January Update (Patreon)

Hello lizards and other squamate reptiles,

First, the poll for $10 backers to decide the next patron content will be going live right after I'm done typing it. If you're one of them, check it out in a sec!

Second, we (Kat) are (is) in the process of collating everyone James Somerton stole from, so we can share the ad revenue from the last video with them. Since the video's release, a lot more eyes have been looking for plagiarism in those videos, so we're confident we'll be able to track most of them down. The work has been democratized, which is a clever way of saying "I don't have to do it all myself any more, hooray!!"

Some ex-Somerton fans have even started a website with transcripts of the videos and sources for what was stolen, which is super impressive. Take a look if you're interested, and I'm sure there are still contributions to be made. It's great having more people looking, so we make sure we don't miss anything.

Next up is collecting the contact information for the stolen writers, determining how we're distributing the funds, and working with them to get their money in the bank with the appropriate tax guidance. We didn't remotely expect this kind of attention (or money (dear god, 14 million views, what the hell happened here)) so we're handling this as a proper operation. We want to do right by the people affected, so we'll be up front with how we handle things once we reach that step.

After that's all sorted, it's back to making videos. Over the last few years I've started a lot of projects intent on making several videos out of it (RWBY, Vaccines, Fallout, Deus Ex)... and then decided to 'take a break' and started another thing without making the 'next' videos I openly teased (vampire the masquarade, more rwby, other aspects of vaccines, more fallout games etc). I think it might be nice to clean up shop and finish some of those!

...or maybe I'll start another extremely high-commitment project. Who knows. Maybe I already started one and you'll see updates on it soon. Maybe an animated short is being made in collaboration with a real animation studio. Probably not though. That sounds like I just made it up. Ignore that.

Pretty soon I'll finally make the video talking about the Brainmind Residency, where we funded a bunch of small independent creative projects. (wow I really hate taking youtube's money don't I) It'll probably go up on the second channel when it's done.

When the plagiarism-sorting is finished (and the next patron-only content is out), I'll post another update here about what's progressing. I'm glad to be working on stuff I can actually talk about while I'm making it now. Thanks again for being so patient with the last video. I'm glad that ordeal is (almost) over!

- Harry