Meteo Xavier

I didn't say anything other than I just now noticed he's one of our sponsors. Even if I wanted to take a side here, there's juuuuuuuuuuuuust no way in hell I could. This is some sort of dodecahedron conflict shit right hurr.

It's like outspoken liberal activist Janeane Garofalo said, "It's comedy, deal with it." Then again, when's the last time you saw her in anything? More on topic, if the newest walls-o-text is any indication, it's that this is one crazy-ass blitzkrieg of culture war insanity, and I think should be bronzed and put on a pedestal as an icon with a plate underneath that reads "This is when the culture war of videogaming reached its logical extreme". What good can come of this is that people can now start to see "wow, this shit really is going too far" and they can start letting their brains back into the control panel to take comments from internet trolls and celebrities with the massive icebergs of salt they were supposed to be using in the first place. And I just now spotted that Cynical Brit is actually one of our sponsors...

Yeah, it took a few seconds for me to connect that there. Also, rather coincidentally, I found this today: http://gamesnosh.com/radical-feminism-hindering-progress-video-games/

How did they find that? Did the ex post them or something? (Understand that I'm not really willing to dive into a whole new, disgusting story just to satisfy a loose end curiosity there)

Oh wow, I thought I wrote an update here, but it's not there. Ok, so it's been a little while longer in making an update than I realized. Here's what's going on with the project right now - it's still essentially complete, but it's waiting on me to create the tracklist before it can be sent in for evaluation. So this time, it's actually ME holding up production on it. Why is it taking me so long to make up a tracklist? Well, there's a few reasons for it (or excuses, however you prefer to see it ), the first and foremost being that my August has been particularly wild and ridiculous. For those who don't know, my body has been losing physical strength and energy gradually for the past several years and in July, I finally had to see a doctor about it. At first I was put on anti-depressants and ambien, along with vitamins, to help see if that can restore my positive energy, then later it was determined via blood test my testosterone is low, so I had to start taking testosterone shots to rebuild my body's physical strength and energy. This worked at first, but sooner or later, when you start taking a bunch of new medicine, there's going to be complications and boy were there ever! The shots initially actually had me bedridden because two days later I'd have debilitating pain in my leg. I also found out I wasn't taking the ambien correctly and had to stop for a bit - and that resulted in a WEEKLONG total insomnia rebounding that truly fucked me up for a week and fucked up my schedule for several weeks. Then my wife got sick at the same time, and this shit wasn't cheap so I had take extra video and photography jobs to help make up the bills. Then the cat got fleas and that's been difficult because the fleas are stubborn and they make me paranoid due to my autism. Fucking hate fleas, they drive me nuts. In the meantime, I also had to start doing some other paid music gigs I was finally lucky to get, but their productions were also weird schedule-wise, and by the time it looked like I finally had time to put this project back on my priority schedule, my headphones BROKE and I need to get them repaired. This kind of shit happens to me ALL the time and it's impossible to plan for. I probably could've gotten the tracklist done by now, but it just didn't work out that way on my end. I don't want to just throw the tracks together and submit it either, I want to CAREFULLY select the best progression of sounds from start to finish I can. I don't even want to do them on my basic speakers, I want to do them on my headphones where I can hear everything clearly and be able to select from there. You guys put in the effort to make the songs, I need to put in the effort to make the song list - I just had not had the right energy and time to do it yet. Some of you may be asking, "Well gee Meteo, I still see you post on here and be a dick in IRC and Facebook and all that, why don't you quit doing that shit and focus on this?" The answer is, "because I need to make time for myself to rest and vent too, just like everyone else, or else I can't get it done right. It's even part of my doctor's orders." So let me get my headphones fixed, which I'll call the guy this week, and I'll try to get back on that. Thanks again for your ever-patient nature, Ocremix! I greatly appreciate it.

