TPN'S Q&A
Hello all.
In the past year or so, I’ve thrown out the idea of a Q&A video a few times…
...but never actually followed through with it.
Since September was the last time that I really spoke to you directly about the channel and
disorganized hurricane inside my own head
I figured it was about time.
Before we get into that though, I wanted to let you know about a couple things
we’ve been working on behind the scenes.
After being in limbo for a while,
our official website is now alive and kicking,
thanks in no small part to the tireless efforts
of defrostedrobot to get it going.
The site aggregates and organizes pretty much everything from me and the channel
that has been scattered over the web and across social media.
We have all the videos handily organized,
a store with all that sweet sweet merch
“I sold out baby!”
Including a new Sisyphus inspired logo design
and even an About section.
Oh, and there is a section for audio commentaries I’ll be recording with friends
that you can purchase for 2 bucks.
The first one for 'The Buffy Movie', that I recorded with my friends Jack and Cal,
is available for a dollar right now until the end of the month to celebrate the site launch
and our five year anniversary.
Any and all proceeds go to supporting the channel and allowing me to eat,
for which I am eternally grateful.
Without people’s generosity through Patreon and donations so far,
none of this could happen.
The website also has a calendar so you can keep track of upcoming events
And speaking OF
it’s been far too long since Team Nerd let the wheels come off the bus
so this Saturday at 7pm Mountain Time we’ll be watching
'Buffy', 'Angel', and 'Firefly' and making bad decisions.
"That's why you should have unbuttoned the third button."
"No-no--"
--"Did you button?"
"This-this is enough juice."
And then on Monday the 19th, I’ll be celebrating the channel’s 5 Year Anniversary with a solo stream
- watching videos with you from the past year
and chatting with anyone who cares to show up to the stream.
Hope to see you there.
Now, Q&A.
"I'm ready."
A number of you asked how am I and how's full time going?
I'M SUPER. THANKS FOR ASKING.
In September, it will have been one year since I decided to quit my job and go full time on YouTube.
I’m planning on doing a full video dedicated to sharing this endeavor around then,
but there is not a greater understatement than to say that the past year has been uuuhhh,
“Challenging.”
I had aspirations to fire myself out of a cannon that first week
and to fill this channel
with content
and different movies and shows
and vlogs
and interviews
and Comic Con presentations.
YEAH.
That didn’t happen.
Instead, I discovered that
with the absence of a boss,
and other departments, and coworkers,
and hard deadlines coming down from on high
...it can be VERY difficult to get stuff done.
Not only that but I am prone to what I would conservatively describe
as a raging firestorm of self-doubt and fear of failure.
Sometime early in September I completely stopped being able to sleep and, without sleep,
I couldn’t write.
And then it became necessary to move,
something I knew would happen.
Then a bit of personal loss.
And then just some hardcore rubber meets the road new habits that have needed to be built.
In short, I discovered that if starting a business were easy, everyone would do it.
"What is this, a lobster?"
On the other hand, I have done some writing for the channel in the past year that I am
the MOST proudest of,
I think the videos have grown in scope and complexity,
and I have finally been able to collaborate with other creators that I admire.
And have been learning how to dance,
properly, with some of those inner storms and demons I described
So, how am I doing?
"I feel fine."
I look at the growth of the channel and myself and can see we’re both better than we were a year ago.
And I believe we can get things where I want to go.
Tamara and Cullen on Facebook asked about the possibility of future Top 10s.
I have said before that I can’t think of anything more boring to talk about than just
my favorite episodes.
I mean...once I say what my Top 10 is... we’re done.
That’s it.
And...can I even change my mind without an addendum video?
I mean...the very thought is enough to give me heart palpitations.
WHICH is why the three previous Top 10s have been skewed around particular themes and ideas.
Because then we can endlessly turn the prism on the episodes
and look for new connections and new sources of beauty.
[beauty punch]
[precious]
Those videos are also insanely time consuming and generally mean a pause on the other content.
Still, it has been FAR too long since the last.
And I've wanted to do something for awhile now on love or relationships in the Buffyverse.
