#I'm really normal about this franchise guys in case you couldn't tell

[sirmanmister]

My birthday is next week on Friday and I've been thinking of shit to do for it for a while now and cuz I'm a big fallout dork I was like "ah yes I should make irl depression era wacky cake for my birthday it'll be so fallout-coded" and for some reason, even though I already KNEW it existed and fully planned on making the Nuka Cola recipe in it, I just looked through the Vault Dweller's Cookbook for the first time and my god I have too many options now.

There's an actual birthday cake recipe, old lady palmer sweet rolls, fancy lads snack cakes and a perfectly preserved pie recipe that are all very well within my reach to make. I don't even LIKE cheesecake but that pie is calling to me. Also mushroom cloud meringue and stimpak jello shots and little buffout matcha cookies.

At the moment I'm gearing towards something I've never actually seen in the games; Mississippi Quantum Pie. Which is apparently in Fallout 3? It's like a mud pie from what I gather and it has fancy blue icing :3 Aside from all the desserts I'm also so fallout brained I was thinking of fucking APPLES and mac n cheese for supper (not together) cuz dandy apples and blamco LMFAO

Aside from food stuff I'm also gonna go to a cold war museum inside a bunker that my grandpa used to work in (like the BUNKER not the museum) and I'm gonna get all dressed up and go out to lunch after :) then we're gonna watch Blast From The Past which is abt a nuclear family that I watched YEARS ago when I was a kid. Anyway fallout is really fucking cool and I'm excited

[thephantomcasebook]

I'm thinking Ewan Mitchell sold his soul to Hollywood. Fucking scary how they lure young great talents like him in. Thoughts?

Look, I'm gonna tell it to you as clean as I can.

Actors and Actresses are narcissistic, shallow, neurotic, empty people, which, as a whole, can't be trusted. They'll do and say whatever it takes not just to get a role, but to get even a few more lines in a script. They are adult people that play make believe for a living because they, generally, don't like themselves and want to be someone else. To deify or put on a throne, anyone, that plays pretend for a living is plain ignorant and you're asking for your heart to be dashed.

No one enters entertainment and comes out a better person, yeah?

There is a very few actors/Actresses that are jobbing, lunch pail working performers that are good and normal people.

Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Jenna Coleman, Nikolaj Coster-Waldu, Matthew Marsden, Aiden Turner, and Sam Heughan.

The only standard you should have for an actor or actress is these three questions:

Are they respecting the character?

Are they respecting the Lore?

And - most importantly - are they respecting the fans?

I hit Olivia Cooke with the fucking truck all the time, because, Olivia Cooke does not live up to these basic principles. She doesn't care about Alicent, in fact she hates Alicent. She doesn't give a fuck about the lore, and is actively campaigning to change it to virtue signal. And she openly does not care about the fans unless their gender and sexuality gives her cashe to big-up her career.

Like I've said, you can love a character and dislike an actor/actress. I'd give my sword for Alicent Hightower ... and at the same time I think Olivia Cooke is a dishonest snake.

Same thing with Lena Headey. Lena Headey might legitimately be retarded, okay. She is so stupid that she couldn't spell "Cat" if I spotted her the "C" and the "A", right? Lena Heady also happens to check all three of the boxes. She loved playing Cersei. She respected the Lore around Cersei and didn't try to change her character to make her look better. And while she had a terrible history prior of out right abusing her own fans, she learned to appreciate the people that paid her fucking bills, in the end.

When it comes to Ewan. I wouldn't wear those clothes, and I question the manhood and self-respect of any man who wears them - gay or straight. But at the end of the day, Ewan Mitchell has a right to do whatever the fuck he wants to do. Or, more succinctly, I don't give a fuck about his or any other actor's personal lives.

What they do on their time is their business. But what they do on my time is my business. And since I'm paying a subscription for "MAX" and thus paying his fucking salary, I expect him to not waste my time with half-ass performances and hack effort, right?

But he hasn't waisted my time.

Ewan Mitchell has been a model of professionalism and passion when it comes to portraying Aemond.

He has put more thought than anyone - except for Glynn-Carney - about his character.

He is dedicated to playing the character right.

And he has been exemplary in his treatment and interaction with the fans of the show and the franchise as a whole.

