YouChew

Crazy Luigi's Pick: 100 Ways To Rape In Super Mario 64 by MrVanderschmere

When searching for a great YouTube Poop in a certain month, one great challenge is actually finding that YouTube Poop in general. This month honestly hasn't been one of my personal favorites, and the amount of YouTube Poops I've seen ended up taking a bit of a dive as well. Looking for a great YouTube Poop for this month came at the cost of finding out which YouTube Poop was great for this month as opposed to finding a great YouTube Poop period, and even finding the February YouTube Poops from this month honestly felt more like a cumbersome challenge than anything else. Nevertheless, I did find one surprisingly great YouTube Poop out there, and it even still held up to this day!

Now to an average viewer, this might not seem like a great YouTube Poop since it could be viewed as a video where nothing of real substance occurs. However, when it comes to how I see it, this video demonstrates a specialty that few brain raping videos can properly produce in the first place. One aspect that comes to mind is that the video doesn't ever stay onto any particular aspect of mind fucking for too long. After all, the title does suggest that the video will have some variety in how its brain raping should commence; staying onto just one aspect for too long would detract from not just the other effects, but also on the video in general. Still, what makes this video stand out on its own against other videos of the type is through the variety it brings out.

In this video, the title might have lied to you on what the amount of raping comes down to (as in I'm pretty sure the amount of rape that comes out of this is less than 100), but there's definitely a lot of surprises that you can find throughout this video. Some pieces of raping came forth through the audio, such as how in one instance there was some somewhat loudly distorted stuff involving the Mario Flight Cap theme before displaying more interesting visuals to compliment the distortion. Other aspects ended up working better as special little visual jokes, such as the interesting little bits with Wario, Shigeru Miyamoto, and even Reggie Fils-Aime that come up every now and then, as well as how the distortion in the visuals complimented the experience. With this video, it knew when to do what at just the right moment to make the video have more of an effect on the viewer. Really, the best thing I can say is watch this video for yourself in order to understand what I see here.

Thebluespectre's Pick: PLS THIS IS NOT EVEN A YOUTUBE POOP by Escuadrón Por Los Narcótitos

What is it about Scooby-Doo footage that automatically makes a YouTube Poop video better? I have not heard much from this artist before, but this one video hits all of the points a YouTube Poop should have.

First, it never sits still. We start with the Twilight Zone opening (Which promises us "bullshit"), only to rapidly jump into a blend of Scooby-Doo episodes (and one Johnny Bravo episode guest starring the Scooby Gang) cut up with 60's Spider-Man and more. The video never lingers one one joke too long, and it never gives you quite enough time to figure out what's happening.

What it does have is musical interludes. Multiple musical interludes. Even having one in a video can be entertaining, and while a YouTube Poop Music Video is more technically impressive, throwing three or more of these gags in at once has a good flavor of its own.

Lastly, that toothpaste commercial break works as a literal palate cleanser to slow down the action before the finale. Fake commercial breaks in YouTube Poops are a favorite trope of mine, due to them lending to the not-really-there narrative of a mash-up video. It's pretty hard for me to find anything wrong with this video. I'll give it a 9.97 out of 10.

Zacheatscrackers' Pick: Garfield Plays Pool by dewmann

Let's start off by saying that I'm a fan of dewmann's work. Always have been, always will be, even though I probably haven't expressed it that much (though, to be fair, I don't watch many poops nowadays, much less critique them since I'm semi-retired and mostly do Pac-Man dubs nowadays, so that's really my own fault). While most poopers today are fairly skilled in this craft, not many really seem to innovate or deviate from the typical rape/mountains-of-effects style from what I can tell. That's where the main man himself, dew, comes in.

Dew follows the typical poop lineage of bat-shit crazy, but there's something about his style in general, including this poop, that strikes me as out of the box and interesting. You'll notice, first of all, the beginning with the carefully synced visuals with the beat that sort of comes out of the blue in a good way. From there, you know you're in for a riot; and hell if this video doesn't deliver that. For most of the video, the pace is slow, but gripping, and the effects are near perfectly evened-out so there's always something insane to expect... or better yet, not expect. For a video of this length, it's better to be slow-paced instead of piling everything on in non-stop succession and diminishing the element of surprise. The latter is much better suited for smaller videos, which dew also does very well.

If nothing else, there's a very prominent surreal humor feeling to obtain from this through the simple fact that the source is a fat orange cat from the 70's or some shit who's fucking with an innocent mouse on a pool table to smooth jazz.

Overall, this is my pick for the month, since it demonstrates how well dew is able to translate his style's pace from length to length, and I feel he deserves a spotlight on the list due to how passionate he is about pooping and how much he'd appreciate this. I give this video a 10/10.

When it comes to videogames, it is very common for the settings, stories, and gameplay to take us “out of our reality”, so to speak, and immerse players in a different world, at least for a short period of time. Games share this trait with other mediums, but thanks to the interactivity of games, it can often be more engaging to some, to truly take control of a character in a different world. Having ways to allow players to further immerse themselves aids in this, making immersion potentially a game's greatest asset.

However, immersion is a fine balancing act – it is important to keep the player from breaking their willing suspension of disbelief, since if things get too ridiculous or too annoying, it can often take players out of the game and back in their living room. They're no longer “in the game”, they're just playing it. At times, adhering too strongly to immersing the player in the world can actually accomplish just that, which is why glossing over certain aspects of things can be helpful for a game's design. While it's an interesting idea to have a world with many different currencies, it would be decidedly less interesting to make the player manage all of their cash themselves.

The discrepancy between immersion and convenience most often occurs in adventure and RPG games, where creating a solid setting is an important part of the design, but it can occur anywhere where the game is any more complicated than a control pad and a couple buttons.

The Ultima series provides a lot of examples of both of these situations, with times where the game values its own universe over giving players an easier time, and times where the game makes it easier for players to play while sacrificing some immersion.

In Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny, the series largely hit its stride with its lore and world-building, and made some changes to the land of Britannia, the setting for most of the series, to reflect this. Places were more detailed, with furniture and items, and you could find signs on the roads telling you which way said roads would take you. However, all of these road signs (along with some items and other things) were written in Britannia's runic script instead of in plain English.

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This sign says "Beware the Deep Forest". It's also worth noting that there are special runes just for "th", "ee", "ng", "ea", and "st". How intuitive.

This means that any time a player wishes to read a sign or check certain things, they will have to open up the game's manual and translate the runic script manually. This is great when it comes to making the land feel different and foreign, but the issue comes from, of course, the inconvenience of it all. For players who have never played Warriors of Destiny before, they will have to keep the manual, as well as a pad of paper and pencil, within reaching distance because of how ubiquitous the language is to the world.

At the start, this can be a very immersive moment; it accomplishes exactly what it was supposed to do in the first place, and since the runic script is ultimately just a letter substitution cipher, it isn't terribly difficult to translate. But the game is a very long, very open-ended RPG, and the choice to use the runic script ultimately caves in on itself the longer a player plays the game. Figuring out what the signs say in the first couple hours of the game aids the immersion, but after a while, it can become very tedious. This issue could be alleviated if a player is able to internalize the runic script so that they can translate it by sight alone, but that often requires frequent reading of the runes, and signs are not that close together.

Ultima Underworld also included the runes, and its execution was far more effective as well. The runes are just as ubiquitous as the signs in Warriors of Destiny, but the way they were implemented is the key difference.

Underworld uses a system of magic spells that involves using a combination of rune stones to spell out the incantation. For example, one of the earliest spells a magically-inclined player can cast is In Lor, a Light spell. This requires both an I runestone and an L runestone, and right-clicking on the runes allows you to quickly check which they are. Since the rune bag also lists the runes off in alphabetical order, it's very easy to memorize each stone.

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They still look different, being runes and all, but it's much easier to deal with them since you can see what they mean in the game itself!

The major reason this works better is simply because of how much faster it all is, not to mention the fact that Underworld's spells will be in use far, far more often than someone will ever look at signs in Warriors of Destiny. If a player constantly uses certain spells, the runes will become internalized that much quicker. Commonly switching between the Light spell and the Create Food spell means having to go to the rune bag and switching the equipped stones out, and thus both combinations will firmly become entrenched in a player's memory. This also lessens the amount of time spent in the game's documentation – all of Underworld's spells were listed off on a flashcard that was easy to grab and check over. The usage of the runes helps involve the player in the Ultima atmosphere, and are also convenient to use and memorize: the game manages to have it both ways.

Bringing Ultima IX: Ascension into this may be unfair, as Ascension is riddled with numerous, numerous problems, but it does provide a great example of how sacrificing immersion to make things convenient for the player doesn't always pay off. This particular point is brought up time and again when deriding Ascension, and it is no less obvious when compared to the previous games in the series.

Ultima games run in a loose, yet linear, timeline, and the player character is the same in all of the games from IV onward. Since the games can be played in any order, it was imperative for the designers to add ways to explain the important aspects of the world to Ultima newcomers, while simultaneously treating the older fans with respect in terms of their knowledge.

Ascension, however, doesn't, and the way Britannia is explained to players, both new and old, is extremely unfitting and immersion-breaking. The introductory sequence states outright that the player character has visited and helped save Britannia many times, and thus even if the player themselves doesn't know about the world, the in-game character clearly does. This is an immediate assumption due to the way the dialogue is worded.

Unfortunately, the way the explanations are handled treats the player's character as if he is a complete greenhorn – his speech when asking about things makes it seem like he has completely forgotten everything about Britannia. This is briefly poked fun at by a character who can't believe that the player has forgotten about a holy relic recovered at the very end of Ultima IV, and asking basic, almost childish questions such as what paladins are and how to get to villages visited in previous games shatters any possibility of immersion that Ascension could have attempted. Being able to ask anyone to explain things is convenient, but destroys its immersion in the process.

With all this said, here are some things to keep in mind when it comes to striking a balance between an immersive atmosphere and making things less of a hassle for players:

When it comes to introducing the game to a player, take both the character and the player into account. Does the player's character have a history in the world, or are they someone who, say, fell into a magic portal and has no idea where they are? Alternatively, make both routes available for the player to choose, so they can roleplay their character as they see fit.
If you want to give a setting a unique language, keep in mind how deeply you want it to affect the gameplay itself. A game can have a fictitious language in terms of its universe, but when it comes to dialogue, it can still be shown in a way the player can read it.
Try and find ways to combine both a convenient design and an immersive atmosphere with one fell swoop. If you want to make a town seem wild and lawless, make it so that the player can be pickpocketed by NPCs. Of course, don't go too far with this either – if a character pickpockets an important item, make sure that it's possible for the player to get the item back.

The look cues the goofy music, but the face cues the inspirational music.

There's a part of our mind that is hardwired to believe that no matter how bad a film can be, the fact that one actor that we really like is there will at least make it worthwhile. This is a part of our mind that causes many DVDs to be purchased at a pharmacy or dollar store. It is also a part of our mind that allows us to become more informed of those we enjoy as entertainers, letting us know how talented they are as well as how their careers stand. Simply put, I watched Man Of The Year because of Robin Williams. Robin Williams is probably the most prominent comedian that resides in that "they can do no wrong" section of my conscience, next to George Carlin and Bill Murray. Robin Williams shares quite a lot of great factors with Jim Carrey. Both are filled to the brim with energy, can do well in serious roles and do some fantastic improv when given the chance. Their film careers on the other hand show a very different path. Carrey has made a considerable effort to avoid terrible roles (though that's not to say he hasn't gotten into some stinkers) and has mostly made a comfortable home in dramatic work. Unfortunately for Williams, he has had his hand in some harshly panned productions and switches from the two theater masks constantly (especially when you compare him to Carrey). So basically what I'm trying to say here is that I don't think Man Of The Year was a good film.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy myself with the film, but it was a different kind of enjoyment that I get from a film that I don't consider good. Rather than being raucous and soaked in mockery of the very thing I was watching, it was mild and basic enough to at least consider it my money's worth. As satisfactory as that might be, this comes across as bizarre. For me to see a film that has Lewis Black, Robin Williams and Christopher Walken sharing the screen together along with being a political satire and the best thing going across my mind is "I guess I don't need to get my looney back" does not compute very well. It also doesn't help that I recalled more moments of laughter than I did awkward silence or aggressive criticism. It's almost as if my brain is well aware that there is more beyond these aspects but it doesn't want to dive further deeper into them. Instead, it just wants to accept it had a good time, in the same way that getting caught kissing your pillow isn't the most awkward thing to happen to the person that came in. But I'm not going to let my bias take hold, at least not in this case.

But what exactly is Man Of The Year about? At first thought, you imagine a film that revolves around TIME magazine's pick for the most important person on the planet. The one that makes the biggest change, engrained in the consciousness of many. By the title and the titular actor alone, I'd imagine Robin Williams playing a hobo who looks at the current Man of the Year's picture on a newsstand and decides that he will one day be on the magazine, later going on a series of wacky hijinks all the while learning about following your dreams and helping others. Y'know, the sort of saccharine schmultz that you can totally see him excelling in. The actual story isn't close, but it is noteworthy enough to be one hell of a cigar. Williams plays Tom Dobbs, a comedian who loves to rip on the American political system. Many people adore the guy, so much so that when he makes a joke about running for president, the audience cheers for him. Slowly but surely, support builds up and Tom figures that he might as well give it a shot. For his presidential campaign, he is backed up by his manager Jack Menken (Walken), and one of his greatest comedy writers Eddie Langston (Black), who notice that when he talks serious politics, he tends to not bring the same spark to him. The two of them suggest to Dobbs that in the presidential debate, he should be more of himself and bring the people what they want from him. At first, Dobbs takes reluctance to the idea, but eventually decides to make the event a complete farce by being brutally honest with his jokes. Due to his stunt, he becomes incredibly recognized in the public and on the night of the elections, he becomes the first comedian to be elected president.

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To be fair, his had confetti and balloons.

As far as concepts go, that alone is scoring some major points. Not only is the idea of a comedian being elected a president able to showcase their abilities to outrageous degrees, but the material that you can suck out of it is plentiful that it could fill up it's own genre. Not only would have the reaction of the comedian realizing he's in high office, but also you'd have citizens who find themselves pissed off by being the laughingstock of the world and other countries looking at each other in utter confusion. It would be as ludicrous as a bus driver being the president because the last one's spirit came to him as a bird and told him he was the rightful successor. That alone would make it, and Man Of The Year does work with it. For one, Robin does what he does best, especially in the scene where he tears down the facades of the two other candidates. He plays paintball while the Secret Service is watching by, wears a George Washington wig and outfit when addressing Congress and even makes Saturday Night Live worth viewing. Of course there's also Lewis making his usual wisecracks and Christopher Walken has some of his patented moments thrown in for good measure. The thing is though that Man Of The Year isn't just about Dobbs and his crew painting the White House polka dots (which is one serious missed opportunity right there), it's also about elections being rigged.

Yes, in a Robin Williams comedy, there is a serious subplot involving an electronic voting system error. See, there's this woman who works for a company called Delacroy. Delacroy is in charge of the recent election and has already put the machines out. The woman finds out though that an error is causing the wrong person to be elected and immediately informs the company. Rather than fix it immediately as secretly as possible, the president decides to ignore it because if they try to correct it now, their stock will plummet and they want more money. Now, I will give it credit that the film having Dobbs not truly be elected into office is a good move. Not only in the realistic aspect, but because it gives him a conflict. No, the issue would moreso be that they try to create a villain out of this. It's the kind of weird that doesn't benefit the movie, because it's not working as a punchline. It doesn't even work as a bizarrely serious aspect either because it doesn't carry much poignancy to it. Some elections end up with the wrong results, but usually it involves another party trying to weasel their way to the top or lack of voter interest, not a company that wants their electronic system to be used in all the elections to reap a huge profit. It could possibly work if there was more depth to those characters, but needless to say there isn't much else to it. And it doesn't get any better I'm afraid.

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Pictured above: Man Of The Year not getting any better

For starters, I consider myself a very ticklish person. By that I mean that practically anything makes me laugh. A well executed, incredibly sophisticated series of witty remarks could very much evoke the same amount of tear-jerking chuckles that a person falling down the stairs whilst farting as their body hits the next step. That makes it very hard for me to convince others that I don't like Seltzerberg films that I'm forced to watch, because they can still hear the ringing of my cackling from before, but I have the ability to recognize when what I laughed at was good comedy and when it was bad. In Man Of The Year, I'd have to say that for every hit, there was at least two misses. That wouldn't be too bad if the jokes were being fired at you from every corner, but you have to remember that satire does not automatically mean comedy. If it did, then reading 1984 at the Apollo theater would not be met with excessive booing. It's a shame because when it hits, it hits well. Robin Williams goes on and on in the political debate, he really was on fire. A lot of the comments, while simple when it comes to ripping on the system, had a genuine sense of cleverness, effort and good intentions. Furthermore, the comedy of the film was at least giving off the feeling that it was trying to say something beyond the goofy tones. It was blunt, but it was the kind of blunt that was trying to break down a wall. Like I said, there was that sense that it was pushing as hard as it could, and I have to commend it for doing the best it could. Especially considering that it was a political satire taking place smack dab in the middle of 2006, which focused much less on making fun of Dubya and more on critical issues that had been plaguing the system before and during the Bush administration.

Unfortunately though, as great as political satire can be and as much as I love it, it doesn't mean that it will be good. If I was convinced Man Of The Year was good, I would have compared it to Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert from the get-go. But when the jokes had soul they had no punch to them, and when they had a punch to them they had no soul. That political debate I was talking about earlier was a good example of this, because the good jokes weren't saying anything bold beyond "this system is screwed up". I know that the basis of political comedy revolves around that principle, but there's also always another matter tied to it, there's always something beyond that single point. At the very least it might say that a certain part of the system is screwed up or they say the same thing with a sillier comparison. It didn't take many chances either, since it constantly tried to restrict itself. Every actor that I mentioned gave it their half. They weren't showing signs of struggling, but you know that what you're seeing isn't them at their best. Lewis Black should have been clocking 100 swears in under a minute, Walken should have had more of his speech mannerisms coming through and Robin Williams should have been bouncing off the walls. To it's defense, maybe having all three go to their full selves might have made too much of a clutter, but a film trying to juggle comedy with a conspiracy drama isn't any neater, though I'll get to that later. Even with the chances it tries to take, it limits them substantially. There's more time spent on Dobbs taking his presidential campaign seriously than there is time where Dobbs is making fun of the way politics is being run. Rather than have Dobbs muck about in the White House and push some bold or insane legislation, he's mucking about as the President-Elect. Oh yeah, I forgot to clarify, he's not the president in the film, he's the president-elect. With that simple detail, buckets upon buckets of potential have been thrown down the drain, crippling what could have been an absolute masterpiece. This alone could have been the biggest sin that the film could have committed, but one thing makes it worse.

Remember that woman that I mentioned above? The one that I didn't even dignify with the name of the character or the actress? She's the love interest in the film. For a while I had found unnecessary love interests to be harmless for the most part. They were sometimes stupid, but they were the kind of stupid that I could at least laugh at. This one on the other hand was one that made my teeth grind so many times that I can bite into an apple like it was butter. It was bad enough that there was this film trying to be something it shouldn't have been, a drama. But then there had to be a romantic relationship. It was so incredibly pointless to the plot and it was awkwardly shoehorned to give it some semblance of heart. Which turned out to be like performing surgery on a healthy person and replacing the heart with a rock. She honestly did feel like a rock, just kind of there, and occasionally catching the attention of someone because she came right out of nowhere. There wasn't anything she really added, and on top of that, she wasn't good enough as an actress to pull me into anything she said. Worse off, it's because of her that the unnecessary drama came along to ruin a film that had one hell of a chance as a stupendous comedy. And it's not as if the drama was working well enough with the comedy that you could at the very least excuse the shift in tone, no, it felt like two different movies were being played, and not in the hilariously awkward way where they're on at the same time, more in the gratingly annoying way of one movie going on for a while, stopping and then the other one goes by.

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"If I do a Bill Clinton impression, will that cheer you up?"

Man Of The Year is about as mixed a movie as you can get. It's wasted potential combined with half-hearted performances from big names that has a great deal of faults that somehow can find themselves to be overlooked by the mere fact that one has incredibly low expectations that are exceeded substantially. If you have a comedian becoming the president of the US because of an election error, you don't focus more of the film on the comedian accepting that they might not be the real president, you have the comedian engage in tons of shenanigans. Much less if you have Robin Williams as said comedian because you miss out on some hilarious opportunities...or at the very least a few cute gags revolving around some of the previous work he's done (I would have been set with Genie's face being chiseled into Mount Rushmore). With that said, it still could have worked as a comedy-drama, provided both of those sides be evenly dispersed or sewn together properly. And at times, that actually did occur and it worked pretty well. But when you look at the film from a distance, it can't hold itself without tipping over. It never falls and crashes, but it's not something that anyone wants to go near to either. To say I was disappointed would depend on the ways I saw it. As a film that I saw simply because it had an actor I liked, it did enough and maybe went a little beyond in my eyes. As a film that when stripped down to concepts and ideas that could have been played around with, there wasn't enough experimentation or energy as I would have hoped.

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It's been a popular source of discussion since my arrival here; how do you properly pronounce my name, and what does it entail? Is the first part really 'zach', 'zac' or 'za'? Is the middle part 'heats', 'cheats' or 'eats'? We needn't go into the last part.

This article is meant to finally provide some answers to the long-standing debate surrounding my alias; simply put, I dunno, man.

Frankly, I didn't even create the name myself. It was my sister. We were hanging out one day back in Delaware, and I was coming up with a new e-name for myself, since zach033094 wasn't cutting it. I was perplexed, conflicted, and even unsure. Then she came along and noticed I was snacking on some saltines after we had tomato soup and sandwiches. She creatively came up with the name 'zacheatscrackers', and somehow, it clicked, and it was the name I've stuck with ever since. But even I never quite got what it meant. Then, one day... it dawned on me.

The answer was right in fucking front of me, and I didn't even realize it this whole time! I swear, I must be developing super early-stage dementia. See, it's really very simple.

