Creator / Atun-Shei Films

"A filmmaker with an interest in history who dresses up and does silly voices in order to educate and entertain you."

— The description Atun-Shei Films gives for his YouTube channel

Andrew Rakich, better known on the internet as Atun-Shei Films, is an independent filmmaker, semi-amateur historian and YouTuber who has created and hosts several recurring series on his channel, as well as making numerous documentaries on New Orleans and New England, King Philip's War, and assorted folklore. He also sometimes creates video essays on historical films such as Braveheart.

While Rakich had been educated at the UNC School of the Arts and aspired to be a filmmaker long before he had a YouTube channel, his earliest videos were entirely for recreational purposes about topics he liked. It first began with Atun-Shei applying his background in film and history reviewing historical films and giving his opinion on how to "fix" them (and sometimes not even historical films; one video had him pleading "Please Don't Screw Up Legally Blonde 3", of all films). Then, he decided to focus on his background as a tour guide in historical reenactments to tell anecdotes ranging from local New Orleans to Civil War-era and Old West stories in the style of a history tour guide.

However, his Breakthrough Hit came during the debate surrounding Confederate monuments that was revived in light of the racial protests in the U.S. in 2020 that the channel began to take the form it would become known for, when Atun-Shei took inspiration from ContraPoints and created "Were the Confederate Monuments of New Orleans Racist?" The extreme, vitriolic backlash he received from Confederate apologists after the release of that video led him to create the first episode of what would later become Checkmate, Lincolnites!, arguably his most famous series to this day.

In 2023, Rakich completed production on his first widely-released film, The Sudbury Devil, which premiered at the Satanic Temple World Headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts in early September of that year and was later released independently to stream on his website on December 21st, 2023.

Click here for the official Atun-Shei Films YouTube channel, and click here for the official website.

---

Films Rakich has made:

• Alien, Baby!
• In The Wild Wood
• The Sudbury Devil

Works associated with the Atun-Shei Films YouTube channel

• The Abolitionists^note A documentary series about prominent activists and freedom fighters throughout history
• The Birth of an American Town^note An extensive chronicle of the history of the Massachusetts hamlet of Sudbury
• Checkmate, Lincolnites!
• DAEMONOLOGIE^note An adaptation of The Demonology of King James
• Frozen '50s Man
• The Witchfinder-General

---

Tropes common to Rakich and also found in his miscellaneous work:

