He was fixated on cum for a while. His reason that Steam should have quality control involved a scenario in which you go to Toys R Us for a teddy bear, and find them covered in jizz. I think he even made that comparison on the Co Optional Podcast.
Pretty sure thats the title of a jimquisition
I mean, "cum covered teddy bears" is the joke in a segment of FistShark Marketing, an old improv comedy podcast Jim used to do.
The bit is called High Demand in episode 108, it is the first segment of the episode, lasting from 0:40 to 10:25. There is 9 minutes and 45 seconds of the joke "jizz covered teddy bears". It was during the shittiest days of FSM IMO. Like FSM wasn't ever
good, but I enjoyed it, I am sure most of us here enjoyed Jim's work at some point, and at one point I shared Jim's sense of humour, then he devolved into an even bigger degenerate and I stopped sharing it. FSM is also an under discussed portion of Jim's lore, probably because it was a non-gaming related side project he managed to actually keep away from his gaming content, so fuck it, just for some change lets revisit this old podcast together.
The premise was entertaining enough to me, and the absurd super natural Nightvale-esque lore was something I liked. I still listen to it as background noise from time to time. An interesting thing about having re-listened to all 145 epsodes multiple times is I can track the rot of Jim during the four years or so it ran, and one thing I will say, you can see that Jim got objectively shittier with all his endeavors due to Trump Derangement Syndrome. The whole idea was the main cast worked for some cartoonishly inept and immoral corporate marketing firm (also you can tell no one on the show actually understood what marketing firms actually DO, not to mention the company seemed to lack any form of focus or specialization in who it represented or even what it actually did, but suspension of disbelief is a thing), and as time went on it was revealed that things definitely weren't normal, legal, or even sane. It had a setting kind of like a knock off Nightvale, but corporate and based in Boston for some reason. They also make all the various celebrities they seem to represent seem like complete nutters, so this must be some alternative universe shit for any of this to make sense.
Episodes 1-50 were definitely the best, the rot was minimal and it seemed like Jim actually enjoyed the project. There was a solid chemistry between him and Conrad, with Caitlin Cooke being a good balancing force. The formula worked and this is when much of the lore was established and it was a good time. There are very few misses during this section, though in episode 50 we run into the first "scripted" episode, where Cait is written out and dies at the end.
Jim and Conrad did fine for the half dozen or so episodes of just them together until they had Jonathan Holmes join them as Paulson Sear, who lacked the right chemistry with Jim and Conrad. Him being the innocent, normal, not cartoony straightman kind hearted person was a good role for him, he knew how to play the part, and the idea was sound, he just didn't have the chemistry with Jim and Conrad to make it work. This is also where more political episodes start slipping in, I still like the majority of these episodes, but it was starting to become hit or miss here, I remember these being the first times new episodes would come out and I would go "man, this one just isn't working" or "when does the next segment start? This bit sucks" while listening to it. However, like Cait, Paulson gets killed off in episode 100, though they did try to play up towards it narratively and set it up and is the only time the story was really a big part of the podcast. That said 100 is a rather shit episode that just didn't work. The follow up, 101, was actually pretty good. I liked it, and is the last episode to really play off of the story of Paulson, and is a Jim and Conrad only episode. Any plans for actual storytelling end, and it is back to the usual call backs and references to previous bits of lore as far as continuity goes.
The last 44 episodes from 102 to 145 are only down hill, this was FAR more miss than hit. It is only Jim and Conrad, and Trump Derangement Syndrome is in full force, not to mention Jim has now been doing Podquisition for quite a while with LKD, so the dumb degenerate shit was really starting to eat at Jim's brain in earnest. These are some of the most random and political episodes of the entire series, and there is only one episode here I remember fondly, and that is episode 114:
The New Frog. This one is unique, as it is entirely its own bit, isn't framed as a meeting in the office but rather a presentation to various investors, and I just like it. This section also has the most call backs to old lore, shit references to real events happening in the world, politics, and degeneracy. These 44 episodes date themselves harder than the other 101 episodes ever did.
Without warning in episode 145 the change the outro from "FistShark is" to "FistShark was" as they read out the credits, as a subtle way to hint they just killed the series. Not only that, but they started to set up a potential storyline in that episode that had me interested to see where it would go, just to immediately blue ball me. Why did they kill the series? Well apparently because "
Jim's career is going so well, and Conrad is a super serious and professional game developer now (who only went on to ever make one game) also it is hard to make an absurd parody of reality when reality is so crazy itself!". [
ARCHIVE] So they killed FistShark Marketing and sneakily turned its patreon into
Conrad Zimmerman's personal patreon so he could soak up the money from all the people who were already subscribed and didn't bother to unsub rather than kill it and start a new one. I think
Boston's Favourite Son is in the same universe and is a spiritual successor to FSM, but I haven't bothered sitting down and listening to it all yet to decide that, I got better things to do and I want to actually examine that podcast so I can rip into it sometime.
Speaking of Jim's podcasts and Conrad Zimmerman, let me give you
the message Gavin "Miracle of Sound" Dunn gave as the reason he was leaving Podquisition in September of 2019 [
ARCHIVE]. Him leaving was the last straw for me and that postcast, I appreciated his optimism, and you could tell LKD and Jim didn't share his views on video games, both hating the industry, and Jim in particular just hating video games by that point. How does Conrad relate to this? Why, he replaced Gavin on the Podquisition of course!