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It all began one day when Harrison Ford was at home. He was unsure of himself and his sexuality, so he picked up some hentai from the nearest XXX shop, dressed up as a chick as seen in the picture, tied a 25 pound mini-safe to his balls, masturbated to his mint condition lamp-with-tennis-balls-glued-on-that-vaguely-looks-like-a-chick, and drove off to Taco Bell. Trust me when I said that the looks he got entirely involved raised eyebrows, dropped jaws and endless 'WTF' expressions, yet he didn't care; the man wanted to experiment, after all, give him a damn break! He ordered 5 things of Nachos Bell Grande, beat the nearest disabled child to death with a shovel he kept in his pants pocket, stole his fork and spoon, and chowed down to his heart's content with practically everyone watching him that very moment. Soon after he begun, the pain of his ball-weights became so great that his ballsack ripped in half, his pants broke down, he puked blood... and he showed how little he cared and just continued eating. Ironically, the nearest civilian remarked "what a man...".

He went up to compliment Ford, and as Ford gradually lost his manhood (his penis shortly followed the fate of his ballsack), Ford was quick to eye this particular gentleman. He was rather chubby, had an MLP shirt on, a neckbeard that practically reached his chest, arms flabbier than a preschooler that hit puberty and decided to hit the Big Macs early, had nothing approaching a tan, was greasy, and wore glasses that barely fit his head. After he complimented Ford, the latter laughed so hard that his balls somehow shot up into his body. He coughed them out onto the guy's MLP shirt, and he did probably the most embarrassing fan-gasm in existence: "LOOK AT ME, GUYS! I HAVE HARRISON FORD'S BALLS ON ME!". Ford then looked out the window in disgust as he muttered "stupid cracker..." to himself, then the bomb in his chest went off, blowing up the Taco Bell, and the combined DNA of everyone's blood and guts created numerous clones of the 'cracker', all of them shouting "CRACKERS! CRACKERS!" in unison.

The situation soon turned into something right out of 'Zombies Ate My Neighbors', as the clones went around turning the population of the world into their own kin. Soon, the entire population of the world was crackers. A man in a nursery home, who just happened to be eating clam chowder and crackers, witnessed this predicament on the news and remarked "well, blow me down like a whistle; lookit all 'dem crackerz!". His caretaker caught on and laughed her ass off.

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This entire debacle, naturally, gathered the attention of the U.S. Government and Obama, the president himself. What'd he have to say?

"My fellow citizens... stop giving a fuck about this. This is disturbingly like the speed-induced fanfic fantasy of an anti-social teenager. Nothing to see here"; then karma hit him like an air gun to the balls, and the crackers somehow broke into the office and turned him into one of them. He soon changed his opinion to "My fellow citizens, praise the way of the cracker! Everyone go to your nearest Food Lion and buy every box of crackers in the vicinity!".

Soon enough, everyone did just that, and Earth itself literally began to resemble a cracker. It was quite a sight to behold. I watched CNN and found out everything... and thus, the origin of my name was revealed.

But I still didn't quite know what my name meant exactly. I decided that it was best to leave the whole thing ambiguous, since stuff like this is better deciphered through imagination.

(NOTE: No Fords, crackers, civilians or Obamas were harmed in the making of this tale. This is also obviously fictional, since Harrison Ford would never lose his manhood and clones out of other peoples' DNA isn't biologically possible, but hey, this'd still make a hell of a beer story down at the Quaker Steak & Lube)

Women deserve their own publications, it’s totes the truth! We’re finally living in an age where women can vote, work, join the army and go out drinking, all the things that they wanted. Okay, maybe they still face a teensy tiny amount of discrimination, but hey, we’re getting closer! That’s why we need the kind of publications that celebrate what it means to be a woman, and all that being a woman means! That’s why we’re going to take a short tour of a recent issue of Women’s World , a magazine that represents everything these publications stand for.

Women's World Magazine was first launched in 1981 by Heinrich Bauer Verlag, a publishing company which set up office in New Jersey. This magazine stands out for it's editors; the current writers for Women's World are almost entirely women, or at least have women's names! This is a meaty 55 page publication, sold on supermarket shelves next to other respectable publications such as The Sun and The Daily News for less than two dollars!

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There are lots and LOTS of women’s magazines out there, each with their own specialized focus, such as new miracle diets, itemized lists of dieting tips, or scientific breakthroughs on dieting! Women’s World spreads its topics out to every category that matters, in an effort to reach out to as many different kinds of women as possible. Every woman is slightly different, whether they enjoy giving themselves makeovers, making snacks for parties, making fancy snacks for fancy parties, giving their friend a makeover, making cocktails for cocktail parties, finally dropping their weight below one hundred pounds, or making tropical cocktails for tropical cocktail parties! We will talk about several of the headlines here, but the one at top-center deserves special mention for its genius design; "PMS- GONE! Cure the grumpies- just by eating an omelet!

There are many, many sensitive topics when it comes to being a woman in the twenty first century! As much as we try to be an open and empathetic society, there are still some subjects that are taboo even when they happen to half of everyone. In these kinds of situations, the best way to show that you care is to do what Women’s World does and make light of the situation! Don’t think of it as recurring emotional distress that can last for a week or more; it’s just “the grumpies”! When someone spills their double-cream latte and gets annoyed, or can’t use their favorite parking spot because it is already taken, they know exactly what you’re going through! And if you’re looking for a way to ease your achy-wakey pains, try changing your diet. Have you tried dieting yet? You should.

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One of the most important and relevant parts of any magazine is the jokes section! Now, it’s true that anyone with an Internet connection can find an endless supply of puns if they are looking for them- and puns are the highest form of humor- but how will you know which jokes are the best ones unless Women’s World hand-picked them for you? Women’s World even offers inspirational quotes, such as this little quip from Siddartha Gautauma Buddha himself; “What you think, you become”. According to that Mr. Potato Head cartoon next to the quote, we are the answer to a Wheel of Fortune word puzzle! Don’t you feel like you’ve won half of a new car already?

Just to the right of those jokes, the same page has a wonderful blue sidebar titled “Take an instant ‘vacation’!” This is a list of four weird tips of a happy staycation, all meant to give you a vacation’s stress relief without any of the planning. For instance, you could try daydreaming about the kind of place you’d like to vacation at, so you can have that satisfaction without even beginning to set goals! The column even has a picture of a dog wearing sunglasses at the beach, to help set the mood! A suggestion at the end of the sidebar says, “For a quick chuckle, search YouTube.com for funny videos.” You might not have thought of checking one of the most popular video hosting sites on the Internet for a video with humor in it, but Women’s World is full of the kinds of suggestions that save you all of that time you might waste planning in the dark!

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Here we see the two most important parts of any Women’s World article; lists and suggestions for your next shopping trip! Now, it’s tempting to call these advertisements, especially when they tell you the names of all the products, list their amazingly affordable low prices, and give links to the product manufacturer’s websites so you know where to get more fine items. However, try thinking of it as more of a guiding push from Women’s World! The cosmetics aisle is a crazy place with dozens if not hundreds of products, many of which are far overpriced for what they do- but you can’t just go out without makeup or nail polish! That would be nuts! It’s best to get advice from your favorite publication before you make any tough decisions, so you come into the supermarket with your mind already made up. Remember that whatever you think, you become, so think about the best bargains on nail lacquer you can find!

The actual ads are helpful as well! One of the best choices Women’s World made for their selection of commercials was- wait for it- a page dedicated to new Jalapeño flavored Spam! When a magazine dedicates a whole section to recipes, it’s nice to see that they still consider the lives of active women who don’t have time to spend two hours cooking every night, but still have one hour to assemble a can of Spam into a taco with feta cheese and black beans. That’s what Women’s World is about, “{Giving} Taco Night a Kick in the Maracas!”

For the articles themselves, there's a secret- everything needs to be in list format. An astute reader might ask why this article is not going too far in-depth about any of the subjects on display in Women’s World , and that is because most of these articles are no more than a few sentences long! The editors of Women’s World know that modern women are very busy individuals; between a full-time job, one or more children and the St. Patrick’s Day party that they are most certainly planning, there just isn’t enough time for a long, boring wall of text. Instead, give them an itemized list of all the hints they never knew they needed, so they can absorb the maximum amount of motivation with the minimum amount of time-munching research.

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In fact, the biggest headline article in this issue only takes up two pages! Here Women’s World offers a guiding push towards the Wheat Belly diet, the secret art of weight loss being sold on supermarket shelves everywhere! At the risk of spoilers, the secret to Dr. William Davis’ weight loss tip is that the gluten in wheat products causes the human body to retain far more weight than usual. Although this is information that has been known for decades, this book combines that common knowledge with a wide variety of recipes that have been gathered for you so you don’t have to spend fifteen whole minutes finding free low-gluten recipes on the Internet!

The article on the Wheat Belly diet also demonstrates another genius time saving writing technique! “In a recent poll,” it begins, “America’s top nutritionists made a bold prediction for 2014: Wheat-free diets will be the hottest way to lose weight this year.” Which poll are they talking about? Who are the nutritionists? What criteria determine whether a diet is popular? The secret is, none of that matters to the readers of Women’s World! Busy women have no time for research when they have to fit baking and accessorizing into the same day, so don’t bother citing sources. You don’t even need to say who wrote the article half of the time, nobody’s looking! As long as the diet works, there’s no problem.

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Speaking of baking, this issue’s cover features these enchanting cupcakes with candied leprechaun heads perched on them, for the big event we all planned on St Patrick’s Day! The recipe is not shown in this photo- we can’t give spoilers on everything, after all- but rest assured that it involves building a scaffold for the merry magical men, like a parade float! The end result is a dessert that’s beautiful to look at… though eating it would be a shame. You spent loads and loads of time bisecting Airheads Xtreme rainbow candies and assembling them into tiny bowties, the least your guests should do is take a photo for Facebook before they devour the whole kit-n’-kaboodle in two bites!

Having a smorgasbord of frosted baked goods right after the main article about losing weight by cutting wheat products out of your diet seems confusing or even counter-intuitive, there’s a paid advertisement in the form of genuine clinical research that can set you back on the diet track! The makers of Vysera-CLS (which can be read about here: http://dietpill-revi....uk/vysera-cls/ ) paid an editor from MyFreeDiet.com to write a two-page spread about their miracle in pill form, which allows anyone to lose weight while still eating 2,000 calories a day and not exercising significantly! The ad describes this pill’s effects as “sort of like eating a donut, but only absorbing a fraction of the calories”, just like using Olestra in home cooking! And while a woman with a healthy body weight of 140-150 pounds or so might be offended by the sculpted, grinning, underwear-clad model posing in this ad, she’s got her back to the camera in a non-threatening manner, making her as acceptable as the rest of the sculpted, grinning models in this issue!

There’s so much more even in this single issue of Women’s World , but we would only bore you by listing it all. These kinds of publications are best when you pay two dollars to own it yourself, and give it a quick browse while waiting your turn at the hairdresser! While the sheer number of publications targeted at women is so mind-boggling, it’s practically cray-cray, articles like this can help un-boggle the mind. Remember to give your local magazine rack a quick browse whenever you can- you’d be surprised what you might learn about the way we learn! Whatever you think, you become, so be sure to think about Women’s World as much as you can!

In fact, here’s a quick exercise you can do to get in tune with your proud female self. The first step is to take your back issues of Women’s World , and soak them in a solution of water and Elmer’s School Glue, $1.99 at any crafts store. Leave that paper to sit for a few hours; in the meantime, feel free to read some classic literature (William Faulkner was decades ahead of his time), or perhaps research the background of your town representative. Blow up a balloon, and wrap the soaked paper around the shape as a cast. Decorate the outside of this shape with crepe paper of any color you want, regardless of what our entertainment scientists say is the best color, and then wait for it to dry. Cut a small hole in this shape and fill it with any candy you want (the calories don’t matter when it tastes good!); close this hole up with a little more glue.

Congratulations, you’ve made a piñata! Now beat it with a stick and collect the goodies inside, because that’s the only way you’re getting anything of worth from Women’s World .

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After doing my interview with CorruptionSound last May, I decided to get further in the know-it-all of the YouTube Poop community. After a little searching, I found a fairly underground editor known as MattVariety.

MattVariety is a pooper––also known as Mashu on the YouChew forums––who is best known for being associates with TheRazorEdge and for his avant-garde style of pooping. In this interview, he states that TheRazorEdge helped him transition his style from generic SpongeBob poops into the unique experimental works he makes now.

His videos are slow-paced and have a distinct creepy atmosphere to them. Some examples of how he does so is using effects and even hidden messages that give the videos an illusory environment consisting of lovingly made throwbacks to internet originals such as the MarbleHornets series. Find out more about him in this article and get affiliated with this guy.

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I've noticed that you have had a theme of slow-paced and sort of atmospheric mood in your videos. What influenced you to do that?

Well, a lot of the influence that derives from my videos are from psychological horror-related sources. One of my favorite horror games of all time would have to be Silent Hill 2, primarily because it just fits that niche of uneasy mystery very well. I do my best to recreate that sort of eeriness in my own videos.

Oh, I thought it came from the MarbleHornets/Totheark series.

Well, that too; actually, if I had to say, that would be my original go-to influence. Over time, though, my style evolved more into what you see now.

What are your hobbies outside of pooping?

Mostly just screwing around with gaming and programming. I also spend a decent amount of time listening to music, which is another source of ideas for my videos.

What word would you use to describe your poops?

Probably "subtle". Subtlety is something that I've grown to implement more into my videos, and, as you'd expect, while it doesn't make an immediate impact, personally I believe it's just the little nuances that creep out at the viewer that really adds up, like a hidden message here, or hints of foreshadowing there.

One of Mashu's videos from 2012.

At/from where do you get the ideas for your poops?

Usually I'll just pull out some atmospheric music like Aphex Twin or some of Radiohead's later stuff and just think of shit that would freak out my viewers. It's not really much of a grounded external idea sort of thing. I also actually have a plot going in my head that all of my videos run on and hint at (again, that's where that subtlety factor comes in; I never try to outright show it off). I also have a complementary blog form of it, so if you like my videos and want to learn more about what they're "all about", you can check it out here. Shameless plug, I know.

Have any of your videos pleased you/met your expectations?

A lot of my earlier videos I feel were awkwardly placed between that creepy style I was explaining earlier and general absurdist humor standard of that of a 12 year-old. As of lately, they're gone much more towards horror, though I'll occasionally break out the good ol' CDI poop now n' then. One issue that I tend to have when making my videos, however, is finding decent sources. Often times I'll just pull out videos of someone walking into a forest or traveling in a car. It's at that point it makes it hard to break from YouTube Poop and into the genre of videos that I make now, because with your everyday YTP, you can just download a video of, say, Hotel Mario or the Cory In The House intro and fuck around with it. With this, it's like you have to be more creative of what exactly to edit. Plus that atmospheric sort of creepiness isn't as exciting as an average YTP, which tends to be the medium I compare my videos with, so I'm usually biased against my own works.

I was rather intrigued by your tennis match with Therazoredge, where you used each other's videos as your sources. Where did that idea originate?

It was sort of a spontaneous idea, most likely related with the previous endeavor with trying to find decent sources to edit, hah. At the time, I was examining the process of "re-pooping", or taking someone's YTP and making a YTP out of it. I thought, hey, why don't we integrate this with Tennis?

Since you have a broad interest in music, do you ever make any?

You know, I've tried, but it's always turned out to be quite shitty. I unfortunately don't have a very keen knowledge on musical theory, so while I have some good ideas, I can never really put them out in a way that doesn't sound like an 8 year-old child jamming on a keyboard.

Are there any poopers that have inspired you and have helped to augment your style?

One that's probably rather obvious would be Therazoredge, as he was pretty much the person who motivated me to translate my videos from generic Spingebill videos to more of what I make now starting around, I dunno, I think it was 09? '10? Other than him, I can't really think of many YTPers specifically that inspired me, I guess it's been more of an original sort of thing, as arrogant as that sounds.

An older video of Mashu's.

What are your favorite effects/filters to use in your poops?

I'm a personal fan of Black Restore (really gets that creepy, dark look going on), Bump Map (nice for adding an artificial spotlight to make a more cinematic feel to the video), Color Curve (great overall color restoration effect), Film Effects and Film Grain (also creates a lovely cinematic feel), Gaussian Blur (good general blurring tool), Median (creates some really cool shit), Sepia (cinematic tool), Starburst (same as Median), Threshold (ditto), and Unsharp Mask (ditto). I've also recently used NewBlue, and honestly, I think there's too many to count of them that come in handy for me.

Are there any people outside of YTP that influence you?

I can't think of any people in particular, though the above mentioned Marble Hornets team does come to mind.

Is there anything you want to say before we are done?

Well, I'd just like to say thank you for interviewing me, makes me feel a little special really, hah.

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You can check out Mashu's YouTube channel here, and his complementary Gray Snow tumblr account here.

Windows is starting up.

On Christmas Day of 2013, I had heard from a relative of mine (who heard it from his own computer guy) that once 2014 came to pass, the computer software known as Windows XP would be having its last update(s) real soon. By the time this article comes up, it may very well have already gotten its last update that would help make those computers feel more secure. While there are still about two more years left on this system's life-cycle before it truly bites the bullet and becomes a system that's permanently obsolete, it really does signify how old of a software this type of system really is. In 2001 (the year that Windows XP was first released to the public), it was considered one of those computers that it felt like practically everyone had to have in their business or home or something like that in order to have a fun and safe time with the Internet. Yet here we are over a decade later with not only Windows updating its software with stuff like Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1 (and real soon, 9), but Apple, Linux, and even Google (and to a lesser extent, Amazon) have also (re-)emerged as major competition towards Microsoft's PC and laptop market. Not only that, but new markets like smartphones, tablets, video game consoles, and even a thing called "smart-watches" have emerged as strong technological environments that make PCs almost feel like they'll be a thing of the past.

It does feel kind of sad to see that a device that many people on this site have used at one point or another is about to kick the bucket for good. It had some pretty interesting aspects that truly affected how we used our computers, for better or for worst. Not only that, but there were also a lot of memories that truly influenced how much change it had brought up on the Internet. Still, as humans, we do have this everlasting need to evolve ourselves to make bigger and better things that the masses could benefit from, and in our modern day society, we just so happen to offer a bit more power than what Windows XP has. In fact, we also have an apparent interest in special applications that may or may not be built into our newer systems that could do things that we likely won't use in the first place, such as using Netflix or Hulu. With that said, there have been many positive things about Windows XP that we might have taken for granted at the time of its release.

Windows XP was unveiled officially to the media during the month of August 2001 and eventually was released to the public for all to see on October of the same year, and its impact that would be put onto the public was something that took time to do, yet when it came up, it showed off just fine. As a new web browser, it helped standardize what was, at the time, an increase of power by being a 32 bit processing unit instead of a 16 bit processing unit. To give out a proper understanding of what that means, think of an operating system like Windows 95 as a console similar to that of the original Playstation or a Nintendo 64; it was good for what it was as a computer at the time, but it could get pretty unstable every once in a while if you leave it on for too long (think one of those early educational Charlie Brown PC games as an example of sorts there). Windows XP, on the other hand, allowed for it to start out with a video game like Halo pretty easily with very little issues in the process. This helped show off that this operating system would have more of an impact than some people would have thought it had.

Chances are more likely than not that you've not only seen this, but also loved it at one point or another.

For starters, by allowing for more memory in a PC, it allowed more users to do things that would have normally been limited to just supercomputers that only a select few people had at the time. Programs like Direct-X and Photoshop that had aspects about them that were just "pretty good" beforehand got upgraded to make them really good in not only the mid-2000's era, but also to this day. Not only that, but the improved memory spaces that would be on further operating systems would help make not only video game systems like the NES, the SNES, and the Sega Genesis easier to emulate, but it also allowed for a system as recent (keeping in mind the same era where Windows XP was the most prevalent system) as the Nintendo 64 (and later on, the Gamecube and even the Nintendo DS) to work with little to no hiccups whatsoever. There was also some improved flash capabilities that came through which helped make people like Egoraptor and Eddsworld (R.I.P. Edd Gould) stand out as fun people to look through in the future. However, what felt like a major aspect that many of feel like we've overlooked as a whole is the video editing capabilities that we have.

Before Windows XP, there weren't really any major video editing software tools that you could use to edit videos with since the applications were pretty primitive and the ones that did exist didn't have enough memory to really make something major with them. Sure you can save them onto your PC for whatever reason possible, but there wasn't really much of a purpose to having them out on 16-bit computers since no major websites were created for them at that time, especially when looking at stuff like the Space Jam website. With Windows XP, it allowed users to have a purpose to create new videos for themselves for free and do whatever kinds of crazy shit they want to do, regardless of how good or bad it looks now. Not only did Windows XP help give video files like .avi and .mp4 hold more of a purpose these days, but they also helped influence video hosting websites like EbaumsWorld and StupidVideos to come up and set up a new environment for us to use for future reference. I say that because its through websites like that which helped put up YouTube and its personal influencers like DailyMotion, Vimeo, and blip.tv to set up videos for people like us to set up our personal YouTube Poops through hundreds upon thousands, if not millions of people under an easy method! Still, while Windows XP did help set up some good things about the Internet, it also helped bring up some very bad aspects that needed some serious fixing up to work with.

When thinking about WIndows XP, you usually think of one of the most "popular" web browsers around in Internet Explorer. That is partially due to how during the early days of Windows XP, it was pretty much the only major way users could access things online alongside AOL, and in those times, that was truly something else for an experience. With Internet Explorer 6, it brought out the absolute worst of finding thing on the Internet to date, what with it being filled with exploitable ways of not only being filled up with viruses, but also means of crashing your PC due to some very exploitable hidden details that Internet Explorer 6 had when no other web browser afterwards, regardless of whether you still use Internet Explorer after 6 or not, had ever used them since then! When considering that combined with how Microsoft went and almost monopolized the web browsing universe and how newer web browsers made by Mozilla and Google ended up showing off some aspects of web browsing better than Internet Explorer despite some of its many improvements it made afterwards, and it's almost no wonder why Internet Explorer has the reputation that it has in the first place! Still, having a web browser crash during the start of an operating system's life cycle is nothing compared to an ever-lasting legacy that it had left behind for the rest of its days.

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Imagine working with that all day long.

