The Complete Patreon Essay Archive (Patreon)

So I’m completely indebted to this amazing service, but the one thing that is hardest for you when navigating Patreon is managing the UI / search functions on this site (plus, they show up in google results really weird). So I thought it was high-time to just have a whole big organized archive for easy searching!

I organized these by essay type, but instead of putting them chronologically, I’m organizing it by ones that I think might be the most fairly informative about larger subjects (or I just like them). Because in the end, to entire goal of all of this crud is just to be helpful.

Big Deep-Dive Essays!

The (Much Needed) Therapeutic Evolution of Media - a recent one that I think really just captures the important ways that storytellers are approaching conflict.

Fincher, MANK, and the Games of Being Gauche - Maybe it was the cryptic title and the fact that few people saw MANK, but this was probably the least read big essay I’ve ever written, haha. The truth is you don’t really need to see it? The entire essay is more an excuse to FINALLY write an in depth exploration of Fincher’s career and how his latest informs / betrays / upholds what he does. One of the few things I felt was really helpful.

The Emperor Only Has Groove - the immediate reaction to RISE OF THE SKYWALKER and unpacking how JJ Abram’s entire career of mystery boxing is a go-nowhere excersize. He always says he’s good at beginnings, but he’s not. Because beginnings are meant to be set-up. If you’re not setting anything up, you’re not beginning anything. This proves it.

Loading The Chambers of IN & OF ITSELF - a personal meditation on Derek DelGaudio’s incredible, haunting, moving stage show, now on HULU.

“Believing The Joke” The Importance of Baseline Reality in Comedy - Prompted by a discussion within Wandavision, this is a look at how tension and baseline reality, clarity are SO IMPORTANT to narrative comedy and why sketch logic often can’t translate.

Finding War & Peace with Zack Snyder - A look on Snyder’s entire career, along with the ins and outs of his DCEU work and the thematic hiccups.

ONWARD, Storycraft, and Building The Moment of Transcendence - A deep dive into Pixar’s story philosophy, some bold choices, the problems of certain framework.

Answering the Question: How Do I Become A Better Critic? It’s a question I get asked so often and always felt unable to really help, but thought it might be worth jogging down all my larger thoughts on the matter.

THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 and Aaron Sorkin’s Internal American Opera - I think Sorkin is a big old goober whose version of America pretty much exists in his own head and represents a now exhausted brand of liberal boomerism.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES is Nolan’s Camp Masterpiece - A Susan Sontag deep dive tied into Nolan? On Dear!

TENET and The Troubles of Tricking Yourself - an extension of the old Nolan piece and the push / pull of spending too much time keeping the audience behind the 8 ball.

Malick, A HIDDEN LIFE, and the Hypothetical Soul of Belief - a recent one about Malick’s career and the way religion plays into our collect morality, for good and ill.

The Real Adam Sandler Always Stood Up - A look at HUBIE HALLOWEEN believe it or not and the life and times of the actor who genuinely always was who he was.

The “Bad Guys Close In” Problem - A look at one of the most over-relied on tropes of action films and the lack of dramatic tension behind it.

Semiotics, Sabers, and Star Wars, Oh My! - How online jokes about “the piss saber” turned into a larger discussion of in text and out of text symbols and what that says about both storytelling and fandom!

Frozen II And the Movies That Hide Themselves - A deep dive on the ways that movies so often hide information and motivations behind vague non-mysterious mysteries and all the problems that come barfing out of that.

JOKER and the Problems of Narrative Framing - a big old criticism of “look at what you made me do!” thinking I.E. why you can’t treat films as some kind of real-life documentation, but instead a series of choices created by the authors (that are really about living out some gross inclinations). 

The Universal and Unique of MINARI - a look at my favorite film of the year and how we all have universal and unique experiences but with others and on our own.

I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS and the Jarring Fatalism of Charlie Kaufman - a look at how Kaufman is undoubtedly brilliant and provocative, but how I’m becoming increasingly divorced from his worldview and hang-ups.

THE WATERMELON WOMAN and the Movies that are Not “For” You - revisiting Cheryl Dunne’s 90’s classic and the examining your identity when watching films that express an identity so different from your own (which is a reductive way of putting it to say the least).

