Why start a new channel?  A few reasons.

1) The audience we have on our main channel seems to be picky about lower-fi YouTube content on the main channel.  It does look a bit lopsided to have a huge crew production like Tabletop that we spend weeks and months making, and a fly-by-your-pants one person vlog.  So separating the content seemed to be best to get a wider variety of content into our community.

2) After last year, I realized that I couldn’t be everywhere, and frankly, would love to pay forward a lot of the success I’ve had online to help other people and their unique voices develop and shine.   That is what the internet does best: Discover and support new talent and uniqueness.  There are only so many geek personalities in this world, and frankly, we need fresh faces, to help develop what the next generation of geek is!  So this is my way of doing that. I’m working hands on with a dedicated producer on our team for the vloggers, to support, shape and spread word of how awesome they are!

I searched high and low for a handful of vloggers to launch with, we’ll be adding a few more in the coming month to fill out the roster, and then over the summer, we’re taking submissions from YOU to be a part of the family.  We’re only doing a maximum of two vloggers a day ultimately, so adding another 10 onto the existing (one slot on Tuesdays will always be reserved for a guest slot like me, or a YouTube guest, celebrity, Cubby, haha).   Here’s a playlist so you can peruse.

Please click to subscribe if you can, it really helps to show that number!  I really really appreciate it, and hope that some of these awesome vloggers resonate with you, entertain you.  If there’s subjects you specifically want to see, please also leave those in the comments!

Thanks for supporting my ventures, I really love you guys <3

You are officially spoiled if you read below, NO COMPLAINTS!

Up front I will say I enjoyed this latest Star Trek movie a lot.  It was super noisy, but enjoyable, beautifully executed, and I particularly like some of the secondary characters, Spock was excellent, etc etc.  I just want to share an observation that stuck with me:

Where are the women?  The strong women?  The women we’d like to see in 200 years?  Where are they in this world?  They certainly aren’t around the roundtable when the Starfleet are learning about Khan (there might have been one in that scene, if so that extra was not cut to in any significant manner to be notable.)  In the scene where Kirk gets his ship back and the admiral is having a meeting with “important” people around a table later, I failed to see ONE WOMAN AROUND THAT TABLE, ALL MOSTLY WHITE MEN IMPLIED TO BE MAKING IMPORTANT DECISIONS TOGETHER.  Yes, these are just scenes with extras, but seriously, in the future not one woman over 40 is in charge in this world?!  How can that happen?

For main characters, Uhura had a FEW nice scenes (as a vehicle to humanize Spock mostly), but that other woman character was the WORST damsel in distress ever.  I kept waiting for her turn, waiting for her to not be the victim, to be a bit cleverer, to add to the equation in a “yeah you go girl” way but no, she was there to be sufficiently sexy that Kirk would acknowledge her existence, to be pretty, to serve the plot.  I loved her bob.  That’s it.  What if she had been a less attractive woman, older, overweight?  A tomboy?  Wouldn’t have that been a tad more interesting choice?  Or at least give her a moment where she’s not a princess waiting to be saved.  From a director who is so amazing, who created wonderful female characters in Alias and Felicity, I was super bummed by this.  A woman character CAN exist without having to be sexually desired by the guy.  Oh, and she doesn’t have to be a lesbian either, OMG WHAT A SURPRISING IDEA!

I don’t know if I’m extra sensitive about this issue or what, but I don’t think so, it’s a trend in media today. When I walk into the theater, I see men on posters.  Mostly white men, the same men we see over and over in movies.  Seth Rogen, Owen Wilson, Brad Pitt etc. Where did the women go?  We are telling people that only men are worth centering storytelling around, and that’s just bullshit.  And the problem is we unconsciously define the world and our culture through media.  These things are subliminal, we absorb them, they formulate the “given” that influences people’s life choices.  It might be a little thing on the surface, but this stuff is what prevents women from being as interested in math, or business people or tech etc.  Where are the examples of women in media to strive for, to make that stuff seem possible?  I don’t see many.  And that makes me sad.

People ask me why I don’t like Disney, I say, “Think of a princess.  Tell me three adjectives that come to mind.  Now do that with a prince. Now do that with the phrase, “leading character”.  We will all probably align around a lot of common ideas, Princess: taken care of, rescued, pretty dresses. Prince: adventurer, proving himself, manhood, Leading Character: chiseled white guy in his thirties, rockin’ body, girlfriend in peril.

Ugh.

I dunno about you, but it’s kind of boring to see the same thing over and over again.  So I guess, rambling away from the Star Trek thing, if you’re creating something, think of the first three adjectives that come to mind, then:  Do something different. It’s time to invent new cliches.    For all of us, please.

I’ve been more busy than I have ever been these past few months, and trying to take some time for myself to figure out what’s next (good luck with that Felicia haha) but I’m VERY pleased to announce that Geek and Sundry will be releasing content for another year!

I made this video below as a result of some of my journaling and soul searching lately, I hope it makes you at least think about Geek Culture, whether you agree with me or not.

Re-defining WHY I am doing what I do really gave me the courage and motivation to go forward this year with new eyes, and a clear heart.  I’m actually really excited to change things up!  I like rolling the dice

Just for the curious and inquiring:
Tabletop, Space Janitors and Vaginal Fantasy are coming back this year (they all premiere next week). We have a BUNCH of new shows throughout the year, with shorter runs and more varied talent, to give you more variety (especially in the gaming area). The Flog will come back only sporadically while I am at conventions or travelling, I will be focusing on acting on the channel, developing content and talent searching for fresh voices to cultivate, and doing other shorter run shows like the one I’m starting on Monday, Felicia’s Ark (it’s about choosing which video game characters I’m taking with me after a theoretical flood happens, haha.)

I know this dialing back of The Flog is going to disappoint some, but I want to make it clear I’m trying to free up my schedule to focus on guiding the channel content, and perhaps creating another show, which takes a TON of time (it took me a year to come up with the Guild characters before I wrote the first episode).  As an artist I need some space to figure out if and when I can make something new, that I’ll love as much as The Guild, that YOU will love as much as The Guild.

And FYI the future of the Guild is still up in the air, and since we ended it so well with season 6 I felt like it was time to take a break.  I’ll see what happens, you never know!

I’m very excited to discover new voices and shift Geek and Sundry to really reflect what I love even more this year. Thank you for being on this journey with us, and I appreciate your watching!

And here’s the chat I did after (sorry for the blurriness!  It was dark and I had to watch the TV at the same time!)

Hope you guys enjoyed ittt!

Felicia as Charlie Bradbury

Here’s an article linking to a lot of pretty  pictures from my Supernatural episode, “LARP and the Real Girl”.  I can’t tell you how fun it was to film!  Maybe I’ll do an hour chat on Geek and Sundry after the airing, would you guys watch that?