• Ambiguously Bi: He's made reference to himself having a girlfriend, and later still a fiancee and wife, but he's also deliberately inserted Homoerotic Subtext of himself and Brandon F., a fellow history YouTuber, into videos concerning him.
  Atun-Shei: Obviously I'm not referring to you, Brandon, I mean, you have a lot of personality, I'm sure any one of your subscribers could tell you that. I mean, you've got your, like, twink-y smile, and the really sharp way you dress, and that really sexy Transatlantic accent...um...guess what I'm trying to say here is, uh...[mimes the "Call Me" gesture]
• Arbitrary Skepticism: King James' 1597 treatise Daemonologie goes into detail about poltergeists, fairies, succubi, incubi, among other kinds of spirits and supernatural beings...but werewolves? Ridiculous old wives' tales!
• Argentina Is Nazi-Land: A passing mention is made in "My N@zi Roommate" that Klaus the Nazi came from Argentina to answer Atun-Shei's ad for a roommate.
• Army of Thieves and Whores: His video "America's First Conspiracy" examines the conscription practices of New England towns during King Philip's War, finding that whenever possible, social undesirables such as criminals, drunkards, vagabonds, and others were pressed into service while the sons of well-to-do, respectable families stayed home (unless they volunteered, in which case they usually became officers).
• Artifact Title: The channel's name is taken from the character "Atun-shei the hoemaker" from Rakich's first movie, Alien, Baby!. Although the film showcases elements of many of his personal passions (The Mummy Trilogy, Nazi history, weird science fiction, classic private detective/G-men types, cannibalism), it's not incredibly relevant to his channel in general.
• Artistic License – History:
  • The concept is discussed in several videos of his; in general, he's more forgiving of this than most of the YouTube history crowd, and he particularly defends Braveheart as a masterpiece of filmmaking despite its myriad inaccuracies in the details. He even made a video literally titled "No, Historical Inaccuracy in Movies DOESN'T Matter" in response to Brandon F's review of The Patriot (2000), arguing that the minutiae (weapon styles, clothing styles, etc.) usually focused on by history nerds just isn't that important in the grand scheme of things — furthermore, most people know (and don't care) that blockbuster movies aren't a great source of historical education. That said, he's less forgiving if the movie has substantial or obvious implications for modern society, such as Gods and Generals' whitewashed portrayal of American slavery, which he argues gives ammunition to modern racists and the Lost Cause movement.
  • He later came to disagree with his own assessment, feeling it was too defensive of films like Braveheart and pointing out that he himself, with limited means, was able to create a fairly accurate film about witch hunters and so big Hollywood productions really have no excuse. He also pointed out that his rebuttal of Brandon's arguments was smattered with anti-intellectualism and "let people enjoy things" sentiment without really engaging with Brandon's point that inaccurate movies and other media severely contort the general public's idea of what history was like in ways that are difficult to undo, which he actually agreed with from the beginning, especially regarding the pro-American, pro-war propagandized version of The American Revolution that The Patriot (2000) offers to its audience.
• Author Appeal:
  • If his deep love for Ravenous weren't a dead giveaway, he's helpfully got a whole video about cannibalism stories in the old West. And the cheery coroner in the first episode of Frozen '50s Man can be seen enjoying a taste from a dismembered limb during an autopsy. Also, his "Were the Confederate Monuments of New Orleans Racist?" video has this gem:
    "There's no ethical consumption under cannibalism — shit!"
  • In addition to American (and Nazi) history, he has a passion for the history of film as an art and a medium, and many of his videos examine both.
  • invokedHe's a big defender of Mel Gibson as a filmmaker, arguing that his films in general, and Braveheart in particular, are landmark moments in cinematic history and deserve to be recognized as more than mindless mass entertainment, mocked and nitpicked for their Artistic License – History, or tainted by Mel Gibson's political and religious views.^noteKeep in mind that the channel's early "Fixing" videos featured a character named "Doctor von Murderall", basically a prototype of the later Klaus the Nazi character, whose dialogue consisted almost entirely of things Gibson said during his infamous diatribe during his DUI arrest. This was the basis for his impetus in his response video to Brandon F after Brandon criticized the historical inaccuracies in Gibson's films.
  • invokedHe's clearly a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, peppering references to them throughout his videos, although like most of the fanbase he clearly doesn't hold Season 8 in very high regard.
  • He's done an extensive series of videos on King Philip's War, which he likes to remind the audience is the bloodiest war per-capita in American history despite being mostly forgotten today, and even self-published a strategy boardgame called "Flintlock and Tomahawk" about it.
  • While he had settled in New Orleans, Louisiana by the time he started making videos, Atun-Shei originally hails from Massachusetts, and most videos involving New England find an excuse to include it; the full title of his self-admitted favorite character, the Witchfinder-General, is "The Witchfinder-General for the Colony of Massachusetts Bay."^noteHelps that Massachusetts was home of the early Puritans, of which the Witchfinder-General is a sendoff. That being said, it also has an element of Self-Deprecation, such as the video in which the Witchfinder-General defends the state referring to him as "The Original Masshole" in the thumbnail.
  • An odd case of something being constantly present in a work because the creator rejects it; in various videos, such as "Why Gods and Generals Is Neo-Confederate Propaganda (And Also Sucks)", Atun-Shei explained that the reason his Civil War-related videos are dedicated to debunk the Lost Cause of the Confederacy negationist ideology is because he once actually believed in it for a while, for which he expresses deep regret.
