I recently watched this video on the Marine Corps boot camp experience in an hourish format. I’m pretty new to video essays as a genre so I’m curious how y’all think it compares to others that use this type of personal narrative + found footage approach to analyze a broader topic or subject.

A video about stoicism and the trope of being taken down by a bunch of arrows to show your heroism.

A scientific finding can become misleading without anyone fabricating the research.

This video follows four points where that distortion commonly happens:

• correlation is turned into causation
• relative risk is presented without absolute risk
• findings from narrow samples are generalized to everyone
• one study is treated as settled scientific truth

The examples include insomnia and depression, processed meat and cancer risk, the marshmallow test and power posing.

I made the video because I am interested in the gap between what a study actually establishes and what eventually reaches headlines, podcasts and social media.

At what point do you think most of the distortion happens: in the original research, institutional communication, journalism, or online content?

There was that "One X-cellent Scene" Playlist that was created a few years ago by Nando V Movies. I didn't make one at the time because I was going through some stuff. I finally made one.

Thanks for watching.

A strategic breakdown of the Dance of the Dragons. Not about who has more dragons, but about what each side actually weaponizes: Law, Gold, Faith, Dragons and Fear. Law is older than fire. Fear is cheaper than armies. Motion-graphics case study [11:28].

A video essay I’ve been working on for a while! Try it out if u have the chance!! :)

Is anyone else tired of modern AAA games/movies/shows handing everything to the protagonist without making them earn it?

A good narrative usually comes down to giving a character an impossible decision to show us what they are actually made of. Instead, so much of what we get now feels like a corporate self-insert project where the main character learns nothing and overcomes nothing.

I just put together a deep dive into why modern storytelling across games and movies is missing the mark, and why the real savior of the medium right now is the indie scene (studios behind games like Hollow Knight: Silksong or Clair Obscure: Expedition 33). They still care about the sanctity of a character's arc.For those who value narrative consistency in games, what recent title do you think actually nailed a tragic or mysterious character arc without falling into corporate tropes?

Here is my full take on why current media sucks, but why there is still hope for creators who actually care in the form of a video essay.

Thanks and have a great day.

A video essay about Curb Your Enthusiasm, comparing the successes of the earlier seasons with the perceived misses of the later seasons.