The Bloody Whale Ship Mutiny by a Sick, Sad Pirate King (PATRON-ONLY VIDEO)

Hello Deathlings!

Why do I keep returning to whale ships from Nantucket as a source of inspiration?

Knowing me (as many of you do) there are the whales themselves–large, scary. Then there’s the thirst for blood, oil, and glory in new American capitalism –the drama writes itself!  But it may all come back to the fundamental fear of what lurks beneath– in the dark…limitless....abyss.

SPEAKING OF FEAR.

(Can I nail a transition or what?)

Today we bring you a video that was indeed created WITH FEAR as we navigated the DARK LIMITLESS ABYSS we call YouTube. You might notice that this Patron-only video had the full production value and length of a main channel video. That’s because it was a main channel video.

But truth be told, this video on the whaler Samuel Comstock didn’t quite fit the vision we have for Ask a Mortician.

More truth be told, the last few months we’ve been struggling with the vision of Ask a Mortician.

NOT because we don’t know what we want to make. We know what we want to make:  death documentaries with deep, careful research, stories you won’t hear anywhere else, humor, dead bodies, empathy for survivors, calling to account of corporate perpetrators, and our scrappy but sincere viewpoint.

But in light of what happened with the Eastland video, it’s clear YouTube doesn’t have the same vision for what is good, valuable content. I’m not going to lie, YouTube suppressing something we created with so much love and care (with seemingly nothing controversial about it)? And now living with the fear that the same thing could happen to ANY video we make– with no warning? It’s tough. It feels capricious and cruel. (Much like life on a whaleship… sorry, I promise I’ll drop the nautical talk.)

We wish we were passionate about YouTube Shorts, or TikTok, but we’re just not. In fact some of you may have heard my cranky rants on how those are ruining our attention spans and brains.

It was a tough choice, but we’re going with our gut here, YouTube be damned (ya hear me YouTube?) We’re making this video Patrons-only (you lucky goobers) and continuing work on several long documentaries that may be destroyed by the lords of algorithmic darkness, but never by Patreon and never by all of you. THEY WILL NEVER TAKE OUR FRREEEEDDOOOMM.

Until we release our next main channel video, enjoy the story of Samuel Comstock. One man’s journey as he realizes his big dreams of...uhhhh...commandeering a whale ship and becoming the white pirate king of a Pacific island.

So don’t enjoy it too much?  😂

Onward!

xo

Caitlin

NOTE: We made this video just for YOU, Patron. We understand the occasional share with a friend, but please do not share it widely. Thank you!