• Ax-Crazy: His description of Col. Vincent "The Clawhammer" A. Witcher fits this. In the title he calls Witcher "The Civil War's Biggest Weirdo", begins the video by saying this man was renowned for his barbarity, and describes a variety of violent acts of violence he committed both before and during the Civil War which horrified even his fellow Confederates. Of note are cases of him bashing the skulls of his enemies against rocks, which he did with hideous regularity. And for no reason anyone could discern, he did it all in a fancy "clawhammer" jacket.
• Based on a Great Big Lie: Invoked. Rakich makes a point in most of his videos covering New Orleans "ghost stories" and other folklore that almost all of them either have only a tiny kernel of truth to them or were completely made up and retold countless times by tour guides over the years. That doesn't stop him from spinning a good yarn with them, though, which is the true appeal of such ghost stories to begin with.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Martin Delany, after a life of radical struggle for the abolition of slavery and the liberation of Black Americans, went on to eventually, in an extraordinarily shortsighted attempt at bipartisanship, endorse ex-Confederate and former slave owner Wade Hampton in the latter's bid for governor of South Carolina. His Republican allies promptly abandoned him, and Hampton immediately stabbed him in the back.
  Andrew: Because of course he did!
• Bestiality Is Depraved: In "Did Ancient Egyptians Circumnavigate Africa?", he questions what the motivations of Hanno the Navigator and his men were when attempting to capture the female gorilai (usually identified with gorillas, but possibly also chimpanzees or bonobos) from the island they had camped on. Especially since Hanno's records imply they thought of these creatures as simply hairy, ugly humans.
• Black Magic: The subject of King James' 1597 work Daemonologie, which Andrew turned into a film adaptation. The treatise was the major textual basis of the work of witchfinders in Britain and later, by extension, England's American colonies in the 17th century.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Indigenous Weapons and Tactics of King Philip's War showcases the decorations indigenous warriors put on their weapons during King Philip's War, including wampum inlay, accessories hanging off flintlocks, and engraving or carving warclubs. Since they were intended for combat, they were less flashy than most examples of this trope, sticking to unobtrusive decorations that would demonstrate status without sacrificing utility.
• Bloodless Carnage: One of his (many, many) criticisms of Gods and Generals. During the scene of the battle at what's most likely Miller's Cornfield (famous as the site of the bloodiest fighting at the Battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg, itself the bloodiest day of fighting in the entire war), he mocks the fact that the most obvious damage is done not to any of the men fighting, but to a soldier's water canteen ("He might get seriously dehydrated!"). He views this as irresponsible whitewashing of the scale of the violence involved in the Civil War, and in his opinion, you can't do the conflict justice without showing "rivers of blood."
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: In Ancient Aryans: The History of Crackpot N@zi Archeology he lists the achievements of ancient societies as "writing, pyramids, aqueducts, and man-boy-love."
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: According to his "Abolitionists" series, most freedom fighters throughout history have been "huge weirdos," even setting aside questionable opinions on topics other than their personal cause celebre, since you've got to be at least a little weird to put aside the conventional wisdom of your day and espouse progressive opinions outside the Overton window. He points out one of them literally lived in a cave preaching to everyone who came by.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: invoked Defied and discussed. Rakich has stated that outside of Checkmate, Lincolnites!' ten-episode run, the only reason he would go back to debunking the Lost Cause or create hypothetical spinoffs to the show (offering up a Checkmate, Wehrmacht! adressing the myth of the clean Wehrmacht as an example) after its conclusion is if he really needed the money, since the concept is his most profitable one by far, at least on YouTube.
• Caustic Critic:
  • Generally averted in his historical movie video essays, where he'll go out of his way to point out things that the film does well or service the film by way of better storytelling. In fact, a large aspect of "Fixing Braveheart" is rebelling against this exact type of nitpicky "This film is SO historically inaccurate!" discourse which has dominated discussion surrounding the film and propping up its myriad qualities, such as its great battle scenes and its simple but relatable story of a rural hero becoming a Rebel Leader which fundamentally works well even if it has little basis in reality and runs on Black-and-White Morality.
  • The one notable exception to this is Gods and Generals, which he goes out of his way to trash on a historical, political, directorial and artistic level because it is just that bad. Not only does Rakich despise the transparent Lost Cause apologia and revisionism rampant throughout the film, but that he believes it's also mind-numbingly dull and overwrought despite its constant attempts at melodrama. All 45 minutes of his review on it have nothing positive to say whatsoever.
• Colbert Bump:
  • invokedRakich has acknowledged that his channel experienced significant growth after The Cynical Historian featured a clip from Checkmate, Lincolnites! in a video he made about the Lost Cause myth, causing his channel to rapidly start growing at a time when he really needed it to.
  • In terms of things he himself has bumped, Ravenous (1999), while not a completely unknown film, experienced a surge in popularity after his videos hailing it as a masterpiece came out.
