#Jim Boeven

[supfag]

PUT IT IN YOUR MOUTH THE CANYONS (2013)

[yawnderu]

König - Character Study

Contrary to popular belief, König is not shy. While he does have social anxiety, rather than making him shy, it may make him seem rude (and he can be, sometimes). Blunt comments, side eyes, as well as blank stares through the mask are just some of the things that may make him seem that way, besides his sharp tongue. This man is not afraid at all to speak his mind.

While he sometimes may resent or dislike his height as it got him rejected as a sniper, he knows fully well how imposing his figure is, and the big advantage it gives him on the field over anyone else.

Voice lines such as ''Finally, some worthy adversaries'', ''Having fun yet?'', ''Let's be honest, it's better off in my hands'', ''They are no match for me'' and ''Not bad... I've seen better'' make it clear how cocky this man can be. He's a good soldier and he knows it, no doubt.

After spending most of his childhood being bullied, I can definitely see him being harsh on other soldiers based on voice lines such as ''where did you learn how to shoot?!'' and ''let's not do that again''. He would easily pull rank on other soldiers and get a power trip that he never got to experience when he was much younger, when he was powerless unless he was fighting.

The amazing Jim Boeven (König's VA) replied to my DM on Instagram asking how König would be like as a friend, and he said: ''The best friend someone can ask for. Loyal like nobody else. Helpful and loving.''

Despite being able to kill other soldiers with his bare hands, König knows how to measure his strength with his friends and rescued hostages to make sure he doesn't hurt them on accident. I can see him being nervous to hold anything too small or delicate, such as a small animal or anything that can easily break and is important.

He's still bitter he didn't get to be a sniper, by the way. His voice line ''and they said I couldn't be a sniper'' spits pure venom.

[lulu2992]

Greg Bryk was in episode 25 of Podcast141, co-hosted by Marwen Heni, Mars Lipowski, and Jim Boeven, to talk about his acting career in general, but also and mostly his role as Joseph Seed in Far Cry 5.

Since he’s already shared a lot of anecdotes in interviews and live videos on Instagram, I thought I wouldn’t learn anything new... but I did, so here’s a summary of what he said about his experience playing the Father.

We knew that the dev team (he specifically mentioned Dan Hay and Drew Holmes) had struggled to find the “right” actor for the role, but what I don’t remember ever hearing before is that, after two years of unsuccessful search, the project was almost cancelled for this reason!

Thankfully, that was when Greg Bryk auditioned. He had already said the script they gave him (and that he thought was “amazing”) was what became Joseph’s monologue in the mission “We Must Be Strong”, but he gave more details about what was originally in it. In this early version of his backstory, Joseph was 23 years old and working two jobs to support his family. One night, exhausted, he fell asleep on the couch as his pregnant wife went out to get ice cream. He was then awoken by a knock on the door, told she had been in an accident, and taken to the hospital. The rest of the story is what he says in Far Cry 5: when he arrives, his wife is dead, their premature daughter is “stuffed with tubes”, he hears God’s calling, and understands he has to make this sacrifice.

So he got the role, and when they called him again to record a sermon (my guess is it was this one, but I’m just speculating), he saw what the game looked like and thought everything and everyone was “incredible”. Over time, as they got to know him, they even changed the character and partly rewrote the Father specifically for him.

The team was also very accommodating. For example, the scenes are usually shot in the huge performance capture studio, but for the Heralds’ eulogies, which are much more intimate, they built a small room so he felt like he actually had something around him instead of a big, empty space.

A day before the game came out, the cutscenes were already available online and he watched some of them. He was very impressed by the last eulogy (or, as he calls it, “snot monologue”) in particular because of how “vivid” and “human” it felt. It brought tears to his eyes and he recalls his wife was “blown away”; it was “special”.

As for the fans, he thinks they’ve been very supportive and welcoming. Some have told him they felt heard and seen by Joseph, and he believes it’s because he’s a character who loves people for who they are. At this point, he and the co-hosts agreed that being an actor was a gift because it gives an opportunity to make people’s lives better, especially in video games because there’s a unique connection that doesn’t really exist in movies or TV series.

Marwen Heni mentioned that, while most villains want you to hate them, Joseph, on the contrary, wanted you to reflect and think that he might be right. Greg Bryk admitted that he believed everything he said, especially about family and technology. Sometimes, people are isolated or only have online connections, so having someone tell them, “I see you and I love you for what you are” is powerful. In his opinion, this message resonated with a lot of players because it’s a simple truth and we all want to be part of a family.

