much longer just to say that like i think my favorite characters are always going to have to be people that i can take a while to explain like more complex i think simplistic characters is nothing wrong with them necessarily but you know like emperor palpatine isn't just never going to be my favorite i'll say the performance that looks cool yeah and i like the performance but um you know what that means jay is next jay i have to follow that well i mean i was just saying i like a character you can do it hey hey hey i don't feel that i mean i i don't know if i could talk that long about any character like without scripting it beforehand and i'll tell you something now i haven't written a fucking script i didn't write a script either i just like tywin i know i know maybe we have different skills mumbleheim wow that's probably insensitive to some cultures oh is there drama i i'm sorry someone i gotta knock on the door and i had to step out for a moment that was um i really enjoyed listening to you talk about tywin he's a fucking legend yeah i am i i because i remember when i remember when season eight came out and i was your emotional support animal and you started showing me the episode and all the clips and stuff with tywin and you're like rags look at how amazing the show used to be look at how incredible these characters were look at how cool this motherfucker is oh my god rags can you see this these are the words he said and i said yeah this looks real like a really awesome show i'm i'm so sorry about what they did to your your beautiful baby and i was like damn now i like tywin a whole bunch because these clips he's showing me he's really cool yeah the same experience he's uh safe though he dies right before the show goes to shit so that there's no and they didn't do any like tony stock shit where they said like turns out to tywin rape babies just like what no no like no they leave him alone which is nice is there a single episode or a single season of television more disappointing than season eight of game of thrones i don't think there is i i would argue it's probably the worst fuck like like it's the worst because i think of legacy yeah um maybe doctor who's one of those seasons might be able to compare but like season eight game of thrones that fucking assassinate everyone and destroyed the whole thematic through line of the show it's just like that's some significant damage consider this consider that for almost a decade game of thrones had it was one of the most culturally significant uh tv shows that existed in media everyone knew about it even if you watched it or not it had it had invaded popular culture and the next episode and the fear of spoilers and the excitement that people had for every episode was incredible for almost a decade and then we get to the end of season eight and now nobody talks about it and if they do it is almost always horrifically negative about how the whole show was ruined by the end and it takes some serious work to destroy that lengthy and powerful of a legacy in such a way do you know that data dinklage recently said people were mad because the white people didn't get to walk off and i can't believe it's so fucking short-sighted of him to say that the other thing he said just quickly because i think he was like who cares anyway it's not real there's fucking dragons in it it was just like oh god i'm about to be dragging my balls across your face if you say that again yeah it's so sad it would have been a strong contender for my favorite show of all time and i i can't watch it i tried to watch it again like last year and i just i couldn't get through it and then i remember i watched one of baller's videos about season eight i was just fucking like furious it's like like tweeting about how fucking mad i wasn't gonna say anything important please it's it's the worst thing that ever happened let you know when i'm back in the land of trying to listen to both of you at the same time i've gone to the land of the ring race rags are shut the fuck up till it fixes that's what you can't see me and i can't hear you oh i heard metal oh god did it happen again hello i like your first instinct rags whenever you can't hear anyone is just talking sassad late instead of stopping nope nope because if i because here's the thing if i talk incessantly and i interrupt everything you say that means you can't say all that stuff without me because i want to hear what this is from a place of love because i want to hear what you have to say slap you in the balls out of love you can't because i'm dragging them across someone's face in chat so you're gonna slap his head too and you don't want that you can't i do that i think jay is adept enough to slap your balls without hitting the guy's face yeah he is that dexterous yes i would have how many people were talking so i was currently doing the rags both were well uh i guess is it is jay's turn right to dole god not again favorite you gotta be fucking again jay didn't even have the turn yet oh no no wait i think is i think his audio is gone again they want to go to sing rags you can't hear us can you nope we're back singapore we're in singapore now okay all right okay jay go do it all right take my turn again you know i've taken this question is just you know not favorite character of all time because i guess i guess if i were to do that it would probably do be it probably would be the doctor but that's not really fair um because we've got why not what we've got essentially there we've got um that that's essentially having several interpretations of the same character but because they're all in the same continuity you get to include them all as one i suppose i would have thought you'd pick a particular one rather than the entity as a whole but i i don't i don't think i would pick a particular one or i think i would particularly even though there's a 13 to think that i i get absolutely despised yeah that doesn't even count that's just a complete misunderstanding she doesn't she doesn't count um but um the character that i wanted to bring along was uh simon from misfits who i don't know who here is even familiar with misfits i know who is i just don't know who isn't not me i have not seen it but you told me to watch it multiple times so i've been doing a rewatch of misfits recently with fringy and man the strength of that show is it's character writing um more than anything else i think but um the standout character in all of them is simon um who is this so we have the setup of a um group of young offenders i think that's i think that's the most important part is that they're like we don't even need to talk about like the sci-fi stuff that happens in that show just to appreciate who they are as people and that they are um a group of young offenders who are essentially forced to work together by circumstance they are put in the same like community service service rotation that's how they know each other um and then shit happens to their group and they are forced to collaborate even though there was people they almost certainly are i think well they're a bunch of misfits they almost none of them would really be friends um outside of the show outside of the circumstances i i'd sincerely doubt that anyone would talk to any of the others uh and you have Nathan who is a um a fan favorite character he is often presented as a protagonist even though it's quite a flat team structure um and you know he's a i mean he's a master class in comic relief without making it annoying um and he has a he has a rich character in a and his own values and strengths and weaknesses and and you know exactly the kind of thing he's likely to say in any kind of situation but uh it's simon who has i think more nuances and complexities than any other character in the show he is a um you won't meet him he is incredibly socially distant from everyone else he is awkward and nervous he doesn't understand most social cues or the difference between the subtle differences that most people do understand there's a difference between coming across as awkward and and coming across as palatable to most people um i think the perfect example of that is a scene where he is asking a girl out he asks do you like food if you do we can go for some pizza and garlic dough balls in a very like matter effect um and also very clearly nervous demeanor um and there are all of these social nuances that he doesn't understand but he clearly he clearly does have um his own moral compass and heart in there um and as he grows it's really rewarding to see this guy um get his first proper people that he considers to be his friends um and to see the things that are significant to him and to see um how his sort of um how his how his life being socially distant from other people has informed his morals and his and the kind of decisions he's likely to make and his understanding of the world um he is a very satisfying character to see grow other than one arc that fringy and i am very going to controversially get angry about yeah it's like one fringy it's one of those popular arcs in the show i don't know why they assassinate him in like an episode it's yeah but it's it's really easy to separate it from the rest of the show so right fringy it's one of the most popular arcs in the show stop saying that it sounds like it's fringy's fault i don't like it fringy why did you make that arc so popular also um i don't know i don't know um because we're talking about writing i don't know really how much how fair it is to bring acting into it but holy fuck um iwan rion who plays in i was honestly one of my fucking like standout performances like i can't think of many performances i like better than him as simon he conveys so much nuance and emotion um he has to play the character getting possessed and is able to do full switches of demeanor like he's like you're like oh there's a different brain in that body now um he is fucking insane um scenes where he is um there is a scene where um let's say without spoiling it um some of the people that he has grown to consider his only friends over the course of the previous season he is now being found out in a way they found out information about him that as far as he is concerned risks their entire friendship with him collapsing and his performance in that scene is fucking amazing um fringy do you know the one i'm referring to based on that uh i think sorry i think i do yeah um yeah i don't i don't i can't um appreciate the the the melding of writing and performance that come together to form this character enough like he is through and through one of my favorites um and yeah as i said well i don't think i can pick a favorite character of all time but he is one that i i can't think of any you know it's the same rule as well i don't think i can pick a favorite of all time there are certainly characters who reach a level where they can't reach a higher level for me and these are just all the characters that i like as much as i'm capable of liking a character right writing and acting definitely go hand in hand oh yeah um like you a good actor can take bad writing sometimes and salvage something out of it usually it's not very good like but uh when both are good when you have a terrific actor with like top-notch material it creates this positive feedback loop where you end up with something really special i think yeah absolutely and as well the same way as you could the other way you can have a um some serviceable or even good material totally ruined by it just being delivered with an actor who doesn't really seem to give a shit about the material they're working yes we if you had like a really great material gal Gadot was delivering there would still be like characterization and things to complement we would just be like man sucks that she's the one delivering those lines honestly like um it can make dialogue feel so much less natural it can really rob dialogue of the implications that it would have being read by a more talented actor true with the way that words are said intonation and all that stuff yeah yeah well all right then it looks like next up magical is mr frong who is your favorite character of all time and why the caveats to start with would be that i'm pretty sure that i have a character who is among the favorites if not potentially my favorite um but i don't want to talk about him quite yet because he's he's from a series that i'm sure we'll get around to talking about in depth eventually um and also it can be hard to hone in on a single one and uh something else i was thinking about in relation to this question is how do i factor in like characters from comedies who are really static but who i really enjoy seeing so when i think about that i think about like homo simpson basal faulty like eric cartman sterling archer a lot of a lot of comedy characters who i really enjoy watching um who i guess would be would be up there with my favorite characters but i guess i feel like i have less to i feel like that conversation would be a lot harder to have at the moment so i decided not to talk about those ones uh and some other ones i was thinking about too um but for this conversation one of my favorite characters is dead evil and part of the reason why i like dead evil so much is because i struggle to think of other characters that are so ripe uh for the exploration of theme than dead evil there there are so many things that i don't even know that they were on purpose when the character was created um that just line up so well uh it's kind of unreal so when we think about who is dead evil who is this character so he's one of the few superheroes who is defined by a disability he's defined by what he can't do as opposed to what he can that's so cool that's such a unique things to have for a superhero who is defined by what they cannot do um and then you think about so many of these things again i i'm not sure that um that stan lee knew what he had created when he did this but a blind lawyer a blind catholic lawyer who dresses up like a demon and goes out into the night to beat up criminals now you said that's like that's that's a concept but it's like okay so we have a man who has decided that he wants to become part of a legal system you know part of the legal system uh and you know adhere to the tenets of the legal system in terms of like the rule of law specifically the rule of law is probably the important one um yet clearly he doesn't believe in this system or at least he thinks that the system is flawed in ways that he can remedy by going out into the street at night and exacting vigilante justice to create the world that he wants there are so much that you can explore that has been explored in stories about him about that the fact that he would make that decision and then we think about the moral implications of the things that he's doing because dad will generally adhere to like a no kill rule um and usually when we talk about it it's like batman a lot of the time his concern with the no kill rule is uh fear of like what he will become if he breaches that rule that he'll go down a really dark path and um and uh basically become unhinged like a lot of the time with spider man the reason why he doesn't want to kill the bad guys is because he is kind of like a he is pretty wholesome um and also the idea of like redemption and salvation and stuff and um but with with uh with matt he's a catholic so he believes that if he crosses certain lines that it will be basically condemning his soul and that's like a factor that he has to grapple with as well as the standard things right of can i rob somebody of the chance of redemption is it okay um is it okay to cross this line to create the world that i want um i think when you think about that it's like there are plenty of stories both in the comics and in the tv show that are that that explore these concepts but i think it is