• Creator's Favorite: invokedAtun-Shei admitted in "So You Want to be a YouTuber (feat. Everyone)" that the Witchfinder-General is his favorite character/series, considering him to be the most unique character his channel has.
• Creator's Oddball: invoked Acknowledged in the introduction to his video on The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect, which discusses a work of science fiction rather than history.
• Creator Provincialism: He gives a lot of special attention to the history of New England (where he grew up) and Louisiana (where he currently lives).
• Crossover: In How New England Yankees Conquered the World, Brandon F made an appearance to talk about the Revolutionary War. Later on Brandon's channel, Atun-Shei made an appearance impersonating him in "Reconsidering the Historical Films of Mr Mel Gibson".
• Dark Fantasy: The sketch "Historically 'Inspired' Fantasy Settings" shows a show of this genre being nitpicked by the lead actor. It turns out the most vulgar swear words of the middle ages ("By God's Blood") would sound silly to modern ears.
• Dated History: He's done this to himself on occasion when he messes things up, particularly his video correcting a number of mistakes in his first King Philip's War video.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • One of his major goals is trying to get people to understand how differently people thought and perceived the world in the past — for example, poor white Southerners who owned no slaves themselves still putting their lives on the line to defend the institution because of how vital they thought it was to a functioning society, or people afraid of witchcraft because, from their perspective, the reality of supernatural powers and events influencing the world was as obvious as the sun in the sky. This isn't done to justify or excuse said views or behavior, but instead to educate people why such things were accepted. He puts it succinctly in "The Top 10 Most Immersive Historical Movies of All Time" when discussing Barry Lyndon, a film which in his opinion is one of the best showcases of characters with the regressive cultural attitudes of their time who are still relatable:
  Rakich: The fact is, almost every person watching this video would never in a million years be able to honestly befriend anybody born before the Industrial Revolution. Harp on all you want about "The Good Old Days" and how life was "so much simpler then", and how much you'd love to fight in The American Revolution or whatever. If you could go back in time and meet your six-times-great-grandfather, he'd think that you're lazy, effeminate, and insufferable.
  • He also makes clear that The Abolitionists, while broadly positive about the figures featured on the program, will not gloss over that these people were still products of their time, and that being progressive in one area hardly makes them right about everything. The very first episode about Martin Delany delves into his problematic near-black supremacism justified by racist pseudo-science, his deeply ahistorical attempts to appropriate the culture of ancient Egypt as West African, and the fact that he was a bleeder and leecher by trade, while always seeking to put these beliefs in the context of their day, namely a white society whose own biology, anthropology, and ethnography was "a Heinrich Himmler fever dream" of white-supremacist nonsense actively trying to erase all African culture.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: It's very easy to tell which videos Rakich made at or near the start of his YouTube career, as they often cover a much broader range of topics than he's typically known for, the production value is very low and may just consist of him talking with a handful of visual aids and worst of all, he doesn't typically cite any sources, as was the case with "King Philip's War: The Most Important American War You've Never Heard Of", which he has stated he created almost entirely from memory as opposed to any hard research.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The QAnon members in Episode 2 of Frozen 50s Man may be horribly prejudiced people who believe in insane conspiracy theories but even they hate Nazis. Learning their leader works for Klaus causes them to have a Heel–Face Turn and leave to go rethink their lives.
• Evilutionary Biologist: "This hotel has a dark secret" discusses the real-life example of Joseph DeJarnette, a Neo-Confederate Social Darwinist who used his insane asylum, the Western State Hospital (which was later converted into the hotel featured in the video), for sterilizing thousands of mentally ill or mentally disabled patients. Andrew also notes that, unlike common fictional depictions, DeJarnette maintained a warm, comforting bedside manner and was generally kind and gentle to his patients and sincerely believed that sterilizing them was the best way to release them into the general population, something which he thinks is even scarier than a cackling madman, since it meant he was more easily able to manipulate the people under his care and their loved ones into accepting what he was doing to them.
• Excrement Statement: In "That Time the Ladies of New Orleans Peed on Union Soldiers", the rich white women of New Orleans would make a point of harassing the occupying Union Soldiers - in particular emptying chamberpots onto the heads of Union Soldiers passing below. Since it was taboo for men to criticize high society women, even when they had valid reason to, the soldiers just accepted it. When General Benjamin Butler ignored this taboo by giving orders to treat ladies who disrespected Union Soldiers as prostitutes, it caused global outrage and cost Butler his post. The local response to the rich white ladies of New Orleans was to print Butler's face on the bottom of chamber pots. Atun-Shei reveals that the Confederate Memorial Hall still sells such chamber pots, and strongly implies he himself peed in it.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: invoked He says that Vincent "Clawhammer" Witcher got his nickname from the two-tailed coat he always wore, which made him look like the back of a clawhammer. This was a coat usually reserved for formal occasions, which meant Witcher was wearing the equivalent of a tuxedo every day.
