Trail Thoughts ✦ October 2022 (Patreon)

Heyo Adventure Club and Happy November 1st! Who is putting up their Christmas tree today? I'm honestly considering putting mine up this weekend as I have a brand new couch and I think my tree will look awesome beside it! (You can see pictures of the couch near the end of the newsletter.)

Before we get started, welcome in to all the new patrons that joined during the month of October! This is my Trail Thoughts newsletter that I write at the start of every month. This is where I share my data and analytics from my Twitch stream and YouTube channel, talk about the previous month and what happened, and discuss what I have planned for the month ahead and often a bit further out.

Many folks look forward to reading my newsletter and it provides some different content here on Patreon to sprinkle in between everything else that I share, which is mostly videos, of course! I really enjoy writing these posts, sharing my progress, and being transparent with you all about how things are going, as you are all such a big part of the journey and the success!

Also, I've updated the header images from leaves to snowflakes because where I live, we have snow on the ground, it is currently dumping snow, and winter is definitely here for us. 😊

• # of Streams: 6 ⬆
• Avg Viewers, incl. Hosts & Raids: 25 ⬇
• Avg Viewers, excl. Hosts & Raids: 23 ⬇
• Unique Viewers: 646 ⬆
• Unique Chatters: 143 ⬆
• Chat Messages: 3,080 (avg 513 per stream ⬆) 
• New Followers: 30 ⬆ (avg of 5 per stream =)
• Subscriptions: 89 ⬆ (avg 14-15 per stream ⬆)

The symbols beside each data point indicate if the figures are up or down relative to the previous month. If there is an equal sign, there is no change.

October had fewer streams, like September did, because I had the first two weeks off due to my vacation! Though Davy and I did end up streaming on Friday, Oct 14 which was a lot of fun. It was a short 2-hour stream, but we had the opportunity to hang out with the community for a bit. 

Other than that, I continued streaming my Dragon Age: Origins playthrough and Star Wars: KOTOR II playthrough. I also had my birthday and 3-Year streamiversary stream on Oct 30. If you missed it, you can re-watch it here. During this stream, I dove into Coral Island for the first time and that is such a fun game that I am enjoying a lot.

I have no big plans for my Twitch stream for November. I have a very strong feeling that I will be wrapping up Star Wars: KOTOR II this month, which means that I will have to fire up a new game. I've decided that I will play Fallout 3. I played Fallout: New Vegas for the first time way back in early 2020 and have not revisited the Wasteland since. I've heard great things about Fallout 3 despite its age, so that is what will be next! Good chance that will start this month.

I also plan on continuing my Coral Island playthrough on Fridays, but not every Friday. I have a few games in mind that I'd like to explore on some Fridays this month. 👀

If you haven't had a chance to stop by my Twitch stream, I am live every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 15:00 UTC (this is currently 09:00 MDT, but that will change this weekend as we change time one hour back).

• # of Videos: 17 total ⬇ - 4 public videos ⬇ and 13 for Patreon ⬇
• Impressions: 1,093,864 ⬆
• Total Views: 48,795 ⬆
• Views on October Videos: 25,251 ⬆
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): 3.1% =
• Watch Time: 11,586.9 hours ⬆
• Average % Viewed*: 30.0% ⬆
• Unique Viewers: 26,644 ⬆
• Net New Subscribers: 432 ⬆

The symbols beside each data point indicate if the figures are up or down relative to the previous month. If there is an equal sign, there is no change.

* This data point tells me how long a viewer spent watching a particular video. If a viewer watches 10 minutes of a 20 minute long video, then that is 50%. Because my videos are long, I like my percentage to be around 30% but it is typically between 16-21%. Most viewers will skip the intro's and thoughts/review portions of my reactions and I've noticed with a lot of my movie reactions they like to watch particular scenes and skip to those instead of watching the whole video. It's just the nature of doing YouTube!

I am pleased with how October went because of the fact I was AFK for two whole weeks. My prep work in September paid off pretty well! I hope you all enjoyed the videos that were posted on the channel and here on Patreon this past month. Thank you all for the views, comments, and likes. 💛

October was my first month of doing scary movies for kaiielle-oween, which will absolutely be a recurring thing every single year, although next October I will incorporate some non-scary movies too. I'm thinking of diving into some actually scary stuff next year, such as The Exorcist, The Conjuring, Insidious, etc.

To wrap up my thoughts on October...

• Favourite Movie: Silence of the Lambs
• Favourite Reaction: Psycho
• Best Comments Received On: Psycho
• Highest Liked Video: Psycho (97.8%)
• Lowest Liked Video: Halloween (93.8%)

Are there any other YouTube stats that you all are curious about that I could share? Please let me know!