Another major problem that I had briefly mentioned was viruses; while they definitely weren't anything new nor were they anything close to safe for PCs to have beforehand, the way they were implemented throughout most areas of the Internet helped make them become the single most annoying and killable ways you could ever destroy some of your PCs, especially if you weren't wise to know what to do there. When it came to viruses before Windows XP, while they still did some dangerous things on your PCs, they at least had some interesting methods of putting them out onto either MS-DOS systems or on Windows 95/98/ME computers, as well as some pretty strange results coming out of it in the process (with danooct's YouTube channel giving off some proper examples of just that). Starting out with Windows XP systems onward, however, they implemented some of these viruses in the most douchebaggy, Hellbent methods possible. Some of these viruses ended up being displayed as annoying pop-ups that you couldn't get out of unless you pressed the Ctrl+Alt+Delete method on your keyboard and quit that method that ran; the end result from the virus would either be that you clicked on a button to have it take you to a fake virus scanning method that'd be ready to con (and infect) you or you'd end up losing your Internet data if you quit the method that was running. Either way, it was still annoying to see, but that's just the tip of the iceberg on that shit.

When Windows XP came out, it introduced an interesting little folder called "system32". That folder was a very nifty way for it to store important things onto your PC so that it always ran it properly no matter what. However, it also introduced a horrible exploit that can still be rampant on certain PCs to this day; with Windows XP and other 32-bit PCs, you could write a small little batch code that allowed you to write down something along the words of "delete the C disk drive that holds the system32 folder" (I'm not typing the exact code down here lest I accidentally end up deleting my own PC in the process) and it would end up being able to quarantine very important files for the system to run on. In the end, all that you'd have left is a blank black screen with a FATAL error on your system, with there being no other choices than to either try and find a way to revert your system back to normal (which not many people knew how to do in the first place) or you'd more likely have to install a new version of Windows XP or whatever system you had onto it with all of your data being left behind in the process. While this little piece of code is still a bitch to have been discovered and exploitative to some people, it is something you could outright avoid altogether provided you stay away from batch files like this. However, not even the best kind of protection can prevent you from seeing fake virus protecting applications.

What would usually be the worst of the bunch that not many people could avoid outright are the viruses that pretend to act like a company like McAfee, Norton, Malwarebytes, or AVG and help you catch them while pretty much infecting your system on the inside-out. These viruses have the looks and styles that they need to have in order to pretend to be trustworthy pieces of data when they really have that special something that infect your system before you know it. By having it look like an actual virus blocker combined with putting in secretive data that can allow it to infect whatever it wants to infect, they make for some of the biggest dickbag viruses that we as computing users have ever seen yet! Once it has its way onto your system, it would then mess with your files in ways that only massive dicks would by making a great majority of your files (even game files like Solitare and 3D Pinball) inaccessible through simple methods and force you to input a credit card number in order for you to try and "un-infect" your PC. That is probably the absolute worst way to infect a PC yet since not only is it more common to get than ransomware viruses, but it also has the potential to lead to phishing, which is basically people having access to your credit card information and using it for their pleasure. Really, combining serious damage with potential threats helped make browsing on Windows XP almost feel like a minefield when first starting out; in a way, it still kind of is on other PCs to this day.

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It's especially a pain in the ass when you can't even understand what the fuck it's trying to say here!

With this in mind, I personally had some pretty interesting and unique moments with Windows XP. I had started out as a person that was not really caring too much about stuff like the Internet since I basically was the person that liked playing video games on my Nintendo 64 and sometimes on the Windows 95 PC that I had up until sometime in the early 2000's (I'm thinking either 2002 or 2003 here). Anyways, when it came to upgrading my PC back in the early 2000's, I won't lie and say that I wasn't hesitant with upgrading my system into Windows XP because I was still attached to the system in a sense. However, once I had no choice but to integrate into these new Windows XP computers that my grandparents and my mom had (let's just say that I had an interesting little way of living sometimes throughout my childhood), I had grown to eventually love playing with stuff on there. From simple games like Billiards and checkers to some unique online slot games to even playing a new sort of game they had called Pinball 3-D, I had realized that there was a whole new way of looking through things online. It also didn't take long until I started going more outward into the online world for the first time in my life, and to be fair, most of that stuff was involving things that a normal, young kid (that's also a fan of all sports) would look at, such as Nickelodeon's website, places focusing on video games, and other stuff like that. However, it's when I started venturing out at I think the age of 12 that I started noticing some... interesting things online with Windows XP.

From that point in time with Windows XP, I had my life change in ways I had not expected. Whether it was for the better or the worst, I'm not 100% sure on, though. For starters, some of the art that I had seen on stuff like Super Mario and Pokemon would invariably lead me to some pornographic websites that had allowed me to secretly see porn online at an age that I wasn't really supposed to have. Not only that, but some of my interests ended up growing from simple things like having me not being much of a music person beforehand to listening to lots of different music now (although I know I don't show that on here), as well as gaining more interest in the artistic style of life. It also let me be introduced to the idea of having multiple PCs for the first time in my life, although one time was involving a very slow PC and some virus attacks that threatened my first PC's performance. Not only that, but there were growths of newer, major websites like Wikipedia and YouTube that would still have quite a grasp on our society to this day, as well as introduce websites like MySpace that would fall almost as quickly as they would rise outright. I especially had a nice growth from hating to write down stuff for school to enjoying writing to the point where I can say that I have helped out a Writing Staff of sorts for a website. Even with Windows XP, there have been some people that had to use Windows XP's Movie Maker in order to make YouTube Poops like SuperYoshi, Pimpsahoy, IAmTheGang, and many more people that I have likely forgotten about; it even had myself try and take a stab at making one back when YouTube Poops were making a major boom onto the Internet! Seeing quite a movement like this happen truly made this era quite a unique experience that we'll probably never experience in our lives ever again.

Still, the memories that we might have with Windows XP will be quite an experience that will take a long time for us to really forget about them. While it is true that some members here might have never really had a Windows XP computer in their lifetimes, there are definitely aspects that won't be taken away from us even as Microsoft ventures to try and go from a good computing experience to a... let's just say more interesting cultivation of ideals that appear to mix-and-match together into a blurred line on what is truly a computing experience and what is more about a multimedia extravaganza. From advancing technologies on aspects like quality of pictures and videos to more extreme viruses that act like fake prompts that you can't escape from so easily, there was definitely an experience that not many other computing system's could say they had in their lifetimes. If you had your own memories of working with Windows XP computers, such as how this piece will probably be the last article where I did the majority of my work on my Windows XP system that I currently have, now would probably be the best time to share them while you still can. Otherwise, it is finally time to honor the past and look forward to a brighter future, for without it, we might not have greater personal experiences at hand.

Windows is shutting down...

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Huh. So this is what a Final Fantasy game is like.

This game's a very interesting beast. With its traditional turn-based combat, spells like Firaga and Blizzara, Phoenix Downs and Cait Siths, it's a Final Fantasy game in everything but name. Which is interesting, because the only other Final Fantasy games I've played are the first and the XIII games. The first game bored me due to its lack of personality from its main characters and its weak story, though being one of the first RPGs, you can't fault it for that. XIII and XIII-2 I enjoy to varying degrees, but we all know what popular opinion on XIII is, so no point beating that dead horse. I say this because this game, in both form and function, harkens back to older Final Fantasy games. For others, it may cause a wave of nostalgic emotions. For me, though, I'll be able to judge it objectively on its own merits.

Story

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Our heroes in a rare, non-super deformed state.

Our four Warriors of the Light, as it were, are Tiz Arrior, a humble farmboy whose home village is swallowed up by a giant chasm that appears out of nowhere, Agnes Oblige, a young maiden who's tasked with awakening four crystals from their slumbering state, Ringabel, an amnesiac casanova who carries around a mysterious journal that tells the future, and Edea, the heiress of the antagonistic Duchy of Eternia who can't stand her home's crimes anymore. Together, they have to go across the world to awaken four crystals to save the world from darkness and fight an evil empire.

Sound trite and cliche? That's only because it is. The first good chunk of the game that centers around this plot is somewhat boring, since it's nothing you've never seen before. As time goes by, though, the story opens up, and plot twist after plot twist unravels to make the game much more interesting than it would originally seem. Specifically, Edea's concept of black and white morality is gradually challenged, until it's clear that both sides have varying shades of gray to them.

As for the characters themselves, they too vary in quality. Ringabel and Edea are the clear standouts, with Tiz and Agnes, our two "leads", being much more conventional and, as a result, boring. Unfortunately, everything seems against their favor. Ringabel and Edea start out with interesting characters, and as their story arcs develop, they become even more interesting. Tiz and Agnes start off pretty bland, and they don't really have any kind of character arcs to speak of, so they remain bland. Ringabel and Edea's voice acting are adequate, while Tiz and especially Agnes are tolerable at best. Ringabel and Edea's leitmotifs are awesome, Tiz and Agnes' are a touch lacking. Like I said, everything seems against them, which is unfortunate seeing how they're supposed to be the lead characters.

It's a good thing the supporting cast shines through. While some characters fit their stereotypes to a tee, the ones that show up later into the game are much more interesting and fleshed out, with one in particular being a standout.

The good thing about the game's twists, for the most part, is that they seem to go at the same pace as you do. As soon as you start picking up that something may be amiss, characters in the game realize the same thing. It's a great feeling when the characters are just as smart as you are. Unfortunately, near the end of the game, there is one major element that I feel was horribly fumbled. I won't be specific, but you may be able to surmise what the twist is from what I say, so if you're afraid of that, you can skip over this portion.

Spoiler

Despite that last major issue that almost personally crippled the ending for me, for the most part it's a well done story, even if it has its down moments and occasional hiccups here and there.

Gameplay

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Note the BP numbers. In this scenario, Tiz and Edea can chain multiple actions together in one turn without consequence, while Ringabel is forced to sit out for one turn.

As most people have pointed out, though, the battle system is what steals the show. It behaves like a normal turn-based RPG, with characters having the option to attack or use an ability each turn, etc. You know the drill. Actions are based around Brave Points, or BP. Your standard attacks and skills each cost one BP, and every turn every unit gains one BP; so if everyone just attacked like normal, it would behave like a normal RPG. But the big change comes with the game's nonsensical title: Braving and Defaulting. The option "Default" is essentially "Defend", except it not only cuts down damage you take that turn, it stores up one additional BP. Then there's Brave, which lets you attack an additionally time that turn, or up to four times if you wish. Depending on how you play, you can either use the BP you've been stocking with Default to go on an all-out offensive, or you can feel free to spam attacks when you don't have that many BP to spare; just keep in mind that you'll be a sitting duck while you wait for your BP to fill up again. In addition, certain killer moves that you gain near the end of the game cost BP as opposed to Magic, so you really need to plan out if a certain attack is worth surrendering future turns.

There's also the friend summoning system. While normal summons do exist in the game, summons are primarily done via StreetPass and SpotPass. When you're about to perform a devastating super attack, you can choose to Send the attack out. The attack performs like normal, except now it's stored as Summon data. When you StreetPass with people, or connect with online friends via SpotPass, you'll swap Summons with one another. You can only use a received summon once (though can gain them again on future passing), and depending on how far along the game your friend is, they can act as emergency kill moves.

Another social system is the Abilinks system. If your friend owns the game, you can link up a character with theirs (e.g. you can link your Tiz with their Tiz, etc.), and while your level and stats will remain the same, you can use all the abilities that their characters knows. You can also switch which character you're borrowing from at any time if you feel like it. This system's a good idea, but in practice it is a bit broken; while you might not have the stats to back them up, being able to use ultimate skills from day one can be a bit much.

There's also the Bravely Second feature, added in the Japanese rerelease as a tease for the upcoming sequel...Bravely Second. At any time, you can hit Start to freeze the game (whether it's during your turn while deciding actions, or in the middle of a turn, it matters not). When you do this, you can select any of your characters and have them perform any move, regardless of their BP. Moves used during this state break the 9999 damage cap, which means a well-timed move can annihilate a foe. The catch is that each use of Bravely Second costs Sleep Points, which are gained by just that: sleeping. For every 8 (nonconsecutive) hours your 3DS is in Sleep Mode, you will gain 1 SP, and you cap out at 3. This makes Bravely Second a prized ability that must be saved for only the most dire situations. There's an in-game store where you can buy SP for real-world currency, but that's entirely up to you. Thankfully, that's the only case of micro-transactions in the game, so you don't have to worry about it pinching your pennies.

Another reason to leave your 3DS in constantly sleep mode is the reconstruction of Tiz's hometown of Norende. A Facebook-esque minigame that takes place in the background at all times, there are different parts of his village that need reconstruction. For instance, you might have a weapon shop that will take 4 hours, and an item shop that will take 2. You start with a handful of units, and you can spread them as you wish. If you had two units to spare, you could put them into each of those buildings to have them ready in that amount of time, or you could put both in the weapon shop to have its time divided by 2 and have it ready in 2 hours. You gain more workers each time you StreetPass/SpotPass, which you'll need when all the buildings start taking 99 hours. Eventually, your work there will allow you to buy unique weapons and armor from the Adventurer (your save station that appears all over the place), as well as grant you access to newer special moves.

One other thing worth mentioning, and probably the most significant, is the job system. At any time outside of battle, you're free to switch your characters' jobs. There's a multitude of jobs (capping off at 24), and while the ones you start off with such as Black Mage, White Mage, Knight, etc. are the same old same old you've come to expect, as you progress further through the game you, you'll get into the more unique and bizarre classes, such as Ninja, Vampire, and Performer, who dresses as either an Elvis impersonator or in a bunny outfit depending on the gender.

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You love it, you know you do.

Outside of your basic job, which comes with battle abilities and one inherent support ability, you're given a wide variety of mixing and matching options. Each character can choose one job command, which lets them use all of the battle abilities of one class (e.g. you can have a Black Mage who can use all of their known White Mage spells, a Knight who can use all of their known Monk attacks, etc.). They can also equip support (passive) abilities that they learn from various classes, up to a certain number depending on how far through the game you are. This allows for a lot of unique combinations: you can be a Ninja skilled at dodging with the Red Mage's support ability that grants you 1 BP for each dodge. Or you can be a Pirate with the massive MP-consuming Amped Strike with the Swordmaster's battle ability Free Lunch, which negates MP cost for two turns. Or you can be a Spiritmaster using the ability Stillness which costs 2BP but negates all damage for two turns, in addition to the Time Mage's support ability Hasten World which grants everyone an additional BP each turn. There's a whole lot of creative possibilities out there, which each player will most likely only scratch the surface of, and the potential for that creativity makes it a great system.

One last thing to note is the ability to tweak difficulty. You have your standard Easy/Normal/Hard that you can change at any time, and then you have your sadism abilities to disable gold/experience gains. But then you have the random encounter slider, where you can go anywhere between force an encounter every two steps and disable them altogether. While disabling them may seem nice, you must keep in mind that grinding is a necessary evil to overcome those bosses. However, since you have the choice of when to grind, you can go through whole dungeons without fighting a single enemy, or walk in circles on the overworld to grind while watching TV in the background. This is assisted by the ability to fastforward battles or put it on autopilot to constantly repeat the last move you made. All of these together make grinding an incredibly simple matter. Whether this works or not is up to personal discretion; it creates a completely different rhythm that's alien from most JRPGs. While it does work better than forcing random encounters, I believe that the next necessary step is to make a game where the grinding element does not exist at all, or at least doesn't feel like grinding. As is, though, this is a decent medium that lets you decide where and when you want to do your grinding.

Aesthetics

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This isn't concept art; these are your in-game graphics.

Character sprites are about what you'd expect on the 3DS; averagely detailed, a little cartoony, not perfect but not bad. The star of the show graphically, though, is the backdrops. Each city looks like a painting that you're interacting with, and if you stand still long enough, the camera will zoom out to show the whole area, letting you marvel in it all. Technically, it's nothing all that special, but artistically, it's a masterwork to behold.

On the audio end of things, we've got the soundtrack, which is absolutely superb. Instead of your typical Nobuo Uematsu, Masashi Hamauzu or Yoko Shimomura, instead we have Revo (sometimes known as Linked Horizon), the same band that brought us the world-stopping opening to Attack on Titan. The result is a very rock-inspired soundtrack, which you would think may be at odds with a JRPG that is dug so deep into its traditional roots. However, it surprisingly works. It helps that the calmer themes, such as city themes or dramatic music, stays orchestral, which comes as a surprise from a band that is known for a rocking opening theme. Once you get into battle, though, things take an awesome turn. Even the traditional battle theme, which is often a bore and a chore to listen to in most JRPGs, has a really cool driving beat with drums smashing in the background and guitar riffs throughout to accompany the blaring trumpets. Personal favorites of mine include That Person's Name Is (mini-boss music played when battling Job holders, who you must defeat to obtain their job), Baby Bird and Love's Vagrant (Edea and Ringabel's respective leitmotifs that play when activating their special moves), The Civil War Country (the third country's map music, which is surprisingly forward for a town theme), and the final battle musics (the names of which may be spoilerific so I'll refrain from naming them here).

In fact, a year after the game's release in Japan, the band had a live concert playing the game's music. If you thought shows like Symphony of the Goddess were a big deal, this show blew them out of the water. These are guys in outfits, rocking out hardcore to video game music. It's pure bliss.

And that leaves us with the voice acting. It's...hit or miss. The side characters' voice acting is averagely good, which is fine since they only show up here and there. The problem comes with our main characters. As stated before, Ringabel and Edea are fine, and Tiz is acceptable, but to quote Agnes' catchphrase, her voice acting is "Unacceptable!". It's incredibly breathy, as if she's constantly on the back end of running a marathon. I get if they wanted to make her sound pure and refined and all that, but it comes off as artificial. And again, this is a problem since she's ostensibly the main character. And when your lead's voice acting is so horrid that you want to constantly skip past their dialogue, you're forcibly torn from the experience. While the voice acting by no means ruins the game, it is a rather large mar that can't be overlooked.

Value

This is a classic RPG, so you know what that means. That's right; it's long. Like, really, REALLY long. I clocked in at 84 hours, and while I wasn't ADD enough to collect every weapon and encounter every enemy and all that, I did take part in every sidequest (except one I accidentally missed, but it wasn't of major importance, so it's not a big deal), and apparently that's around the average, if only slightly above. At any rate, if you can't dedicate yourself to a long game, then this won't be for you. But if you're looking for a time vacuum, then look no further.

Unfortunately, a lot of that time is spent in tedious repetition. I'll refrain from explaining why because, again, spoilers, but let's just say that after the 40 hour mark, you're going to be doing a LOT of backtracking and repeating things you've already done. At least you can turn off the random encounters so you don't waste too much time in these old dungeons, but it can still sometimes feel like a chore.

There's plenty of sidequests, and for the first half of the game, they're incredibly significant. Not only do they provide some major character beats, but each one results in gaining new jobs, which opens up new options, which is a plus. In the second half of the game, the sidequests are more there for humor or character development, without any real substantial gains. If you care that much about the characters and the world, they're still fun to perform; if not, that will probably shave 10 or so hours off of your total playtime.

As mentioned in the spoiler section above, there's two different endings depending on a choice you make during the game. Thankfully, while your levels and stats are saved, the game drops you off before you make said choice after beating the final boss of one ending, allowing you to play out the other if you wish. There's also a New Game +, in which you can carry over your gear. After such a massive game, though, I'm not sure if anyone would want to play it again immediately afterwards, just from fatigue.

Conclusion

Overall, I'd say this is one of the better games on the system, and that's saying a lot, seeing how the 3DS has seen a massive boost in wonderful games. The combat is incredibly deep, the soundtrack is kickin, and while the tedious grind of the latter half and the mediocre voice acting can hold it back, it's still worth playing. It's no masterpiece that will change how you look at the genre, but it's easily one of the better entries in recent years. If you're an old-school Final Fantasy Fan[tasy], and the recent games have angered you due to their departure from the norms, then this is the game for you: reaching back for nostalgia while moving forward with new ideas that don't deviate from the formula, but instead progress it.

Story:
+ Gets interesting the further you get into the game
+ Some impressive plot twists, even if some are more predictable than others

- Starts off weak and stale
- One major twist fumble near the end
- Choosing different endings feels backwards and makes you feel like a tool

Gameplay
+ Brave/Default system keeps you on your toes, planning multiple moves in advance
+ Job system is well thought out, allowing for endless creative combinations
+ Social features, while a bit overpowered at times, are a fun inclusion

Aesthetics
+ Artistically stunning at times
+ Kickass soundtrack

- Voice acting leaves a lot to be desired

Value
+ Will last you around 70-90 hours

- Around half of this time feels tedious and repetitive, exhausting your patience and making you want it to just end already.

8/10

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Playin' MCs since 1999.

Mmmm, good ol' Boondocks.

Most people know what it is by now, and its impact is undeniable. Satirically sharp, intelligent, hysterically funny and arguably one of the most poignant franchises in years, The Boondocks was created by Aaron McGruder for The Diamondback student newspaper located in Maryland. Although the comic strip was initially produced in 1996, it wasn't until 1999 where it made its national debut with the help of Universal Press Syndicate and became the hit it is today. What made it different from other generic strips like Cathy and Garfield was the fact that it lampooned both African American culture and American politics. Rarely did it rely on the cheap one-note humor that its peers abused to death and beyond, instead opting for controversial viewpoints on various subjects (whether it be racial, class or social) and more thought-provoking quips.

The cast is just as interesting to boot. Huey Freeman, arguably the protagonist, is a cynical, leftist, intelligent kid that also happens to be a retired domestic terrorist (take their word for it). He's often the mouthpiece for Aaron McGruder, and looks down on the idiots of society, whether they be racial stereotypes or simply people that don't know any better. Riley Freeman, the other de facto protagonist, is his brother and complete opposite; a wannabe, misogynist, bratty gangster who represents everything Huey has disdain for. Nonetheless, the two share a reasonably tight relationship and are the most prominent characters. Not far behind is their parental grandfather and legal guardian, Robert Freeman, who's witnessed many American tragedies and was a part of the Civil Rights Movement. Despite being perpetually on a quest for tail and often at odds with his grandchildren, he still deeply loves them and does what he can to keep them out of trouble.

