lindsayellis

Update, and we have a store now!

Hi all,

So you may have noticed that we didn't release anything last month. I could be coy about it but the truth is I was busy having my government-mandated semi-annual YouTuber meltdown, and I desperately needed to step away for some time. But we are working on some new stuff that we're pretty excited about, and I hope you'll feel like it's worth the wait, as well.

Thank you all for your patience, and for those of you who've had to scale back your contributions to us, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO APOLOGIZE. First of all, I feel like a dick that I wasn't able to keep up with the schedule, and second, I'm not entitled to anyone else's money. I'm grateful for everything you've chosen to give.

In the mean time,  we've partnered with the fine folks at DFTBA to create a merch store! It only took me ten years! Now you can own physical artifacts that reference highly obscure in-jokes! Broadcast to your friends that you are losing to a bird! Right now, it's exclusive to patrons only, and patrons all get 20% off everything in the store.

The password is beastzoned20

edit: link for those for whom the link is being difficult - https://store.dftba.com/collections/lindsay-ellis-patreon-pricing

Patreon update starting October

Hi everyone, Nella here with some news!

TL;DR, we’re switching this Patreon to charging per month starting October. 

For Those Still Reading: 

Starting October, we’ve decided to change this Patreon from charging patrons per video to charging by the month. One, so no one has to worry about getting charged more than once per month. Personal budgets are hard enough. Two, it gives us a little bit more leeway in terms of finishing projects rather than being slaves to the end of the month deadline. We’re hoping this will be less pressure for everyone involved. 

Thank you for all your support so far! 

Nella et al.

YouTube: Manufacturing Authenticity (For Fun and Profit!)

Brought to you by Squarespace.

The End of the Era of the Movie Musical

And now for something completely different!

Disney's Remake of Beauty and the Beast

Thanks, I hate it.

Marxism | The Whole Plate

oh boy!

The Whole Plate: Queer Theory

IT'S STILL PRIDE MONTH IT COUNTS 

Edit: Wow, that is embarrassing - I uploaded the wrong file! Am in the process of uploading the correct file, but be patient - this may take a while.

Oh No Another Star Wars Video Essay: The Ideology of the First Order

I'm sorry but it's my turn to talk about a Star War.

Yes I realize "ideology" is spelled wrong we're working on it.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Warners (Part 3/2)

UPDATE: Big apologies for deleting the last post, everyone. I uploaded it vis-à-vis the mobile app, and it subsequently didn't charge Patrons. Please disregard the last email, and thanks for bearing with us.

So this is a bit of a draft and also pretty experimental but here we GO

The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Studios

So last night, I got super puking sick and was in bed all day, so where I meant to fine tune this sucker today, this is the... 95% there version. A draft, so to speak. It still has a few placeholder cards and errors with sound. But the finalish version is exporting now and will be up in a couple hours. 

Edit: Okay, now it is updated to a final-ish version.

The Hobbit: A Long Expected Autopsy

Part one of two. 

We're going on an adventure!

For those of you who saw on Twitter that I'm getting on a plane tomorrow to fly 20+ hours to where it's literally summer... well, I wasn't kidding. 

So tomorrow begins our sojourn to the island nation of New Zealand to shoot our video essay-umentary about the Hobbit on location, the reasons for which will become obvious, well, upon its release (beginning in late March). Thank you all for your continued support, allowing us to put in real effort for our productions (including buying decent equipment and hiring a skeleton crew). I promise the Hobbit feet make sense. Actually I don't. But one never knows.

We are going to try to utilize Patreon's newfangled Lens app while we're there to give a live update for patrons (keyword: try. Obviously I've never done it), and I'm sure nothing will go wrong and everything will be fine, unlike with the Hunchback shoot where we missed our flight back from Paris.

Yeah. That happened.  

My Monster Boyfriend

This ended up being a way more expansive topic than I realized, so rather than doing something comprehensive I end up touching on a lot of subjects that deserve way more time than I can give here. 

