do you guys remember that mbmbam live show where justin started a question about a guy who hurt his wrist and griffin interrupted to say "from jerking off too much?" and laugh hysterically at his own joke. only for justin to continue the question, which is that people keep joking about it being a masturbation injury and its unoriginal and not funny at all and how does he make them stop. all while travis and the audience heckle griffin out of existence. i think about that all the fucking time

stealing jokes from the mbmbam tv show tonight

So the MBMBAM live show from Minneapolis is out today, and there’s something I need everyone to understand.

The reason Clint sounds a little choked up/giggly in the announcements is because this was preceded by -no joke- 5 minutes of cheering and applause just for him. He kept trying to start talking, but nope! Finally he just stepped away from the mike and basked in it.

❤️❤️

Look at this adorable man!!

It really feels like the McElroy brothers don’t want to do their podcast anymore. I noticed it first in summer of 2020, and I completely understand why. I remember thinking to myself that they should just go on hiatus instead of churning out the same number of episodes for all their various shows because they sounded burnt out. And when Yahoo Answers died, I thought they’d take a hiatus until they were ready to revamp their show, and I was surprised that they just...didn’t. It seemed like they were back in the saddle with Wikihow, but I feel like that honeymoon period has ended. If they do one question from the audience and one Wikihow, I’m very surprised. They’ve taken to just talking about nothing for 20 minutes and doing their bits and segments as afterthoughts.

Justin seems bored every episode. Travis tries to boost the energy, but he’s never been funny. Honestly, Justin and Griffin are mostly just mean and dismissive towards Travis. And I know there’s this whole open secret thing about Travis’ narcissism, but like, damn. Sometimes they’re so rude to him for seemingly no reason. Griffin seems totally checked out.

I remember when they did their Very Special Episode when Yahoo Answers died, and Justin made a “joke” about he wished that meant MBMBAM was going to be buried along with it. And that’s stuck with me. I can’t unhear it in their episodes now. I know they keep doing it for income, audience expectations, and charity work, but their hearts are just not in it anymore.

Live Blog of Interstitial Infinity #12 - The Black Market Car:

oh no the calico critters reminder :(((

(maybe this is just me, but I want to see like, calico critter fursonas of the cast. and shadow is still a hedgehog, just in that style)

enjoying the video game smack talk, and remembering the in-character sea of thieves stream; what a good stream!!

shopping segment/re-inventory car, hell yeah

that doll-selling slug shopkeeper is going to post about her wild customer interaction with mob on social media and go viral on like, slugblr or whatever

OR that doll-selling slug shopkeeper is going to submit a story to slug mbmbam (msbmsbam) haunted doll watch (if they're still doing that)

shadow toppling these apex kids over like dominoes goddd

"surprised Marn wants to do two voices" lmao

aw Mary

getting the murder of sonic the hedgehog detective vibes from shadow this episode

the interaction of various "magic" systems between medias is neat

oh al, buddy :(

I respect and think it's more fun ultimately how committed shadow is to the backpack magnetshot method, but it was sort of funny to hear after mob reminded us that he has the power to levitate people lol

I know it's incredibly silly to think about like, languages, when this whole fictional show has a wild and incredible premise, but just for a moment, it was fun to think about what language would be written down on the notecards (so Marn didn't have to voice so many NPCs), and what language everyone is speaking and if there's like a universal translator effect from the train?? this doesn't matter at all, just thought about it for a moment bc of the notecard joke lol

Amelia!!!!!

Women!!!!!

