My grand plan to be more regular with posts this year has been a failure lol. But this week I have been given a prompt to do one of the posts I have been planning to do for a while. This week Griffin and Justin McElroy announced they were leaving Polygon. This may not matter to you but I have been obsessed with one McElroy or another and Polygon since September last year.
The Final Pam and other Griffin shenanigans
Around Sep 1st last year I saw a post on Tumblr (I didn’t reblog it at the time because I assume I went straight to Youtube to watch) that linked all 3 of The Final Pam videos Griffin and Justin did for Monster Factory – one of their Polygons series.
In the series the lads play games that have a character creation section at the beginning and they go buckwild making weird looking characters, then they go and play for a while with their wacky creation. With The Final Pam they play Fallout 4 and create this bizarre character called The Final Pam, they then play the game and keep doing console commands to mess with the game and create this insane story arc for her. These videos were my intro to Polygon and the McElroys and they were EPIC!!!! Seriously go watch them now if you haven’t seen ‘em. Part 2 | Part 3
Another great part of the Monster Factory series is Griffin and Justin playing Spore.
I enjoyed the Monster Squad videos so much that I went to Polygons channel on Youtube and found other things to watch. I watched an episode of Awful Squad – which is a group of Polygon staff doing a livestream each week playing PUBG usually hosted by Russ Frushtick. I usually watch the video-on-demand when I get home the evening after they stream because I am usually heading to/at work when they stream. Even though he didn’t work for Polygon Travis McElroy is sometimes on the stream as well. At the time when I started watching I only knew Griffin and Justin so I wasn’t familiar with other Polygon staff members but there are a bunch of them now I adore just as much as the McElroy’s.
Just after watching the Final Pam videos – in the space of a week I watched the entire Peacecraft series Griffin did. In this series he plays World of Warcraft but he refused to kill anything. It took him forever to level up but because a bunch of Polygon (or maybe just McElroy) fans found him in game and gave him lots of items and help he was able to play and go into all sorts of areas someone who hasn’t even reached level 10 would normally die. I basically was in love with Griffin after that! 😀
I also watched the entire Touch The Skyrim series – Griffin and Nick (who has now left Polygon) add random mods and do console controls to make Skyrim more interesting.
Other Polygon faves
After that I started watching lots of Polygons Youtube content. Awful Squad became my weekly show to watch (I don’t watch an actual TV anymore; I just see shows via Netflix). Polygon is actually its own website that has game reviews and other pop culture content but I mainly consume their media via their Youtube channel.
For maybe the last month I also have become a big fan of another weekly livestream series called Gil and Gilbert After Hours. 2 staff – Patrick Gil and Brian David Gilbert – play games but each week they come up with a new idea of what punishment they have to suffer when they fail/die in game. They also have little mini segments that viewers suggested in the previous weeks comments. The lads are very funny and I love it as much as Awful Squad now.
Some other Polygon stuff I enjoy are the series Game Ogre – Pat and Simone de Rochefort have supposedly been cursed to be stuck together in an ugly sweater and can only be released if they beat a challenge in a video game – with each of them holding one side of the controller – so they have to work together to succeed. 😀
Another recent set of videos was a two-parter – Simone and Jenna Stoeber played a game called A Way Out. Their commentary during it was awesome and I loved it – please Polygon – more Simone and Jenna co-op game play!!!
I don’t watch EVERY new video Polygon puts up on Youtube but it’s getting close. So far the people I have mentioned are all my faves at Polygon. You could say I am quite endeared with them and plan to continue watching their various videos.
The McElroys Podcasts
But let me continue now with my McElroy related obsession. As well as Polygon – which Justin and Griffin helped create, they do a lot of different podcasts that are hosted by the Maximumfun network. The biggest one is My Brother, My Brother and Me which they do with their brother Travis. I had seen some Youtube vids with excerpts but had not really listened to a full show.
The Adventure Zone
I am not sure what prompted it but around February 20th I decided to start listening to The Adventure Zone podcast (aka TAZ)…..I think I may have watch a Youtube video that had the audio from the first episode.
It involves Griffin, Justin and Travis McElroy playing Dungeons and Dragons with their father Clint. Griffin is the Dungeon Master at the start (I believe as it carries on the other lads DM at some point also). I was instantly hooked and started listening to it nonstop for a few weeks. Griffin created chapter arcs which become quite complex and moved into a complete story called the Balance arc that I HAVE NOT FINISHED BECAUSE I DONT WANT IT TO END!!! I think I might do a separate post sometime about how Griffin has EMOTIONALLY COMPROMISED ME during the story. Seriously the last few eps I listened to – so much crying. Griffin write a book dude – I will read it and surely weep.
But let me go on for now….
Sawbones
March 16 I was kind of bored and wanted to try listening to some other podcasts and I tried a few random ones, but then I thought “dang why don’t I try Sawbones” which I had heard ads for listening to TAZ. Sawbones is a podcast by Justin and his wife Sydnee about medical history. Sydnee is actually a doctor but they are not giving any advice, just looking back on the weird things people did throughout history to cure diseases. I decided to start at the beginning and work my way forward. They started in 2013…I listen to at least 2 episodes a day and I have only reached the start of 2015. It’s really interesting and entertaining! There might be a few episodes that might make people squeamish as it is talking about medical procedures…..and sometimes in the olden days people did WACK stuff to try and cure things. But yeah – I am kind of obsessed with it right now. haha
I love these dorks ok?
After Peacecraft I really adored Griffin but I didn’t yet appreciate Justin or Travis. For a while I would get cranky with lil Trav during Awful Squad because when his character would die he would grab his guitar and start singing and it would drive me nuts (after a while Russ who usually hosted the streams put his foot down and Justin had to stop) but a few weeks ago when they were having trouble with the stream and Simone was running things she let Justin sing/play and it was actually lovely. Listening to the Adventure Zone made me appreciate all the lads more. The family are all very funny! 😀 But right now Justin is my fave…that could be because I am mainlining Sawbones daily. 😀
I have also finally started listening to the MBMBaM podcast….it goes back even longer than Sawbones but I decided to start from the beginning of 2017, so I have some catch up but not years and years worth. Even though I am a couple of years older than Justin I love how they all make pop culture references that I totally get. The only ones I am not cluey on are when they talk about commercials and some smaller kids TV shows from when they were kids that never made it to Australia.
Last week I finally had some credit on iTunes and bought the 6 part TV series of MBMBaM they did last year. They are such silly boys. Because the McElroy’s have been keeping me entertained for months now I also decided to become a supporter of MaximumFun during their Maximumfun Drive.
I am super glad I got interested in their other work when I did, if I hadn’t then I probably would have been more upset at the announcement Justin and Griffin were leaving Polygon. I love Polygons Youtube channel and the work they do there but I know I will keep hearing stuff from the McElroy’s each week (even when I have caught up on the podcasts).
But truly thank you Polygon for existing and introducing me to these guys – for the last 6/7 months Polygon and the McElroy’s basically consist of 80% of my media consumption after Tumblr/reading sterek fanfic – heh. I look forward to seeing what you all do in future!
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