Patreon Exclusive Art: My Love for You is Out of CTRL

Welcome, November! And welcome, new Patreon-exclusive art! This cute little YCH piece was done by NyxReiju over on Vgen (with a small color edit by me!) and is the perfect size for a desktop background. It's also going out to all Patrons, including the free tier.

You might wonder why I didn't opt for a holiday themed piece this month, given that Thanksgiving is coming up and the food puns I could slap on the title basically write themselves...

But, if you look closely, I think you'll realize this IS a Thanksgiving piece! Because what am I most thankful for?

(Spoiler Alert: it's YOU!)

If I may take off my propeller hat and Groucho glasses to be achingly sincere instead of corny for a second: I love you guys. (Yeah, yeah, parasocial blah blah, I love you as much as anyone can love virtual strangers, please don't come to my house to declare your undying love for me, and all those necessary disclaimers, whatever. You get the gist!)

Making audios really has changed my life for the better, in more ways than I can count, and in more ways than I can tell you. But I'm gonna try! Because I am feeling especially schmaltzy today!

Reasons to Be Thankful #1: Creating Comfort, Catharsis and Silliness for a Wonderful Audience!

I know, I don't have to tell you: it's tough out there. Sometimes it seems like everyone is angry or sad or lonely--often all three! For all that we're connected by the internet 24/7, comfort, understanding and a little human kindness can feel hard to find. A lot of the internet runs on rage and fear and making you feel bad about yourself.

The world can be harsh, and it needs escape hatches. Fiction is a fantastic escape hatch. Best one humans ever invented, I think, next to maybe cheese danishes.

Which I guess are more escape hatch accompaniments than escape hatches themselves...?

But I digress.

Those little pockets of fictional safety for working through feelings -- no matter how messy -- are so important to me, as both creator and consumer. Whether it's finding catharsis for trauma in a horror story, getting a good cry from some angst and hurt/comfort, the pure escapism of a high stakes adventure, or the comforting hope of a fluffy romance, stories matter. From high art to pulps to smut, they matter. They're some of our most important tools to manage and make sense of being human.

I know, a monster girl threatening to eat you? A yandere hiding under your bed? Comfy kisses from a perfect imaginary girlfriend? Unlikely to get much in the way of critical acclaim or have world-shattering impact. I'm the first to admit I'm a working hack, with hacky tastes and sensibilities. I always have been and I like it that way! Ephemera, junk food and pulp fiction make up the threads of pop culture, even if they're not individually recognizable in the fabric's final pattern.

But even so: I'm proud to make these things for you, no matter how serious, scary, sexy or silly. Because even if stories aren't -- and shouldn't be -- treated as guidebooks to living our lives, they're still part of emotional maintenance, a way to sort out our internal wiring and learn to handle even our ugliest feelings. We practice dealing with the worst parts of ourselves, and aspire to the best parts, in stories of all kinds. Even goofy li'l ones like mine.

So I hope that the things I've created these past few years have made your life more fun or easier to deal with, or made the world softer and gentler in some small way, if only to put you to sleep, if only to make a commute less boring, and if only for the length of an audio.

Selfishly, making audios for you has helped make me a softer, gentler, more hopeful person too. Of course I'm still human, I get impatient and grumpy and irritable like anyone. (Boy, do I!) And I've always gladly worn the badge of "bitch on wheels" in the tough, ambitious, knows what she wants sense of the term.

But every day, doing this gig means I have to choose sincerity more often than sarcasm, even when sarcasm feels easier. I have to choose hope more often than despair, even when I feel hopeless. And I have to pick myself up, dust myself off, and keep going even when I want to lie in a lump and whine, or when someone is pissing me off and I want to get snippy and mean. Especially then.

Because what I make for you has become a soft place to land for people who want or need that, and it's impossible to play a character who cares if I don't.

(Tsunderes? Much easier sometimes! But even they have soft squishy centers I have to access...)

So...truly, thank you for that. Thank you for generally making me kinder and gentler, more patient and more hopeful, just by being you! I won't pretend it's never tiring to try and be peppy and encouraging for an audience (it is a kind of customer service, after all!) but for the most part: I really do like it. I like the person I am when I'm making things for you, when I'm interacting with you, and trying to fluff up the pillows around this joint so you all have a nice comfy place to flop when you want to take in a story.

There's a glut of art in the world to choose from when you need it to give you an escape, and you've chosen mine! And not just what I make from scratch myself, but what I curate by selecting other people to work with. That means a lot, too. Thank you so much.