Shadow: How did you lose your job? Amelia: The economy is in shambles

Trish's commitment to "the conductor is a stand user" theory is giving me Drawtectives "a rhinoceros did it" theory, and it's very funny to hear her build up to it again and everyone else start groaning 😄

I don't know if we'll ever get the crew meeting One-One, but if they did, my guess is maybe only Trish would possibly like them? My other guess is that Shadow would hate One-One almost immediately, but I could be wrong

learning someone has a big number still hits every time

aw, alchemists buddies! cutee

possible alignment scale idea: how willing is your character to kick that toad, in the kick the toad car? was thinking about surge the tenrec punting the toad immediately

oh dang, episode end!! I wasn't expecting it for some reason lol

thank you as always for this show, my work was sort of wild this week, so this was great to react to and enjoy! thank youuu 💚💚💚

Highlights from MBMBaM in Boston last night (mild spoilers if you want to wait until it's released):

A pre-show/intermission playlist that included Grace Kelly by MIKA, a Kristin Chenoweth cover of Birdhouse in Your Soul by They Might Be Giants, and Butter by BTS

The crowd going absolutely nuts every time Paul came onstage to do anything

Paul shushing us every time he brought out a canned beverage for one of the boys so he could open it directly into the microphone, causing the crowd to go even more nuts and multiple people to yell "YEAH BABY GRIP IT AND RIP IT"

An absolutely wild Shmanners opener about colonial marriage customs

DALL-E Mini art of the brothers displayed on the screen during intermission (prompts included Griffin McElroy Winning A Disco Dance Contest, Justin McElroy Riding On A Giant Pizza, Travis McElroy As A Merperson, and Courtroom Sketch Of Clint McElroy As Evil Santa)

Justin's harrowing tale of being trapped in a train bathroom

The sound was messed up for the first ten or so minutes until Paul came out and fixed it and Griffin thanked us for being the politest audience ever by not saying a word about it

They all went to the aquarium and had a really nice time :)

Travis telling one (1) Shrek joke, and Griffin forcing him to tell three (3) more

When talking about which animal they'd be most afraid to come across, Justin's was rodents, Travis' was spiders, and Griffin's was Jon Voight

Griffin performing a rousing, completely improvised song about how great it is to be a human person (inexplicably to the tune of Proud To Be An American)

An incredibly baffling visit to the Wizard

A bizarrely horny Haunted Doll Watch

Justin telling everyone to be quiet while Travis and Griffin were answering an audience question because he was trying to buy Zap Daddies dot com and he needed to concentrate

Someone in the audience bought it before he could

One of the people who got to ask a question was *the* Adrian Cowles and when he introduced himself the crowd lost their collective shit

Justin asking Griffin to do an impression of Mark Wahlberg to close out the show, and Griffin getting halfway through the impression before saying "wait is he from Boston?"

is there a strictly auditive piece of media that has inspired you in some way ?

Audio only media, hmm?

I'll tackle this as a hypnosis question and a general question individually because I'm not 100% sure how to parse it.

For hypnosis Ella Enchanting is my big inspiration. Goddess' stuff is way too high production to even enter my mind as a possible avenue and it blows my mind that I sleep in the same area as some of the files that I listen to nightly were recorded. It kind of makes me feel I should be better at this because every single thing that the most highly produced files I know of (and the podcast episodes that she ran too) are theoretically in the same space as me.

I dunno. Maybe one day I will ask her how the hell she did what she did.

For Ella she has about the same production as I do and is focused on the same area of concept based fantasies. She's way more energetic, inventive, practiced and polished than I am, but I see Ella and have a feeling of boldness that says I can do better if I commit myself.

I really need to more often.

Also back to Goddess for a moment, but The Realm of Bliss Podcast was one of my earliest gateways into legitimizing my kink. Up until then it felt like a sex thing people in relationships did or a medical tool that was done with clients or a theatrical performance piece for stage magicians. There weren't many episodes, but Realm of Bliss really brought me in to the fold. It's why I call Goddess my oldest friend in the community-- ignoring the collar and such.

For Other Media...

I used to be big into podcasts, particularly Maximum Fun network. There were so many MBMBAM jokes in my circle and I felt Adventure Zone helped me be a better DM. I listened to some stuff like Tanis and Rabbits but Rabbits burned me real hard and kind of poisoned the well for me.

Never got in to Night Vale but tried really hard for a friend who enjoyed it. I wanted to have common language with them. Listened to well over 20 episodes. They would have benefited me trying Magnus Archives but I didn't have the drive for it.