David Byrne, Adam Corolla, Dying Cowboys And Old Men On Bikes - A weird one about two radically different figures who represent the choices we make to change with the world or drag our heels against it.

THE KING OF STATEN ISLAND and the Struggle to be Present - I was surprisingly and deeply-moved by Apatow’s latest with Pete Davidson (CW: Suicide)

CATS! Same As It Ever Was and So Much More - A look at one of the silliest musicals of all-time and how it got one of the most absurdly horrifying, misguided revamps ever. Oh, Tom Hooper!

THE LIGHTHOUSE, Art Films, and Feelings of Servitude - a look at the way feelings, dynamics, and visceral imagery often emotionally drive us to “understand” art films in a way we may not logically. 

MORTAL KOMBAT and the Potential Pitfalls of Prequel-itis - a recent one on the dueling fan fiction instincts between expanding the worlds (good!) or getting trapped in lore establishment and the world as it is (not so good!)

MARRIAGE STORY and the Myopia of New York - Often devastating in its specificity, but I had the weirdest takeaway to this one with regards to the way the city can cause someone to overly hang onto their identity with it / hurt others in the process (but really, it’s true of any place one calls home).

The Troubling Truth of Streaming Numbers - I saw people talking about ballooned streaming numbers and I had to throw down on a lot of nonsense the industry puts up with this stuff, and more importantly, how it’s used for gross union busting ends.

Bill and Ted and the Odyssey of Comedic Direction - A quick look at the way direction and intention effected each entry of the Bill and Ted trilogy!

Jim Henson’s 80’s: When Movies Were Whiplashingly Weird - I’ll be honest, I don’t think this essay ever figured out what it was about! But I did like the subjects I was writing about!

Screw the Oscars! Here are the REAL Movie Awards for 2019 - I really don’t like year end lists except for the fact they are a decent place to talk about movies you didn’t write larger essays about. This year had thoughts on incredible films like Midsommar, Parasite, Last Black Man in San Francisco, etc.

Youtube Video Essays!!!

I started doing mega youtube essays with editor extraordinaire, Landon! https://twitter.com/LandonSDu Most of them are full “Why It Works” type breakdowns of the writing and conflict management in amazing movies.

Star Wars: A Scene By Scene Breakdown - taking a deep dive into one of the greatest films ever and ignoring all that Hero With A Thousand Faces misunderstood crap to look at the reasons it REALLY works.

Cinematography 101 - One of the most helpful things you will come across, I swear. It’s a glossary of all the kinds of film shots and how they effect an audience / what it communicates.

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse: A Scene By Scene Breakdown - A look at one of my favorite movies ever made, celebrated for it’s incredible style, but some of the best writing and relationship foundations are behind its success.

Mission: Impossible FALLOUT: An Action Breakdown - After writing for years, being able to actually SHOW the clips feels so revolutionary. This is a look at how to construct “the writing behind all the best dramatic action scenes.

Video Games

Hades and the Beauty of Attempt - What an incredible game. One that fully captures the spirit of what “trying” really means.

The Soulsy-ful Satisfaction of SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWENTY BAZILLION TIMES - an insanely detailed recap with what might be my favorite game of all time.

SPIDER-MAN: MILES MORALES and the Totally Troubling Conservative Cognitive Dissonance Dance - A silly title that is really just an examination of the head-scratching choice of a game that lovingly puts Black Lives Matter and cultural nuance front and center... and yet has you run missions for the cops to get ex-cons and even use criminal backgrounds and hacking to “identify” the perps in question. To say these are incompatible ideas is an understatement.

Surrendering To The DEATH STRANDING - a look at Hideo Kojima’s gonzo headspace / video game that some how crests into a  deeply moving experience.

THE LAST OF US PART II and the Problems of Being Included in the Apocalypse - a deep-dive into the game’s troubling structure, equally troubling backlash, and the thematic issues of depicting violence against queer people.

The Cognitive Pains and Pleasures of PERSONA 5 - one of the most enjoyable games that is also at times completely reductive and infuriating. But I STILL dream about getting coffee and studying.

Assassin’s Flack, Design Choices That Stack, and Not Looking Back - A deep look at the ASSASSIN’S CREED series. Yup, every game, and examining the ways little choices make a big difference, while accepting that its been treading water for so, so, so long.

