Lets Play / Sjin

Sjin, real name Paul Sykes, is a Let's Player and an ex-member of the Yogscast. He frequently shows off Time Lapse constructions in his Let's Build series, and collaborates on both vanilla and modded Minecraft series, usually either with Sips or Duncan Jones. His Minecraft co-op series are largely filled with aimless or laid-back conversations with either Sips or Duncan and not a lot of progress.

He voiced the orange spaceman in Spacemen and the orange ninja in Ninjas.

His YouTube channel can be found here. He is not to be confused with Paul Sykes, a politician from the United Kingdom Independence Party, or a lower-tier British rugby player of the same name.

Series featuring Sjin:

• Ninjas
• Spacemen
• Yogscast Minecraft Series, including the subseries:
  • Let's Build
  • Feed the World and later Sjin's Farm
  • Magic Police and later Cheat Police
  • Time Cops
  • DruidZ
  • Rule the World
• The Yogscast Garry's Mod series
• Magicka 2 with Rythian, Zoey, and Zylus

Sjin provides examples of:

• Achilles' Heel: When playing TTT, Sjin cannot spell the word innocent backwards as a traitor and has never been able to do it.
• Affably Evil: Part of his persona while playing Minecraft Tekkit (he and Rythian actually start bouncing jokes back and forth during their climactic showdown in Blackrock Chronicle), whereas in real life you can drop the "evil" part.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • To Strawfingers in Feed the World. Beforehand, Duncan and Rythian took this place in various Minecraft series.
  • Kim Richards has it in for him now, after he betrayed her for Sips.
• A-Team Firing: Sjin stinks at shooting in Murder. He eventually improves.
  • In Rule the World, the army of Sjinterfell's archers suffer from this, though the sheer number of archers allow for quite an impressive result...his army, despite taking heavy losses, wins a decisive victory against Lord_Blackwood, forcing him to flee...and ending the Blackwood arc.
  • Also in Rule the World, his Champion Theron Badshot displays this. A Running Gag is Sjin updating his name to reflect his (improving) marksmanship skills.
• Cassandra Truth: In Garry's Mod, he outright declares at the start of a round of Murder that he is the murderer. Nobody believes him until he actually pulls out a knife in front of someone who survives long enough to shout out.
• Chew Toy: Treated as such in the Jaffa Factory Tekkit series.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Has shades of this with Naïve Newcomer Kim Richards in episode 25 of Feed the World.
• Combat Pragmatist: Sjin is good at being the murderer in Murder since he can simply wait it out and backstab.
• Consummate Liar: Sjin is a very good liar, which he uses to troll the audience on a regular basis. It's gotten to the point that the fans rarely believe him, however.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite getting frequently pushed around, he keeps Sips Co running and in the Jaffa Factory series through his manipulation of Sips is revealed to secretly be the true CEO, being considered more of a threat than his boss by Zoey Proasheck and Rythian in Blackrock Chronicle. He's also a generally good gamer in spite of his eccentric mannerisms.
  • Whenever a game requires him to be cunning as opposed to purely skilled, he is significantly better. Examples include playing as a Traitor (or Jester) in TTT or a soul in Soul Hunt.
• Cutting the Knot: When doing a puzzle in Parv's gym, he opts to put dirt on lava, rather than burn to death.
• Deadpan Snarker: Most obviously to Rythian in their Trine 2 Let's Play.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: In Grand Theft Auto V, he constantly undermines himself by trying to shoot the others on racecourses, only for them to kill him or overtake him.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": He does not refer to himself by his real name in the office and asks that others do the same.
• The Dragon:
  • To Sips in their Minecraft videos.
  • He also briefly behaves this way towards Sips in their Civilization V gameplay, notably when he joins Sips in trying to revolt and overthrow Lewis Brindley.
• Drives Like Crazy: During Grand Theft Auto V, Sjin proves his piloting skills leave something to be desired. His standard driving is fine, but helicopters and fighter jets are not his strength.
• Epic Fail: Despite his mostly good gaming skill, Sjin really does have some terrible moments.
  • His performance in Pixelmon has been relatively subpar. He starts with Snivy and then manages to level up quickly, so far so good. But then Snivy's movepool expands and he uses Tackle in favour of better moves such as Vine Whip. This means battles that should be his are contested much more than they otherwise would be.
  • In the first video of Garry's Mod Murder, Sjin is the only bystander left and Sips, the murderer, is chasing him down with the knife. Midway through the chase, Sjin confusedly asks Sips if he is the killer. Sips can only reply ... no?, then he just runs with it, saying that he only has the knife out to "protect" them from the real killer, who could be anywhere.
  • In this episode of Murder, Sjin manages to successfully bluff the others into thinking he isn't the murderer, but then bumps into Simon Lane in a vent and after a brief chat kills him, causing Simon to loudly scream. The others immediately know he's responsible.
  • A general rule for Murder is that Sjin cannot shoot to save his life, at least at first.
  • When playing TTT on the main channel, he hears Duncan mention that he has a defibrillator, which allows traitors to revive their allies. Despite this, he leaves Zoey's body unprotected and allows Duncan to revive her, which results in both of them effortlessly gunning him down and Rythian more or less screaming at him for his incompetence. You can see this in animated form here.
