#most of their affection towards each other is shown through acts of senseless violence

[klugpuuo]

i love this and i think its amazing genuinely but as a certified freak who's replayed all the telltale games abt 2 morfucktillion times i am going to have to

generally when i look at what could and could not be 'canon' in the sam & max timeline i check for exactly one thing: if it would directly contradict another thing, or disallow another thing from existing.

and i dont mean in text. in 101, sam mentions he 'regrets' his 'lack of technical background' which goes against him reprogramming that robot in hit the road, AND basically all of chariots of the dogs. this means its still canon that sams a big robot nerd.

i think your idea of the comics being the beginning of it all is pretty awesome, but i mildly disagree with the thought of TTIV being seperate from the telltale series, primarily bc of the frequent references to the telltale games - sam mentions the events of 305 like twice

canonically, poker night 1 happens i think right around the same time as beyond time and space, while poker night 2 happens after 305

re: your thoughts on the charactarization of the duo in TTIV

i agree for the most part, even going past the fact that max IS extremely jealous of lumpy, considering the opening where he loudly opposes lumpy's joining, the throwaway line about him "protecting his territory" from them, etc.

by the end of the telltale games, max is way calmer than he used to be. though this could be chalked up as the max we see literally being a year younger than the original telltale max, there wouldnt be THAT much difference, and considering you the player are not in on the jokes like you are in the telltale games i feel like they shouldve toned it down a bit

HOWEVER. I DONT THINK THEYRE FED UP WITH EACH OTHER.

having rewatched the end bit, where max PRACTICALLY APOLOGIZES FOR BEING WEIRD TO SAM (!??!!?), which he rarely ever does, especially GENUINELY, and considering the way sam GENUINELY IS TERRIFIED FOR MAX when he thinks max is dead, i'd say that they aren't really tired of each other but more at a low point in their relationship that they arent sure how to get out of. and even then, they still physically fight (which is more or less their brand of affection), they still reminisce about old cases (and that one time max put the aquabears into hibernation), max still gently pokes fun at sam, even if sam's mostly focused on training lumpy 99% of the time. they still care about each other, but theyre just going through it (which also feeds into my personal theory [not hc but theory] that the only reason the two rarely seem affectionate in the telltale games is because of a sudden awareness of other people in the world as potentially being equal to them and a fear of being met with homophobia and backlash and also theyre 2000's games)

ive never played ttiv, just... every single other game...... but i did watch the 99th vr playthrough and have rewatched it about four times and so i hope im not missing something horribly awkward that completely shatters my perspective on these two

i think that in the end their relationship depends entirely on what year it is, who's writing them, what the wind's like today, and how funny their relationship could be in the moment, but what's ALWAYS true is that they ALWAYS care about each other.

as steve elequently put it:

A typical Sam & Maxish kind of day might find the boys hurtling to the scene of a crime in their clanking, smoking, highly flammable 1960 DeSoto Adventurer, Sam with his head out the window (revealing that there's a real dog in there somewhere), Max driving (even though he’s not tall enough to see out the windshield), but never too rushed to stop off and fill up the car with a colorful array of popular junk foods. In fact, the actual case these guys are on is almost beside the point! Sam & Max truly enjoy each other’s company and any time they can get out and mix it up with society is a great excuse for snappy banter and manic interactions with their surroundings.

i was being a completely sane person today (/s) and was creating a timeline tree for snm would anyone even be interested in that. and collecting my shipping thoughts (or specifics about them being a couple etc). know that i still consider my knowledge of the franchise as poor. its just tidying it up in my head so when i talk about something i can pinpoint a specific thing (i was too deep in fnaf theorizing so now i have to suffer thru a franchise that doesnt even have a canon)

in short/tldr the comics are the base that happened in every possible timeline and everything else is derived from that, happening after, except the cartoon, which shows some events the same way so that would be more intertwined; not everything is connected/within one timeline. and the cartoon is my most fav and where i see them as a true couple.

long rant ahead

on one hand i really like the time travel theory where its like comics -> ttg -> cartoon etc by them travelling back in time for that, however there are many holes especially thinking about their families and stuff so

i like the idea of things branching off. one branch is comics - htr - cartoon, as something more intertwined

second is comics -> ttg -> poker night 2 (since it references ttg events) (idk bout 1 i havent played/seen that)

third would be comics -> ttiv (or comics -> htr -> ttiv, i have no idea atm if bosco's is mentioned in the comics but it is in htr and mentioned in ttiv. ttiv is also set in the year it came out, so theres a huge gap inbetween ttiv and htr but i wouldnt say its where the ttg games happened!)

