you're about
NOTE: if you wanna see my socials and stuff like that, go to the "contact me" page.
who is bro?
well, i'm just a guy who likes music Quite A Bit. my favorite music tends to have a lot of heavy distorted guitars, but i like pretty much all genres (yes, even harsh noise). favorite metal-adjecent genres would probably be post, progressive, power, symphonic, and math rock/metal. favorite non-metal genres include trance, psy-trance, breakcore, neurofunk, drum-and-bass (especially ambient dnb), jungle, and ambient. my favorite musicians are halley labs and dm dokuro, though i'm not sure which of those two i like more, at least with regards to music. (i definitely am more inspired by halley labs overall though; they inspired me to make this website, revamp my stream setup/explore OBS more, etc.) i do still like a lot of other people's music though. my top 5 albums in order would probably be BLACKSHAPE by BLACKSHAPE, i can't wait to be sad and alone on the edge of the universe by Halley Labs as hyi, USA by Anamanaguchi, The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorp by Patricia Taxxon, and More Adventures ~The Forever Fieldtrip~ by Halley Labs as Darius and Rotteen. (They Know Who They Are by DM Dokuro will probably be on this list once it's finished though.) (also no i haven't listened to doraemon yet, in fact i regrettably haven't really listened to that much of patricia's discography yet. i haven't even listened to little spoon yet. fake fan, i know.)
as you can maybe tell by how over half the albums i just listed were made by furries, i'm a big fan of furries. such a big fan that i decided to be one. it's kinda hard to put into words how inspiring it is to see someone be so unapologetically themselves, despite the world telling them not to. so fascinatingly weird yet so, so normal. simultaneously human and inhuman, not in conflict, but taken simultaneously. i think the world would be a much better place if everyone was a furry. the way they just don't care if they're cringe or not is not only a mentality i've aspired for myself, but also one i've aspired to spread to others ever since i saw a furry at a ren faire in may 2024. (be on the lookout for a blog post telling the full story of that, because it's kind of a canon event for me.) and don't even get me started on their art, i mean, there's gotta be a reason why so many of my favorite musicians are furries. that said, i regrettably haven't gotten around to making a fursona yet though. you'll know when i do though.
beyond music and furries, other interests include video editing, thumbnail design, drawing (occasionally), speedrunning, and speedcubing. favorite media franchises are undertale, wings of fire, celeste, pokemon (charizard gang 4ever!!!), and yugioh. favorite youtubers are gamechamp3000, ceave gaming, and summoning salt.
epic backstory
(trigger warning for depression and lots of sap lol)
I wasn't in a great place in 2021 and late-2020. Feelings of worthlessness and self-pity were common. I felt like I wasn't accomplishing anything with my life. I felt like nobody cared about me. I felt useless. While I don't think I would've ever actually killed myself, that doesn't mean I didn't ever think about it. However, as you'll soon see, this dark time didn't last forever.
I don't know if I'm quite ready to tell the full story of why Charizard means so much to me, but to summarize, some time in late 2020 or early 2021 I grew a bit of a hyperfixation on Charizard. As time passed, this hyperfixation grew and grew until I felt like I had to express it with some kind of art. This was a tall ask considering I wasn't exactly a very artsy person back then, but I still wanted to try. I think it was about March of 2021 when I had the idea for Undermon: Hell's Flames. I mean, it wasn't called that back then, it was called Genocidal Judgement, but I knew it was going to be an Undertale AU where you fight a Charizard somehow. At first I thought about replacing Sans with some sort of skeleton Charizard, but I scrapped that for not making sense and being too unoriginal. I think I also briefly considered just fighting a normal Charizard, but again, too unoriginal. Then, I had a much better idea: fight the Charizard after a standard Genocide run on the surface. But why fight this one specifically? Well, this Charizard is known as the Ebott Guardian, and he's also really strong and friends with Giratina- look I was 13 ok LOL. Little by little, I began to form some sort of story, and I slowly began to realize that this was something I just had to see through. But... how? I had no experience making music or sprites and very little experience editing, and I didn't know anyone who did either. Well, there really wasn't anything else I could do, was there? I was just gonna have to wing it.