• Franchise Original Sin: invoked His review of Gods and Generals points out that some of the film's qualities that get criticized by him were also present in its predecessor, Gettysburg, but only became serious issues for him in the follow-up.
  • He takes Gods and Generals to task for claiming that the Confederates weren't fighting for slavery, but as he acknowledges, this was also the case in Gettysburg. It was more forgivable in Gettysburg because Confederate motivations were only brought up very briefly (and could just be brushed off as the opinions of individual characters), and because the movie is devoted almost entirely to the military side of things rather than the underlying social and political factors that helped drive the war. Gods and Generals, by contrast, is full of speeches where the Confederates go out of their way to paint their cause as righteous and justified. Moreover, while Gettysburg could legitimately claim to present the events from a neutral, unbiased point of view, Gods and Generals is very clearly biased in favor of the Confederacy despite director Ron Maxwell's attempts to pretend otherwise.
  • The somewhat clumsy use of non-traditional story structure in Gods and Generals was also an issue in Gettysburg, but it wasn't as big of a problem there because there were plenty of likeable and engaging characters to get attached to. This is not the case for Gods and Generals; as the review notes, Stonewall Jackson (the closest thing the movie has to a protagonist) is a Static Character who lacks introspection, while most of the other characters are boring, underdeveloped or both.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: In his review of The Outlaw Josey Wales, he says that while he understands the bitterness many Confederate veterans felt after the war, his empathy doesn't blind him to the fact that nothing can justify the atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups.
• Greater-Scope Villain: In "Freedom or Death: The Louisiana Slave Revolt of 1811", Atun-Shei describes a revolt of Louisiana slaves led by Charles Deslondes against the white planters led by Manuel Andry. Though the rebels were defeated and killed to a man, Governor Clayborne was the real victor. He used this to accelerate Louisiana's statehood and entrench the American planters as the political power in the state.
• Gushing About Shows You Like: Ravenous (1999) is his favorite film by his own self-admission, and the two videos he's made on it so far are basically a cumulative hour and forty minutes of this, along with a heaping helping of Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory and What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?, which he also admits he's doing to "indulge the turtleneck-wearing, NPR-listening English major who lives in [his] head with a bloated, long-winded, high-handed, eggheaded, grandiose, snooty, ostentatious, needlessly orated video essay in which [he uses] words like 'dialectic', and quote[s] from books with titles like 'The Sexual Politics of Meat'".
• Hillbilly Horrors: Andy portrays Maine as an entire state of both this and Lovecraft Country in "Did Vikings Explore New England?"
  Andy: You cross the Piscataquog River and you just get this...horrible wave of dread. It's bad enough on the I-95 corridor, but at least there you know you can escape back to Massachusetts. Go north of Bangor and it's like a fucking Cormac McCarthy novel. There's not even electricity up there. People live in houses made from human bones and mate with cave trolls in the starless dark of howling winter night—I'm not exaggerating. There are literally only 163 Dunkin' Donuts locations in the entire state.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: His documentary "In Defense of Puritanism" is an examination of how the popular image of the Puritans as backwards, austere, intolerant fanatics is a gross oversimplification that erases their more positive aspects and achievements. While there is some truth to the stereotypes, Puritanism's nature as a decentralized and non-hierarchical movement resulted in multiple schools of thought emerging under the umbrella, meaning it wasn't a monolith that can be painted with a broad brush. The prejudices many Puritans held can't be justified, but they become understandable when viewed in context and it's debatable as to whether they were actually particularly bad in practice by the standards of the era. Finally, they were pioneers of ideas like freedom of speech and equality before the law, which have become widely cherished American values, and were directly invoked by men like John Adams who themselves embraced their progressive ideals while disowning their problematic ones.
• Holiday Episode: Every year since 2019, he's released a video on Leif Erikson Day discussing the history of Erikson's expedition and the settlement of Vinland.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: invokedThe Birth of an American Town examines how the settlers' children who reached adolescence in Sudbury, while we have no reason to doubt their religious piety, likely engaged in a lot of illicit sex due to a combination of hormones, the surprisingly sex-positive rhetoric of the Puritans (Even if they strongly condemned fornication, homosexuality and masturbation) and the fact that Sudbury's communal governance meant frequent town assemblies often left homesteads conveniently devoid of parents. Of course, this type of behavior came with the heavy risk of children born out of wedlock due to the absence of birth control, which carried severe punishment and shame with it as it branded the mother with undeniable evidence of her guilt.
• Horny Vikings: Subverted in "Who was Leif Erikson?", which starts with a man claiming to be Leif Erikson arriving in armor and roaring that he came to America to pillage in the name of Odin. Once he leaves, the real Leif Erikson arrives in the normal clothes of a well-to-do Norseman, denounces the first man as an imposter, and reveals that he (the real Erikson) is a Christian Momma's Boy. The rest of the video is Atun-Shei talking about how Leif Erikson was unusually kind and harmless for an explorer.
• I'm a Humanitarian: His "Cannibals of the American West" talks about three examples of non-survival cannibalism that occurred in the American West.

