Update 10/28/2019

Hey ya'll,

Hope all's well. Just wanted to touch base about where things are right now and the glacial pace of content at the the moment. Well, there is some truth to that. I talked about this a couple weeks ago on twitter, but to keep it super brief: Shortly after posting the Eva video, my mental health more or less completely tanked. Not even entirely sure why. Could have just been burnout from the Eva video, could have just been a stressful few months getting to me, could have just been brain juice bad dopamine no work. Suffice to say, I wasn't in an emotional or physical position to do a whole lot for a couple weeks. So that sucked. There was a surprising silver lining through it, though.

As you may know, I've semi-recently started playing Final Fantasy XIV. I talked about it on the previous episode of the Perfect Parry Podcast, I won't shut up about it on Discord, and I've generally talked about it to anyone who would listen. Fortunately, if there's one thing I can do when depression and anxiety hit, it's play video games (for better or for worse), and I played the hell out of FF14. I am equally proud and ashamed to announce that I have successfully finished the main storyline, reached level cap, and come to two steadfast conclusions:

1) Final Fantasy XIV may be the best single player game, both narratively and mechanically, that people are sleeping on at this exact moment.

2) Oh right, I love Final Fantasy, like, a lot.

FF14 is, among many other things, the most passionate love letter to Final Fantasy as an entity humanly possible. Fighting summons is your primary role in the story, you get a Chocobo companion you can fight with, I have a mount that's Bombs carrying me on a palanquin. It's great.

There's a lot more to FF14 than that, obviously, but taken as a whole, I'd be lying if I didn't say it managed to scrape some cynicism off my calloused fanboy heart. So I, without the time or energy to do much else, basically replayed most of the Final Fantasy franchise and long story short, I can now say that in the past year, I've completed 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 14, and am currently planning on working through 4, 8, and 12. It has really reawakened my love for these games in a way I hadn't felt in a long time. 

And I have Thoughts™. 

As such, I have begun working on a batch of smaller essays (in this case, meaning under 15 minutes) focusing on different aspects of Final Fantasy and it's various entries. This'll include some obvious things such as a recommendation video for FF14 and a direct analysis of Kuja from FF9 and an FF7 retrospective as well, but also some more niche topics like Advent Children and Tetsuya Nomura.

I currently have 4 scripts more or less ready to go with 4 more currently outlined and I expect to have more as I work through the remaining games. Especially 8. That game's, uhhh...something. And, given their similar topics and such, I feel it would be best for the health of the channel to try and post these in close proximity to each other, ideally on a weekly basis. The algorithm demands certain patterns and we gotta do what we gotta do. However, I also know that trying to dive straight into that without doing the proper footwork beforehand will, at best, lead to stuff that's rushed and not up to my standards and, at worst, would bring me right back to burnout. As such, I'm currently working on getting things in order before I begin on what will probably end up being referred to as the Final Fantasy series. Getting a certain amount of scripts ready to go, playing all the games I need to, having certain art assets made, etc. 

This'll allow me to get back to a regular content schedule, something I think would be healthy for both me and the channel. However, the major drawback is that it'll be a little while before things begin appearing. That footwork inherently takes time. As such, while I get things in order that in order for the Final Fantasy videos, I've begun editing Persona 5 Part 5 in the mean time. At the current pace I'm working, I expect that to be live within the next two weeks.

Also, Outer Worlds is fucking amazing and I'm probably gonna do something quick on that because that game has so much to talk about.

That said, I'm trying my best to be responsible. I am, by and large, feeling much better now, but I need to be responsible and take care of myself. Last thing I want is to slip back into exhaustion. These things are coming, and I will be trying my best to bring them at a healthy and consistent pace.

One last thing: I've been toying with the idea of 'making of' posts for the bigger projects. For stuff like the Eva and Persona videos, I always have a lot of behind-the-scene stuff I could talk about that went into the making of them, as well as little stuff I find cool like art assets and such. Kinda like what I originally envisioned the vlogs to be, but written. Let me know if that sounds like something you'd have interest in.

Love ya all,
Peace