TotalHalibut aka TotalBiscuit aka The Cynical Brit

Yeah he's actually threatening libel, as for his friendship with Laura, his latest statement indicates that he's afraid that associating with her will put her at risk, so it's not about him being angry at her (he explicitly said he puts no blame on her for the new article), he's just afraid that if they are publically friendly she may face consequences of some sort from people in the circles she moves in.

TL:DR - Conventional treatments ineffective, liver too damage for clinical trials that we know of. I'm retiring as a critic to spend whats left of my life sharing my love of gaming with my wife and all of you via co-op videos and streams. The podcast will continue every week, with a streamlined 2-hour format. We have no plans to launch any kind of donation campaign and suggest above a list of ways to support us if you would like to.

When I went into hospital a week or so ago, it was accompanied by the news that conventional chemotherapys effectiveness had been exhausted. My body has become resistant to all forms of it according to my oncologist. 46 chemo treatments, 138 days plugged into a pump. Let nobody ever say I wasn't stubborn. Unfortunately this was followed up a couple of days later with some more bad news. My liver is failing and its effectiveness has lowered past the point where the clinical trials I had been offered would take me on. Yes apparently there are things that are too dangerous for even the terminal. Obviously we're going to keep looking for other trials but I'm currently coming to terms with the fact that I don't have long left and right now at any rate, there is literally nothing I can do about it other than try to manage the pain as best as possible and stay as hydrated as possible to ease the pressure on the liver. There are quite a few pain management options left to try and the ones that I am using can be increased in dosage quite significantly if need be. The majority of the pain is being caused by pressure on the spine from hardened nodules in the liver and lung as well as fluid. We haven't fully explored the options for dealing with all of that, but its high priority so that my quality-of-life can improve.

That's what it comes down to now, getting my quality-of-life to as good a standard as possible. Even though you don't really have any treatments to fight with any more, I firmly believe that the will to live is a very strong asset and that is much easier to maintain when you're not in crippling pain all the time.

That will most likely be my last health update, unless some miracle happens or we do indeed find a trial that can do something despite the damage to my liver. I'd ask people not to speculate about how long I might have left. I've deliberately left out some details to try and reduce the behavior, though it might very well have the opposite effect. All I do know is that kind of thing is upsetting to some of my viewers that read it and I'd rather not encourage it. I've already exceeded the "usual" lifespan of someone with my condition so whatever numbers people come up with are just that.

Its now a case of "what do I do with the time I have left?" Why am I telling you? Because if you're a viewer of my content, its relevant to you.

Retirement, sort of

Firstly, I am retiring as a games critic. I can't do the job anymore. I'm under the influence of too much medication to think clearly and my schedule too unreliable to get coverage out in a timely manner. I've found it very stressful over the last year to try and keep up, knowing that I'm failing and watching my work (rightly) fall out of favour because there isn't enough of it, its not on time or its not of good quality. It doesn't make any sense to continue to try to do that job in my state and while it used to bring me a lot of satisfaction, now it's just the opposite.

Does that mean I'm done with Youtube and Twitch? Nope, blokes gotta make a living. I have a family to consider and there's no such thing as "too much" when it comes to what I leave them when I go out kicking and screaming. I want to spend the rest of my time with the two things I love the most, my family and my work. I'm transitioning my Youtube and Twitch work over to gameplay with my wife. There's a bunch of co-op stuff I never really got around to playing and I have the perfect gameplay partner right beside me. When I'm having a good idea, I'll be doing gameplay streams and Youtube videos with Genna. If you want to know what to expect from that, well we've done it before, just not recently, there's some rather popular videos of it over on Her channel

This is something that will make me happy, spending time with my family but also getting job satisfaction. That's something all too easily overlooked by some, I'm a very work-driven person and one of hardest things of the past couple of years has been dealing with not being able to reliable do my work. It's brought on depression, uncertainty, anger, you name it. I hate it.