Joseph doesn’t control his followers with fear, Marwen Heni commented, but with devotion, and that too makes him compelling. As he was playing Far Cry 5, he started questioning whether or not he (as the Deputy) was right for opposing the Father, which is something Greg Bryk says he saw a lot in comments. He believes there’s “an intimacy to the relationship” between Joseph and the player, a “seduction” in the sense that we all want to belong. He’s humbled by the impact his work had on people.

When asked if he would be open to reprising the role, this time, he answered, “Absolutely”. In fact, and this is news to me, he revealed there were discussions about turning Far Cry into a TV show, and the different games would have been standalone seasons. That said, he added that, at a certain point, it’s necessary to let characters go and that he was grateful for what he had already experienced playing the Father.

Marwen Heni then asked if Joseph, who is very complex, was entirely fictional or if it was Greg talking through him. He answered his characters are always him, to a degree, because he wants to connect with the material so he never lies and can work from things that matter to him. He never judges them and tries to think about what he wants to express through them. He’s interested in their humanity and what motivates them. “We’re all broken,” he said. “Some are much more broken than others, and sometimes those broken pieces are very sharp and jagged, and they lash out.”

He also revealed he had “very specific rituals” to help him become a character and then let them go. He mentioned a few prayers that one of his friends, who is a Wiccan, taught him. In fact, and all the co-hosts agreed, it can be very hard to “disconnect” from a character sometimes because actors aren’t just pretending; they’re using real emotions.

He had already said his son Dempsey had done the mocap for John and Jacob in the Collapse DLC and that he felt carrying Ethan’s body in New Dawn was a way for him to honor his “boy”, his dead dog Lucky, since he deeply regretted that he couldn’t be there to take him to the veterinarian the day he passed. What I didn’t know, however, is that it was Greg himself who had asked if Joseph could carry Ethan, and the team made it happen. He also explained that, when it was time to play this scene, he tried to imagine what it would be like to actually lose his son.

But who is Greg Bryk’s favorite Far Cry villain? Well, when he auditioned and started researching the franchise, he was interested in Vaas because of Michael Mando’s performance. He still doesn’t know him personally but has a friend who worked with him and who spoke about “how electrifying his talent was”. There’s something “unhinged” and “primal” to him as a performer; he’s a “wild” and “special” actor.

Finally, when told he was born to play Joseph, he confessed he felt he was indeed “called” to play this part but wants to give credit to Dan Hay, Drew Holmes, and Jean-Sébastien Décant for creating such a “terrifyingly human” antagonist in the first place.

[evilvvithin]

KÖNIG in CALL OF DUTY: WARZONE 2.0

[celestialhole]

I want a petition for a new Konig voice actor. PLEASE. I CANNOT HANDLE THE BS THIS MAN JIM BE DOING.

[cripitique]

sometimes I should remember that famous people can be normal enough to search their names in my old posts and see what I had mentioned them in without tagging them

yes mr. König, I'm looking at you. anyways, good evening sir

[maylovessyou]

LIKE I REPLIED TO ONE OF HIS STORIES AND THIS MF REPLIED TO ME???? LIKE??? but then left me in read I wanna cry.

Thing is, I LOVE KÖNIG so I HAVE TO LOVE HIS VA ASWELL ok.

[radcowboylad]

I think that actors being super involved in the fandoms for franchises they’re in is truly the ULTIMATE marketing tactic that I don’t think the actual creators really take notice of.

As someone who reeallly only gets deep into franchises based on the fandom, these actors are like the fucking backbone of them. Not even exaggerating on that. They unintentionally bring more content for fans to thrive on and keep them involved with the community a lot longer than usual which is absolutely fantastic for people like me who are tired of fandoms dying so quickly because of how short our attention spans have become (thank you tikTok and thank you Streaming services for releasing content all at once instead of one episode per week, totally didn’t completely backfire on your longevity)

For example, let me talk about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022) Ghost, Soap, König and Horangi:

Initially, Ghost had started appearing on tik tok when the game released sometime around October or November, and because this character was sexy as fuck, he brought in a HUGE AMOUNT of fans from an entirely different demographic (more women, more lgbt people, more mask kink people too lmao) which is so vastly different from its stereotypical community (being males who are often insufferable, sexist, homophobic and transphobic)