I first started attempting to make a Charizard sprite in April of 2021. It was with some random free website I found online called Lospec Pixel Editor. I tried a few times before ultimately discouraging myself so badly with my poor performance that I gave up for the time being. Once again, I felt useless. I called myself a perfectionist because I wasn't meeting my made-up standards. After all, if I couldn't make something great on my first try, why even bother? Well, that feeling wouldn't last for too long, because about 2 months later I somehow found a new website called Pixilart, and this time I managed to make something a bit less terrible. I ended up revising the sprite 3 more times, but eventually I was actually kind of ok with the end result. I then made phase 2 with not too much more trouble, but I got really self-conscious when spriting phase 3, to the point where I locked myself in the computer room for over an hour, not letting my family in should it risk them seeing what I was making. Why? Well, I really, REALLY didn't want to be seen as "too edgy," and this phase had blood and dilated pupils and blue fire and yeah it was definitely pretty edgy LOL. But I did eventually finish it, and I think I was happy with it. Now, making sprites is one thing, but how on earth was I going to make music with absolutely no prior experience?? Well, my dad owned a copy of Reason 10 Intro that I was able to use, so I at least didn't have to pay hundreds of dollars for software. Beyond that, well, I kinda just had to do the same thing I did for spriting: wing it. And so, that's what I did in mid-to-late June of 2021. Unfortunately, it was immediately obvious how terrible I was at this. However, this time, instead of totally giving up, I decided to put Undermon on a short hiatus to make remixes of various fanmade Undertale songs to hone my music skills. I thought I was just gonna make a few Undertale remixes, make Undermon, and then go back to making gaming videos, but as you probably know, that's not what happened. This plan didn't last for long though, as I only made 2 mediocre remixes before I got tired of not working on Undermon, and on July 5th, 2021, I (very nervously) released phase 1 of my ultimate passion project: PYROMANIA. Looking back, it definitely could've been a lot worse. It's definitely unusual for a Megalovania, but I don't think that's inherently a bad thing. It's like Patricia Taxxon once said. Improving at an art form just means learning or otherwise unlocking the means of expression that suit you, and by that point, I hadn't unlocked many means of expression yet. I mean, I didn't even know what a scale was back then, much less other music theory ideas or even VSTs. I would then release phase 1.5 and 2 in July before ultimately deciding that my music skills still weren't at the point I wanted them to be at yet and putting Undermon on another hiatus. From August to early November of 2021, I would make several more remixes of fanmade Undertale songs, some of which now have several thousand views. In that time, I slowly fell in love with the music creation process. It finally felt like I was actually doing something with my life. Slowly, my depression faded away. Slowly, I began to feel less lonely as I began to socialize somewhat with various people online. Slowly, I became more confident in my abilities, and it all came to a head in November when I decided to finish this Undermon thing once and for all. It took some struggling figuring out how to make original music, as I really only had experience making remixes, and I'd be lying if I said I never doubted my abilities while I was trying to remaster phase 1, but I eventually made something I was kind of happy with. For the next 3 weeks I devoted myself to making the best thing I could possibly make... well... kind of. You see, back then I had much less of an understanding of how the Youtube algorithm worked, and I thought it was extremely important that I upload at least once every four days. In my mind, if I waited too long, the algorithm would give me way less views for some reason- look, I don't fully understand the workings of my past self's mind. I just know what happened, not why. Anyways, as you can imagine, this led to a lot of my early videos being rushed, and I never fully got over the whole upload schedule fear until early 2023. That said, I tried my best to work with what I had, and on November 25th of 2021, I finally released the full OST of Undermon: Hell's Flames. Looking back, it definitely shows its age and its rushed-ness at points, but it also shows passion. Passion for music, passion for writing, passion for spriting, and most of all, passion for the thing that saved me from myself: Charizard. It's this passion that is the reason I choose to keep the full OST video up on my channel, despite it being pretty bad by my standards today. This passion still burns today, and I'd love to harness it and remaster it one final time to make it something I and others can truly enjoy, but I haven't found time for it yet. Perhaps one day.
Since that time, my passion for music has only grown. I've reached heights my past self would've thought impossible, and I'm currently happier than I've been in a very long time. I owe it to a lot of people. To the Pokemon Megamix community, especially Hanabi, for being what really got my music off the ground, teaching me very important musical concepts and inspiring me to learn even more. To DM Dokuro for being my biggest musical inspiration in 2023, and Halley Labs for being my biggest overall inspiration in 2024. To the furry fandom, for killing cringe culture and inspiring me to be truly myself. Most of all, to Toby Fox and The Pokemon Company, for being the reason I even started this whole thing in the first place.