  • In another TTT episode, Sjin asks if a boom body has been placed, which Lewis confirms. Sjin assumes Lewis is a detective and activates the boom body, killing himself instantly. Lewis calls him out on killing himself despite Lewis revealing himself to save Sjin. It can be seen here.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Kim Richards has this reaction to Sjin in the Flux Buddies series after he betrays her for Sips.
• Final Boss: For Rythian and Zoey in Season 1 of Blackrock Chronicle.
• The Fundamentalist: In Civilization V, he plays this during one of the seasons, with a fictional religion called "Sjintoism". The guys get annoyed by this, in no small part because their towns are being converted to it.
• General Failure: His skills in Pixelmon leave something to be desired.
• Genre Savvy: When playing Murder, Sjin sees Simon Lane running up towards him in a room with only one exit. He immediately tells Simon to fuck off, aware that he's probably the murderer. It's not clear whether or not Sips and Simon gave it away beforehand, mind. He later starts barricading the room he's in so that the murderer will be delayed enough to be shot dead.
  • In Rule the World, Sjin receives instruction to explore Thaumcraft as part of a larger story arc, and is specifically told to seek out a wizard in The Twilight Forest. Sjin does this and meets Spooky_Steve, a lich skilled in Thaumcraft. At first, he won't help until Sjin applies some 'leverage' in the form of finding and grabbing his phylactery. Despite effectively kidnapping Steve and forcing him into slavery (a point Steve brings up nearly every episode), Sjin is always careful to be nice to Steve, even going so far as to build him a giant Mage tower in Sjinterfell and to get the hounds off him when he gets stuck in their pen. Someone has clearly read the Evil Overlord List, specifically Rule #48.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: From Simon Lane's perspective. He gets fired from Sips Co in Episode 14 of the Tekkit Jaffa Factory series and tries joining Simon and Duncan Jones. Unfortunately, Simon keeps beating him with a stick and calls him the worst employee ever. He then leaves, with Simon then firing him. Later on, he does reform for real.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • With Sips. The two are damn near inseparable. Even after Sips began doing more solo stuff and collaborating with others, he and Sjin still collaborate whenever they can and clearly get on like a house on fire.
  • In terms of Yogtowers, he is almost always playing with Duncan Jones.
• Horrible Judge of Character: In Rule the World, a great deal of the plot has him trying to rebuild the goddess Renzovia, who numerous antagonists or in the case of the Lich Spooky_Steve, antagonistic allies discuss in less than glowing terms, while Sjin refers to her as a benevolent figure due to her promise of power and greatness.
  • This could be a case of Black-and-Grey Morality however, as Sjin is more than willing to fight obviously evil opponents like Lord_Blackwood, and help ambiguously good characters like Princess Eldraphyn...but he never claims to be good, exactly - after all, he wants to Take Over the World.
  • Inverted with Spooky_Steve - he knows they are evil from the moment they meet, and immediately takes steps to compel their loyalty and instruction in Thaumcraft by finding their phylactery and putting it in a pocket dimension that Steve can't get to. Thus, if he ever wants to return to his hole in the ground, he'd better teach Sjin Thaumcraft, and no funny business!
• Kill It with Fire:
  • During his and Duncan Jones' Pixelmon series, he and Duncan have a habit of burning down the gyms of the gym leaders, since they are almost always made of wool or wood. Thus far, every single gym leader has been victim to it. Somewhat karmically, their own gym gets burned down later.
  • In Cornerstone, he causes serious damage to the base of Strippin and Benji with only two buckets of lava. Due to the non-flammable building material and the timely intervention of Hat Films, the damage is limited but noticeable.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: He and Sips fit squarely into this during the Red Matter incident. All they wanted was some copper, so they went blast mining. Cue a Red-Matter bomb consuming the world.
• Misplaced Retribution: Murders Ross of Hat Films for stealing his jetpack. The reality is that it was Smiffy who took his jetpack, and that the stolen one was replaced immediately afterwards.
• Motor Mouth: The guy can spew out information fast.
• Naked People Are Funny: His Minecraft avatar's mankini skin, which proves handy for jokes in Tekkit. The skin has since been retired.
• Number Two: He plays this role to Sips a lot, although he also falls into The Dragon depending on whether or not you think he's evil.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: His Tekkit persona barely appears competent, until The Reveal that he's been manipulating Sips by disguising himself as a giant head and ordering Sips around, meaning he is the true CEO of SipsCo.
  • This is his general mask all around when playing with the other Yogscast members. He dumbs himself down for the sake of comedy (and probably to fluster the people he's playing with, but in any solo series he shows himself to be extremely competent and is one of the best Minecraft world builders in the entire company.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Part of his characterisation in Jaffa Factory. It's a front for his manipulative tendencies.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: According to a story Sips and Turps told, Sjin bought a plush of Maximus from Tangled while in America and had to throw out a pair of jeans in order to make it fit. This is something no one else in the Yogscast will let him forget. Ever. Sjin claims this isn't true, for what it's worth.
