Sarah Z

Hi everyone! Glad to hear the video's been a hit. I know some people do not like the colour grading on the powerpoint section I'm sorrrryyyyy I promise it's not a filter, I didn't just make it look like Vince Gilligan trying to colour grade Mexico for shits and giggles, that was just the lighting si

Hi everyone!!! Patreon version of the newest video is out soon. Last month, Patrons voted on my team gale explainer as the next Patreon video. I still fully intend to make that, but in the process of rereading the books, it got me thinking about an extremely fun part of my (and hopefully some of you

Hi everyone!! Some of you might remember that last summer I did my first-ever live shows in Toronto and Vancouver, and that they were some of the most fun I have ever had doing this job. I got to meet so many of you in person and talk about fun things and also tell some very Canadian jokes (I think

Hi everyone! Work on the next video is going well! It's been filmed and editing is Underway! In the meantime, I was fortunate enough to have an awesome conversation with Jay Dragon! Jay is the editorial director at Possum Creek Games, designer of Wanderhome, Sleepaway, and Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast,

Hello everyone, and happy June! (Happy Pride Month, among other things!) I hope everypony is doing well. I had a fantastic time this month talking with Jacob Geller. Jacob and I do the same strange, solitary job, and this conversation is mostly us comparing notes on the inside of it. How an essay ac

As voted for by patrons! (#2 option). Okay okay elephant in the room: I didn't use OBS properly and as a result my awesome slides are off center and you can't see the bottom of them. In my defense I already recorded this video once and it was worse and I didn't want to do it a third time. Practicing

As voted for by $10+ patrons, the subject that's been bouncing its way around in my mind lately. I guess this is kind of a companion piece to Three Dead Girls I Love in some ways; it's largely about the same historical forces, but this is a more specific thing that's been on my mind even as the vide

Hi everyone and happy Star Wars Day! Oh boy do I have a treat for you, because for this month's chat I got to talk with my friend and colleague CJ the X. What with all the CJ glazing in the Big Joel one it was pretty much inevitable. CJ is a YouTuber, rapper, and public philosopher, and together we

New video is out on Nebula, and early here for Patrons! Thank you so much for being patient with me; this one was really a labour of love and took a lot of time and work. If you remember the longass post I made a couple months ago about a filming day, that was for this! Your old friend Brenda Trende

NEW VIDEO for patrons!!! I had a wonderful time talking with Lindsay Ellis, as I always do. This was filmed a hot minute ago so let me think, we talk about uhhhhh monsterfucking, that one I definitely remember, our work, being creators, playing fuck marry kill with phantom of the opera characters, a

As voted for by $10+ patrons! To be honest, we did get a bit rambly with this one, for which I apologize, but I hope I can slightly make up for it by letting you meet my cat?? On another note, new video coming soon!!! Like, within the next two weeks soon. I'm really excited for you to see it. I'll p

Hi everyone!!! I've been sitting here trying to write this post for like twenty minutes lmao, which feels appropriate for a project that kept refusing to be smaller than it needed to be. THREE DEAD GIRLS I LOVE is out now on Nebula. Two and a half hours. My longest video, and the one I'm most proud

Next episode and we have TWO GUESTS ON, Big AND Little Joel, can you BELIEVE IT? Big Joel (Henry) has been making video essays for about as long as I have, and talking to him was an absolute blast. We talked about the gap between what media claims to be and what it actually is, chess, the economics

I was 15 years old. I had a life-size DIY TARDIS in my room. And I had OPINIONS!!!!! This is the video that started it all, or at least, started something. This isn't like, literally speaking the video that launched my channel in the sense that I made this, forgot about it, and then didn't make the

Hi hi! This is the one you voted for! (well, $10+ patrons voted for lol). Thank you to everyone who participated in the poll. People request videos from me all the time (and I genuinely appreciate it!) but there are a lot of topics I'm never going to cover, for a variety of reasons ranging from "I s

Hello, everyone!!! Work on the latest two videos has continued to go swimmingly, and work on the mockumentary (IKYKY) is going well too! I had to make some edits to the script since we're bringing Nebula in and raising the production value, but that's exciting to me. In the meantime: TALKS WITH CREA

Here's a very cool and very fun fact about filmmaking: everything takes SAUR MUCH LONGER than you think it will. I knew this, intellectually. I've been making videos for years. I've done enough production days to understand that "quick shoot" is an oxymoron. But somehow I still arrived at my friend

So, my $10+ patrons voted on this month's topic: "videos I'll never make and why." SO my plan was to record a casual ramble covering a few different subjects. And then I realized it would take me literally ninety minutes to only talk about one of them. ;;; For LITERALLY YEARS I've had notes for a vi

