ArTorr Monthly | November 2025

Welcome back to ArTorr Monthly! Partly out of refusal to acknowledge it's already November, and partly because I wanted to hit an important project milestone before getting back to you, I'm a couple days late on this. Nonetheless, here's the scoop on what I worked on last month and what you should look out for in the month(s) ahead!

The Final Stretch

This is the milestone I wanted to hit before writing this ArTorr Monthly: the video pass on the Andor video is done. The entire video timeline is (basically) filled out; there's just a couple small places that would make more sense for me to revisit later on. We're almost ready to release this thing. But there's one more crucial step in the pipeline: the final pass. Before I describe what that is, let's all bask in the near-completeness of the video together. This is what the Premiere timeline looked like a month ago...

October 6th, 2025

... vs today!

November 5th, 2025

So the final pass: I've described it in the past, but as you can imagine, this is the polishing stage of the video. I could release the video as it is now, but it would be missing a lot of the epic and immersive sound effects, filters, transitions, text graphics, and overall cohesion of style that you know from many of my other videos. So my current task is to impliment all of that.

There is also one other big thing I have to do at this stage that will decide whether you see the video this month or next month: how many copyright claims I will have to address in order to monetize the video.

There's a much bigger conversation to be had here, and I'm gonna save it until the video release day is announced, but in brief; deciding not to monetize the Rogue One video earlier this year did not work completely in my favor. Of course, I decided not to monetize it for three reasons: 1) to skip the frustrating process of cutting down parts of the video until all copyright claims were gone, 2) to preserve the full creative vision of the video, and 3) to rally more of you to join my Patreon page, which in my ideal world, would become the primary source of income for the channel. Though I'm grateful not monetizing it allowed me to achieve all three of these things, it came with one thorny consequence: I had no control over the amount and frequency of ads on the video itself, which evidently resulted in several of you getting bombarded with severe amounts of ads, all of which were automatically inserted by YouTube. Effectively, non-YouTube Premium viewers got a much more disruptive video-watching experience than any of the bullshit I could've done to the video to bypass copyright would have been. If I had monetization control, that would've absolutely not been the case. Plus, I would've actually made some money from that video, which, you know, is always nice to have when running a YouTube channel.

An image of the 1910 TonyPandy Miner Riots, which serves as just a small example of some of the history referenced in the video.

Because of this, I will be monetizing the Andor video, and no, it will not have a gazillon ads on it. That now also means I have to go through the annoying process of removing copyrighted songs and visuals, or disfiguring them enough that they are no longer matched by YouTube's content ID bot. If say ten songs are claimed, that will probably take me a week to fix. If twenty, two weeks. And so on, and so on... The video employs several musical selections from the Andor soundtrack (as do all my videos employ material from the creative work they're analyzing), and a couple songs from bands that may get flagged. I've learned a lot of tricks over the years for bypassing the content ID bot, so I feel pretty certain I will find ways to preserve a lot of what is currently in the video, but I just won't know for sure until the first test upload. Preempting a lot of what could be claimed has affected how I've edited certain parts of the video up to now (there's no Godzilla Minus One-style sequence in this like there was in the Rogue One video), but there's bound to be some things that still get flagged for copyright.

SO; now you know exactly what lies between now and the release of the video. On Friday, I will finally be putting out the ten-minute preview of the video for Tier 3 patrons. It's not the first ten minutes (they're not totally presentable for all the same reasons I mentioned last month), but it will be a different ten minute slice from early in the video. When it becomes clear the video is 100% done, I will announce a release date here and on all my social accounts. Of course, everyone reading this will get early access to watch the video. Possibly, extended early access, since this video has been in the making for so long. Wish me luck and a smooth journey to the finish line!

So, Let's Talk About the Ghost Video...

Looking back at the last six years of ArTorr, from one overwhelming project to the next, I feel like it has been a constant process of learning what not to do, over and over. Of course, that's life, that's how you grow, and that's how you confront creative problems. But one would hope, for someone as versed in making video essays as I am, that by now I'd possess some small amount of foresight to anticipate when certain ambitions would lead to... not disaster, that's too strong of a word, but complications. And folks, deciding to make the Ghost of Tsushima video alongside Andor has just been very complicated.

At almost every moment I set aside this year to work on the Ghost video, there was a voice in the back of my head telling me that my time would be better used trying to whittle away on the gargantuan project that is the Andor video instead. Since that video entered the editing stage, I've made virtually no progress on the Ghost video. Early-on, I supposed the Ghost video could serve as a break from sitting in my uncomfortable editing chair and scrubbing through hours of footage every single day. When I got tired of that, I could open my laptop and work on the far-less intimidating Ghost script. But that simply never happened, and editing has been all-consuming, as it has always been with past videos. As a lone creator, I'm just not very good at juggling multiple projects, even when they demand different things of me. Especially because I have an equally-demanding day job, and a life I try to earnestly live here and there.

All of this is to say: it has become abundantly clear I will not be able to release the Ghost of Tsushima video this year. With the holidays imminent, it will simply be impossible. That also means none of the other videos I announced on the 2025 roadmap will be releasing this year either. Not that that was promised-- the roadmap only showed you what I'd be working on. But with just two months left here in the year, even that has become something I'm not sure I can fulfill.

Uncle Shimura reacting to this information

With Ghost of Yotei out in the world, the original pressure I had for making this video has also dissipated. The algorithm traction I could've garnered is gone. No matter what, the assignment is getting handed in late. That is to say, it will still be handed in. But for the sake of both the growth of the channel and my own creative tendencies, I'm reprioritizing what projects make the most sense for me to focus on after the Andor video. I will talk much more about that after I finish the video, but know that the Ghost video may no longer be the next video you see from me after Andor. To reiterate, this is simply about finding the best solution for all parties involved: the channel, me, and you; the community. Nonetheless, I apologize if this has bummed anyone out. I'll follow up on what all of this means post-Andor, where we will figure out what comes next.

That's All Folks!

That concludes ArTorr Monthly for November 2025. As always, thank you so SO much for your support. In the month of thanksgiving, I'm grateful for you and this community. Though November will be all Andor all the way to the finish line, I can't wait to talk to you after the video is out; not just to hear your thoughts and reactions, but work together on what's next and how this community can feel more like a community. In the meantime, enjoy yourself this November, stay warm, and eat good food; regardless of if you celebrate American Thanksgiving. Peace out!