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macgyvertape · 1 day

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‘if joanna had lived the lannisters would have been normal/nicer’ WRONG i think she would have married cersei off as geographically far away as possible and then started doing some the lion in winter shit with jaime. she refuses to acknowledge tyrion because in surviving his birth she’s gone from a victim of tywin’s imp to his mother an accomplice there must have been something wrong with her to birth him like that. do not fall into the all dead mothers were really soft and niceys fallacy

#got #game of thrones #yeah this is a fanon that really bugs me #like Tywin liked and respected her #also i should watch lion in winter

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macgyvertape · 2 days

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He's the most based character in the Wasteland because the fiddle music was good, and I'd be doing the same thing with my niche instrumental genre music no one else likes

"Vinyl hipster operating a radio station that exclusively plays really bad fiddle music which he defends from disgruntled listeners using human-sized bear traps and mouse traps" may be a fallout bit of all time

#fallout #fallout show #fallout prime #i loved the fiddle minuteman radio

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macgyvertape · 3 days

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Today's the day

#the flash tv #wow todays the day #and I was at such a different point in my life during s1 #the commonality really being I’m still on tumblr lol #I should really go back and watch those last few seasons

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macgyvertape · 3 days

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Playing through Fallout:New Vegas for the first time in years. And I'm developing a newfound appreciation for the damage done to the intended pacing of the narrative with the addition of the Courier's Stash. I wake up in Goodsprings, and as part of the extended tutorial you have Ghosttown Gunfight, the fairly self-contained faction war between Goodsprings and the Powder Gangers. And the design intent, I think, is that this is probably supposed to be a pain in the ass, with only one or two avenues of support available to you given the low level at which you'll pick this one up. Six Powder Gangers, some in body-armor, would be a serious threat, and committing to fighting against that with your dinky 9mm and a varmint rifle seems like a rough time! An actual uphill battle, doing the right thing instead of the easy thing. Fortunately, Benny inexplicably left my handy 40mm grenade launcher in the grave with me, so I cleaned up.

I'm working my way south, and, you know, in a version of the game where Benny didn't inexplicably leave my handy 40mm grenade launcher in the grave with me, this would have been the knock-on effect of my "good" Karmic choice in defending Goodsprings; the road south is littered with powder gangers who'd have been neutral had I not kicked the hornet's nest. As it stands? Free experience. I hit Primm, and fighting through the cramped hallways of the Bison Steve I encounter an enemy armed with what was clearly supposed to be the first heavy weapon I'd encounter in the world. Tight Corridors. Inexplicable Grenade Launcher. I clean up. South I go to the Mojave outpost, Nipton, that whole thing. And clearly, clearly you aren't meant to take a swing at Vulpes here, right? You're supposed to take it in, get a sense for the legion. In the version of the game that shipped you're supposed to get bodied if you try to kick the beef gate here. There are allowances in the game for if you pull it off, sure, but I did try with just the service rifle, without the glorious first-strike capabilities afforded to me by the 40mm grenade launcher that Benny inexplicably left in the grave with me. It didn't go very well!

So now I'm dogged by Legion hit squads on my way to Novac, which I get the distinct impression was not the point in the game at which this was supposed to start happening to me, because I am gathering up some pretty expensive equipment, all sold for space. I punch through to Vegas, and at this stage, the clear developer intent is that you need to spend some time milling around Freeside or Camp McCarran in order to gain access to the Strip- do odd jobs to scrape up the money, buy the forgery from Mick and Ralphs, gain monorail access, get your science skill high enough to hack the robot. Get the lay of the land, get a feel for the people, send some time stewing in the human cost of House's walled garden before you head in and hear the pitch from the big man himself.

Except I've got 5000 caps from selling off all the legion killteam equipment. In I go!

And the fun thing is, right, the Courier's stash can't be diegetic, but it is having a very direct impact on the world here. A top legion guy just went down to my inexplicable 40mm grenade launcher. Whatever else I'm roleplaying as, I am roleplaying as a guy who woke up in the possession of an inexplicable 40mm grenade launcher, and neither I nor my character can plausibly ignore that fact given its terrible bloodstained utility. I play a man, a man who would be a good man, a man nonetheless bewitched by the terrible resolutory power of the grenade launcher. My best friend, the inexplicable 40mm grenade launcher! My worst enemy, the inexplicable 40mm grenade launcher!