Hey all! I'm so excited to share something new with you: Off-Script, a Patreon-exclusive interview series where I sit down with creators I admire for loose, unscripted conversations about their work, their process, and whatever else we end up talking about. The idea came from wanting to offer you so

Hey folks! This is a Patreon special just for you guys. It's not a fully researched, tightly scripted essay or anything; it's just me working through something in real time. If you've been online this past week you've probably seen ConformityGate: the Stranger Things fan theory that the finale was f

Here it is! This is the stuff that ended up on the cutting room floor for the chess cheating video. 30 minutes of stuff that didn't make the final cut, including why India suddenly has 85 grandmasters, what actually happened with Anna Rudolf in 2007, the phone-in-toilet cases I didn't have room for,

Hey everyone! Happy new year :) Figured I'd do a proper check-in since it's been a minute. Life stuff: 2024-into-2025 was a lot. I finally finished my MA after years (defended in December!), did my first live shows in Toronto and Vancouver, ran a charity stream for the Transgender Law Center that ra

Hi folks!!!! As well as on Nebula, my new video is available for y'all on Patreon right now! Expect it up on YouTube in a few days for everyone as well. I hope you like this video. Chess has been one of my hyperfixations for months now as I grind to reach 1600 and maybe even eventually 2000 rating.

Hey everyone! I have some exciting news to share! I'm doing my very first live shows!!! This summer I'll be bringing "This Might Be A Tangent..." to Toronto (July 24th & 25th at The Garrison) and Vancouver (July 27th & 28th at Biltmore Cabaret). I'm going to be talking about some absolutely fascinat

I'm finally back! ❤️ And I really, really missed making videos. I can't say when the next one will be up, but I am intending to get back to regular uploads of Patreon specials now, so be prepared for that. This video took a lot of work, including editing help from the amazing Ella Grant and script s

Hey everyone! My newest video is out here and on Nebula! I'm still making final edits to ensure that the public version video doesn't get copyright restricted or demonetized for its content, but I wanted to share the early version with you guys right now. Hopefully the public version won't take too

Or something. Title may or may not be subject to change; I'm not locked in on one yet. ANYWAY, I've been interested in exploring this question of queerbaiting as it pertains to real people for awhile now. But the more I worked on and wrote this video, the more unsure I was about the entire notion of

Hi everyone!!! After working on this for awhile, my next video is finally out! It's about Bad Cinderella, Andrew Lloyd Webber's edgy goth musical that was so universally despised that it ended his unbroken Broadway streak. We take a look at it, what it tried to do, and why so many musicals end up be

IT'S OUT!!!! I'm pretty proud of this one. I hope you all enjoy it too. :) The Rise and Fall of Replika (YouTube)

Hey everyone (and happy Homestuck day), I've received some messages about people concerned about how I'm doing, as well as just people wanting a general update- and now that I'm doing okay and getting back into things, I wanted to respond and give you guys an update about how things are going. First

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN, and so as democracy goes, I shall give you my Wife Guy Hot Takes. I hope y'all enjoy! Also, happy Halloween!!! hqdefault.jpg (YouTube)

Hey everyone! Hope folks are doing well! Here's the link to the new video, up a little early this month (it'll be out publicly shortly). In this one, we're talking about Beer Bad, the (debatably) worst episode of Buffy, and why it even exists in the first place (spoiler: it's because of government p

Hello everyone! This new video is coming out early for patrons, mainly because I finished it and thought I might as well make it available for y'all before it goes up officially tomorrow :) In this one, I wanted to sort of examine the way "innocuous" backlashes against certain media end up being use

This one got wild toward the end. Enjoy! sddefault.jpg (YouTube)

Hello everyone! The second of this month's three Patreon videos featuring Emily has arrived! Last month's poll asked for our experiences with pre-2010s Internet. For us, that meant a lot of old flash games in all their coolmath glory. Join us for fun times with The Impossible Quiz, Barbie makeover,

Hello! So, you may be wondering why the videos have taken so long. I was going to do this one on my own, but remembering that my cowriter Emily was coming to visit me this month, I thought it might be fun to film them together. As said in the video, this was originally an hour and a half of us talki

Hey everyone!!! So, this month I've finally decided to confront the spectre that's been haunting me, as a human being, since the release of this episode back in 2014. Doctor Who put out a weird, seemingly anti-abortion metaphor episode, and it vexes and haunts me every single day. Because of the sub

I'm BACK!!! Rest = taken. COVID = gone. Opinions = still pretty salty. I hope this video is worth the wait! I wanted to talk about these ongoing conversations of fanfiction as Art vs Not Art, and what it means to be considered as such in our broader cultural mainstream. I hope you enjoy! In the next