Knowing Better
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May 2025 Update
🕑 Added 2025-05-01 16:40:40 +0000 UTCHello everyone!
I'm still working on the scripts. The first one is 27239 words long, the second is 2703.
For those who may have missed the previous announcement, this Hawaii project has ballooned to the point where I had to break it up into (hopefully only) three videos. That wasn't the original plan, but as I was writing, I came up on the length of the SDA video script and realized I wasn't even a third of the way through my outline. If I kept this as one video, it would be something like 8 hours long, and there's simply no way I could do that. Not only for my sanity, but I would need like quadruple the hard drive space.
Parts videos are usually a pretty terrible idea on Youtube as fewer people watch each installment - but I also have to weigh that against most people likely not clicking on an 8 hour video. So this last month was spent figuring out how to break this into parts without it just being Hawaii 1, 2, and 3. It's become a similar situation to the Vegetarianism/Kellogg pair of videos, where I need to come up with a theme for each video, along with their own intros, outros, and theses.
This process is far more time consuming than I care to admit, so I am ever-grateful to have your support.
Currently, it's looking like the videos will be broken up as such:
1. Establishing the kingdom. How Hawaii went from a collection of separate island kingdoms to a modern constitutional monarchy (for the 1800s). The Hawaiians were independent, so most all of the changes to their society and culture were done by themselves, not some foreign power. Roughly covering pre-contact to 1840.
2. Corrupting the kingdom. How the Hawaiian royalty sold out to foreign interests. Unlike other indigenous groups, no foreign power came in to steal the land. The Hawaiian upper class divided up the land and sold it - legally - to create sugar plantations. These new business interests then got the kingdom to change laws to benefit them. Roughly 1840-1887.
3. Overthrow. How and why the corrupt Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown - not by a foreign power, but by descendants of missionaries and sugar barons who were born in Hawaii, but whose interests aligned with America. I'll be covering the effort to regain their sovereignty from 1887 to the present.
So, I am mostly done with Script 1, my research assistant is going through to add her notes, then I will start the process of having experts and members of the group - in this case, Native Hawaiians - look it over for any issues. If you happen to be versed in Hawaiian history and would like to help out, let me know.
Script 2 is still in its early stages. I spent a non-insignificant amount of time coming up with a family tree for the Hawaiian monarchy to use as a plot device, much like the conspiracy boards for Vegetarianism.
Since I have a plan for Script 2 now, I'm hoping that I can get some serious writing done this month. But given how long everything is, I'm sure it's going to be another 2-3 months before I can even start filming.
Writing has always been my bottleneck and I fear that if I just get into filming and editing Part 1, Parts 2 and 3 will take even longer to make. I've seen too many other creators vow to cover "the entire history" of something and then burn out after one or two videos. If I already haven them written, there won't be much reason to burn out. And I'd much rather have all three laid out and interconnected, rather than just making them as I go along.
All that said, if I had to guess, Part 1 will be coming out in the Fall, with Parts 2 and 3 a month or two afterwards to space things out. Of course, Patreon will be getting everything earlier than Youtube.
I know some of you have been disappointed by my slowness on this project. Trust me, I share your frustrations. For a number of reasons, this topic required a lot of special attention. People have been lying about Hawaiian history to suit their agenda since the 1820s and many of those lies persist to this day. I'm likewise confronted with the modern sovereignty movement, which is actually a dozen different groups with competing interests and different versions of their history. It's all quite delicate and I want to make sure I get it right.
Comments
Josh
Great turtle picture!
Christopher Apostolof
Do I wish it was coming out faster? Of course, we all do, but it’s because we love your content. Do the right thing, put out the quality we all have come to love and enjoy, and I can tell you I’ll happily be supporting you here on Patreon awaiting the series.
