Once Upon a Time about 4 30 one morning I got a silly idea for a YouTube short
about a writer auditioning for a fantasy heroine
good afternoon
hello
but the fantasy heroine who showed up was not a 16 year
old waif who could inexplicably shoot a warbow
how old is she
uh [I'm 36]
oh no no
but a 36 year old with two kids who was completely done with this this then evolved or possibly
devolved into gently poking fun at other romance and fantasy tropes and kind of also fan fiction
hello
oh you're hurt excellent tell me all about it and then evolved again into basically
what would happen if dnd was played by two characters from Yes Minister
Leo stay down!
Leo was it?
assuming that one of the characters in Yes Minister was a rabid shipper I even
threw in a little bit of character development
Caroline please stop pushing this
fine I will leave it be
and it turned out that a certain section
of the internet is as the kids say invested in the story now
which I think is what the kids say when they like things
actually you haven't seen that one yet but stick around to the end and you shall I mean
I have basically recreated early 2000s fanfic in video form but shhh most of them are too
young to remember that so I'd like to first thank everyone who shared in my joy because
making the series has been pure serotonin and I love it very much not the subtitles
part the subtitles take forever but the other parts thing about shorts is they don't actually
make any money apparently YouTube is rolling out monetization at the start of next year sometime
but I got eight times the views that I got in the previous month and made less money so yeah
gotta make the videos and keep the lights on luckily I enjoy those videos too so it's all
good and fortunately I have my channel members and patrons who support the things I do regardless of
what they are which is fantastic I thought I'd answer a couple of your questions about
the series and also let you know that if you are a regular viewer who doesn't watch shorts there
will be a compilation of the first dozen-ish episodes up soon which you can watch I mean is
still vertical format but they're all one after the other in a long video so whatever's good for
you said dozen-ish videos basically comprise season one and season two will be coming along
shortly when I figure out roughly what they're doing I've already started writing it I've got
three episodes so far it's gonna be fun there are gonna be costume changes side note I apologize in
advance if the image goes out of focus on this video my camera has recently stopped allowing
me to flip up the screen and so I can't do things like manual focus while looking at
myself which is a bit of a problem but the new camera is coming so it's all good first question
can hedgehogs eat cheese and if so what kinds
no hedgehogs can't digest Dairy it gives them diarrhoea you should give them cat or dog food
instead that was not in any way relevant but people would be sad if there wasn't some kind
of cheese reference so one word a couple of you wanted to know why Rosamund couldn't be stabbed
through mail because mail is traditionally not very good against stabbing so in the
second episode Rosamund wrenches her shoulder while she's wearing a mail shirt and now she's
worried because she's not going to be able to get that mail shirt off without causing
herself some discomfort and the writer says could you not maybe get stabbed instead now
you can be stabbed through mail it's better than nothing against stabbing but it's not amazing but
if you're being stabbed with training weapons through mail you're probably doing something
wrong that is a degree of nuance that the writer probably lacks however at least at
this point whatever happened to the second Bandit I think we can safely assume that if
he wasn't killed he was at least incapacitated by Leo when he pulled him off Rosamund I mean
there are future career options for Bandit number two if he survives but we'll see.
