the rainbow junkie fun club

just a small bit of honest transparency about how the sales of songs for rune are going, because i thought you might be interested

here’s a few more words about songs for rune, my new album (and first post-homestuck release with new material not written for homestuck) (you can buy it here, and i’m gonna remind you about it again at the end of the post so, you know, watch out for that)

a few years ago i got a very confusing series of messages from someone who ran a homestuck blog that seemed to be very angry at me for the semi-arbitrary joke numbers i did when “pricing” jailbreak vol. 1 (vol 2 not, nor ever will it be, in progress); apparently the fact that i thought doing shit like pricing the track phantom echoes at $70.07 (it looks like a ghost going boo, see) was cute, but they thought it was borderline evil. they’d approached it as if there were secret codes hidden in it or something. when they messaged toby about it he said (half-correctly) that there wasn’t any inherent meaning to the whole damn thing and i got a bunch of (i think?) joking flak and i made myself a lifelong sort-of-almost-but-not-really enemy.

the twist in the story is that said enemy apparently was a diehard fan of the music i made, specifically one simple track in particular. there’s a lot they’ve written about why they feel strongly about this song of mine, but suffice to say after they found out about the fact that the person who made that track was the person behind their “”anguish”” over these numbers 

a: they had a lot of feelings about that

b: i think i’ve gotten a (personally, i feel) completely undeserved get-out-of-jail-free card with them for composing something they have a very personal connection with that’s helped them through some hard stuff, and i’ve been trying pretty hard to live up to that for em ever since. 

enough prelude: that initial weird internet meet cute blossomed into one of the longer and stronger friendships i’ve had over the years. probably nobody’s been there for me as strongly and as drastically as rune’s been. without their help i’d have been in very real danger of homelessness last year. i’d be lying if i said they haven’t been a hugely positive impact on me for a lot of reasons, and i’ve been really shitty at trying to help them in return, mostly because of my lack of solid placement in life at my current point (i’m treading water right now seemingly every day as it is) coupled with some kinda serious mental illness stuff on my personal part i usually do not talk about and will not talk about in detail here (suffice to say that i’m no stranger to general anxiety) 

here’s the gritty: rune has a very serious illness and a very bad life situation and they desperately need all the help they can get to help them out of it. i, for one, can’t give them nearly any help in my current living situation without a significant salary job (which i do not have) so purchasing this album would be a very real thing you could do to help a very good person who deserves nothing but a very very good turn in their life.

songs for rune is at least one part of me trying. i’ve been working on the songs on it ever since…i want to say mid-2012? some of these songs are way old at their core. sleeprush is the “oldest” in terms of things people have already heard (the original version of the song is from 2013) but hopesong and friendfight both have roots from back then, and one of the bonus tracks is traceable back to early december 2011. these were all written with rune in mind; these are songs to calm oneself to, to mellow out, maybe cry a little, maybe sleep for a sec, hopefully smile. it’s some of my best production work and it got a solid last-minute boost from erik’s typically annoyingly-great piano chops (honestly it pisses me off how good he is at just…doing that. i wish i could be an eighth as good at composition as he is at just…improvising a melody out of thin air. this is a rant for another day).

i don’t typically get super sappy about stuff. i also know i’m not the most consistently available/reliable person in the world when it comes to making things for the world. i’m trying hard to change that over time, and i hope songs for rune represents somewhat of a mission statement for that. initially, right after the release (which, itself, came after an exhausting 60-hour rush of finishing up the last 10% of everything) i intended on editing the tracks and polishing a bit more.

i’m not going to do that. i’m leaving it as is; this album, upon several relistens, isn’t perfect. but it shouldn’t be. i’m not either. 

this album is hopefully something relatable to that feeling for you.

despite all of the struggle they go through, rune is someone who’s been insanely brave. i don’t mean that in a daytime television way. they’ve struggled immensely but they keep a smile on and hang a stupid joke on the end of every paragraph to this day. they keep on living and don’t stop no matter what.

rune is a good friend. they deserve a better life. if i can even contribute a small amount to that it’ll be a very tiny fraction of what i owe them. please check the album out and give ‘er a listen. and if you could buy it to give a few bucks rune’s way, that’d help them a lot. thanks. 

songs for rune is a brand new album i made that is as chill as you can probably imagine. there are some jams here, you get me? nice head nods. i’m proud of this one.

it’s four bucks that go to a good cause. buy this dang thing if you can. it helps a friend, specifically, and they need said help.

(above: new easy girl. new . ..  life)

preamble

My name is RJ, (everyone says “Hi, RJ” in unison here) and I do everything. For years (my entire life, maybe?) “I do everything” has been sort of my modus, full stop. I used to have a business card that said “Robert J! Lake: Professional Everything” and after that I had one that listed “Music, Design, Writing, Animation, and Illustration” with “Basically Everything” underneath it. It’s a part of me. And it’s ran me for as long as I’ve been able to think.

It’s more than just a pull towards productivity, towards a workaholism. It’s more selfish than that. I’m addicted to it, which is weird. I’m not really addicted to things, in general (even if people say I have an “addictive personality”), but this gives me a thrill like nothing else.

