Ahoy there subscribed person who gets my emails or person who, just wandered onto this post. I know things here have been kind of quiet as of late, and I’ll go into that a little bit and will explain some of why my focus has shifted, and also peel back the curtain about life a bit.
WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN!
The short answer is: Busy
The longer answer is: Busy launching a story-based Substack and also you know life…
Ili (of Iliwritesstuff, also my wife) and myself for the last few years, and it seems longer than it probably I think. Have begun to publish our story “The Dominant Ones’ here on Substack, we are in effect self-publishing it. I mean yeah we’re using the platform to do so but this is ours to control. A lot of things happened over the last few years to us, and we’ve slowly but surely been chipping away at this. I think if I haven’t been streaming or working on the MNR project or not at work I have been in some way working on this. Ili has been also just cranking out concept after concept and even some subtle scenes I wrote out.
But, we decided we needed to get this out there, we’re taking a leap as I said it’s self-published, and we’re only asking for roughly $50 a year to support it. You can read more over at the site which I’ll link at the end of this paragraph, but this is a big step for us and also a moment. I won’t lie and say I haven’t been nervous about how people will receive this, I mean when you put something out you will always get feedback and it’s the job of a person to filter that feedback into two groups: Constructive, and pointless. If it is constructive I will take any advice I can get, but if it’s just you screaming you don’t like it and I need to be better, well you’re just wasting both of our times at the end of the day. Granted, I also did not mention that hey maybe I’ll get some very positive feedback. As of this post, we are only at five subscribers on our free tier and that is just off the strength of the Chapter Zero we have not (as of this writing) even published the first chapter officially. Still, I’ll take any growth as positive. The views have been insane, but I always try to push to get further. I remember when we were starting on Twitch, the goal was to get to fifty followers to hit affiliate status, and we moved through that in pretty quick succession. Granted at the time it was four of us on the project and we were streaming at least five nights of the week (my number may be off a bit) so hitting that was easy. That said, the biggest problem we encountered was hitting the average viewer goal, now thankfully here I don’t have to worry about that. But, I still kind of see the views as an idea of where were at. It isn’t a precise thing, but if what I’m seeing on the view count is any indication. It’s looking good but can always get better. I’m excited to see where this project takes us, and I can’t wait to share Ili’s art, which I’ve seen the completed chapter one cover and it looks great, I’m hoping we can kind of get the effect for the interior art to work, it’s a great little visual trick she pulled. But, we’ll see if we can get it done in time of publishing, which will be Sunday at midnight EST. We’re doing that for a reason which I’ll get to in a bit, but for now, here is the link to The Dominant Ones, please just head over and check it out, and if you haven’t yet or like what you saw I ask you to please consider subscribing.
Brandon gets life into focus
So I’ve had the same pair of glasses for the last I don't know ten years or so. I got them before I got married so they are old. Anyway over time there have been...hints of maybe I need to get my eyes checked. A few examples are:
1. Missing objects on a table I just looked at and having them pointed out to me
2. Hard to read the insanely small text on games anymore (seriously, I know they wanna throw a lot on the screen but I need a magnifying glass to see subtitles sometimes it seems.)
3. When I am at work looking at a bad product and asking my coworker if it looks okay only to be told “No, I know your glasses are bad, but how can you not see this?” Pretty sure there were some colorful comments sprinkled in there as well. But, I don’t remember them and I won’t do them justice probably so you get that edited version.
Anyway, it’s been a bit and well I have no excuse, my 9-5 job (well when I work weekends anyway) has a pretty good health insurance plan. So, one day I decided to get me and my wife’s eye exams scheduled. Doing so was pretty cut and dry, going to it well was an experience cause I was checking in. They had a picture on the counter, when you go to an eye exam now I guess they can do a health check. So they showed all the signs of bad things in the picture. Call it PTSD from my parent’s passing, call it some form of undiagnosed hypochondria. But I saw that and suddenly my brain went into some crazy mode.