Other prominent characters are Michael Caesar, Huey's best friend and other foil, Thomas and Sara Dubois, an interracial couple with a biracial daughter, Jazmine, who's naive, insecure about her biracial status and often the target of scorn from Huey, Cindy McPhearson, who's basically a female Riley and Uncle Ruckus, a racist, self-loathing man who claims to have vitiligo and has limitless praise for the white man despite, ironically, being black himself.

Due to such a daring stance and masterful, if occasionally offensive, ability to tackle serious topics, along with a cast ripe for satirical overviews, it often became the victim and/or target of op-ed movements and cancellation for newspapers. Nevertheless, it still had a large fan-base that continued to grow over the years exactly because of its content. Eventually, despite being one of the biggest names on UPS, it ended in 2006 and the rights were sold to Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Those who aren't overly familiar with the series are probably asking "well, is that it?". Ho ho, not by a long shot, my friend.

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The stone that the builder refused, practically endorsed the n-word and made viciously assaulting male testicles a phenomenon.

A year before the strip met its untimely end, McGruder decided to create a television series based off it, and unlike other comic strip adaptions that sucked (I'm looking at you, Baby Blues), Boondocks' adaption was incredibly well-received. Not only was the satire prevalent in the strip perfectly translated from the show, but the humor was arguably even better and ten times as offensive and risque; seriously, tell me you didn't laugh your ass off the first time Ed Wuncler III showed up and started harking on about Iraq. Absolutely priceless, nothing more and nothing less. Quite apart from that, however, the show was also lauded for its soundtrack, featuring tracks from underground players such as Asheru, who's now one of my favorite tappers ever, and the art style, which progressively got more anime-esque until you could almost mistake it for an actual anime. These other two aspects not only made the show a superb adaption of the strip, it also became an entirely different entity and enjoyed on its own merits.

The characters were just as effectively adapted as the satire and humor. Riley and Ruckus spout the n-word more than anyone else in the show, Huey is even more dark and serious, Robert's perverted behavior and frustration at his grandsons became his defining traits, the Dubois' interracial marriage status became frequently lamp-shaded and a source of Tom's (often hilarious) abuse and Cindy Robinson is copied word for word from the comic in the best way possible. Michael Caesar, unfortunately, has yet to make an appearance due to Huey already having Riley as his perfect foil, though in his place are perfect additions to the cast.

The aforementioned Ed Wuncler III and his buddy, Gin Rummy, for starters, are white men voiced by black actors (Charlie Murphy and Samuel L. Jackson) and are the spitting image of wiggers everywhere. A pair of psychopathic soldiers who, despite having only a handful of appearances, are downright hilarious and provide a good deal of the show's humor. Ed's grandfather, voiced by Ed Asner, needs no introduction, as he's too much of a brilliant bastard for words. Thugnificent, another great character, is a goldmine of hilarious quotes ("eat a dick!") and a famous rapper whose popularity eventually goes down the tubes in the third season. His voice fits him to a T and he's also a frequent source of humor for the show. Once you see enough of his scenes, you'll never get tired of him. Colonel H. Stinkmeaner, Gangstalicious, Bushido Brown and A Pimp Named Slickback are also notable additions to the cast, all amazing in their own right. Stinkmeaner and APNS are two of the show's breadwinners in terms of brilliant dialogue, Bushido Brown is badassery personified and Gangstalicious is... well... something else entirely.

Keep in mind that these guys are just the tip of the iceberg for the adaption, as the show introduces many more new faces that are sure to make you laugh yourself into a coma.

You can, and WILL, get this stuck in your head at some point. I guarantee it.

All things considered, it was hard to debate the quality of the show at the time, but there was absolutely NO debating that the show arguably rivaled its sister strip in the sheer mountains of controversy it attracted, whether it be from the constant racial humor, the caricatures, the profanity-laced dialogue... you name it. That being said, the show's first two seasons were obviously a tremendous success and the show became one of Adult Swim's most popular and critically acclaimed shows. Due to how expensive and time-consuming the show was to produce, however, the third season wasn't released until 2010. The first two, in comparison, were separated by a mere year, and this only served to make the show's large viewer-base antsy and impatient. Few can deny that the wait was worth it, however, as the third season dialed the insanity up about five extra notches and had some of the funniest and most controversial episodes so far. I can safely say that I still watch A Date with the Booty Warrior from time to time, as its one of the most priceless pieces of animation I've ever witnessed.

The season finale, It's Goin' Down, aired in the middle of August 2010, and the show ended its time in the spotlight. With 45 episodes of satire, crazy story-lines and other sweet things like that, The Boondocks left its mark and then some. However, it's been four years since then, and many fans have speculated that the show reached its end and wouldn't go on to even bigger heights. Tears were shed and demands for another season came flying like tomatoes at a Broadway stage, and eventually...

Pay yo taxes.

McGruder, unfortunately, won't be involved in this season but nonetheless, I'm hyped as all hell.

And you should be too; lest you be a slave. Oh, and dat BB reference at 1:09.

South Park definitely hasn’t had the strongest history of video game tie-ins. During the show’s heyday back when it first premiered around the late 90s, people were pretty quick to try and cash in on the hit show through various kinds of merchandise; this, of course, includes video games, with two games based on the series getting released for 5^th Generation consoles. While I haven’t played them myself, reviews were mixed at best, and Matt Stone and Trey Parker had hardly any involvement in their production and would even end up voicing their disdain for the products years down the line. Aside from that, years down the line after the show had cemented its place in TV history, some small indie titles for the series were released as a tie-in to the series; while they weren’t quite as much of a hastily thrown together experience like the games in the late 90s, they still weren't a completely fleshed-out South Park experience in video game format.

Luckily, being avid video game fans themselves, Matt and Trey sought out Obsidian Entertainment in order to try and rectify the franchise’s lackluster history in the medium. And the resulting product from this collaboration was South Park: The Stick of Truth. And I really don’t have to hesitate when saying that this is bar none the best South Park game available to date. It’s not only a beautifully crafted love letter to long-time fans of the series but also a great entryway into both the TV show itself and the RPG genre for newcomers to each. What everyone involved in the making of this game managed to accomplish with the material that they were given was nothing short of delightful.

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Now to provide a small summary of the game's premise. At the start of the game you’re placed in the role of the new kid, who has just moved in to the town of South Park and is tasked by his parents to go out and make friends. Soon afterwards, you become acquainted with Cartman and several of the other boys who are playing a roleplaying game involving humans and elves, with Cartman being the leader of the group of humans known as “Kupa Keep”. After realizing the vast potential that the new kid has to make friends with nearly anyone faster than anyone else, he tasks you to go around and recruit more kids to their side so they can overthrow the opposing group of kids that make up the elven kingdom. The general plot of the game is a relatively simple concept that, like most things in South Park, escalates out of control in a bizarre and over-the-top fashion fairly quickly. And for the sake of those who have yet to expose themselves to much of the game's story, I want to avoid disclosing any more information in order for the game to be as much of a surprise as possible.

As you have probably gathered from the description of the story, the basis of the gameplay is similar to that of a standard RPG; in fact, a lot of the game is practically a spiritual successor to the first two Paper Mario games with a wonderful South Park coat of paint. For starters, you play as your avatar character and are able keep one of six partner characters that make up the main cast of the series. Each partner has unique abilities and attacks that can be used both outside and inside of battle, and on top of that, unique dialogue was recorded for each character for whenever you interact with objects and characters in the environment. Battles are turn-based, but with timed prompts to increase damage that you inflict or decrease the damage that enemies inflict upon you. And hell, the game is made to look exactly like the show, so you can count the fact that it’s animated to look like paper cut-outs as well, with the camera being at a fixed angle as you traverse the town of South Park and its outskirts.

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Without a doubt, the biggest strength of the game is the impeccable writing. Simply saying that The Stick of Truth is “like playing an episode of South Park” is an understatement; the game practically crams the entire series-worth of content into a single game disc. Matt, Trey and the developers at Obsidian spared absolutely no time in stuffing the game full of as many references and injokes to the series as possible. However, before I continue, let me clarify something about that statement first: the term “reference”, especially when referring to comedy, has a tendency of giving off a negative connotation due to how poorly other shows and games have utilized them for the sake of pulling off a comedic moment rooted solely in nostalgia. In The Stick of Truth’s case, however, the references don’t ever interrupt the flow of the game just to say “Remember when THIS happened in the show?” to the player.

Instead, the references are just a part of the universe, and they’re scattered around the game in bits and pieces for people who are attentive enough to look for them all. For example, if you choose to go in to the town’s movie theater, you’ll hear all a various amount of Trey’s “Rob Schneider” trailer narrations playing in the background. And if you go looking in the personal quarters of certain characters, you’ll find miscellaneous items from their past lying around; with Cartman, for example, you can find his AWESOM-O outfit stuffed in his closet and the Antonio Bandereas Life-Sized Blow Up Doll sitting inside the headquarters located in his backyard. Essentially, if you can think of a certain character or moment from the show, no matter how minor, you can most likely find it. It’s the ultimate South Park treasure trove in nearly every conceivable way, and Matt and Trey seemed to know exactly how to take advantage of putting their long-running franchise into this new medium.

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It’s the exact opposite of something like, say, The Simpsons Game, which had writing that solely centered around the characters being aware that they’re in a video game and running the joke into the ground before you’re even halfway into it. The Stick of Truth never does that; since the story itself is essentially a self-contained, interactive episode of the show, not once do they pull the self-referential “we’re in a video game” joke. The closest that we ever get to that kind of a joke is in a couple tutorials, but even then the characters never go out of their way to completely break the fourth wall and usually provide comedic excuses for the way the game works; for instance, when Clyde complains about the fact that the battles are turn-based, Cartman justifies it by saying that it’s how “the people in the middle ages did it”. It’s a simple joke that fits the character well and doesn’t destroy the illusion of the world that the game has built for us.

The layout of the town is something else that I have to admire. According to Matt and Trey themselves, before working on this game they really had no idea how the arrangement of South Park worked, since all they had to do in the show was cut to whatever location in which a scene needed to take place. So playing this game is pretty much the first time that you’ll learn the geography of every memorable location or landmark in the town. Certain locations of note from my experience with the game include Kenny’s dirt-poor house being blatantly segregated from the rest of the town by a set of train tracks, and the fact that the entire region of Canada can be reached just by traveling north through the woods. Speaking of Canada, the way that they went about “adapting” the country so to speak works so well that I wish I could actually share more about it, but I feel like it’s more worth it to discover it yourself by playing the game.

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The difficulty of the game is something that I haven’t truly experimented with, to be completely honest. I had a relatively easy time completing the game, but to my recollection this is because I ran through the game on a normal difficulty setting. Throughout the game you’re free to either increase or decrease the difficulty in order to fit your gameplay skill, which is convenient for people who have either found their groove quickly or need more practice. With that said, even when you stay on a consistent difficulty path, the game has a tendency to have an ambiguous difficulty curve. Often times the game was relatively easy for me to progress through, but at certain points, including both side missions and the main story, would go up against certain bosses that would mop the floor with me.

When it comes to criticisms that I have for the game, for the most part they're pretty minor. While not being extremely difficult could be a turn-off to some people wanting to try the game, I feel like it's not objective enough to really include among some of the lesser aspects of the game. Something in particular that comes to mind when it comes to what could be improved is that the game is prone to lag and framerate issues at random times. I found that kind of strange given how simple the graphics are, but since I only experienced this occasionally whie traversing the town, it didn't detract from much. And keep in mind that I played the PS3 version, so other versions of the game may not have this problem.

Another small issue that I had with the game is the way “junk” is implemented. As you go through the game you can rummage through other peoples’ belongings; you’ll either find new weapons, armor, elemental attributes, or miscellaneous junk. Since the junk serves no real purpose other than possibly being a fun easter egg, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ll end up selling all the junk you find for more money. While this sounds fine, the fact that you can find an abundance of junk everywhere means that money will never be an issue for you. You’ll pretty much be able to purchase any high level weapon that you please by the time that you’re a high enough level to equip it, which removes the possibility of having to really think about the way you play. I guess on the plus side, the fact that you can get so much money so quickly is good in order to unlock the single best feature of the game:

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Yes, for over 200 in-game dollars, you can pay the fine plastic surgeons at Tom’s Rhinoplasty to give you Mr. Garrison’s “Hasselhoff” makeover. And your character will be shown like this through all gameplay and cutscenes. There was really no way for the game to get any better after unearthing this incredible feature.

In summary, there are many ways for me to recommend this game to others. For anyone who is a fan of a show in even the slightest way, this game is for you. For anyone less fond of RPGs and would like a good jump-in point to get their feet wet, this game is a great place to get your feet wet. For people who aren’t fond of the show, I’m not sure if this game will be able to change your mind. Even so, it makes me happy to see South Park finally get a game that wasn’t thrown together as some sort of soulless cash grab. Matt and Trey truly wanted to give fans of their show the definitive South Park video game experience, and The Stick of Truth delivers that in spades.

Welcome once again to the Hall Of Frame, where we look at our favorite frames from some of the craziest cartoons. Today, we're going to tackle another YTP favorite, that being Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog. This is perhaps the third most used YTP source in the history of the genre, and it's very easy to see why. Apart from it's sense of humor that combines most of the slapstick of the Looney Tunes with the typical Saturday morning cartoon self-awarness, it's animation style is notable for how unconventional it is compared to others. With a cheap looking style and designs, AoTSH manages to produce a variety of wonderful and expressive visual gags. They capture the character's traits perfectly, with Sonic's fast movement and Robotnik's hammy ego. It never loses sight of the fact it is a cartoon and uses all the opportunities it can to express the surreal nature that lies in a world of pure nonsense. Yes, for such a simple show, AoTSH can bring about some truly great frames worth to be talked about. And we're here to talk about them.

HerrVarden's Pick: Decoy In Fear

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One may consider this frame to be nothing out of the ordinary at first. It it merely a damsel in distress threatened by a mechanical chicken. The execution of such though leads itself to a great attention to detail. First of all, consider that the episode in which this frame is a part of revolves around Breezy. For it to properly revolve itself around the character, she has to be able to draw the eye. While she is intended to be some sort of hedgehog robot look-alike, the humanistic qualities that are added on to her allow for her to stand out more amongst the usual cast. To further drive that she is the center of attention, she is given a curvacious figure and long hair, which is usually considered as one of the pinnacles of feminine beauty. The choices of color in her appearance are also important to take note. The blue in her hair allows for Sonic to find something in common with her, the greenish-turquoise skin is calming and can draw Sonic to feel the need for companionship and the red is simply a hook that draws him in, moreso when considering that her skin compliments it so well. The red also signifies the duality of Breezy's character later in the episode. Scratch, on the other hand, exemplifies the menacing factors with his threatening glare, but also note that his lower half of his beak is perpendicular to the upper half. While this can be attributed to the flexibility of his robotic design, also consider that the way his jaw bends can lead him to become some sort of frightening abomination. A mechanical nightmare that proves to be a greater threat that anyone has ever seen. Worst of all, Scratch seems to look at you, increasing the fear. He already has his prey tied up, he'd much rather go for something that is still moving and devour it in the most gruesome of forms. This frame captures more of the danger that Breezy faces and how one feels the need to save her from the atrocity that she is about to face.

Crazy Luigi's Pick: The Remarkable Rear Of Robotnik

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Honestly, finding the perfect frame to select from out of the scenes that came from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog kind of felt like a challenge for me. Don't get me wrong, it's not because of how difficult it was to find such a frame, but rather it almost felt too easy! There have been plenty of ridiculous scenes like Dr. Robotnik having a giant hand just to pick up a just as huge phone out of his pants, but I wanted something that was very seldom talked about as my selection. However, I wanted my selection to look downright insane as to what's even happening as opposed to Looney Tunes-like logic such as Scratch turning his hand into a sexy lady or Grounder turning his hand into a pumpkin. I honestly felt uncertain on whether I'd even find it or not... until I discovered this piece!

By glancing over the image at first, I felt as if someone had accidentally created a monstrous combination of Scratch and Grounder that no one had ever noticed beforehand. The fact that the bumbling duo's faces look as they are help make such a feeling look all that more strange for such a feeling to happen in the first place. Once I actually looked closer at this image, there were still things about it that stood for me to still find it worthwhile to look at. For starters, the faces that both Scratch and Grounder make are so unbelievably ridiculous that you just can't help but laugh at how messed up they are. Of course, you can't help but mention that ass of Dr. Robotnik here being one of the biggest times we've seen it yet. However, the thing that might make it really complete is how out of context this could possibly be.

Without context, you would likely have so many questions in wondering what the Hell is even going on here. I already mentioned the obvious of a monstrous combination early on, but there's still more questions beyond that to ask here. For starters, why did Scratch and Grounder get near Dr. Robotnik's ass in the first place? Are the quirky duo making those faces due to how bad his ass smells, or is his ass eating the two alive? There's also a sort of laser blast that appears to be going on, yet what is it supposed to do, and is it already taking effect on the three? It's questions like those that magnify how ridiculously perfect this screenshot is that I have to give it my dubious honor of being on the Hall of Frame.

SkyBlueFox's Pick: Dr. Robotnik In Anguish

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I'm constantly finding myself drawn to this particular frame (pun unintended), but for a while I was never able to pin down why. Even for the standards of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, it feels very cartoonish and "wacky". Considering the entire cartoon runs on "wacky", that's quite a feat, I'd say.

The major aspect that stands out is just how utterly different and somehow expressive the frame is, even though it's literally nothing more than Robotnik's mouth and a stubby pair of feet and arms. At times I've thought that I get a bit of a Peanuts vibe from it, thinking back to the medley of times where Charlie Brown or another character became nothing but a large mouth and tiny nose while screaming in frustration or indignity. The good, er, evil doctor's face has become so wobbly and contorted in pain that it literally hides his entire body. It's quite possibly the laziest way to draw Robotnik screaming, yet it's somehow incredibly charming to look at. I can't help but smile and laugh every time I see it.

It's not a part of the animation that's given focus, of course - Robotnik screams like this for maybe half a second before the episode continues on - but that perhaps makes it even more interesting, especially when you consider that the show never tried drawing Robotnik screaming in this way ever again, at least to my knowledge. In the end I feel like this is one of the hidden gems that fulfill's Milton Knight's philosophy when drawing Robotnik: he's not necessarily drawn well, but he's most certainly drawn expressively, and that's what counts.

Nozdordomu's Pick: The Grounder Conundrum

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Another YouChew user looked at this frame and remarked that it looked like "a huge naked black guy's about to sit on Grounder." That sounds about right. There's plenty wrong with the picture without counting the black buttocks (note Grounder's human hands, the terrible perspective, or the Chinese food box on his head), but they just push it all into a new realm of strangeness. I like this frame because you can practically build a whole episode around it. Let's say Grounder wanted to be a human, but his plans went awry, and so now he only has human hands and he somehow created a mutant giant black man. Imagine that Robotnik wasn't impressed with Grounder's declaration of love and decided to show him what real love meant: getting buried under a big black ass. Perhaps Grounder's Chinese food hat attracted the butt with its smell. Maybe Robotnik wasn't satisfied with the first frame of "Tails in Charge" and decided to up the ante, and become black at the same time (why not?). This picture practically dares you not to find anything silly about it. I also find humor in Grounder's expression, which makes him look like a cross between Donkey Kong and a blowfish. I haven't seen the source episode, but to be honest, I don't care to find out what those big brown things actually are, even if it's funnier than black people sitting on robots.

Mushrooms' Pick: Cocunuts' Comeuppance

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Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog is no stranger to animation smears and this frame isn't any different. We have Coconuts in disguise as a bearded magenta and black paint smear with a chef's hat, cooking what is obviously molten magma in a pitch-black pot decorated with a skull and crossbones just to illustrate the sheer level of hardcore death metal Coconuts is at. On the right, there's a blue-armed Sonic (minus bandages) and Tails with what looks like an unused red tic-tac-toe board with an erupting volcano in the distance.

But wait, something's not quite right here. They're clearly irked about something. Not just irked, but completely overcome with rage. This isn't just ordinary frustration, this is the face of death. Those are the eyes of a killer. They're eyeing down Coconuts while he isn't even aware of the terror about to strike. Sonic and Tails want his ass dead and they want it dead now. Just look at their faces, you can tell what they're about to do to Coconuts is going to make Hannibal Lecter look like an episode of Sesame Street in comparison. They look like they're gonna commit a mass genocide, gather up all the dead bodies, build a pyramid out of the corpses, look back on all of it and say "yeah, we did that. That was fuckin' awesome." You know that volcano I mentioned earlier? That's symbolic of Sonic and Tails' rage about to erupt all over Coconuts. This is art, people. What the hell did Coconuts do to incite such a powerful wrath? He didn't cook some chili dogs fast enough. Dick.

Cantfly's Pick: Tails in Charge

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Yet another completely predictable entry from yours truly. You're sensing a common theme to my picks for the Hall of Frame, aren't you? Maybe my subconscious is trying to tell me that I have some sort of undying fascination with mustachioed men and detailed shots of their asses or something like that. I don't know, and I'd rather not dwell on that. Anyway let's take a closer look, shall we? I know you want to.

First off, the second thing that probably catches the viewer's eye when they happen upon this frame (with the first thing being so completely obvious that I don't think I need to spend time describing it) is the fact that this shot contains the title card. Since this means that this frame can be found at the very beginning of the episode, I think I'm allowed to make the accurate assumption that the animators who worked on this show went out of their way to make Robotnik's ass the key thing that keeps children in their seats. A bent-over view of his buttocks was what the writers considered to be their best foot forward. And who can really blame them when they have animation's sexiest fat man at their disposal. I'm surprised that this is the only episode of AoStH that I can think of which starts off with a Robotnik ass shot. If I was in charge of the show I'd make sure to start off every episode with some kind of subliminal buttocks imagery involving the infamous Doctor. It would make even the most forgettable episodes memorable for at least one thing. Because I'll say one thing for certain; I have the faintest idea of what even happens in "Tails in Charge" from when I last watched it years ago, but I will remember these first few seconds for the rest of my life.

