Progress Update: A Blossoming

Hello, you lovely human beings~

This is a big one. I'm not sure how often I say that for effect around here, but it's just the truth here. It's unthinkable how much can happen in the space of a single week. Everything seems to be changing in a positive way all at once. It feels like I can breathe safely again.

I'm not sure I can get to all of it in just one post, but I'll try to hit the important stuff here.

Where are we?

We released the new video not four days ago, and although it hasn't ballooned the way our Lovecraft episode did, it's still doing quite well. It's #1 in Youtube's search engine for the search term "worldbuilding", which looks like a good omen to me. People are flooding in to participate in the competition, we've seen well over 100 new members on our Discord server, and (if you're new and you're reading this, a thousand thank yous) we've seen a handful of lovely new patrons!

This is all incredibly welcome. It would be at any point, obviously, but especially now. I'll be frank, we're kind of shambling out of a down period. For one reason or another, a lot of our patreon supporters have gone their separate way over the last few months, and our Slavic folklore series has only done okay in terms of views and ad revenue. On top of this, Discord has been fairly quiet for a while now.

But, in a whirlwind, that's all changing. The Patreon (as you've all seen) has been evolving very rapidly over the last few weeks, the competition is adding life and urgency to all our platforms, and with the promise of our partnership with DFTBA on the close horizon, I can just feel that we're moving in the right direction.

This very post is a part of it, in fact. Revising our patreon to be more connected with you guys, share more with you, etc., etc.

Suffice to say, it's been a good few days. We've needed it.

What's Next?

No matter how our numbers and our confidence swells, eyes on the prize. There's another video to be working on right now, and it should come together in relatively short order. I already know (essentially) what it's going to be about, I've just got to do a bit more research, cobble together some supporting evidence, and figure our how to articulate all of this...

We're also quite close to being able to open our Merch store with DFTBA. We only need to find the time to provide them with a few branding materials and we'll be good to go!

In terms of the larger patreon, all the revisions have made things tricky to manage, but we'll begin sending out new rewards as soon as possible. There's a lot of catch-up to do now that many patrons at various tiers are automatically unlocking rewards though, so forgive us if we're a bit sluggish with our delivery at first!

Anything Else?

Plenty, but it hasn't come far enough in planning/concept work for me to feel comfortable talking about it here. What I can tell you is that it looks like we're entering a sort of bloom. As we become more comfortable as creators and open up to our fans and supporters more, the show begins to feel more alive to us.

Things are good, and I think they can only get better from here.

Here's to the near future. It's going to be a blast, and I'm glad you'll all be along for the ride.

—Benji