The most exciting news this month is that MCU Phase One reactions begin on Monday, November 7th with Iron Man! My plan is to put out an MCU reaction every Monday and then another movie reaction sometime else during each week. We'll see how this plan works out for me, though. 😂 There's like 65% of me that thinks it's do-able and then the 35% of me is looking at me strange going "Are you nuts?"

So for now, the loose plan is:

• Mon, Nov 7: Iron Man (2008)
• Mon, Nov 14: The Incredible Hulk (2008)
• Mon, Nov 21: Iron Man 2 (2010)
• Mon, Nov 28: Thor (2011)

Outside of the MCU, there will be reactions coming to the following films:

• Passengers (2016)
• Die Hard (1988)
• The Last Samurai (2003)

I haven't decided yet if I want to try to fit a fourth movie in November with those three or just focus on my Review & Ranking videos instead. I still have 4 seasons of The Clone Wars to put out, along with Stranger Things 4, and then I will need to do one for House of the Dragon as well (finale coming soon, for those of you in those tiers). I meant to get out some of these in the last two weeks of October and then that just didn't happen. And I apologize for that.

I'm trying not to overcommit myself, but also be transparent about what I want to do! I'm very excited about this month. I'm hyped to dive into the MCU and finally experience another franchise that so many peope love.

Thumbnail Changes

I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but I've started updating some thumbnails on my YouTube videos! I am still working on getting them all changed over to the new look, which I will finish over the next few days. I decided to do this because I've realized that my thumbnails don't exactly pop compared to some other channels. YouTube recently introduced a tool for us to see how our thumbnails compare to other creators in our niche, which is awesome! But it made me realize that my thumbnails get drowned out by other channels.

The change I'm making isn't a drastic one. The most obvious change is that I've added a yellow border at the top and bottom of the thumbnail. Smaller changes include: removing my chair from behind me and a larger drop shadow behind me to make me pop out more from the background. For some movies, I've changed the image that I've used for the film and have also picked a different expression for myself if I felt I could have a better one. Here is an example of a pretty big change to show the difference of a before and after:

Not sure if anyone knew this, but yellow is one of the best colours to use in a thumbnail as our eyes are drawn to yellow more than any other colour. And the two yellows that I use in my thumbnails (the top is slightly darker than the bottom) are in my kaiielle brand colours (yes, I have dedicated brand colours 😅). So it's a win-win.

Description Changes

With the launch of my dedicated Links page on my website, I have taken the opportunity to rework my YouTube descriptions to make them much shorter than they were before. I am going through and updating them as I adjust the thumbnails for each video.

Title Changes

I haven't put through any drastic title changes yet on my videos, but I'm considering making unique titles for my reactions instead of just having the default template of Movie > FIRST TIME WATCHING > Reaction & Review. The problem is I'm having a hell of a time figuring out what to put. I don't necessarily want to put what I thought of the movie right in the title, but I'm just not sure what to do.

So I'd appreciate feedback from you all, if you have any for me! What sort of titles draw your attention to click on a video? Or do you just click as soon as you see the movie title? Do you not even read the title and just look at the thumbnail? I'd love to know and that might help me decide what to do.

Shorts Incoming...

A lot of folks should have access to YouTube's new channel look which separates out long-form videos from shorts and lives. I shared this in yesterday's weekly schedule post, but I want to re-iterate it again here. I will be carving out time to make shorts videos that contain specific reaction moments from my videos. It's a good way to expose my videos to new viewers. If they happen to see a 10 second moment from a reaction video, they might come over and end up watching the reaction.

I intend to go all the way back to the Star Wars films and make shorts from every single reaction video. Like I said yesterday, I don't plan on sharing my shorts here on Patreon, so if you would like to see them, tune in to that section of my channel! I will also be sharing them on TikTok and Instagram to try and get eyes on the channel from outside the platform.

First, the regular reminders:

• Annual Memberships: At any time during your membership here, you can switch from monthly to annually and receive a 10% discount on the cost of the tier by doing so! Just go to your Membership settings to do this.
• Exclusive Reactions: My Snack Break discounted tier that has 100 slots always has some availability and there are spaces available this month too! If you've been considering checking out some of my exclusive stuff, there are a lot of videos to watch now! So come join us! You can switch tiers in your Membership settings. And if you would like to see what the exclusive stuff is all about for free, click here to check some reactions out!
• Discord Server: This is the best place to say hello to me every single day and interact with other people in the community in real-time! Sync your Discord account in your Patreon settings and you'll be auto-joined to the server.

Exclusive Reaction Tiers

With House of the Dragon ending this week, that just leaves Andor and The Bad Batch to watch and I'm just going to truck along with these two shows for this month because of the fact I want to put out essentially twice the videos on YouTube that I normally do.

But I have decided that I will be watching Tales of the Jedi and getting those reactions out this month for you all. I've heard many good things from a handful of you and some of my close friends as well, so I'm kind of getting impatient and I want to watch them.

