Captain Southbird

I've been running regular Sunday morning streams for a while now. Of particular note, I was playing Abiotic Factor with Teckworks (and some other rotating friends.) For me, it was a new experience! I actually want to make some highlights of it, the first series in a while I felt compelled to do so.

In the meantime, VODs exist here:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list...

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 13

Captain Southbird

One more post about this, I READ in YouTube's own documentation that it wouldn't advertise more than 3 videos in 24 hours. That was their own documentation. So, for those of you suffering from Southbird channel spam this morning, because apparently YT's own documentation is WRONG, I apologize. If I had known it was gonna do that, I would've taken the extra step to not notify on those uploads.

So, I do apologize for that. However, just to reiterate why I did any of this, that "third channel" was based on some old desperation, "Misalignment" was just a symptom of me flailing. But I've been doing a lot with weekly streaming right now, and I realized my old edicts of keeping "general gameplay" off the main channel when that's literally like the main thing I'm doing was stupid. Plus, y'know, I'm trying to "feel better" about things I used to be upset about, and that "third channel" just felt like a permanent reminder of some crazy times. So it had to go, for many reasons, but I didn't want that content "lost", so I folded it back, plus some other "Misalignment" stuff that wasn't here before. In terms of content, a profit.

But I really didn't mean to spam people with this nonsense, and YouTube told me it wasn't gonna do that, but it did, so whoops. In any case, I'm done, I'm never "moving" videos again, it's too much strife, heheh

2 months ago | [YT] | 105

Captain Southbird

In short, the old "Misalignment" channel, briefly named as a stream highlight channel before I felt it was unnecessary, has been recombined with this channel. There's still a few VODs that were pushed there I'll put on my full VOD channel eventually.

There is now only two Southbird channels, this one and the Twitch VOD upload channel (www.youtube.com/channel/UC6HL...)

Sorry for making a mess, at this point I promise not to (re)move videos again, short of something YouTube forces me to do.

2 months ago | [YT] | 49

Captain Southbird

Okay, despite what I wrote about a week ago, I gave this some more thought. I've seen some channels that can mix "personal flair" while also sometimes having "mixed content" like general gameplay content.

Now, as this pertains to my ridiculous space and ever-shifting ideas, here's what happened in the last few years:

1) I was confused as to what exactly made my metrics fall (I'm much more at peace with all that now)

2) Flailed by doing a bunch of weird stuff like moving videos around to different channels, with different justifications

3) Created a completely (at the time) not-Southbird-in-name channel called "Misalignment", as an experiment to just see if the name "Southbird" was blackballed, which (after the "Misalignment" experiment was over) I have more recently renamed as a "stream VOD highlight" channel, but realistically it probably won't see a lot of use, and it has the lowest sub count of the three

---

So... I know I've jerked around my older audience by moving things around on whims that made sense to me at the time, but rather than just doing that again, I'm thinking the separate "full VOD" channel is fine for now, and is pretty typical pattern unless I stream to YouTube itself. (Another consideration, but another topic entirely.)

What I'm thinking right now is merging the contents of the former-Misalignment-now-mostly-unused "highlight" channel back into the Southbird mainline, which also brings back things like Teck and I playing Minecraft. (I've also had some nostalgic feelings about that lately as well.) And then, of course, simplifying back to just two channels, which realistically is all I probably need.

However, "moving" videos is not a natural process, it's really a "delete from here, upload over there" operation, which of course loses comments and everything else. But realistically, I probably wrecked all the useful old history from the previous time I moved things around.

I apologize for all the erratic stuff I've done, but in the last few months, I'm trying to kind of reorganize the things I do to make them sane and make sense. If it helps at all, I feel like I'm getting myself on a much better track than I've been in years. I just have a few regrets... like separating the SB+Teck Minecraft vids off the mainline. I know what my reasoning was at the time, but I kinda feel like Teck is too much of a partner personality for my content to not keep it all "at home."

---

In short:

- I move all the videos off the "third channel" no one really needs back to Southbird mainline

- VOD channel remains as-is

- In the future, besides still wanting to make "Southbird niche" content, I guess a few highlights of "funny stream moments" isn't the worst possible thing

---

Not doing any of this tonight, but I'll give a bit of time for comments in case any of you think I'm insane... or, hopefully, that it sounds like I'm starting to make some sense, heheh

2 months ago | [YT] | 92

Captain Southbird

Long overdue update. So, what happened with Starbound was, we thought Arcana was much more developed and had a whole bunch of missions and stuff. We were mistaken. Again. It dead-ended and we found ourselves trying to scramble that series while basically just digging stuff up. Not a problem in a gameplay sense, but not exactly great material for Zam/Phé. We're still trying to decide what to do about that, leveraged against existing Starbound mods or whatever.

That said, in the meantime, I've tried to pick up streaming at least weekly. And, I know, there's a certain amount of you that I'm sure are rolling eyes and thinking that's what every YouTube type does when they're out of ideas, and that's probably true to a point. But, hey, I did write my own custom AVIAN client to offer snark the audience can contribute to, so at least I'll give you that!

Much more recently, I am back to working on my Beast Intersection idea, which I also fully appreciate has been a start/stop project that's languished for years, but hey, some work is better than no work. Eventually I hope that can feed more for this channel as well.