To give respect where respect is due, radio plays in general make me very happy and have since I fell in love with the Welles version of H.G Wells classic War of the Worlds in my teens. If Radio 4 did a dramatization of any of Gaiman or Pratchett's work I was there eagerly. I consider radio adaptation of Neverwhere to be the definitive telling of the story (and the Marquis focused original side story too) and deeply enjoyed Mort when it was done. Good Omens was nice but the TV version is best.

When I was young I listened to radio a lot and focused in on those radio dramas. It was either that or listen to Caeser the Geezer prank people, which dad liked but... not my cup of tea.

So when I was heavy in to tabletop I used to do a LOT of audio files as rewards and cookies for players. One character I had hours of audio and hundreds of thousands of words of backstory because they played an amnesiac and I wanted to make their life feel lived in and make the people feel more real before they showed up in canon.

Then I just became addicted to it and did it for fun. The group's DM was always better than me at it. Every time I got audio from them it felt like a fully realized piece where mine was conceptual at best.

I guess auditive media is something of a focus of mine, even if I can't really define my preferences or the things I gravitate towards.

Thank you for. The question, anon. This was a good one that got me thinking about things that haven't crossed my mind in years.

It’s familiar, but not too familiar. But not too not familiar. It’s a joke that spiraled out out control.

I rewatched the 2003 version of Fullmetal Alchemist recently and was reminded of why I was (still am) head over heels about it. You have to be to stitch together a 12+ minute animatic about it. Oh yes, this is just the first section of a much longer bit. The full thing will drop at some point. This is spoilers for the end, if you care about that for a 20-year-old anime. 

This segment is spliced together from four or five different segments, but the two big ones are:

Full Body Transfer - Episode 1 of the MBMBAM TV show

Shower Self Defense - Episode 242

🤡 🥺 ✅ also related to the clown emoji question but your yami bakura and thief king are genuinely so funny when they crack jokes or have funny moments

AHHH THANK YOU!! I really need to find more excuses to put them in funny situations.

🤡 - funny exchange

This bit from Kill The Lights, almost directly lifted from the MBMBAM TV show.

🥺- feels

Any time that I have a character talk about their feelings or opens up about themselves when they usually don't. although tbh i speed-wrote good grief after watching DSOD for the first time and that was a whole feels-fest.

✅ - unwitting recurring things

I realized after writing Kill Shot that I have characters constantly furrowing their brows adlsfk i've gotten better about it but now that i've said it here, see how many times you notice. btw open season for anyone to point out silly things i constantly do in my fics!

Hot take: “too much corporate influence is bad” and “forced indie-ness is bad” can both be true. As some examples of what I mean by forced indie-ness, here’s some things I saw around Tumblr that inspired me to make this (one of these isn’t technically about fandom but I think you get the point in all three)

This person making a metaphor comparing the MCU (and what might have gotten shelved because of it) to McDonalds “taking over” towns and closing diverse mom-and-pop restaurants etc. but with rhetoric that seemed to imply a solution to which the restaurant equivalent would be blowing up all McDonalds locations and the corporate headquarters (employees would be allowed to leave the actual restaurants beforehand, corporate not so lucky) and building a bunch of ethnic restaurants in their place and if a worker from a minority race is out of a job never fear as there is now a restaurant serving their ethnic food near them that they and their family will be forced to be running (along with any other employees of that race that are “overflow” from who’s assigned to other restaurants of that ethnicity in that community who’d have to pretend they are family or friends of the family running) and being forced to not only keep up authenticity but keep the we-are-not-a-fancy-corporation look up in all places where there isn’t something cultural they could put there (mismatched furniture, over-checkout-signage written on a chalkboard etc.)