But the interesting thing is, once Neil Ellice (Soap’s actor) started showing up and involving himself within TikTok after That One Interview, his character’s popularity BOOMED, while Ghost kind of just remained the same level, despite both Neil and Samuel being present in that interview. I think this is because Ghost’s actor (Samuel Roukin) never really took too much interest in social media’s or the newer cod fandom, and his reactions and responses to questions in the interview never seemed (to me at least) that he cared too much or that he didn’t want to be there. (I don’t think it was intentional though, but it’s hard to know for sure)

After a week or so of the game release, König started to win the hearts of the new cod fans as soon as players started to unlock him in DMZ/multiplayer; people were obsessing over him, despite not being a story mode character (all we had was his character backstory written in his bio)…. And then his Voice actor (Jim Boeven) suddenly made an instagram story reply to someone and either unintentionally or intentionally made a remark in regards to König that came off as homophobic. This actually kind of killed the König fans temporarily; it felt awkward and uncomfortable to express liking König for a while because a lot of the homophobic fans or even just other regular fans would reply to fan art and comments and edits saying “but he’s straight/but his VA is homophobic and calls himself an alpha male unironically” etc. it was also interesting to see how the lgbt fans would actually start rejecting Jim and fully separating him from König in attempt to “reclaim” him and say “Jim isn’t technically his creator/writer, therefore the things he says in regards to König is irrelevant and not canon”, but when Neil would say something about Soap, those same fans would treat it as canon despite it being just as true as the heterosexual König remark Jim made.

I wrote an extra paragraph for Horangi but I accidentally deleted it all ugh I didn’t know adding a link would replace the entire paragraph with the preview and disappear let me do a tldr I don’t know much about Horangi because his character popularity increase is extremely recent OR because I kinda fell out of the fandom briefly until a week ago but essentially I think that Nick Martineau (horangi VA) interacting with the fandom on Neil levels is definitely reviving some cod fans and making player’s interest in COD last just a bit longer.

Anyway the tweet I was gonna link was him talking about joining AO3, the fanfic writers were FREAKING OUT and scared him out of it

I think this really shows how much effect these voice actors & actors have over these characters outside of professional work. Fandoms are a slippery slope so of course, if an actor puts a negative input on ‘their’ character, it’s going to have a negative response or effect from some of the fandom, and vice versa. It needs to be treated with respect and open mindedness.

I guess also the beauty of not having actors involved is that you can avoid this issue all together. You can’t really stop actors from “tainting” characters outside of official media because their words outside of it doesn’t make it official or canon at all

But anyways, Old fashion interviews can be nice too. but it’s different. Interviews can easily seem too professional and insincere, that the actor doesn’t actually have to have any passion for the franchise/character, can only be there for the money or because they have to be there, etc even if that’s not always the case… so it’s truly on another level when an actor has a lot of passion and love for their community and interacts with fans outside of interviews. The casual-ness, it feels more personal, and there’s a lack of need for censoring for company image or whatever and those factors name it so easy to become more attached to the character AND the actor themself.

It feels so special when the art, memes, projects, edits, and even fanfics you make can have an unprompted response from an actor involved. i think it’s normal when you see their reactions and it put you on a small high + silly bragging rights even if they comment on a lot of things.

Even if the actor is not like their character (let’s be real, actors are very rarely anything like the characters they play) it still sort of feels like that character is still alive in them, even if the character has died and the show has ended… it fills me with so much happiness especially when these actors react like their characters or answer questions on behalf of the character, or give their opinions on silly discourse, headcanon’s, theories and ships. The fandoms FEAST on this shit for a good while and it becomes the talk of the week!

Oh boy and let me tell you more instances where actors have completely amplified my emotional attachment to franchises!!! (Warning: irrelevant rambles you don’t need to read)

I was hyperfixating HARD on rdr2 a few years ago and obviously it’s just so easy to fall in love with the world and the characters in that amazing game on its own, but when I discovered Roger Clark (Arthur Morgan), Robert Wiethoff (John Marston) and Peter Blomquist’s (Micah Bell) instagram accounts, I had so much fun seeing their involvement in the fandom (despite it being little in comparison to mw2), seeing how Peter would make his instagram captions allude to not being human and kind of just acting as a Micah parody, seeing Peter make (hilarious) dad jokes (that I steal to this day) and build a fucking chicken coop on live it just makes it SOO SPECIAL!

