Weekend Update (05/11/23) - Surprise! It's a book!

editor's note: this image is not mine and really doesn't have a lot to do with the book, but I thought it looked cool

Hello!

I was being my trademark self and holding off on any Patron updates because I set myself a specific work goal to hit before doing so and was struggling with it. The main thing is that I really didn't want to just come out with a vague 'big things are coming' post and then follow it up with more radio silence, but on the other hand, it's November and I also didn't want to put you amazing people through more of an unnecessary wait. If you follow me on Bluesky you may have some indication of what I'm about to talk about (just ask if you want a code, I've still got a few), but if not, here's what I hope is a pleasant surprise...

(Before you get to wondering, steady progress is still being made on the next set of videos to round out 2023 for the channel. Originally it was just going to be the Elemental video followed by a yet-to-be-disclosed longer topic, but then a recent South Park episode was released that it turns out became an interesting avenue for some other things I'd been wanting to talk about.)

My mind has been in a lot of different places lately. Like many of you, I've been very disturbed by the recent news of what is happening in Gaza, the horrors currently being inflicted on the Palestinian people, and frankly it pushed my mind far away from the kind of light-but-hopefully-insightful media discourse type work I usually put out. There's nothing like a state-backed genocide to really make you feel irrelevant in the endless waves of pain and suffering that much of this world is built on, especially when a lot of your work involves trying to inject some broad shift in the ways people think. So I was stuck, and in this funk I took a step back to reconsider my priorities. Put simply, I have always wanted to create as much positive change as I can within my own limited artistic means and for a while now that has been in the form of politically charged video essays, a type of content I've enjoyed making for a number of years and luckily a few others have enjoyed watching. At the same time, I've always had other ambitions, goals I generally put on the backburner out of concern that it was not what an audience desired or the most 'effective' use of my platform. The thing is, who is to say what is an effective use of a platform like mine? To avoid getting overly pretentious, video essays are basically a form of highly consumable art, and as art their purpose is to evoke something in an audience without the creator necessary controlling what that evocation is. A few of my oldest Patrons might even remember that this did not start as a strict video essay channel, beginning with an animatic pilot for an original series and even some later fiction work scattered in there. The missing piece of the puzzle has always been an overwhelming passion to get another thing like that out, in between the usual work that I produce. I'm happy to say that I have recently found this passion.

Black Vinyl

Black Vinyl is a novel project that has been playing in the recesses of my mind for about a year now, even if it has only really been for the past month that I've committed myself fully to its fruition - actually I might call it Death to Saturn or Saturn Burns, I'll leave it up to you all later. I cannot bear to say how much prose I have started in my near thirty years on this earth without concluding, but I can also say without a doubt that this is the strongest I have ever felt that I'll have something final to show off, with a significant story covering many topics that has very much crystallized in my mind since I first started putting it together. I'm pulling influences as disparate as Tarkovsky's Stalker to Brave New World to Hunter x Hunter to Succession, but in its broadest strokes this is a post-apocalyptic dystopian work, a genre that many of you know I have always been particularly fascinated with. I don't want to say too much more because it is still very much a work in progress, and this is where we get back to the start of this post. 

tl;dr, I wanted to wait until I had a first draft for the full prologue that I was happy enough to share, but with time ticking on there are just a few things towards the end that I still feel a need to work out. On the other hand, I'm excited by the prospect of involving you all with this creative process and especially showing off the 20+ pages already produced for anyone curious to see what I'm doing in my off-time alongside the usual content grind, and the reason things have been delayed over October. So, I was going to do that. I'm extremely open to feedback as someone still relatively inexperienced in this arena, and in fact I've opened up a sub-forum in the community discord for anyone who wants to direct their thoughts there. Mostly though, I just want to stop blabbing and post the thing, and let you all get on with your lives while I continue with the work you all pay me for. You can use the link below to access it, which I hope to regularly update with each completed draft of new chapters. And of course, no worries if this is simply not the type of thing you're interested in, but I hope that you'll give it a shot as I keep up with development on this side-project. More updates coming soon.

Read the prologue (so far) here 

Lots of love

Jack Saint

xoxoxo