This Lin-Manuel Miranda stan who made a positive claim/argument/whatever-this-is weirder than any negative ones I’ve seen his haters make about him; that instead of doing things like Disney soundtracks (no mention of his actual stage shows but presumably this guy likes In The Heights and maybe Bring It On but hates Hamilton because that’s what blew him up), Lin-Manuel Miranda should have been some kind of weird YouTuber doing StarKid-esque (but not as a part of them of course) stuff and making parodies and stuff like that and this appearance he apparently did on MBMBAM was “peak Lin-Manuel Miranda” (in terms of the kind of star this person thinks he should be). And this stan’s reasoning for wanting to basically lock his career in an indie box, well, this guy didn’t use the “Tumblr fandom terms” but it was essentially that he’s too “skrunkly scrimblo” to be involved with big corporate media (which apparently applies to Disney but not YouTube).

(the one that’s two points in one because they’re connected) While I see the point of the haters of rainbow capitalism, I think some people kinda take the whole “the first pride was a riot” narrative to too much heart and almost lose the the gay part (other than who’s doing it and jokes about “gay wrath month”) in favor of envisioning metaphorically (but only metaphorically because that’s not literally all the kinds of “killing and violence and killing and violence” they want to commit in the name of the cause) throwing bricks at cops until the streets run red with their blood. The other kinda-connected thing because it’s also a thing that’s against rainbow capitalism technically is this post I saw talking about how “good queer content” can never be found in mainstream media but things like (to paraphrase despite the quotes) “pre-code novels you’d probably never read” “foreign-language movies you’d be too turned off by the language-barrier to watch” “obscure YouTube series made by a friend of a friend” etc. in a tone that suggests if e.g. the YouTube series blew up or the foreign film got an English-language remake that changed nothing script-wise but the obvious cultural-marker stuff but kept the gay romance intact they’d automatically cease to be good queer rep because too many people liked them

●How is party king's personality with his brothers?

●The same question but with the other 2 please 🙏🏻

oh this should be fun :)

party king: -adores playing games with the other two(sunshine likes card games while lm likes board games, party is indifferent.) -unfortunately, hes the one thats away from the others the most, needing to train for tournaments and needing to go to events. this leads him to be the most lax when hes around the other two!

sms king: -loves giving the other two trinkets of his(both have rings from it) -adores laying(or leaning) on their brothers, especially when its all three of them in a pile! -smothers his brothers with love when hes around them.

lm king: -loves spoiling the shit out of his brothers. -they may get on his nerves but by gods does he love them. -king of dad jokes, loves to annoy the other two with them.

misc: -they cant stay mad at eachother for very long. -all three are mischievous bastards and their relationship with one another shows this. -yknow that one olive garden pasta mbmbam clip? thats them. (party is griffin)

Three mutuals sitting down to discuss their comfort characters call that my blorbo my blorbo and me

I think part of what makes the McElroys so lovable for millennials and gen z is that they’re a REAL underdog success story. All the ones about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs starting Apple and Microsoft from sheds and Jeff Bezos starting Amazon from a shed are wrong. They all came from well-off backgrounds with upper-class privilege coming out their goddamn ears, but the brothers didn’t.

They really were just three ordinary boys from West Virginia, and if you listen to Griffin’s Florida State lecture (the whole thing’s on youtube) he talks about how rough things were for them when they started their podcast. He mentions how they were in mourning over their mother, fighting all the time, and ready to separate forever, but held on and decided not to abandon each other in the thick of it. And things were still rough, because their father had to work stupid hours at the radio station to support himself, and the brothers were trying to make it in game journalism.

And then they started MBMBaM, a goofy bad advice podcast full of improvised bits and comedy segments, and it blew up. They started TAZ, a fun D&D podcast where they played with their dad, and were able to bond together and let him retire comfortably on the revenue it generated, and now Clint oversees the TAZ graphic novel series that’s still releasing issues and spends boatloads of quality time with his three sons. Monster Factory is just a funny game stream where Justin and Griffin try to destroy character creators as much as possible, but it’s one of their biggest IPs. Their TV show was short-lived but explosively popular among their fanbase.

