Ladies and Gentlemen of the Legion...

 I posted this wall of Text earlier on my youtube community page after catching some shit. I will do the same HERE but I will make additions...

Just as an FYI as some people have expressed "concern" regarding the workflow of Tex talks battletech. Some have complained, and I think that's valid so I'm going to shed light on the process here and now.   

1. Research and Writing. This can take a long goddamn time as I may have to read 10-15 sourcebooks, consult Sarna, and even the writers of the series itself in order to gain the insight I need. I could easily just glance at Sarna and text to speech somebody else's work but I think that'd result in you guys rioting. This stuff can take time.  

2. The Editing: Mike works wonders, but still we have to find sources for images and high-quality ones at that. In many cases, we cannot actually find images for events so we have to make them. Or photoshop/tweak things to suit our purposes. We've done this quite frequently and most people haven't noticed, or asked: "Where's that from". Chances are if you don't recognize it, we made it. The process of finding images, animating, and laying a sound-track complete with sound-effects can take a few hundred hours of work. Sitting there with mike and punching things together, choosing this song over that song, or working through hard sections without good images or information can be a mighty chore. But we take pride in what we do.  

 3. Final passes - This is where we add in the projector effects, intro/outro animations, and then the commercials. This can take a week by itself as the project gets so damn big that adobe HQ bursts into flames. We need a render farm at this point, but that's far beyond our budgetary allowances.    

4. The Actual goddamn millennia that youtube takes to accept files I send them and render them to appropriate HD. Sometimes this can take days on days. Sometimes this can take an hour. I have no goddamn idea how that black magic works.  

At any rate - From here on out, I'll update you as best possible as we work on the projects we do. To give you a better understanding of what's coming up and what we're doing. Right now we're almost an Hour into the episode, and uncut audio suggests we'll be a hair under two hours before we're finished with just the meat of the episode. That's without commercials, gags, and an intermission. Believe me, we won't forget those. At all. 

  I do apologize for the setbacks. Initially, we thought we'd be done by the end of January but there were some things I had to do. I will go over those here and now. Firstly, the initial scope of this episode was going to be just clanner elementals. Nothing else. It would have been a tiny, short episode and there would be a lot of jokes about how they're just muscle brained fools with jump-jets. But then people wanted to know more.

 The "Desire to know more intensified". 

People wanted to know what happened after the Amaris Civil War. What happened to the SLDF. How the fuck they became the clans. People asked and asked and asked.  

SO! rather than say fuck off I do what I want...  I expanded the scope. 

 This is a big one. It's at least a 2 parter. Some have joked it'll be a 3 or 4 parter. Who knows?

 I only know what I've written so far and it's a lot.  We're going to cover a lot. Not everything, but a lot.   

The second thing that set me back was a far overdue visit to my family. I had not seen them in 3 years. I'm a workaholic. I had put off a lot of things but this seemed very important.  So working my ass off in meat-space, plus taking an actual amount of time off to see family plus a hectic schedule and wanting to expand the size of the episode are the reasons for the delay. Mike as well has his job, his work, and his studies. We're both truly working very hard but for people who feel "offended" that the timeline as projected was not met - I do apologize. Accept the above information and reasoning for this delay.   

Further:

To answer Questions that have been posed to me:

Query: "What's the patreon money used for anyhow? You seem to want people to stop giving you money, and regularly point out its a waste of money"

Response: Of the patreon money (which is decent) I take 1/4th for myself to pay taxes, As I have a day job, the tax burden is enormous with what patreon makes. 1/2 goes to Mike to pay for his editing time. The last quarter goes to people I'm trying to help out, people who do need money that I know, who are trying to get by or better themselves. I don't just throw money at them (I have in the past), but I get them to do little things for me, to build their ego and give them meaning 

Query: "You respond to a hell of a lot of comments, even ones where people bitch about what you're doing. Why is that?"

Response: I respond because I want to know what people thought and I'm a weird Autistic guy who sometimes can't read peoples intent over the internet. Also, I get riled sometimes when people bitch re: the Battletech stuff and its because I care about Battletech. I simmer in rage at the bullshit Battletech has been through. From shitball companies to shitball game designers to shitball money grabs. Battletech is fucking Battletech because of the fanbase. It is alive because of the fanbase. Nobody in their right mind would pick this game up and play it if the world wasn't so amazingly beautiful and amazingly crafted with absolute god-tier writing (excluding large parts of the Jihad and Dark age - though those may mature IN TIME) 

Query: You'd get a lot more views if you did stuff like top 10s and 10 minute videos on quick stuff like history.

Response:  I do not like 'top tens' nor 'here's a million years of history in 5 minutes' or minute-history anything. I don't think history or lore should be simplified. I'm a historian by education, degree, and practice. I'm a storyteller by habit. Distilling a war, a decision, or an event to 5 minutes of goofy bullshit is demeaning to it. Ask a man who knows lord of the rings to "Go ahead and sum it up but like, in a paragraph" and watch them change colors. That's how I am with Battletech, and military history. Some shit has layers. Some shit don't. I really don't want to compromise what I want to do, because at that point I'm pandering to the algorithm and what youtube finds profitable. The moment I change that, I change myself, and I will have undermined everything I believe in and work toward. I want to be me in all I do. This ain't about fame or fortune. I've met great people and made fantastic friends and memories through doing things my way. If I'd pandered or changed that, I'm sure as hell I'd be more famous or wealthy for it - but at what loss? I shudder to think.

Query: You mentioned on twitter you quit drinking, are you okay?

Answer: No. I'm not. I'm a workaholic who has too many things to do, a demanding boss, and a very difficult job that has zero room for fucking up. But, as of today it's now  22 days without a drop of alcohol. Decided to quit. Don't know for how long. Working a 60+ hour work week on top of everything else was getting to me and I had been drinking far too regularly for my happiness. Sleep deprivation is a motherfucker.

Query: I applied through the 'secret method' to get into the BPL But I didn't get accepted to the discord, I'm a patreon, why can't I?

Answer: Because I don't run the discord. Understand my reasoning - When I started my discord I was coming over from the age of Skype and similar bullshit. Discord was new to me. It started off as small, my friends, my long time gaming companions, and that was it. People asked to join based on what shenanigans they saw and the community I occasionally showed slices of. Many people have joined over the years, and we have a damn impressive engagement/stay rate there. Namely because its a community, not a "WORSHIP TEX FAN CLUB WITH GILDED SEATS FOR THE PEOPLE WITH MONEY" like a lot of discords are. I actually game there, hang out there, play there. I've made friends there. But, to protect it - I've had to turn the day to day running of it over to my modstaff. They're volunteers, able, and damn impressive. Getting in isn't a guarantee and I don't tell them who gets in, nor do I often even offer much in terms of opinion as to that matter. They self regulate, and they've kept the community safe, and alive. To open the gates would kill it. To let anyone in would kill it. Open discords for a youtube channel are a bad idea. My reasoning on that is that  I do not see myself as above people, nor separate from them. I do not want to be seen as a god among men, a glorious leader, nor a great man. Merely, a man. No more. No less. I am another voice in the choir. I prefer to see it that way. Ego is the death of all good, I am convinced... 

-- Tex --