  Atun-Shei Films: "What is it about the American west that makes people want to eat each other? Because it happened a lot; like, a weird amount."

• Inspiration for the Work: invoked
  • In a Q and A, he admits that A Field in England inspired the bizarre, psychedelic visuals of In Defense of Puritanism. Well, that and tripping on actual psychedelic drugs.
  • At the end of his video on King James VI and I's Daemonologie, Atun-Shei admits to having taken inspiration from the BBC's adaptations of Shakespeare with minimalist settings for the video.
• I Surrender, Suckers: The "road agent spin," a draw specifically designed to look like you're offering your pistol to someone, only to suddenly whirl it around and fire, as featured in The Outlaw Josey Wales. He taught himself to do it, and one of his videos is a tutorial on it.
• Lampshade Hanging: "In Defense of Puritanism" points out that the iconic buckled hat was a later invention that started as a joke and is no more historically accurate than a horned viking helmet. The Witchfinder General costume still features it.
• Large Ham: several characters in the various series on the channel.
  • The Witchfinder General is more of a Cold Ham, but still chews the scenery frequently. Look no further than the Signing Off Catchphrase he gives at the end of each video ("Thou art a wretched sinner, utterly undeserving o' God's love...")
  • Klaus the Nazi, almost constantly.
• Long List: In "How New England Yankees Conquered the World", Atun-Shei reads a list of men from the town of Gloucester, Massachusetts who died at sea. It takes him over five minutes. At the end he reveals that the list only involves men who died in 1879, and that even then, most of those men died in a single freak storm.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: invokedDespite the fact that Rakich has stated he believes that The Witchfinder-General is his most unique and noteworthy contribution to YouTube, the numbers on his channel suggest his audience is far fonder of Checkmate, Lincolnites!, and his most viewed video of all time is ironically enough "My N@zi Roommate", a silly six-minute sketch which was almost guaranteed to be demonetized instantly due to its subject matter.
• Nightmare Fetishist: In "Fixing The Mummy (2017)", he jokingly describes a bizarre fantasy of his where Ahmanet and Imhotep get it on while half-regenerated with scarabs crawling out of them.
• Noble Confederate Soldier: Discussed in his video on The Outlaw Josey Wales, which he believes does this trope much better than Gods and Generals. Josey's not fighting for the South or "states' rights", nor is he interested in justifying either. His beef with the Union lies solely against the Redlegs (pro-Union paramilitaries) who massacred his family and killed his surrendering men.
• Noble Savage: Mostly defied in his videos on Native Americans, especially King Philip's War. While their culture is somewhat different from the white settlers', the Natives are still canny, politically-minded, and driven by most of the same things as their rivals. He's also up front and candid about the severity of the violence they often inflicted on white civilians. Rakich is vocally critical of what he sees as The New World invoking this trope through its theme of "humanity decoupling from nature," pointing out that not only were the English themselves pretty close to nature as a pre-industrial agrarian society, but that the Native peoples were every bit as much the unquestioned masters of their environment as the Europeans were of theirs.
  Rakich: Now, in fairness to the movie, if I was caught in a time warp to 17th-century Virginia, I would much rather live with the Algonquin than the English. I mean, I'd eat better, I'd have more personal freedom and I wouldn't have to constantly witness women being treated like absolute dogshit. But it would still suck, I mean, it'd be a life of backbreaking hard work, y'know, and it wouldn't mean I wouldn't have social problems either! I mean, my brother-in-law might be an asshole, or my son might be an ungrateful brat who's unfit to hold my titles, uh, the Sachem might have a grudge against me and might be trying to make my life difficult!... Just because Algonquin life was tribal doesn't mean it wasn't complex!
• Nobody Poops: Discussed in his video essay on Terrence Malick's The New World (2005), where he criticizes the film for its highly romanticized depiction of the Powhatan people, and the idea that they "lived at peace with nature". He notes that the film avoids acknowledging some of the less glamorous aspects of "living at peace with nature"...like having to poop in a hand-dug latrine.[[note]] Atun-Shei notes in a few videos that he's an avid hiker who's been on several multi-day hiking excursions—meaning that he knows this experience very well.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: In "Did Vikings Explore New England?", Rakich declares that Tales Of A Wayside Inn is "The second sexiest piece of media set in the town of Sudbury", implicitly saying that the sexiest is his own film, The Sudbury Devil, which he then immediately plays a clip from.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: The Witchfinder-General qualifies in the unproduced script where he fights Dracula, for a forgiving definition of "hero."
• Politically Incorrect Villain:
  • Klaus the Nazi, for obvious reasons.
  • In his "Were the Confederate Monuments of New Orleans Racist?" video, Atun-Shei uses a meter to show how racist said monuments were - the lowest rating was "Innocent" (which none of the monuments were rated as) and the highest was "Hitler!". He gave the monument to the Battle of Liberty Place, which was built to commemorate the White League's violent attack on city hall, a rating of Hitler.
    Monument Inscription: "United States troops took over the state government and reinstated the usurpers but the national election november 1876 recognized white supremacy in the south and gave us our state."
• Production Posse:invoked Atun-Shei Films is also the name of his independent film production company, and both he and it regularly collaborate with a number of the same actors, including Kendra Unique, Linnea Gregg, Randy Walker, Trent Davis, Philip Yiannopolous, Matthew Ridgon and Matthew Taylor-Raetz. In addition, most of the music to Rakich's work is scored by Dillon DeRosa, including his films like The Sudbury Devil.