the thing that i find so interesting and appealing about dead evil is just how potent all of these sort of fundamental elements of his character are for like so many different types of stories you can explore about like the nature of being a superhero vigilante or like your concepts of justice or like morality redemption um and you get that like born again the man without fear uh dead of a yellow um uh i haven't read out but i've heard that has a lot of stuff in there too and then the tv show as well um and i mean and this is all putting to one side that dead of a has a real cool factor to him the costume is awesome the concept is really cool of like a yeah again a a blind man who has like heightened senses so he relies on hearing and smell and then he can leverage those uh in his professional career as well like as a lawyer there's certain advantage that he gets from being able to do that um yeah dead dead evil is awesome um he is he is really really cool great character and a really strong example of like theme married hardcore with with with a character it's it's it's difficult to think of like stories that you would that you could tell where you would not be able to pull something just from these fundamental ideas about justice and uh morality redemption yeah i uh i really like dead evil that's uh that's what i want to marry him did you like the man no way i really liked him in in no way home but again it's like a minute of time but i definitely was happy to see him i mean we talk about performances like charlie cox's perfect like i don't want to see him played by anybody else he's he's gonna play uh dead evil um i i do get worried about what they're gonna do especially best what i would be worried about what marvel would do with with a character that you love in phase four why would you worry about that oh by the way for anybody who isn't super familiar with comics who is interested in reading comics uh dead evil born again is um that that is a really fantastic uh like entry point um for for learning about dead evil it's pretty much like the quintessential story it's definitely worth reading amazing art i think that was uh massive charlie he did uh batmania one which was also him and frank miller which is another great comic too oh man those two made a lot of good comics um yeah uh that's about it all right another dynamic character so many layers and thematic relevance um gone yeah i believe it is now your turn once again oh sorry sorry wait one last thing i wanted to mention as well about dead evil because i someone reminded me in chat um that like a constant question that's raised about dead evil throughout all of his stories is like his intentions like you are you actually interested in helping people or do you just want to hurt people like do you like do you like uh being able to go out because this character sustained a lot of trauma in his life and it's like do you just use this as an excuse to go out to beat the shit out of people uh yeah i think it's easy to become resentful when you've lost your eyesight uh well it's it's a lot of things right is uh because his dad was a boxer who uh who ended up getting killed uh because he was used to because he didn't throw fight um that is definitely like a huge part of his history um and it's just again it's like god damn you really did not like like in every sort of core aspect of who this guy is you've leveraged something that's interesting and and i mean you know when you talk about villains kingpin is a really cool villain um bullseye is a cool villain electra is a cool character um he's got a lot of cool villains but uh yeah sorry so that's that's that's my piece yeah no worries very well um i'm going to go with Breaking Bad's Walter White good choice um it's uh or i was talking earlier about like how i think i consider characters as vehicles for themes and in the case of Walter White i would say it's pride and then anybody who's um looking for like brainstorming advice for stories like writing stories starting off with the seven sins is a pretty good jumping off point because any kind of interesting human behavior or motivation is basically comes down to one of those and um Walter White is a portrait of pride i think and what it can do to a person and it's a for all it's spectacle and you know almost comic book level tension and explosions not that they're that frequent or anything it does get a little bit pulpy and comic booky in rare instances but uh overall it's a realistic study of somebody just very milk toast limp dicked at the start i mean who's overqualified uh he knows he he's very good at what he does he's very talented he feels cheated with the whole thing with uh elliott schwarz gray matter losing the gray matter yeah losing the partnership uh just deeply resentful and he's kind of stewing in this resentment but he doesn't show it at all he's just very suppressed and um and then he has this cancer diagnosis and all of a sudden he's got a clock on his lifespan and he's questioning what he's done for his family and what he's going to leave them with and he just decides fuck it and sees a news report of how much money can be made um making and dealing drugs and justifies going through with it by saying that well the money that i make i'm going to leave it to my family and they don't have to know how i make this money but i'm going to make this money i'm going to give it to them i'm going to die and what i did won't matter all that matters is that my family is well off and sort of like it's the idea that you can that all the terrible shit you can justify in the name of like doing good by your your children your family making sure that they're in an okay place and um i love what the show does across the entire show uh his morality just swings from one end of the spectrum to the other and i like how it's a debate as to where exactly he became evil and there's an argument to be made that maybe he was evil all along and the circumstances just brought that out in him but i don't know about that personally i think i think what you do has a lot to do with your character and he never really did evil things until he went down this path of the drug trade and um but it's not like he went from good to bad and that's it i like that at the end of the show like he reaches rock bottom he's withering away and you see that there's still some good in him and he reaches this revelation in the last couple episodes that he wants to leave something positive behind yeah like he kind of he he did the drug thing he uh he went all the way to the top he rose and fell it was the archetypal story and then he's just at the bedrock now where he's about to die and it's like is this what i want to leave behind like my family my family hates me i've introduced all this poison i've produced all this poison for people like what what can i do that's like good well i can get well actually no like i was gonna say kind of save jesse but he doesn't attend on saving jesse when he when he goes for that final confrontation but he sees the predicament that he's in he like he thinks jesse's working with the nazis but that's not the case and uh but he does he does something good in the end and um you can it's arguable whether or not he got what he deserved in the end um i i think it's a satisfying ending maybe i mean i like season five the last season but it's definitely the most flawed season out of all of them and um they did a really they made a really ballsy move with introducing the the gun in the the opening scene of season five because they didn't they did that and not not really knowing where they were gonna go with it and i was i've read a lot about the writing process about how there's a lot of like like tough days in the writers room we're just like oh my fucking god how are we gonna pay this off like what can he do with this gun and uh i think they kind of wrote themselves into a corner there a little bit maybe they should have taken a more organic approach by not like introducing a flash forward and then having to service like pay off that flash forward yeah i think it did the exact kind of damage you'd expect something like that could do which is that it locked into a payoff that they weren't actually 100 on board with yeah that perhaps wasn't truly organic to that story if you were to just follow just like take a not a completely or well i guess suppose like if you just follow walter white organically what he would do beat for beat rather than just like figuring out these intense tent pole moments and then like building your way up to them in this kind of artificial paint by numbers way but i thought overall the breaking bad struck a good balance between an organic and a schematic approach to yeah compelling storytelling and i like i like the the the breadth of morality that that character encompasses like it's like going going from like i guess he was like you could consider him a good person in the beginning and then he just turns into this terrible monster but then you see that there's some redemption in him at the very end i think you have to stack a lot of what he decides to do in all the circumstances he ends up with when i think when he's like profiting hardcore and he's in a comfortable position of people knowing it's him earning the money like with a car wash i think he's willing to go back to being 100% altruistic but the second like jesse or hank start to threaten the empire he will threaten to kill them sort of thing yes he's very driven by ego narcissist hates charity doesn't want anything given to him anymore i think you see when hank is at his end so i think the waltz everything he says and does in that scene it just tells you it's like yeah he values hank's life more than he does all of the money he has yeah and that's gonna mean something right i was thinking of the characters like tony soprano i love that character but he doesn't really have much of an arc like he stays pretty consistent throughout the whole thing you know and so i prefer walter white in in like his transformation back and forth and it does it in a realistic way it's a very believable character yeah and i think a lot of people would cite i think jane's death would be the the moment where you go from probably being like i can kind of understand all this to be in like wow i think you're a bad person now yeah yeah polarizing for sure i would agree though that most people would gravitate towards that as the moment where it's like okay this character's like irredeemable now i think it's rough that scene that's really good though yeah this is i don't think anybody would like that's one of the avastated well-known pop culture characters that is known for an extensive arc that's uh takes place over five years really well done and really well performed oh yeah he was a fantastic Brian Cranston yeah and i just love that he comes from a comedy background thing with the comedians comics like that you put them in a dramatic role and they can just do it like a lot of the time like there's just something that they get about like the human experience was like Jim Carrey in the Truman show right that is a comedic role but it is also dramatic right same with Bob Odenkirk sketch comedy background uh same with a dramatic role and he's just excellent is it Jeff Daniels right from uh Dumb and Dumber sorry what's is that his name Jeff Daniels right Jeff Daniels yeah yeah he's really good in um in a lot of dramatic roles he was great in Steve Jobs Robin Williams yeah newsroom Robin Williams yeah good will hunting um yeah i was trying to think of another one i'm just there that'll come excellent choice and now we move to the doom portion of the discussion yeah so of the four questions most of them i pretty got an answer pretty quickly this was like excruciating trying to figure out uh which character i was going to choose so i guess kind of similar to some other people i don't have like a necessarily definitive answer but one one that comes closest right um now unfortunately this is from a film called akira that i'm pretty sure people haven't seen for the most part so i'm gonna quickly summarize some of the some of the back plot like my character is the colonel his actual name is colonel shikishima but he's never called that he's just called the colonel in the film the the basic background of the film is that uh also it's uh animated by the way which explains some of some of the things that happen um but it takes place in japan basically in 19 oh and there are people with psychic powers called espers and in 1988 there was an event it's sort of like the bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that destroyed tokyo where one of these uh basically people with psychic powers exploded it's not really fully clarified basically they destroyed the city of tokyo and then the actual the story we see takes place in the distant future of 2019 um after tokyo has been rebuilt and uh the main yeah in the main uh the main plot revolves around um another wave of people gaining psychic powers and the other people who have psychic powers and the military's attempt to like basically keep them under control uh and it also deals with some political stuff uh it's it's an epic story in the sense that it has a lot of characters and a lot of plot um but i'm only really going to talk about uh the colonel character so the colonel is in charge of the military right um and i first saw this film when i was very young uh and i just like hated him um sort of instinctively it's like the military is bad why would we hurt people anybody who uses violence as a dick that kind of thing um and there's a point in the film where the colonel instigates a military coup so like obviously fuck this guy right um you know why would you do that you know that you not only are you using violence you're taking over the government it's undemocratic you're a piece of shit etc etc um but as i've gotten older i've realized that the colonel is the only character in the entire film it's an actual adult he's just doing the things that are that are required um to do what is in the best interest of everyone and like in the case of the uh military coup he does that because there's like another basically there's another pressing threat where tokyo could be destroyed again and the only way to do that um is to take power from the people who are stopping him and go over and try and stop tetsuo and basically try and save everyone's life um and it's just really interesting how the sort of thing that you would expect to be horrendous you know what could be much worse than uh a military commander taking over control of the government um two military commanders taking control of two governments but uh yeah but it's it's actually just the responsible and adult thing to do and basically everyone who surrounds him is uh like greedy and selfish and stupid and short-sighted and he's like one of the very few characters who is able to actually be an adult um it's really fascinating he has a he has a line uh he's talking to a scientist and the scientist is very um romantic and thinking about like what what they could possibly do what they could possibly explore you know what what could we possibly get by studying basically these these psychic people and he asks the colonel uh what do you believe colonel and he responds i'll tell you my job isn't to believe or disbelieve it's to act or not act and it's just such a good encapsulation of what must be the thought process of being in command of the military you know is i'm generally somewhat averse to themes but a lot of the reason the colonel is very interesting is that he's basically um an embodiment of of the theme of like responsible military leadership which isn't something i would usually be interested in but that's part of what makes him fascinating is that i would i have a natural aversion to him and in in