Have you ever got the feeling that you were missing out on something? Like, the flavor of some product that has been out for years yet ignored by everyone? Here's an example for you; I’ve never bought a single can of Red Bull. In fact, I’ve never had Rockstar, or Monster, or any of these tall cans of pure energy. I come from a family that’s fairly sensitive to caffeine, so I never really bothered with anything more caffeinated than regular coffee or tea. Many of my friends in high school would regularly gulp down double servings of the sweet-scented grog with little to no effect, while I could only observe in quiet wonder. What, I asked myself, was so special about these beverages?

Red Bull is one of the oldest modern energy drinks, first produced in Austria in 1987. There have been energy drinks before Red Bull, but this is the product that set today’s standards of design; taurine, caffeine and sugar, served in a narrow can with an iconic label, sponsoring extreme sports events. This formula has been successful, and I aim to find out why.

While I was out buying a few cans, I found that there have been three novelty flavors released in 2012- cranberry red, lime silver, and blueberry blue- which were still in stock more than a year later, despite all appearances of never having been restocked. Only the sterile atmosphere of the market kept dust from forming on the cardboard 4-packs, each branded with the outline of a charging bull. I was leery of these drinks at first, since any beverage that hasn’t been consumed for that long would definitely have problems. Yet… those cans would also be like a time capsule, a frozen moment in time desperate to be shared with the rest of the world. Plus, if I was going to have a new experience, it might as well be a rarer experience. I picked up samples of each flavor and prepared myself.

Red Bull Classic

I figured I should have a control group. After all, I can’t give an honest opinion about a beverage if I’ve never sampled it before. Compared to an average North American cola can, the traditional one-serving Red Bull can is slim, taller than it is wide, seemingly designed to be easy to grip. There are much larger servings out there, overgrown tankards with more than two cans worth of beverage within, but I like the smaller design. This can’s design evokes some alien battery of unknown construction, sending a uniform chill into my hand as it saps heat. Better try it before it gets warm.

Pulling the tab feels different from a normal cola can. There is more resistance in the aluminum, built thinner yet stiffer, reinforced. The tab does not fold open a hole so much as punch it with the crack of a gunshot. Red Bull is differently carbonated as well, a sort of short “phut” rather than the slow, sustained fizz of a cola can. I can see the mist burst forth in a faint cloud. It smells like… energy drink. The aroma is artificial, with a hint of aspartame even if there is none. Here goes nothing.

Red Bull has a light texture, like a sort of thin apple juice. Unlike cola or juice cocktail, this drink doesn’t cling to my mouth, or stick to my teeth. I want to say it’s because Red Bull uses sugar instead of corn syrup, but that would only be an educated guess. The carbonation that accompanies it is light and subtle, a sort of background noise instead of a carbon dioxide burn. Red Bull does its best to be inoffensive and downright pleasant to drink.

Notice that I have not described the flavor, nor the taste. Sadly, Red Bull has a flavor that is both mystifying and disappointing. I can describe it as sugar and energy, but not much else applies to it. Whatever it is supposed to be, my tongue becomes numb to it after a few swigs so I only feel bubbles sliding down my throat. It’s not terrible, only underwhelming.

Actually, there is one flavor that this reminds me of. Imagine, if you will, your grandmother’s house. Next to your grandmother is a candy dish. There is no chocolate in there, nor gumdrops, nor mints. She only has the most basic of hard candies, like a lollipop without a handle or a Jolly Rancher without a wrapper. They come in many shapes, ribbons and drops, but this one is unidentifiable. This is the single melted blob of hard candy at the bottom of the dish, the one you pick at when you dig too greedily and too deep, desperately prying the last dollop of sugar from your grandma. You stick the jagged shard of candy in your mouth and wonder what kind of fruit it is supposed to be, while wondering if you have anything better to do with your afternoon. This piece of candy has done nothing to satisfy any desire you might have, but it is sweet so you take it regardless. That is the experience of drinking a can of original Red Bull.

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Red Bull: Red Edition

After experiencing normal Red Bull for the first time, my hopes were not high for the flavored editions. Plus, I’m not feeling a thing! Red Bull has this reputation as being twice as powerful as a cup of coffee, but all I feel is disappointment and an aftertaste. Nonetheless, I will clear my mind and try another.

Red is supposed to inspire aggression and feelings of strength, and I get that vibe from this can. The flavored editions all have a more “dignified” appearance than the default can; normal Red Bull is designed to look like a checkered flag, but these are all in solid colors with more emphasis on the bull mascot, rendered larger and in silhouette. The particular way light reflects off of the can is very photogenic, if that makes sense.

When I crack open the Red Edition, my nose is instantly battered by sour candy winds. The carbonation is as faint as always, only now with a stronger, more defined flavor. It is tart, very tart. The flavor itself resembles any three-dollar cranberry cocktail you would buy at a supermarket, threaded with carbon dioxide for a slight fizz. Red Edition manages to taste far cleaner than a normal cranberry cocktail, because of its lesser sugar content. A cocktail is normally supersaturated with corn syrup, so much that it coats the tongue purple and forms rings around your teeth. I wouldn’t call the flavor better, but it captures the essence of a cranberry cocktail well.

Acttuallyy, raw cranberrries don’’t taste anything likke cranberry conncentraate either. I’m ffairly sure that tthe Red Bulll companny just put some pecttin in the mix and ccalled it “”cranberry”, allowing the placebo effecct to do the rest. In fact, tthe ingredients llist is almost exxactly the same as a noormal Red Bull, exxept with “natural flavors”” instead of “natural and artificial fflavors”. The ddescription on the can nnever explicitly promised fruit juice. It’’s sweet, and tthat’s all that matters. It slides down my throat easier than that othher stuff. In fact, I’’d say it was the best flavor so far.

I’ve got tthis weird twitch goinng on. I thhink I might be tired from sitting arround indoors. I’’m going to go ffor a walk.

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Red Bull: Silver Edition

Okay, my head’s clear now. I’ve figured out what normal Red Bull tastes like, you won’t believe what normal Red Bull tastes like. Apples. It tastes like diluted apple juice that’s been kept in a plastic bag at room temperature for a while, like prison wine, not that I know what prison wine tastes like because I’ve never been to prison, never even visited one to see a relative or an ex-girlfriend, not even once. Or maybe I just like the sound of the word “apples”. Apples. Apples.

I’m glad I went for a walk, because I got to have Red Bull Silver while I was out. The special editions have very adult looking cans, which makes me wonder why everything has to be so dignified and adult these days, like we can’t enjoy a soft drink unless it looks like I pulled it out of Hugh Hefner’s mini bar if he has a mini bar, I have no idea if he does. So when I opened this can it did the usual “phut” thing it sprayed mist again, but it has a really light scent that I had to fish around to notice, kind of like how some fishermen hope the police don’t notice they don’t have a license because thirty dollars or more for one season is frankly ridiculous, I swear. This is lime flavored, right?

It’s more like a SweeTarts candy. You know, the pellets of powdered sugar compressed with fruit flavor and dye that really burn when you bite down on them, man I really want a SweeTart right now. That is exactly what a Silver Red Bull tastes like, probably the exact same ingredients, maybe even better than a SweeTart. I wouldn’t say it tastes like a lime though, because this can of sweet beverage tastes silver while a lime tastes green more than anything, green being a sort of earthy and organic scent not that organic means anything anymore, kind of like how this drink isn’t really lime.

I’m kind of thinking of Sprite or Sierra Mist or Surge or Mountain Dew or some other citrus soda pop right now, but that’s not what Silver Edition tastes like. Maybe if you squint really very extremely hard, it’s like a watered down, carbonated limeade, and since limeade is usually strong enough to remove stains from bathroom tiles that’s not a bad trade-off. Eeven the sour taste onnly linngers for aabout a seccond or so, like somme sort of reminder of whatt I was supposed to be ddoing here today instead of hikinng arround in the woods for ffifteen minutes or maybe morre. TThe ingredientss are all screwy arttificial stuff too, like “Glycerol Esters of Wwood Rosin”, which ssounds like the name of an old lady ffrom outer space. Also, why does SSilver Red Bull have “Blue 1 dye”” in it??

Great, tthe twitch is back, and now my heart feells all slow. I haaven’t been eatinng very healthy llately, and it shows. Got to get out excuse me.

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Red Bull: Blue Edition

Those scoundrels. Those LIARS. Have you seen the supermarkets, looked between the aisles to know what is really in your ~~muffins~~? Let me tell you about the blueberry ~~muffin~~. That confectionary demiurge, that yeast-burdened paste pretending to be cake through a mountain of syrup, is nothing but a lie meant to make mankind forget true blueberry behind its merest shadow. Have you ever questioned how or where blueberries can be picked in the dead, fallen depths of winter or farther? Have you ever wondered how the flavor of a limited resource such as a blueberry can be shared with a whole country when the farms are so much smaller than the population they feed? The answer is that these “blueberries” are pretenders to the throne, mere alchemical chimera born of artificial flavors and enough binding reagents to roll it up in a little ball. You consume the fruits of the living dead, and are told it is manna. No longer!

Blue Edition Red Bull claims many potencies I refuse to believe, such as the stimulating nature of its ingredients, but do not think you can brew a beverage with the same nature as those pernicious indigo dots that fill my muffin and tell me it is a fruit, not that it ever claimed to be a fruit. As usual for the unwitting minions of false deities, they wheedle and call it blueberry flavored, which I cannot quite disagree with. Except this brew is harsher, more sour, impregnated with astringency that the pretender usually lacks. Without being blunted by the syrup extracts usually found in these sweet lies most foul, whoever consumes this Red Bull is privileged with every blemish and birthmark the chemical carries. In some respects, there is nobility in how it tries to be more like real blueberries, flavor carried in a burst of juice rather than the jaw-exhausting morass of a ~~muffin~~. Aparrently, this allso contains ffifty percennt of my daily intake of “”pantothenic acid”, whatever thaat means. This stuff also didn’’t turn my tongue purpple, wwhich is sort of a disssapointment.

I have no iddea wwhat I was typping for the last few paragraphs. Outsidde, back in aa moment.

Sugar-Free Red Bull:

Garbage

Conclusion:

Now that I’m awake, and my clinic reassures me that my insurance covers what happened yesterday, I’m glad to give a retrospect on the Red, White, and Blue editions of Red Bull. Red was probably the best in that it tasted exactly like what it claimed to be. Silver was acceptable and did its job well, but wasn’t anything unusual. Blue, lastly, was just sad, and is incidentally the one that is easiest to find in stock as a grocery store. As an aside, apparently the Silver edition is hardest to find right now, so if you really need lime beverages you might have to go for Baja Mountain Dew or something. You can count me out, though; I've had enough of energy drinks, partially because my doctor told me to never touch Red Bull again. In fact, I’m about done with artificial energy drinks. It’s just kombucha tea from now on, and man is this stuff smooth. Another cup would be great right now.

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"Fuckin' boopin' ass game!" - JonTron

One's grump. The other is not so grump. You know the drill.

Game Grumps is a web-show created by Arin Hanson (Egoraptor) and Jon Jafari (JonTron) that involves them doing commentary on various games. Both of them were previously known for their own respective productions. Egoraptor is, of course, famous for the Awesome Series, along with Sequelitis and Girlchan in Paradise, among other things. JonTron is famous for, naturally, the JonTron Show on YouTube, along with a spin-off channel focusing on League of Legends. He's also involved in Polaris and Blistered Thumbs on That Guy With The Glasses. Due to the history of these internet personalities, many fans were both skeptical and excited for this show. Many speculations were formed about it at the time, and many different assumptions and viewpoints were expressed; among them were how well they would gel together and how well their styles of humor would work on the same video.

An interesting note is that the Grumps are often referred to as their real names as opposed to their internet aliases to drive home the "two dudes just playin' gamez" concept. Game Grumps came to fruition due to an argument between Arin and Jon about whether Wolf and Fox from StarFox were clones while they were playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl. A friend they were with told them that they were being needlessly grumpy over the game... and the rest is history. The two internet personalities created the channel on July 10th, 2012, and began the first era of Game Grumps with a Kirby Superstar play-through on the 18th. What set GG apart from the typical Let's Play was the lack of focus on the game mechanics, which at the time was seen as rather fresh and interesting.

It indeed was.

What made the show work wasn't specifically because it was so different from other Let's Plays, as mentioned before. The duo typically strayed away from LP hallmarks, yes, but they did it in favor of spontaneous conversation, vulgar, often goofball humor, a TON of gratuitous yelling and frequently (and hilariously) pointing out absurdities in the games themselves as opposed to just being different for the sake of it. To extenuate the supposed differentiation intention, Arin and Jon had made it clear several times that the videos weren't Let's Plays. Among the best early GG videos are the Goof Troop, Sonic '06 (although the length is an issue for some people) and Kirby Superstar series', along with the Chuckie Cheese and Mary-Kate and Ashley one-offs.

Beyond the challenges and quirks that made the show a blast to watch, though, was the dynamic between Jon and Arin. It was clear from the get-go that they were close friends and enjoyed each others' company, but their personalities and ideals often clashed, leading to many hilarious moments and rather though-provoking arguments. Both were rather hot-blooded and ready to go into mad tangents at the drop of a hat, but Jon seemed to do it more often. There was also Barry, their intrepid and sarcastic editor who soon developed a following and memetic worship from viewers. Some of the show's most insane and hysterical moments come from his little touches, so that's not a bad thing by any means.

Although the show, like any popular one, was polarizing from the very beginning, it quickly attracted a large fan-base that spawned tons of remixes, fan-art and a (usually) strong relationship between the Grumps themselves and viewers. Due to the massive popularity, the channel spawned numerous series' outside of the main one (Game Grumps, obviously); GG VS, GG Animated, Guest Grumps, Steam Train, Steam Rolled and Table Flip, along with several special holiday-themed series' (although just about everything after the Animated series began almost a year later).

In spite of the hilarious humor, numerous memorable episodes and endless memes, however, the series was definitely not without its flaws.

It was arguably around the time the Naughty Bear video was released where the Grumps began to really show signs of decreasing in quality. The duo seriously started to lose their humorous edge (to those that found them funny in the first place, anyway), hints became consistently ignored, which they blamed on the game's design as opposed to their own lack of attention, and some of their most notorious habits (ECH and Arin's often poorly formed opinions, among other things) became near impossible to bear. Even before that, though, the Grumps frequently stopped playing games out of nowhere either due to minor frustrations or simply losing interest a couple parts in. Not only that, but several fans felt that the Sonic '06 play-through went on a bit too long. Many instances within the YouTube comments and in various forums show that the show's decline can be pointed to as just as much a result of the constant bickering between individuals and idiotic mindsets as the shortcomings of the duo themselves.

Then, on June 25th, 2013, Jon left, causing quite the uproar amongst viewers due to the abruptness of it. His replacement was Dan Avidan (Danny Sexbang) of NinjaSexParty fame. The already large divide between the fans continued to grow at an increasingly fast pace and it was utterly obliterated upon the introduction of Steam Train, RIGHT AFTER Jon departing no less. At the time, you could count the amount of people taking this in stride on one hand. All of this thankfully cooled down after a while, however, and Danny eventually grew on the fans.

Danny indeed stuck out like a sore thumb for a while, being a bit too similar to Arin and agreeing with more or less everything he said, but the Wind Waker HD play-through revealed some rather dark secrets regarding Danny, causing many viewers (including me) to sympathize with him. He also developed a penchant for telling crazy stories and generally just wanting nothing more than to fuck around, which soon caused most to overlook his less defined days. The introduction of all the new series' listed above after Steam Train, along with new Grumps Ross O'Donovan/RubberRoss and Suzy Hanson/Mortem3r, garnered attention and a lot of positive feedback. Ross became the channel's go-to affectionate punching bag and a frequent source of faux-blame and Suzy became well known for being a friendly lass with a surprising penchant for occasional trash-talking and macrebe comments.

A good deal of the bad aftertaste of Jon's leave has passed due to the cast doing their best to establish new things and move on from the Golden Age of the channel. Unfortunately, the polarizing views of the show itself have yet to relent, however, and there's no end in sight in terms of arguing and petty bullshit. Again, though, that's to be expected of fan-bases of popular web-shows, and Game Grumps is certainly no different.

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In a couple months, the show will have completed its second year, and all things considered, you can tell that the show has come a long way regardless of any roadblocks in the past.

What started off as simply two popular dudes on the web deciding to do a show together morphed into an internet phenomenon and one of YouTube's more notable attractions. To some, it might not seem like much, but to fans of gaming and, well, funny shit online in general, it's huge. The proverbial commentary cocoon sprouted into a beautiful butterfly and has become more popular than anyone initially expected, and there's no end in sight. Despite many complaints that the channel was dying and was becoming more a business than just a laid-back, funny thing for gamers to watch, Game Grumps is still as hilarious and interesting as ever despite everything it has gone through. Although the show will always inspire different viewpoints and will always have its flaws, its success is inarguable and it's near impossible to resist at least watching a few videos every once in a while.

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HerrVarden

In this year, many famous deaths have impacted us all in various ways. While we may curse the year for robbing us of great talent, it's simply one of the inevitabilities of our world. It always feels bad that those with true ability will no longer continue to amaze us with their skills. Yet at the same time, that is not to say that all their work prior is in vain. To paraphrase Banksy, "we all die twice; once we let out our last breath, and again when our name is said for the very last time." Much of the greats' body of work lives on despite their actual bodies being buried in the ground. Their spirit reminds us of their greatness. In that regard, I would like to talk about an actor who, even though he's known to a great deal of us by two films, showed that there was a lot more to an actor than that. As you can imagine, that man is none other than Bob Hoskins.

To the commoner, Bob Hoskins wouldn't be much of a standout name, lest you were familiar with his Brooklyn accent in the two films that I've mentioned. Despite this, Hoskins was actually British, and worked in such films as The Long Good Friday, Ruby Blue, Mona Lisa, Hook, Pink Floyd's The Wall and countless others. Aside from playing a New Yorker, he was known to play Cockneys, gangsters and Cockney gangsters. But, he proved himself to be versatile enough to play J. Edgar Hoover and Nikita Khrushchev. Unfortunately, I have not looked at any of his other work, or at the very least his better work. Still, that's not to say that what little we do know isn't important in its own right. His roles as Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Mario Mario in Super Mario Brothers shaped his career and put him into the minds of many more people than would've known.

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On my side, I can say that his work in Who Framed Roger Rabbit has been a great influence on me. While the film had a great variety of concepts that I enjoyed, as well as a plethora of memorable scenes, it was Hoskins's acting that got me so engrossed in the production. It took me a while to appreciate just how great his ability was in the project. Mainly, it was the fact that for the most part Hoskins had to imagine the characters he had to interact with. It is very tricky to act without something in front of you, let alone perform the proper actions to make them seem real. Yet Hoskins made sure to take into consideration any nudges or fidgeting that would occur from the toons moving in any which way when the special effects couldn't do so well enough. He made sure to focus in the right spots and treat that empty space as if it were a solid being. His preparation for the role is cute in its own right, as he would play with his daughter who had imaginary friends of her own. As he kept recognizing their existence, he was able to project that onto the toons he would act alongside. It really shows his dedication to finding any way to make his performance better.

Along with that, he makes Eddie Valiant a more interesting take on the hard-boiled detective sort. While there's various instances where the joke is played straight, Hoskins makes sure that the character still contains a more joking and light-hearted side. It's done in a very subtle way, which I think is great because it can still maintain the cynical attitude that stays with a man who's been through it all, as well as give him more humanity and connection with the audience. That and with this tone, the more goofy-sounding jokes still give believability to his character. At the end of it all, Eddie Valiant is simply looking for the answers and trying to do good for the world. Another thing I admire about Hoskins is just how he enjoyed himself in the role. It may not be incredibly obvious to a person seeing it as his role requires him to be more jaded, but he takes advantage of hitting all the notes necessary in a film-noir archetype. He's an alcoholic, a snarker, a gritty-talker, and a man who doesn't like to be pushed around by anyone. He finds himself seduced by a femme fatale and pushed around by a bunch of mooks, and confronts anyone who's played him like a sap in the harshest of manners. His reactions always told you what he was feeling, so much so that if the film was mute, you would follow him perefectly. It was a role that he embraced so much that you too could see how much he enjoyed being part of the film. Simply put, when Hoskins was on, you were in for a great ride.

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As far as I can tell, Bob Hoskins was a standard professional actor, being well-versed in his field and astute about a variety of other subjects but also sincere and easy-going. One of my favorite quotes of his was that when asked what he owed to his parents, he said "Confidence. My mum used to say to me, "If somebody doesn't like you, fuck 'em, they've got bad taste." In other times I've seen him in interviews, it was evident how down to earth and happy he was. Perhaps in some way it was fitting that he didn't become that large of a household name. The reasonable amount of fame he received was sufficient for him and he wouldn't properly fit into the greater mainstream scene. Still, it wouldn't have hurt him, as he certainly had enough talent to reach those heights. In the few years before his death, he had retired acting after Snow White And The Huntsman, mainly due to his Parkinsons becoming more prevalent. While that ruined the likelihood of him being in any further films, it still is a shame to see such a talented man go. In turn I feel bad, as I do with many actors who have died, for not knowing more about his work before his death. But I know that the one work that I do know him from will always stay with me, mostly because of the wonderful performance that he gave in it. Rest in peace, Mr. Hoskins.

Nozdordomu

Ah, Bob Hoskins. Where have you been all this time? Playing a gangster or a working-class type in all manners of character acting, for sure. Winning awards at Cannes, I can see. While I haven’t seen much of you until now, when you made the headlines, I know you’ve been getting steady work in Britain. I also know that you passed away less than a month ago, and now all I can do is apostrophize. I didn’t expect to meet you in my lifetime, but it’s still sad to see you go.

That said, I feel like the wrong person to write about Hoskins. I haven’t seen The Long Good Friday, though I’ve heard it’s really good. I haven’t seen Mona Lisa, which looks like the kind of film I’d love and is on my long “to watch” list. Hell, I haven’t even seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which I really should have seen by now. That’s probably Hoskins’ most well-known picture, at least for Americans, but the only thing I know about Eddie Valiant is that Toon killed his brother. The only films for which I know Bob Hoskins are Hook, in which he played the thankless but memorable role of Smee, Hook’s underling; and, of course, the infamous cult sensation, the Super Mario Bros. movie.