I will also be diving into some Clone Wars extra-stuff this month and sharing that too (these won't be in the weekly schedules, just shared here once they're ready).

I also want to watch my second viewing of Revenge of the Sith in preparation for that ROTS/Siege of Mandalore reaction video that I want to edit together. Not sure if I will get that out this month or next, but it is coming!

⭐ Tier Changes for 2023 ⭐

I am going to be writing a separate post letting you all know about some tier reworking that I'll be doing that will take effect in 2023. I'm making these changes as a result of the Patreon platform itself (new features coming, plus just how Patreon is set up as a platform) and to have my tiers be a bit more streamlined for folks.

If you are currently pledged in the FIRST THREE TIERS ($2, $4, $7 CAD), these changes will impact you, so make sure you read that post when it will be shared tomorrow.

Remember that lightsaber y'all got for me? I finally played around with it during my birthday stream! Click here to watch from the moment it starts. I will be taking some time soon to get the settings exactly how I want and then it will have a permanent home behind me in the office. I'm excited!

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My lovely mom and stepdad bought me a brand new couch and we got that all set up this past weekend! It is Ella approved. I also found a rug on Facebook Marketplace to fill up the space now that I don't have two couches anymore. 

My brother and sister-in-law AND my mom and stepdad both have this style of couch. It's a sofa bed with a chaise lounge. I love this style of couch because you can easily pull out the sofa bed into bed form and it essentially becomes a permanent foot rest for all 3 people who are on the couch. I love putting my feet up and was not able to do that with either of my two previous couches, so I'm very excited to be able to lounge properly in my living room now. I also really like the colour!

I'm really excited to set up my Christmas tree in that corner. I'm excited to get the rug placed. I can't do that until my last couch has been claimed. I have "sold" the loveseat (given away for free) and just waiting for someone to want my three-seater couch.

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To wrap up this post, I will share some of my photos that I took while Davy was here on his vacation.

Here is Lake Minnewanka, just outside of Banff. We were on the Lake Minnewanka Cruise that takes out on the lake for an hour.

Peyto Lake, along the Icefields Parkway in Alberta. It's shaped like a wolfs head. This lake is visible on a large boardwalk after a quick 5 minute walk from the parking lot on a paved trail. Very accessible!

Davy holding up the Canadian flag while standing on Athabasca Glacier. This glacier is one of six glaciers that connect to the Columbia Icefield. The Columbia Icefield is incredibly important as it feeds water to three different oceans - the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Arctic Ocean - and multiple cities and towns along the way to those oceans. The glaciers have been melting very fast for a long time, which is very scary. But it's still beautiful!

The last pre-season NHL game for the Calgary Flames, up against the Winnipeg Jets. Unfortunately, they lost the game. But it was still an excellent time and it was Davy's first NHL game ever, which was a big ask for him on this trip.

The view of Lake Agnes. This is a lake that takes about 60-90 minutes to hike up to and there is a teahouse at this lake where the staff haul in all of their supplies and haul out all of the trash. We managed to catch the teahouse on its last day of operating for the season and Davy and I were so lucky and got the last two bowls of soup for the day.

The view from the top of a little mountain called Bear's Hump in Waterton National Park in Southern Alberta. It's a short and steep hike (40 mins) but with rewarding views of the townsite of Waterton. It was very windy up here that day.

Natural hot springs, located on the side of a forestry logging road in British Columbia. We spent nearly 3 hours soaking here in the hot pools. One of the pools was much too hot for me to enjoy. I'm excited to return here sometime in the late winter for another soak now that I know where it is, as this was my first time here!

About to devour into some Tex-Mex.

Walking through the rubble of the Frank Slide, which occurred in 1903 when a chunk of the mountain broke off. They expect more of the mountain to come off one day and have a lot of monitoring devices at the top of the mountain to measure millimeters of changes. They have no clue if another slide will happen in one year or 1,000 years. But they know it will happen again one day.

This might be a weird photo, but we drove through Fort Macleod one day and I decided to take a photo of myself on the street where some of The Last of Us was filmed. I took this picture to send to my mod, Jake, who is the biggest fan of the games.

Here's where this street appears in The Last of Us trailer:

The show doesn't release for a couple more months, but now is a good opportunity to say that I will be reacting to the show for the CHANNEL instead of exclusively. This entire show was filmed in Alberta and is our largest production yet in film/TV (not just in Alberta but Canada-wide) and I already can't wait to see how they dressed up various locations throughout the province. So I figured that it would be a fun one to put on the channel because I have lived here my whole life and am very proud that we have had such a huge production that will likely be very successful.

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Well, that's a wrap on this month's newsletter! Thank you so much for reading, for being a part of this community, and for being such lovely people!