spite of that his character is just wildly fascinating um there's another scene where he literally shoots the messenger someone someone that that's where he instigates the military coup they bring him the message that he's being stripped of his command and he literally tells him to shoot the messenger and it's probably the right thing to do it's just it's it's fascinating how um he's doing all of these things that on the surface seem uh horrendous and and and monstrous really but it's just what it's what has to happen um to save people's lives and the characters are very fascinating it's unfortunate that people probably haven't seen the film but maybe you should go watch it akira so it's really good i've seen i've seen clips and the animation's gorgeous i've watched it but it's been a long time so i don't remember it very well yeah the the animation is usually regarded as like one of the most beautiful films ever made that's pretty unquestionable but it gets a lot less respect for its like story which i think is quite good um i'm a big akira stan so go check it out with him being what you ended up choosing as your favorite character what do you think it says about your preferences for seeing what like what things you see in characters or what you like to see in characters so that that's kind of what's fascinating that's why i was so excruciating to choose because i i thought up all the different things that i would abstractly imagine to be really important and i realized that there wasn't any character that embodies all of them so like something that's really important to me are character relationships and um basically how character relationships change over time but that doesn't really happen in features all that much it's in tv shows have the time to pull that off but you don't get super complex exploration of that and and films all that much right um i mean the reason i guess the reason to choose him is sort of if there was a character that i would want to see more of more than anyone else and just to sort of explore like the mind of this character to see what else he was up to it would probably be him but yeah like i it's kind of fascinating that different characters are accomplishing wildly different things and i couldn't really think i i would i would be at my woodson trying to come up with like a handbook of what makes a good character because these people are so different like on my list you've got Mulan you've got larry david from curb your enthusiasm right tywin lannister kating cotar from snagskin new york like selene from before sunrise there's just nothing in common with these characters at all um they're wildly distinct and what makes them interesting and their place in the story and the kind of stories they're in i mean these are just kind of the people that i i guess i connect the most with and really would like to see more of um on screen oh it's not in mulan never mind just don't no more one enough mulan enough mulan mulan all right um all righty you only have one left mr mr rattleton here at the end who is your favorite character and why bringing up the proverbial rear so i i thought of a couple because there's a lot of characters i like i was really close to maybe doing one that's unexpected i almost chose boris sherbina from uh shernobyl uh scars guards character i really like him a whole bunch um but we gotta bring it back to middle earth and in a not so surprising pick i'm gonna go with boramir yeah of course i often put boramir with ferramir because the two of them have a very close and intertwined relationship as far as it relates to the things they say and do and of course with their father denathor it's a very interesting pairing slash triangle depending on how much you want to zoom out of it but boramir is who i'm going to be picking for this for this little efap episode so boramir is i guess if you're super casual and you watch the fellowship of the ring um and you don't really pay too much attention and you're not if you're dumb you will hate boramir you will think that he's just a standoffish jerk who is standing as an antagonist and is getting in the way of our our plucky hobbit heroes and our man aragorn and he's just being a jerk and he just wants to do things for himself but boramir is a fantastically put together character because he's one of the i must want to let so let's just take a view of the timeline here and we're gonna be using the definitive edition uh movies for this as we always should the extendeds right so we first meet boramir at the council of elrond and he really wants to protect gondor because from his perspective and as is legitimately accurate gondor has kind of been standing between mordor it's assaults and the rest of middle earth particularly at the key point of osgiliath the city at the river and he's been fighting and fighting and gondor has been fighting and fighting and men are dying and this has made him understandably a little a little upset it's made him a little upset that his countrymen die and his people suffer and so much resource uh resources of gondor have been going towards protecting everyone else and he thinks it's it's understood a little thankless you know that that they're putting so much effort into stopping mordor uh from advancing and so he shows up at the council of elrond with this perspective that he understandably has and he wants to use the ring's power in order to defeat sarin uh not really coming to grasp fully with the idea of its corrupting influence right but at the council it's decided that this fellowship of the ring this jewelry brigade if you will is going to band together and they're going to deliver the ring to mordor so it can be destroyed and boramir agrees he he even says after everyone gets together you have my bow my sword my axe are we great boramir comes in and says if that the the fate of all of us rests in you little one talking to frodo so he understands that it is pragmatically within his best interest and everyone's interest if even though it's not the ideal scenario that he wants and that dinner for once as we'll get to later as we'll discover in the two towers um it is best that he cooperate he's like the embodiment of a d and d group where every where you've got that one guy who doesn't really get his way his his key either the player or their character it's it's really not ideal what the party wants to do but he's like you know what it's still best for us if i help the party and we do what we need to do and our success is far more important than my personal feelings on the matter anyway so he goes along with the will of the council and he goes with the fellowship and throughout the fellowship of the ring we see that boramir even though he can be a bit rough and a little bit standoffish though for good reasons he has an immense amount of care and practical concern that goes into the well-being of his companions particularly to the ones who need it most there is a scene where he is shown specifically training mary and pippin in swordsmanship and instructing them how to parry and block blows and that sort of thing which is very very important remember excuse me it was i think when we were watching our lord of the rings breakthroughs or breakthroughs are watched together or whatever it was this was before the rise of skywalker came out and we were joking that thanks to boramir officially mary and pippin had more combat training than ray skywalker did because boramir cares about the safety of the people in his party who are the least capable of defending themselves he doesn't worry about legolas he doesn't worry about aragorn and all the stuff that they can do he's concerned about the hobbits right when they are escaping moria when they're leaving right we have that scene where they're walking down that that uh definitely not osha approved staircase and part of it crumbles and it falls away and crashes into the chasm below all of our heroes have to jump that chasm they have to jump across well i think gandalf goes first and behind him is boramir and in each arm he has mary and pippin he is jumping across with these two hobbits because he knows they probably can't make the jump and he has to help them what a chad now fast forward's a little bit to um when spoiler alert uh the ball rod again takes up you know gandalf and they fall into the pit it is boramir who runs back and grabs frodo who is a little dumbstruck by watching you know his friend fallen to the chasm it's boramir who comes back uh i think so i might be remembering it miss remembering it but i think it's boramir who does that he's very he he's very i guess goal oriented you know he takes action when he needs to so we get to rivendell after that and not sorry not to rivendell we get to the forest for sarah brorn and all of them are at i'm having a blank on the name of it and now that i'm kind of put on the spot a little bit but he has a conversation in the extended edition the proper edition of these movies he has a conversation with aragorn about what he feels he has to do for you know gondor and how gondor's suffering and how he it explains a great deal his relationship with aragorn and understanding aragorn's perspective trying to get aragorn to do what he needs to slash why are you behaving this way we learn a lot about him he's not a selfish guy gondor really is his top priority he's seen enough suffering and he wants to end right so we fast forward further and further and we get to amon hen and at amon hen boromir of course he this is the scene where he's he finally comes across frodo in the forest and he tries to take the ring from frodo it's corrupted him enough being around it has corrupted him enough even though previously he thought that it wouldn't do it it turns out that uh men are easily corrupted as it has we've been told before so he tries to get the ring from frodo frodo escapes and then boromir realizes what he's done and he is he's he's he feels awful about it he's he he basically weeps he feels terrible that he's had this weakness and that he gave into it and now the person that he needs to protect is running away from him for fear of their own safety and after this he of course fights and dies to defend uh mary and pippin in particular and he kind of he and it's a really big deal in this world that boromir dies and as boromir is dying you know he he says you know if i was if i could live i'd follow you to the end aragorn you're what's best for gondor and gondor is the most important thing um you know you're my king and things could have been great uh you know go get him for me and then he dies very sad um i think that when we were in episode 93 when we were talking about boromir as a character in the lord of the rings it came up that the significance of boromir's death is more vast than a lot of people might realize because of the familial i guess the the family situation the family drama with denithor boromir and feromir but we don't really learn this until later uh imagine if you will if boromir had survived amon hen either he didn't get shot or he survived his wounds um i thoroughly believe that he would have gone with aragorn legolas and gimley to go and rescue mary and pippin because he legitimately cares about their safety and he's a good guy he's very he is very heroic and chivalrous in that aspect um he would have been present at helms deep which politically is significant because he is acting as a representative of gondor so if he is risking his life to defend rohan from uh the white wizard and is present at helms deep that means a great deal between the movies as to gondor's uh relationship with rohan and rohan's uh their willingness to help gondor eventually they do but this would have definitely made that less of an issue because their direct representative essentially a quasi royal character the son of the steward himself is there helping at helms deep now even though it's not the most plot important uh extended scene that of course belonging to the death of saruman oh yeah i think my favorite extended scene is the scene between now this is a it takes place in the two towers that's where the scene is in the film but the event occurs before the event of the fellowship of the ring it's at osgiliath and this is after osgiliath is recaptured from the orcs because it's sort of a tug and a tug of war kind of battle at osgiliath between the orcs and between the men of gondor so osgiliath is retaken by the men of gondor from the orcs and everyone's having a great time it's a celebration this is legitimately good this is excellent and boromir's there who ferrimir's there and denithor enters he comes in to meet his sons and it's a big important celebration that they won this battle and denithor puts down ferrimir and he doesn't give him any respect he says if it wasn't for you ferrimir osgiliath would have never fallen and ferrimir says well we we were outnumbered we didn't have enough men if we had enough men we could have held it and denithor is like oh you're just making excuses you're not good for anything and boromir he comes to bat for his brother he says father this is a day of celebration like all this praise it belongs to ferrimir just as much as me because we both retook the city and he loves you he wants to do everything he can for you he fights and fights and fights for you and it shows how much boromir is ready to stand up to his father essentially and advocate for his brother who is legitimately a very talented and excellent human being as well the both of these brothers are and he's just not given what he needs to succeed essentially on multiple occasions by denithor as if denithor is setting up ferrimir to fail as well denithor says that ferrimir your failure your failure reflects poorly on me and because of the state of denithor's mind it makes you wonder is is denithor trying to make ferrimir fail so that it does look bad on him so he can be mad at ferrimir to justify his dismissal of him it's not exactly clear but i think you could make a pretty good argument for it but in osgiliath after they recapture it boromir is the one who is sent to go get the ring boromir is i mean ferrimir would have been a great choice of course ferrimir is a boss but denithor sends boromir he says your brother would fuck it up i want you to make sure it's done i want you to get you know there's whispers that you know they have the one ring and you know that's a big deal and you need to go get it for gondor and things will be great who will win this and we can stop all this bloodshed at least in his mind that's what's going to happen though it's also like oh are you just saying that because you're a bit corrupted by the yourself and you want the ring for you and it's not super clear but again i think you can make an argument for it so retroactively which is probably why they cut this extended scene retroactively we learn about ferrimir as a character and how much he cares for his brother he sees the earnestness of you know ferrimir and how much he tries and how it's not pleasing his father and his father's just shutting him down putting him down he sees in the same way how mary and pipin in particular they don't really belong here but they're they're trying they are putting themselves in danger on this quest and so he respects that and he teaches them stuff and he watches after him hell even before they get to moria when the spell is being cast by saruman on the on the mountains to make them fall and kill the fellowship it's boromir who says we need to go because the little ones are going to perish essentially those are those are constantly his primary concern and i think all of these together make boromir a guy who is it's a tragic story of an incredible guy who has understandably really kind of pushed to be corrupted in a way not just by his human nature but because of his experiences in his life concerning