The check-in went fine I was calm, and took the little puff of air into the eye I always hated, at that point I was waiting for the doctor. Also realizing I left my phone in the car panic rushed out (fun fact if you’re in Texas if it is like 96 outside by the math of glass and contained place with no A/C your car interior is probably 900,000,000,000 degrees give or take in about twenty minutes). After securing that, I walked back in and waited. The doctor called me in and he was honestly a very friendly old man who clearly had a lot of experience and I should not even worry about the health screening thing.
Except, because it’s an eye place I could see the scan of my eyes on two GIANT ASS MONITORS to the right side of where I was sitting. I didn’t see anything on them that looked bad, but still, that little voice was echoing in my head. It did not help matters that I guess my eyes were super special and he had to do about twenty things to calibrate the machine to get my exam done. All the while I am freaking out about the thing that looks fine. How bad was it you ask? Here is an exact quote from the doctor:
“If I am not saying holy smoke, you’re alright”
I think he said it about three or four times to me but it did not sink in, finally when he got to the eye thing he pretty much said for my age and everything I was healthy as a horse and had no signs of anything. Ili was right behind me and came out confirming I more or less drove the doctor insane, and I feel bad about it. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why I felt as I did but well sometimes things just happen. Still, if you somehow found this and remember me as a patient, I’m sorry for that and you did a great job. I even left a positive review on the survey thing I never take cause I felt bad.
What’s happening here anyway, are you abandoning the desk?
Nope, I have no intention of doing so, as I said sadly right now The Dominant Ones and getting it launched has taken up a lot of my time right now, also nothing has come out gaming-wise that I got or even felt motivated to cover that we’re not covering on the ½ assed show over on twitch. I do have plans here and I have things to review in the figure department, I just have not gotten around to putting fingers to keyboard if it was not related to the story. I mean I spent my Sunday last weekend updating and tweaking notes on the world that was built, and now I have more to add to that cause of plot reasons.
It is kind of why I am posting this now, while reviews may slow down nothing has irked me enough to write a rant about it as of late. I still intended to use it for that, the desk is an experiment and a place for me to let out thoughts and opinions that I don’t get a lot of time to vent out on the other places I can go do so. Just lately I have not had anything to get angry or annoyed about, which I think is a first for me...is this that mellowing-out thing I heard comes later in life?
Anyway, there will be content coming, just a matter of sitting down and getting it done among other things. My work life has been busy as well It is peak time where I work and I come home kind of drained as well. So yes, while I should use my time to do things I will admit something. I’m lazy and just wanna veg out and watch AEW or play a game and just enjoy and not have to form opinions on things. Also, I just finished FF7 Rebirth recently and that felt like it took 2 years of my life to complete. But yeah this isn’t going anywhere, and I still have no plans to charge for this blog/rant center but subscribers always help so I know that it’s reaching people so yeah subscribe today.
What the future holds:
So to say the start of this year was pretty ambitious as we decided to launch the story, continue with our streaming stuff on Twitch, and all the fun and adventures of life we decided to add one other wrinkle to the slate: Moving
I feel like when we started the year we were gonna be doing that at X date, well it moved to Y and now recently realized it will be at Z. I still have time but it is always on the back of my mind that it is coming, and something we are doing is with moving in mind, getting things wrapped or prepped will be starting soon even though we won’t be moving for some time yet. Next year probably will be just the same if not more crazy added in because come on, who here likes boring?
I’ll close with this, life is nothing if not dull for me right now, and if you wanna follow along there are plenty of places to find me and see what we’re up to, I feel like MNR is evolving before me and it is going directions I like and am trying to pursue. We will have challenges and there will be setbacks, my job is to try and make them minor instead of major. This small sample of life was brought to you by me. Maybe I’ll do more down the road, or we’ll have a review soon who knows, that is why it’s called “From the Desk of Chaos” One thing is for sure, when you think I’m going to zig I may zag, and who knows maybe more voices will be on here at some point?
I’d also like to close with a picture of the ever-present support of the desk and the Dominant Ones, two of our pets Phoebe and Lefty basking in the light of a job well done.
-The Chaos Director