#fallout #fnv #fallout new vegas #always interesting to think of #the storyltelling inherent to game difficulty #and intended play #that so often dlc gunpacks undercut

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macgyvertape · 4 days

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Watching the trailers for IWTV s2, I was thinking that not since season 2 of GoT have I watched an film/tv adaption of a book that had a break between installments and not basically read ahead.

It's funny because I over the past months I have watched the IWTV movie, Queen of the Damned, and Lestat the Musical. However the latter two works contradict themselves enough that I still have no idea where the show is going to go, since the show timeline is so different.

One of the only future things I have been spoiled on is Daniel/Armand and that's just from seeing the post that goes "i hope armand fucks that old man on screen, just for you" which yeah I hope that happens in s2.

I was just a few years to young to experience when IWTV had it's big IP moment in the early 2000s, then afterwards IAnne Rice's noted anti fanfic policy, where sites (like Twisting the Hellmouth) mentioned they wouldn't host fanfic, were a strong recommendation to not read the series.

#iwtv #the vampire chronicles

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macgyvertape · 4 days

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Thinking about Edward Elric as the Amestrian Military's specialest little unfireable boy

State alchemists can be fired for underperforming. We know this up front from the likes of Shou Tucker. And this makes a ton of sense from the homunculi's standpoint since the state alchemists are sacrifice candidates, and the homunculi would want to cull the weakest candidates and focus only on cultivating the strongest ones who stand the best chance of opening the portal.

........Then there's Edward. Who's already opened the portal.

There's no need to cultivate him. No gamble taken on whether he's good enough to open the portal. He passed the final test already. Graduated 4 semesters early.

And as such, has a free pass to do Absolute Fuck All.

And I'm imagining how funny this is from like an outside perspective.

Some newish state alchemist who'd only ever read up on the stories of Edward Elric, ready and excited to start their career of being paid handsomely with endless freedom to research and travel and do anything they want in the pursuit of science... surprised and confused to find themselves put on probation their first month for things like "ignoring orders." Which is, as best they had thought, a famous Edward Elric pastime.

Roy showing a slight bit of stress about his yearly state alchemist report, and Ed just snorting and rolling his eyes at Roy because every year HE just hastily does his on the train ride over (canon in the manga, a travesty it was left out of the anime) and it gets rubber stamped. Ed not realizing that other alchemists' reports get genuinely scrutinized and torn apart while Ed is free to turn in whatever absolute bullshit he thinks of 36 hours ahead of time. One year his report was about whether alchemy could be done via dance (conclusion: no it can't) and no one cared. Roy WANTS to tell Ed there's some kind of unknown favoritism around Ed making him literally bullet-proof but Roy has no way to phrase this that doesn't sound like he's just in denial and mad at how good Ed's train-reports are.

Guy from the Internal Amestrian Affairs sector who's responsible for auditing other internal military personel for any suspicious activity hitting about 1 million red flags for Edward Elric, issuing a STRONG and URGENT recommendation to suspend the alchemist pending further investigation into things like "literal bunk-buddies with two members of the Xingese royalty (enemy nation)" and "spent $10,000,000 of his stipend on a librarian to make her re-copy (what he seemed to interpret as?) military records in some extremely transparent effort to unearth state secrets (it was a recipe book but he was literally asking her about state secrets)" and "literally has never once obeyed an order, ever, not even once in his career, and is on public record having said 'I do not care about the goals and protections of the Amestrian Military. I am in fact only pursuing my own interests several of which are diametrically opposed to the safety and well-being of the governing body of Amestris'"

The issued recommendation is intercepted before it even reaches its intended desk. President Bradley himself has taken issue with it and denies it before a single set of eyes has seen it. The President's veto stamp is a terrifying hammer, used rarely, and it is now sitting on the auditor's desk.

The auditor sleeps with one eye open from then on out.