• One-Man Army: In "Race for the Wool" (with Lewis Brindley, Duncan Jones and Sips on his team), he grabs a bow and starts racking up kills like there's no tomorrow. He eventually gets run down, but by the time he does he's proven to be a real Spanner in the Works for the opposing team.
  • In Rule the World, Eldraphyn even refers to Sjin as such thanks to The Sword of Sjinterfell as well as The Heartseeker Crossbow. She's proven right in their surgical strike on Alfheim, when they retake Eldraphyn's kingdom after a very short fight.
• Poor, Predictable Rock: The problem that Sjin initially struggles with in Pixelmon the most, since most of his team do not learn many effective moves. In the case of Gyarados, which he initially evolves to counter Duncan's Charmeleon, it knows no Water-type moves, although it came very close to beating it in a prolonged fight while several levels lower.
• Power Trio: Due to Simon's ongoing absence from the main channel, Sjin has joined up with Lewis and Duncan to fill the gap.
• Pungeon Master: For all things Pokémon related in his and Duncan Jones' Pixelmon series.
• Pyromaniac: He and Duncan really enjoy burning down the gyms in Pixelmon. In the case of Pyrion, this meant they set fire to a very large chunk of a forest.
• Running Gag:
  • Whose ranium? in the Sips Co series.
  • Rambling on about how coal is something you need, but once you get a lot of it, you stop thinking you need it, and then when you run out you realize you need it.
  • Mahogany doors. Mahogany doors. Mahogany doors. Mahogany doors. Mahogany doors.Mahogany doors.
  • Diamonds are a girl's best friend.
  • Flax is string!
  • See Kill It with Fire.
• Redemption Demotion: In Murder, Sjin initially stinks at shooting with the revolver (granted, it's not the most accurate weapon, but still). To contrast, he's lethal as the murderer.
• Redemption Promotion: After Sjin reforms in the Jaffa Factory series, he becomes a lot more competent and becomes an efficient worker. Granted, The Reveal proved he wasn't quite so stupid anyway, but it became even more noticeable afterwards.
• Stripperiffic: His old Minecraft skin, which was him in a mankini and nothing else. He's since put more clothes on.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • He basically destroyed the Yogscast Voltz server by detonating a red matter bomb underneath their base, while trying to mine for copper, though to be fair he had no idea what it was at first. Then they decided to find the wormhole after the server has been fixed, only stopping because the ocean prevents them from finding the chunk it's in. Their solution to this? Try building yet another red matter bomb, because that worked so well the first time.
  • He was also the one that kept falling to his death in Tekkit a lot as he forgot his flying ring.
  • In MarsQuest, he gets fatally electrocuted by an electric fence twice in as many minutes.
  • During the first episode of Murder, Sjin is the only bystander left and Sips, the killer, is chasing him down with a knife out. Sjin, who by this point can see his pursuer, can only ask if Sips is the murderer, to which Sips can only answer with a confused/bemused "...no?"
  • In this episode of ''TTT'', Sjin left a traitor body alone while the other Traitor had a defibrillator ready. Rythian has a breakdown watching.
    Rythian: Where's your brainpower gone?! What is it actually spent on? E- E- Do you have so little that everything you do is spent on just existing?
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Sjin initially stinks with the revolver in Murder, to the point that Martyn jokes that his aim is on par with Sjin's. Later, however, he does improve and get some good kills with it.
  • In Pixelmon, his performance is initially rather poor, and his team constantly get their arses handed to them on a platter. Later, his team diversifies somewhat and he's able to give Duncan a relatively close battle, although he still has some way to go and Duncan's clearly the superior player.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Sips in their Minecraft Let's Plays, as well as any other series where they're partnered together.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He has this sort of interaction with both Sips and Duncan. They mercilessly take the piss out of each other, but hang around a lot anyway.
• Vocal Dissonance: His voice sounds surprisingly nasal given his real life appearance.
• We Used to Be Friends: Kim has it in for him after he betrayed her for Sips.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: He doesn't hesitate to show off his feminine side every now and again. He's well known at this point for playing Granny_Bacon in Shadows Of Israphel, and one of the rewards for the 2014 stream donation goals? He showed to sing Let it Go in a full Elsa costume.
• Wild Card: In Civilization V, Rythian is understandably rather skeptical as to Sjin's allegiance, given how in a single game (well, series) he can backstab rather well. Indeed, when it appears that he may join Lewis Brindley, he joins Sips' poorly thought-through revolution for the hell of it, then rejoins them and tries claiming to have part of the glory, when in reality Duncan Jones and Rythian were responsible for the victory.
  • Exaggerated during the "Prongs of Power" series when he nukes the entire world with more nukes than he can fire in a single turn whilst humming Beethoven's 7th. The rest of the game was mostly spent recovering from this.