And that's really all you can ask of an actor in your franchise. What he does and believes in his personal life is his affair. As long as he doesn't disrespect me than I won't disrespect him. That simple.

Once more, you guys have to stop putting actors/actresses on thrones, cause they're only human ... and, in many cases, not very good ones. Love the character, stan the character, but hold these real life people to simple standards that they should be holding themselves too.

I'm not coming down on you nonny, but I've had thirteen years of this shit on Tumblr of fangirls worshiping an actor or actress in cult like status because they like a character.

You guys have got to stop doing that, cause it only leads to bad things.

[klimp42]

Final Fantasy 8: An Amazing Story Hidden Behind Weird Mechanics

So it should be said that there is one thing that I love and that is some good narrative in gaming. I love it, give me a game with a good narrative and at least decent gameplay and I am in there, and a good narrative doesn't mean oscar level writing because I love Deadly Premonition, a notoriously weird game, but a golden game in my heart. Its story is weird and unique and at times outright strange, but it's endearing and I love how wild the story gets as it goes on. Now why am I talking about this? Why it's because of my lovely new bad gameplay good narrative obsession, Final Fantasy 8. That's right, gamer boys and girls we are going back to another old game, and that's because I just played it, and the remastered just got announced at E3 this year.

Alright so if you know nothing about the Final Fantasy series, let alone the 8th installment, let me help you out. Final Fantasy is an old franchise, it started in 1987 and got its name because the original name Fighting Fantasy was taken by a board game in the states, the myth of it being called Final Fantasy because it was a last ditch effort to make a successful game is just that, a myth. The game is prolific, being one of the granddaddy's of the JRPG genre and helping bring that good ol fashion turn based combat system popular in tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons (D&D)  to videogames. Final Fantasy 1 is a classic of gaming and also is kind of like D&D, you have classes similar to the previously mentioned board game; Warrior, Monk, Thief, Paladin; with a few of its own unique classes; Red mage, Black mage and White mage. The games story was very simple, worlds ending, killing these fiends and go back in time and stop Chaos from doing this over again, also at some point the game explains that you are from another universe and that's why you just start outside the beginning kingdom, Final Fantasy stories like to be a little wild at times.

Like D&D you gained levels in this game by fighting monsters, getting stronger with each fight and eventually being strong enough to be able to face the final boss on even grounds, or maybe a little above them if you grind out yourself to max level. This system, if you are into the RPG genre, is incredibly rewarding as you get to see your team of lowly nothings evolve into masters of combat who can slay gods. The best part, to me at least, is going back to the starting area or an area that gave you trouble and stomping on those monsters who thought they were so cool 20 levels ago. Now in Final Fantasy series this system is in most of them, fight monsters, get exp, level up and your stats go up with it, the special cases are Final Fantasy 2,6,8 and 10, and of these the worst offenders of weird leveling are 2, 6 and 8. That's right, I said it, 6 has a weird leveling system with level not raising stats and needing summons equipped to level stats, I personally don't believe that it deserves its spot as one of the best Final Fantasys but that is an article for another time. I could explain why each is weird and 10 is fun and different in a good way, but forget all that and let's get into the focus of this piece, Final Fantasy 8.

Now even though it is my new obsession in good story bad gameplay, my fascination for this game goes way back to when I was a 3 year old with a pizza hut demo disc. Yeah you bet that was a thing, you would order a large pizza and it would come with a playstation demo disc that had a couple of games, but the only one that mattered to little old me was the demo for Final Fantasy 8, or that game with the guy with the cool sword and big water snake, as I was 3 and couldn't read that well. Seriously, if you have played a Final Fantasy game before you would know that you can use summons by clicking the tab they are in and then selecting the one you want, well ol kid me thought it was random as I was just picking things at random. So what I am saying is, I have always had a special place for this game in my heart, so there might be a bit of bias.

So I spent some time flip flopping over what I wanted to discuss and explain first, story or gameplay, on the one hand I wanted you to know what FF8 had to offer narratively, but on the other hand I feel I should let you guys know what you're getting into when you play this. So I decided to compliment sandwich this one, but like a subway compliment sandwich where the teenager who doesn't really want to work there barely tries to cut your bread so the top part is like really thin. So thin that what I am going to give you is this, FF8 is a great story of a young man learning to overcome his own weaknesses to understand that strength can be found in companions, listen I know that sounds cliche but I need more space to talk about the amazing character development and got to tell you about this bad gameplay.

