Castle Magus

Whenever anyone brings up "roleplaying horror stories," I can't help but immediately think of Counter Monkey. Pat's story of his bad experience sounds vaguely similar to (albeit about 27 and a half minutes shorter than) Spoony's Vampire Jyhad story, at least with how it ended up (i.e. with the campaign ruined [or nearly ruined in Spoony's case if the DM hadn't simply neutralized the whole thing via DM fiat] and their involvement in it unceremoniously ended).

"YouTuber Guru Larry, AKA Larry Bundy Jr, has said some crazy things about Pat online over the past decade. We discuss some of the most outlandish claims that Larry has made about Pat, and Pat issues a special challenge..."

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Wow. Just wow.

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Okay, so... the only thing I knew about Guru Larry before this was that he used to be on ScrewAttack, where I watched a few of his videos, and that he was (and technically still is [I almost put a link there, but then decided against it]) on Channel Awesome, where I did not watch any of his videos. And that was it. That was the grand sum and total of my exposure to and knowledge of Guru Larry. This is the first I've heard of any sort of beef between Guru Larry and Pat the NES Punk. And, of course, I had no idea the guy apparently was such a scumbag (assuming, as always, that Pat and Ian are on the level here, which I still as of yet have no reason to doubt).

That said, that bit ("bit" both in the sense of a small portion and in the sense of a performance piece, e.g. "he was doing a bit") at the end of the video where Pat literally pulled out $5,000 USD and challenged Larry Bundy Jr. to come to SoCal Gaming Expo and present incontrovertible evidence of the five claims against Pat that Pat enumerated in this video for which Pat would pay him $1,000 per claim if he (Larry) was successful at proving them true was just... it felt slimy to me. Yeah, I know, Pat was just, as I said, doing "a bit," but still.

Basically, my interest in watching these "Petty Pat" things (and all the similar stuff before "Petty Pat" was officially a thing) can only be described as morbid, and even that might be an understatement. I seriously feel like I need to go take a shower after watching these things, sometimes. And yet, I still watch them, even so.

(To go off on a bit of a tangent, I'd completely forgotten that Pat had done a collab with Spoony/Noah Antwiler back in ye olden dayes. I knew about Pat before he did his collabs with James Rolfe and Spoony and it was pretty cool seeing him work together with those guys. And... yeah, I'd have to agree with Ian's opinion of Spoony these days. Last I saw of Spoony before I abandoned Twitter entirely... he, uh, wasn't doing so hot, like, at all. But... maybe he's actually doing better more recently? I hope so. I haven't yet watched those videos there, as of posting this, but I'll be doing that in a bit. Might even make another, separate post about them later.)

(EDIT 3) Here is a follow-up to the below. (/EDIT 3) (EDIT 5) See also: this. (/EDIT 5)

(EDIT 6) I've since started watching Cinemassacre stuff again, so disregard any specific references I make to them below. (/EDIT 6)

And pretty much anything that was/is even tangentially related to them.

This is why, at least in part. (I found it via rumblings in the past few days in my Twitter timeline. It's mostly about Channel Awesome, but there's a bit of Cinemassacre stuff in there as well. [EDIT] To be fair, a lot of that thread is just a bunch of randos expressing rando opinions, so take it with a grain of salt. I was more interested in the initial post with links directly to the Twitter accounts of former Channel Awesome contributors, than I was with the rando circlejerking, interesting [or at least amusing] though some of it admittedly was. [/EDIT])

It's basically more of the same. Behind the scenes shit that throws a pall over my enjoyment of the on screen stuff.

With Channel Awesome, it's been brewing for a very long time, at least since the shit with Spoony went down back in 2012 or whenever (I never really posted about that in particular here, outside of that one post above, but if you care, just Google "Spoony meltdown 2012," though some of the Spoony stuff is rehashed in that forum thread to which I first linked above), and it's kind of a wonder that I hadn't already long since dropped the lot of them.

With Cinemassacre, it's been brewing at least since the videos involving Alpha Omega Sin, as well as other shit that has come to light.