what sort of lawyer is Rosamund retaining to prevent her husband's inheritance from being
stolen ah well in this instance a lawyer just isn't going to cut it hence the mission that they
are on but that is a plot detail that we will get to this one's quite long I'm gonna have to read it
I would like it if Leo was revealed to have some completely mundane feminine
talent like he can sew enough to mend trousers or something
he does in fact know how to sew at approximately the same level
as rosamund's 11 year old daughter knows how to sew which is to say roughly as well
as Rosamund herself does she can mend things that's something you need to be
able to do but she's not really keen on sewing as a recreational activity
I got a lot of questions about the hot childhood best friend so let me summarize
yes we will see him again however he is at the location that Rosamund and Leo just left so we
can't see him again unless he somehow turns up at their destination for some reason or they
go back to where they started or he ends up at a third location that they are both going to
will there be bodice ripping no I leave that to your febrile imaginations also
why would you rip the bodice someone's gonna have to sew that back up you know
several people expressed a desire to borrow slash steal some of the ideas in the series and write
their own stuff to which I say crack on if it's fan fiction then it's fan fiction of a thing
which is itself a fan fiction of troops I'm not quite sure how that works it's very meta though
dear Rosamund did you get to pack two knives if not do you have to
eat using your stabbing knife or stab using your eating knife
don't worry she brought several knives not that she'd be averse to stabbing
someone with her eating knife but it's not really weighted for throwing so
a couple of people ask are you going to write a novel or when is the novel coming or I need this
as a novel that's not a question but anyway in the nicest possible way if you want one please
don't say that and the reason I say that is that every single time in my adult life I
have attempted to write a long form story I get to about 5 000 words and then I get stuck for
these shorts there is a separate file labeled Rosamund and in that file there are just over 6
000 words of scenes which I needed for chronology but will never actually appear in the series or
scenes that will be described in the series but I wanted to write out in full to figure out how they
went if I think about it as a whole project like try to conceptualize it my brain freezes but if I
just think about the next thing that has to happen for the video then we're somehow okay so I don't
know if this will ever turn into any kind of long form content but if it does it will be because
I finally managed to work through the short form content to get me the plot that I needed
let's do three more does the heroine's recognition of being in a fictional
narrative change her response to the various storylines and plot points that arise?
Yes to an extent yes but the main plot not so much because the main plot is what's really
preoccupying her even though Caroline doesn't seem to really care about it at all she is not here for
bonus romance Shenanigans while she's trying to secure her kids inheritance and so if she is in
fact reluctantly going along with some of the tropes it's only because they either make sense
to her or because she's trying to keep Caroline happy so she can bargain for concessions later
oh here's a good one that's gonna make you mad my question is what happened between
Rosamund and Leo that made him her hot enemy what forced them to work together
writer keeps calling him hot anime but the only grudge Rosamund seems to have
against him is under no circumstances will I let you be a love interest
those are all excellent questions
to which I know the answers but I cannot give you the answers at this point in the story to
paraphrase Brandon Sanderson you're gonna have to watch and find out the answers entertain me
though so I hope they will entertain you too last question is probably my favorite because it is
I can't tell if you like or hate these tropes
and that's very interesting to me because the series has been loved
by people who love the tropes and by people who hate tropes and so
I'm about to make approximately 30% of you really mad because honestly
I love this stuff
oh no we're Partners in the police force but for some arbitrary reason
we have to go undercover and pretend that we're married
Say It Isn't So I've never really cared for you but now we have to spend arbitrarily large
amounts of time together for some reason and maybe you're not so bad after all
oh shoot we've got such a great working relationship and we're such good friends
but I think I've fallen in love with you and that's really bad because we're
literally in business together and also why would you be in love with me anyway
I live for the shiz I really do I know it's very popular in some circles to think that
tropes are bad or romance is bad or whatever and there is an entire universe of fiction
so if you don't like those things then that is totally fine but honestly this stuff is my jam
and the reason I love the liaden universe is because I love the space adventure stuff but
I also love the Quasi Regency romance stuff that's happening at the same time and I did
just re-watch the entire BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries so I have all of
the feelings about that too can you tell never mind for now here is the extremely
meta episode 12 of the fantasy heroine series I wish you great joy of it and I'll see you soon
Rosamund you will never guess what
you finally decided to name the city we just traveled to
much better than that we're famous on the internet oh the internet is
Caroline I literally live in your head I know what the internet is
although I must say they do all think you're going to stab me
can't say I haven't been tempted
but they're also invested which I think is what the kids say when they like things
well I'm happy for you
also at least half of them seem to get your name wrong
I'm sure they'll pick it up
well since we're now internet famous I think
we should continue planning out what happens once you arrive in
yes
Quayforth where you are to deliver Queen Eudosia's Declaration of truce to King roland
and I assume that King Roland is going to declare a ball to celebrate
and it's a masquerade too
of course it is
oh and in response to the question will we ever get to see Leo the answer is I don't know yet
we'll see