#i had to get mr house's speech patterns down its an integral part of his character

[akisstobuildadreamon]

Happy Pride Month! Thank you Courier for finding grandpa our beloved leader a holographic emitter!

(Mr. House explained but the Courier clicked through everything.)

(original)

[crazy-talk]

As promised, here’s a little large compilation sort of thing of little moments and memories from SBFP that you folks have submitted. I really appreciate everything that you’ve all submitted, it’s pretty clear that SBFP helped and entertained a whole lot of people - in equal amounts.

Here’s some SBFP moments:

Grand Wizard Wakka

The Shitstorm VII Woolie haunting plan

“What a mysterious game.”

MY HOUSE

“Wait, what’s my objectives?” “You don’t haaave any objectives!”

Qui Gon Chi

“Whah happuh?” “das whah happuh!”

“No, shut up though.”

The Baby

“Shut the fuck up about Face/Off!”

“Bleetzboll...”

The Sadness Trilogy

“KIDS LOVE THE FOCKIN’ DEVIL!”

Pat thinking he’s dying because he sat on a chocolate bar

Kenpachi Ramasama

Shit-kids

“Whut deh fuhk? Is he using duh bät room?”

Mr. Shakedown/Kenny/Quint/Eric Sparrow

TAR-KUS! TAR-KUS! TAR-KUS!

“Love is just chemicals.”

Pat eating candy alone in a closet

Matt throwing the fire axe

“Oh no, I make’da bad game!”

“Hey, is that the script?”

“JAAASON!”

“It’s fine.”

The RE2 valve noise

“Yeyeyeye!”

Woolie’s atomic purple Gameboy

“Eyy, what’s goin’ on, man? You ready to play?”

And some SBFP memories. Some of these may be a bit emotionally heavy so feel free to skip this part:

the sbfp lp of yakuza 0 got me and my best friend into the yakuza series. we watched it together and we still laugh about matt falling to pieces over "never-before-seen results" - Anon

the best friends have had such an influence on my speech patterns that i've infected people who've never watched them before. half of my friend group says super big [x] and porked up now - Anon

SBFP introduced me to so many games that ended up becoming personal favorites of mine, like Deadly Premonition and the Silent Hill series. Their videos became a way for me to spend time with some of my own best friends as well! -  captainofthestars

theres one particular moment that will always resonate with me - in their devil may cry lets play, i cant remember if it was 1 or 3, they talk about someone in the comments who mentioned that they had to beat devil may cry with items due to having a physical disability of some kind, i cant remember which. they talked about how it was awesome that he managed to even beat the game like that, and, personally, as someone who struggles with motorskills issues this made me very happy, as a devil may cry fan. theres a lot of other great moments from the tbfp, both funny and genuine that made me happy, but this one in particular stuck with me a lot. -  krillfingers

I'll never stop making "pull out king" jokes thanks to sbfp - venerabledreadnought

I remember the first Shitstorm that made me actually have to get up and sit in a brightly lit room with other people in it, Anatomy. It's become a Halloween tradition to watch it every year since, though watching a whole bunch of Shitstorm also became one. As someone who started watching at their second machinma ep, it's not a lie to say that they made up the entirety of my teenage years. I will miss the channel dearly, but I look forward to the future. -  duke-nitro

My friends and I have been watching The Zaibatsu for so long that we have accidentally adopted a bunch of their phrases like going “yeahyeahyeahyeahyeah” or saying someone “go down.” Also, despite us not knowing each other when we became fans, we all somehow began with their Man vs Wild let’s play and I even made friends with one of them because I quoted something from it at work. Favorite moment probably has to be the entire Omikron playthrough, I can’t pick a single moment. It was a beautiful trainwreck start to finish and I still put on the playlist from time to time while I’m doing other things. I swear I could gently fall asleep to the sounds of Pat screaming about the shooter segments. shogun-ceanataur

