Upcoming projects update (more non-YouTube projects) (Patreon)

Hey pals,

I've been experiencing a lot creative dissatisfaction with YouTube recently, and in response to that I've been working towards a lot more work that isn't on YouTube. From now on, my patreon is going to be funding all my creative endeavours, and while I'll still be making YouTube videos, it's only going to be a part of what I'm doing. If you want to understand my feelings on it, you can pretty much watch this video. I've been struggling to upload the video I'm most proud of so far, because YouTube's copyright system keeps blocking it on behalf of the people whose movies I am trying to promote... YouTube sucks, the platform is bad and full of nazis, the copyright system is pure piss, the community is, bad.
I'm not quitting Youtube, but it's important to me that from now on YouTube is one of the things I do, rather than my whole thing. I want to use the online space in a way that is creatively satisfying to me, and where possible improves people's material reality, and YouTube has been and continues to be helpful in that, but it's not everything, and there are many, many problems. Just wanted to update everyone on what I've been working on lately and what I'm going to be working on for basically the rest of the year.

Right Now:
As most of you know, the second Patreon Goal Reward Video, The Matrix Sequels Are Good, Actually, is now up for $2+ patrons, and will premiere on youtube next month. In the mean time I'm trying to finish a video about Cyberpunk 2077 that I've been working on for a while.

Soon:
In June, Natalie and I are hoping to release a video about Travellers and their historic relationship to the state, and what it means for everyone else as well. I also have a shorter video reviewing my Snyder Video and talking about what I would do differently if I was making it again now.

Later this year:
Some video projects that don't have firm release dates: I have a video-poem project similar to my "Being Seen" project from last year; As ever, I am working on new episodes of Monster Men (Vampires, Terrorism, The News Media); I want to at some point do some more political videos, one on ecofascism and one on terfs; I have plans to do more video game analysis videos, inc. more on Disco Elysium, Alan Wake, Witcher and others.

We just hit another patreon goal, $4000, for which I promised a video about the philosophy of posting. That won't be out for a little while, because the script is going to be kind of complex, but I expect to do that some time before the end of the year.

Big Projects, Non-YouTube Projects:
A Cyberpunk Manifesto. I wanted to separate out one of my video projects to talk about here, because it's firstly going to be a really big project and also because its publication outside of youtube is going to matter too. I'm working on a manifesto for the online left, working title: A Cyberpunk Manifesto. I expect the text version will be significantly longer and will go into more detail, but I will be publishing it as a video as well. There are several key things I've noticed in my time online that I want to address, and because I have a hopeless optimism about the power of the internet to do real good and aid the struggle for communism worldwide, I want to offer those critiques, and talk about ways that people can use the online space in a positive way too. I have a lot of reading on my reading list to do for this, and I'm going to be collaborating with a couple of friends to help get it right.

Podcasting. As hopefully most of you know, I've been collaborating with That Jess to make a series about TTRPG play and design, called Rolling With Rainbows, and I'm currently recording the first mini-series of a podcast under the same name. The podcast Rolling With Rainbows is going to be Jess and I experimenting with different RPG systems, and to do that we're making little limited series playing different systems with different sets of guests. In the first series I'm playing Vampire The Masquerade, but we're planning some Cyberpunk, Star Wars RPG, The Service, Moonpunk, and one-shots of smaller systems too. As well as doing all this, I am joining a friend's TTRPG podcast (more details about that on my twitter soon), so podcasting is going to take up a good amount of my time.

Streaming. I've been doing streams for long time now, and it's started to regularly make me money, which is really exciting and cool, but part of the reason I bring up streaming here is work that I put towards streaming that isn't on stream. When I stream games, all the work is on stream, which is great, and pays for itself. However, there are regular streams I have been doing that I've struggled to find time for and I want to deliberately make that time. One is a fun regular stream called The Posts Stream where Natalie and I, and sometimes friends, come on to discuss the state of posting online. We've taken a break from that for a while because we couldn't take the time to prepare properly for it each week, but I'm hoping that now my biggest project is finished we can get back to it. The other is The Politics Stream which I do with Jess. As you may have noticed, political streaming is very popular but also, very very very BAD (not to get too general). The reason for this is that politics streamers often built their content around quick turnaround and clickbait to appease platform algorithms, which obviously doesn't contribute to good political discourse or in most cases even result in the streamer having a base-line valid politically literate opinion. With the politics stream I've been aiming to produce discussions that can be watched back at later points, and to do that I've been doing a lot of research. I generally need to read half a dozen articles and maybe even a book per each segment of these streams, which is why we were spacing them out for every two weeks. As with the posts stream, this has been on a break but hopefully will be back regularly soon. As I said, the work that goes into preparing these streams is not on-stream work and therefore doesn't attract donations & twitch money, and also is fairly time-consuming (although, imo, very satisfying creatively & intellectually). That's why I wanted to draw attention to it here while talking about the work that this patreon goes towards supporting and the reasons I'll be working on youtube less.

Watch Parties. This deserves a mention, because it's a feature of the ($5+) patreon discord and it's definitely something that this patreon pays for, but it's not that time consuming and is mostly just very fun. I'm doing a watch part tonight with Jack Saint, it's gonna be a blast.

Game Development. This is the thing I'm absolutely most excited about. Natalie and I have several game projects that we want to make, and one (The Duchess: a lesbian horseriding romance game) that we've actually begun the early stages of already. There's a big project we're working towards, and we hope to use the smaller projects as a learning experience to get there, but something I've noticed is that all the work I've managed to get done on game development so far is in my down time when I have big youtube projects out the way and don't have to start other projects yet. This has made me realise that (A) I need to structure my work better so that I'm not working flat out until a youtube video is done, and (B) I need to do a bit less youtube if I want to ever actually make any games. 

So I'm doing those things, and I'm very very excited about all these cool creative projects, and I hope you all will continue to support me and check out all of them as they come out, as well as understanding that some of this work is going to probably involve some gaps where nothing is coming out but I'm nonetheless working very hard.

I've left the plan for video releases above deliberately vague, especially the later on in the plan we get, because I intend to spend more time on all these other things as time progresses. Once again, I'm not quitting or leaving YouTube, but I am going to put more and more of my energy towards other things until I reach a place where I'm really happy with what I'm making and the online communities I'm interacting with.

Thank you all so, so SO much for supporting my work these last few years. It really means the world to me. My BPD, my queerness, and let's be real at this point my aggressive commie bullshit, have all made me quite unemployable at this point, and I can't express in words how much I appreciate the astonishing kindness of you all in supporting me to follow my dreams. Thank you again x

Sophie