So remember when I said that old Final Fantasy's had a nice leveling system based on fighting enemies, getting exp and raising stats? Throw it all out the window, because like I told you earlier FF8 is one of the weird ones. So for some reason FF8 has a whole system based around equipping "Guardian Forces" (summons) and then through this unlocking the ability to junction (equip) magic to your stats; like strength, magic, hp and the other classics; while also being able to junction magic to element and status attack and defense, allowing you to be able to either protect or do damage based on said elements and statuses. Now you might be thinking how does this work, because magic is usually used based on magic points (mp) well there is no mp in FF8. This is due to the narrative stating that it is very rare for people to do raw magic instead they need to draw magic from nature and creatures/people and use it that way. This means that in FF8 magic is a finite resource and instead of regaining mp you have to spend time drawing magic that is randomized to be either 2 or 12 magic, so it can take awhile. If this sounds a bit weird and confusing, don't worry it kind of is, there are tutorials to explain it, but man is it a weird system. So why is this all necessary? Well unlike other Final Fantasy's, in FF8 leveling raises your stats by the littlest amount, so to be able to do decent damage and also defend against it you need to junction magic. Also to make things even worse, leveling can be a problem as monsters level with you, so if an enemy is tough for you at level 20, raising your level to 30 won't help you as they will be doing more damage and have more health. The game does try to offset this by making it so if an enemy had fire to be drawn at lvl 10, at lvl 30 they would have fira to be drawn, which would make it so that you can junction a more powerful magic and do more damage. FF8 also gives you the option to just cast magic instead of drawing it from enemies, and can be useful since most bosses have healing magic to draw from them meaning you can go in without a huge stock of cure's.

Alright so we have a confusing system with a bad mechanic of monsters getting stronger with you as you level, is that all that is weird? Nope. So remember the guardian forces I mentioned earlier? Well they are necessary to be able to junction spells to stats and make your party stronger, but there are a limited number of them and that usually means only three of the six party members will have guardian forces so you can make a decent party for fighting. The problem is that the game likes to switch around who is playable a lot, and while it is fun and interesting in the narrative, it sucks gameplay wise. The game does make it easy by letting you be able to switch who has what guardian forces in a menu, but it gets tedious after the 15th time you have to do it and especially when the game switches between two perspectives like 4 times in 30 minutes. Also sometimes you have dream sequences where you play as another team and when you come back to your main party everyone but Squall, the main character, has everything unequipped, so you have to go back and re-junction everything and it's just a waste of time. Listen I could keep going on the weird aspects of this game, but I don't want it to take up this whole article and we got cool card games to talk about.

FF8 does a lot of things in a weird and bad way, but that doesn't mean it doesn't do things really really right, and thats with Triple Triad baby! Triple Triad is the super fun card game that exist within FF8, a game so good that you can also play it in FF14. The game is easy to get into and can get pretty hard with each area of the game map have unique rules, yet you can game the system by going to areas and abolishing rules and bring rules from other regions to new regions. Well except for one region, it is the king of rules, no exceptions! The fun of this game is not just showing the npc's of FF8 why you are the Yugi Muto of Triple Triad, you see you can learn an ability to turn cards you win from Triple Triad into items, which in turn can be turned into spells, powerful spells, I'm talking spells you are not meant to gain until like lvl 45 or 50. This means that if you want to you can spend time in the starting area at lvl 7 and leave a powerhouse that level thanks to Triple Triad. But there is a problem, this method is not quick, it takes hours to do this and also to even be able to get the ability to do this you will need to get AP for your Guardian Forces, which means either fighting fights normally or carding enemies which kills them but doesn' give exp, it can only be done at low health so be careful not to accidentally kill them.