Persona 4 and Kenpachi Ramasama were my favourite. I found the name itself hilarious, but how they kept on referring to him as the full name in different little bits and tones never failed to make me laugh. That “See you later, fuckers!” part from when you see Yosuke was also hilarious. I’m not sure if that video is the oeigin, but it’s why I’ve integrated that phrase into my everyday life. Goddamn what a fun, memorable episode. - whatthehellisthisevenfor

tbfp got me through being homeless in my car twice. every time that I wanted to give up, to just stop trying, i'd turn on whatever new video they had out and it brightened up my life. my mom, who was with me, came to love them to, she used to wait to hear them to relax. i have so many memories of that time, and i don't fully relax or even eat on long days until I've turned their videos on. my favorite quote is still "mistakes into miracles". its a rly motivating quote imo. -  c0l0c4k3s

I always loved the Silent Hill 2 LP. I never played it when it came out - all I knew was that it was a horror game, and I hated horror at the time. But when the LP came around, I knew a bit more about the game and I was intrigued. Seeing the game, meeting the characters, hearing Pat disect the story and themes for Matt, I loved it all. I was fascinated, and still am. I will still watch the LP every few months, and I call SH2 one of my favorite games, even though I still haven’t played it.Thanks, SBFP, for all the great moments and the great memories. I wish you all well. - iamthewanderingbard

The best friends are what got me so invested in the Dark souls games, and what motivated me to get through DS2. Even if I say 'You see what i mean' unironically a lot, and go 'You. Did it.' -  awkwardmuses

I got into Super Best Friends from a post on the Twin Perfect forum, that linked to the Silent Hill Downpour lp, and never looked back. Their let's plays brought me so much joy back when I wasn't in the best living or health situation, and continue to do so. My favourite let's plays have to be Eternal Darkness and the Shitstorms; I always go back to those when depression hits, or for any reasons. I'll miss them together, but I'll always have those delicious delicious memories. -  mrjaffesxeldritchtwin

The Best Friends Play are the reason I end so many sentences with "though". I first found them when a friend recommended the Best Sisters Play MLP animations, and I've loved them ever since. I know it's used as a joke, but I really believe they've earned the title of HYPEST GAMEPLAY ON YOUTUBE. I love all of their David Cage playthroughs, and I adore how many plot-points they guess during Beyond: Two Souls. I love how, when they play a game they really love, they show so much knowledge and care. -  mads-in-zero

It was incredibly amusing and oddly touching that the Zaibatsu created this hate circle of David Cage and his godawful games. Even before Detroit’s release, the best friends AND the fanbase were ready to hate it because as a collective, we just latched onto that one thing to hate/make fun of. And we go all out on it together like some fucked up family, and I love it. -  missinghmmingbird

I can’t help but shrug off every minor inconvenience and major issue in my life with “it’s fine” thanks to Gun Jumper Liam. Thanks to Matt and Woolie supporting Skullgirls like no one else on the internet, I really got into it and fighting games as a whole. I’m not good at them, but oh boy do I love them.And if it wasn’t for Pat, I don’t think I’d ever have touched a Yakuza or Persona game.These guys affected my life more than any other individual or group on the internet ever really has. -  dklordg

The first Best Friends video I ever watched was Portal 2. That short LP had me in stitches. I'd never laughed so hard. I've been a huge fan since then. These guys where the ones that introduced me to LPs and made me realize that you can have fun watching other people bumble through games. TheSw1tcher has been one of my favorite channels on YouTube since I began watching. It gave me something to look forward to. I got through high school, and essentially grew up, watching these videos. There are so many catchphrases and memes I will never forget and will always make me smile. I absolutely say stuff like “whah happun?” and “shit-kids” all the time. The Deadly Premonition and Detroit: Become Human playthroughs are wonderful gems in my eyes. It’s amazing how a group of guys can get so many people to collectively love and bash certain games. We’re all on the same page, having a blast like a huge group of friends at a slumber party. Matt, Pat, Woolie, Liam, Billy, and everyone who involved themselves with the Super Best Friends are the absolute best. They gave me a chance to relax and laugh along with some familiar voices. Although it's sad they are going their separate ways, I totally respect that fact. They have my love and support. I wish them nothing but success and happiness moving forward. I'll be watching! And a note to my fellow fans: This has been a wild ride. I'm glad I got to enjoy it with you. You are all fantastic people. -  fablesamongus

[justforbooks]

Obama’s Secret to Surviving the White House Years: Books

Not since Lincoln has there been a president as fundamentally shaped — in his life, convictions and outlook on the world — by reading and writing as Barack Obama.

