082: The SoraRabbit Update #4 — The SoraRabbit Hole

Welcome back to the latest installment of the SoraRabbit Update! It looks like this will be the ongoing format for these sorts of posts… none of my other iterations made it past the third post. I did mean to put this one out months ago, and the subject of it was going to be completely different, but things didn’t work out the way I planned.

It’s official now… there’s a green screen and everything.

As I alluded to last time, this post was originally meant to be the big announcement post for my long-promised YouTube channel. I’ve been working on it off and on for three years now, and I really did mean to get it up and running this year.

Sadly, that just wasn’t feasible. I made great strides towards getting it going… I got all my equipment, did some test footage, practiced with lighting and sound, learned how to edit and do voice-over work, found the music, filled half a notebook with ideas and plans. I’m about as far as I can get in my pre-development stage without actually doing the content. (Although I have all the footage and most of the editing for two videos.)

But as the remainder of 2024 rapidly fell through my clutching fingers, I had to make the hard decision back at the end of August that it just wasn’t going to happen this year. Mainly due to workload and stress, but also for a technical reason I can’t get into just yet because it involves a central feature of my videos. Due to these reasons, I put YouTube on the backburner and turned my focus to my other projects.

So if I didn’t get my YouTube channel launched, then what was 2024 all about? Well, when I started this year I set a huge goal for myself. Due to various reasons I’ve talked about in my previous Update post, I didn’t get much posted last year. I was determined to make that right this year, to produce a respectable amount of content up to make up for the light 2023.

To do this, I made an ambitious list of posts that I wanted to get done, with a rough idea of when each one would need to be finished in order to have enough time to get through the whole list. I tacked this to the vision board above my desk and got to work.

If you look at the shot of my list above you’ll see I scratched out five projects on my main list and also added a sticky pad with nine more posts on it that I hadn’t initially planned on. So all in all, I came out ahead of my goals.

My best editor, Gobo. But she’s taking a break.

So, in between all my attempts at getting my YouTube channel launched, I stayed more focused than I have been in years, getting through my list one item at a time… at most times working on 3-4 posts at once, switching all my attention to whichever one was closest to being finished.

Two of the posts I scratched out were new installments of Journey Through the Forgotten Comic Book Bin, one of my favorite new features. The reason for temporarily shelving those will become evident at some point in the future. Just know that I have big, big plans for that series down the road. I had also planned to do a 5 year anniversary post (because I’ve been doing this for five years!) but sadly I didn’t get around to that. I then figured I would use this post as my Year 5 retrospective, but I decided against that too. I instead decided to just keep plugging away and instead celebrate my 100th post in 2025. As staggering as that is to think of, I’m very nearly in the triple digits on my main posts.

So did I just work this year? Mainly, yeah. I know I usually talk about pop culture stuff in these update posts, and the things I’ve been enjoying like new movies, games, TV shows, things like that. But this year was almost solely about catching up on the SoraRabbit Hole. A majority of the things I watched had to do with posts I was making. Star Wars the Clone Wars Season Three, The Mandalorian Season Three, Doctor Who Season Five. I watched lots of tokusatsu and started two new series of posts to cover Kamen Rider and Super Sentai. I finally got back to the Ultra series with Ultraseven, which will be my next post. (Just putting the finishing touches on it.)

I finally finished my coverage of Chi’s Sweet Home, an adorable kitty anime. I went overboard with my Halloween content, covering three Halloween specials and four horror movies along with two more posts mentioned in the next section. I watched both of the 80s Ewok movies with Cocoashade. (This also inspired a new series of posts that will premiere in 2025.) I really love watching things for my blog… I mean, this is all stuff I’d be watching anyway, why not also write about it? This blog gives me a stage to get my thoughts out there, celebrating the things I love, and hopefully expose my readers to things they may not have tried otherwise.

Side note, the shot up above shows the cool Marvel Godzilla poster I was gifted by the awesome individuals at my local comic book shop. Since the plague hit and I started working my day job from home, I don’t get out much anymore. Aside from the occasional game nights I host for my friends and family, and hosting Christmas at my place, my only non-family socialization comes in the form of my weekly excursions to my neighborhood comic book store. The three people who work there are great and we have some fun nerdy conversations about comic books, 80s cartoons, various TV shows, and whatever else comes up. One day I noticed them putting up a Godzilla poster and knowing how much I love the big green kaiju, they promised me the poster once they were done using it as décor. So now it has a treasured spot in my game room.

It wasn’t all TV and movies, though. As I do every year for Halloween, I played a Silent Hill game. (Two this year, actually.) Cocoashade unexpectedly gifted me a Duo-R and lots of games for it, so I started a fun series of posts about retro gaming. I also played a bunch of indie puzzle games, several installments of Super Smash Bros, and a whole lot of Just Dance. There’s lots more on the Video Game section from this year too if you’re interested.

I even got some comic books and manga into the mix. I returned to making fun of Rob Liefeld and caught up on my coverage of Taberareusa, the cutest manga about self-cannibalizing talking animals I’ve found so far.

But that’s enough advertising. All that is to show that I did a whole lot of work on the SoraRabbit Hole this year and I feel like I made up for my light 2023 and then some. 2025 will be a similarly big year… I’m already working up my post list for that year. As a sneak peek, I plan to return to the Forgotten Comic Book Bin more than once, I will cover the second Super Sentai series, J.A.K.Q., at least one Clone Wars post and one Doctor Who post, more if time permits. Hopefully I will get out my big Just Dance lore post, and more retro Corner posts. I will start that new collab series with Cocoashade. There will be another SoraRabbit Update with more news than this one had. And, of course, my usual Halloween and Christmas posts. And if I get through enough main posts, my 100 post celebration.

There are fewer posts planned, but this will be the year that I finally, FINALLY get YouTube going.

Yes, I’ve brought it back around to Youtube. Right now I’m not going to reveal exactly what will be on the channel, but just know I have maybe around 50 videos currently planned. Probably more… I haven’t really outlined the various series I’m going to work on. I expect more will be added, some will be scrapped, and the entire channel will evolve as I go. I actually have two videos almost finished, and as soon as I polish off the last five posts for this year, I’ll be working hard on scripts for the next eight videos. If all goes as planned and I don’t run into any more hitches, the first 10 videos (at least) will be up in 2025.

I know that’s all pretty vague, but it’s all I can reveal for now. But hey, here is a sneak peek of some behind the scenes stuff going on.

No context will be given! I just wanted to show that I’ve been hard at work and I think the YouTube channel is going to be a lot of fun. And yes, I may dress as Godzilla in some videos. You’ll have to tune in to see if I’m joking. (Those could just be my jammies. I’ll never tell.)

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to. Not as substantial a post as I had hoped, but I can be content with what I’ve accomplished in 2024 and excited about what’s coming in 2025. Once I’m done with 2024, I will have put out 15 main posts, 8 Short Hops, and 14 Video Game posts. I have to say that’s pretty impressive for me and I’m proud of myself. There were times I didn’t think I could do it, but I just kept working at it.

I want to thank you all for reading and sticking with me while my productivity has been up and down. I hope you’ve enjoyed the posts I put out this year and I hope that you’ll join me in 2025 both in text and video. I appreciate each and every one of you.

Well, back to work.