State of The Ellie-verse (née The Metaverse)

Heyo! Hope everyone is having a satisfactory 2022 so far :) If you're solely here for the YTP stuff, I appreciate the support very much! This update is largely regarding my video essays so feel free to dismiss yourself if that side of my work is not your thing :)

Many of you know that I make an update video every year called "The Metaverse" where I lay out all of my projects and related info as a resource. I wrote and filmed a new episode for this year calling it "The Ellie-verse" but unfortunately I'm choosing not to edit or publish the video for a few reasons:

1. Update videos tend to hurt channel performance.

The Ellie-mentary channel isn't one that accounts for much of my viewer traffic and income, so analytics shouldn't be much of an problem in theory, but it's not a non-issue either. Whenever I post a new Ellie-verse a chunk of people choose to leave the channel because it's not what they subscribed for, and I think the high-effort nature of those videos cements in their minds that my time that "should" be spent on Actual™ content was instead spent on self-congratulatory nonsense. Whether this attitude has any legs isn't really up to me.

2. Technical issues

I spend a much longer time than usual setting up for the video shoot. All of my lights needed to be factory reset and re-connected (a process that should be snappy but in practice took multiple hours). The microphone audio was more echoed than usual because I couldn't put it in the usual spot. My phone which I normally use as a camera wasn't cooperating, so I chose to use my Razer Kiyo Pro which was a birthday gift from my family.
I'd only used it before for streaming so I'd never bothered to give it a true test, but after several hours of troubleshooting, uninstalling and re-installing drivers, etc. the camera just wasn't producing the quality I wanted.

[rant] The Razer Kiyo Pro advertises itself as a camera that supports 1080p at 60fps. What it doesn't tell you is that you can only achieve that if you disable auto-exposure and also don't install any of its built-in software (because for some reason Razer Synapse is so broken it actually throttles the performance of the camera). And even after doing those things it would still only record in 30fps. I SCOURED the web for fixes and nothing worked (Please believe me when I say I spent literal hours trying to solve this and don't try to troubleshoot in the comments) Finally I looked at a review by EposVox who I've been watching for the last several months in which he shows the camera alongside three other competing webcams and says "wow! look at that! such a smooth 60fps" even though in the video all the other cameras are noticeably 60 while the Razer one is still showing 30?! Like, what?! Maybe I'm just fucking losing it or something, but if this camera is giving me 60 it sure doesn't feel like it and I hate how it looks. [/rant]

Anyway, the picture clarity is fine enough that I was going to be a big girl and edit the video despite my petty frame rate insistence, but then...

3. Body image issues

No amount of reassurance can fix the way I see myself, unfortunately. I've gained a substantial amount of weight in the last year, such that I could no longer fit into the corset that goes with my Ellie-verse dress, and the overcoat would barely stay on even without the corset. The changes are noticeable on my face as well. In the past I've been better about pushing my insecurities to the side, but this time watching the footage back just filled me with dread; a guilt for not taking better care of myself, and the fear of inviting mockery to myself and to people like me. You know how cruel a place the internet can be, especially to women and double for women who show their faces/bodies.

So unfortunately my insecurities have won the day, sandwiched between other issues and my refusal to sunk-cost-fallacy my way into finishing the video. What it is motivating me to do is make fitting into that corset again a goal for next year! But in doing this I've realized one of the subconscious reasons I've been putting off the next proper episode of Ellie-mentary is this exact variety of body dysmorphia. It sucks, and I'm not asking to be consoled or reassured. It's just A Thing I have to be honest with myself about. Fortunately Bee's around to keep me in check and make sure I'm only doing productive things to manage my physical health and appearance, but in the near future you may see Animated Ellie get more mileage.

Thanks for understanding, and sorry to disappoint anyone who was looking forward to a new Ellie-verse. I'll probably re-use last year's footage to make an updated Twitter version that better reflects the state of things for this year. I can't make any promises about when the next Ellie-mentary will be but it's not something I've given up on, even if the format changes a little.

Thanks <3