gondor and the blood that he's spilled with his countrymen to defend the world essentially and i it's tragic that a character like this had to meet that fate it's a it is a heroic death but it is tragic all the same and i'm super curious what would have happened if boromir would have lived what impact did his death have on denithor into driving him even further into madness and what influences politically and militarily would that have had um it probably would have had a lot of big consequences but we can only speculate but i've waxed long enough about my boy boromir and uh that that's my that's my choice i think in really you found 93 it was said by a certain almond skeptic that nobody would pick boromir as a favorite character because i'll be lame he changed his mind he would we showed him the light we showed him the light boromir is the correct decision he's a boromir is fucking legend i was i i i rewatched a scene or two just to sort of because he was on my mind um to just sort of watch the things he says and his attitude and of course shan bean does an insanely good job of portraying this character um it is it it's great to see how this movie because this ties into why i picked it as my favorite story or at least my favorite i guess favorite movie in my mind was what i was sort of going with here for whatever reason but they do so much with a character like boromir and the more you look into him the better he gets and i you know he's one of the a lot of the times in fiction you have these characters that you enjoy seeing and you really look up to him and you see that you know they had a tragic end and you just wish that it didn't happen you wish they could have kept going on and you wish they could have continued to be awesome into the future but that's boromir my boy i'm sure i couldn't don't catch you mentioned it just the the first thing he says to aragon after lutz is dead the little ones are they safe please if they took the little ones oh yeah that's it yeah yeah yeah yeah it's it's so much material to sift through that's the thing it's just it's syndicative again of characters like it's not about can you even save me it's they've got them you got them you got to go save them they got them they got them i tried to stop them but i couldn't yeah um i really respect the role that his death played in emphasizing just how dangerous the ring is and then for a while all of a sudden realized okay i have to destroy this thing and i need to do it i can do that boromir because of what it's doing to my friend yeah the political impact of it that awesome scene when boromir loses his shit and tries to steal the ring yeah i love that scene so good because he tries to justify it to himself you know my countrymen are yeah they're dying mine it should be mine um yeah and then the moment he snaps out of it he's practically weeping i can't believe i've done this people had come away at a certain point thinking he was kind of the dick and it's just like man watch the movie how do you come away with that perspective when you see what happens the second that he realizes his mistake um it's i mean i it would it was really easy for me to maybe pair this with faramir because they are intertwined and faramir is another character i really really like and i think it gets an unfair shake um even more than boromir does because he's sort of set up to fail by denithor on multiple occasions i feel and he's been up to so much and he's so active in what he's doing in the at least in the world he's constantly working and fighting and he's very good at both of those things and he's doing his best and how he lets frodo go and i mean he gets a great wife you know that's good but faramir is great boromir is great and i was like i said i was going to choose borysherbina or potentially i'd molded in my mind i i almost chose rip uh who was of course the talking magical wisecracking skateboard voiced by dom delawiz who starred in the feature film the skateboard kid from 1993 i knew you were gonna like i asked of course i gave it i gave it a bit of thought uh a bit of a generic choice you know yeah i it would have been too obvious uh i think a case could have been made but faramir see we're gonna go with but i've been talking too much so we can i think theater as well but then again could just start naming all the characters in lord the rings i like yeah i guess just everyone is amazing and you have a bow story telling like how much does lord the rings come up it's like yeah it's not a surprise is it yeah well yeah and we'll never get another i've just i've come to terms with the fact that we're never going to get another good show coming out this year no yeah i um yeah i'm gonna watch it before i watch the trilogy we'll give it we'll give it the bow but like average i'm sure what's the uh what's the word on the street about the amazon show is it supposed to be like oh wow apparently it's got like an enormous budget something like four hundred and sixty million dollars also it must be good yeah definitely definitely expensive budget equals good well i mean that's at least promising i mean maybe they could match like the technical elements of filmmaking if even if they can't match the storytelling oh wow i mean like that point it's just frustrating to say it go to waste isn't it i mean it's sure like i'm trying to be optimistic okay i don't know okay i don't really get to be optimistic yeah um what for though i guess for those who don't know the deep e-fap lore when i got absolutely slammered on metal stream i was just drinking like straight uh that uh that honey bourbon that wild turkey man i was just a good whiskey oh yeah it was i was a horrific mistake and i remember afterwards in in stupor and in an alcohol fueled days after where i had just walked away from the computer uh just i guess i was lost i i distinctly remember laying in bed as tears streamed down my eyes crying for boromir's death like i was it's like an actual person had died and it was a tragedy and i was so so sad it just because it's it felt it was so real it just felt so real there's like fights on my most watched bot on youtube by the way well when you when you type metal commander into youtube this hop suggestion is drunk rags oh no oh my alcohol is a pathway to your fame metal oh my goodness well if you remember um a redditor once attributed your like rags your highest notable successes to knowing me and this is when i had like far far fewer subscribers than you this was written the most notable thing you've ever done is know me well so they they must think very highly of you metal is only famous by you who's only famous by me it's a it's a complicated social networking web um my my next birthday is coming up prepared to bourbon oh my god once a year is enough once a year i have hit the randomizer because we are our final question i actually had four prepared as a backup we will not need them um oh my god so that is apparently the order so john it's the last question what is your favorite medium for storytelling and why oh yeah hmm uh i'm not much of a book reader but i think books are the superior form like because you can go into an unlimited amount of detail you can make it as long as you want and uh uh you can explore everybody's mindset and uh you can leave however much you want to the imagination i mean you can at least the same things apply to film but with film you have to be conscious of the fact that people's butts get sore you know um in the seat and uh you you gotta wrap things up in like three hours max i would say but you know you can take your time with a novel and really elaborate and uh i mean that's not to say the other um forms are substantially lesser i mean there's masterpieces and all and all the different mediums but i mean i would say books are the the most uh efficient one at at telling like if you were to tell it like a masterpiece story you could probably do it most effectively in a book um that's just when you say efficiently what do you mean um well just that you can the relatively enormous amount of detail that you can go into i suppose and you you uh with film and television you're kind of relying on the you know picture say a thousand words sort of thing where you're what you're trying to convey to the audience might not entirely translate with the book it's like there's no you can leave no room for confusion you know it's just like this is what i'm trying to tell you um the what between film and television uh as much as i respect film and i think more masterpieces have been made in film and television i think television is actually has the potential at least to be more superior than film because of the length of time that you can stick with one character and you can really explore a character across a number of seasons and uh you just you simply can't do that with film you gotta you gotta really boil things down for like a for a movie experience and uh yeah i don't really have too much to say on it beyond that that's that's uh that's what i think yeah which puts doom a number two yeah so um my answer is easily i i prefer film over ever story over every other storytelling medium um i think that film is able to take like the best parts of every other medium and combine them like the potential like music on its own is like incredible right but music can also serve like music plus film accompaniment has so much more potential than just hearing a song and like um a screenplay can take a lot of the elements of a novel not not all of them um there's things a book can do that are are very difficult at the very least to do it in film and and like john said books can take their time um and books can uh you can interact with them you can interact with the story in much greater detail um but i think that the experience of watching a film is way more uh intense um in particular i think that film exceeds at suspension of disbelief and immersion um some a problem a huge problem i have reading books is i can always hear the author's voice and i have a very difficult time like actually suspending disbelief and immersing myself in the world i always feel like someone is telling the story to me and it kind of kills it um okay i can probably count on one hand the number of fiction books i've read in the last 10 years it's just very difficult for me to really get into whereas films like the suspension of disbelief is immediate unless they fuck something up right it's much easier at least for me to kind of immerse myself um and something i definitely do agree with is that i think television has the potential to vastly outperform features i just don't think it's happened yet um i mean probably for like budgetary and practical reasons um there's also the idea that uh television shows tend to go on a while and most of them kind of go on until they kill themselves seems to be um the trend you know there are i could make a list probably of 20 30 or 40 television shows where they have a particular season that's like a masterpiece but how many shows can i point to that are a masterpiece in their totality i don't know if there's 10 i mean maybe if i saw all of them right i could point out 10 but i could easily identify you know 100 films that i think are of the absolute top level of craft but that's happening with films as well isn't it that film series carry on until they kill themselves that yes that that is that is absolutely true um i mean i i personally would argue that just overall the quality of films has gone down substantially unfortunately in the last like decade um it's really depressing to me to compare like the output of the last decade to like the 70s or the 90s or something like that that's a whole other that's when the skateboard kid came out hey they're good decades there's a lot of banger stuff going on back then um yeah television has an amazing potential i just think that usually because of production reasons and practical limitations there isn't enough time to fully map everything out and and when something becomes profitable there's an incentive to keep it around until it goes sour which is sort of my problem with it um sometimes it doesn't happen and it's fantastic but yeah i think i think film is i mean film is easily my favorite storytelling medium nothing else really remotely comes close but i do think that it has some advantages i mean the only the only major competition i see is is literature um i actually looked a good deal into storytelling and songs and it's just not i don't think it really competes with literature or film um there are really good things about lyrics and music but i don't think that it really gets close to the storytelling potential of these other mediums i haven't really explored poetry all that much and like video games have the potential to tell great stories but i mean i think they don't even need to the vast majority of the time you know if i listed my 30 favorite video games of all time i couldn't even tell you the story of probably three fourths of them so yeah well there we are um that puts jay in the driver's seat this answered question next can i just be a little cock and say that they all have their merits and their own their own little things they're good for boom i wanted to do i find um i find pick one and you hate all the other ones yes to be particularly interesting on screen mediums to be particularly interesting because um they seem to be um one of the only mediums where the assumed format is baked into the medium itself so people will say film you hear film and people assume oh one installment story and then you know if there are more things in the same universe they're separate installments whereas tv it's like oh this is um something episodic that comes out in seasons whereas when you have um when people just say that you know pros that doesn't really come with that assumption you know you get novels but a novel can still contain like a huge number of different formats i feel it's less assumed what you're going to be doing with it in that case um which i find to be quite interesting so i i'm not sure whether to include i suppose on-screen formats as their own uh separate medium or to talk about tv and film separately and you know made for streaming productions um but i suppose i think i i i i guess they all do have their um their unique benefits um i find that video games are one of my personal least favorite for at least conveying a story you know i love games a lot but um and i think this might be biased by the fact that i just haven't found many games that contain the stories that would make me you know love the medium just for the story um maybe maybe soma will be that for me when i finally play i don't know but um yeah stringy yeah i'm for you now but um yeah i find that i find just the the stories of video games generally less involving um but i'm happy to accept this might be i think that the reason for this often is the fact that um a i mean certainly in a poor video game story you often see the story as an obstruction from the gameplay uh i find a game to be one of these a medium that more often than not falls into the trap of there are two separate reasons you're there rather than every reason you're there for it comes together to form a cohesive whole it's like um the story of a game often is something that you appreciate on a separate level to the gameplay rather than the gameplay informing your understanding of the story which um creates an experience that i find to be um i mean detrimental to the actual story itself right you know when when there's something that is distracting you from from the story that you're there to absorb um and i think for that reason it's a lot of dissonance kind of thing yeah yeah well don't don't worry about it if anyone else wants to check it out i'm i'm all hey not that one shut up um it's the only medium that i think really has this this