***damn, now THIS is a necrobump!

My career goals are simply to get whatever I can get out of using my entertainment skills and be satisfied I was lucky enough to get that. I learned the long and hard way that trying to be a successful professional composer is basically a fool's errand these days (no offense intended to you guys still shooting for that) and I really don't want the difference of whether or not I can put food on the table be if I can find someone willing to pay me $400+ a minute for music now that everyone and their Mom does music and voice over work today. Instead, I'm going to take a far more practical approach - keep my day job, keep climbing those leaders to better and better income, and do music and voice overs part time. I HATE the idea of music and voice acting becoming WORK instead of FUN. Something I WANT to do shouldn't be painful, it should be rewarding for me as a being, not solely my checking account. If I slog 40 hours a week at a job, then it makes the work I DO want to do even more rewarding, and it keeps my discipline. I can get more jobs by not charging $400 a minute, my livelihood doesn't depend on how much I'm willing to suck off a client and therefore the quality of my art increases too. I still get to set my own rules, the chances of opportunities may remain the same, and if I fail, which 99% of all artists will do within 5 years of being artists, then all I am is disappointed. It's better to be disappointed than disappointed, hungry, bankrupt and potentially homeless. The only objective downside is I lose time to be able to work on music, but honestly, if I'm failing in that endeavor like 99% of us will after a while anyway (and I'm not trying to inflate that statistic, I've been told only 1 out of 100 artists finds professional success to replace a salary) than all that time would largely be for naught anyway. ... I have been kinda venting on this subject lately after some surprising backlash I received from a topic on this subject elsewhere by known composers. It shocked and disappointed me how black and white they see this subject, and I've been kinda bitter on it since yesterday. I won't pretend this post is entirely unbiased there.

The Bible belt is awesome.

Back when I was friends with JesusTheDarkLord and some of his friends, I saw former OCR people around. Now I see no one. DON'T ANY OF YOU HORRIBLE BASTARDS WANNA VISIT ME IN EAST TN? We have Dollywood for god's sakes! (but no, the rollercoaster made out of Dolly's boobs does not exist)

I felt a portent yesterday. I felt something was going to happen, but I figured it was going to be Tracey Morgan, as he was the one grabbing headlines alongside Tony Stewart, not Robin Williams.

I don't know how relevant this is here, but considering the guy was a major game fan and even appeared in a Zelda commercial with the daughter he named after said game series, I figured it was at least somewhat appropriate to pay some respects. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/11/robin-williams-dead-dies_n_5670050.html - confirmed to not be a hoax. Before I got into music, I studied acting first, and unlike music I was actually good at it at the time I was studying it. Robin Williams was one of my main templates for that similar to how Hiroki Kikuta and Motoi Sakuraba exist as templates for me now. I don't usually get bummed out about many celebrities/entertainers that die, but I do feel unusually gut-punched by this one. Anyways, just wanted to leave a little mini-shrine here for those interested to contribute to it.

Neptunia makes me wish I did modern gaming because it is by far the most interesting premise for a gaming series I can think of hearing about for the last several years. One of these days I'll be checking out the anime of it.

Yeah, the thought going through my mind reading this is "if you live in such a shitty place, maybe crowdfunding an album is not your biggest priority?"

Maybe where you live...

To be fair, I think it actually ships on it's own external HD iirc.

This is the biggest VST I've ever seen... http://www.productiongrand.com/

Well, I'm trying to order them in a good way so each disc of the project has a good balance and a nice, dramatic progression from song to song. For example - while each track on here is most definitely good, some tracks are, for lack of a better term, filler, while others really stand out in a variety of ways. Some are epic metal monsters, others are fun orchestral bits, some are dark, some are very light, etc. What I want to do is be able to manipulate the moods and balance out energies so there isn't really a part of the full project that's weak, and put songs that have special dramatic value in the right places (i.e. songs that most definitely sound like they could start a whole new disc by themselves will do exactly that). With 5 CDs worth of music, it's going to be a challenge, and Roz has told me to wait on doing it on serious merits until we send the whole thing into evaluation. I think he's the one actually submitting it, but I can do that too if he's busy (and I know he is).

I've worked on a track order some, but I've been waiting to for what we need to do to send them through evaluation first. I've been letting Roz handle that, but he's still busy and I've been wondering today if I need to jump in and do that myself instead. I'd been writing you and seeing Rozovian on occasion, but it hasn't worked out yet that anything's moved forward from it yet.

You mean Edinburgh?

There was indeed.

I did think it was funny the project director himself would be the last to know.

I think I listened to the track you're talking about last night, Mak, and if I had concerns about it, you would've heard about them by now. It'll be fine, man.

I don't have any way of stopping you if you do, but I can't think of any reason why you would, they are perfectly fine as they are.

Now that everything's in, I will be working on a track order. I got a start already, but I needed everything else in first before I could get too far. You and me need to have an IM dialogue somewhere so we can discuss the finer aspects. We have more than just director/artist comments that need to be added in somewhere. Rozovian's schedule, to my best current frame of reference, is still very busy and random, so I need to be taking some charge of that and delivering to him. My next little while is busy with private life things, but after July 10th, I should hopefully be pretty clear to put this up to my personal priority to administrate.