#fma #there are so many funny plots about #x character being unfirable #edward e #edward elric #would make all of these storylines so much more chaotic

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macgyvertape · 5 days

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re: wyll's lack of a sex scene

"its nice that theres an ace option" there isnt. you still have sex, larian just fades to black after 3 seconds of fully-clothed kissing. if you dont want your character to fuck, you can say no. if you dont want to say no but for some reason still dont want to see anything, the game has a nudity censor option

"he was just lowest priority because, out of all the romanceable companions, he puts the lowest priority on sex" lower priority than haarlep? than the drow twins? emperor? the woman who owns his soul gets full-frontal but his own scene cuts to black before he even takes his shirt off. larian puts in the content they think players would enjoy, and seemingly just saw the option to fuck wyll as unimportant to players

"it just wouldnt mesh with his character, hes too romantic" okay but he literally does fuck offscreen in his romance route, so it would in fact be in character for him. also sex isnt inherently impure. this is a less sex-positive take than the generally accepted one in the mormon church (i would know, im exmo). have you never heard the euphemisms "making love" and "intimacy" before? this is a weird take and youre weird for having it

do i, as a lesbian, personally want to see his cock and balls? no. do i think it Says Something when larian just assumes that no one wants horny wyll content in a famously horny game? yes

#baldur's gate #bg #wyll ravengard #wyll deserves an huge patch of his own

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macgyvertape · 6 days

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See the thing about Destiny 2 is when it's good it's so fucking good IMO. FPS PVE is probably one of my favorite genres of video games, and there's a reason I'm almost 4 year into what's basically an MMO sub, when a year and a half was my previous max on other games before getting bored.

My other top favorite is Bungie Halo; and it's a shame that I hate the Flood so that takes out several of the games and like the infinite regenerating health which takes out Halo CE and Reach. So that leaves ODST which, great music but only so many time you can replay it.

Recently I played through a bunch of FPS on gamepass and genuinely I felt that no game matched either Bungie series in movement and gunplay. So it's back to Destiny where I'm catching up, and being reminded why I love it.

#destiny 2 #mac plays video games

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macgyvertape · 7 days

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You wanna know what’s pretty messed up?

So there’s a mini, joke chapter at the end of Fullmetal Alchemist Volume 3 called “Flame vs. Fullmetal” –if you’ve watched FMA 03, you’ll remember they adopted aspects of this into the semi-joke episode, episode 13—Anyway, the premise is that people have started musing about the timeless question, “Who would win in a fight?” between Ed and Roy. And for the hell of it, Ed and Roy agree to an all-out alchemist battle to settle the matter.

Fast forward through the battle a bit, Ed’s lured Roy out with a decoy and seizes the opportunity to jump the Colonel from the smoke.

In classic Roy fashion though–

–he’s prepared. “You sliced up my right glove but psyche I’ve got a second one that does the exact same thing.”

And Ed’s toast. Rip Ed.

This whole sequence is pure humor, all jokes and snark and the satisfaction of watching Ed and Roy try to beat the shit out of each other. But something about it seemed…familiar. Something that finally clicked.

In this silly little sequence, Ed chose disarmament of his enemy over victory. He chose securing his position of power by using his automail weapon to slice through his enemy’s transmutation circle rather than actual violence. And his foolish trust in passively subduing a powerful opponent is what gets him well and truly burned.

And then, well there’s his fight against Kimblee. Chapter 76

Ed spent a long chunk of the lead-up to this battle arguing that he does not want to kill Kimblee. He gets into a fight with the Briggs soldiers about this, and they never quite convince him that Kimblee is better off murdered.

So when it comes down to a fight between the two of them, Ed chooses mercy. He chooses Kimblee’s life. He separated Kimblee from his philosopher’s stone, and slices out the transmutation circle on Kimblee’s palm.

And just when he’s let his guard down, convinced he’s passively won–

–Kimblee, rather than Roy this time, pulls out his trump card.

It’s…nigh identical. Ed sees an opening, uses it to disarm, then is taken by complete surprise that his opponent has a second transmutation circle…a second philosopher’s stone.

In Flame vs Fullmetal, Ed is just sort of…comically blown away. His weakness was exposed and his pride suffered for it. Against Kimblee. Well–

–he does not get away in tact.

And it hits as such a…dark piece of continuity. A trueness to this being Ed’s weakness, and a stark, cold, harsh reality in the fact that there are bigger, scarier things out there than Mustang, yet things just as manipulative, powerful, tactful. Things which will kill Ed at a moment’s notice, that do not deserve his mercy.

