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General Dog posted:Have any of these campaigns been funny since about halfway through Balance? This post is funnier than anything they've done since halfway through Balance
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Jul 30, 2022 19:21
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If they're hellbent on using D&D just run a pre-written campaign and play characters that are fun instead of deliberate assholes, it'd turn out a lot better
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Jul 30, 2022 20:27
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All of them are funny in the middle, with some good moments in the beginning and the end, less so near the end, and almost not at all for the last episode. The funniest moment in this episode by far was literally a toilet joke. Dylan is loving hilarious. Even the fact that he exists is funny. I'm not entirely sure which is worse, Zooks not telling anyone about the Blink Sharks, or the entirely manufactured conflict between Koda (doesn't want anyone to go through the portal) and Amber (did not intend to go through the portal until Koda said not to.) Captain France fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Jul 30, 2022 |
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Jul 30, 2022 20:42
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Realize most of ya'll are probably already aware of it, but the McElory's mini-season (6 ep) of Dimension 20 is comedy gold back to front. Justin is firing on all cylinders, Travis and Clinton get semi-serious characters with actually well handled arcs, and Griffin plays a chaotic goof monk with the most wholesome handling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-y98OYaXu8 Which is to say, it'd be nice if they brought in other DM's to AZ to help better tailor an adventure to their impulses.
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Jul 30, 2022 21:58
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PRDfVyz-PE I wish I could find the humor in this video but unfortunately it's well past the first half of balance so I guess actually I hate it and it sucks
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Jul 31, 2022 02:05
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General Dog posted:Have any of these campaigns been funny since about halfway through Balance? There was an episode early in Graduation that was hilarious, they did some great fish out of water stuff with the Firbolg from an agrarian forest village with no concept of money taking a mandatory accounting class, and then they had some really funny shenanigans with all three of them taking a practical exam in gathering information at a stereotypical D&D tavern. It was great having the teacher explain how you're supposed to do things contrasted with how the players wind up doing it, definitely the high point of the campaign. And then they never did a class scene ever again
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Jul 31, 2022 03:29
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Everyone just go listen to Rude Tales of Magic instead, not only does it have good jokes but all the players act like they actually want to be there.
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Jul 31, 2022 04:24
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The World Inferno posted:Realize most of ya'll are probably already aware of it, but the McElory's mini-season (6 ep) of Dimension 20 is comedy gold back to front. Justin is firing on all cylinders, Travis and Clinton get semi-serious characters with actually well handled arcs, and Griffin plays a chaotic goof monk with the most wholesome handling. Brennan is one of the "best" dm's around and has earned that praise by his professional improv skills in comedy, natural charisma, and outstanding players that he draws in and never lets go. Griffin tries his best, but as others have said his weakness lies in his need to make every finale super grand scale. I liked balance and amnesty, but every series after the first suffered in the end by poor execution and scale issues. His players aren't great either. Travis regularly and disastrously dragging it down with abhorrent character/player choices and rp, Justin losing interest mid series, and Clint being consistently lovely but not knowing how to actually play a decade later and counting so slowing the momentum. All that really limits them. Crazyeyes fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Jul 31, 2022 |
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Jul 31, 2022 13:42
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Crazyeyes posted:Brennan is one of the "best" dm's around and has earned that praise by his professional improv skills in comedy, natural charisma, and outstanding players that he draws in and never lets go. Griffin tries his best, but as others have said his weakness lies in his need to make every finale super grand scale. I liked balance and amnesty, but every series after the first suffered in the end by poor execution and scale issues. It’s what happens when you have three adult nerd brothers who have inexorably tied themselves to one-another professionally and have also been doing this McElroy BrothersTM thing, in some form or another, for almost a decade and a half. plus their dad—who, like you said, is an absolute sweetheart and also a consummate media professional, but is also their dad and is clearly stuck between being their co-host/business owner/operator and also being an old dad who clearly loves his three large boys. like this is how TAZ was always going to go without bringing in a bunch of outside people on the production/showrunning side and delegating management to them. riff/chat-based stuff like MBMBaM is relatively fine and indefinitely sustainable if you’ve got good rapport because it’s just some bros doing banter. As far as anybody knows MBMBaM, the wifecasts, etc, are all doing great. They seem to fit very well with the way that the McElroys operate and work together creatively. As long as nobody actively hates each other the risk of somebody feeling burned by a creative decision, or the risk of the product being hurt by relationships, is all very low. Nobody has to be the “leader” in a big way either, because it’s just some people who love each other and clearly enjoy making content together doing their thing. Balance was great, first as an occasional one-off to MBMBaM and then as its own single thing, but turning it into an actual narrative show that can sustain multiple seasons and complex storylines requires poo poo like direction and organizational/operational hierarchy and people who can unilaterally make decisions and be the bad guy or the person who does emotional labor or the one who tells Travis that his idea is bad, and the McElroy company, for lack of a better word, obviously isn’t gonna be structured like that or ever operate that way. Trying to make one or two of the brothers the bandleaders or the CEO or whatever will never be a thing. Despite what some corners of the fandom would have you believe (or clearly would like), Griffin/Justin are not the Lennon/McCartney of the McElroy family and they will never assume those roles it’s the “making an independent film with your friends” problem, stretched out and drawn out over years for the podcast age: you can treat the work like work and the people you work with like employees/colleagues or you can treat them like friends/family and bolster those relationships, but you can’t sustainably or effectively do both all of the time without major sacrifices to both the relationships and the product
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Jul 31, 2022 15:27
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Like at this point it kind of feels like they really hate doing TAZ and wish they could stop at least for a bit but they’ve already built it up into a major keystone of their brand and income earner for literally everybody in the family and plus they’ve got all of these business relationships and comic book people to keep employed and whatnot and also clearly the fans, what if they lose the fans?