issue but i also think it's a matter of um i think a perfect game would combine gameplay and story much more effectively than i think most games do and that you would see a beautiful meld of um the gameplay is actually informing your understanding of the the characters and this and the world and and the plot and the story um i think maybe maybe games technology isn't there yet but maybe one day we will even have a game where you can make decisions in the heat of gameplay and characters will react as those characters would react in real time something like that could be you know make video games the ultimate medium for storytelling but we're not there yet as or at least i've not seen anything that delivers that yet have played disco elysium i am not right you might be interested in checking it out i'm gonna have a look i hear nothing but glowing things about disco elysium yeah it's um i don't want to say too much about it because it is it is probably the only game that i've played where i don't want to spoil the story and so i don't really want to talk about it that much but like that makes sense when when i when i start playing it i feel like i'm immersed in a story that is doing something that couldn't be accomplished through film or literature it's the only video game where i've ever felt that way that it's really exactly like what you said it's making a unique advantage of the yeah it's it's taking unique advantage of the medium of being a video game and doing something that you would have to be a video game tell a story in this way um and it's it's very funny and yeah i i i couldn't recommend disco elysium enough i bought it i just i bought it as you were talking based i just pecked for you so it reminds me of a speck ops the line like doing something really unique with the fact that it's a video game yeah you you can't really replicate that in film or any other medium yeah and this is um this is i'm sorry right no you go ahead first i was going to go and look to the engine okay so long so i was just gonna say there's a really unique quote or a really unique idea i heard from uh alan moore there's a very strange documentary called the mindscape of alan moore which is pretty weird um if you watch it be prepared it's pretty weird but he's the guy who wrote watchmen and he's talking about a lot of his thoughts about um the film industry and the industry of comic books and stuff like that and he said um they wrote watchmen to maximize the medium of a graphic novel or a comic book or whatever they wanted to do things that could only be done in a comic book and so he said that it was like fundamentally unadaptable because so many of the things that make that an endearing piece of literature couldn't exist in other formats they were specifically trying to do things that maximized the format of a comic book or graphic novel and i heard exactly the same things from tarantino when he was talking about um is uh the things he prioritizes in filmmaking he specifically wants to do things that maximize the medium of film and this is he's often given this response people will be like why are you moving so violent and part of his response is because violence looks so good on film you know film does violence better than any other medium can partially because of the suspension of disbelief and the immediacy of the experience so i think in general that's that's a really good goal to aspire for as an artist and whatever it is that you're doing is you you really want to do something uh intrinsic and unique to the the medium you're working with and yeah in video games there's the potential there but yeah disco at least seems the only example i've seen it's a great point yeah uh rags hi i'm not done i think jay said jay said the done so i guess you're too just done always a little little piece about tv and books and film that's okay i guess it's all right that's like three things you need to choose one yeah you can't just have three i want to uh because i feel like video games are a unique medium in what they are able to offer and everything else is just sort of a matter of choosing the right medium for your story in terms of um there are things that it is much more natural to convey as information in a in prose and then it is in in a visual medium and vice versa where you have you know um if you're if you're showing something something on film then you're always conveying well almost you're always conveying the the emotions the expressions of any character whose face is in frame you're always conveying or almost always conveying the environment that they're in and the distances from characters for each other and i think this um make you know it's a much more natural medium to accept for example convey the logistics of a fight scene very effectively um where in whereas in a um a a a in the medium of prose basically you're just going to have a fight scene described you in many ways you're just going to have to accept that that's the way it went because you can't actually see physically you know where the characters were standing when this began and and their sides compared to each other you could you only have the information that the author has chosen to give you whereas visually you can see basically everything and i think um it's it's really interesting to see um well it's a matter of choosing a medium for a particular story or knowing the strengths of your medium rather and not trying to do things that would be more suited to a different medium because i know maybe that's the medium you truly want to be working in or whatever that was my answer i think that's a good point j congratulations thank you rags because think of all those all those um like trying to use a i think fighting and fight scenes are an excellent way to sort of have that it's a really good example because trying to describe the nitty gritty little little things about a sword fight right in text form is um it it would be that would that would probably suck yeah you know if you're on screen right yeah and you want to have just you want to convey characters in a monologue that might seem really unnatural um you want to convey like a character's deep inner thoughts you're either going to have to do that in voiceover or fight or have them maybe or just find a way to imply it through their dialogue and you may not be able to find a way that is um just as natural as it would be to be able to just tell your um your your readers that by just putting it in the pros um so um my pick for best medium to convey a story is i have a feeling that fringy's gonna agree with me but i'm gonna say games wow j just said games kind of suck compared to the rest of them don't you know that games suck wow i shan't confirm or deny whether games bad games do suck i'm pretty sure that lego star wars the video game is not as good of a story experience as the star wars films um which films because it might be better oh that's good point correct so i'm going to say games but i'm not going to specify video games because the umbrella of games as a medium i think for this uh for the purposes of this question is best served if i give my top tier answer which is game sure but specifically tabletop role playing i knew it no no a pathfinder dnd vampire the masquerade whatever it may be right it's very unique so games are unique automatically because they have a an an interactive component they require you to do things uh you're not just a passive observer you need you as a player in some cases if we're gonna get meta some games stanley parable for instance uh require you to do things and but most games are the player playing as a character in that universe either role playing as whoever they want to be or as kind of a character that already exists in that world the tabletop role playing games on top of the necessarily interactive component that a game has is that it is it's live and you have a person a game master a dungeon master a gm or dm i'll probably alternate between you know using as we go here but essentially you have a dm who is the storyteller and the guide uh if you will they're the one who puts together worlds and stories they do the work of being the npcs describing events as they happen and there are other players who play generally as a character that they create to exist within whatever world that the gm is essentially setting out for a campaign or for a more sandboxy kind of adventure or whatever they want to do and what this does is it gives a unique scenario where you essentially have a live curator or a live storytelling master who can on the fly in response to something that a player does have the world change in specific ways so we already have um the interaction of a game the impacts that that has on the world but it allows for players and their in uh in their consequences the things that they do to transcend something that is already built for you most games don't really have a wide scope of things that you could do that's meaningful in terms of a narrative generally games that do they mark this as a big selling feature uh even things like fallout and maybe an elder skulls game or a witcher game or anything like that where there are multiple pathways to get through the game they're still very limited in the things that you can do and the things that you're allowed to do it's all pre coded and kind of pre approved in a sense whereas this has opened up to a much much much larger degree if you have someone a human mind there um especially if they're talented and dedicated who can give you the feedback for the things that the characters do and I love books I have I've fallen out of reading them mostly because of the time investment that it takes and I've loved many many books um I of course love movies it would be difficult to be a member of this podcast without liking movies I like tv shows I enjoy smoke signals and pictographs they're all great but I've always been a I think I'm a gamer at heart I enjoy the doing of things I enjoy the challenge of progressing through these things and I don't feel like there's any reason why a game specifically a tabletop role-playing game um has to suffer because of its because of the medium that it is a book for instance is not going to have a visual component to it for better or worse but it is it is a it is a hindrance on what they can provide and maybe that's kind of a good thing that people might enjoy about them but it simply isn't a part of them and they're also not interactive um you the only interaction you have with the book is maybe the conjuring up the aesthetics of it choose your own adventure um yeah oh that's true you have a choose your own adventure but in a sense I suppose that's a game uh but even then they're so very limited uh though I guess that's not necessarily a constraint of a medium it's a constraint of how many pathways do you want to design but I hadn't considered choose your own adventure books I had a cool Indiana Jones one when I was growing up best medium of all time is choose your own adventure books oh my goodness um and of course movies you have the visuals we are visual creatures primarily it helps us immensely to be able to see things um the you know being able to show something and all that it means I think that could be very very efficient um especially when you have a limited time but I think that if you have a really good GM who is talented and who is smart and who is good on their feet that you can potentially provide the greatest storytelling experiences because you can put players into the roles of characters to do things and to make decisions and to have all those things be things that the participants are doing themselves and I think that's the best way to I think it's only my favorite way to tell a story right when I feel like I'm a part of the world when I'm part of something um and I have to really think about you know how do I differentiate between myself and this character that I want to play what would my character do in this situation and I have to think about the logic of what they might think in the scenario that they're in what am I willing to sacrifice both in a medicine because it's a game you have often skills and abilities and things like that but your character also has motivations they have personalities they have goals and they have principles and they have limits to what they're willing to do to get the things that they want um and that offers such a unique experience that I think that's the thing that's the best way to tell a story is to stress your participants to become involved and to see what they do and to present to them a world and a setting where they can do those things so that's what I'll say a beautiful I didn't yeah I think it's all right I'm glad we got dnd representation I think a lot of people are very happy about that yeah I really have become quite interested in tabletop role-playing games and what they can provide I would be very interested to see us do one sometimes especially with all that we talk about in terms of stories and characters and what they do to be able to sort of craft these things for ourselves and to come up with characters and ideas that we curate and that we guide based on the references that we have and our thought process when it comes to consistency and you know our big storytelling you know the facets of that that are important I think it'd be interesting bringing what about you what do you think so I think when it comes to the uh the idea of like what is the best medium for storytelling I suppose there's like the three factors one what is your favorite two which one do you think has the highest number of like the best stories ever and then three which one do you think like at peak provides the best storytelling experience I'm not sure what I would say in terms of my favorite one because I do like the whole bunch of them um real like films video games uh books um tv shows of course that's basically all of in terms of the one that I think has the highest quantity of like top tier content I'd probably say it's film feels like we get a lot of there are a lot of great films to latch on to I think do you mention it before seemingly just by virtue of the way that television shows tend to be produced it's hard to find a tv show that is consistently great from beginnings to end usually it goes on for too long and then deteriorates at the finish line or at least that seems to be common um which is unfortunate uh because in a lot of ways if you were to compare like film and television it seems like having as little as you know like three episodes but as much as a hundred episodes or even more than that um that that just by having that if we have like comparable budgets comparable time to produce them then tv shows would have like more potential than film but I think that the medium that has the most potential for like the widest breadth of really great experiences with storytelling would be games uh I think that just makes sense to me um because a lot of games can do what film television do um but then there's also things that uh video games are very uniquely poised to do that uh no other medium can which is the interactive element um and then you think about the varieties in terms of interactivity you can go as straightforward as like mass effect where it's like you know you make choices that influence the how the story progresses and you can get into stuff like environmental storytelling how does a video game in uh how does a film present to you an environment that you can explore and read tidbits about and overhear conversations like you can in a stealth game or uh give you the branching choices with as much depth as you can get in like a video game like Deus Ex um and um you know like exploring an environment like in Metroid or um the video games give you the capacity to go at your own pace which can both benefit and detriment the