#and before watcher when it was just bfu

[amiibo-king]

ive been seeing some people deride others as childish or whatever for being like "ghost/mystery files wasnt as good as buzzfeed unsolved" calling it "sour grapes", but i watched a video talkin abt the watcher thing just now (by stateofmoregon) where she points out that, when youve been receiving something for free, and u suddenly have to pay for it, it forces you to think about whether or not you actually like that thing—if it's worth paying for, if you only liked it before because it was free. which i think is a good point. it's not that people are suddenly denying they ever liked ghost/mystery files, its that many of us are being forced to reexamine whether or not ghost/mystery files is something we actually enjoy or if we were just taking it because it was free, and many of us are deciding that no, we never really did enjoy it on the same level as buzzfeed unsolved

i know that i personally havent even watched a ghost/mystery files episode in some time bc every time a new one popped up in my feed i just felt apathetic about it, none of the excitement i used to feel about new bfu eps. and i realized a while ago that ive only really been forcing myself to watch new ones out of the hope that maybe this time itll have the same charm as bfu did. so i really dont think its fair to say its "sour grapes". a lot of people are just being forced to reckon with feelings that theyve had for a while but just never bothered to acknowledge because hey, its free.

[drunkkenobi]

i loveeee yt analytics and i find your spread-sheets/watcher such a fascinating place to do it so forgive me for the word vomit:

mf so far has surpassed my expectations of how it was going to do- i was anticipating something like a few weeks/ amonth or so to get to a million because that's what the best performing puppet history episodes usually took to get there. do you have any opinions as to why these enter the algorithm better? maybe just because true crime/spooky stuff is more of an automatic click for the brain instead of historical events or they're still more well-known for that due to bfu?

my guess is that the difference in shane vs. ryan hosted eps. will be based purely on the subject matter but i do also wonder if casual viewers are more used to ryan presenting/shane commenting and more likely to watch a video with that format! time will tell! the feedback on both presentation styles seems to be largely positive, there doesn't seem to be a huge preference for one of the boys to take over so far.

it is so interesting to me how different yt is now than from when bfu was in it's heyday. nowadays episodes on these sorts of topics do 500k in a day, 800k in a weekend, 1mil in under a week - and that's considered great and trending on the yt algorithm! back in 2017, 2-3 mil was considered a reasonable marker for a bfu ep. in a week as i recall. it's also fascinating to me how yt videos "move" so to speak - some accumulate quickly and others doesn't, seemingly at random.

steven & ricky & food videos! i've noticed a jump on steven & ricky's worth a shot eps. too, which bodes well. i know you have said before that ryan & shane's stuff tends to have better opening weekends much like bfu, while steven & worth it would often enter the yt algorithm and soar the next week. curious as to whether you think that a steven show will be coming next and how you anticipate it doing.

love your work but am too shy to come off anon! hopefully this message wasn't annoying!!!

Anon do not apologize you are not annoying, it brings me such joy to talk about these things.

-i think because people see thumbnails of Ryan & Shane plus a spooky thing and they click. PH doesn't advertise either guy in the thumbnail or description so it makes sense that casual folks don't realize it's a Ryan and Shane show. I also have to assume that the weeks of promo MF got (and months for GF) contribute to their strong openings.

-i think YouTube is just not as popular in general as it was in like 2014 or so, the peak of buzzfeed days, but I'm not the best person to speak to that as I never paid attention to youtubers until these goofs in 2018.

-food shows have SUCH a different algorithm! I wonder if it's because people are more casual viewers or if they click based on topics versus personalities. I'd love hard data on this.

As for a Steven show, I'm not sure! It'll be after Ghost Files if we get one this year at all. there are 8 weeks between MF ending and GF starting so I assume Puppet History and some one-offs slide in there. But after GF I have no idea what the rest of Watcher's year will be. I'd love to see Dish Granted ofc, but Steven's said it takes up too much of his time to do a full season again. Eat Like Me has potential if they tweak the format a bit (in my humble opinion) but I'm not sure if it'll come back either. I do miss Steven on-screen terribly, TMS isn't enough! But I also respect him being the business boy.

[trashworldblog]

For the ask game, 2 and 4!

