July 2025 Patreon Update (& Discord Link)

Hey all! Sorry for the delay in posting an update this month, but it was a hectic last few weeks. It’s been a wild three weeks on the road, and I just got home last night back to my kitties and my fiancee, so I’ve been resting and I’m planning on taking the bulk of the rest of the week off to rest up and self-care a bit. BUT I did want to let you know how I’ve been doing because it was a really great couple weeks!

So first off, though, I wanted to start off again, thank you all. I hope you all are taking care of yourself, especially right now. Watching the news the past week; especially given whats happening in the US Congress right now for those of us (as I assume a good chunk of you are) living in the US is absolutely terrifying and I don’t know entirely how to process it other then to keep focused on what I can do. I know we’re all dealing with similar emotions, so just - thank you for supporting me during all this so I can focus on good things instead of struggling to get by. 

But let me tell you the good stuff. So, as I’ve said in other updates, the reason I was traveling for almost three weeks at the end of June was because I was in NEW YORK CITY, filming my episode of the upcoming Nebula anthology streaming series Sub/liminal. It was an absolutely wonderful experience - it was certainly the biggest and most intense directing project I've undertaken. While certainly, Nebula is not operating on the scale of Netflix, they’re definitely treating this with the weight of any other streaming series - so it was amazing to have the chance to step in as a director of an actual show, rather then as something that I had built from the ground up like on IDENTITEAZE. It was a wildly different task, but I learned a ton. The crew and cast were absolutely the best (at one point, the crew found out that I was a huge Trekkie, so they started to hide and pop out and surprise me with a Vulcan salute, which was the absolute sweetest!) I also got to work with the amazing John Rubenstein (whom many of you may know from Star Trek Voyager and Enterprise but has been around for many decades and has a Tony-award), Micheal Cervis (who I know from Fringe!) as well as Andrea Cortez and  Ali Corbin (who you may know from American Reunion). I put a picture from the shoot that I'm allowed to show you below. They were all so freaking kickass, I can’t wait to show you there performances. There’s still a lot of work to do in post-production, so the show likely isn’t coming out until next year, but it reminded me so much of why I love directing and why I’m aiming to do even more. Next up, working on getting my horror feature script funded!

I also spent a few days in San Francisco at the BayCon convention, where I participated in a few panels with my wonderful close friend, Spotted Giraffe, whom some of you may know from her work as a cosplayer in the Star Trek community or as a co-host of the Strange New Pod show. Adore her so much and BayCon was a ton of fun. Its one of the OG conventions, so it was cool to see what an older convention with a legacy was like as someone who has researched so much about that time but wasn’t alive for it. An absolute joy!

As I said, now that I’m back home, I’m going to rest up this week. I realized while I was on the road how much I had been working myself too hard to try to prep for filming Sub/liminal, as well as working on the book I mentioned, I’ve been working on, AS WELL AS doing YouTube. The same thing applies to my fiancée, Erin - she just finished her final test for her CPA credentials, and we’re waiting to hear back on her results to see if she passed. But she’s spent the last two years spending most of her free time studying for every test, so she’s been shocked to find herself again these past few weeks without having to study, as well as having time to herself with me not home. It's been healthy, I think, for both of us to now have time to slow down a bit. I think it’ll help us be healthier in more ways than one (like actually taking care of our bodies and not ordering take-out all the time because we’re so busy).

After this week, my plan is this. I have two YouTube videos that are mostly edited and ready to show. That damn Sex in Star Trek video I keep mentioning that is almost done, and also a video about the erasure of LGBTQ and maragnlized history by fascism and colonization. I’m going to work on both of those and then finally on the co-written essay about The Meaning of Andorids in Scifi with Aranock that we’ve been pushing back because I’ve been so busy. So, YouTube will be the focus for a bit over the summer.

Then, when fall comes back around, my new literary agent for my book comes back from his break, and we’re going to move full steam ahead on trying to resell my book that got dropped by my initial publisher. So fingers crossed that goes well! I am so damn passionate about this book - its literally a dream book for me - so I WILL get it out there! The question is just when and how, not if. I want it to have a big platform, but we’ll see how things go! But as frustrating as it was to lose my publisher, it honestly feels for the best to have time to step away from it and come back with fresh, more relaxed eyes in the fall.

And as for other things, now that Erin’s CPA is (fingers crossed) done or close to, we’re aiming to start earnestly focusing on leaving the US. It's getting more and more terrifying here, and on top of that, the reason we considered staying in California, the fact that I want to do more directing and filming, is becoming less relevant as filming starts to leave Los Angeles more and more. It earnestly feels like Vancouver or Toronto is a better fit anyway for my career, let alone our safety. So we’ll keep you updated. Additionally, I will be reviewing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in the coming weeks, as well as Peacemaker. Additionally, Aranock and I will likely have something to say about James Gunn’s Superman movie, considering our prior videos on James Gunn’s filmography. And don’t forget Frak This podcast.

That’s all the basics. But to sum it up, my fiancée Erin and I are going to try to slow down a bit this July to recenter ourselves and refind our energy. And then we’re going full steam ahead on cool projects like YouTube and such. Also, I don’t want to promise anything just yet, but Erin and I want to start livestreaming together yet again, more regularly like I used to do a few years ago, which seems more feasible now that we’ve got more free time. That probably won't happen until at least August, but that's the hope!

Anyways, adore and love you all. I’ll be sharing a preview of the two upcoming videos here on Patreon within the next couple of weeks or so, exclusively for you all here on Patreon, so keep an eye out. Love you all!

Jessie

Also, for those who need it, here is the Discord link - https://discord.gg/uX9zk9Q6