Last Friday, seven days before his departure from the White House, Mr. Obama sat down in the Oval Office and talked about the indispensable role that books have played during his presidency and throughout his life — from his peripatetic and sometimes lonely boyhood, when “these worlds that were portable” provided companionship, to his youth when they helped him to figure out who he was, what he thought and what was important.

During his eight years in the White House — in a noisy era of information overload, extreme partisanship and knee-jerk reactions — books were a sustaining source of ideas and inspiration, and gave him a renewed appreciation for the complexities and ambiguities of the human condition.

“At a time when events move so quickly and so much information is transmitted,” he said, reading gave him the ability to occasionally “slow down and get perspective” and “the ability to get in somebody else’s shoes.” These two things, he added, “have been invaluable to me. Whether they’ve made me a better president I can’t say. But what I can say is that they have allowed me to sort of maintain my balance during the course of eight years, because this is a place that comes at you hard and fast and doesn’t let up.”

The writings of Lincoln, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, Mr. Obama found, were “particularly helpful” when “what you wanted was a sense of solidarity,” adding “during very difficult moments, this job can be very isolating.” “So sometimes you have to sort of hop across history to find folks who have been similarly feeling isolated, and that’s been useful.” There is a handwritten copy of the Gettysburg Address in the Lincoln Bedroom, and sometimes, in the evening, Mr. Obama says, he would wander over from his home office to read it.

Like Lincoln, Mr. Obama taught himself how to write, and for him, too, words became a way to define himself, and to communicate his ideas and ideals to the world. In fact, there is a clear, shining line connecting Lincoln and King, and President Obama. In speeches like the ones delivered in Charleston and Selma, he has followed in their footsteps, putting his mastery of language in the service of a sweeping historical vision, which, like theirs, situates our current struggles with race and injustice in a historical continuum that traces how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go. It’s a vision of America as an unfinished project — a continuing, more-than-two-century journey to make the promises of the Declaration of Independence real for everyone — rooted both in Scripture and the possibility of redemption, and a more existential belief that we can continually remake ourselves. And it’s a vision shared by the civil rights movement, which overcame obstacle after obstacle, and persevered in the face of daunting odds.

Mr. Obama’s long view of history and the optimism (combined with a stirring reminder of the hard work required by democracy) that he articulated in his farewell speech last week are part of a hard-won faith, grounded in his reading, in his knowledge of history (and its unexpected zigs and zags), and his embrace of artists like Shakespeare who saw the human situation entire: its follies, cruelties and mad blunders, but also its resilience, decencies and acts of grace. The playwright’s tragedies, he says, have been “foundational for me in understanding how certain patterns repeat themselves and play themselves out between human beings.”

Context in Presidential Biographies

Presidential biographies also provided context, countering the tendency to think “that whatever’s going on right now is uniquely disastrous or amazing or difficult,” he said. “It just serves you well to think about Roosevelt trying to navigate through World War II.”

Even books initially picked up as escape reading like the Hugo Award-winning apocalyptic sci-fi epic “The Three-Body Problem” by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin, he said, could unexpectedly put things in perspective: “The scope of it was immense. So that was fun to read, partly because my day-to-day problems with Congress seem fairly petty — not something to worry about. Aliens are about to invade!”

In his searching 1995 book “Dreams From My Father,” Mr. Obama recalls how reading was a crucial tool in sorting out what he believed, dating back to his teenage years, when he immersed himself in works by Baldwin, Ellison, Hughes, Wright, DuBois and Malcolm X in an effort “to raise myself to be a black man in America.” Later, during his last two years in college, he spent a focused period of deep self-reflection and study, methodically reading philosophers from St. Augustine to Nietzsche, Emerson to Sartre to Niebuhr, to strip down and test his own beliefs.

