Update

Tl;dr the video I’ve been working on for 4 months is going into suspended animation so I can move on

Hi everyone, kind of a crappy update, sorry, but it is what it is.  For the last 4 months I’ve been working on a video about High School Musical.  I never saw it when it first came out, and after getting a bunch of requests for it and checking it out I felt like I had to make a video about it.

After starting the researching processes, I knew it was going to be a longer video, but by the time I got to writing the damn thing I quickly realized that it was 4, half-hour sections: a 2 hour video.

Needless to say, I felt way less guilty taking a month or two off if it was going to be so long.  I like to keep the videos at around the half hour length, so, for example, taking a month off to make the 1-hour Cats video kinda lined up in my head (half an hour per month; 2 months to make a 1-hour video).

Well, after 4 months, and what should be the final deadline for the video I really don’t like where it’s at, for a few reasons.  Firstly, this script deals with some really difficult and delicate subjects that I still really feel just aren't articulated exactly how they need to be with the current script.  I hope you understand me not feeling ok clumsily stumbling through several really sensitive topics.  Like I just *know* that I’m making some kind of mistake here, either I'm missing something, or I'm just not saying it in the right way, but I'm not one of these guys who has a master’s in philosophy and can properly express how what I'm trying to say needs to be said.  Which, in turn, has led to me spending a LOT of time trying to get it right and I'm still just not 100% that it's where it needs to be in it's current form.

On top of that, something really depressing has been happening all over my feeds across every platform.
After going after Les Mis and Cats and having those videos both be really successful (thank you!) I’ve gained something of a reputation online for being the guy that takes down musicals?  Especially movie musicals.

I don’t want to be that.

Normally when I say something is bad, I do it with the intention of defending something or someone else that has been wronged in some way.  Cats for example, is a…functional? musical, and the film didn’t feel like it even cared how or why Cats worked at all.  And while I didn’t like Les Mis, I tackled it from the perspective that Hooper was mistreating his cast and risked them being injured.  Same for the live-action Disney movies, it really felt like they were mistreating or misusing their actors and it felt like not very many people were bringing light to that.

And while I can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I do that thing where I swoop in to cringe-ly (sp?) white knight a bunch of people who didn't ask for help, I really worry that, like with most of my critics, a lot of people are going to look at the title and comment something to the effect of “yeah, take them down!!!1!!” which just isn’t the kind of energy or community I’m here to foster.

Like, with the release of Dear Evan Hansen alone all I’ve been seeing are people saying “oh I can’t wait for Sideways to take this down” which just gives me really, REALLY bad vibes.

So where do we go from here.  I’m not deleting the video from my harddrive (it’s a solid state but I just can’t get harddrive outta my head, sorry) so there’s (hopefully a very good) chance that it’ll still see the light of day and I can get this video out to you all eventually, but I can’t overstate how much it’s just become a black hole in my life sucking all my time and energy into nothingness, and I just need to move on.  Not just in terms of being able to make videos for the channel, but just so I can literally think about something else and be able to function as a human.

For you patreons especially, I appreciate you hanging on during this weird blank space in my career.  Obviously you haven’t been charged, and won’t be for any of this (and this is exactly why I don’t do monthly payments).  I’m looking at October 1st as a kind of hard-reset day to just work on something else.  Speaking of which, if you have any requests, I guess now would be a good time to comment them below for what is hopefully (fingers crossed!) going to be a new video in October.

And as always,

Thank you all for your continued support

I literally could not do this without you!