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I have a long and complicated history with Super Mario Bros. My earliest memory of the film goes back to age four or five, when my brother and I crowded around the TV to watch the VCR. We were both crazy about Mario back then, and although I can’t remember what we initially thought of the film, it must have caught us off guard. I vividly remember the Yoshi puppet, the Bob-omb, the weird scene where Mario and Luigi walk the dinosaur at the club, the freaky Goombas, and the brothers in their “stompers” (the last one’s on the cover, so that helps). Everything else is fuzzy. I have to admit, though, that Bob Hoskins’ Mario Mario (canon!) was the only live-action Mario I knew about until I came to YouChew. The nostalgia was strong enough to convince me to see the film again, which I did about two years ago.

Maybe now isn’t the time to admit that I don’t really like the Super Mario Bros. movie. It’s just hard for me to appreciate a film that’s as much a mess onscreen as it is off screen. Super Mario Bros. had a very troubled production, to say the least, with conflict between the studio and the directors over the film’s tone, copious budget overruns and shooting delays, and a ton of bizarre story and character choices. Mario is a father figure to Luigi? Koopa has a dominatrix wife? Toad is a folk singer? “Trust the fungus?” Argh, just thinking about the movie makes my head hurt. All the conflicting elements at play make the conflict uneven and muddled, and the set design feels like a retread of Total Recall’s Mars. It’s an interesting failure, for sure, but a failure nonetheless. That said, I understand why so many people, especially on this forum, like it. It has the great virtue of never being boring. It makes the best use of “Walk the Dinosaur” in film. It has this unique oddball charm that makes it watchable throughout. And although he’s a bit of an unsung hero when the film’s discussed, I think Hoskins deserves a lot of the credit for that.

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Truth be told, Bob Hoskins gives the best performance in Super Mario Bros. It’s not the best performance of his career, but it is the most admirable. Dennis Hopper overacts a bit too much as Koopa and John Leguizamo seems miscast as Luigi, but Hoskins fits Mario better than you’d think, especially since Mario had little to no personality before the film came out. Before Nintendo made him a happy-go-lucky jumper, Hoskins had the good sense to take his working-class personality and apply it to the Italian plumber. His eye-rolling cynicism and everyman appeal make a nice contrast to Luigi’s idealism, and his professionalism ensures that Mario never seems self-aware. Some actors would play Mario if it meant a paycheck or pleasing their kids, and although Hoskins did take a big paycheck, that’s never evident in the final product. If nothing else, I have to admire Hoskins for committing so fully to his role. Hoskins went through more trouble for this film than most actors go through in their careers. Not everyone could survive a shoot like Super Mario Bros., which was apparently so painful for all the principal actors, Hoskins included, that they would frequently go off set during filming and get drunk.

Funnily enough, Hoskins never knew that the Mario film was based on a video game until he found his son Jack playing it. Bob later went on to call Super Mario Bros. the worst film he ever did, probably due the long bouts of drinking it inspired and the damage it did to his American career (though he kept making films in Britain). Jack, on the other hand, loves it and praises Bob's performance. Having grown up and read the negative reviews, he’s decided that he doesn’t care. “It’s no one's intention to ruin the classics,” he says; “if you remember your past enjoyments, then it would definitely keep your childhood memories alive and safely locked in your head forever." There you have it. Even though Bob suffered and drank a great deal to appear in Super Mario Bros., he gave enjoyment and many fond memories to all kinds of Mario- and movie-loving children. A lot of actors would love to achieve that, I bet, for children have all the influence. Several of those children, including James Rolfe, have grown up and continued to praise and defend the film online. Despite my disliking of the film, I say more power to them – especially if it keeps Bob Hoskins’ memory alive and locked in all our minds.

Although it’s tempting to lament Hoskins’ death at the unfair hands of Parkinson’s disease, or to complain that his swan song is a drippy Kristen Stewart film, I know it doesn’t really matter in the end. Bob Hoskins had a fulfilling career, a more fulfilling life than I can imagine, and a memorable role in a very memorable film based on a video game. Few video game films deserve that adjective. And, few actors deserve as much appreciation, admiration, and downright respect as Hoskin does. I know one thing: he’ll always be Mario for me.

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So with these last few months, we've been in a relatively... interesting position, so to speak. With the 10 Year Anniversary of YouTube Poop getting closer and closer to the month of December, we've been under some tight schedules that have kind of pushed ourselves sometimes. However, even then, we haven't forgotten completely about what makes this website work in the first place: the YouTube Poops! While real life issues might take some of us away from this website's duties (college, real life work, etc.), we still make sure we perform to this place's duties to the best of our abilities. Even so, we do feel like we owe you an apology for not getting some of these pieces of work down for the website under a proper manner. With that said, we hope to make it up to you by providing you with some of our favorite YouTube Poops over these last three months.

Crazy Luigi's Pick: "Sonic and Tails read Sonic Boom reaction tweets" by The Electric Cheese

When something new comes out, it's natural for someone to make an immediate reaction based off of your own feelings. Sometimes it comes for new videos that were released, while other times it could be to new aspects that you have no idea of what to expect.It's through these aspects where we even look at changes that might not have been all that necessary to do in the first place... such as character redesigns. Character redesigns can be alright to work with if your character hasn't had a cult following or needs to try and improve your existing IP before it does out, but these redesigns have to be handled in a proper fashion. If you do it under a proper effect (as in changes that aren't too extreme and would gradually be implemented over time), the changes could be effective enough to help your IP become more of a cult classic by design than any other past design would, such as the changes that Garfield made in its designs. However, when you don't have such proper methods to tackle a redesign... let's just say that the end result might very well be equal to that of the results shown here.

With The Electric Cheese, the way that he works with videos really makes him stand out as a YouTube Pooper more than any other person that aren't considered the big dogs like WalrusGuy or cs188. While he is more known as a techno musician that works with other video sources in the mix, I always enjoyed his videos as a sort of influence to a craft that I want to try and implement myself. The style that he has in his YouTube Poops brings out a simpler, yet more advanced style of videos that really makes them stand out to me whenever a new video of his comes out. In a sense, having pictures being displayed for the characters kind of makes The Electric Cheese's style really stand out as a more comedic aspect that also has a sense of nostalgia from the likes of 2006 or 2007 YouTube Poops having pictures used for the idea of a YouTube Poop. Still, even I know the best part of it is all the sentence mixing towards the Tweets displayed there.

Twitter really does display some of the strangest aspects of online connectivity, and that doubles greatly when someone reads them out loud. After the funny reaction by Dr. ~~Robotnik~~ Eggman to the Sonic Boom redesigns that starts out the video, the real meat comes from the sentences that Sonic and Tails (with some extra others at hand) read out loud. The things that Sonic and Tails say are almost ridiculous to the point where certain videos and images really capitalize how insane and out of context some of these thoughts are in the first place! It only gets better when Knuckles enters the picture and takes a look at his own redesigned self against the wishes of Sonic and Tails; the reactions used were just golden. Top that all off with a bonus reading from Amy Rose and Rule 34, and you've got a great video even after months of getting accustomed to the new looks. Give this video a look; you will not regret it one bit.

HerrVarden's Pick: "[YTP] Max Payne's Rhetorical Questions" by kitty0706 (April)

I've often enjoyed the work of a certain Gmodder by the name of Kitty0706. Particularly because his style is the one closest to YTP. It's filled with stutters, nonsense, audio clips gone crazy and generally feels like a seizure of the senses. Sure, other Gmod videos are random and quirky, but his is a special kind of random and quirky. Interestingly enough, he had previously dabbled in the art and even considered his older videos to be a combination of Gmod and YTP, making that connection much more reasonable. On the first of April last year, he posted a video called What it takes to be a *REAL* Mafioso which was in essence a YTP involving Mafia footage. Staying true to his style as well as being a good video, he decided to repeat the tradition, only instead he chose the game Max Payne. After watching the video, he's proven not only that he does well making zany video editing but that Max Payne really works as a source. It has some clever moments in the dialogue which with the absurd faces and bizarre way the characters move help to take out the serious element in lieu of something more comedic. For example, when Max says "Don't answer that" and "A rhetorical question", they're not really all that funny. It's just comment and explanation. But the way it is implemented in the video brings forth much hilarity. Another one is in 0:26 when Max responds to the detective with a long no. In context of the game, that no comes from some ugly shit going down. Here, it's just a silly outburst. Hell, he even uses a very chilling call to trigger a classic reference. There also standard goofy moments which are akin to a wacky game footage edit or a gimmicky LP, such as the use of the Left 4 Dead 2 carnival music, rave music and high pitch repetition. The use of Max's face throughout the video adds even more to the fun, especially when he uses the infamous Payneface. After this video, I'm sure you won't ever take Max Payne seriously. Well...maybe not entirely...

Crazy Luigi's Pick: "YouTube Poop: Bobby Will Never Be MLG" by DasBoSchitt (April)

When looking at YouTube Poops, one thing that can potentially ruin a fun experience for me are bad visual edits. Many times, I have seen a YouTube Poop look to be at least decent, if not good for people like us to see, but as soon as I see something that looks to be a bad effect like a stock explosion on just one person or having something look real bad like a typical Microsoft Paint effect, it ends up sucking me out of the experience. Some of that might be due to inexperience or probably being limited due to the technology that they have (such as some people using Windows Movie Maker to make YouTube Poops), but considering some of the things people like IAmTheGang made over the years, it really isn't that justifiable of an excuse to have. Over the years, technology has also advanced to make some of the aspects that couldn't have been done all that effectively before, such as having green and blue screen effects over certain scenes, become much more effective in the process. Of course, mostly none of us have ever gotten it down to the point of this video here!

DasBoSchitt admittedly is not your average, run of the mill YouTube Pooper that you'd usually see here. In fact, you're more likely to find him working of something like G-Mod than doing things like this on a regular sort of basis. With that said, it probably is the experience he has had over the years with editing from the likes of G-Mod and whatever program(s) he uses that makes something like this stand out over most other videos that have special effects as the main focus. Now let me say this right now: the special effects really make this YouTube Poop go into leaps and bounds into what it would have been a fine YouTube Poop into a great one! Many of them that you see, while admittedly usually being more used as a comedic pieces over anything else, really do feel almost seamless into the scenes perfectly. It's almost like every frame that had special effects put much time and dedication into making it stand out that much more in the process. Only once or twice I noticed some more off-putting things into them, but even those scenes kind of worked for what they did and they don't really hinder the rest of the video all that much in the process.

As for the rest of the video, you pretty much get a more standard King of The Hill YouTube Poop that you could find most people doing. However, aside from the special effects he uses there, he still manages to find his own unique tastes into this video beyond some of the typical jokes you could find, such as having something odd happening in the introduction theme as an example. One very notable moment to me is how after Bobby gets kicked in the chest and gets a "Game Over", Hank notices Bobby's playing on his Game Boy (Color?) and he assumes he's "starting a new game", which then cues to the next scene involving the rematch between Bobby and Chang quite nicely and effectively. Speaking of which, I found the scene where Bobby and Chang travel through parts unknown and Chang getting hit by Dr. Weird's assistant Steve with a baseball bat to also be one of the more funnier scenes to come out of the video. Not only that, but we also have a nice YTPMV (which we rarely see in King of The Hill YouTube Poops these days) involving the Mortal Kombat techno theme song that had a fun sound to it and a pretty satisfying payoff in the process. Speaking of satisfying payoffs, the ending scene that we have with Bobby kicking Peggy was considered so beautiful to me that even if I did notice some select faults, it would more than make up my decision to list it as the best April YouTube Poop for me personally.

zacheatscrackers' pick: "Obama wants to cut your kids" by Gretkong (May)

As much as I've adapted to the rape style of YouTube Poop, my appreciation for sentence mixing and classic footage manipulation will never waver. Gretkong's application of these tried-and-true, timeless methods reinforce my love for the olden days of poop.

For one, choosing one of Obama's speeches as footage was a genius idea; for me, celebrity and political figure speeches are some of the best resources around, since there are endless ways you can utilize them. Simply twisting the words into innuendos and forming incredibly vulgar statements alone will always be a great technique in my eyes, but completely changing the meaning behind what the person is conveying through these edits is phenomenal. This practice has warped the general viewpoint of several famous people in the most messed up, yet affectionate way possible, and the way it's done here with Obama is no different. The constant references to cutting and Mr. Romney's ass create a deliciously disturbing and darkly hilarious image that just clicked me with me in a way that no poop has in a long time, much less the past few months. The repeating and close-ups perfectly peppered in at occasional intervals made me go from snickering to outright bursting into laughter.

Overall, the simplistic formula of the poop just works... really, really well. I won't say that it shows that you don't need a bevy of effects to make a great poop, since that's been proven many times down the road and it'll just come off as ironic, tired and pretentious coming from me; I'm just going to say that Gret did a damn good job at making this video and leave it at that.

9.5/10. Just about perfect, but I knocked off half a point since a bit of the sentence mixing here and there is kinda choppy, and the editing at 0:08 was a bit hard to swallow in comparison to the excellency of the rest.

Crazy Luigi's Pick: "The Ievan Polkka Collab" hosted by ChiefDoggington (May)

Sometimes the best idea for something could very well be having an easy concept turn into something more interesting. Take for example the usage of YouTube Poop Music Videos like this one. The best thing that this type of video can hold is that there's no real wrong way to go through this type of thing. All you have to do is make sure it sounds nice and nothing too screwy happens in the process. As long as you do that, just about any good sounding song can work just perfectly! That's probably the biggest advantage this video has over anything else.

The video starts out with a quick clip of the context of what the thing comes from in the first place before diving straight into the madness of what's to come here. First, we begin with basic JonTron by SixFourImpala with it not only giving out the opening notes to the song itself, but also giving out sort of lyrics with them basically being the fool me three times joke from that Nightshade game review he did. After that's done, we get probably the most intriguing video of the bunch with Jaiman1998's "Meme Face Sex Toy" with a major focus involving basement footage of Columbine High School shooter Dylan Klebold with some other various shit that I have no knowledge of being mixed in for a piece that's almost hypnotizing to watch. After that piece, we get theadventuretimefan's simple, yet effective piece with Regular Show's Mordecai & Rigby doing their "OOOOOH!!!" thing with some Eddsworld and ASDF Movie mixed in. A manwith10toes interruption later, we get some of the more complex pieces done by CreepahWeegee, ChiefDoggington, waymuu, and GabrielCol595 that sort of put them into a next level-like place.

With CreepahWeegee, you get to see probably the most trippiest, complex-looking version of the song done yet! The main ~~man~~ dog himself, however, not only isn't too far off in being trippy as all fuck, but also brings out the most diversity to the song yet, giving out not only new notes, but also lyrics to the point where he makes it feel like a remix! Bringing it back down to reality for a bit is waymuu with some rather interesting source choices that include a woman with the words "vile black lipped cunt" and "underage chicken rapist" on them for some odd reason and a rotating head of someone that I also don't know of at all. GabrielCol595 then gives off a nice first time YTPMV collaboration piece with the Tourette's Guy, some guy named Joseph playing a trumpet, and a few other pieces that make for a nice sounding piece to go off of. However, it's the last video done by Alfonzopancakes that has Yoshi involved that's just so funny and perfect sounding that even if you don't like the polka song all that much (like I do, if only due to the meme at hand), you won't be disappointed with the end result whatsoever.

These are some of our favorite YouTube Poops we've seen from the last three months. As usual, if you feel like we've missed anything that came during that large timeframe, please let us know about it with a comment describing why you feel that way. With that said, we hope you enjoy this article for what it is.

The Lolicon

[Opening music begins. A shot of Tom’s Restaurant is taken from the outside.]

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JERRY: So, you know what I did after that?

GEORGE: What? Tell me.

JERRY: I told the guy off in front of the whole crowd. He must have been really embarrassed after that!

GEORGE: Sure, sure.

JERRY: What, are you not feeling this conversation?

GEORGE: Not really, no. Hey, Jerry, let me ask you something: What do you think of Japan?

JERRY: Oh, it seems like a nice place. There’s lots of cool robots and pretty girls. I’d probably vacation there.

GEORGE: Right, but that’s not what I’m getting at. What do you think of anime?

JERRY: Anime? Can’t say I know much about it.

GEORGE: It’s Japanese animation. I’ve been browsing around on the Web recently and I stumbled across it. Let me tell ya, there’s a whole lot of stuff out there, just for anybody to see. I really like it, Jerry. It’s brilliant stuff!

JERRY: Oh. Well, that sounds like it’s just for nerds.

GEORGE: Look who’s talking here.

JERRY: Sure, I’m a nerd, but I’m into the good nerdy stuff. Comic books are a classic. This just sounds stupid, though.

GEORGE: Wait, it gets better. Do you know how many girls are in these shows?

JERRY: You’ve piqued my curiosity.

GEORGE: They’re everywhere! And I can’t believe how cute they are! I’m telling you, Jerry, they’re better than the real deal. They’re prettier than most of them, first of all, and they also do anything you want them to.

JERRY: Wait, wait, they can’t be better than in the flesh.

GEORGE: They are!

JERRY: No, no. You’re looking at a screen here. I have to feel my women—their face, their breasts, and all their other curves. All you can feel here is a cold and unloving monitor.

GEORGE: You have to try it out yourself for you to believe me. Here, I’ve got a list of what to watch and—

JERRY: I’m not interested. Try somebody else.

GEORGE: Fine, I see how it is. . . . So, are you paying for our meal today or what?

JERRY: But I did it last time! Now it’s your turn!

[Cut to new scene. Outside shot of Jerry’s apartment sets the scene at the beginning.]

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JERRY: Why are you still going on about this?

GEORGE: Because I’m telling you, you have to watch this stuff!

JERRY: I already said no before, and I meant it then.

GEORGE: This is one decision in life you won’t regret, Jerry!

[Kramer comes into Jerry’s apartment by spinning around after opening the door.]

KRAMER: Hey, Jerry. I heard all of this commotion about anime and I had to go see what was going on.

JERRY: Oh, don’t tell me you’re part of this too, Kramer.

KRAMER: George is right, it’s life-changing. It definitely changed my life.

JERRY: It must have made you an even crazier bum.

KRAMER: Well, I had to quit both of my jobs because it was just so interesting to watch.

JERRY: But you never even held jobs to begin with!

KRAMER: Yeah, well, my bosses didn’t know that!

JERRY: So, you stuck around for who knows how long in workplaces where nobody knew you were never hired . . . without getting paid?

KRAMER: It’s good life experience.

JERRY: Uh-huh.

KRAMER: Anyway, I came across the most amazing thing online last night. It’s called Rule 34. You know how there’s all sorts of wacky porn out there?

JERRY: I don’t want to think about it.

KRAMER: Well, apparently there’s porn out of everything imaginable. Everything, Jerry! Can you believe it? There’s porn of Ronald McDonald, Superman, my grandmother—anything you can think of and more!

JERRY: Did you have to bring up Superman like that? I don’t want to think of my hero as being desecrated that way.

KRAMER: We all know that Superman has a dark side.

GEORGE: Kramer, I think we got it.

KRAMER: Just remember what I said, you guys. There could even be porn of me for all we know.

JERRY: Well, you go have fun surfing for that.

KRAMER: Oh, I’m on the hunt now! [storms out of the apartment]

GEORGE: [shakes his head] What a character.

[The next scene opens late at night with Jerry watching anime on his laptop, intrigued.]

JERRY: [deeply involved with watching as he has his right hand down his pants] Huh, so maybe George was right after all. I think . . . I think I’ll watch some more of this now.

[Hours pass, and it is now daytime. Jerry and George are talking about anime together as Elaine steps in to the conversation.]

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JERRY: I’ve gotten through most of Haruhi last night.

GEORGE: Oh, really? That’s a good one. Those schoolgirls sure are something.

ELAINE: Um, if I may interject here, what are you two grown men doing watching cartoons at this age?

JERRY: Well, they’re not cartoons, they’re anime!

ELAINE: [rolls eyes] Right. George is a pervert so that isn’t surprising, but I thought you were better than this, Jerry.

GEORGE: Elaine, don’t make George go to his bad place now.

JERRY: Calm down, George. Elaine, it’s nothing too bad. It’s just some harmless fun. I’m sure you have your own pleasures you wouldn’t want to talk about.

ELAINE: Don’t be silly. I blurt out everything about myself without thinking.

JERRY: Sure.

ELAINE: [sighs] I guess you won’t believe me. Well, I’ve got to go somewhere else now. I’ll see you two losers later.

GEORGE: Okay, goodbye! So, getting back to our previous topic . . .

[The next scene begins with Jerry walking in the hallway of his apartment, and encountering Newman unexpectedly.]

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JERRY: [irritated tone] Hello, Newman.

NEWMAN: Hello, Jerry. Word on the street is that your new hobby is watching animated girls all day now.

JERRY: That’s one way of putting it. I doubt you’re doing anything better with yourself, though.

NEWMAN: Oh, I admit it. I’m a miserable, hopeless human being. But at least I don’t get aroused from drawings like you do.

JERRY: Why don’t you try it for yourself, Newman? You might need some love in your life.

NEWMAN: Don’t you worry about me, Jerry. I’ll get my satisfaction soon enough. You’ll see! [maniacally laughs and runs through the hallway]

JERRY: [shakes head in disbelief and walks away]

[Jerry comes into his apartment to see George slouched by the couch, appearing weary.]

JERRY: What are you doing here?

GEORGE: Oh, Jerry, I think I need help.

JERRY: With what?

GEORGE: All I can think about now is those precious anime girls. They’re just so beautiful . . . why can’t I have them all for myself . . .

JERRY: Snap out of it, George! There’s a time to obsess over anime girls, and now is not the time!

GEORGE: You’re right, you’re right. I guess I’ve got nothing better to do now than to ogle over big-eyed pipsqueaks on the computer.

JERRY: Maybe I can help.

GEORGE: Maybe.

JERRY: [uses computer] Hey, my computer’s really slow now all of a sudden.

GEORGE: Yeah, I, uh, downloaded a couple of things on it while you were gone.

JERRY: “A couple”? Are you sure about that?

GEORGE: Well, it can’t be more than one gigabyte overall.

