Divergent Interests
Posted 20 April 2008 in Life, the Universe, and Everything by Catriona
Nick and I have a fairly large number of shared interests, which always make co-habitation a little easier; I’m not always making him watch romantic comedies (although, action-film fan that I am, I did draw the line at Hitman Uncut last night: it was grotesquely violent and exploitative) and he’s not obsessed with sport, so we don’t end up living a life with a horrible resemblance to an American prime-time sit-com.
(Although I am obsessed with sport; well, I’m obsessed with football, anyway. But Nick just ignores the fact that I watch every game of each World Cup and get up at 4.30 a.m. to watch Liverpool win the Champion’s League final.)
But sometimes, our interests seem to diverge more than usual.
For example, I have spent today (after waking at 6.30 a.m.—on a Sunday!—to find that my fan had snapped in half during the night, a stranger than usual occurrence) sitting in the living room marking an enormous pile of assessment.
Nick, on the other hand, has pulled out a borrowed copy of Overlord—which he always describes as “the game written by Rhianna Pratchett”—and has apparently spent most of the afternoon carving a violent swathe through an environment that looks disturbingly like Hobbiton, complete with underground dwellings with round doors.
It’s all right, though; I think these are evil hobbits.
And I get to stop marking soon, so we can get back to our usual Sunday night activities of mocking Robin Hood and squabbling about what we’re going to watch afterwards.
After all, shared interests don’t have to equal perpetual consensus: that would be dull.
Share your thoughts [2]
1
Nick Caldwell wrote at Apr 20, 01:01 pm
I’m not absolutely certain that they were evil hobbits. On the other hand, they were imprisoning and possibly eating local villagers. OK, yes, probably evil.
The game does feature that slightly frustrating design decision to give the player two options — self-interest or chaotic murderousness — but label them “evil” and “really evil”. You can take the “evil” route without doing anything particularly objectionable, as best as I can tell.
Still, it was very fun until that giant fat hobbit end of level boss.
2
Catriona wrote at Apr 20, 01:07 pm
Well, you certainly told me that they were evil hobbits.
And, as Willy Wonka notes, cannibalism is frowned on in most societies.
Can you not then play the game without having to label yourself evil at all? Because I tend to get a little worn down by non-stop evil, and that would frustrate me.
I much prefer to be the good guy, and spend my time reanimating enormous mechanised minotaur god-kings to overthrow evil dictators.
Man, that game was fun—I have to play that again with a different character class.