Ed lives, but he sacrifices his own life-force for it. He surrenders years off the end of his life to pull through. This is an unforgiving consequence shown to naivete. And the parallel exposed in a joke chapter from volume 3 is just…

…well, chilling.

#fma #fma meta #thank you op I never connected these dots

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macgyvertape · 8 days

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just curious as they're always things i've never questioned just doing but people in my life are often surprised that i don't mind doing them alone

🔁 pls reblog for sample size

#polls #damn I do all of these #I usually get food to go now #but yeah I used to travel for work #so completely comfortable traveling alone #eating alone in a restaurant even if it's nice #going to the movies alone sure #though I'm so picky on movies usually someone else wants to see it #heck I've been to two concerts alone in the past few months #because what I want to see in concert #is often not even a genre my friends like #as far as traveling alone none of my close friends are in the sca #so I travel to events alone #and is honestly a limit on the amount of events I go to #it me #personal

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macgyvertape · 8 days

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This is a very serious scene but please consider

#fma #this would have been so fucking funny

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macgyvertape · 8 days

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the only right way to rank the lestats, mind you

#iwtv #lestat #the vampire chonicles #i want so many more opinions by this guy #for anne rice's works

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macgyvertape · 9 days

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idgaf if bethesda ever tells us concretely which country launched the first nuke, the only answer i will accept is the original one, the one that said "we wont tell you, because it doesnt matter. there is no moral highground in the story of the great war, and the end result for those alive today is all the same either way. those most responsible faced the fewest consequences, and no justice was served. there is no justifiable way to nuke anyone, no matter who struck first. everyone lost and thats the very nature of war and always has been. war is evil, and in that way, war never changes"

not broadcasting who was "really to blame" is purposeful, and any other answer would undercut fallout's core identity to me

#fallout #my biggest point of contention with the show

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macgyvertape · 14 days

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This post made me think of the fandom view of Fallout 4 Brotherhood of steel, as I was watching the Fallout show there were many parts where I thought about how different the fan reaction to Fallout 4 Brotherhood of Steel would have been if you had to do a quest where you carry around an oversized golfbag full of equipment for someone else while they berate you, then they brand you before giving you the power armor.

I think more game designers need to understand that no matter how politically or morally questionable you make a character or faction, the dominant opinion of them will be based on how nice they are to the player and how long the player can work with them while not personally doing anything bad.

#fallout #politics

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macgyvertape · 14 days

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It's pretty fun to think about what perks SPECIAL build Lucy, Maximus, and The Ghoul have since it feels like the writers had that as character reference, even though it varies in implementation from game to game.

I'd say the obvious is The Ghoul has level 10 Charisma, Lucy somewhere in the middle, and Maximus though I love him has 1 or 2 since he isn't passing any speech skill checks. Where Maximus really shines is with Strength and Endurance since he takes a lot of hits that he can keep fighting through. Lucy seems to be spread with a few points in a lot of categories from her introductory pitch but a focus on Intelligence and Charisma, which reminded me of my first character where I did a few points in a lot of categories which then made combat very hard. Overall considering how all three characters finish the show alive with all limbs (re)attached they must have a decent Luck stat.

As for perks:

The Ghoul - it's pretty obvious he has Bloody Mess: "Increased damage with all weapons, and enemies can explode upon death." There's 2 big fight scenes where it's him vs multiple enemies and it with how many shots he gets off, it seems like he has Grim Reaper's Sprint: which returns action points when killing an enemy. Then we see him cut up Roger the ghoul for meat so he also has the Cannibal perk. I'm not sure whether the game would class him as Chem Resistant with how he shrugs off Lucy's dart, or if that would fall under addiction mechanics.

Lucy - an obvious guess is the FO3 perk Daddy's Girl: "Just like dear old Dad, you’ve devoted your time to intellectual pursuits. You gain an additional 5 points to both the Science and Medicine skills." Her rewiring of Mr Handy suggests Robotics Expert. I might be reading too much into the random encounters she has, but she has a number of them so something like Wild Wasteland makes sense.