JERRY: You downloaded three gigabytes!

GEORGE: Okay, so I’m bad at estimating! But what does it matter, I look at the good stuff! I make it count!

JERRY: [opens up some files] Oh. You’re right about that, you do have good taste. I suppose I’ll keep some of this stuff on here for later.

[Kramer enters.]

KRAMER: I haven’t found it yet, but I’m getting closer!

JERRY: What are you talking—oh, you’re talking about that?

KRAMER: Yep. The Internet is a deep, dark place, Jerry. I just know that I’m somewhere out there, doing some horrid sexual act. It gives me the shivers just thinking about it.

GEORGE: So then why are you trying to look for it?

KRAMER: Well, it means that I’ve got some fans out there. I’d love to meet them if I could. That would sure make for an interesting dinner chat.

JERRY: Good luck with finding it, I guess.

[A few hours pass. Jerry is now meeting with Elaine in her apartment.]

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JERRY: Elaine, are you into BDSM?

ELAINE: [surprised tone] What? No!

JERRY: Are you sure? Before you left my apartment yesterday, I noticed that the last search result on my computer was “good bondage techniques,” and I sure didn’t type that.

ELAINE: That’s crazy! I have no idea who wrote that. You think it could have been George?

JERRY: Nah, I don’t think George is into that. Kramer might be, but he doesn’t talk about this stuff much.

ELAINE: Yeah, I bet it was Kramer.

JERRY: Where did you go last night?

ELAINE: Oh, you know, around town.

JERRY: “Around town,” huh? Okay, I’ll take it. I’ve got to go now, anyway, so I’ll see you later.

ELAINE: See you later! [exhales and wipes forehead once Jerry is out of the room]

[Jerry goes to sleep. He is woken up by knocks on his door early in the morning.]

JERRY: [opens the door and sees police] Yes, officers, what can I do for you?

OFFICER #1: Hello, Mr. Seinfeld. We have a search warrant to inspect your home.

JERRY: Wait, what for?

[Officers go inside and check out Jerry’s computer. They open up his images folder.]

OFFICER #2: My God, he’s got all of it on here. You’re coming downtown with us, punk!

JERRY: I don’t even know what I did! [gets handcuffed and sent away]

[Jerry is arrested and sent to jail. He gets a phone call with George later on in the day.]

JERRY: And you’re telling me that all of those girls were underage?

GEORGE: Yes. I should have let you know before.

JERRY: Why wouldn’t you tell me something like that right off that bat? Child pornography is a pretty serious thing!

GEORGE: Well, they’re not really children! They call it lolicon. They’re just drawings!

JERRY: Ugh, I can’t believe this. This is pretty much your fault, too, for downloading all that stuff on my computer without my consent. I want to know who let the cops know. It wasn’t you, was it?

GEORGE: No, not at all. I don’t know who tipped you off.

JERRY: . . . Wait a minute. I know who it was: Newman. That bastard is going to pay somehow if it’s the last thing I do.

[The next scene cuts to Kramer and Newman having a conversation together in Newman’s apartment.]

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NEWMAN: Man, I really showed Jerry this time, huh?

KRAMER: Yeah, I guess you did. Hey, you know about Rule 34?

NEWMAN: Everything in existence has porn? What about it?

KRAMER: Well, you wouldn’t believe it, but I found porn of you, and it sure is something!

NEWMAN: No way! Let me see this! [Kramer shows the porn on Newman’s computer] Oh, good God! What cretin decided to make this!?

KRAMER: I’d like to know, too! What kind of stuff are you into, though?

NEWMAN: Well, I haven’t told anybody else this, but I really like My Little Pony. I mean, really like it.

KRAMER: I’ve known a few folks who also liked horses that way, but they were different kinds of horses if you know what I mean.

NEWMAN: Yeah. . . .

[The scene comes back to the jailhouse, where Jerry is stored.]

OFFICER: Okay, Seinfeld, you’re good to go.

JERRY: What, already?

OFFICER: Yep. This guy over here paid the bail money. [points to Kramer] Now don’t go around downloading images of cute underage girls you find on the Internet anymore, you hear?

JERRY: Right, right. Thanks. [walks to Kramer] How did you get the money?

KRAMER: Let’s just say I have my sources. I found out some dirty secrets about your pal Newman while you were stuck in here, so if he causes trouble again, you know who to call.

JERRY: I’ll keep that in mind.

KRAMER: Also, I have to show you something back home.

[Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine are gathered in Jerry’s apartment later on in the night.]

KRAMER: I’ve been searching and searching, looking to see where it could be. I thought it was to no avail at first. I’ve come across a lot of dead ends along the way. But I finally found porn of myself on the Internet! That’s not all, though—all of you are there with me!

GEORGE: Holy cow!

JERRY: That’s bizarrely intriguing and also really creepy.

ELAINE: Who would care about us that much to make something like that and upload it online?

KRAMER: No clue, but apparently we have some secret admirers! Here, take a look!

[The gang huddles up by Jerry’s computer, showing the grotesque image. Jerry, George, and Elaine show complete disgust while Kramer continues to smile at the image.]

JERRY: Is that . . .?

KRAMER: Yep.

GEORGE: Am I doing what I think I’m doing?

KRAMER: Probably.

ELAINE: So, is this all you’ve been doing in your free time now?

KRAMER: More or less.

END

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What’s up party people. I’m back to do another one of these overview thingies for another one of my favorite shows. Today we’ll be looking at another [adult swim] show, one that still feels relatively new to me since I’ve been with it since the beginning, but as a show it has been in existence as far back as 2007 when the pilot first premiered among four others as a part of this promotion for new shows that [as] had picked up. I really don’t remember that much about many of them in all honesty; I know one was a show based on the Drinky Crow character that was promptly cancelled, another was a live-action show about a fat guy stuck in the internet that got cancelled after one episode or something, and then there’s some other random pilot which turned into that Freaknik: The Musical special starring T-Pain as a Pac-Man ghost with an auto-tuned voice. At least one managed to live on past its pilot and first season, however, and that show would be the ultraviolent animation playground known as Superjail.

The general concept of the show is pretty straightforward. It stars a character known simply to everyone as The Warden, described by the creator of the show, Christy Karacas, as a “sadistic Willy Wonka”, and his pursuits running an ever-unstable jail system through a process of controlled chaos. He has a minor staff consisting of his constantly stressed and emotionally stable assistant Jared; the brutish, transgender head guard Alice; an extremely obedient and friendly mute robot called Jailbot; and a man known simply as The Doctor, a gnarly European man who spends his time performing gory and torturous experiments on the jail’s residents. Among the staff exists another mysterious pair of characters known as The Twins, aptly named for being identical and speaking in tandem with each other. More often than not, they’ll appear (accompanied by a techno beat, no less) to cause some kind of mischief that provides the catalyst for everything in each episode to go haywire; though at the same time, their motivation for doing this is left ambiguous and is most likely done for their own entertainment rather than for any outright malicious purposes. And then of course you have the unlimited supply of inmates residing in the jail who for the most part are pretty much there just to die in the most elaborate and absurd deaths as possible.

Like the other shows I’ve covered, I find it best to run through the series in seasons to showcase the changes that it has gone through over the years. So rather than have me ramble on, let's get right to it.

Season 1

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Like a lot of other shows, the first season of Superjail follows a pretty cut-and-dry format for each of its episodes. First off, each episode begins with a cold-opening of a low-level convict named Jacknife getting apprehended by Jailbot for some sort of crime, leading into the actual meat of the episode. This aspect of the series remains consistent throughout the show’s run, with only one episode from Season 2 not having the cold open. As for the standard plot synopsis for a Season 1 episode, one will normally start out with some sort of change instigated by The Warden in order to quench his near-insatiable thirst for entertainment. Then, through some sort of interference, more often than not as a result of The Twins, things begin to go haywire, and everything culminates in a gigantic, intricate montage of inmates being slaughtered left and right. From here, episodes could either end off on a somewhat conclusive note or it would spiral off into a bizarre and amusing nonsequitur which would be reset at the beginning of the next episode.

Normally when it comes to the first seasons of shows I’ve watched, it’s hard for me to really rank them as high as later seasons due to the writers having to find their footing before they can start to crank out their best material. Luckily, this isn’t the case with Superjail. A lot of the reason why is probably is in part due to how the show relies on delivering rapid-fire visual gags as the real meat of the show. You get a good idea of how each character functions and behaves based on the way they’re animated; Jared, for instance, is pretty much consistently portrayed in a wide-eyed, unstable posture while The Warden is very elastic and prone to shapeshifting in order to portray his vivid imagination.

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The one aspect that keeps this set-up fresh throughout the entire run of the first season is the way in which each episode follows an individual theme in one way or another. If you find yourself on board with the show from the very beginning, I doubt there will be any episode during this season that will communicate that the concept has grown tired in any way whatsoever, in part due to the fact that both the animators and the writers put a lot of emphasis on making each violent mishap as unique as possible. Some examples of the kind of themed mayhem showcased in some episodes include one centered around size manipulation, one centered around hallucinatory drugs, and even one based on the limitless potential of dreams. They really don't make these concepts go to waste either, as nearly every gag one could think of regarding a certain subject is most likely utilized. It's part of what makes the episodes feel so jam-packed and ripe for multiple viewings.

The season is also very self-contained, with each episode getting crazier and crazier as the season progresses until everything culminates the two-part season finale “Time Police”. The previous episodes don’t need to be watched in any particular order, but watching through the season from start to finish provides a sense of payoff that you really won’t get if you skip right to the end. In fact, the climax of the finale is so good that it probably could’ve sufficed as a satisfying series finale if the show never continued. And at first, that may have actually been the case, though eventually the show would be picked up for another season. Speaking of which, let’s talk about Season 2!

Season 2

After the first season struck a chord with a lot of [adult swim] fans, the immediate response was when they could possibly expect a second season. And for a while, we didn’t really get an answer to that. Word of a Season 2 was pretty sparse at first, and with the way the first season ended some started to believe that it may not get another chance. However, we eventually got word of Season 2 happening for sure, which would end up airing two-and-a-half years after the first season ended. I’m assuming that part of the reason for this long delay was because the original studio that produced the animation, Augenblick, had other projects they were working on at the time, so the show needed to find another studio that could produce it.

Enter Titmouse Inc, an animation studio that produced a lot of animated shows for [as] and other networks nowadays but at the time was only really forerunning a small handful of shows. This shift to a new studio made some fans a little worried since they weren’t sure if Titmouse would be capable of producing animation with the same kind of raw energy and exaggeration that the series had when animated through Augenblick, and while there was a subtle difference in the way the show looked, the animation didn’t have to be sacrificed just for another season to be made. In fact, if anything, once the animators found their footing after the first few episodes that they worked on the show, the animation saw a pretty big improvement in how dynamic the ultraviolence could get when needed, as opposed to being pretty flat and sketchy in Season 1.

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Along with the change in production studio, the format for this season’s episodes changed quite a bit also. In a rather stark contrast to the first season, which was primarily just an animated spectacle of ultraviolence centered on a jail and its staff, this season takes the spotlight and puts it on the staff itself, along with other inhabitants of the jail. The show still retains its violent tone, but that more often than not takes a backseat this season in order to give the characters some time to strut their stuff. A new character named Lord Stingray, who is essentially Superjail’s answer to the Cobra Commander, gets introduced as the show’s first real antagonist that has a clearly communicated motivation to oppose The Warden and his control over the jail. Characters who appeared in the first season mostly as recurring background characters end up getting names and some notable spotlight in this season also; the gay inmates are named Jean and Paul and have an episode centered around them getting married, and the friendly burn inmate from the Season 1 episode “Mr. Grumpy Pants” is given the name Ash and has an episode with him trying to overcome fear of a scary movie. Among other things that are elaborated upon include finding out what exactly The Twins are and where they come from, how Jared, Alice and Jailbot joined the Superjail staff, and the return of the one-off all-female counterparts of Ultraprison from Season 1 at the end of the season finale, which would end up being a cliffhanger leading into Season 3.

The general reception to this season was rather wishy-washy. For the most part, it seems as if fans were either not a fan of the crazy escalating chaos of Season 1 episodes being upstaged by more character-driven episodes, or people liked Season 2 just fine, but not as much as the first one. Either way, a good majority of fans seemed to miss the format of the first season quite a bit. I myself was sort of sad to see that format go after I first finished watching the season for the first time. I think the problem wasn’t that the violence and chaos of Season 1 wasn’t there, because it most certainly was, but due to the fact that the episodes were more character-driven, the chaos is spread out pretty evenly throughout the episode rather than slowly building up to a climactic bloody payoff, which in a way was a signature for the Season 1 episodes and made each one stand out. Karacas himself was pretty well aware of how different this season was from the past one, and while he doesn’t have any issue with the way it turned out, he could tell that there were plenty of people who would want to see the old format for Superjail come back. Which leads us into Season 3…

Season 3

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Thankfully, no production issues took place between the break between seasons this time, with the length of the wait being easily a year shorter than it was before. During the wait for the season this time, Karacas and Warbrick were pretty vocal about thinking that this season was some of the best material that they’ve ever produced for the show. They also insisted to fans that they listened to some of the responses to Season 2, and went into the third season trying to form a compromise “between the violence of Season 1 with the characterization of Season 2” and that they were very hopeful that fans would really dig the stuff they were coming up with this time around. It sounds pretty promising, but would these statements end up holding true when the season premiered? To put it simply, yes. And then some.

The transition between the Season 2 and Season 3 formats is pretty seamless thanks to the cliffhanger on which Season 2 left us. As I mentioned earlier, the Mistress and the rest of Ultraprison have come back from their first humiliating defeat in the Season 1 while Warden and the other inhabitants were trying to return from a vacation gone horribly wrong and have taken over the jail. Stingray woos The Mistress as soon as they arrive and manages to establish a pretty one-sided romantic relationship with her, giving him the control of the jail that he always wanted as well. With the jail now being co-ed the environment has become even more hostile than usual, which leads Jared, Alice, and Charise (Jared’s female Ultraprison counterpart) to hatch a plan to get The Warden back in power. I’m not going to reveal exactly how they manage to succeed, but needless to say it’s probably one of my favorite climactic turns that the series has taken thus far and ultimately proved to me that the writers were definitely delivering on what they promised going into this season.

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Going into Season 3, you can basically expect episodes of this caliber throughout the whole run, with each episode getting debatably more and more hectic with the insanely large amount of crazy shit the writers and animators manage to cram into each 11-minute long bloodbath. It may sound like the exact same kind of thing that I’m talking about earlier (because it basically is), but this season really manages to crank things up to a level that it has only probably hit once with the Time Police episodes back in Season 1. Amidst the steady build-up of ultraviolence, you still get a pretty strong idea of what the motivation is behind the story that is being told in each episode. Everything is very to-the-point which is great, and because of how visually fast-paced the show is, there are plenty of twists and turns that the episodes can pull on you without being able to see them coming at all the first time through.

This is also the first season that has episodes that probably won’t be very easy to understand unless you watch through the season in the order that it aired. I already mentioned that the season premiere picks up where Season 2 left off, but there are also a handful of episodes where certain plot points left unresolved actually come back during later episodes and form the basis of the episode’s set-up. While I don’t think it’s impossible for people to enjoy these episodes having not seen the prior episodes that led up to it, the small thread of continuity tying the episodes together will probably make the way they play out more enjoyable. And on top of that, the season ends on another cliffhanger, and based on where all of the characters have been left off, it seems as if these sprinkles of recurring developments will only continue as the series presses onward.

Granted, I also want to get the fact across that I’m not trying to pass off Superjail as this massive continuity-heavy show now. While there may be plenty of callbacks and a few ongoing developments recurring in the background, the show is still very good at making each episode unique on its own. The main reason why I highlight these recurring factors is because I find them interesting and I think it really helps the series feel more cohesive amidst all of the insanity. And luckily, the show has found a way to balance that well without sacrificing what made the show fun in the first place.

In Conclusion

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All in all, Superjail is a definitive example of a style-over-substance show, so much so that I’d debate that the style IS the substance and provides a wonderful amount of material for the viewer to digest, often times prompting multiple viewings of a single episode in order to catch as many of the intricate gags in each episode as possible. Obviously though, like most shows that use their stylistic approach as a front, it isn’t something that can be shown to absolutely anyone. However, the good thing about Superjail is that it has a really good start and can basically be judged at face-value from the get-go, so it’s really easy to tell whether or not the show is right for you. It doesn’t take x amount of episodes for it to get “good”; it starts out as good as it has been and ever will be.

Season 4 will be premiering this Sunday, and the creators have mentioned that it’ll be continuing the good streak that they had with Season 3, which I’m all for. The only downside is that it’s only going to be six episodes long, which may be unfortunate, but I’d rather have them devote more time to animating fewer more solid episodes than having to churn out another ten episodes and potentially have some uninspired duds in the mix. It does beg the question whether or not the writers seem to be growing thin on ways to really spice things up in the jail, as they’ve gone on a number of times that one of the most important things about the process of making the show is that they don’t allow themselves to make a death happen in the same exact way more than once. That mindset definitely has a hand in keeping the show as fresh as it is for the time it has been running, but with the decreased episode count in Season 4, one may worry that they don’t have as many ideas left in the bank as they used to. However, at the moment, I’m having a hard time seeing that as the case, so unless Season 4 proves to me otherwise, I think this show definitely has the strength to live on for as long as it can.

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Welcome back to this year’s E3 Awards! As usual, all of the accolades have been chosen by you, and we’re here to celebrate the winners and shit on the losers. This year was rather slow and mediocre; as such, certain awards needed to be dropped because there just weren’t any nominees worth noticing. However, there were still enough quirks and triumphs for us to cheer for or laugh at today. Without further ado, here are the 2014 YouChew E3 Awards!

The “You Are Tearing Me Apart, Reggie!” Award
For the most unintentionally funny moment

This year, there weren’t too many unscripted goof-ups or hilariously bad attempts to show off. There were a few moments, however, that did tickle our funny bones.

The fact that Fable Legends looked like the world of Shrek, only to end up including ogres, led to a slew of “it’s all ogre now”-inspired quips. However, it could still never compare to what is usually the funniest things at these shows: technical fuckups.

Earlier in Sony’s conference, they were discussing their new Disney Infinity lineup, including Marvel heroes such as the Incredible Hulk. Later on, as a Sony exec was discussing Destiny, the Hulk apparently decided that he wanted more screentime, as a sudden outburst of HULK SMA- was heard before being abruptly cut off.

We can only assume that it was meant to be played during the Disney Infinity presentation, and somehow got played later on accident. The fact that the speaker just played along (“Hulk Smash is right!”) is admirable, but it was still pretty jarring, and had us rolling in stitches.

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The “My Body Wasn’t Ready” Award
For the biggest “Oh SNAP” moment of the show

As previously stated, this was a pretty boring year for the most part. There weren’t too many big reveals; it was mostly just updates on stuff we already knew about and sequels to franchises that we were expecting.

A couple of moments did catch us off guard, though. Pac-Man being announced for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS was a pretty big shocker; however, since Namco is working on the games, it wasn’t that far of a stretch to begin with.

No, the thing that nobody saw coming was an HD remastering of Grim Fandango on PlayStation 4.

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Cue TyrannosaurusReich’s sperm flowing out of your computer.

Despite being a beloved old-school gem, Grim Fandango has never been ported to Steam, GoG, or any consoles whatsoever. So nobody could've predicted it coming back, especially not like this. If it had just been ported over to PS4, that would've been good enough to celebrate; the fact that they’re remastering it, though, was a massive surprise, and a great one at that.

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The “Rock Band 3, Fucking Finally” Award
For the biggest bait and switch

In retrospect, Sunset Overdrive probably should’ve been one of the nominees for this award. The trailer started off looking like a generic shooter (which Microsoft had just been dedicating a large amount of their show towards) before switching gears into a colorful and lighthearted world. However, that was a switch from something bad to something good, and often for this award, it’s more fitting for it to be the other way around.

Enter Project Spark.

A decent looking game, up until Conker made his appearance…only to tell us that he still wasn’t getting a new game. One must ask: why Conker? Why did he need to be there if he’s not getting a new game? Why not just have Master Chief show up, or one of the Gears of War guys? It just makes no sense.

In the end, a video JonTron made about the reveal sums up our feelings rather nicely.

We feel you, Jon.

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“Jack Black’s Octagonal Emblem”
For the most cringe-worthy and painful game/presentation to sit through

This year was pretty straight-laced and dull, so there weren’t too many moments that made us recoil in our seats. The BioWare employee trying to appeal to the internet by going “ALL THE FEELSUH” was shameless pandering, yes, and the players of LittleBigPlanet 3 were pretty hard to watch. But for the worst in cringe-worthy pandering, we’ve gotta go with our favorite internet hermaphrodite, Aisha Tyler.

Get it? It’s funny, because she said a swear word! Ha ha ha! Get her, Adam Sandler, and Sath Mcfarland together and we’ll have ourselves a riot!

But seriously, Aisha, stop. If you want to come off as funny, then come up with funny lines. Because simply swearing isn’t funny.

Stop it, Aisha.

Just stop.

The “ESPN Experience” Award
For the announcement/presentation that had the least to do with video games at a conference about video games

When Microsoft started off their show by saying they would only talk about games, it was a surprise. A delightful surprise that we would get more time for games, and an honest surprise that they wouldn’t spend half the show shelling out the Kinect and the Xbone’s media features like they have in past years. So instead, it was up to other companies to pick up the slack. And while they never got to “Xbox Go Home” levels of distraction, they were still pretty painful to sit through.

Sony spent far too much time discussing PlayStation Now and their other streaming services, but at least they got back to good games. Eventually. EA, however, did not. They spent a good third of their time showing off videos of people talking about games. People sitting in board rooms discussing how much they love Star Wars, or how hip and edgy the star of Mirror’s Edge is. That’s cool. How about some gameplay. No? Okay.

EA is the one who gave us the true ESPN experience this year, even if it wasn’t as excruciating as the Xbone’s reveal with their nonstop talk of “spoats”.

