Noelle Aman
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A very important Mid-video update + Q&A: Onto a brighter future for this channel
🕑 Added 2025-08-01 12:21:05 +0000 UTCHi all, and I hope you're all doing well! It's time for another mid-video update - that vague time of the month in which I post about what's been happening in life, this channel, future video plans, and give space for the next Q&A! The first two of those are... well, very interlinked this time, so let's get into it and talk about what the title of this post is referring to.
1, The Short of It: Given the immense amount of support shown for this decision and the necessity of it because of how this channel is growing, I will be releasing videos as they are done, rather than trying to shoot for a monthly schedule. In a practical sense this means videos will come out approximately every 1.5 months on average, but some may only take 1 month and some may take 2.5. This will allow the videos to be better researched, explore longer and more demanded games, and other nice things! It's also good for my mental health, because dear god I need it!
2, New Benefits: Since there'll be fewer and less regular videos per year, I intend to bridge the gap with more posts here. For larger games with multiple routes, there'll be weekly (at the least) updates with short thoughts on routes I've played so far. And the non-spoiler segments of videos will be posted before the full video is finished as a preview. There might be more than this as time goes on, but these are the big ones to signal 'I'm alive!' and give people something to chew on while I'm in the video writing/editing mines.
3, A Note About Payments: I intend to keep this Patreon running on a monthly model, because the reliable income I get from these videos is necessary for my life, and videos aren't going to become so irregular that a post-paid model makes any sense whatsoever. However, for those of you who want to pay per-post, I will be opening up the ability to buy access to individual posts after this upcoming video (the last monthly video). Patreon's minimum is USD$3 per post, so that will be the cost to access videos without a monthly subscription. Hopefully this is a good middleground between me consistently having the money I need to live and the people who want to donate sans subscription having the freedom to do so.
That said and fears hopefully dispelled, let's talk about the long of it all: 4, What's Actually Up?:
Some updates ago, I talked about the possibility of shifting to an "as-done" schedule for videos, rather than attempting to release a video approximately every month as I have done for the last few years. The reasons for this are numerous and should be iterated again, starting with the, I suppose, "practical" ones.
The biggest long-term life reason is that I intend to enter university in 2027 and will need to dedicate a lot of time in 2026 to study, and from 2027 onward, a lot of time to classes and such. And the biggest channel reason is that it will free me up to create videos on larger and often requested games, with the time they deserve. Yes, this means videos on BL games people asking for, because lots of the ones that interest me are hueg.
Besides this, the other big reason is that this channel and its videos have simply grown too large to be made with the current scale without sacrificing my mental health. I've managed to get along with this fine enough for the last year and a half or so, but that's quickly becoming not the case as the media environment around what I cover becomes increasingly hostile.
I assume pretty much everyone reading this update is familiar with the on-going payment processor situation. Visa et al, with Steam et al, have become fearful of the voices of some bigots, and inflicted massive damage to the general adult and all-ages queer media scenes. The US government is getting increasingly more open about its desire to more or less nuke this same media from orbit, which I'm not sure they'll accomplish but by God they want to. Which, by the way, if you haven't made a stink about this all to the payment processors, you should do that and let them know you don't like them deciding what you can buy.
Anyways. Suffice to say, this has been horrific for my mental health. Up until very recently, I have been working very long hours on these videos without a lot of time to actually rest in a day. Even before this situation I've been struggling to keep up that pace, but it starting has made apparent to me just how unsustainable this is. What very little time I have had, has often been spent extremely anxious about whether or not I'll wake up with a job. I've had nightmares about losing everything overnight. I have been, at points, extremely listless about why I'm even doing this.
I don't like that, because I think this work is important. Whether people perceive me as a nice voice to listen to, or a genuinely provocative and insightful person about complex topics and often disregarded art, I want to take pride in that all. But I cannot go on with this pace and feel that pride in this environment. I love this work and I don't desire to give it up; even when I am in university and even if I get a stable job in pharma I intend to keep this going; but I seriously cannot keep dedicating my entire self to it without the time needed to decompress from the intense stress present right now. And later on, I will keep needing that free time in order to enter higher education.
On top of that, the national language exams for Brazil are coming up soon, in October. I need to dedicate more time to studying for this to ensure that I can obtain Brazilian citizenship, and renounce my US citizenship. To put it lightly, it is a burden on me. I have to pay upwards of USD$5,000 every year in taxes due to it, I am denied retirement fund access because of it, I am in a practical sense denied access to Brazilian social security because of it, and many other things, to say nothing of how grotesquely hostile the US has become and how I feel my association with it is a danger to my safety (not because of Brazilian people or government, god no they've been wonderful, but because of the US government).
Given... all of this, and the incredible amount of support y'all have shown towards these me taking the time I need to get these videos done without sacrificing my mental health (seriously 98% of you voted in favor of this), I am making the choice to shift my production schedule to something actually good for me. 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, holidays off, weekends off, no more working until I have crippling migraines at night and cause nauseating back pain from a years old car accident to resurface by sitting in a chair for 12 hours. Videos come out when they're done, and I will take the needed time to do the research each topic I wish to cover demands, rather than cutting research time short.
I appreciate the understanding of everyone for this change, and I hope the end result is something y'all can enjoy: better videos, sometimes even longer videos, more updates, and more coverage of highly demanded games. Also a significant improvement for my mental health, which I would regard as good.
Phew. Maybe we should just talk about some video games now to decompress?
August: Majo no Shokuzai. So, to the patrons that have been asking me to cover Suki Suki Daisuki and Kichiku Megane: uh, you kinda both got your wish in a way? I found this while searching through DLSite for games to cover, and it is a... witch atonement simulator by the SSD and KM writer, released by AliceSoft, which damn near no one talks about. It's short, it's kinky as fuck, and it's also a fascinating look into the life of someone whose life and community is ruined by the witch hunts of the middle ages. I am very excited to bring it to y'all because dear god it is something. In research, script writing will begin soon.
Future plans: The video I plan to do immediately after Majo no Shokuzai is one that I've been wanting to do since the start of this channel, but haven't due to amount of time needed to cover it: Tsuki ni Yorisou, Otome no Sahou. This is THE game that made me want to learn Japanese; a game about a homeschooled femboy who infiltrates an all-girls school and gets into romance hijinx with them. Apparently people adore one heroine in it and have mixed feelings on the rest, which sounds like a recipe for an extremely interesting video. And also, femboy maids...
THE LIST: It's still going! And without needing to get videos monthly, I hopefully can start to tackle the longer interesting games in this. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WF_2ADCa5UY63yygiElEyGr35UPCf-jfGivuHAeaiqs/edit?gid=0#gid=0
Okay, I think that's all for now. Again, thank you everyone for your understanding and continued support. I hope to make things even better from here. And as always, if you have questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments of this post, and I'll try to address as many as I can in the next Patreon segment.
Until later o/
Comments
windsorgirllove
I've been watching for a while, and I wanted to say I'm glad you're switching to a structure that's better for your mental health! You give us absolutely monstrous video essays, we can definitely wait a few extra weeks. I really love the genre of "sexy visual novels that are also horror", which not a lot of people cover due to the subject matter. I want to say thank you for introducing me to a lot of new games that I haven't heard of, and through them new themes and stories. I'm excited to see what comes next!
AltThrow Nix
Q&A: Have you considered covering anglosphere VNs? Specifically, Slay the Princess is super good.
Miss Choco Chip
Q&A: You mentioned in your King Exit video that you were originally going to review CARNIVAL, but didn't. What made you change your mind?