The Podcast

What about Co-optional? Well that's sticking around. The show must go on after all. We will be moving forward with our proposal to shorten the show to 2 hours per episode however. This is for health reasons but also because lately I've felt like 3 hours drags on too much, we find ourselves having to rely on way too much filler and its not been as enjoyable to do. Some might be disappointed by this though we found in a recent poll that quite a few people, more than those who said they'd be disappointed, actually wanted this change. There are only so many hours in a week. I'd rather have 2 hours of good, fresh content than 3 hours of discussion spread too thin, which the shows as of late have often been. As for weeks in which I simply cannot do the show (which hopefully wont happen but you can never be sure), Genna is going to be trained in production and will take on a host role, with the usual guests. Genna will be filling in for Dodger while she takes maternity leave anyway so, get used to hearing her voice.

Support

We've had A LOT of questions about donations, how people can help etc. That's always humbling to see. Some suggested a Gofund Me. I'm not comfortable with taking donations when I'm still able to work and have income from several different sources. I dont begrudge anyone for using donations as a form of income, its just always seemed inappropriate for us when we have several other ways to making money that result in both parties getting something. If you would like to help, do the things you've always done. Watch our videos without adblock or with Youtube Red (yes Red helps, a lot, much more than watching an ad).

Support our podcast sponsors, Squarespace and [Audible at [(http://Audible.com/cynical)] - they've both been very good to us over the past couple of years and let us pay Dodger and Jesse a salary for doing the show rather than just "exposure" (though they got a lot of damn exposure, let's not sell ourselves short here").

Watch our streams and consider subscribing. There'll be more content coming on Twitch than there has been for a while with streams with Genna. Our subscription is a service, giving you instant access to Vo Ds rather than having to wait for them to hit Youtube (in the case of Cooptional, thats 48 hours afterwards), no Twitch ads, 50 chat emotes, access to the subscriber only chat and a 10% discount on our t-shirts and hoodies. We've done our best to make subscribing a service model, not a donation model and we're going to try and keep it that way, including more features and discounts if we can.

Speaking of merchandise, yes the purchase of a shirt is very helpful. Margins on t-shirts are ridiculous, that's why everyone and their mother wants to sell them to you. [http://totalbiscuit.shop] is where we sell ours.

We have a games retail partner in [http://chrono.gg/tb] that sells a different game every day at a big discount. We get a cut of each sale, so if you see something on there you like and pick it up under our link, that helps.

We do have another partnership in the works as well, with a company you should be quite familiar with.

Lastly, I'll be taking the occasional brand deal here and there. Even though I'm not a critic anymore, I still fully believe in disclosure, honesty with the audience and only taking deals for games you actually like. People can see right through the fake bullshit anyway, so why waste your time and I'd quite like however many videos I've got left in me to be fun. I'm not playing your crappy game, no matter how much money you try to slip me, so you can take me off those mobile mailing lists please.

These are all better than asking for donations. We're still running a business and I want to keep acting like it. All that said, if something goes horribly wrong, if my insurance stops paying out for whatever reason or if faced between draining all savings and leaving my family with nothing but our physical assets and asking for help, you better believe I'll be asking for help. The family comes first.

What we leave behind

It goes further than that though. When I leave this world I want to leave something my family can use to help them earn. Not only would I be ok with Genna taking over my channels and assets once I'm gone, I'd be delighted if she did. I've been encouraging her for years to create more content for Youtube, hopefully as we make a bunch of fun videos together over the next however-long, that confidence will grow. I fully expect The Co-optional Podcast to go on and I love the thought that once I'm gone, the channels will go on in my absence, hosted by the person who knows me best and has been with me for the better part of my adult life.

If this is all a bit brutally honest... well, it is me. I want you to see where I'm coming from, I always have and I really believe that's what made me an effective and useful critic. It's been a privilege, thank you all for letting me into your life and do something so important as to have an impact on how you spend your hard-earned money. Thankfully Youtube is thriving with great review and critical content now, there's plenty of awesome choices and considering most of my critical content has been reserved for the podcast over the last year, many of you have most likely found the places you can rely on.

Thank you for reading, watching or listening and I will see you soon, along with Genna, on a stream or YT channel near you.