Reason to Be Thankful #2: Using Skills I Never Thought I'd Have the Chance to Use

No spiel here...that's it! I frankly didn't think I'd ever be able to do the voice acting thing, even in an amateur capacity. That's a bit like wanting to grow up and be a Disney Warrior Princess FBI Agent Pop Star Starship Captain not that I would know anything about that and then having that wish come true.

WELL, LOOK AT ME NOW, MA, TOP OF THE WORLD

...ahem, etc. etc. and all that jazz. So, thank you for that opportunity! I like being able to vocally strut my stuff and fulfill that childhood dream. Much nicer than letting it gather dust! ^^

Reason to Be Thankful #3: The Elephant in the Room ($$$!)

Down to brass tacks: nobody likes to hear a content creator/influencer/artist/whatever-you-feel-I-am talk about money. It's gauche, especially given how hard so many people have it right now. I'm not the only one whose life has been on fire lately, to put it mildly!

But I think it would be dishonest to pretend I don't benefit materially from the things I make and put on the internet, and the positive impact it has on me.

The financial aspect of this gig is, of course, nice. I've said before that I grew up in poverty, and I mean poverty. The lights getting shut off, no heat in the winter, going hungry, never having anything that wasn't clearance rack or thrift store or hand-me-downs, generational, cyclical, seemingly inescapable, poverty. I was never homeless growing up, but it felt like a VERY near thing a few times.

I got out eventually, in part because I took a couple chances and got unbelievably lucky when they panned out instead of blowing up in my face. I chose the right opportunities at the right times, and the right people and the right resources were around to help along the way.

I don't say this to toot my own horn, to be clear! I did not escape the poverty trap because I'm extra special, clever, pretty, smart, talented or skilled, but because fortune smiled on me when it could have gnashed me between its teeth instead. There but for the grace of God go I, right into misfortune's maw, unceremoniously chewed to bits like an unsuspecting Velvet-shaped gummy bear.

The chain reaction of those chances I took brought me here, and I am acutely aware that any one of those dominoes could have fallen in a different direction, so I am grateful down to my bones that my luck held out the way it did.

My origin story will always feel like it's just over my shoulder in the rear view mirror, complete with that 'objects may be closer than they appear' sticker. I'm fully prepared to never feel totally safe from that particular specter. I don't think anyone who gets out ever feels completely secure.

But it is amazing to feel safer. One of the reasons I do is my audience. You! All of you! You, you, wonderful you!

This channel has given me a kind of breathing room that I've rarely felt. I'm not pulling in $10k a month or anything like that (if only!) but whenever an emergency has dropped in my lap, I've been able to take care of it. When the people I love have been in trouble and needed a hand, I've been able to help out. When my old-as-balls car needed to be put out to pasture this year -- one of many major stressors in 2025! -- I was able to finance a decent replacement without chewing my nails down to the nub worrying about how I'd pay for it. (Her name is Merriweather, she is very pretty, and I love her.)

That's all thanks to you!

And, I've been able to spread my luck around, by paying artists and writers who have made the channel what it is! That's also thanks to you, and it means so much to me to be able to pay my good fortune forward. I'm really proud to be one of the VAs in this space who can afford to pay a little bit to any writer who wants to make money at this, instead of just earning off their talents and keeping all the loot for myself.

As my earnings have risen a bit year by year, their pay has grown too. Someday, I hope I'll be able to pay them the truly exorbitant fees they deserve! (I might make that a goal at some point. "Pay writers at least $100 per single script video!" would be nice to shoot for, I think!)

Most meaningful of all: I've been able to give more to charities that matter to me. From paying some back to the hometown food bank that kept my family afloat during the leanest years of my childhood, to supporting nerdy causes that are close to my heart like the Hero Initiative and the Grant Imahara STEAM Foundation.

So, while I of course don't want you to think I'm a money grubbing gold digger -- fool's gold digger at best! -- I won't lie and say earning money from this isn't the bee's knees, because gosh darn it, it is! And I want to thank you from the bottom of my glitter-coated, black and withered heart.

In closing: I'm so incredibly grateful for your kindness and encouragement and continued support through thick, thin and every viscosity in between, whether as a patron, a youtube listener or both.

Okay, enough of the mushy stuff. The Groucho glasses are going back on! Might even have to get a comedy Arrow-Through-The-Head headband to really recover from the soppy sentimentality. Thanks for listening to me ramble and get all gooey like a total loser! But mostly: thank you for being here, and thank you for being you.

💖💖💖

• Velvet