Also I love how not here for this Kong is in the thumbnail.

Bright: The Apotheosis of Bad Worldbuilding

I never want to think about orcs again.

Dear Stephenie Meyer

I even talk about an anime in this one, which is a thing I never regret doing.*

*I always regret doing.

Gauging interest

Part of the fun fun fun of content creation is the mixed messages you get - I've had several people lament that I haven't done any Loose Canon episodes in a year, but by that same token I've gotten way more growth and engagement in this last year by doing freeform style video essays, and just as many people seem not to miss it. So while building a schedule for the first quarter of '18, whatchy'all think?

Obligatory Post Regarding New Fees

Several of you have already messaged me apologizing for having to cancel pledges in light of Patreon's questionable new fee schedule, which includes a 2.9% service fee as well as a $0.35 per pledge - in effect, the fees are now being shifted more to the patron rather than the creator. 

First of all, no one needs to apologize for having to make changes or cancellations to their pledges. At the end of the day, you give what you feel is worth it to you for as long as you can, but I do wish people wouldn't apologize for it. It's you who is helping ME create content, not the other way around. 

But the other truth is, these fees have always been there - the reason my pledges start at $2.00 instead of $1.00 is because of that nearly 40% that gets eaten on $1.00 pledges. I imagine Patreon thought they were helping creators that rely on large amounts of $1.00 pledges by making it so they get 95% of their pledges instead of the ~60% they were getting before. What they seemed to fail to take into account was how this would effect patrons who support large numbers of creators with small pledges. 

So, as Hank Green pointed out in a series of now-deleted tweets, there was no way patrons could know what the fees were that creators eat. Thing is, I don't think the onus is on the patron to know about these fees--creators like me have simply factored that into our monthly budget. If people pledge, for instance, so much per creation to me, I budgeted to see about 85% of that. That's just a part of the deal we accept by using this platform.

I think they wanted to be more transparent about just how much goes to fees and maintenance (like that would be a good PR move), but if the intent was to give "more" to the creator, all it did was just show how much of small pledges gets eaten up by fees. Hey, not only do you know, but you've incurred the fees! Aren't you thrilled.

The thing is, even though I'm not happy with this decision, there's not much I can do about it other than whine on Twitter like everyone else. If there is one thing PatreCon really impressed upon me, it was how much they do not care what I think about the way they structure their platform unless it's blind, effusive praise. Even if Patreon assumes that some patrons will make some choices about who they want to support. (i.e., if they supported ten creators at $1 each, they now support 6 creators at $1.35 each), I think the vast majority of creators would rather patrons don't have to choose who matters more to them because of a new fee system.

But if you do need to make changes to your pledges or jump ship on the platform altogether, you don't need to apologize for it. This is a voluntary service built on mutual goodwill, and I always appreciate what you can contribute, for as long as you can. It would be right shitty of me to start having ~*~expectations~*~ now. 

In short, I'm not surprised, Patreon. I'm just disappointed. Platforms are not your friend, no matter how much they try to position themselves as such. 

Yours in dead-inside-ness,

Lindsay

Stranger Things, IT, and the Upside Down of Nostalgia

Like how I got that in just under the wire?

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Genres Tell No Tales

Michael Eisner's last good business decision was one he really did not want to make.

The Case for Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame

It's here.

Updated: Revisionist World of Disney

Hello, all -- here's the updated version of the Saving Mr. Banks episode. Unfortunately, the original posted here was edited on Lindsay's travel computer, which wasn't cooperating with some of the footage we shot at Disney World (namely, Pirates of the Caribbean). The changes from the original come in at the beginning and at the 18-minute mark. You won't be charged for this update.

On behalf of both Lindsay and myself, I'd like to give you all a gigantic thank you for your continued encouragement, thoughtful critiques, and support. Our patrons are the reason we've flourished and why we get to create content that is both exciting and fun to produce (and hopefully just as exciting and fun to watch). From the bottom of both of our hearts--thank you. We couldn't do this without you. 

