#supermeta

I am super happy to get this ask because this ask really forced me to realize what I didn't like about Leo describing Leon as being shy but him not being shy at all and it's all about NARRATIVE.

I was presented, because I don't watch interviews, with a narrative of Leo describing his brother only comfortable around him and shy/disliking other people. And then I saw a Leon who is, in fact, a bratty pansexual king who seems rather popular.

But I am given this without any reaction from Leo or Fiat of this being out of character or different.

If Fiat had grumbled about Leon 'not being so shy anymore'? I would have been satisfied. If Leo had raised an eyebrow about Leon's new spot as pansexual campus king? I would have chuckled as he accepted this new version of his brother.

Without that narrative acknowledgement of the change, I felt like I'd missed something. Without any characters seeming to notice the contradictory statements, I felt like I'd missed something at some point and it bothered me.

oh i am sure there are things ryan does that we don’t see but i still believe matt does the lion’s share of the work, and he does so happily because he loves supermega and he loves ryan. and trust me i really do get ryan’s hatred for social media but look man, if you wanna succeed on the platform you’ve chosen you have to play the game. he doesn’t need to have a personal account on anything but at least tweet from the main account once in a while. he says he reads every patreon comment but tbh i don’t believe that since it’s 100% matt who responds to all the comments. i’m almost positive the one tweet (wash your monkey monday does not count) that was made from the sm account while matt was in japan was also written by matt.

to be COMPLETELY fair, the japan trip wasn’t impulsive. z posted about it weeks ago. now we know it was for their anniversary (the worst thing to happen on 9/11) and do i still think it was too soon in the channel’s revival timeline for such an exuberant trip? yes. do i think it was reckless to take such a trip during a covid spike? also yes. but i also think that when the trip was planned matt thought the channel would be in a different spot right now. he probably thought the sketch would be out, the new merch would have dropped, and his little radio show project would be up on the patreon. but obviously that’s not what happened, and now we’re in this brutal content drought and matt is sick and the optics are really, really bad.

like i said i do think ryan cares. he just wants to make shit and not have to do the dirty work required to make that shit succeed. that stream last week kind of exemplifies what i mean. i theorize that matt texted him like, “hey man two weeks with no stream is a bad look and i’m in japan can do you do me this solid?” and ryan did it out of obligation. he barely made it two hours.

they’ve lost so much momentum that it’s impossible NOT to notice the glaring issues with their productivity. i really understand why they keep their circle small now but they are a team of just three people; luke who “moderates” the streams and picks up stuff from the po box and merch shipments (which matt helps with,) ryan who edits and plays his part as 1/2 of the duo, and matt who….does everything else. edits, runs the social media, does the graphic design, maintains the patreon upload schedule apparently, promotes the channel and fields all the difficult questions, plus most likely a million other little things. so when matt is sick, or on a poorly timed vacation time (no i’ll never not be mad about it) everything just stops. and it moves at a snail’s pace already!! they hire out for editing the vods and mail vids, as well as the sticker support emails (the latter of which i actually have no gripes with, whoever they are they’re 100% more efficient at the job than luke was) but like. hire an intern. hire a social media person. hire like, one more person. matt is a man put together with matchsticks and scotch tape as it is and he’s getting four hours of sleep nightly, no fucking wonder he gets migraines or otherwise feels like shit all the time.

the thing is, i believe ryan still cares. he loves to create. he just doesn’t love all the shit that comes with creating on this platform and in this content creator culture. so he’s content to let matt do all the grunt work, who in turn is content to do so as long as he gets to keep creating alongside his best friend. it’s kind of a vicious cycle.