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Jul 31, 2022 15:34
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Ok Comboomer posted:Like at this point it kind of feels like they really hate doing TAZ and wish they could stop at least for a bit but they’ve already built it up into a major keystone of their brand and income earner for literally everybody in the family and plus they’ve got all of these business relationships and comic book people to keep employed and whatnot and also clearly the fans, what if they lose the fans? I get the impression that they really enjoy doing the live shows, either because they're returns to the characters they spent ages building or because they get to do something new as a one off. The business as usual podcast though, that's work.
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Jul 31, 2022 15:41
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Ok Comboomer posted:Like at this point it kind of feels like they really hate doing TAZ and wish they could stop at least for a bit but they’ve already built it up into a major keystone of their brand and income earner for literally everybody in the family and plus they’ve got all of these business relationships and comic book people to keep employed and whatnot and also clearly the fans, what if they lose the fans? yeah i think "let someone else DM" solves almost all their fundamental morale-related problems with TAZ and it also solves a lot of the fundamental family-related problems too (specifically, that no one has to feel bad about telling Travis "no" too many times) like speaking of Brennan, I think that kind of more subtle personnel-management side of the job is what he absolutely excels at, he's good at handling big personalities without indulging them to the point of other people having less fun. which makes sense because he literally did it as a job where they used it to help teens learn how to socialize eke out fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Jul 31, 2022 |
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Jul 31, 2022 16:07
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Crazyeyes posted:Clint being consistently lovely but not knowing how to actually play a decade later and counting so slowing the momentum. okay this bit isn't true though, what slows the momentum is when Clint tries to do something in the rules and everyone else either balks at the idea of actually playing DND or the dm assumes he's asking for something wild and improvises a terrible kludge for what's a pretty basic action he is definitely the one with the worst grasp of rules by dint of having generally gamed the least I just find it annoying that his efforts to learn the rules are consistently stymied less by him and more by the group's attitude towards rules Valentin fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Jul 31, 2022 |
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Jul 31, 2022 16:30
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The ad read in the finale actually has a couple of jokes in it for once. Still worth skipping, though
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Jul 31, 2022 18:11
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I will never listen to a Justin ad read A good refresher would be an outside DM, but also you could have a guest for a season - one of the brothers could still DM but having someone else in the party would shake things up a bit.
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Aug 1, 2022 00:59
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MysticalMachineGun posted:I will never listen to a Justin ad read Get Stuart Wellington in to DM for an arc, he'd fit in while bringing something new to the table.
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Aug 1, 2022 09:40
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BransonReeseHailSatan
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Aug 1, 2022 12:09
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Warbird posted:BransonReeseHailSatan I don't think the McElroy's could keep up with Branson. Would love to hear it though.
