I hate to do things like this.

Plans haven't changed on switching to a more artistic thumbnail later, but since the video hit a brick wall on impressions, I decided to make a more algorithmically optimized thumbnail to try to regain the foothold the video briefly had.

seriously the cutoff on impressions is so harsh that it legitimately forms a corner on the graph- it's as if youtube deliberately throttled the video, but I've no idea what the actual cause was. I'm sort of hoping that changing the thumbnail refreshes it in the algorithm in some way and just happens to fix the problem, tbh.

Now... 1.5k views is nothing to sneeze at, I suppose- but if I can get 18k on my first video, I was hoping to at least match it with my third. Especially after all the trouble I went to to give it a good shot at success. It had a successful Reddit post! I got Allie DailyYuri to promote it! What went wrong?? ... Mainly though, I just hate to put so much work into a passion project that doesn't end up having much reach. I make videos to be watched! I'm not really trying to get to a point where I can monetize my videos, nothing like that- actually if I can maintain eligibility for the partner program I intend to leverage that to remove ads- 'cos if someone wants to support me I have a kofi for that. No, I just want to be seen, I guess. Plus I love interacting with commenters ♥️ the discussions are always so fun! if you've left a comment on a video of mine ily

oh and for the machikado video specifically I want a lot of machikado viewers to sub- because I kinda wanna make a video about Suika and lord knows that won't draw in new viewers. Need an existing audience for that to do even remotely well.

Added 2026/04/09 at 11:45 PM EST

let us celebrate! I'm so proud of the end result, even if the audio's awful messy. Please enjoy.

Added 2026/03/27 at 1:39 PM EST

It was only a matter of time. Just like it's only a matter of time before this series goes full gay :3

Honestly, I wasn't fully convinced myself until I started writing this video- I just wanted to talk about one of my favorite series and get into stuff like the matching photos of the main chars and shamiko's parents. But like...the evidence is overwhelming...and it's not even me reading into it too much! The thumbnail is made from official artwork of these two in wedding dresses, of which is promoting matching figurines that are holding hands... You can't tell me there's no gay here. You just can't. I am a brick wall.

The source art, btw

Added 2026/03/19 at 9:30 AM EST

I've spent so much to fund all that I do, so I feel it fair to ask for a little bit of help. Even if you can't contribute, though, you won't be missing out on anything too big! It'll be kept to pre-releases of YouTube videos, 1200dpi scans of select materials, and other nice-to-haves like that.

If you DO support me, I thank you! I haven't got any exclusive content up YET, but I'm in the early stages of planning a big video on Paper Mario which when it eventually comes out will be exclusive to the Ko-fi page for a time. Either way, your contribution will help me to pay for future scanlation and archival materials. I thank you in advance!

https://ko-fi.com/sierracomix

Added 2025/09/18 at 5:45 PM EST