The Ani-Me Series

You got me to watch anime! I love most of it! Heres my discoveringszs!

Neon Genesis Evangelion - So I did this before the series, but it was sort of the foundational experience that made me want to do this. Also, this piece had an amazing editor who I will thank until the end of time, but please understand I did NOT write that headline (I do not think anything terrible a "perfect year" for anything) and good granola did even that age poorly.

#1 Summer Wars 

#2 Your Name 

#3 Ghost in the Shell 

#4 Only Yesterday 

#5 Promare 

#6 Tokyo Godfathers 

#7 Akira 

#8 Perfect Blue 

#9 Paprika 

#10 The Girl Who Leapt Through Time 

#11 Millennium Actress 

TV Recaps

Watercoolering With WANDAVISION

Episodes 1 and 2, Ep. 3 Now In Color, Ep. 4 We Interrupt This Program, Ep. 5 The 80’s, Ep. 6 All New Halloween Spooktacular, Ep. 7 Breaking the Fourth Wall, Ep. 8 Previously on... , Ep. 9 Series Finale 

FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER

Episode 1 Flyin’ High!, Ep. 2 A Whole Lotta Captains!, Ep. 3 Power Breakin!, Ep. 4 Red White and Blood, Ep. 5 A Million Fuzzy Ideas, and Ep. 6 Oh No! 

THE MANDALORIAN

Season 1 - Full Season One Breakdown Here 

Season 2 - Chapter 9 - The Marshall, Chapter 10 - The Passenger, Chapter 11 The Heiress, Chapter 12 - The Siege, Chapter 13 - The Jedi, Chapter 14 - The Tragedy, Chapter 15 - The Believer, Chapter 16 - The Rescue 

THE LEGEND OF KORRA

Season 1 - Episodes 1-3 - Episodes 4-7 - Episodes 8-9 - Final Episodes 

Season 2 - Episodes 1-4 - Episodes 5-8 - Episodes 9-12 - Final Episodes 

Season 3 - Episodes 1-4 - Episodes 5-9 - Final Episodes  

Season 4 - Episodes 1-2 - Episodes 3-7 - Episodes 8-10 

Series Finale and Final Thoughts 

BOJACK HORSEMAN

I covered this show for Vulture for a few years (those recaps are here), but looking for a space to write about the new season was the reason I actually started this Patreon, for which I am deeply thankful. I’ve always been meaning to return to write the recaps on the very end of the series, but it’s pretty heavy stuff to say the least. I will when my brain can handle it, I promise.

Episode 601 - A Horse Walks Into A Rehab - Episode 602 - The New Client - Episode 603 - Feel Good Story - Episode 604 - Surprise! - Episode 605 - A Little Uneven Is All - Episode 606 - The Kidney Stays in the Picture - Episode 607 - The Face of Depression - Episode 608 - A Quick One, While He’s Away 

Smaller Subject / Short Note Essays

A Short Note on Episode 6 of Watchmen - an incredible episode, but one where I still examine the problem of “one take” directorial instincts and how they may make something feel "graceful and masterful" but subtly prevent the most dramatic version of events possible.

Have you seen The Chris Gethard Show’s One Man’s Trash? - Basically a recommendation for this magic 40 minutes of television and an endorsement of the show / Gethard’s work all together.

A Short Non-Spoiler note on HOW TO: WITH JOHN WILSON - Same kind of recommendation for HBO’s new series that’s somewhat in the vain of NATHAN FOR YOU.

Movies to Watch: ATTACK THE BLOCK - Just briefly remembering a classic.

A Short Note about THE BATMAN, The Trailer, and The Aesthetics - I wrote a trailer reaction! It happened! But mostly it was an excuse to talk about aesthetics.

the lost year.  - Just writing about a shitty pandemic year and talking to you about how you’ve been.

Holding Anger In The Up is Down - same kind of thing as as above, looking at the fascist insurrection of 1/6 without any analysis, just talking about the feelings of intense anger as a result of it.

A Trip Through Random DVDS I bought from 1998-2005 - a goofy look at a few weird films from the only era where I ever collected movies!

Please let me know if any of these links break for whatever reason and I’ll keep updating this archive periodically!

But sincerely hope it helped.

<3HULK