Part of it is that I think I can do everything, and part of that is that history’s generally held that up, because no arrogance here but I’m pretty good at juggling a lot of things at once. What’s unhealthy, like really unhealthy, though, is the perpetual dissatisfaction with not doing enough. I’ve got one hell of a Superman complex and I always feel like I’m not good enough if I’m not exerting myself to the point where I’m nothing.

I can’t do that anymore, though. I’ve been stretched thin for what feels like an eternity and I need to regroup if I want to get anything done for real, because what ends up happening is a lot of crashing and burning over and over and over and over. So I’m done.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop juggling projects in the air, because that will never be something I’ll even be able to let myself do. That also doesn’t mean I won’t keep adding projects to my list. But I’m going to do it productively, and I’m going to build myself. A lot less secret projects with years going by before anything happens, I think, is probably better for both me and people who like what I do.

Okay sure but why is this something I should care about my good dude?

Ironically it’s because that means I’ll be able to do more on here (and in general, with my B r a n d and such).  So I have some announcements of some stuff below the cut.

PATREON HAS BEEN AN UTTER FAILURE AND I’M FIXING THAT IMMEDIATELY

I’m really upset with myself because I was gung-ho about making a better effort towards Patreon and then...nothing. And there are a lot of things to blame for that, mostly my own doing, including (and especially) the eternal horror of a workweek, of needing a job, of The Fear. If I don’t hit a certain money threshold (about 2000-2500 dollars a month) I am in a panic that ends up all-consuming because that allows me no room for error. No savings, nothing much really. Every month is a struggle and every month is consumed by that fear. But nothing gets better if I don’t try something different to break that cycle.

So here we are. Patron is going to be my new home. Most work I’ve posted has been on Soundcloud and Twitter and (well not much lately) here because I haven’t felt brave enough to devote time to something that people won’t see, but of course people don’t want to see it because it isn’t there. So I have to value myself enough to make that leap.

Starting ASAP, Patreon is going to be my first post outlet both publicly and for patrons. I’ll be massively overhauling my patron tiers (1,2,3,4, and maybe probably 5 is the new spread) and my new focus is on direct responses to people who help my patreon; one of the first effects of this will be patron-only polls, helping direct me to figure out what part of the everything I do you most want at any given moment. I am my own person but I wouldn’t be here without you and although I’m confident in my ability to tackle almost anything it’s exhausting sometimes because I have no earthly idea where my time is best spent sometimes.

WEEKLY STREAMS ARE GONNA BE A THING AGAIN

I stopped doing the weekly stream thing partially as a result of needing a workweek and that workweek basically killed me but to be honest I miss it, and if the past few days are any indication you guys are really there for me hard if I actually push for it, and I haven’t been doing that because I’ve been basically mired in semi-secret projects that I haven’t allowed myself to show much stuff from because I have a thing about it but it should be obvious from Stuckhome Syndrome’s existence that I have a tendency to make a shitload of things and show people 1% of them until they pile up at once. So I’m cutting that shit out and I’m going to try (try) to be more public about my process and my work. Ideally without giving everything away; striking that balance is kind of the thing I have to figure out, right?

I’m going to start that soon. Tuesday? Thursday? I’m free those days this week. Getting a consistent schedule is the biggest challenge with my day job basically running me into the ground.

ON THAT NOTE, HOLY HELL HERE’S WHAT I’M WORKING ON RIGHT NOW

MY ACTIVE PROJECTS:

Oblivion Genesis: The big thing right now. An RPG (of a sort) I’m directing, art directing, doing animation for, doing all the music and sfx, designing, and writing based on original concepts by Jack Casteel (who’s also programming it and doing most of the spell design + metagame balance work and i guess...executive producing? co-directing? it’s only 3 people on the team everyone is doing a lot and we haven’t hammered out these terms yet). He came up with the base premise for the game and most of the characters, and I took that and am writing and rewriting and creating an entirely new and very elaborate gameplay structure for the overworld and the battles themselves, plus doing a lot of the art etc etc. I can’t wait to show you much, much more. Also this game features character art by the wonderful Rachel Lundin so obviously this is going to be the best video game ever made. You can hear some of the music right here right now.

Group Hug: A webcomic. I’ll talk about this more on my Patreon soon.

ACTIVE PROJECTS I’M ATTACHED TO (In other words, projects I’m doing stuff for that aren’t necessarily mine):

HALT: A video game about shootmanning in the future. I’m doing the music. Here’s the first trailer.

Muddledash!: Octopus racing. I’m doing the music. Here’s a trailer.

BULLETIN: An RPG about finding your dad. I’m doing the music and potentially other stuff too. Here’s some early gameplay tests featuring my music.

PROBABLY GONNA TRY LAUNCHING A PODCAST SOON TOO

It’ll be called Little RJ Things. We’ll see how that goes.

THAT’S ALL FOR NOW?

fifty bucks for anything you want within reason. music or visual art.

fifty bucks for something like this

fifty bucks for something like this