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Speaking of sports, though…

The “Exciting Dog Action!” Award
For the most boring game due to lack of innovation

While the “ESPN Experience” best described the doldrums of last year’s show, “Exciting Dog Action!” easily describes this one. Sequels. Reboots. Grimdark shooters. Fantasy games that all look identical and all have dragons. Hardly a shred of originality to be found. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was exactly what we were expecting. Assassin’s Creed Unity hardly shook things up. But above all else, what comes out every single year and never, ever, ever innovates?

EA Sports.

EA easily spent at least half of their time on stage talking about their “exciting” new sports games. Boxing, soccer, football, holy shit! It’s almost like they had this same talk last year! Oh wait, that’s probably because they did.

We get that there’s an audience for this genre, and we get that there’s only so much you can do with sports games beyond improving models and animations. That’s fine. But if you’ve got nothing impressive to show, don’t spend half of your show showing it. Seriously, it would be like if Nintendo spent half of their show talking about the new Star Fox in development even though there’s nothing to show, and just panning over that one rock and that one bird over and over again. And even then that would be better, because it’s a game that’s different.

EA, if you must continue your monopolistic, repetitive, blood-from-a-stone sports franchises, then fine, we can’t stop you. But for the love of god, keep it behind the stage so we don’t have to waste our time watching it.

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The “Girl-Wooden Plaque”
For the worst excuse of a "Girl Gamer"

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Gurl, you crazy.

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“Usher’s Plastic Disco Ball”
For the most shoehorned-in celebrity

This year was thankfully barren of celebrities for the most part. Even EA, with their usual shameless shelling out, didn’t have any celebrities on stage.

Well, all except one. Sort of.

It’s one thing to use a dead person’s speeches for the sake of promoting that which they stood for. Using a clip of MLK to promote equality? Warranted. Audio of JFK to get people to vote and help out in their country? Inspiring. But using Bruce Lee to promote your fighting game, and then propping up his shambling corpse in it to fight against? That’s just…creepy. Like, really, really creepy.

This isn’t the first time a dead person has been represented in a game, and it probably won’t be the last. But the idea of his spirit being crammed into a product by EA, it just feels…wrong. We’d say shame on you for doing this, Mr. Lee, but unfortunately, you didn’t have a choice.

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“Mr. Caffeine’s Bronze Coffee Mug”
For the worst performer of the show

God damn it, Ubisoft.

That’s four years in a row now. Four. How do you keep fucking up?

At least it’s not a new performer sucking this year; instead we get to keep the same dumb fucking face we’ve grown to loathe, Aisha Tyler.

To be fair, this year wasn’t too bad overall with annoying performers. Aaron Flynn, the “ALL THE FEELSUH” guy, was obnoxious for a few seconds. Shawn Layden, the new Sony CEO who couldn’t stop making hand gestures, was a little dumb. But nobody tried consistently to make us laugh and failed miserably more than Aisha Tyler.

There’s a sort of rule that applies to movies, and that’s that bad comedies are always the most painful to sit through. Because you can laugh at a bad horror, romance, or adventure movie, knowing that you’re laughing at its inadequacies. But you can’t laugh at bad comedy, because then you might think you’re actually laughing at the bad jokes. Instead, you just sit there in miserable silence.

Pop culture references. Irreverent swearing. The inability to keep a mood. An overall sense of annoyance. The fact that no one else came on stage to relieve us for even a brief few moments. The truth is, Aisha Tyler is still nowhere near as bad as Lord Doodly Doop The Great and Majestic, nor is she as annoying as Toby from a few years back. But the fact that she still annoys us, and that Ubisoft still hasn’t switched her out, is a problem.

Ubisoft, next year, at least try to get some fresh meat. Because while a new speaker may be bad, they probably won’t be as bad as Aisha. We hope.

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“The Concrete Donkey”
For the company that made the biggest ass out of themselves, in both presentation and content

Unlike last year, where there was a clear winner of this award, this year is a little more muddled. Most of the companies were just mediocre; they didn’t show us a lot of outstanding games, but at the same time they didn’t infuriate us.

That being said, though, crap is crap.

EA had the fewest games of interest; almost all of the games revealed were sports games, and many of the others were simply people talking about their development of the game instead of actually showing footage or gameplay of it. So they should win this award, right?

Well…not quite. Instead, the Concrete Donkey is being handed over to Ubisoft.

The irony is mind-boggling; just two years ago, they not only won the awards for the best game, but the best company for their overall excellence. And now, it’s come to this. Jarring transitions from lighthearted to grim and dour. A multitude of dance games. The many issues with Aisha as explained above. They did show off some cool looking games, such as Far Cry 4; many of them, though, were just the same old Tom Calancy bullshit we’ve come to expect. EA was crap, but at least it was consistent crap. Ubisoft was just all over the place, not knowing whether they wanted to have fun, be serious, or show us good games. The resulting mish-mash resulted in the most asinine ceremony of the year, and as such, we “award” them with the Concrete Donkey, an eternal testament to their crappiness.

Better luck next year, guys. Want a tip? Get rid of the chick with the boner.

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"Best in Show" (Game)
For the game that, through trailers, live demos, or other presentations, deserves the most praise and built the most hype

As boring of a year this may have been, there were still plenty of great games that came out of it. Some of them are ones we already knew about, such as Batman: Arkham Knight and Bayonetta 2. Others were delightful new announcements such as No Man’s Sky and Splatoon. But what else could get our adrenaline soaring like a legitimate, epic battle between two corporate executives?

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Okay, “legitimate” may be a stretch…

What could this epic battle between two heads of Nintendo have to do with anything? Well, it was a segue into Super Smash Bros, of course. But we all knew it was coming; we've been hankering for this game for the past year.

The hype machine for Smash wasn’t a quick burst like most E3 announcements are, but rather a slow burn that’s been building up since last year. The reveal of Mega Man at the last E3 is what set our hopes high, and they only got higher and higher as we’ve seen more gameplay footage, the reveals of Pac-Man, Palutenas, and our own Miis, as well as the chance to play the game for ourselves at Best Buys.

Many games showed us little tidbits of scripted gameplay or prerendered trailers, but few games gave us as much of an extensive glimpse as we got with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS.

As such, we award Smash as the best game of the show. Our bodies are ready. And, as we now know, so is Reggie’s.

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"Best in Show" (Company)
For the company that overall was of the highest quality and standard, in both presentation and content

It really wasn’t that big of a contest this year. Microsoft and Sony showed off some good games, but just didn’t have the right amount of pizazz or wonder. EA and Ubisoft flopped miserably in uniquely terrible ways. That left it to Nintendo to salvage E3.

And boy did they ever.

Super Smash Bros. New open-world Zelda. Hyrule Warriors. Kirby. Yoshi. The reveal that X is a sequel to Xenoblade. Bayonetta 2 with the first game included. Mario Maker. Splatoon. Hints at a new Star Fox. All this and more.

But what was the difference between this and other conferences? Other conferences showed off sequels to franchises as well as a few new IPs, right? So why all the Nintendo love?

Well, it wasn’t just the content, but also the presentation.

Nintendo’s conference was not only lighthearted and willing to joke with itself, but it was also slim and lean. The fact that it was only 45 minutes compared to Sony’s 2 hours was a bit disappointing, but each of those minutes was packed with important detail. Not a minute was spent on extraneous information (except maybe the Amiibos, but they actually look kind of interesting); instead, they showed us games, and they showed them fast. And then they spent the next few days still revealing new information, such as Code Name STEAM, a game by Intelligent Systems in which Abraham Lincoln creates a force to fight aliens.

Only Nintendo could come up with something so batshit insane.

There may not have been as many crap-your-pants reveals as in years past, or as many wow moments like Sony’s slam at Microsoft last year, but in a world of shit, this golden nugget floated to the top. So we gladly award Nintendo as the Best in Show for this year’s E3.

This means you’re all gonna buy a Wii U now, right?

…Right?

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Once again, thanks Combuskenisawesome for the updated award emblems. They're always the highlights of the article.

Brainstorming is a large part of a videogame's initial design, helping the developers to come up with ideas and concepts to implement. There's lots of directions that a game can take its gameplay in; an adventure game might have a cave or dungeon focused on battling enemies, quick reflexes and strategy, or have a cave or dungeon focused on solving puzzles, critical thinking and logic. Even within these two basic types, there is a variety of ways to create them. The amount of content that one can think up for a game is enormous, limited only by – of course – your imagination.

Where this becomes relevant, however, is when the game goes into a more solid phase of development, when ideas dreamed up start being crafted and added into the alpha build, then the beta build, and so on and so forth until it can be called a completed product. A person's imagination is limitless, but an actual game isn't: not every idea that a developer thinks up can be added, no matter how good of an idea it might seem like at the moment (or how bad of an idea it might be in retrospect). Thus, keeping in mind what should go on the chopping block when the time comes is important.

This isn't to say that a game will imminently, unquestionably have to have content cut from it. However, a game that has no content cut from it runs the risk of becoming bloated, so chock-full of concepts that trying to dole them out at a reasonable pace ends up hurting the overall experience. And vice-versa, when a deadline is fast approaching and content has to be cut to get the game ready in time, it runs the risk of having the game feel barren or even tedious. And both situations can make the game seem rushed, either because there's so many concepts that they all lacks depth, or because there's so little content that it comes off as being shoved out the door for a release date.

A prime example of cutting too much content can be found in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, specifically the infamous and oft-criticized hunt for the pieces of the Triforce.

Wind Waker contains five proper dungeons (not counting the Forsaken Fortress or the final, mini-dungeon), the least amount of dungeons in any Zelda game to date. The reason for this is because of the time constraints on the game's development. Two or three entire dungeons had to be cut from the game in order to have it ready for its release date, and the gap that this cut made was filled in by the Triforce charts, a large ocean-wide fetch quest which involved finding the charts themselves, having to pay to have each one individually deciphered, and then following the chart to wherever it led to. Due to the tedium of the entire sequence, it felt like filler to many players when the game was originally released, and it was one of the parts of the game that was tweaked in the WiiU re-release.

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With having to find each chart first, then having it deciphered before finally going for the shard it marks, that's a lot of sailing.

What is perhaps most obvious about it nowadays is how out of place it is in comparison to the rest of the game. While it does fit with the exploration that Zelda games try to encourage in players, it's so long, and so repetitive, that it quickly becomes boring, and soon afterward, grating. Instead of the frustration that can come with a particularly confusing puzzle, the Triforce hunt is frustrating in the way of being an impediment.

On the flipside, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is a particularly interesting example of when a game tries to pack too much content into itself and suffers for it as a result.

The original pair of Golden Sun games were very similar despite starring different playable teams and such – the maximum party size was four, the teams could gain a contingent of class-boosting Djinn for each character, so on and so forth. The second game of the duo only allowed both teams to combine very late in the game, and if both teams had all of the class-boosting critters they could find, it allowed for lots of experimentation for what combinations of critters, characters and classes worked for each player's preferred playstyle. Alongside the various weapons and other things that could be brought over from the first game to the second, it made for a huge amount of content between the two.

Dark Dawn, however, was a single game with no second “part”, and attempted to cram a similar amount of content into the game card. Eight characters, enough Djinn for all of them, so on and so forth. The problem stemmed from the fact that the amount of items and critters to collect made the game far, far easier than its predecessors. The higher amount of critters meant that you would have more of them and sooner, leading to gaining stronger spells and stats sooner as well, spells and stats that, in the original games, were designed to be available later.

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Powerful summons like Judgement weren't available until more than halfway through in the first game, and the Djinn needed for them would cause a character's stats to drop significantly.

Not only that, but there was so much packed into Dark Dawn that some other aspects from its predecessors still didn't make a return appearance. Some of these were small disappearances, like a gambling minigame, or a fountain game involving collectible lucky medals, but others, like easier and harder difficulty modes, had a much larger impact on replayability; indeed, given the ease and speed that players can get stronger in Dark Dawn, the inclusion of difficulty modes could have helped balance things out.

However, when a game's development focuses on the core elements first and then has to make cuts later, it often fares better than most thanks to having a solid amount of content to play already. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – the Genesis game, not the one for the Game Gear – is a game that thankfully was created with this sort of mindset.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is famous, especially in ROMhacking circles, for the large handful of zones that were scrapped during development, some of which were concepts dropped during the brainstorming phase, while others have code and even graphics tucked away in the game's cartridge. The most well-known of these is the Hidden Palace zone, which later was reworked and added as a secret level in the game's iOS remake.

Beyond this, there was also the Cyber City zone, Wood zone, and Dust Hill, Rock and Winter zones, the former two being accessible in a prototype build (though both are fairly unfinished) and the latter three being scrapped much earlier. The game was also initially going to include time travel between zones, with Rock Zone being the past version of Dust Hill Zone.

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Wood Zone is still playable on ROMs of certain Beta builds of the game, though it's highly unfinished, dooming you to a bottomless pit after about ten seconds in.

The reason that these cuts are more understandable – and less damaging – than the cuts, or lack of cuts, from the other two examples, is because Sonic 2's final release contains ten whole zones already, not including the Death Egg, which only houses the final bosses. While it would have been nice to have these other levels finished and added (though perhaps two to five more zones would have caused the game to drag on), the amount of content already included is still quite a lot. Their removal doesn't hurt the game's experience in any way.

With all this said, here are some things to keep in mind when developing a game and having content come into play.

When first starting development, prioritize the most central parts of it over others. If you want your game's main content to include about six dungeons, put getting those six dungeons designed, playtested, and finalized high on the list.
When brainstorming concepts for your game, consider how much time you might have to work on it and tweak your ideas accordingly. Planning to try and make enormous amounts of content from scratch within, say, a single year, is nonsensical. The more time – and manpower, possibly – you have, the more you can get done. Think reasonably.
If a situation comes up and content will have to be cut from your game, take the aforementioned prioritizing into account and look at what is truly important to the game's experience, and what can be cut with little harm. If there are parts of your game that lack both tangible content and don't have impact on any story there might be, then they may be prime targets for the chopping block.

A Hollywood executive is waiting for his meeting with two men on the sequel for Schindler's List 2

Hollywood Exec: What's taking them so long?

The intercom goes off

Hollywood Exec: (pushes button) Yes, Denise?

Denise: Your 3 o' clock is here.

Hollywood Exec: They're an hour late. Send them in.

Two men appear. For the sake of convenience let's call one John and the other Sam. John runs in, dropping some papers which he promptly picks up. Sam, on the other hand, walks in nonchalantly wearing sunglasses indoors and drinking from a Starbucks cup

Hollywood Exec: You two are late!

John: (flustered) Sorry about that sir, I had a bit of trouble with traffic.

Sam: 'Sup dude. (sips from his cappuccino or whatever)

Hollywood Exec: Listen...I've heard that you two have done some great work in this business. John, you've gotten some wonderful recognition from all those fancy film festivals, as well as winning that Golden Hand thingy...

John: You mean the Palme d'Or?

Hollywood Exec: Whatever. And you Sam, those summer blockbusters are just printing money!

Sam: Well, as my mentor said, "You can't go wrong with explosions and titties."

Hollywood Exec: Yes, well I've been given the order by the higher-ups to make a sequel to one of the greatest movies in the world. And since I know that you two can make some great stuff, I want to hear each of your pitches for the film. Starting with you, Sam.

Awkward silence.

Hollywood Exec: You do have an idea for me, don't you?

Sam: Uh...yeah! I'm calling it...uh...Schindler's List 2: Schindler's Pissed!

John: Really? That's the name you're going with? You sure you didn't get that from a TV show while stoned off your ass?

Sam: Well, what are you calling it smart-guy?

John: The Trials Of Schindler

Sam: How the hell would anyone know it's the sequel to the movie?

John: Well it takes place at the aftermath of WWII, where Schindler is f-

Hollywood Exec: Hey, it's Sam's turn to talk, not yours.

John: Sorry sir.

Sam: Anyways, it takes place at the aftermath of WWII, where Schindler is still in Germany. He's still guilt-ridden by the Jews that he was unable to save and stuff. He then reads in the paper that some of the Nazis have avoided being in the Nuremberg trials. So he then makes it his mission to track down all the Nazi officials and bring them to justice (with a terrible LaFontaine impression) one way or another.

John and the executive have their jaws open.

Sam: So what do ya think?

Hollywood Exec: (aghast) Well, I gotta say this is...this is...

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absolutely brilliant! Keep going.

Sam: Yes well...

John: Wait, hold on a sec...you really want to hear more of this nutjob's idea for the film?

Hollywood Exec: Of course, I think it has a lot of potential.

John: Even though he ignores the fact that Schindler left Germany and ended up in Bavaria?

Hollywood Exec: We're not really known for being historically accurate, kid. What matters is how good the story can be...you know that's true

John: (reluctantly) You got me there.

Hollywood Exec: Carry on.

Sam: Anyways, so he's finding Nazi after Nazi. At first he tries to reason with them, but they don't cooperate...so he pulls out the big guns and starts gunning them down. (imitates gunfire noises) As he keeps getting Nazi after Nazi, collecting the bounty on their head, he overhears that Amon Goeth has returned to plot his revenge on Schindler.

Hollywood Exec: That's genius!

John: (sarcastic chuckle) If it weren't for the fact that he's dead, sure.

Sam: And it turns out that Goeth is planning to recreate an underground concentration camp under a movie theatre, in which he captures Itzhak Stern as well as a whole bunch of other Jews. So then we see Schindler overseeing the travesty as a little boy with blue clothes meandering about aimlessly in the midst of all the chaos.

John: Oh, so you're going to make it black and white like the original and have that be a key symbolic feature in the film?

Sam: What is this, the 40s? We'll make it color.

John puts his head down in shame

Hollywood Exec: Yes, that way we can appeal to the modern audiences!

Sam: So we see Schindler continue beating up Nazis, getting information from them and informing the president of the United States to send a task force of his greatest men to combat the Holocaust 2.0.

John: Why would Schindler contact the president of the United States?

Sam: Well who else is going to stop those Nazis, the Germans?

John: You do know Germany went a full 180 after the war? It's not like they actually believed Hitler and would let another Holocaust happen. Hell, the Germans should have been stopping this underground holocaust from happening.

Sam: Fine, they'll be bribed with Nazi gold.

John: The rest of the world would be on their asses then.

Sam: The Nazis become the greatest superpower and everyone's afraid to intervene.

John: That doesn't ev-

Hollywood Exec: Let the man finish for Christ's sake! Go on, Sam.

Sam: Afterwards, we find that Schindler breaks Stern out of the new Holocaust and starts making a new list of the Jews he's going to free, which the two find a way of doing so. Then when meeting up with the American team, they devise a plan to ambush Goeth and the Nazi buddies at the theatre. Then we'll have Stern with a...a subplot of trying to get revenge on Goeth's second hand man who then ended up killing his wife, while Goeth is planning to destroy the Jews with a doomsday device. Oh and uhhh did I mention that Schindler gets a smoking hot French chick on his team that kicks a ton of ass and has the hots for him?

John: (rolls eyes) Good lord, why don't you just make it so that the little boy in the blue clothes is brainwashed by the Nazis to become an ultimate killing force?

Hollywood Exec: That's not such a bad idea.

John pulls out a flask and starts drinking from it

Sam: In the end, we have this giant climatic battle in the theatre. Everyone on the team is dead. All but Schindler. Amon Goeth informs Schindler that he's captured Stern and his girlfriend and placed them with the rest of the Jews there. He then sicks the little boy on him, who's become a...a...(snaps his fingers) a cyborg spider with fire-breath!

The Hollywood executive is on the edge of his seat. John keeps drinking from his flask

Sam: Before the boy finishes him off, Schindler reminds the fire-breathing cyborg spider boy of the importance of his family, which touches its heart. The fire-breathing cyborg spider boy then kills Amon Goeth, which prompts Schindler to say...

John: Oh god, don't you even think about saying it...

Sam: "I guess you did nazi that coming?"

The Hollywood executive is in stitches. John finishes his flask.

Sam: Schindler then runs off to to where Stern and his girlfriend are and saves them along with a whole bunch of Jews. The building then explodes and upon that he finds the remains of a ton of the Jews. He then says that he could have saved those Jews, he could have saved more of them. He starts to cry out in anguish over the souls that are lost. We seen the turmoil of a tortured soul who has done his best, but feels as though that is not enough.

The Hollywood executive starts blubbering, blowing his nose into a tissue.

Sam: His girlfriend then informs him that he did his best, and that it was the damn best that he could have done. The two then kiss and all the Jews applaud as they all walk out into the sunset. The end.

Hollywood Exec: Well I gotta say, this is one hell of a project! It's gonna be a tough act to follow, John.

John: (twitching furiously) You really can't think that what this guy is saying is a great idea? You seriously can't!

Hollywood Exec: Oh come on, this story is wonderful!

John: It's not! For one, why would Schindler go gung-ho against the Nazis if he's freeing them from the camps through some other way? Why do we need to include Americans out of nowhere? Whatever happened to Emilie Schindler? Did we just forget that he was already married? What happened to Stern's subplot? Or the French girl's ass-kicking abilities? There's so many other questions that are left to the viewer! But fine, go ahead and make it. I guarantee you that Steven Speilberg, Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley and everyone else would spit on your script. You'd then have to find some other director and actors who would end up making this sequel more unnecessary than it already is!

Sam: Well if you think this is pointless, why did you bother to come up with a pitch for the film?

John: Look I didn't think that making a pitch for this film was pointless...okay I kind of did, but I can see potential in the idea of continuing with the story of Schindler. The man was not a perfect being, his business and personal life were terrible after the war. He never got his factories working right, he was a complete adulterer; these things don't seem to connect with such a heroic figure. But with that all said, his deeds shouldn't be cast aside from his own faults. Just because great men have faults doesn't mean that their achievements are no less important. I want to build upon the torment that he felt from not being able to save more lives. I want to emphasize the idea that while we all have our faults, we are capable of doing good. Not plaster this man's name to another brainless Nazi-killing fantasy.

More awkward silence

Hollywood Exec: You know, John...you make some good points. And I like your angle on the story too. Tell you what, I'll let you both do your take on the film. I'll let the public decide.

A few years later, the two films come out. Schindler's List 2: Schindler's Pissed and The Trials Of Schindler. The former makes a ton of money, but the only people that like it do so ironically. The latter receives multiple awards from a variety of festivals and just barely manages to break even.

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