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Aug 1, 2022 13:05
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Crazyeyes posted:Brennan is one of the "best" dm's around and has earned that praise by his professional improv skills in comedy, natural charisma, and outstanding players that he draws in and never lets go. Also I listened to Fantasy High and man Brennan just puts his whole rear end into making voices I love it about him
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Aug 1, 2022 13:58
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Warbird posted:BransonReeseHailSatan Admiral Joeslop posted:I don't think the McElroy's could keep up with Branson. Branson Reese is the trickster god of the dm pantheon. Absolutely unhinged, yet astonishingly effective storyteller, and loving every second of the chaos he creates with his players. Rude Tales feels like the kind of insane, rambling campaign that could actually take place around a table of friends committed to buying into the story and working collaboratively. It's everything TAZ could be if they just got out of their own way. TAZ was best when it wasn't trying to be serious and, at some points, wasn't even trying to tell a story. Graduation parts talked about above with learning how to be a "hero" and accounting, the entire train arc of Balance where you could ~feel~ that everyone was having fun, Amnesty when they are just tooling around and fighting a swimming pool or whatever. All great moments, each overshadowed by the oncoming oppressive bullshit when the story inevitably collapses to "save the world from cosmic annihilation" yet again. Compare that with the season of Tiny Heist where the entire plot revolves around little people and toys stealing a roll of quarters. The four of them were great. Justin was a standout to me personally after his initial Rick Diggins monolog, but Clint and Griffin both have their moments as well. Travis I don't remember any specific parts and in general I remember him being too serious yet again, but I may be forgetting. Regardless, they were clearly having fun and it plainly showed in their performances. Valentin posted:okay this bit isn't true though, what slows the momentum is when Clint tries to do something in the rules and everyone else either balks at the idea of actually playing DND or the dm assumes he's asking for something wild and improvises a terrible kludge for what's a pretty basic action These are very valid points. Clint was great on Tiny Heist after all, and nothing was lost mechanically. Again, they can't get out of their own way.
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Aug 1, 2022 16:20
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Crazyeyes posted:Branson Reese is the trickster god of the dm pantheon. Absolutely unhinged, yet astonishingly effective storyteller, and loving every second of the chaos he creates with his players. Rude Tales feels like the kind of insane, rambling campaign that could actually take place around a table of friends committed to buying into the story and working collaboratively. It's everything TAZ could be if they just got out of their own way. I made this extremely stupid picture two years age re: TAZ vs Rude Tales and it, depressingly, still rings true 
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Aug 1, 2022 17:40
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https://twitter.com/mcelroyfamily/status/1554109967455731713?s=21&t=IKgO2AsfxcmTK96e6hRJuA
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Aug 1, 2022 18:57
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I really really enjoyed Ethersea, up to and including Cambria. Just that... Cambria feels like it should have been the logical end to the season. It was high-stakes and logical for how the world had been built, got to go on some fun hijinks to get to the conclusion of the arc, etc This whole deal here was... murder mystery, portal, gods, time travel, dimension shifting, callbacks to characters from the prologue, callbacks to concepts from the prologue, callbacks to brief asides from earlier arcs without much fanfare, and then a bunch of ???? tacked onto the end The entire time I was listening to the final episode I thought I had skipped three weeks of content, but nope! feels like the whole gang wanted to mash the eject button and Griffin could only mange it by being bombastic in his storytelling
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Aug 1, 2022 19:21
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Just give me stupid ship adventures. I could have listened to that format for another year before things "popped off."
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Aug 1, 2022 19:22
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Crazyeyes posted:Travis I don't remember any specific parts and in general I remember him being too serious yet again, but I may be forgetting. (Huge Tiny Heist spoilers) Travis blew everyone's cover with the big bad while they were right smack dab in the middle of the titular Heist because he learned that the villain had a peanut stashed away for potential use against their kid/owner, who is allergic to peanuts. Everyone at the table was like "...really, Travis? Now?" and he was like "I'm sorry! It's what my character would do!" Obviously Brennan made it work because he's a consummate professional, but I remember being fairly annoyed with Travis in that moment. I've also seen that in Devo, and now I see the pattern of Travis's characters making selfish and unfun character decisions at the expense of the table. But still, I also think TAZ would improve greatly from the addition of a full-time DM who lets the boys be silly while moving things along a la Tiny Heist, or that TAZ: Imbalance arc they did with Aabria Iyengar Sockser posted:I really really enjoyed Ethersea, up to and including Cambria. I stopped listening to Ethersea around the end of the Cambria arc and ID really K if I'm going to dip back in after reading this thread's evaluations  There's just too many good DnD APs out there now. Ironically most of them probably wouldn't exist without TAZ blazing the trail, but it is what it is I guess!