(EDIT) With that said, if anyone else wants to continue watching Channel Awesome or Cinemassacre content, that's fine. I'm just speaking for myself. I still enjoyed their content up until now (and I won't say that I'll never watch another Nostalgia Critic or AVGN video in my life, either, just that it's unlikely at this point). (EDIT 3) Yeah, no, I can safely say now that I will never watch another Nostalgia Critic video, nor anything else that Doug or Rob Walker is ever involved in. (/EDIT 3) In fact, I wrote another long-winded post about just that very sort of thing, as well. Granted, what I'm saying here kind of contradicts that, at least as far as my own behavior is concerned, but I'm not going to knock anyone else if they still want to watch this or related stuff. (/EDIT)

(EDIT 2)

Yeah, Channel Awesome is pretty much dead now. Most of the (few remaining) big name contributors have pulled the plug within the past week or so, particularly Linkara. Of the big names, pretty much the only ones still there are Angry Joe (who has been completely silent on this whole topic for the past couple weeks) and Cinema Snob (aka Brad Jones). (EDIT 4) Nope, Angry Joe left, too. (/EDIT 4)

And the response of Channel Awesome apparently was to just immediately and unceremoniously delete all of their content. The Channel Awesome Twitter account and Doug and Rob Walker's personal Facebook pages are apparently also blocking pretty much anyone and everyone who is discussing this at all.

(/EDIT 2)

Joseph and Tim have apparently both left THAC (TVTropes Page), for obscure, hush-hush, "not amicable," none-of-anyone-else's-damn-business-but-their-own-I-guess-at-least-until-they-inevitably-start-airing-dirty-laundry-at-some-point-in-the-future reasons.

(EDIT 2) And it looks like they finally decided to air their dirty laundry. So, yeah, I'm pretty much completely done with THAC and its members and former members now, and, truthfully, I already have been ever since they split up. Basically, this is ScrewAttack all over again, for me, and I am simply washing my hands of the whole thing. Marble Hornets was good, and THAC was good while it lasted, until the breakup happened, so there is still that, I guess. Maybe if they somehow managed to work out their differences, put all the ugliness behind them, and got back together again, then maybe I'd start paying attention again, but as of right now, since that seems like it is highly unlikely to ever happen, I'm pretty sure I'm out for good. (/EDIT 2)

For those who don't know, these guys are the ones who made Marble Hornets (TVTropes Page) and its spin-off series, Clear Lakes 44. Troy and relative newcomer Noah are still with THAC (EDIT 2) and now Noah is gone, too, as a result of the above mentioned airing of dirty laundry, and THAC effectively no longer exists (/EDIT 2), for what it's worth, but given that literally half of the group/company (Joseph and Tim) just up and left, for shady reasons, and one of the two remaining guys is "the new guy," I'm kind of doubtful of the future of THAC, despite the reassurances of Troy and Noah that everything's still smooth sailing (EDIT 2) which, of course, turned out to not be the case (/EDIT 2).

So... now, the crux of this post and the question for me, personally, is as follows:

Do I continue to follow the separate paths that these guys may take in the future with the creative, public aspect of their lives, the same as I still do with Channel Awesome[1] and Spoony, even after Channel Awesome and Spoony had their own less-than-amicable falling out? (EDIT 3) That is a moot point, since I have also dropped both Channel Awesome and Cinemassacre. (/EDIT 3)

Or... do I drop the whole lot of them, the same way that I dropped anything and everything to do with Stuttering Craig and Handsome Tom[2], starting from the moment that the latter left/was unceremoniously dumped from ScrewAttack[3] for what were most definitely "not amicable" reasons? (EDIT) Oh, and see also: GameGrumps and BalloonShop. These were two groups that I didn't really know much about mostly until after I'd found out that the original groups had already broken up for whatever reasons, and as such, I didn't ever really get into following them. For GameGrumps, I don't really think Egoraptor has been all that funny after he apparently stopped making animations, and I never really followed JonTron to begin with. (EDIT 4) And apparently JonTron went on to become a part of Irredeemably Toxic Shithole. (/EDIT 4) Though what I saw of GameGrumps while the two were still together was fairly okay (sort of a poor man's version of Two Best Friends Play), GameGrumps in its current incarnation (at least the very tiny amount of it that I was able to stomach) makes me want to hit myself in the head with a claw hammer only slightly less than PewDiePie does. For BalloonShop, at least, I've watched several of their videos, even so, because some of them are pretty damn funny, but still... I don't really follow them otherwise, unless I'm linked to them from elsewhere. So, I guess my natural inclination seems to be to simply not bother with groups like any of these, after they've had fallings outs among their members, with only a very few rare exceptions. (/EDIT)

Hmm... we'll just have to see how it goes, I guess. Only time will tell. (EDIT 2) Well, we saw how that turned out, so fuck everything, I guess. (/EDIT 2)

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( Aimlessly rambling footnotes behind cut )

I've never played D&D or Vampire or Shadowrun or any of those games (outside of their computer game equivalents), but damn if Spoony's Counter Monkey series doesn't pique my interest in it at least a little bit.

(EDIT) And by that I mean the actual RPG stuff, not the board game stuff he's doing in the most recent videos, though that's sort of interesting as well, I guess. (/EDIT)