They sell out entire stadiums and Lin-Manuel Miranda plays them We Didn’t Start the Fire parodies as they walk on and people lose their collective minds. Tom Holland fanboys over them at SDCC. People come from all over the place to hear them perform, and that performance never got less authentic. It’s just three brothers and their dad being goofy together and trying to make each other laugh. And the laughter and love they carried for each other was so contagious that it made an entire world of people love them, too. 

Maybe they’re a bit weird, and their jokes don’t always land, but they’re not always supposed to, because it really is just a tight-knit family living in the moment. And in this world where our two generations may be close to each other but horribly disadvantaged socio-economically, the idea that these three boys carved out a way for themselves through the sheer force of their own happiness out of such a dark place is more hopeful than any “millennials are killing the mayo industry” article ever written.

It was really interesting to hear Travis address a surge of Travis criticism or “hate” online in this week’s MBMBaM. “Work of Fart” is an old school comedy Fuck You and not necessarily undeserved, even if it was in extremely poor taste.

I believe that the McElroys and their fans are generally kind people, but there must be room for criticism or the work, the content that they create, will stagnate. It is the same for any kind of artist. If you are only ever receiving positive feedback, you may just as well be receiving nothing. That it not the same thing as fans spitting acid and expecting honey in return. And that it is not to say that, when targeted, the man himself, Travis McElroy won’t take it personally... though that would be misguided, in my opinion.

It is also important that both sides of this remember that the McElroy brothers are a package deal. Taking issue with a single brother’s actions, at least in the context of MBMBaM and TAZ, isn’t possible. These shows are a group effort and are not approved or endorsed by a single person, but by The McElroy Family. Although, yes, it is a real family, it is not your family. It is a company making business decisions. So while a given criticism may appear to be of Travis, for example, it is really a criticism of the decisions and endorsements of the company. It is criticism of the business that the company is conducting.

And it’s nice that they feel like they can make these jokes with us, or let us peek a little into their genuine feelings, but we are many years and many thousands of dollars away from the moment in which this was an appropriate response... from either of us. We owe EACH OTHER a real apology. And that’s just not gonna happen.

The thing that gets me, re: the Travis situation, is that every time I see people saying he’s done something egregiously offensive I look into it and? It’s not that big a deal? Like people saying he’s biphobic bc of his tweet yesterday while yes clearly there were queer people who were made uncomfortable by it there were also a lot of bi people in the replies (myself included) who thought it was funny. It was a joke made thoughtlessly maybe but it wasn’t like he was punching down or insulting anyone. To me beyond a fear of gnc men it also seems to be yet another case of purity culture rearing it’s ugly head so no one is allowed to make mistakes. I mean I’m not saying he’s a perfect person who should never be criticized, for sure there’re some things he said in older MBMBAMs and such that made me uncomfortable and there have been instances like the introduction of Rainer’s chair in TAZ that I think he could have done more research into and someone should have caught that pre-posting but also he’a a human person? He’s not infallible and it’s really frustrating to see the pendulum largely swing between “no he’s perfect don’t bully him” and “travis is the literal devil” especially when he gets far more criticism than Justin, Griffin, or Max Fun as a whole. All of which is to say I appreciated your nuanced take, I’m definitely going to use “The Rebecca Sugar Effect” from now on, and I thought I’d share my two cents.

I fully concur with this. The only thing I would add is that from what I see, Travis purposefully tries to make himself a resource of brightness in a fucking dark world. Like, IDK if anyone but me remembers this, but the morning after Trump was elected, he put out a “fireside chat”, which still lives on my phone, that said that “I’ll stand by you in this. And in front of you, when I can.”

Which, to me, is a bigger show of allyship than most “celebrities” i can name. And given the McElroy Brand is in part “we will fuck up, we ill learn from our fuck ups,” I’m just completely uninterested in the idea that this guy, the one who wears make up, is the one its okay to bully. Because some people find him annoying.

Just... I’m not here for it. I’m not here for damning people for imperfections, especially ones who have a history of self improvement.

Which is why purity culture hates them, yep.