2: did you watch bfu or worth it before?

yes!! big buzzfeed unsolved true crime fan since way early. i remember watching the db cooper episode and laughing my ass off and immediately thinking that i had to see what these guys are up to. i always kept semi up to date on new seasons, but with the way buzzfeed is set up, i never actually knew when a new season was coming out, and i didnt really give a shit about what buzzfeed was doing at that point. i cared earlier, but by 2016/2018ish i moved on from the feed, besides them, the worth it boys, saf, and the try guys.

i do remember having some favorite buzzfeed videos, and when i went back to watch them after watching bfu and worth it i started recognizing that some of them were made/hosted by shane/ryan/steven and being really suprized that i had seen their work before

i never really joined the fandom either! (i was busy in the phandom)

also fun fact: when i started watching bfu (in middleschool) i didnt watch supernatural because i was scared and actually belived in ghosts. and now im a complete shaniac and get to easily watch ghost files and bfu supernatural

i watched worth it quite a bit too. back when the trending page was good, id look through it and worth it was basically always up there and was always a good watch. but again i had no clue when their seasons stopped and ended. so i probably havent seen everything. i had traveled around the states quite a bit, and had eaten a lot of local food, so it was fun to recognize a cuisine i had tried before. its nice to remember a vacation while watching a video from that location.

4: do you have a favorite co founder?

how dare you ask me this question /joking

ummmmm yeahh

well

okay its hard to answer and not feel bad

ill say i have a bias because that feels better

so my bias is shane because he is the most relateable to me. someone on pod watcher will ask a question and me and shane answer the exact same way. idk why, maybe because we're both chicago suburbanites who went to columbia? we both love the schaumburg mall? idk i guess we're just similar which is fun cus he just gets it. we love a creative, artistic, and funny guy

of course, steven and ryan are absolutely incredible. i love how steven will fully commit to a bit, its so funny, he's incredible. and ryan is the kind of guy im often inspired by, he has such great and funny ideas, how?

[sequencefairy]

(Under a cut so people can skip if they want but I have Opinions™ about some of the Watcher shows)

So, I am one of those people who stopped watching Puppet History fairly early on in it’s run. I watched the first season, and I think probably most of both the second and third seasons, and then I’ve just fallen off entirely. I was talking to a friend about why I dipped, and initially I posited that the reason was that I got busy and got behind and just never caught up, but there’s plenty of things that I miss when I’m busy and still manage to catch up on, so it’s clearly not a priority for me. 

I thought about it some more, and wondered if maybe it was the songs. I don’t like them. Never have. They’re not my thing, I usually turn the episodes I have watched off before I get to them. They give me wicked bad secondhand embarrassment, which is totally a me thing, and my own baggage, and not the fault of the show. So that’s probably a contributing factor to why I never bothered to catch up, but it’s certainly not the reason why I stopped watching, since I was quite happily just skipping them in the early seasons.

The next thing that came up has been the increase in amount, depth and complexity of the Other Story that is happening behind the puppet show about history. And to be quite frank, this is the primary reason why I think the show used to be a good show and now it isn’t and hasn’t been for a while.

PH currently suffers from the same problem that AYS has long suffered from - they don’t know what they want to prioritize in the show and so none of the competing options get the time or attention they deserve. AYS seems to want to both be funny and spooky, but Watcher already has a funny spooky show - that’s TMS. AYS should lean into the spooky aspect, but because the format demands that Ryan and Shane break the atmosphere and tension of retelling of the spooky story, it doesn’t work as a spooky show, and because, let’s face it, riffing on a horror story is not really the best subject matter for jokes, it’s not that funny either!

Similarly, PH used to be a show about history, told a bit irreverently, with a game show aspect associated so they could have a reason to have guests. It had the vibe of Ruining History, extrapolated, and I loved it. I love learning about historical events that we don’t usually hear about, especially ones that are a little salacious and a lot silly. Unfortunately, PH is now a show that is not actually about history anymore and has become a show that is about this ongoing backstory that requires you to pay attention and watch episodes in order and keep up.

This is why I don’t watch anymore. 

Even if the bulk of the ‘lore’ is kept to the ends of the episodes, they still cut in and out in the episode, so there’s no way to just watch the history bits that I like, without also watching all the other nonsense, which just feels like the hot daga with more money. At least the hot daga had the decency to be attached to the PMs, so I didn’t have to skip through BFU episodes in order to watch the show that I want to watch. 