So I have given a decent way to have fun but let me give you guys, in my opinion, the best way to enjoy FF8's gameplay, cheats. That's right a game that's so weird that the PC port has cheats that you can add to your save. I'm not talking about the normal ones we saw when FF7 and FF9 were ported to modern consoles, like the ability to turn off encounters and have it so you don't lose health in combat and do max 9999 damage. I am talking about the ability to modify a save file so you start with most low and mid level magic at full stock on all characters, and let me tell you it is a blessing. On PC it also allows you to at anytime raise all magic stocks to 100 and max level Guardian Forces, and let me tell you guys if you don't have the patience for the grind or want to try and just enjoy the story I highly suggest using these cheats, it makes things so much easier and I hope that the FF8 port coming to console has these cheats too. Also I should let you guys know I didn't immediately use these cheats, I tried to play it legit about three different times and every time the grind burnt me out, honestly if it wasn't for these cheats I would never had enjoyed FF8's amazing story. Speaking of amazing stories, let's finish off this subway compliment sandwich and talk about the good stuff.

So let me give you guys the easy lore of this world, on this planet, there are two types of people, normal people and sorceress, sorceresses can use magic naturally and a lot of them use this power for world domination especially the last sorceress, Adel, who was in charge of the country of Esthar and almost succeeded, due to this the Gardens were created by a man named Cid with the sole purpose to be able to kill sorceress should one like Adel show up again. The thing is one will show up and I don't mean because of plots need for a main antagonist, I mean because a sorceress can not die until she passes her powers to another female. Our story follows the character of Squall Lionheart, a quiet and distant youth who wants nothing more than to be able to prove that he is strong enough to be on his own, so badly that he actively shuts out other people who try to get close to him. Our boy here is a SeeD candidate in Balamb Garden, which means he is close to graduating and being basically a mercenary for the Garden until the need to fight a Sorceress arrives. And from there that's how the story grows, you have a cast of characters that join over time each interesting in their own right, helping as you deal with a looming sorceresses threat. Sounds pretty standard right? Well let's be real even something standard can be handled masterfully and that is exactly what FF8 does. Before I get into that there are two more characters I need to talk about. Laguna Loire, a soldier of the Galbadian army, who Squall keeps having vivid dreams about, through these dreams you see piece by piece of what he went through and how these events shaped him and the world around him and also how he is connected to Squall. There is also Rinoa Heartilly, a young girl who wishes to free the city of Timber from Galabadian control and in the process acts as the catalyst to what motivates Squall to change, all do to a chance meeting. When you look at the plot of FF8 it is abit generic what with stopping a Sorceress from creating her perfect utopia and most characters, outside of the ones mentioned above, get little depth to them, but what makes this story so engaging and interesting is Squall.

You see Squall starts off as a character who I can say I was disappointed in and didn't really like, a character I had adored since I was a kid due to my memories with that demo. He is angsty, off putting and really annoying, hell it feels like half of Squalls Dialogue is "...", but the thing is, that's the point. Squall is like that because he is afraid of trusting people again, fearing that if he does he will get hurt again and abandoned like he was as a child, so he puts on this cold front to make it easier for him, he doesn't have to worry if people like and rely on him if he is cold and indifferent, they would all just hate him. It is through this premise and his chance meeting with Rinoa that we see how Squall grows and changes, a man who I started off hating and grew to love and it's because it feels natural. Squall isn't cold because he thinks its cool or because he knows he is better than everyone else, he is a kid, a sad kid who went through heartbreak way to young and is afraid to love someone again. He is thrust into a dangerous world and has to come to terms that his lifestyle will not work for him, that he needs and wants to rely on others and he can't just keep ignoring a part of himself. Through the course of FF8 you see a quiet kid with a broken heart, overcome himself and become a real hero and use his new strength to make sure he can protect those close to him as well as himself.

And now we reach a bit of a problem, I would love to explain more, I want to explain why certain scenes moved me so much and why Squall's journey brought me to tears, but then I would need to spoil parts of the story, and that is the last thing I want to do. This is a Final Fantasy story that has incredible character development and I want people to be able to experience it themselves, to see what makes it great. I should also at least mention that the story is not without faults and tropes with Rinoa starting off being your typical manic pixie dream girl and if Squall really wanted to be alone he would have left SeeD after completing his training, and of course the other characters are not given as much screen time as Squall and Rinoa. However, tropes are not always bad and can still have depth, and by the end of the story I would say that Rinoa sheds the trope but it is on the nose in the beginning.

I left a lot of stuff out and with the HD remaster coming out sometime this year I think that if this article intrigued you, pick up a copy and experience it yourself. Experience a masterpiece of character growth that I believe is held back by clunky gameplay choices. I sincerely hope if you do decide to pick up this title that you enjoy Squall's story as much as I did.