Also just this morning, Teck and I thought of a new approach to Starbound. Not sure if it'll work, and it wouldn't be exactly around Zam/Phé, although "same universe." Thus, not sure what to do with the current series yet, but there will likely be more Starbound, in a slightly different form, in the near future.

I currently stream to Twitch (though if the dust settles I'm considering dual-streaming to YouTube as well), so if you're interested in supporting any of that:

Twitch: twitch.tv/captainsouthbird
VOD uploads: www.youtube.com/channel/UC6HL...


Other than that, stay tuned...

2 months ago | [YT] | 122

Captain Southbird

FYI, as is probably obvious, end of year holidays have been upon us. I took a roughly 9 month hiatus this year due to burn-out and other things, but I am slowly trying to crawl my way back. As you've seen with Starbound, of course. I do have more ideas in the works besides Starbound, but they'll take a bit of time to develop.

And, of course, due to the last two weeks of the year being a mess of holidays and family visiting and all that, not expecting to have anything else ready until sometime in January. Which I hope is understandable.

In any case, it's felt good to finally blow some of the dust off and get back to making things, even if it's currently a bit of a slow throughput, but I kinda need to reboot my own brain here and get back into the rhythm of it.

Naturally I wish all of you the best, and maybe I'll still be able to make something good out of 2025. Here's to hoping, anyways.

In any case, no jokes, a little Discord exists: discord.com/invite/Db8DKAkv6B

10 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 167

Captain Southbird

I asked Microsoft Co-Pilot to make a PowerPoint about me. Frankly the depth of its knowledge is scarily accurate, down to my first console being a "Bally Astrocade", which I bet 99% of anyone reading this has no idea what that even is.

But what really got me was showing me Bella making, ahem, "that face" and I guess that's the perfect primary image to associate to Captain Southbird.

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1 year ago | [YT] | 61

Captain Southbird

I'm bored and I dare you:

discord.com/invite/Db8DKAkv6B

EDIT: Okay, more serious text, I did this as a bit of a lark to see what would happen, but actually got a handful of cool new joins. If it helps, this isn't a "huge" Discord server, so you'll still actually be able to have conversations, but it could use more people just to increase possibility of activities.

1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 77

Captain Southbird

From the department of people who keep better track of stuff than I do, apparently last night was the 5th anniversary of the Starbound series! Here's a very awesome bit of fan artwork from MamaLuigi145, who's been around me and my creations forever.

1 year ago | [YT] | 362

Captain Southbird

As 2023 draws to a close, felt like I might as well do a little write-up. When I left Vinesauce in 2018, I felt like the channel was strong, and I could just break off and do my own thing and find my own success in YouTube land. I had a lot of optimism and ego, and I guess that was my first mistake.

Boy was I wrong. I'd say about 90% of my audience bled off once I stopped working for Vinesauce, which showed it was never really about me, they just associated with me because of the one-degree-off-Vinny. Now, I obviously don't hold anything against Vinny, quite the opposite, he was always good to me, it was just sad to know that I personally didn't really matter when I was no longer associated with him.

In the last 5 years, I've had a lot of trouble coming to terms with that. I've been angry, frustrated, depressed. Not JUST about that (I mean, have you seen the world lately?), but it was a factor. Even today, I'll randomly be "spotted" on Reddit or something, and they always call out, "'Hey, didn't you work for Vinesauce?" Clearly showing in the last 5 years, the general public at large hasn't cared at all about anything I've done, because nobody knows me apart from that, apparently. (Because on the flipside, they never "spot" me and call out anything BESIDES Vinesauce.)

In the last few months, I've finally come to terms with it. I'll never be a popular YouTube personality. I'm surprised at the few who have stuck with me, but you all are special to me. I don't know why you stick with me when everyone else left, but it means a LOT.

However, that also means I'm deprioritizing YouTube. That doesn't mean I'll never upload, for example see the "Mayonnaise RPG" thing. (Which I had a lot of fun with! And my younger brother even wanted in on it, the "second voice" there.) Knowing I'll never "succeed" on this platform, I'm going to just upload whatever amuses me whenever I can. I just also want to focus on other things in life since the things I do on YouTube tend to be heavy time investment for little reward. It's just a practicality.

Still, the mild net positive here is that I'm finally going to get back to just uploading "for fun" and not be worried about whether whatever I upload actually does anything for the insatiable YouTube machine. "Mayonnaise RPG" is a perfect example of me amusing myself. I actually love Mario RPG, it is a super nostalgic part of my childhood, and I'm old enough that I played it on the SNES back in the day when it was NEW. This sort of corruption comes from my soul. I love reverse engineering things and making them deliberately malfunction in an interesting way. It's just how I roll.

If you like it, it's here. If it's gotten old, well, unsubscribe and go your own way, I'm not gonna be hurt by it, we all like what we like, and vice-versa. I want to enter 2024 (and all the potentially scary things it brings us) with a better focus on just getting back to being "me" and not focused on how much none of this really "worked out" in a "metrics" sort of way. I know I'm out of touch and "old hat", but fuck it, I'd rather be me than just another pandering to the meme machines of the Internet.

1 year ago | [YT] | 330