If they want to make a show about the puppets and their rich internal lives, by all means, Watcher should do that. But like, not at the expense of what used to be one of their flagship shows, and is now something I fully ignore for the six weeks it’s on youtube every year. I don’t think I’m alone in this either, there’s definitely folks in my regular circle who have dipped on this show for reasons similar to mine, and I’m sure that means there are others out there.

I’m happy that Shane’s having fun telling this story, but I also think that because of this, the history parts of the episodes have gotten shorter and less well done and I’d love to see them re-focus and re-prioritize. If the show isn’t going to be a history lesson anymore, then fine, let it not be, but just like AYS is undercut by the way they don’t seem to be able to decide whether it’s supposed to be funny or scary, and so it ends up being neither, PH is neither a good history show or a good show about a time-travelling puppet.

[leconcombrerit]

Help why did you have to remind me of my DFF brain rot i JUST got out of it

if you were to write a special film-length episode to DFF like the rumoured existence of one, what would that have been like?

i personally would have gone for some low stakes plot with a bunch of BFU/Watcher-like youtuber friends visiting the site years later and talking about rumors and police findings and theories and confirming a couple of plotlines (miss me with vague shit, i need everyone to be confirmed dead), and they are played by the previous cast in different roles bc that's the kind of meta stuff i like lol

(i am keeping my tabarcode/pheenon tho, i need another show with them, i cannot believe i am being tortured like this, you cannot give me a taste of their chemistry then just never do it again!!!)

I can't help it, sometimes Non pops up in my head like Masky from the woods and I have to yell about it to the world

............ Okay so that might be the question no one should ask without being fully ready for me to pull out my whole google doc folder full of notes, scenes breakdowns, actual written scenes, meta about some of the scenes, character development interpretation and-

Seriously though I was so mad and frustrated that I came up with a whole fix-it sequel, including a sequel to my sequel after that to make it less depressing, and then just. Lost the will to write I guess.

You can ignore the novel below, but I am VERY EMOTIONAL AND NOW YOU'VE THROWN ME BACK INTO THIS THING

Beware that I'm a firm believer of the "they're all stuck in a infinite loop" and "Non partially haunted them" theories, so that's what I go by. If I keep it simple, it would go like

(It might not always make sense but it does in my head I swear)

I have it start right after the ending of the series, except when Phee and Jin walk into the house, Phee gets weird flashbacks of what happened before (except some stuff doesn't quite match, it's important, and Jin doesn't get flashbacks, also important), then it cuts back to the beginning, with the boys at the back of the truck. We go over Phee's many failed attempts at saving everyone in little glimpses. Things tend to happen quite the same way in every loop, Phee always gets brought back.

After a while though he starts remembering a little and gets seriously confused. After a number of loops though, Phee tries really hard to remember to save Por before he steps into the house (and straight into another loop). Cause Por never, ever survives long enough for shit. And when he finds himself at the back of the truck again, he does remember he has to 'save Por', although he's not sure why or from what. Phee also does weird things, like calling Tan New.

Then. Then a lot of things happen, I can't put everything in a short summary dear lord why does brevity always elude my best efforts. Anyway. Let's say Phee remembers more and more of the previous loops they've been stuck in, and believes that if he manages to save everyone, then they'll be able to break out of this. Except he does (after a lot of efforts sweat blood and tears cause New has a literal plot armor where everything that can go his way will, it's Non's scenario after all, New's his only trustworthy director) and... Well they don't get out at all. Their ears ring and they just fall. Bamboozled again, love.

I'll also point out that it solves the "Phee has information he's got no way to have" plot hole in the series. What we've seen in the series isn't the first iteration of it, so he just remembers glimpses without even realizing it. Same for Tee, who goes batshit crazy from the get go and jumps on the ghost bandwagon. He survived sometimes, so he's got a feeling for things. Doesn't fully remember, but just enough to have intuitions and not question them. So this time, since everyone survived, they all have those intuitions of sorts (except Jin it really is important for his plot line), which will make it so much harder for New to lead them on.

