EVERYTHING IS LATE (but it's a lot) (Patreon)

Understandably, not everyone seems to have watched my hour-and-change-long update video explaining the exact nature and context of all ongoing projects and rewards, so here's a tl;dr: everything is late.

As you know, Digibro is essentially a one-man show. All elements of content production, research, fan engagement, customer support, and anything else wrapped up in this job passes through me, and sometimes the pipeline of myself is clean and operating smoothly, and other times it gets clogged and stuff piles up and pretty soon, nothing is as planned.

This is the natural consequence of trying to run a career with no set formula--trying to create content based on whatever is inspiring or interesting in the moment--while also trying on some level to actually live my life. Again, if you want in-depth explanations of some of the twists and turns that come up in the job, just watch the vlog. Here's the long and short of it:

Patron rewards: I usually try to get these done in relationship to the month that they are paid for. I.e. you buy a rant in June, you get the rant before June is over. However, I am also willing to push these rewards back from time to time if I think that the main content which you are ostensibly paying for first and foremost is struggling as well--after all, it effects more people, including the ones paying for it. My mentality is that as long as everyone gets what they paid for eventually then everything is good, but letting anything pile up would be extremely dangerous in the future, so I don't want things piling for too long.

Some of the reward tiers have regularly come out on time, most especially the 2 Weeks Review. Dead Projects Graveyard meanwhile belongs inside of itself: I only ever made 2 of these in the nearly a year the tier has existed. Almost no one seems to care. I haven't cancelled it because I still had ideas and intentions to continue it, and it falls into a large category of "things I want to eventually sit down and overhaul but haven't yet." I might just close the tier for now because it's not a priority.

September Rants: This is the most important one. People definitely care about getting their rants, and I usually try to get them all done by the end of the month. Those of you who patroned in July will be aware that I spent the first three weeks of August periodically getting all of that months' rants completed, which was a major element of how the pipeline got jacked up to begin with. In August I spent the last few days of the month, as I usually do, plowing through every rant so I wouldn't be behind anymore. 

I did not get this done in September, whereupon the end of the month snuck up on me while I was trying to do ten thousand other things (again, see the vlog). Regardless of the fact that I consider getting actual main-channel content done to be a higher priority than the rants, I plan to do both at once and hopefully have the rants done by the end of this week. I would ask you not to submit your October rant requests until I make a post announcing that they are open. I might just switch back to the old comment system as well, because even though it had flaws, the indexing of DMs has its own issues. We will see. 

Care packages: I usually get all of the final touches of each care pack done towards the back end of a given month, and then try to ship them before the month is over. I've been overtime once or twice, but August is the first month in which I straight-up did not have almost any of the work done by the end of the month, having been more concerned with trying to get the rant problem under control. September has now come and gone, and not only are the August care packs still on my desk, just a series of poems away from completion, but I haven't even started on the September packs yet. I could definitely get these done in less than 2 weeks, and then get the October packs done in the last 2 weeks of the month, and send all three before the month is over, but I'm just letting you know that a this point that's the best-case scenario, since the August packs still remain unsent. Remember that if you're on this tier, you have already paid for an October care pack, so even if you unpledged now, you have my guarantee that all packs you've paid for will reach you eventually.

Actual content??: So what about the actual content, whose process of creation has supposedly clogged the pipeline so badly? I talked about why certain shows were on hiatus or postponed in the vlog, so let's just talk about what IS, in fact, in the works right now.

Bad-Looking Good-Looking Anime: This is a 20-minute video for which I already have the audio and most of the clips I need to edit with done. It uses Vinland Saga to talk about the history of animation techniques and their powers, as well as to explore what makes a manga adaptation worthwhile. Very "essential digibro" kind of video. 

Bring Back Pokemon Puzzle Challenge: Just a 10-minute video diving into the history of the Panel de Pon series and explaining why the Pokemon variant needs a sequel. I already have the audio so this would just take a few hours to edit once I can set aside time.

The Worst Anime of My Childhood: This is the big one. A 35-minute video in the vein of The Great Anime Director Who Time Forgot, except this one is the great anime Studio that time forgot. Deep-diving some 90s OVAs, industry and creator histories, and uncovering some historical gems. I'm EXTREMELY proud of this script, but I have no idea how long editing is going to take. Consider that the Great Director video wasn't even as long as this one, and that it was edited entirely by Davoo who had a whole month to work on just that one video. I probably won't be putting nearly the same level of detail that he did into working on that, but it will still take a fair amount of time regardless, so I wouldn't expect to see this completed until later into October, and I'll be prioritizing the two aforementioned scripts first.

Searching For the Best RPG Story: Tactics Ogre: So this is the expected launch of a whole new series covering long-form RPGs. This is the kind of video that I simultaneously have the most desire and least incentive to do: I know that it won't get a ton of views because most of my audience doesn't seem to care that much about my video game coverage, and I'll never be able to establish a larger audience for that content without dedicating much more time to it, which is going to be impossible if I'm trying to satisfy both my core anime fan audience and the fans who just want as much Digi content as possible at the same time. I have played through about 2/3 of Tactics Ogre and written four pages of introduction for this video, but it's kind of fallen to the backburner for now.

