of any sort of Patreon perk you'd like to see, feel free to let me know! I want to make sure I'm doing whatever I can to make this the best it can possibly be. 

That's all for now! Thank you all so much for the support and for reading this very long update!