Maximus - Toughness: which reduces damage threshold/damage taken is an obvious one. He notably doesn't have power armor repair skills, but in older games a perk like Power Armor Training was needed to use it. There's a few different melee attack perks in the games but Fo4 Big Leagues fits well

#fallout show #fallout prime #fallout spoilers #fallout #lucy maclean #the ghoul #maximus #fallout maximus

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macgyvertape · 16 days

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One thing I found interesting was tracking The Ghoul/Cooper Howard's relationship with dogs over the season, since The Ghoul is presented as true neutral out for himself at the beginning it serves as an audience cue.

One of the establishing character moments with his post bomb cold cowboy killer persona was a "kick knife the dog" moment. He heals Dogmeat to use him as a tracker but then abandons him when he isn't useful.

Then in flashbacks you learn he had a dog, he loved that dog, he hates the idea of leaving Roosevelt to die because dogs won't be allowed in vaults. I would be curious at the amount of screen-time he has with his wife Barb vs his dog because I think it would be almost equal.

After Lucy helps him out, he rescues Dogmeat and gets a "pet the dog" moment, though his comment of "I'm sorry Dogmeat but you ain't him" shows he's still mourning Roosevelt 200 years later.

I just find it interesting how the most memorable art in his house and where the camera lingers for a bit is:

#the ghoul #cooper howard #fallout #fallout prime #fallout spoilers #fallout show

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macgyvertape · 16 days

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Yeah I found The Ghoul/Cooper fascinating the way he leans into various cowboy personas to the point of becoming the mask trope, and especially with the flashbacks that provide context to his actions episodes earlier. I also find it really interesting to dig into the two remnants of his acting career that survived: Vault Boy and the hardened cowboy killer in The Man from Deadhorse film

In the beginning you see him be asked to do the Vault Boy thumbs up, and it's clear he hates it but it's not clear why. Then the episode where he obliterates the Vault Boy face on the billboard, and you find out in flashback he was the face of Vault Tech merchandizing and advertising that became the Vault Boy, he came up with the iconic thumbs up. Then in the final flashback episodes later, you see him bluescreen in the face of learning the horrors Vault Tech is committing, and it makes so much sense why he hates that particular legacy so much.

I really like how The Ghoul finding a surviving tape in the shot up Super Duper Mart is how the audience finds out that despite his objections Cooper did go back to the role and with it's cold execution and mccarthyist killing communists is good dialogue. Then that hardened cowboy killer role gets referenced one last time in the final flashback; as Cooper's having a breakdown from learning about Vault Tech's horrors Hank MacLean introduces himself and says how much he loved seeing Cooper in the role in that specific scene. Which is meant to be a character red flag about Hank as part of the nice dad facade falling apart.

Kind of obsessed with The Ghoul in Fallout (2024). Walton Goggins is honestly just so excellent in every scene, he really sells it, but there's something to how that character is WRITTEN, y'know? Like, we get this really strong juxtaposition of his character before the war and his character after, and some revelations later in the show even further recontextualize some of that.

Pre-war, he's kinda this pastiche of the John Wayne/Clint Eastwood type Western star, famous for his cowboy roles. He has some gripes with how his characters are being written early on (for example, being made uncharacteristically violent and having reactionary anti-communist rhetoric injected into his dialogue), but he goes along with it because there's all this mccarthyism about and he doesn't want people thinking he's a communist sympathizer.

POST WAR, he's leaned HARD into the cowboy thing, he's cold, he's merciless, he's willing to kill children in front of their parents to prove a point. He's become the hyper violent, macho, western anti hero that he was critical of before. It's like, he's cast into this insane world where everyone is fighting for survival, and Cooper Howard has no footing in that world, but that anti-hero? That cowboy persona? The outlaw, the outlaw has a place here. So, that's what he becomes. The Ghoul. It's a performance, really. Cooper has to become this mythic cowboy gunslinger archetype to survive, embody the characters he used to play on the screen.

I know this is really surface level stuff but it's so so interesting to me. I really hope season 2 gets to pick away at this shell he's built around himself, maybe as he gets closer to Lucy and we start to see more of the man he used to be peaking through.

#fallout #cooper howard #fallout show #fallout prime #the ghoul #hank mclean #fallout spoilers

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