Tell you what:
If the channel hits 50K subscribers, I’ll start writing the next Top 10.
Several people asked what other shows or topics I’d like to cover
or other shows that influenced me in the way these shows have...
Those two questions go hand-in-hand, really.
Given the enormous amount of work and time these videos can take,
if I didn’t have some kind of personal stake in it
I probably would’ve given up a long time ago.
But 'Buffy' changed my life and the list of shows that have done that is not very long.
There's probably a 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' or
'Avatar: The Last Airbender' video series in our future.
'Dollhouse' didn’t land for me the first time I watched it
but I think it fell victim to the same problem 'Firefly' did
and that was 'Buffy'’s long shadow.
There may be some talk of it in the future.
I need to rewatch it.
Might even take a stab at talking about Whedon’s upcoming HBO series,
'The Nevers', on an episode by episode basis.
After that, who knows?
I don’t fancy contemplating what my 60s will be like just yet.
Meta Maus on YouTube asks: (has reviewing changed your feelings about seasons or episodes?)
It’s become a cliché now that having to write an essay about a particular episode
almost without fail forces me to discover new love for it.
Episodes that I considered middling or passable the first couple times I ran through the series
have now become some of my favorites in their respective seasons.
Two that stand out to me are 'The Prodigal'
and 'I Only Have Eyes For You'.
I was also regularly surprised when writing about 'Buffy Season 4' at how much better it was
than I remembered when I was just doing personal rewatches.
The best videos on the channel are the ones where I found a personal connection to the material.
When I find that, the essay “clicks.”
It happened just recently with 'Are You Now or Have You Ever Been'.
I had been working on the essay for a few days and the day I wanted to finish it,
I suddenly made the mental connection the episode had to the concepts of redemption and forgiveness.
Everything in that video once the music starts,
wasn’t even a glimmer of an idea until the day I wanted to be done writing.
But it’s what makes that analysis personal and memorable.
And, when I DON’T find those emotional connections for myself,
it leads to videos I wish had been better,
like 'Hush'.
Speaking of which….
Yuval on Facebook and BubsiePlays on Youtube both asked
if there were episodes I was challenged by or ones upcoming.
The really classic ones like 'Hush'
and mostly panned ones like
'Where the Wild Things Are' are the episodes that put my stomach in knots when I sit down to write about them.
Writing successfully requires me shutting out anything but my own voice in my head
but I still feel a sense of needing to do the classics proper justice.
And there is also no joy in trouncing any of them
because I know there is always SOMEONE who liked an episode.
And, at the end of the day,
I am as much a fan, here to celebrate this thing we all love,
as I am a “critic”.
God, I hate that word.
"No, it’s fair."
Kelnner Rodrigues de Franca on Facebook asks You did a really deep analysis on 'Restless'
are you planning to do something similar with 'The Weight of the World'?
'Restless' is a unique beast in the series and so required a unique approach.
But I think that doing away with the need for a particularly coherent plot
as well as any kind of inner logic from scene to scene allowed Whedon to absolutely go banana pants
with references and foreshadowing
- which called for a banana pants episode Guide.
An episode with a more linear grounded narrative
like 'To Shanshu in L.A.'
or 'Primeval'
doesn’t afford the same opportunities for injected craziness and so make for less complex videos.
While there is no other episode like 'Restless' there ARE other episodes that are unique to the series
like ‘The Body’ and
‘Once More, with Feeling,’
which also probably require a unique approach when writing about them.
Though I have no idea what that approach is, just yet.
Haley McDonald on Facebook asks: Is there a novel or another piece of media
that has really affected you to the point of altering your viewpoint
or a decision you were trying to make?
There are several passages in Norman McClane’s book, 'A River Runs Through It',
on love and how to love certain kinds of people that have stuck with me most of my life.
I have reread that book every few years
and was excited that I got to do a reading of a few of those passages by request for someone on Patreon.
Linked in the top right and in the description.
pico1000_4 on Youtube asks there's a lot of academic writing on 'Buffy' I've been collecting some recently
have you ever thought of making a reading list of particular essays you find interesting?﻿
Totally.
