BTS #002 (Patreon)

Oh, good, it only takes 21 hours to render one of these spa videos. I was worried I'd get to play a game on a Sunday evening. 

Right now I'm "enjoying" some "random snow plows at 4:45PM" ASMR. While I appreciate the people who make our streets safe to walk on and keep society functioning, I also want to complain about how their jobs conflict with my job in the mornings, as they start as early as 4AM on some days. At least the non-stop screaming toddler (and I mean non-stop in the most literal sense of the word...) doesn't normally wake up until 6. 

So, since I've never really talked about how I do what I do, I realized, wow - people probably don't know the strict rules I have to follow to create content. I guess the most limiting aspect is timing. I only have from midnight to about 6AM to film videos as that is the only quiet time where I live (sometimes that is cut short by snow plows...) and I'm hoping this will improve in the future as we are looking to rent a semi-secluded house with no immediate neighbors. (The place still has to have good internet though...) That being said, in the evenings (his time) Jack and I always have quality time together so I try my best to wrap it up anywhere between 3 and 4, earlier if I have to cook. That leaves me with about 3 hours to complete a video. Why that's challenging? Because for one, my videos are pretty damn long... And two, there's no time for reviewing the footage and possible re-takes. So if I make an unforgivable mistake (by my standards) ... I have to scrap the whole thing. Yep, that's how that works. I just refuse to publish anything that isn't great. 

So this is how I manage to put so much pressure on myself for making videos. (Just between us, I'm also extremely ambitious and would love to make like 10 videos a month, but reality, why must you be so cruel...) That's when I think to myself, if only my neighbors would appropriately put their child to sleep at 8PM like every other parent in the world, I could possibly film two videos, or film one and edit it the same night... Argh, the untapped potential...

Other than that I want you to know I read pretty much everything you post here even though I may never respond. I had no idea you guys wanted to hear about what I'm up to so until now I treated my patreon as somewhat of an archive of all of my videos (post-rebranding). Something I get asked a lot is if I'll ever make German roleplays again. No, no I will not. I don't enjoy making German videos. I hate the language. The effort vs payoff is just too far in the negative... I started making German videos back when I was a small fish and could still incorporate individual requests. One of them was for making videos in German so I tried it out for a while. It sounded like an innocent, friendly request but it was a TRAP. Because as soon as I started, German peeps started getting really uncomfortably demanding, spamming me with questions (and threats) if I didn't publish a  video in German in 10 days... The comments ranged anywhere from "When is the next German video coming out?" to "Have you stopped making German videos?" and "Well looks like I'm unsubscribing cause you don't post German videos anymore" <- That one was exactly 10 days after the last one. My appropriate response was FUCK YOU. I don't enjoy it in the first place and this is what I get for trying to be accomodating? Borderline harassment and comment spam? No thanks, I'm not dealing with that crowd anymore... 

I could go on and on about how unreasonably entitled some viewers are and maybe I will in a rant post someday. Also, I hear that you guys would like to have more say in what triggers I use in videos. A lot of ASMRtists let you do that so that's a perfectly understandable desire. I've been shying away from that because I like creative freedom. I like doing what feels right to me, even if it's being extremely flirty in a video or some shit... And I look back later thinking "What the actual fuck have I done?" Lol... I've been thinking about how to make this more fun for you while at the same time making it not completely shitty for me. I don't wanna go down the same road again where I only make videos to please people to the point where I start hating what I do. I guess I'm still figuring out my own boundaries there. Like I don't really want to make paid content even in the form of "oh, you can only see this post if you give me at least $5" - I like my artwork being accessible to all. But I also want to thank you for supporting me with your hard earned money so I've started to introduce polls and early access. Eventually I'm sure I'll find something that you're happy with and I'm happy with. 

And lastly, why I'm anxious to start personally responding to you guys here - is because I have issues and I don't want you to start expecting things of me and then be let down. That's my defense mechanism because I'm very moody, I'm bad with consistency and commitment and as a result a lot of people left me and on bad terms because they had expectations I just couldn't meet. I still read your messages and I appreciate your kind and heartfelt words. I just don't want to entertain the idea that you can buy my attention. Going off previous experience, I feel like a lot of people do feel entitled to my attention, especially when they do nice things for me. I don't like feeling like I owe somebody because they gave me money or were nice to me in some way. I've also had people message me through etsy and even buy things from my store expecting to get close to me that way. It makes me really uncomfortable. My time, attention and love is not a commodity you can purchase. I know there's a line somewhere between letting you guys know that your words and thanks have reached me and playing into someone's manipulation. To sum it up, I've been avoiding all contact because I was scared of trusting the wrong person and dealing with this situation again. This is coming from a wounded heart trying to heal.

I'll stop here, this is as much openness I can take and as much trust as I can give you guys at the moment. Thanks for understanding.

//Ally