Anyway back to the thing. When Phee wakes up he's in the house, but just with Non this time. He doesn't realize shit at first, and they just watch a movie and talk about stuff. Namely how Non thinks sequels usually suck, and Phee doesn't agree. Then Non asks him if he thinks he can write his own, it gets creepy, and cut, back to the truck. Phee

After that we're halway through, it's goodbye to Phee's POV for a while. There's a bit of everyone, starting with New. It also gets fairly heartbreaking from there sometimes, but it's already a super long answer, so, uh. Well.

And damn I wanna write it again now. It's been stuck in limbo for months but I mean I have each chapters breakdown scene by scene and-

[the-awkward-outlaw]

I'm gonna do my emotional dump on this show for a sec, and I'm sure other people are in the same boat as me.

I genuinely miss watching these guys. I loved BFU and was so excited when they formed Watcher. My sister and I were such big fans, we still quote both channels constantly. But I haven't watched anything since the paywall fiasco in April, including the old BuzzFeed stuff.

I've missed watching both shows, watching the hilarious banter, the jokes, the spooky places with a comical twist. I liked their new stuff, especially Too Many Spirits and Are You Scared of the Dark?. I was looking forward to a full, bright future.

Then April happened, and I was so enraged and hurt. Even after the apology, I was still enraged. Tbh, I'm still hurt. It felt and still feels like they spit on my face, on everyone's face, and while I'd love to believe they genuinely were sorry, I feel like the apology was more because they were called out on it. It's tainted all my views of them, including their past BuzzFeed selves.

But again, I iterate that I miss them! I miss their goofy dynamic, the brotherly affection they have for each other and letting us in on it by filming it. And I understand they don't want to be BuzzFeed 2.0, that they wanted a different direction, and I would have been supportive if they'd done it differently.

I even joined Patreon, before this whole thing happened, and I felt it was a waste of time. There was no additional material, nothing. And I've joined other YouTubers who've moved from Patreon but they've kept their main content free from the beginning while still having a ton of extra content behind the paywall and being constantly active with their fans. Something Watcher was heavily neglectful of (and I'm sure still are, but I refuse to give them my money).

I've lost these two as friends because they shattered who I thought they were. Perhaps I'm just going through the mourning phase of this grief, but it sucks. I miss my friends, but I don't like who they turned out to be.

I want to watch the stuff they've put out since April, but I'm afraid the two ghouligans I became attached to are gone and have been for a while.

some excellent faces from ryan so far this season. looks like he's--looks like he's seen a--looks like he's seen a GH--

[ryanberga]

Maybe it’s me hoping as a white person/not my place but I think people (tumblr wise anyway) are starting to realize all the infantalizing racism he got and treat him better? All the chaotic king and emotional maturity (especially while at the same time, and no shade to him, Shane’s proving the whole badass unflappable thing to be not true) has probably helped?

yeah i'm only active on tumblr so i have no idea how ryan is treated on other platforms (except i've heard uhh twitter is pretty shitty but that honestly doesn't surprise me at all), but at least in my little corner of bfu/watcher fandom, i've seen a lot more people vocal about the poor treatment of ryan as compared to shane, and i've seen people actively trying to spread awareness of the issues that still exist, so i think that has definitely lead to people treating ryan as more of like. an actual person lmfaoo

[nightmaresonelmstreet]

Everything about the La Llorona episode of bfu is so unhinged

[allhailthewicked]

Has this been done before?

[monsteraficionado]

So, are you new to Watcher?

Whether you just discovered the dudes from Buzzfeed Unsolved premiered a new ghost hunting show or you stumbled across Ghost Files without having ever seen Ryan and Shane before, perhaps you find yourself a bit lost regarding Watcher.

So here I present a not-quite-short (yet I hope comprehensive) guide to Watcher Entertainment!

What is Watcher?

Back in 2019, three ex-BuzzFeed employees (Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej from BuzzFeed Unsolved and Steven Lim from Worth It) joined forces and announced they were launching a new production company and YouTube channel called Watcher. They toiled at it for an entire year and their new channel premiered on January 10th, 2020 with seven shows, the first of which was Puppet History (but more on the shows later).

They started with a grand total of five employees: the three cofounders, Brittney Lee (Production Supervisor) and Anthony Frederick (Creative Director of Post Production). Now, Team Watcher has grown to include several more people, including some ex-BuzzFeeders like Katie LeBlanc (who used to produce BFU and Worth It, today is Head of Development at Watcher), Annie Jeong (who you may know from Worth It and the Berry Boys video featuring Ryan and Shane, now a Senior Creative Producer) and Mark Celestino (cameraman for BFU, now Senior Creative Producer at Watcher).