experience and of course video games can have the problem of ludonarrative dissonance where uh the story that's being presented is uh very much mismatched with the gameplay but that feels to me more like an error in the in the process of like the decisions that you're making in terms of the game I think Matthew Matosa talked about it in like Bioshock Infinite you didn't have to make it a first person shooter but you did and because you did there were some serious compromises to the story whereas Abe's Odyssey which was the comparison had chosen to tell its story it chosen to be a certain type of game blended with the story that they were trying to tell and then you can achieve a similar effect um a similar story more effectively uh I think I think the problem is when I think about a lot of my favorite stories a lot of them aren't video games there are a lot of video games I think have cool stories and cool worlds um uh you know you think about like the world of Halo is really cool the world of Thief um Splinter Cell you know like Deus Ex uh like Zelda you know there's a lot of cool worlds in video games it seems like um but I you know I don't yeah I went when I think about like my favorite stories generally I'm going to be leaning to you know towards like tv shows films books and stuff but then there are some in video games that I really like um plenty of games I have that have really cool stories I but I I think it's a matter of video games of like the most potential to provide some really fucking cool and uh very diverse set of storytelling experiences um but I don't know that we're there yet um but hey who knows maybe maybe soon yeah it's sort of similar to my experience there's a lot of games where I feel super immersed in the world and things feel lived in and real but that's I mean that's not storytelling to me completely you know you need uh something going on right when you start looking at the the pieces of like character and plot and whatever um what yeah it just hasn't risen to the level of film yet I think a big limitation uh the video games have which is entirely self-imposed is that a lot of video games revolve around killing things and when you you know when you think about the number of stories that revolve around like killing things as a very central element of the plot it's pretty small like even think about diehard it's like there are plenty of scenes where there's no action there's just a lot of downtime where characters are talking um and getting development whereas like when you think about video games there is an expectation I think it's a fair expectation that the majority of the content is going to be gameplay uh and if you do like an uncharted thing where the majority of the gameplay is shooting people um I think that that limits the number of stories that you're going to be able to tell and it is a limitation that is not necessary right because you got a lot of like adventure point and click adventure games that are very very much focused on story like monkey island and stuff like that where um and then you see like the benefits of that right where you can focus a lot on uh on the writing and I guess there might even be an element now of like with so much of the emphasis on multiplayer games it seems like um you lose a bit in terms of the amount of uh teams that are like exploring the variety of different ways that you can do storytelling but but then there's a lot of indie developers who are exploring that a bit more so maybe it balances out I think it's really tricky with video games because as soon as you bring in the interactivity element you you you introduce like like the player is going to do the exact opposite of like what the game wants you to do like you because a lot of gamers will take the least obvious path to pick up all the you know secrets or you just do all the side quests first or whatever you know what I mean like it's very hard when you think about an open world game how do you keep the story chugging along how do you how do you deal with pacing when once you go into gameplay the player in a lot of ways sets the pace um yeah I think you got two options one or well you got more than two options but the the common options is one you railroad them hardcore and you make it so they can't like Max Payne 3 is a really cool story I like that game a lot but you you can't venture off the beaten part there was a very clear way that you need to go and then the game will stop constantly to be like all right story time like full-on cutscene story time slow walking time and then you end up with a pretty cool story but like if you want to actually have some freedom with it then you're out of luck and then on the other side I guess you have something like red dead redemption to another rock star game where you can just decide to spend like 10 hours going out fishing and playing poker how do you maintain the urgency of the story when uh when you're allowed to do these things and and do as much as you once um off the beaten track right it's it's really hard to um wait sorry someone in chat said heavy rain is a great example of excellent storytelling through gaming I disagree um I actually think that the quantic dream games are a pretty bad example I quantic dream games feel to me like um the very limited mindset of it can we make games more like films um is this david cage shit huh is this this this is the david cage yeah quantic dream is the david cage stuff where it feels like we are missing the uh right where we're trying to make it more like films and I mean it's kind of like you can get some really cool like the last of us is a really cool uh game and I like the story in the last of us a lot and it's definitely more leaning towards being cinematic that's an experience that you can offer but uh you do sometimes wonder if it feels like that is a not really fully taking advantage of the medium in the same way that you see with uh less conventional I haven't played uh the game what's it called stanley parable like isn't that a game very good has a really cool story but that it's really a story that would only work as a video game I think it can only work as a video right and so that that feels to me like uh the stuff that I found really interesting is what can we do it's one of the reasons why I like stealth games so much because when you think about environmental storytelling stealth games are really good at that it's like here's a place we're gonna put a bunch of information in this place that you can piece together to tell a story and if you listen over here conversations read stuff on computers and notes and things like that and just generally observe the way that even like if you're playing a game where there's a target how they navigate the environment there's a lot that you can pull as a story that you don't really get in a film or a tv show so to say I completely agree with like the whole environmental storytelling being awesome and particularly in stealth games but my least favorite form of that is like reading notes and computers and stuff uh I think I think it's hard it depends on how well written all that stuff is it's gonna be interesting well I always I always feel like uh thief is a really I will never stop being impressed by this decision but in the old thief games uh you'd get a map for the place that you're going to go to but the maps are diegetic they're like written in their hand written piece of paper like that just is this is a map and at the beginning of the game you get super detailed maps and the explanation as well this person you know they worked on the manner that there was a maid or something there and they gave me this really detailed map uh but then as the game progresses the maps start becoming more obtuse because there's information that's just missing where it's like he managed to get this far but he couldn't get any further this is the best that I could come up with as a map as like how fucking cool is that that it's like the map is telling a story of how of like the history of this place because of the lack of information that is available for that location what a cool idea and that's something you could do in films and television and books and stuff as well but like when you think about in a video game and the fact that it means that you as the player have no choice but to experience this situation I think that's the cool thing is it aligns you more with the with with Garrett uh the like the player character because you don't have extra information like you have as much information as he has and I guess that's the interesting thing when you think about storytelling uh is that when it comes to video games do you want to put a wedge between the player and the character or do you want to make it non-existent and what are the benefits of that like when you think about Halo it's an explicitly stated goal is that they made Master Chief as like as much of a blank slate as possible because it means that you are Master Chief and like you're in a certain sense you're a passive observer in the cutscenes but an active participant in gameplay uh conversely you know when you have a game I guess like the last of us too is probably a good example right Abby is a character she is a person with defined goals um and and and but the problem is like if you if you can't associate with that character and in fact if you actively dislike her it's going to be really hard for you to continue playing that game um and so it's that awkward part of like how do you balance that do you put that in the the gameplay do you have a character who's super well realized uh in cutscenes but then they never say anything in the gameplay um and it's always entirely in your control um and and you know I mean it seems like erring on the side of caution tends to work where you think about like the old Ratchet and Clank games where they had a lot of dialogue and a lot of characters talking to each other having fun banter and good conversation but when it was gameplay it was gameplay and nobody talks versus in the the remake where everybody's constantly fucking talking and then you hear the same lines over and over again as well in some games and it really takes you out of it it's like it is it's difficult it's difficult in the wind if to give credence to the tale to our pro playing game aspect is when you have these are often cooperative games essentially and you could have an NPC and a character I mean technically it's a PC because the GM is a player of a kind but you could have a player in a world or a character in a world and all of the different players could be interacting with this character and you could be running based on their relationship with them and the things that they do and say to that character you can have that same character almost simultaneously having two or three or four different stories whereas if you have like a movie there's only kind of one way that you see them behave in the events or as in something that's more interactive and on the fly providing of course you have a good storyteller but there's always a storyteller in a story you can see how this kind of character can be fully realized by putting them into multiple different scenarios within the same story to me playing the quantic dream games is a bit like netflix asking you if you're still watching to press x to continue or it's it goes too far on the side of being a movie where it just makes the interactive component feel meaningless like it's just because you play it's like this might as well just be a movie yeah exactly that's the way you arrive at it's like why would I not just watch a film at this point but it is hilarious game we played not too long ago that kind of almost made like it had a bad story with a bunch of asshole loser characters little hope in it yeah little hope and it was barely a game so it like took the took aspects of both story and game and they were both terrible it's like the worst possible way to yeah it really was it's a nightmare scenario it's the worst of both yeah that's the thing what do you do at that point like if it is the conversation right like you can have a great game with a bad story but you can't have a great game with bad gameplay that just seems to be like a general rule of thumb um and if so then you know how much how much should you be prioritizing uh story versus gameplay when you consider that a like a film or a book they have to have stories because that's what they are again doesn't have to have a story a story is optional so they they don't necessarily need to put their resources and effort and talent into making one of those if they just want to make something that's the purely gameplay yeah a mistake that often gets made is sort of shoehorning and story into games that don't need it that that's probably why it gets a bad wrap a lot of the time I mean it's similar to how films just kind of jam in a romantic subplot when they don't need it those usually pretty storytelling and gaming is so much younger than film and certainly books yeah yeah that's it's got room to grow we've had thousands of years of books and we've had about a century and 20 yeah films and we've had like 70 years of tv more than even 80 and you know same for like and then plays with thousands of years as well as far as games go we've had performance is still very old and games are what like 40 years old 50 years old and I mean games that have stories that are really important to them that's only been a thing since like the late 90s what and yeah I don't want to say that no no no because there'll be so many there'll be so many ones that actually did try to do stories in the early 90s like earlier Final Fantasy games and like those Mario RPGs and stuff like that those texts those text-based RPGs based adventure games taking seriously I because I don't want to buy it because it's one of the things that always annoyed me when it 2013 was like a particularly bad year for video games from what I remembered like there weren't a lot of games that came out a lot of the games I got praise like Bioshock Infinite was just like dog shit um and it felt like the era when it's like ah see video games are finally starting to tell stories I hate it I hate it so much because when you think about a lot of the best stories and video games you can pull a lot of them for before that time god damn the early days like ps2 xbox gamecube and I guess you can include Dreamcast as well oh boy we had a lot of games with great stories and great writing great great great writing like the Japanese series had great writing um I always know that people talk about Metal Gear Solid that that has cool stuff going on in the Grand Theft Auto games oh those are some well written like we're talking some tight like comedy and and world building uh and and all that sorry can you can you justify saying that jack and daxter has great writing jack and daxter is incredible jack and daxter are super so to clarify I think that the like jack two story I don't think that that works I'm pretty sure that it doesn't work yeah I'm just thinking like jack two's story doesn't really work jack one barely has a story and jack three is probably the strongest of the bunch but it still has a lot of the problems and but yeah great fucking characters and super sharp dialogue that's true that's the thing and and it's interesting to think about because I'm not sure how many people have said this but like jack and daxter the writing in those games may well be sharper than uncharted in terms of dialogue um oh and and also someone's mentioned sly cooper fucking great like surprisingly great story considering what it is fringy thinks that furry games have really good stories in them I was about to say that ratchet and clank is really sharp and funny too and that's that's a 50 50 it's a robot game too so um well I mean like the opposite like