Podcasting Over PSP: I've recorded four 1.5-hour episodes of this already, and will be releasing the first one today. My plan is to release two a week for now while we find out how frequently they can even be done. But yeah, this is basically the return of the Digi & May Do type of let's plays, which we had pretty much replaced with streaming these last few months. We still plan on streaming every Friday because the superchats make them very profitable even without the raffles (which we haven't done for the last month and change because we still haven't gotten all of the previous rewards shipped out), but since May hasn't had time to edit the Pokemon streams anymore, and some people have stated their desire for a return to the classic podcast-style let's play videos, that's what I'm bringing back. I think the ones we've recorded so far have all been excellent. While we're at it, there's also the Digi Bros Revival, but I have no idea how often Vic can come over and do that.

Wrapping Up the Summer Season: I didn't end up watching most of the summer anime over the course of September, nor getting any vlogs done about them. At some point I figured I might as well wait for them all to end and cover them then. So far I've completed Given and Accelerator and working on El-Melloi II--I might do short analytical reviews on Given and a little piece on the other two shows, but I will also be doing more rambling, sort of Finish or Fail style reviews with May in the Podcasting Over PSP series. We spent a bulk of episode 4 just talking about the insane plot of Accelerator. 

Arifureta really deserves a full-bore SAO-style analytical takedown, and I want to make that too, even though I'm afraid of it pushing all the other shit I already mentioned back and making my pipeline worse. If you're someone actually reading this: would you rather I prioritized an in-depth breakdown of this show while it's still at peak relevance, or do you think it'd be more worthwhile to focus on other pieces I've mentioned?

Kicking off the Fall Season: Even though the Summer coverage ended up being kind of a mess as expected, I'd ultimately call it a success--I'm at least finishing the shows up, and the early part of the season had gone great. I think we can at least start off on the same kind of strong foot for Fall.

Dororo '69 Groupwatch: So, I have this vlog I recorded weeks ago which was meant to dovetail into me launching a groupwatch, but thanks to weird technical issues the video announcing the groupwatch got corrupted twice when I recorded it. The idea was that the show would be added into my weekly anime viewing and talked about alongside the current shows, so if anything it might make the most sense to do this in the Fall season. I want to do Dororo because it's one of the oldest fully-subbed anime, only 26 episodes, and I have plans to make a video documenting the whole history of the franchise eventually.

Other?: Random vlogs and ideas are coming into my head constantly. Sometimes I think on an idea for an afternoon and decide it's not fleshed out enough or just won't be worth the effort to bring it to life. You never know what might actually see the light of day. Fans of my music have been asking for a new release, but I am neither inspired enough, nor have enough meaningful incentive to worry about it right now. I've got potential album ideas and I've posted a few songs on soundcloud in the last few months, but I wouldn't say an album is any kind of priority in the face of just how clogged the pipeline already is. I also had plans for other physical product ventures in the vein of the t-shirts I did in July, but considering I'm so behind on other shit, and the shirts ended up being kind of a clusterfuck in themselves, I'm holding off for now.

In collaborative news: Don Jolly is going to visit my house in a couple of weeks for a couple of days while he moves across-country, and we plan to make some kind of collaborative project regarding the Gamera film trilogy from the 90s. Best Guy Ever and his girlfriend Michelle are also coming over at the very end of the month, so that'll probably result in things as well. I also got a weird offer to possibly get an all-expenses-paid trip to NY Comic Con to promote some Yugioh game... THIS weekend? I have no idea if I'm going to get picked and the whole thing is insanely last minute, but if they pick me I'm gonna do it, because I already wanted to visit Don before he moves out of the city, and I might potentially get to smoke a blunt on the Empire State Building. We'll see??

I'm not going to lie to you and say that the reason all this content is late is simply because working on all of it simultaneously and not being sure what to prioritize is too time-consuming. There were days where I just smoked pot and watched youtube analysis videos all day. I would argue I got tons of new ideas and thought about how to incorporate new influences into my style, but facts are facts: I spent a fuckload of time watching gaming analysis this month.

That was in the background often while playing tons of Tactics Ogre, before putting that video project on the backburner. It was also while I sunk 40 hours into Pokemon White trying to catch all of the Pokemon because I got too depressed over shit that was happening in the news and generally was so overwhelmed by all the bullshit constantly happening on the internet that I just needed a break for a while. You may have noticed I've hardly been online, and that's because I've been sitting in the living room watching analysis videos and playing Pokemon. Whether or not I'll make a video about my thoughts on this Pokemon White experience I'm yet undecided about.

Anyways, again, I am a one-man show. If I get depressed and just want to play Pokemon all day, or if I eat a bad sub and spend all day groaning and clutching my stomach and feeling like shit (today), or if I feel such a strong pull towards talking about some random game or movie that I'm willing to put everything else on hold to get that done, then the consequences of any of those events will be felt in the content production pipeline. I can't thank you all enough for being so patient with me, especially in the face of my inability to properly manage all of the concerns and outreach of such a massive patreon audience. I don't always get around to every single message I receive, but I would encourage you to just keep messaging me again every so often until I respond--especially if it seems like there's a pocket where I'm not as busy. Assuming that ever happens!