To me, 12 was the start of the downfall. Make it less like a classic JRPG and more like an MMO. Got rid of the strategic turn based battles in favor of watching your characters just do things. It led directly to 13, which to me was by far the worst thing to ever happen to Final Fantasy. It was also the moment I realized that I must be weird as hell, because reviewers kept panning the story as overcomplicated (which is basically what I live for) and praising how unique that awful battle system was.

Oh Lord it’s all blurring together on me. You’re right. I don’t get the theory either then.

Yeah it’s pretty far down my list too but I think the theory goes that Hilary wanted him dead because if he ratted on Bill then it would hurt her election chances. Plausible enough as far as motives go. Still, I agree that Trump is the obvious choice.

The only thing that makes me hesitate on that one is… Trump or the Clinton’s or whoever could have had him assassinated in prison, I don’t believe they would have gone through the added effort of keeping him alive. He’s gonna have a hard time sourcing kids now so why bother? Certainly not because any of the list of suspects values friendship or loyalty

TBH if using my death to get rich was an option and my wife didn’t take it, I’d haunt her ass.

To be clear, I’m not using attractive here to mean “physically beautiful” but instead “possessing qualities the other person wants in a partner.” Weird was a word choice for humor but I was essentially saying, “have more attractive qualities than unattractive qualities.” While recognizing that what one person finds unattractive, another might find attractive, and vice versa. By definition, simplifying a complex interaction of human wants and desires into one dimension, rendering it intentionally useless as advice, for the sake of trying to be funny.

Nah I think it’s a pretty simple algorithm still: don’t be weirder than you are attractive. It’s just that there’s really wildly varying ideas on what’s weird or attractive.

He went on an unhinged racist rant about Black Lives Matter in 2023, ending with something along the lines of “white people get as far away from black people as possible.” More details on his Wiki page but that’s the high level.

It was a wild character arc. Paraphrasing heavily…

90s “Corporations are stupid and abusive to employees”

2001 “What if we’re all just fragments of God? Why do we fight each other?”

2009 “Place bets on the people you hate most, they always seem to win.”

2023 “Black Lives Matter is a racist hate group.”

2025 “Trump will fix everything. Also please get me into a medical trial daddy.”

I was really holding out for the redemption arc but alas.

I’m a little sad about it. I liked his writing in the late 90s/early 2000s. Very anti-corporate. Imperfect but fairly progressive. It seemed like he was just a hippie at heart. I wish I understood what happened to him. From the outside looking in my best guess is falling victim to his success, he began to think too highly of himself, and maybe a bit too much paying attention to Fox News. It was a wild turnaround from my perspective.