To this day, reading has remained an essential part of his daily life. He recently gave his daughter Malia a Kindle filled with books he wanted to share with her (including “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” “The Golden Notebook” and “The Woman Warrior”). And most every night in the White House, he would read for an hour or so late at night — reading that was deep and ecumenical, ranging from contemporary literary fiction (the last novel he read was Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad”) to classic novels to groundbreaking works of nonfiction like Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow” and Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Sixth Extinction.”

Such books were a way for the president to shift mental gears from the briefs and policy papers he studied during the day, a way “to get out of my own head,” a way to escape the White House bubble. Some novels helped him to better “imagine what’s going on in the lives of people” across the country — for instance, he found that Marilynne Robinson’s novels connected him emotionally to the people he was meeting in Iowa during the 2008 campaign, and to his own grandparents, who were from the Midwest, and the small town values of hard work and honesty and humility.

Other novels served as a kind of foil — something to argue with. V. S. Naipaul’s novel “A Bend in the River,” Mr. Obama recalls, “starts with the line ‘The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.’ And I always think about that line and I think about his novels when I’m thinking about the hardness of the world sometimes, particularly in foreign policy, and I resist and fight against sometimes that very cynical, more realistic view of the world. And yet, there are times where it feels as if that may be true.”

Writing was key to his thinking process, too: a tool for sorting through “a lot of crosscurrents in my own life — race, class, family. And I genuinely believe that it was part of the way in which I was able to integrate all these pieces of myself into something relatively whole.”

A Writer of Short Stories

Mr. Obama taught himself to write as a young man by keeping a journal and writing short stories when he was a community organizer in Chicago — working on them after he came home from work and drawing upon the stories of the people he met. Many of the tales were about older people, and were informed by a sense of disappointment and loss: “There is not a lot of Jack Kerouac open-road, young kid on the make discovering stuff,” he says. “It’s more melancholy and reflective.”

That experience underscored the power of empathy. An outsider himself — with a father from Kenya, who left when he was 2, and a mother from Kansas, who took him to live for a time in Indonesia — he could relate to many of the people he met in the churches and streets of Chicago, who felt dislocated by change and isolation, and he took to heart his boss’s observation that “the thing that brings people together to share the courage to take action on behalf of their lives is not just that they care about the same issues, it’s that they have shared stories.”

This lesson would become a cornerstone of the president’s vision of an America where shared concerns — simple dreams of a decent job, a secure future for one’s children — might bridge differences and divisions. After all, many people saw their own stories in his — an American story, as he said in his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention possible “in no other country on Earth.”

In today’s polarized environment, where the internet has let people increasingly retreat to their own silos (talking only to like-minded folks, who amplify their certainties and biases), the president sees novels and other art (like the musical “Hamilton”) as providing a kind of bridge that might span usual divides and “a reminder of the truths under the surface of what we argue about every day.”

He points out, for instance, that the fiction of Junot Díaz and Jhumpa Lahiri speaks “to a very particular contemporary immigration experience,” but at the same time tell stories about “longing for this better place but also feeling displaced” — a theme central to much of American literature, and not unlike books by Philip Roth and Saul Bellow that are “steeped with this sense of being an outsider, longing to get in, not sure what you’re giving up.”

Mr. Obama entered office as a writer, and he will soon return to a private life as a writer, planning to work on his memoirs, which will draw on journals he’s kept in the White House (“but not with the sort of discipline that I would have hoped for”). He has a writer’s sensibility — an ability to be in the moment while standing apart as an observer, a novelist’s eye and ear for detail, and a precise but elastic voice capable of moving easily between the lyrical and the vernacular and the profound.

He had lunch last week with five novelists he admires — Dave Eggers, Mr. Whitehead, Zadie Smith, Mr. Díaz and Barbara Kingsolver. He not only talked with them about the political and media landscape, but also talked shop, asking how their book tours were going and remarking that he likes to write first drafts, long hand, on yellow legal pads.

Mr. Obama says he is hoping to eventually use his presidential center website “to widen the audience for good books” — something he’s already done with regular lists of book recommendations — and then encourage a public “conversation about books.”

“At a time,” he says, “when so much of our politics is trying to manage this clash of cultures brought about by globalization and technology and migration, the role of stories to unify — as opposed to divide, to engage rather than to marginalize — is more important than ever.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com