a human version of a furry is a flashy you know skinny um well on that no my answer would be that it seems to me the potential in games is all the other ones put together at least it could be um I know there's a distinction to be made that well yeah but you still have to like engage with it though so that's a level of interactivity or the interactivity as opposed to like just watching that can take away from being immersed and that's actually the way I kind of tackle the question I find my immersion currently um it seems to be film is the best bet um it would be tv if only they were more consistent but as for anyone over the shows it's so fucking hard to find a tv show that can stay consistent films are a much lower gamble because hey you can find a lot of tv shows that stay consistently bad okay Netflix comedy is a barely but then games I think at the very best and I've experienced a couple have been fucking phenomenal um but the thing is like this there's just I don't find well my maybe it's because of the fact that I don't consume as many games as I do films but uh films just seem more reliable though I I guess what I'm saying is I probably pick film but I think gaming is currently the winner uh if they were all pushed to their best outside of maybe if VR pushed to its best where you're like that level of immersion where it's and it's like you know fucking top tier production everything looks incredible I imagine that level of storytelling where you're walking around in a world yourself like that's probably gonna be one of the most incredible ways to consume stories as well um yeah I think for now because gaming has music in it it has reading in it it has the visuals the splinter and it has the ability for the the creators to take the camera from you and show you what they want to show you so like a an author intended experience or they can have it so that you're free to explore as you wish like it just seems gaming is the um a step up again I guess uh to interject because I think John Tuss on it briefly but it's probably worth talking about is that when it comes to like books which we haven't talked about a lot I think books have a unique strength uh and the same with the video games have a unique strength books also have the unique strength thing that uh the the like there's something about pros and just the fact that you have to like imagine what's happening that there's a certain effect that you can achieve with with books in terms of like really um provoke I guess not provoking evoking emotional responses to like things that you otherwise wouldn't get emotional responses to as easily in like film a really good description of like a cold breeze can kind of like emulate that effect in you in a way that you don't necessarily get by like watching somebody be cold on a screen um I see what you're coming from I think this is a problem of it's between people though because you could have the one guy say when they described Rivendell I was imagining this incredible place when I saw Lord the Rings and saw Rivendell I was like oh well that's fine I guess but then flipping it you could have someone who was like man it looks so much better in the movies than I had imagined well yeah that's that's an interesting one because I often hear people say this where it's like well with books it's your imagination and there's no imagination in like film it's presented to you and it's like yeah you know what that could be really fucking cool I don't like I don't like I don't want to discredit the idea of somebody else creating something really awesome that I can look at I don't want to like yeah like watching that Balrog it's like I guess I could have come up with something better in my imagination but what's impressive about Looney Tunes I could just imagine Bugs Bunny doing all this crazy shit it's like well the craft of the animation that's like a really big part of it it's a really cool experience that you can get and it's something you get right like that film television visual mediums and of course like you know books can't leverage music either or sound they can evoke sound but like music I guess is kind of absent or at least like score non-diagetic music um film and television they definitely have an edge over books in that regard in that the barrier between the audience and what's happening in the reality of the story is that it's thinnest or you're just you're seeing what's happening I think seeing real people really helps me get immersed in stories like yeah I think so um yeah and I guess it's uh it's kind of a I guess we haven't really I'm not sure if this is worth clarifying but I guess animation we're not including as a in this in the same way that we're talking about like film and television and stuff because of the fact that animation is present in film television and games yeah yeah I figure that makes sense because to clarify animation is fucking cool yeah contrary to random weird thoughts some people have is like we're very pro animation here okay just I don't know I guess like you know the simpsons is an animated show right look at all the references well we can't go with episode without a simpsons where we're going to nobody in particular we're talking about south park family guy even and um we recently talked about smiling friends we watched that day one like all of the Pixar classics a lot of the disney classics 101 Dalmatians we watched and that was such a pleasant coins experience yeah you guys saw we were the happiest the first one it was the next to one punch matter right you know and uh I like death note and I've been like in cowboy bebop that's a cool show Akira brought up I I think I will watch Akira um based on the recommendation I've always heard yeah I want to see it oh man hit me up when you see it I'd be curious to know what you think yeah it's it's a I think it's an incredibly good film but it's also very weird I'm always curious to see what people what people's reaction is I because I'm not super familiar with anime but um I know that Akira is often references one of the more influential uh anime like out there would like ghosts in the shell and stuff because they're both probably the single most influential yeah yeah yeah it's it's very cyberpunk and I guess that's interesting because a lot of the I know that I've seen comparisons and maybe I would change my mind if I watched the films uh like the anime films that uh Blade Runner was significantly influential in uh the development of the style of uh like cyberpunk anime which I guess is interesting again because Blade Runner was obviously influenced in some way by Japanese aesthetics yeah there's a big yeah Japanese uh cultural component in a lot of cyberpunk stuff now a lot of Japanese writing and words and you know the presence of Japanese companies makes Deus Ex super interesting because like Deus Ex doesn't have as much of that compared to a lot of other cyberpunk Deus Ex has a much more industrial no I don't want to because there's a lot of cyberpunk anime stuff that has like industrial it just seems like it has less of that like uh definitely the the reboot games have much more of like a sleek western minimalist kind of thing informing the designs uh really really quick note uh responding to someone in chat they said you're better off reading the accurate manga as the movie is a fraction of the story um I don't think the movie or the manga are particularly better or worse they're just profoundly different I don't even I don't regard them as the same story honestly like the the the plot's completely different some of the characters are completely different uh the emphasis are I mean it's it's insane how different the manga is from the film um I mean they're pretty much distinct I like if you read the manga and then saw the movie you would just be confused I think you're like wait uh nothing uh the same happens now this is interesting to me because I haven't read a lot of manga I read uh in fact I think the only ones I own is all you need is Kill which I thought was really cool and uh I think the first volume of One Punch Man and I read the first volume of One Punch Man before I watched the show and like it was uncanny like there were certain uh like key frames that were just pulled directly from the comics I think I want to watch them like dude is this like is the anime like a one-to-one adaptation of manga is that like how it works pretty much is yeah sometimes um right okay I mean in the case of in the case of Akira like I I'm assuming that nobody wants me to go into details of the differences but it's profoundly different yeah I mean like almost every almost every single character it has meaningfully different characteristics the plot is totally different it's like they said it's way longer there's like there's plot lines it's it's it's very very different yeah I guess that is the thing though like if you're adapting a long manga and you're turning it into a film you're gonna have to make decisions about what's a it I mean it's always the conversation right of like adaptation when it comes to film of something that's much bigger than that is uh what do we keep what do we cut what are the essentials and I mean it seems like generally a book like a full-length book doesn't strictly translate to a two-hour film like there's often more stuff in a book um someone mentioned a chat by the way which is worth clarifying Blightrunner was inspired by some french comics because France has had and I think still has a very active and prevalent graphic novel scene which is like big and popular culture let's go for it mues speaking of that yeah uh mathal we have a tool to the last one uh do you want to last and the least again sorry wait no we didn't talk comic okay fine okay just leave it's fine it's fine no I just I just figured it because maybe your decision don't no don't don't don't go the moment to smell the finally well because we're a week because I feel like we can't just include comic books with books right there's there's a difference in the visuals I would agree element they are different things um this is what Germany starts with maybe we don't have anything to really say about it at the moment because it's I'm personally personally I'm really inspired by comic books in my approach to film because I always think like when I'm writing a script or storyboarding it's like how would I frame this if I was drawing a comic book you know like if I think if you're if you're if you just make a film of something right off the bat it can be easy to base your shots around where physically you can place a camera or put a crane or whatever but like with comic books you have this god's eye you can put it anywhere and uh you know with me doing machinima I can put the camera anywhere I want and so I'm just like if this was a graphic novel how would this look like if this is a comic book how would this look I think that's the interesting aspect of wow there are a couple of things with comics because the the the main thing is because it's still images it's an emphasis on really strong if it was animation it would be like keyframes but like really strong images but also just how do we connect these images together like what is a good sequence um because I mean I know that that's Will Eisner said sequential art which is probably a good umbrella term for it um but also I guess the unique benefit of comic books is that in film there is one framing like throughout the film in terms of the size of the image I guess you have variations in aspect ratio but like generally it's it's pretty it's 16 by 9 or you know letterboxed like uh and film was 4 by 3 and then 16 by 9 video games are typically 16 by 9 but with comic books it's like you can basically do whatever shape you want uh for for a panel um which is like the I'd say that's probably like the unique element of of uh of comic books it's interesting to think about how those can inform storytelling like how do I convey this best without being able to move anything yeah that's a thought but that's it I'm done metal go for it no I got no I don't want to anymore oh boy magic all right uh yeah um no I legit just forgot what I was about to say no that's it look at your damage for me yeah thank you I'm sorry I'm sorry just say film that could be objectively correct answer uh so I think also that games at their peak are probably the best uh but then again as we mentioned a bunch of times already it's not being used well because at the end it's all about execution I mean you can execute it well and pretty much all of them I'd say but yeah uh storytelling in games pretty young still um but here VR is probably the one I want to touch on because I think I'm the only one with a VR set here right I don't think I have one oh you do um not a proper one like a phone one you know it's like a it is a little a built one I mean use a little VR with a little little bit severe yeah but I mean with games you can play there are games that you can get on you know I'm sorry I spoke yeah yeah me too I'm tempted to get a quest but I don't want to get zucked yeah it's funny because the quest is probably the best value but you have to be I think online all the time when you play or something uh but yeah I I played a whole bunch of VR on stream as well I think the last thing I finished was Half-Life Alyx and man there was some there's some good shit I I don't know if the story was super good but just the immersion in it was like really well executed which just reminds me it's like man Valve please make more games because you're really good at that stop making so much money and make games again that would be that would be nice uh does anyone played Resony will forward VR yet because I'm no that's interested in playing that quest exclusive I'm not allowed to play that uh that's kind of lame exclusives for VR headsets yeah there's only VR exclusive quest exclusives it's really annoying I did hear though there's VR mods for Resident Evil 2 and 3 remake I'm gonna I want to check those out apparently they're like yeah so that too if you if you go into VR you can play Skyrim a whole new way yeah no I'm good because the VR VR version is full price I think or something or like pretty pretty high priced oh there actually is of course there it's a separate version it's just meaning oh yeah okay no there's an actual sky Skyrim VR it's it's not surprising yeah uh so now I'm good it's probably moddable and shit but I don't I don't know it's Skyrim you know what's up uh but yeah it's very bad it's what I hear yeah some word on the street I was the well not sick of Skyrim yeah that's a good question uh yeah if it's very well executed you can utilize the gaming the gaming part of storytelling very well like I guess I'll go back to god of war 2018 like even if you're not doing the main story missions and you're just traveling around on your little or your little boat it's either atrius and kratos having conversations and giving you story from different timelines of the gods or stories about the mum or later when the giga chat mimir comes on the head and just starts telling stories and man you just want to go around with the boat and listen to his stories because it's so great he tells stories about the gods and it's just funny as well like it's just the game doesn't waste your time with like silence while you're rather around like it's giving you back stories and shows you the character characterizations of the different people and between them uh and the the side quests I remember one particular one because kratos is always like ah we don't have time for like silly side quests we're here for our goal but then we come across this one guy who lost his crew and he can relate to that guy he's like nah we should help him and then obviously atrius is like wait we said we're not doing any side quests like yeah but I basically just like yeah I