Happy watchings!

Angelina M. 

The Wonderful World of Historical Revisionism: Walt Disney, Mary Poppins and Saving Mr. Banks

Owing to technical difficulties, this ended up being a hasty edit - I'll update this post tomorrow. As for now, I have given you my soul (and eaten myself sick at Disney World) and I am dead.

Framing Megan Fox | The Whole Plate: Episode 7

She was framed, I tells ya.

The Whole Plate - Episode 6: The Male Gaze vs. The Men

Wow, another one a day later? How'd you manage that, Lindsay? Poor planning, my friends!

See, the Guardians episode was scheduled to go up last week, and the Whole Plate ep was scheduled for today, but the Guardians episode ended up being a much more arduous undertaking than I thought it would be (seriously, it got reworked a LOT). But since we've got two videos on the docket for September as well, these both have to get out at the end of the month!

So the result is not only that you get this video early, you get this video a week early! Am I proud of that? Is that how it should be done? No! 

Will we get back on schedule in September? .... :D Stay tuned!

Guardians of the Galaxy

I'm not sure how to pre-empt this one except for with an apology - this was supposed to come two weeks ago, and it didn't. And I have no explanation for that other than... I just wasn't happy with the episode, and I kept working on it.

Oh, and there is also a THE WHOLE PLATE episode I was also working on, and it's coming out tomorrow.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that a huge part of the delay for this episode is YouTube's SHOCKING new copyright algorithm - it would fucking figure that the first video where I consciously decide not to show my face would also be this post H3H3 lawsuit world where WOW all of a sudden, copyright bots are like a THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD metaphor that I cut out of this episode.

You know, the guardians? The ones with the legs that hunt you down? Well, anyway...

I'm uploading this at 11:14 PM EST, and I'm working on the next TWP ep to go up before midnight tomorrow. And I feel, well, yikes about this because, if nothing else, it's not terribly professional. Moreover, given how long this episode has taken (I've been writing it since the movie came out) one would think I'd be at least okay with it, but, no. 

I'm hoping that y'all, the people who are funding this venture, get more gratification from this episode than I did.

Woof.

Pocahontas Was a Mistake (And Other Disney Hot Takes)

Brace yourselves...

Feminist Theory Part 1 | The Whole Plate Ep. 5

LET'S DO THIS 

The Whole Plate | Episode 4: Genre

what is the genre of these movies even

Next episode: FEMNISNSISMS

Thank you (also, thank you)

Hi all,

I want to thank everyone for taking the time to respond about the Mel Brooks video. I'm in the process of incorporating some of the suggestions, and I hope to have the final version public tomorrow morning.

But in a broader sense, I wanted to thank all of you for helping fund this venture in the first place. I was talking to a friend today about how different it is now from the days when I was reliant on ad revenue - it was all about how much you could get out, how fast (which is a lot of why I'm not super proud of some of my old work). This model means not only that I'm not doing 100% of the work alone (because I can afford to pay people), but that we can focus on quality over quantity, and spend the necessary time on research, media cultivation and writing. And honestly? I find it much, much better this way. Angelina and I worked really hard on the Mel Brooks episode, and in many regards it has come to feel like a team effort with all of you guys, as well. Thank you so much for your support as well as your sharp insights - we really couldn't do it without you guys. 

Mel Brooks, The Producers, and the Ethics of Satire about Nazis

Hey fam, I'm looking for feedback on this one -

The file you're watching won't be the final version the public on YouTube sees. Normally I'd just put it up early here and then later make it public, but this is a much more sensitive subject, and I don't want to just preach to the choir. So if you do have feedback (especially if you are of The Tribe - I have had some sensitivity checks on this but am always open to more), I'd like to hear it. Angelina and I worked really hard on this, but beyond that, we don't want just to preach to the choir - we're hoping to reach a broader audience, not just  confirm existing biases. So I may yet make (slight) changes in the interest of the Greater Good. Thank you all!!