Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
So a lot of you know that I have a Patreon. If you didn't, uh... you do now? I originally launched it for my comics, but it kind of transitioned to being mostly focused on my Witchcraft podcast years ago -- because that's where I had extra content I could give folks -- but it's overall just for "me" in general.
Anyways.
My goal for the last year has been to increase the "value" for Patreon patrons, with all paid tiers getting access to a copy of Super Awesome Action Heroes, and the five dollar and ten dollar tiers getting access to my novels (at different times -- the five dollar tier patrons get them on a year delay).
For a while I had been doing Patreon exclusive "vlogs," but those didn't last just because I literally ran out of things to say in them. I mean, I'm boring. The only eventful stuff in my life is the eventful stuff happening to all of us right now. Back in April, I think I came up with something fun that I've now done two months in a row.
And that's record reaction videos to episodes of The Pagan Invasion.
You see, for the April episode of BS-Free Witchcraft I did an episode on the structure of Satanic Panic propaganda, and used the first episode of 1991's The Pagan Invasion as the example to illustrate my points. For that episode I needed to, obviously, rewatch that first episode for research.
Rather than just watch it in private though, I recorded my rewatch as a commentary and reaction video and posted it as a Patreon exclusive video. And even though the podcast has moved on from the topic, folks asked me to react to episode two... so I did that last week. I fully intend to review the whole series on my Patreon now, and each one of my videos ends up being like two hours long. I don't know if I'll get a chance to do one every month, but I plan to get through the whole series.
Honestly I'm not sure why I didn't think of doing something like this before.
So yeah, we're doing fun stuff there. Oh, also, before I forget to say something -- July is the annual Q&A episode of BS-Free Witchcraft, and I need listener questions. If you have something you want me to respond to on the show, just send it in via the show's contact form by July 11th 2025.
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Story of my life. “Wait, what am I doing here? When did I become staff?”
Yeah, that happened to me too XD
Mine is more something i signed up for years and years ago and they’ve never removed me from the list… I got birthday cards from McDonalds for something like 20 years.
As someone who a) just got a smartphone, b) knows tons of people without smartphones, and c) uses paper schedules anyway, I want to punch Roy.
I hated the thought of cons not printing out programs… until I finally got myself a smartphone. Now I get all weirded out any time I’m at a con that DOESN’T use Guidebook or some other online thing.
One of the things that cheeses me off about RI Comiccon is that while they PROVIDE a program book, it doesn’t have a schedule of events in it. You have to go to the lobby and copy down whatever it is you want to see that they’ve put up on a whiteboard!
Isn’t that the same con that had to have fire marshals step in because they oversold the event?
Paragons of effective management, really.
Yep, that’s them. I went to lunch early enough that I got back into the con before the hammer came down. A friend I met the next day told me HE’D been locked out because they were over crowded. It’s a thing. I remember Phil Foglio did a strip about a NY Star Trek con where Ticketron oversold the con and something like 14,000 people showed up. Last year they had to make refunds for the people who paid extra for the “Batman” section of the con. Yvonne Craig cancelled months before the event and Julie Newmar (who I’D been looking forward to seeing) had her flight cancelled because some one shot up LAX! Adam West and Burt Ward did the best they could, but they were bored and it showed.
I keep every program book from every con I have attended. Not having one at Otakon just felt weird… I wanted something physical I could bring back to show the staff here, but they were pretty much electronic-only (I heard later there WERE program books, but there were very few printed.)
Oh, we’ve had this debate many a time, but it comes down to this:
Everyone wants one. But most folks leave their pocket program guide in their hotel and asks for another one. We go through 500 extra every convention.
We made Conbooks an optional grab and cut printing of them by 20-30%, but people want the printed program guide, even if it’s online.
Live with it – you print up a batch of schedules (one or two sheets generally does the trick), put them out for people to take as needed, and put up a big one as a poster behind the information desk for when you run out. Yes it’s a good idea to have an on-line schedule – be sure you can update it on the fly. But don’t dare Murphy by depending on it solely. The number of things that can go wrong is scary…