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Aug 1, 2022 19:25
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Branson Reese, like Brennan Lee Mulligan, runs Dungeons and dragons for literal children so I think he'd be fine working with the McElroys. But again, Rude Tales benefits from an outstanding cast AND a good editor (Tim Platt is apparently not super good with the rules/knowing what to roll either, but they edit those bits out and just keep the storytelling parts which he is very good at)
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Aug 1, 2022 19:31
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Highway Traffic 
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timp posted:the pattern of Travis's characters making selfish and unfun character decisions at the expense of the table. Me listening to Travis playing TTRPGs https://youtu.be/BoRZpjap3tI?t=24s
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Aug 1, 2022 21:19
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We know who to really blame for Travis and that's Clint McElroy. That fucker.
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Aug 1, 2022 21:26
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SpacePig posted:Me listening to Travis playing TTRPGs Now if Travis was the imposter or whatever and that was a meta play to throw out the other guy, that would have been amazing.
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Aug 1, 2022 21:31
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Ches Neckbeard posted:We know who to really blame for Travis and that's Clint McElroy. That fucker. The genetic continuity between Clint and Travis is scary, despite it being hard to see with the way Travis dresses himself nowadays lol
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Aug 1, 2022 22:12
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Pork Lift posted:Branson Reese, like Brennan Lee Mulligan, runs Dungeons and dragons for literal children so I think he'd be fine working with the McElroys. The short interlude in Rude Tales where: Branson has the characters play witch hunters for an hour, fleshing out their backstories and forging friendships, only to have the regular PCs come blazing in, controlled by Branson, and immediately murder the witcher hunter PCs, while spouting off catchphrases.
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Aug 1, 2022 22:26
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Pork Lift posted:But again, Rude Tales benefits from an outstanding cast AND a good editor (Tim Platt is apparently not super good with the rules/knowing what to roll either, but they edit those bits out and just keep the storytelling parts which he is very good at) yeah I feel like TAZ is edited competently but not with the kinda ruthless eye for cutting out boring stuff you see most of the other best podcasts do. like in naddpod, you can tell how they've got their combat editing down to an artform, just enough context about mechanics that you can follow it but with zero of the rules questions or slowly adding numbers or filler stuff that make turns drag on
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Aug 1, 2022 23:12
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I feel like the rolling and such in TAZ is "supposed" to be in because it's part of the whole show where they argue about things instead of just doing them and letting the dice decide. That's not how RtoM does it so they edit those things out unless they're relevant.
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Aug 1, 2022 23:41
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The Trinyvale short campaign in NADDPOD is my favorite dnd podcast product with DM Caldwell absolutely letting the players go fully rampant and be their absolute worst selves.
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Aug 2, 2022 00:41
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Bip Roberts posted:The Trinyvale short campaign in NADDPOD is my favorite dnd podcast product with DM Caldwell absolutely letting the players go fully rampant and be their absolute worst selves. Hell yeah
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Aug 2, 2022 01:09
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Bip Roberts posted:The Trinyvale short campaign in NADDPOD is my favorite dnd podcast product with DM Caldwell absolutely letting the players go fully rampant and be their absolute worst selves. Trinyvale also helped me to realize that I think Jake is my favorite of the group when it comes to improv skills. He's always giving people something to work with.
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Aug 2, 2022 01:21
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Pennsylvanian posted:Trinyvale also helped me to realize that I think Jake is my favorite of the group when it comes to improv skills. He's always giving people something to work with. Hard agree. Jake might not always get the payoffs but he sets up so much. Everyone's gets funnier by proxy when Jake's around. I stopped listening to TAZ a long time ago, Naddpod completely replaced it because it's got what I liked about early Balance. A bunch of funny people being funny, first and foremost, and then developing the characters and story from there. It paid off well in the end, but only because of the the stupid comedy jizz cave body hiding jenkins bullying parts, not in spite of them. IIRC Griffin once said that he was embarrassed about the earliest arcs of Balance and that really put me off hoping the show would ever recapture the parts that I liked the most. It's not strictly bad to prioritize more serious structured story from the get go, but it's just not for me.
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Aug 2, 2022 02:40
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Ches Neckbeard posted:We know who to really blame for Travis and that's Clint McElroy. That fucker. Travis truly is the middlest middle child.
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Aug 2, 2022 16:56
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I normally dislike the live MBMBAM but these last two were full of actual jokes and moments where one of them made another break down completely and also some bullying of question askers good stuff
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Aug 2, 2022 17:27
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Empty Sandwich posted:I normally dislike the live MBMBAM but these last two were full of actual jokes and moments where one of them made another break down completely and also some bullying of question askers Sci Fi romance title question was very good.
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Aug 2, 2022 17:28
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