One moment that was super special to me was when Roger Clark voiced a western audiobook and gave out some copies for free on twitter and I was a winner. I was able to have a chat with him, and after a while I made some doodles of the book characters and he saw them and ended up following me back 🥹🥹🥹 (STILL SAD THOUGH BECAUSE I NO LONGER HAVE ACCESS TO THE ACCOUNT)

Oh oh oh and TF2, those voice actors are quite literally carrying TF2 more than the actual fucking devs GENUINELY! It’s actually kind of upsetting how these actors really openly want to do more official things with the game but valve is sadly dead as fuck these days… Medic’s voice actor especially (who I think streams occasionally? I’ve never made it to one before) makes the fandom much more livelier and so fun, doing lines in medic’s voice and the fans creating funny sfm’s and comics from them!

Actually, one of the hugest impacts an actor has made on me definitely has to be Bill Moseley. I’m sure most of you probably have no fucking clue who this dude is so let me tell you all about him

I first discovered Bill Moseley in the movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (still my #1 favourite film) and he plays Chop Top, the brother of Leatherface. Sadly that character is only in that film though but oh my god, Bill Moseley did what no other actor could ever do…

I fell into a rabbit hole and discovered that Bill Moseley formed a band called Cornbugs where he essentially roleplays/sings AS CHOP TOP and it also had fucking BUCKETHEAD in it (I believe he’s one of the musicians who has made the most albums (435) in the world) and he is an absolute guitar legend and genuinely amazing music despite his silly iconic look (you guessed it he wears a bucket on his head)

Although it sounds…. Extremely unique, to say the least, I am lucky enough to be one of those people who actually enjoys all kinds of music (yes, even country, before you roll your eyes. Don’t underestimate my tastes) because most of the songs are extremely silly and fun but would probably sound… too interesting to the average person. Most of the appeal to me initially was how in some of the songs it was pretty explicitly about chop top, bubba and Drayton and my hyperfixation thrived for so so so so much longer than it should have purely because of that music career.

It also doesn’t end there though, he has an even Niche’r band that is active currently (unlike Cornbugs bc it got dispanded after buckethead got bored and left I think) called Spider Mountain that has music that genuinely surprised me. These songs are actually so good and underrated even though they are also silly (and definitely would be more appealing to Normal listeners in comparison to Cornbugs) but even though it’s about completely disconnected to chop top, I’ve noticed that the lyrics in a few of these songs seem to be about some family members and himself, like Maple Men which is an extremely silly but catchy song, and they just fill me with so much glee. Like this dude is just a dad having fun in the studio!! Making songs about silly and random topics like Goose Steppin’ Down Broadway, incredible shrinking man, and stupid life of a mom eater LIKE THEYRE JUST SO SILLY AND FUN AND CHARMINGGG these types of passionate actors increase my lifespan and when they go far and wide for the franchises they’re in its so magical.

I have to stop here now but im just about done talking about this anyway, my phone is starting to lag from my hyperfixation rambles. I’ve been writing this for 3 hours.

I’d also love to hear about whatever experiences that any of you have with actors amplifying your experiences, or just general thoughts about this recent trend that’s happening with them!

[justiceloord]

Sooo dissapointed in these actors who support onlyfans prostitutes or talk shit about plus sized women. Shame on you. Yes I'm talking about you Warren Kole and Jim Boeven.

[its-night-again]

Y'all really are a bunch of adults throwing tantrums over König's sexuality because it didn't go the way you wanted it, huh.

Embarrassing.

Stop harassing Jim Boeven, go write your fanfics and behave like adults instead of like spoiled children for once.

[doctordbd]

NOOOOOO KÖNIG’S VA IS HOMOPHOBIC AND CALLS HIMSELF A “SIGMA MALE”

I hope this is all just a big misunderstanding, but with the given evidence it doesn’t look too good.

[x3no9]

I am extremely okay with this being the face under König's mask....

Added note: don't like his homophobic attitude though. Luckily he is just the voice...

[evilvvithin]

KÖNIG ➛ MODERN WARFARE II

[l4xu0riipng]

I wanna know if Jim and Nick ever argue abt this 😭 Jims saying all this shit abt König not being gay, and then there’s Nick,,, idk i think it’s just be funny, and it’s crossed my mind so many times

i mean...

[celestialhole]

Jimmy..... Jimmy.. Jimmy why are you whimpering...

[wordstome]

peace and love in the cod fandom if we learned to stop getting personally attached/invested in the voice actors and intrinsically associating them with characters we love