Most everything I’ve read that influences one particular video or another
is listed in that video’s description.
I really try and source.
There is also a section on the new website called “Suggested Reading”,
where I have tried to gather all of those works together into one place
with a short explanation of what each has meant to me.
Full disclosure of course, links there pop you out to Amazon
where a purchase keeps me in Totino's and wine boxes.
Well...PART of a wine box...really.
J Hallenbeck on Youtube asks, if you could do absolutely anything for a living, what would it be?
J, I’m doing it.
Django Makepeace on Facebook asks how has the growth of the channel affected you personally
and is it encouraging or daunting that so many people in the community look up to you as a content creator?
For a long time, I found the channel growth kind of intimidating.
I started doing videos on YouTube to practice voice over work.
Friends had been telling me for years I should do voice over
but, since I couldn’t find a tried and true path for getting into that,
I figured why don’t I just start a YouTube channel and write a few things?
"I am a vocal fan of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer" which--"
At the end of that first video, I included an afterthought throw-in
that I would make a quick skip guide to get people through 'Season One',
which was a challenging season for me.
But the 'Buffy' audience IS a hungry one
and when I finished the first season people were asking for the next.
Five years later and here we are.
The channel, like the show that started it, has altered the trajectory of my life.
And through all of the writing I’ve gotten to do and share,
I understand myself more clearly than I have at any point ever.
I can’t really speak to the second part of your question.
There is an aspect to the process that is intensely selfish
in that the only experience I really have control over, is my own.
The only way the videos get done is for me to sit down and write something that I want to write,
that I find entertaining,
and that expresses my own perspective in a way that is fulfilling.
THAT is the only success I can count on sustaining.
The fact that the work matters to anyone else beyond me is a gift.
Hannah (V.) Boyens on Twitter asks
how do you get yourself out of your own head and insecurities in order to create content?
Hannah, as someone who spends way too much time in his own head,
I deal with this question almost daily.
Hourly on some days.
The world often feels very much like a messy jumble spinning out of control to me
and an experience I despise is turning to someone and saying,
“Oh my GOD it’s THURSDAY already?”
For me, MAKING something is like dropping a marker in the stream of time.
It slows things down and orients me in time and space.
And the longer I go before I drop the next one, the more the spin comes back.
But it forces me to grapple with my own fear of writing hot garbage
or making a boring video
or any other manifestation of “failure.”
The only two approaches I have found to conquering that are,
first, to try and get as much nonsense out of my head as possible and into a todo list.
and then plot those things on a calendar.
The calendar is almost always wrong,
but it’s still better than that pile just existing in my head looking like a mountain impossible to climb.
Then, when I’m ready, I just grab the next todo.
And the second thing I try is to focus as much on THIS present moment in time as possible.
I’ve brought up several times in videos the idea of the stories we carry with us.
The ledger of all our past events we keep in our heads.
Our fears are born in that ledger and it’s important to realize that the ledger is,
if not altogether bullshit,
at the very least not real.
The only thing real
- the only thing ACTUALLY OCCURRING-
is this moment-
right now.
So for now,
take a deep breath, let the rest go, grab your keyboard,
and start writing damn it.
All right, this is getting long so I’m going to put the brakes on for now.
Thank you SO much everyone who submitted questions including everyone I wasn’t able to get to.
Let me know in the comments if you like this kind of thing, have questions for future vids,
and maybe we’ll do another Q&A like this somewhere down the line.
Don’t forget, new website calendar, with streams this coming Saturday and Monday.
We’ve also been having a grand old time with our rewatch group
at the $5 dollar level over on Patreon.
This month we’re doing a double day with 'The Prom' and 'Graduation Day Parts 1 and 2'.
And speaking of Patreon, Jack and I are also going to be doing a big update this month
with more banned decisions, a new commentary track, readings and all manner of shenanigans
so hop on over and have a look at the bonuses if you’re interested.
But, please remember,
even just watching the video IS support that makes all this possible.
As always, I am grateful and honored.
Here’s to 5 years.