like him because he sacrificed himself for his crew and I want to give him like closure and stuff uh yeah that's really well made but then again yeah as more said already your best bet is probably still movies and if you're really lucky tv shows uh because a lot of times just movies are still a fucking minefield right now too bad television production is an embarrassing disaster listen listen everyone listening right now okay movies are not in a good place but go back to the 1970s the 1990s there's a lot of great stuff back there okay great great great stuff if you want movies there's there's plenty of movies there we did it everyone further than that into the the 30s and the 40s no fuck all that it's overrated what we did it 28 questions in six hours and a half hour you're generous calling it 28 I was gonna say four well you see when you ask a question seven times you could call it the same question but when you're asking different people it ends up being different yeah answers and well maybe no same question maybe you should say maybe you should say four questions 28 answers okay yeah well yeah there you go 28 answers in six hours and a half an hour and a three minutes we did it nice what a strange evap we did today that's not yeah we're talking about stuff that we like that's excuse me yeah yeah we'll be back to normal at no time we need to make an inverse one of this where the questions are just like what do you hate the most about storytelling what story do you hate the most like oh cat what element of storytelling is the most destructive oh man I actually have an answer to that well I think there would actually be we could do that sometime if you guys roll over it we can do the evil version of this I'll take something I'll get to live up to my name look at that immediately in chat TLJ like yeah what's wrong with TLJ oh nothing nothing the letters itself they're fine I use them all yeah TL and J are very commonly used what story is the most poo hmm that would be a story yeah poo story I know I think I think a poo story too took what the original did I'm sorry shallow that's it's really called a poo story number two who is my favorite since character yeah three two resurrections racism on my Christmas um yeah I actually had some what well in the past hour no it was before we even this turn of this day god time went fast it was it was like two hours ago I've been reminded of an appointment I have this morning which means um I figured that the best thing to do was to just try and make sure everyone got their questions answered but I'm afraid if that was going to have to be cut short and by that I mean oh at what a little short six and a half hours that's true that's true we made a deal more than six wait wait a minute hold on it's more than wait oh my god right it's melting no it's six and a half hours that's about right we get the banner on your channel and it says long form like six and a half hours with the fuck I know that's almost too long I agree do nothing you're right thank you no no no mere six and a half hours that's embarrassing Mamiya you should be embarrassed Molo well I mean I brought you on so it's already like capped out we are we're already get shleamed on get shleamed on but yeah before we go we'll we'll do a little chat about what everyone's up to we'll go from left to right shall we shall we allow it is it on me it is on you doom person what are you up to in your doomland uh right now I'm working on a video on netflix's arcane that's pretty good and I'm going to be talking about uh why it is pretty good and how it could be better um that's uh it's about it right is there anything else you want is that it they usually you just take like a good 20 seconds even 30 all right I don't know you should talk about like how they're probably the best channel on youtube how everyone subscribe yeah if you want to go subscribe to my channel it's called moller uh we have about 300 000 subscribers it's pretty good yeah go uh go subscribe to that wow no i'm tumor media on youtube you guys subscribe if you want oh he's not really he's not really moller guys he's just joking damn oh shit I helped us all the time he went oh shit I know it was a convincing convincing uh charade facade that's right very well um you charade your latest video is still on jango correct yeah I haven't released a video I've canceled like three or four videos since last year but there will be there will be more soon oh okay you what's what are the other ones then what's what what you what you can do at moller oh the ones that got canceled um the one that's relevant to us is I was going to make a video called art is not subjective but I spent I spent about three weeks working on the script and at this point I think I'd rather eat glass than finish that video because it's seems like such a it seems like such a simple thing like I could explain the core argument and idea and maybe five minutes but it just there's so many ideas that branch off of it and there's all these things you have to explain otherwise you know you're not really doing the topic any service because people will just be like oh well what about that right and it just oh man I if I ever go back to the video I think it'll end up being legitimately two hours long which I guess yours is like two or three hours long so do it now I understand why it's uh it's a really unpleasant bag of marvels it's the kind of thing that you can't say and get away with unless you extensively describe it in anal levels of detail and carefulness and even then people will be like I didn't watch it but your video is wrong yeah it's just it's such a it's such a fashionable thing to say oh well it's subjective but like my my core problem with that is it just kind of undermines the purpose of discussion right it's like uh I actually have I actually don't think um saying that art isn't subjective is even the hottest take in that video the hottest take is that saying people's opinions are not equal some opinions actually are um more useful than others people like to say that and they will crumble in just an instant on that but everyone says it it's the simplest thing like are you actually going to tell me that if you talk to a six-year-old who's watching the movie for the first time that their opinion on how good a movie is is of equal weight to like you know martin scorsese like of course not yeah the six-year-old is way more insane at that point wait what yeah yeah it's a it's a really really pleasant discussion I look forward to going back to it yeah sweet well uh the free what about you what are you up to where did you go come back um I'm just gonna go just working on stuff it'll be done when it's done oh that's all I got for you have you worked on anything recently that may be coming out tomorrow uh no um no but all right that's right I'll be working on boba fat and it's been an adventure um that's that's coming out tomorrow isn't it yes it is on the mula channel it'll be premiering how exciting and oh my god we'll check out me metal rags springy and jay enjoying episode three boba fat which if you've seen yourself oh my um you're in for a treat and lots of editing went into it I'm betting you a lot we're gonna have some fun I love what I'm coming out of you that'll be like normally if I have time probably all righty I love funny bad stuff would you say it's funny bad um hilarious yeah I think it qualifies funny but I it's not because there are shows that are funny bad that I would watch on my own and I would not watch boba fat on my own yeah I'd never watch it alone I'd never watch it it'd be such a waste of time you may as well just look at the wiki summary but if you're with friends oh boy gonna be funny yeah yeah good okay I mean the gun train is like comedy gold the gun train jokes write themselves jay you have a channel no don't talk about it as with the previous few appearances on if I've made I'm still working on on a video about reaction content on twitch and youtube with a focus on his own piker he has the best reaction content probably gonna be 30 to 40 minutes long oh my god you're gonna be stealing his content to make money is what you're saying yes wow ultimate revenge jay one is a people you have any idea when that's coming up um well I was hoping to get it out before I left for christmas break um which right that was on the 21st of december 2021 wait we're past that what fuck when did we get it then I was hoping to get it done like pretty soon when I got back after christmas and then I got the koof and it felt very bad for several days the same thing that happened to me whoa oh my god it's yeah well the koof you know they say it's going around these days so you've seen the coronaviruses a slut wow yes well jay I also so I'm also working on a video on his son and I was probably going to mention you in it a certain a certain event that may have transpired I guess just clout chasing on these videos right now what you guys are clout chasers his son is a fucking legend leave him alone yeah you're writing on the coattails of legendary men now his son is a um a stalwart renaissance man you know and I I can only hope he's got a little renaissance shadow probably that's not nice don't make fun of me John what about you what are you doing what what what's happening I'm John Graham on YouTube I've been working on a show called Arby and the Chiefs since 2007 2008 is it done yet and uh no but I just finished the latest episode of it it's like an hour really good I watched it very good thank you very much so I'm I'll be premiering that publicly in the next few days I'm not exactly sure yet I'm waiting to hear back on a firm a few voice actors in regard to how they should be credited but anyway um I'm on the eighth season of my show it's about toys that come to life and encounter people online and sounds cringe you're right you should watch it anyway subscribe they're here they don't care about that sort of thing I love cringe and uh I'm JCJ Graham on Twitter as well that's you're you're in your eighth season yeah everything good happens in the eighth season so what I hear is that yeah um I'm working on a mainline video it's coming along that's all I can tell you is um and then we go yeah the the latest thing I made was with Fringy the Boba Fett which is gonna be fun it'll be tomorrow other than that you'll see me and these some of these fine peeps on the when Wednesday coming which in fact will begin with us covering all the super chats from today uh catch up style and then again the Saturday of Fappin's um that's that's that's that's that's that you know uh metal what about you you fuck you fuck that's very nice you motherfucker what am I gonna well if he was gay he wouldn't I mean yes if he was gay he wouldn't have fucked his mother whoa the fuck is he would his dad would have fucked him he would have tricked his father into fucking him in the butt step I feel like it's more of a line to cross to gay gay daddy butt sex I feel like I feel like it's um it's more of a line at the incest line is a it's a bigger line to cross than the I am not attracted to this gender line I think anyway on that note do you have a peer reviewed study to prove that no all right an opinion discarded okay now just show what's on the internet mates are easy but you've never even done incest rags well I was inside my mom for a few months but oh no it's like like like last year are you calling me a baby roller stream no you do an incest so on one hand twitch streams we're gonna be back on a regular basis uh soon I'm over I'm done with vacation times uh and also metal's forge is gonna come well not it's gonna be continue and it's gonna be a new one tomorrow about matrix resurrections and I'm sure it's gonna be yo that movies hmm yeah I'm gonna watch it tomorrow do all them the notes and stuff uh so good luck a fun day all things matrix because I'm stupid I'm just gonna do it on my own without any guests tomorrow so that's gonna be fun so uh quickly talk about a little bit about the the current twitch meta that's out there because it's very annoying to me and I hate it so oh yeah I'm so hateful that's all the dmca stuff I know there's nothing to hate about that they're making use of content they're entertaining people and these evil corporations are trying to be like oh is that a copyright it's bullshit really Hassan deserves to stream everything that's ever been made a funny a funny note on matrix resurrections the first time I saw anything about it was the rlm review and I legitimately couldn't tell if they deep faked the audio like I couldn't really believe that this was actually the movie oh their video I couldn't do it I couldn't do it I got like five minutes in and I was like I can't listen to this I can't do it I don't want to remember you this way no no the rlm video okay so they were positive uh if you watch matrix resurrections and you watch the video reviewing it it's hard to reconcile uh a little bit a little bit maybe I'll watch it after I watched the matrix for the record so it was it was a deep fake I still can't tell is is that like actually they clips from the movie if the movie's horribly ugly and horribly edited uh it's just to enjoy that man I might love watching that tomorrow that's gonna be a great sunday I mean like yeah you'll have a great time do it for the love of the craft well them giving sort of a flaccid endorsement of something that's pretty bad is not new I've been watching their it's I don't mind disagreeing with them if uh if they have their reasoning but like their reasoning for matrix resurrections sucked jay was just like it's it makes better commentary about how fans of franchises suck it's like okay okay talk about how it was executed you suck yeah CJ's doing it again can you believe it but yeah we want to know more about that I'm not CJ let's talk about it tomorrow it's gotta be a great time and then like I saw that all of it was horrible and I couldn't even watch it in one go but I loved it it was like wait what yeah yeah I saw a clip of the bathroom scene on YouTube and I thought I was watching an SNL skit or like an MTV movie awards kind of bit or I was like this isn't real is it this is from the movie that I don't know exactly you not being able to tell if it's real that's meta commentary on the matrix oh wow that's so deep yeah right that's exactly how I felt it's so bad you can't believe it that's just like meta man wait rags you're the last one say stuff about channel channel is currently and video is making in progress potentially like subscribe smash comment below in the description now in the description what well actually I put out I put a video my descriptions are on top I get it all out of the way up front and then my video is at the bottom of the page I encourage people to comment before they watch the video based on nothing but the description all right um however they do a lot I do I do have um I put out a video today about boba fat actually I was going to do one to release tomorrow but then I remember oh yeah that's right we've got e-fap today I got to talk about bohrmere and so we did I got a cry for bohrmere I got a cry for bohrmere but I put out a dog bites video uh today I should have one up sunday no tomorrow sunday I should have one out monday because today I'm not working on it because this is what I'm doing with my life uh so I'll have another one out monday I decided that what I was going to do for uh dog bites I'll make a regular channel video because I need to get used to using the new stuff I've got um you don't want to get some old things done because I got to get over the hump of some old projects until I could slide greasily and smooth into my new stuff that I want to do uh but yeah stay tuned for the deets uh I'll wait for the bulletins as events warrant um that is the news very well rags signing off is there anything you guys wanted