Currently, Watcher presents a new episode of whichever show it's currently in season (right now it's Ghost Files of course) every Friday at 12 PT. Between shows, or sometimes on Wednesdays, they might air One-Offs, which are smaller, well, one off videos. Over at their Patreon you can find more content including:

Early Thursday access for Friday videos

Watcher Weekly+, a weekly talk show featuring any combination of cofounders and/or Watcher crew, where they answer fan questions and sometimes open fan mail. NOTE: for a taste of these, you can refer to their now-extinct Watcher Weekly show, formerly airing on Wednesdays over at YouTube dot com.

For higher tiers, a monthly livestream also featuring any combination of cofounders where they shoot the shit for an entire hour

Also for higher tiers, audio commentaries for select episodes

And for the highest tier, Discord AMAs with different members of Team Watcher.

Onto the shows:

Watcher has many shows. A whole lot of them. Ryan, Steven and Shane are very creative guys and it shows. When they first started, they began with a new episode of a different show every week, which was for some people very confusing. They've settled into airing whole seasons now, so after we're done with the premiere season of Ghost Files, we'll move onto a new season of Puppet History and then onto another show.

Because it's so many shows, I'll only describe the ones that are still being produced, along with the shows that premiered for the first time in 2022, in chronological order.

Puppet History

Helmed by Shane Madej, this was the first show that appeared on Watcher and the host, a puppet named The Professor (played by Shane) has become the de facto mascot of Watcher. If you liked the Hot Daga and Ruining History, this is essentially its spiritual successor. Here, The Professor leads Ryan and a different guest through a journey of a wacky historical event, while they compete to see who will become History Master. The lore gets really deep.

Top 5 Beatdown

A Ryan Bergara concoction, Shane and Ryan debate asinine topics ranging from the hottest Disney cartoon characters to top dog breeds, comparing top 5 lists and often fighting about it. When they do not fight, the duo showcases their one shared braincell. In every episode, they have a guest who knows more about the topic than them.

Are You Scared?

Also created by Ryan Bergara, Are You Scared? began as a Zoom show and evolved to being shot in person after pandemic restrictions eased. Ryan tells Shane one of the spookiest stories from the internet, and they both laugh over it. In a way, the format is similar to Unsolved, and the promotion campaigns for it are hilarious: once, Ryan pretended he'd been kidnapped by The Professor and made an entire photo shoot about it.

Too Many Spirits

From the galaxy brain of Katie LeBlanc, this was the first show shot in person during the pandemic, and also the only Friday show to feature all three co-founders. Ryan and Shane gather in a backyard to read ghost stories submitted by fans, but they get drunker and drunker every episode. They start off very normal, but by the fourth and last episode of each season, they are absolutely unhinged. By the way, the drinks? Handmade by Steven Lim himself, who turns out, is a (not) wonderful bartender. In the most recent seasons, we get an actual professional bartender, Ricky Wang, who has a very special working relationship with Steven.

Dish Granted

Created by and for the suffering of Steven Lim, Dish Granted is about love and food and friends. In each episode, Steven sets out to grant a friend of his their dream dish, even if it costs Steven his own sanity. Currently, the episode with Simu Liu holds the honor of being the Watcher video with most views. I love it, and you should too.

Worth a Shot

In each episode of this show hosted by Ricky Wang (of Too Many Spirits fame), he creates a special cocktail for a different guest. Ricky definitely knows what he is doing, and so, this show has a very soothing quality to it.

Eat Like Me

Also made by Steven Lim. Join Steven as he learns more about different cultures and/or lifestyles as he eats for one day as someone else. In the pilot season, he discovered the joys of the diet of a Korean college student, the woes of British people, and the pain of a professional eating competitor.

Pretty Historic

Created by Selorm Kploanyi and directed by none other than Sara Rubin, Pretty Historic looks at history from another point of view: beauty and makeup. It is an incredibly pretty show, the aesthetics are top notch, and it dives into really interesting subjects. I am begging for y'all to watch this.

