End of June Updates!

Hey there my lovely lovely Patreons! Its just a regular bowl fulla soup here!

Its that time of month! Time... for UPDATES! 

But first - why is everything taking so long?
Truth is, Souperinos, its been a tough few months. Now that I'm nearing the completion of the first part of the SHAR video (which will be available to £3+ Patreons soon enough), I've noticed that nothing in it really suggests it should have taken this long. In fact, given the age of the game, the OBS files are small enough for my little rig to handle quite fine. 

No the truth is I've been going through a breakup the past few months (it's okay. I'm okay, we're okay. You guys aren't my therapist. My therapist is my therapist, and I talk it through with them) but the TL;DR is that a lot of mental energy has gone to the logistics of that and processing that emotionally. Energy's also gone to spinning up parts of my life which I'd noticed had wound down - which is a tough thing to do in the best of circumstances. 

This ties into the other thing, which is that I'm getting a bit tired of London. It's a great city and all, but places are usually less about the place than the people who make the place - and a lot of the people who made the place are now leaving. Which is sad, because I've only just started to boot some of those connections back up. Keeping them booted up is gonna take more effort now, and I presumed that I had more time than I do. The effort to keep them booted is worth it, in my opinion. And I'd encourage you to do the same. Its just accepting that it'll require more effort. 

The other thing is work. We're in crunch season because we're close to a project launch that keeps getting its launch date pushed back, and the company is doing "restructuring" which means whether there even is a job will be up for debate come November. And I'm not even sure I want to do the job anymore.

It's a bit of a cliché, but there really is nothing quite like *this*. There's nothing quite like getting to read about weird topics and go on these random deep dives and rabbit holes. There's nothing quite like putting a piece of yourself into something you make and throwing it out into the world -- and having people believe in you enough to support you doing that.

I'm quite cautious by nature. My job is good and, for the most part, pays well. It's just writing code and doing software development is never gonna inspire me or fill my soul with the same joy as doing this. And I'm wondering, even if come November I still have a proper job and take the pay jump the company offers at the end of a grad scheme, whether I take the risk and commit to this full time. Because this would, in my eyes, be the last career move I make. And I'd need it to be viable well into the future. It's not fully viable yet. But its close, and it could be. 

So, yeah. Tectonic shifts happening in my personal life. I want to keep you all aware of that, because I think its important to have some transparency over this thing you believe in enough to pledge money to. 

Anyway - the stuff you ACTUALLY want! The UPDATES!

New £10+ Patreons:
First if you're a new top tier patreon, hello! I will be working on your doodles if you have requested one - and these will be available via the shared google drive doc in the discord. I aim to have all the new ones done by end of July. Speaking of which...

SHAR VIDEO!
Part 1 is almost done. It's literally just animations and sound effects - adding in the typical soup polish! It'll be done by the end of July - possibly sooner. But I'm setting a firm deadline for the end of July because I go on holiday then (I have accrued a lot of annual leave)

Next Video Topic
It was a tight margin, but the next video topic selected by your £10+ overlords is about how we ended up in a nuclear-armed world. It will attempt to chart events from 1945 to 1958 with the signing of the US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement after Britain tricked America into thinking it had developed a hydrogen bomb (spoilers)

It's a two parter - the first part going from 1945 to 1952, with the first H-bomb test. The second will take us from 1952 to 1958. Both videos will also be sponsored by Ground News, a company run by a bunch of huge but very lovely nerds, and are very eager to sponsor a video on how we ended up in a world capable of blowing itself up several times over. 

The script for part 1 is in its first draft phase, and that will be made available to you lot pretty much after this is done. 

Bonus Content
The list of bonus content I owe you guys keeps growing, annoyingly. But one piece I did wanna share was the intro for the second most voted on topic for the next video: about how the decline of coal mining links to the decline of social democracy with a particular focus on the UK. I started working on it well in advance of the vote as a creative outlet, and think it would be good to share it with you

Also the guy who reads and critiques my videos and scripts had the idea of us doing commentaries on films and media - because the world always needs more white guys commenting on that stuff. At the suggestion of the wonderful Lemming, we're gonna be doing a commentary on the Simpsons Movie. A film which is good, actually. And maybe tangents on how mid-teen Simpsons, while nowhere near the standard of the golden age, is still pretty good. Expect those soon! 

Anyway thats all from me. Stay flexi out there! 

-- Soup