• Real Men Wear Pink:
  • When discussing "The Dark Deeds of Freydis Eriksdottir", the strict Norse ideals of masculinity are central to the saga, as Thorvald was compelled to murder Helgi and Finnbogi to affirm his manliness even though they were innocent of any wrongdoing. Atun-Shei closes the video by encouraging men to drink Cosmopolitans and practice Seiðr magic (a very feminine pursuit in Viking culture).
  Atun-Shei: What, Seiðr magic's too girly for you? Tell that to fucking Odin! Skál! *downs his own Cosmo*
  • Despite his film pedigree and obvious Author Appeal subjects being things like cannibalism, Two-Fisted Tales, Nazis unearthing ancient evil artifacts and extremely bloody and violent wars, Rakich isn't afraid to admit when he still gets teary-eyed at schmaltzy, emotional all-ages films, such as the endings of Paddington and Babe.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Subverted in "Freedom or Death: The Louisiana Slave Revolt of 1811". After the German Coast Uprising was suppressed and the rebels massacred, they were painted by the triumphant planters as bloodthirsty savages. Yet in truth the rebels only killed two people and were remarkably organized and meticulously planned in advance. Atun-shei also stated that Deslondes' two right-hand men in the revolt, Kook and Quamana, were veterans from the Akan Kingdom and were likely trained in military tactics.
• Seasonal Rot:invoked Discussed. This is Rakich's impetus behind limiting Checkmate, Lincolnites! to just ten episodes. He points out that the scope of the series (namely debunking myths about The American Civil War) is very limited, and that if he tried to extend the series just because it's extremely popular with his audience, then he would not only run out of material very quickly but the overall quality of the series would swiftly plummet.
  Andrew: You're getting ten episodes, total. I want Checkmate, Lincolnites! to be something we can look back on fondly. I want it to end strong, like Breaking Bad, and not die a slow death, like Friends.
• Shout-Out:
  • "Ancient Aryans: The History of Crackpot N@zi Archaeology" introduces Atun-Shei recreating almost verbatim the beginning of the scene of Indiana Jones teaching a class in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Both are even dressed similarly.
  Andrew: Archeology is the search for fact, not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, there are plenty of youtube channels that teach philosophy.
  • The video footage in the first part of "In Defense of Puritanism" is a shout-out to A Field in England, which is set during the English Civil War and features similar unsettling, Deliberately Monochrome shots of an open field, characters tripping on psychedelic mushrooms, and a black circle engulfing the screen. He acknowledges the film as an inspiration in the "Ain't Nothin Cheap About These Laughs" Q&A — it, and Andrew himself indulging on psychedelic drugs.
  • Several of his videos use the Ravenous (1999) soundtrack as background music, and in the bridge segments of "Cannibals of the American West" he dresses up like and acts remarkably similar to Colonel Ives.
• Shown Their Work:
  • As any good student of history would do, he cites his sources to back up his points and claims in his videos. For example, in his Checkmate, Lincolnites! videos, he'll provide letters or diary entries written by important figures at the time to either prove his claims or disprove a point made by Johnny Reb.
  • He has also come around on this point in regards to historical accuracy in filmmaking. As Rakich sees it, directors of a film have to on some level micro-manage every tiny niggling detail about their film, including production design, and once he himself had had to contend with his own constant struggles for historical accuracy and immersion with a minimal budget while filming The Sudbury Devil, he came to the conclusion that big-budget historical movies really ought to just do the history justice if they already have the money.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Andrew Rakich doesn't hide his disgust for the practice, and he goes further into depth on the subject in his video The Mundane Horror of American Slavery.
  Andrew: Imagine for a second a situation in your own life where you don't have that much personal agency. This might be an easier mental exercise for some of us than others, but it could be at work, or at school, just anywhere where you don't have that much control. Your boss wants you to do your job a certain way; your teacher wants that assignment in by Wednesday, and oh, by the way, it has to be double-spaced. The good news is that in our lives, at least here in the developed world, when your shift ends, when the bell rings, you're back in control; free to go to the bar and vent to your friends about your idiot boss and all the crap you had to go through at work. Even in the most benevolent of circumstances, American slaves never had that. Take that feeling, that feeling of a lack of agency of control, and imagine that you have it every moment of every day; that you were born with it, that you will die with it. Then you'll have some tiny inkling of what it might have been like to be an American slave.
• Succubi and Incubi: Succubi and incubi were among the most feared demons in the early modern Anglosphere, and Daemonologie goes into detail about them.
• Switch to English: In "My N@zi Roommate", Klaus begins discussing his plans with Adolf Hitler in German, before Adolf stops him, telling him that they should practice their English if they want to blend into the modern world, and they continue the conversation in English, although they exchange some brief German phrases again after encountering Klaus's roommate.
• Symbol Swearing:
  • A video analyzing a scene from The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc is titled "The Most Fµçкed-Up Scene in Movie History."
  • Not a swear word, but the intention is the same. Due to YouTube's crackdown on Nazi content, videos on the subject (usually involving Klaus the Nazi) has "Nazi" written as "N@zi", such as "My N@zi Roommate" or "Ancient Aryans: The History of Crackpot N@zi Archaeology."
• Sympathetic Slave Owner: The Mundane Horror of American Slavery deconstructs this archetype:
  Andrew: American masters did not treat their slaves with respect and even love. They certainly thought they did, but you didn't have to be John Brown to realize that it was all a delusion. It came from this twisted sense of paternalistic responsibility that was entirely self-serving.
• A Tankard of Moose Urine: "Did Vikings Explore New England?" portrays Truly flavored vodka as this, with Andy visibly struggling to drink even a little of it and praying that his viewers at home have something better to drink for Leif Erikson Day. He still winds up drinking most of the bottle over the course of the video and is clearly already plastered when it starts.
• Take That!:
  • In several videos, such as "Why Gods and Generals Is Neo-Confederate Propaganda (And Also Sucks)" and "When Movies Were Magic", he uses Paul Blart: Mall Cop as an example of the nadir of filmmaking.
  • "Ancient Aryans: The History of Crackpot N@zi Archaeology" ends with Klaus the Nazi appearing on Joe Rogan's podcast. When Rogan starts rambling about thoughts he had while on drugs, Klaus shoots himself.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: In his video describing the tale of Julie the Naked Ghost, he briefly digresses to describe an anecdote he heard while at Mount Vernon about a man who once stayed with George and Martha Washington for six months simply because back then it was considered unspeakably rude to ask someone to leave your home even when they were clearly taking advantage of you. Rakich concludes the anecdote (complete with a "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer) by mentioning that George Washington wrote just three words in his diary when the man departed at last after six months; "He finally left".
• Uncertain Audience: invokedHe's admitted that his dream project probably doesn't have enough commercial potential given its budget to ever get made. That dream project? A Work Com about the construction of the Bent Pyramid in Ancient Egypt, where the hapless Loser Protagonist architect realizes from very early on (since pyramids need to be calculated out in advance to be constructed properly) that critical and catastrophic flaws in the pyramid's design are going to leave it looking like crap by the time it's complete. The rest of the show is him trying to hide the defects long enough to embezzle enough money to flee to another country before he's executed for his failures, blissfully unaware that he's just as likely to have been executed for his successes if it had worked out properly. Rakich has also gushed over a theoretical special episode where the Pharaoh comes to visit the worksite personally, and quickly proves to be the most Royally Screwed Up asshole imaginable, inbred to the point of near-deformity, constantly demanding to sleep with everyone's wives and having people executed for very petty reasons, with an emphasis on demonstrating how, growing up in an extremely toxic environment where despotism and a god complex are imprinted onto his mind from a very young age, of course he's going to be just the absolute worst.
• Values Resonance: invokedDiscussed in "In Defense of Puritanism", which attempts to recontextualize the Puritan movement, not just as intolerant religious fanatics (although it also makes no bones about their flaws, nor does it attempt to excuse them), but as important thinkers in the foundations of modern liberal democracy, pushing such principles as equality before the law, democratic government by consent of the governed, universal literacy and education, and, while they often failed to properly see the humanity in other peoples, human brotherhood and human rights.
• Vikings In America: invokedEvery year on Leif Erikson day, he makes a video discussing the history of the Viking settlement of Vinland, which according to historians was probably somewhere in Newfoundland. However, in "Did Vikings Explore New England?", he explores the evidence that Vikings explored as far south as Maine and traded with the local Native Americans^note To be clear, a lot of this evidence is bogus and was essentially made up by amateur historians from New England who wanted to claim their home as having been once populated by Vikings. While most of it doesn't hold water, he points out the existence of an 11th-century coin from Norway which found its way onto a beach in Maine and had been perforated, presumably to be used as a necklace. Historians explained this away as having been the result of a Chain of Deals which migrated the coin much further south amongst the contemporary Natives, but (a very drunk) Andy declares that they don't want Vikings to have explored Maine because they hate fun, and America. He then proposes the alternate explanation that Vinland was actually in New Brunswick and the Vinlanders were basically right next door to Maine, so they could have totally explored it all the time.
• Villainous Valour: The cruel slaver Manuel Andry is described as acting in this manner. His slaves tried to kill him in his bed armed with axes and knives, and despite being unarmed himself he fought his way past them and escaped his plantation. Then, despite being injured, he mustered a militia of 80 other planters and ambushed Charles Deslondes' army of 500 rebelling slaves. (A later video reexamining the revolt questions this sequence of events, noting that the only witness was Andry himself and that the physical layout of the plantation leaves more than a few questions.)
  • The "Abolitionists" episode on John Brown's raid describes the bravery of one of the marines involved in suppressing the uprising who climbed into the Harper's Ferry armoury full of armed abolitionists waiting to kill him, charged at John Brown, slashed his throat and stabbed him hard enough that his sword blade bent in two before making his escape.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Invoked in "Overanalyzing Ravenous (1999)", where he makes cases for the film being anti-American, anti-capitalist, vegan propaganda, queer liberation, and feminist. Some readings were intended by the filmmakers, some are just interpretation, and some contradict the other readings to make their point.
• You Bastard!: Played for Laughs in "Plymouth v. Jamestown: Where is America's Homeland", in which the Witchfinder-General comes on after Atun-Shei has finished making his point to berate the audience for not donating money to the channel.