Ghost Files

Finally, Ghost Files doesn't really need an introduction. Ryan Bergara's baby, the official successor to BuzzFeed Unsolved, and in the words of Shane Madej (to which I subscribe wholeheartedly), the perfect ghost hunting show. Only an episode and it's corresponding Debrief have been released until now, but it's so good. So different from BFU in a much, much better way, while still feeling incredibly familiar. Wow. The Ghoul Boys have done it for real.

However, Watcher has a vast catalogue with even more shows than those, plus all of their one-offs. My personal favorites and recommendations to you are Weird and/or Wonderful World (with Shane and Ryan) and Homemade (hosted by Steven). Homemade particularly feels like a work of art that I don't feel gets appreciated as much as it should.

Also, I greatly recommend watching Ryan and Shane Eat Everything Boysenberry (Again): Bless Annie for doing this for us. Berry Boys 2, once again taking off at Knott's Berry Farm.

So where can I keep up with Watcher?

If you aren't following them in at least one of their social media accounts, you might want to do that:

Their YouTube official channel

Tumblr

Twitter

Instagram

TikTok

Patreon

Finally!

These are the bare essentials to getting into Watcher, but I hope it's useful to at least one person. If you have any questions, ask away! Imo, the fandom is incredibly nice and would love to help any newbie find their way through.

[chxmpagneproblemss]

my puppet history theory is that they’re going to find some chaotic way to bring back the professor and maybe even a redemption arc for ryan? my points:

- the sheer chaos of ryan and shane as a duo

- the sheer chaos of puppet history as a whole

- the sheer chaos of puppet history lore

and now i present textual evidence:

in the series finale of BFU, they made it very clear that it was the series finale. in both posts before the season, and in the final episodes and post mortems of the final season. i am entering the following exhibits taken from the instagrams of ryan bergara and buzzfeed unsolved into evidence:

However, with PH, Watcher has just said “finale” and they haven’t clarified if it’s the series finale or the season finale…

…except for when they have.

Entering the following exhibits taken from the official Watcher instagram, twitter, and youtube pages into evidence.

Look at the date that tweet was posted….

then look at the date the finale was uploaded.

They have said the professor is canonically dead, but the professor is was an immortal time travelling puppet. And they expect me to believe there’s no way he can be brought back? Entering the following into evidence.

Somewhere around 45 minutes in the season finale, we see the horse in the background of the party on the puppet pop in. The horse died much more violently on screen, even went and spoke to god, but here he is at the party!

At approximately 20 minutes and 40 seconds into the Olga of Kiev episode, we see the horse.

Around 7 minutes and 56 seconds into the jose rizal episode, the horse appears again. I’m sure it’s happened in previous episodes also but I’m too lazy to document every instance. I would attach screenshots if I could, but I’ve hit the photo limit. I’ll see if I can post the screenshots in the replies.

This is evidence that even though a puppet died on screen, they do not cease to exist entirely and can continue to appear on the show. Basically, for puppets, life goes beyond this earthly realm and continues well into the “afterlife.” If I remember correctly, this has been confirmed before.

If I need any further evidence, there’s a couple of posts on the official watcher tumblr blog that stand out to me, but I’ll try to attach a screenshot of the one that stood out the most to me in the replies also, with further elaboration.

In conclusion, I believe the team at Watcher is gonna remain cryptic about the whole thing (especially to claim plausible deniability if/when people say they thought the professor was gone forever) and then spring a surprise season on us when we least expect it, which will then solve the issues of what happened in the SEASON finale. just a theory 😙 the rest is in the replies, pinning the full post w the reply on my blog

[noa-nightingale]

Ryan was on the First Ballot podcast! I don’t know a lot about basketball so I can’t give my opinions on that but here is a list of highlights!