and i dont mean this in like a multiverse way, since the creator seems to dislike that, its simply just a very loose canon that differs with each installment (simply due to different people working on these imo. nothing too deep imo)

but the juicy part!! i even made brackets that im too lazy to remake digitally so i will just write it out for each bigger installment. im excluding poker night 1 as i havent played it nor watched much gameplay

M = married, BF = best friends (in all technically)

comics: M - unlikely; BF - yes absolutely

htr: M - possible; BF - yes

cartoons: M - i take it as canon here. BF - yes million percent

ttg all seasons: M - no; BF - yes.

poker night 2: M - not sure, implied dating, i take that as good enough; BF - yes

ttiv: M - absolutely not. not a couple at all. BF - they seem too tense, yes, but from my experience playing, their interactions were imo the worst in all of their media, so i wasnt buying it at some points

note - ttiv has to be like the straightest they ever were and i also see it in S.P.'s more recent work. im looking too deep into that, perhaps, but im just thinking were never gonna get anything similar to what we got from back in the 90s again, if theres any future projects

people are also saying they got married like 4 times and its making me a bit confused here. do people mean cartoon, htr dress up card, cake topper and tdph ring scene or am i missing something big?? because to me that is married once, other ones being just for jokes (first one as well but its less vague), and in the ttg games its so extremely vague i cant count that (being realistic here) that said its still fun to joke about them getting married several times, but in this case wouldnt it be more of a marriage per timeline?

and to end this, a personal tierlist

my most fave obviously is the cartoon. not only is it the easiest to work with for me, with the fast pacing and short watch time (but ofc i wish it was longer) i absolutely love how their relationship is depicted there, even if a lot of stuff there is just jokes, but if everything is a joke then its also fine to take everything as canon within this media, to me! like when haters say that people only take the wedding scene out of the intro and ignore the rest - as if the other stuff couldnt happen (isnt one of the shots them fighting a giant octopus, which they end up having an episode about too. like cmon. anything goes here) even if it was contained within this specific part of the franchise, im ok with calling them a couple here. and its S tier overall

another S tier is the comics. nothing else to say

HTR is like A tier to me, only taking off points because its soooo sloooowwww and playing it after watching the series took 3 years off my life immediately. otherwise gud game.

ttg is like A to B tier for me, because of some specifics and preferences but thats just me being nitpicky so, the games overall are good. A- it is. thats all

poker night 2 is fun, i watch the gameplay a lot lately when im too tired at midnight to do anything else, A tier

ttiv. oh how mixed i am about you. gameplay by itself and my first experience with the game - S tier. it made me so giddy more than one time and i kept wanting to come back until i finished the game fully. i dont mind the bugs, its just what i expect in VR games and even tho it made me a bit frustrated at times it wasnt all that bad. its also the only vr game i played for over an hour once and didnt get motion sick - the exception was the level at the store which seemed too bright and actually made me nauseous. which is a feeling that somehow comes back whenever i think about this game. what i dislike was the dialogue, while most of it was fun and fine, i had moments where i just burst out laughing, they (or max especially) were way too mean towards the player. i know its a joke and you could chalk it up to max being unhappy with us/jealous, but it got like, generally unpleasant very quickly. with stuff like good throw - "nice!" bad throw - *neverending insults* and the second was how painfully straight it was and like. the vibes i got from them two was like, oh theyre fed up with each other and my shipping self was just left quite disappointed. i did not get all lines during my gameplay which made it great but upon going thru every line manually after, i was just more and more uncomfortable with what they said in their banter. this drops the game to like C for me? maybe B if i squint. being generous. i also got sick of their talking animations over time... the models are fine just got to be too much. bonus points for max ragdoll physics tho. coming up with a conclusion that this is a completely separate timeline and has nothing to do with anything other than the comics and perhaps HTR. i talked so long about this one cause its the one thing that prompted all of this lol.

but its not that serious! i just knew this franchise for ages as "oh its the two animal guys that are married and its funny" and now that i got into it fully, i see a lot of the shippers are obviously daydreaming and taking things out of context - which is fun, i agree!! i also do that. but it just painted a completely different picture for me. so no. theyre not married, theyre not a couple, except for the cartoon, where its implied, which stays on top for me. but in ttg at least, they love each other, its not as romantic, but i can ship them there (so i ship them in the context of the cartoon and ttg basically)

anyway. nothing is canon for them, everything is canon for them, and everything they say or do is a joke so. its not that deep at all. they gay tho