The episode is called The Lakers Don’t Care About Conference Championships with Ryan Bergara.

several beautiful bergiggles

Ryan talking about being partly Filipino (and Japanese and Mexican) and acknowledging the people from the Philippines in the Watcher (and BFU) fandom

talking about his career so far

talking about his grandma who would scare him intentionally when he was younger

Lakers talk (unsurprisingly)

but really - as someone who doesn’t have a clue about basketball, it is so enjoyable listening to him; he gets so intense and knows so many details, I love it

ghost talk (Sorrel-Weed House, Old City Jail, Sallie House)

ranting about Shane not experiencing fear

caling Shane a “douche-y skeptic” and immediately clarifying that he means it affectionately

the general enthusiasm

talking about why he decided to leave Buzzfeed and start Watcher and how important ownership over your own creations is - he talked about creative freedom

I did not know the podcast or its host before but he really seems to be a fan of Ryan and his work and that’s just so beautiful (seriously, there are many compliments, it’s so so lovely)

A wonderful little episode. <3

[drunkkenobi]

Ghost Files Opening Weekend

Not a traditional spreadsheet update here, but just wanted to report on Ghost Files opening weekend. it was a doozy, y’all.

As of 10:15am (eastern time) on Monday September 26, the first episode of Ghost Files has 1.693 million views and counting. This is heads and tails faster than any other Watcher video has hit a million views by a mile. (around 10-12 days is what I think the record before is, from the first season of TMS) Ghost Files did it in 29 hours, almost exactly to the dot.

GF was getting so many views so quickly on Friday that it was stuck at 1.7k views for awhile, which is something that apparently only happens when a video is so popular so quickly that YouTube takes awhile to update the numbers. I did not know this was a thing and I have been tracking BFU and Watcher videos for 3+ years.

To put the GF opening numbers into perspective, the average opening weekend numbers for the last two seasons of BFU (final true crime and SPN) average out to ~1.76 million and I recorded all of those on the Tuesday after they aired, not the Monday. (I’ll definitely be checking the counts tomorrow as well to compare more accurately)

Ghost Files also trended at #2 for most of Saturday. Watcher videos have trended before, but I’m not sure anything has ever trended that high (I try to keep track of what trends opening weekend but I don’t always record the placement, so please correct me if I’m wrong!) BFU trended a good deal of the time on opening weekends, so GF is following in its footsteps.

I’m so excited for Ryan and the whole Watcher team, you can tell so much time and care was put into this series and it’s so wonderful to see the well-earned success. I’m also very excited to see how the rest of the season goes and the Debriefs! I never tracked the Post-Mortems so I won’t be able to compare them as easily, but still very interested to see how they stack up!

[jervis-tetch-my-beloved]

Hello, my name is Cassandra. This is my bullshit blog where I post about my bullshit little guys and bullshit little tv shows. I’m, 20 She/They, and actually Jervis’s wife he told me himself.

I post mainly about Gotham but here are my complete fandom list

Fandoms:

Bold = Favorite/ Hyperfixation at the moment

General Batman Media ex: Arkhamverse, Reevesverse, Gotham, The Dark Knight Trilogy, 1989 movies, 1960 movies, Harley Quinn Animated Series, Batman: the Animated Series, The Suicide Squad

Stardew Valley

The Stanley Parable (Ultra Deluxe and original)

My Babysitters a Vampire

Taleblr

Danganronpa

American Mcgee’s Alice/ Alice Madness Returns

Slime Rancher

Insomnis

Resident Evil

Watcher/BFU/ Ghost Files

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Cuphead GAME

Super Mario Bros

Peacemaker

Sander Sides

Yandere Simulator

Doki Doki Literature Club

Amnesia

Detroit: Become Human

Analog Horror - The Mandela Catalogue, The Walten Files, local 58, etc

The Legend of Zelda (particularly botw rn)

BYF:

I don’t have a DNI, I just block people I don’t like. Terfs can kindly fuck off btw

Topics of incest are discussed, not anything like shipping but my favorite character was in a relationship with his sister, so if your sensitive to things like that tread lightly

Gore, violence, nsfw and swearing are things I post/post about often

If you are sensitive to yandere content or obsessive love and you wish to continue following me, I suggest you block the #yanderecore tag. Everything I reblog is tagged under that. Also I don’t actually support harming people and abusive relationships.

Tag Navigation:

.(character) a tag for a character when I wanna sort them but not put it in main tags

Cassandra Tag / Cassandra Maria - My Oc, named Cassandra. Anything that fits under her aesthetic of any variation of her

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(Don’t mind this)

[sequencefairy]

About Today and Your Love is a Waterfall :3

About Today is a shyan fic I started writing for someone and then never finished, but I am still committed to actually finishing it someday.

It takes place in an AU where that last BFU filming trip is really the last and there's no Watcher. So, instead of flying back from New York, Ryan and Shane take the train back across America, and realise their feelings somewhere in the flyover states.

Here's a bit:

The train sways and bumps, gently rocking the whole car. Ryan’s hand clenches around the armrest of his seat. “Relax,” Shane admonishes, “it’s like being on a boat, just move with it.”  “Easy for you to say,” Ryan mutters.  Shane huffs a laugh. “You’ll get used to it. See how you do walking on solid ground when we change trains in Chicago, or after we get off in Los Angeles. It always takes me a minute to adjust.”  “You said you’d done this trip before?”  “Yeah,” Shane replies, stretching his arms over his head. One shoulder joint cracks gratifyingly. “Cheaper to drive into New York maybe, or to fly, but I took the train a couple of times through university, just to try it.”  “Feels like something you’d do,” Ryan says. “An old-fashioned choice.”  “You saying I’m old, Bergara?”  “You said it first,” Ryan laughs.

Your Love is a Waterfall is a Moon Knight wip, from Layla's perspective. I have a lot of feelings about her, and what she went through and how the show doesn't really ever address any of them. Have an excerpt:

It’s the wedding in the Maldives that Layla remembers when she is served with divorce papers in her father’s house in Cairo. The process server hands her the envelope, makes a note on his clipboard to acknowledge her receipt of the papers, and leaves. Layla stands in the open doorway, hands shaking, knowing what she’s going to find inside the brown paper envelope before she even unseals it. He hasn’t answered the phone in three months. He hasn’t called. No one has heard from him since the last time he spoke to her, when he landed in Chicago, three months ago. She feels like a wire, wound tight in a pair of hands, ready to be used to choke the life out of something, out of someone. She clenches her jaw so hard she can feel her teeth creaking.  She turns, and slams the door behind her when she goes back into the house. Pitches the envelope as far as she can throw it. It lands somewhere down the hall, but she doesn’t see, because she’s bent at the waist, a scream erupting into the hands she has pressed over her mouth. It’s all she allows herself.

[littlekingbergara]

wait, anon, as a long-time Shane Stan since 2017 and someone who doesn't really operate a Shane/watcher blog, I think I can kinda answer this! And also the part about people who LOVE him being quiet about it.

I get the sense that Shane is much more uncomfortable having the traditional Youtuber/fan relationship than even his co-founders and that kinda spills out into how I engage with him. Like he just doesn't do as much to encourage parasocial relationships (not to say that Steven or Ryan *do* or even that I think parasocial relationships are bad necessarily depending on how you approach them). BUT I can kinda tell that he would prefer people talk more about his content and content only or at least is a bit more comfortable with that. I know barely anything about his life and I think that's by design!

Having said that, I don't think the people who have him as their favorite are necessarily as quiet about it as one might think but it comes out in different ways. The amount of credit and praise he gets for Puppet History is overwhelming (quite frankly I don't see people praising Ryan's genius for example in the same way for BFU or Ghost Files but that's a different topic for a different time). I think a lot of people channel their love for Shane into their love for his content or his one-liners. So, really the fandom freaking out about Puppet History is their way of showing their appreciation for Shane if that makes any sense.

Finally, I also think that a very small percentage of Shane stans throughout the years, back when people were more traditionally loud about him in a Youtube parasocial way (think 2017/2018 and then also when Watcher was launched), gave us a bad name. :/ There were a few that were not... great about Ryan, especially back when Shaniacs vs. Boogaras was a real divide. Not to say that all people who had Ryan as their favorite were perfect angels but there used to be a lot more discourse in the fandom about the way that people who loved Shane would talk about Ryan. So, I think some became more hesitant and that has carried over to today.

Sorry for the word vomit! I just go to thinking!! I engage in the fandom very quietly these days but I still adore Shane and am glad others do too. :)

yeah i totally get what you're saying about love for shane being channeled into love for shane's content. we all love puppet history and are very aware of how much shane puts into it and how he makes it special.

i wasnt active in fandom during the beginning of unsolved and still dont venture into tags very much but i do remember seeing some people being like... outright hostile in regards to the whole shaniac vs boogaras thing. aaand interpreting it as which guy you like better which i have gone off about before and probably will again. and of course the racism.

great insight! don't apologize!