Roderick

Phaedrus' Street Crew
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    9454

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Roderick

  1. Posted

    Holy fuck, I just realized I dreamed last night that I had Patches and was playing it. What a crazy, specific thing to dream about.

     

    Thanks for the big write-up, Latrine. I haven't done a lot of arena because of the cost of entry and not a lot of faith in my skills. So far I'm really enjoying the singleplayer content and the tavern brawls, which bring some truly bonkers play mechanics.

  2. Posted

    I'm looking forward to Mario Kart 8 Superb Waluigi Edition, Splatoon 2 and Odyssey. On the indie side I was enthused by Kingdom and Flipping Death. I concur with everyone else that Zelda is so far massively enthralling and it should hold up for at least a few weeks, if not months.

     

    I've tried holding the Joycons loose in hand, but I already dropped one of them from the sofa (fortunately only a half-meter fall), so I've stuck to the grip so far.

  4. Posted

    I have two tanuki Animal Crossing friends on my avatar, name's "Roderick", and the code is SW246877063201. I have a sneaking suspicion what I'll see everyone playing all evening.

     

    Heh, there's not a whole lot you can do with friends on the Switch yet, but that'll roll out this year. In some form or another.

  5. Posted

    Makes sense if you think about it.

     

    You know, one thing I'm missing from the Switch is the 3DS app that let you see which games you had played and for how long. It's a silly thing, but both me and my partner are playing Zelda and the savegames only show the date. We have super different playing styles (I'm noodling away my time stealthing butterflies and gleefully distracted by every goddamn heron I see, she's playing with more focus on the story), so I am curious how that'll translate into our playing time.

     

    The Switch really has a sparse suite of tools. Not that that's bad per se - there's definitely no deluge of questionable software to whisk away into folders - but some things are sorely missed. Some more interactivity with friends would also be welcome, even if it's just a rudimentary messaging system or something to collect. I kind of expect Nintendo to release stuff like this in the coming months.

  6. Posted

    I've recently gotten back into this and really enjoy spending an hour every evening noodling on the iPad with Hearthstone. It's been a weird transition. I only ever had one decent deck, but suddenly I had to readjust to this entirely new meta and like five expansions with new synergies. Rather than coping with that, I just plunged into One Night In Karazhan, which is a lot of fun.

  7. Posted

    For fear of spoilers I've left this thread largely unread, but I am having fun with the (so far limited) Switch social features. I posted this on Facebook:

     

    17098329_1895656627372608_60686050685698

     

    I'm not crazy about the quality of the screenshots, and there seems to be something weird going on with the graphic style of Breath of the Wild, a fuzziness, that makes it hard to photograph well. But the captions lend themselves well to outrageous statements and I look forward to further chronicling the adventures of Hink.

  8. Posted

    I had noticed Sony putting out really slick deals on a PS4 Slim + Horizon for the Switch launch price or lower. Hey, all the more power to people who want a PS4.

     

    Alright, my Switch is IN and I'm currently downloading Zelda, which is taking literally hours. Prolly my connection though. The Switch looks really slick, but I have to get used to how tiny and fragile things feel. Removing Joycons is something that feels dangerous, even, in a way. Nintendo used to be all about indestructible machines, but this feels like it might snap and pop at the wrong handling. Could be just a feeling of course.

     

    It isn't helped by noticing, and I put this question to all of you, that my left (blue) joycon seems ever so slightly wobbly when attached to the Switch itself. Not in any gross way, but it definitely feels a little less snug than the red Joycon. Moving it back and forth, I just about feel that there's a little room to wobble it around. Anyone else experience this?

  12. Posted

    Reposted from the general movie topic:

     

    I remember there was a Fast & Furious discussion here a while back, that seemed to praise the series. And years back I recall having a Good Time in the cinema with Fast Five. So it was disappointing when I saw Furious 7 (or whatever it's called) yesterday on Netflix and it was the most boring thing in existence. It begins with thirty minutes of depressed characters slowly looking at each other and brooding on things that happened earlier (of which I as a relative newcomer know nothing), then there were some fun but long action scenes (notably jumping with an expensive car through three buildings), and a loooong finale. There was nothing to it. Ironically, only the very ending managed to suddenly have enormous weight and substance, but a cast member literally had to die to get there. And it was a heartfelt moment, to be sure. The rest was such a drag, though.

  14. Posted

    Years and years ago we did a movie club here where The Earrings of Madame De came by. Very romantic. And a fun club that was, though I believe we only ever got to 4 or 5 films before it sizzled out. Still, it was the reason I got to see Kanal, and holy shit that was good.

     

    I remember there was a Fast & Furious discussion here a while back, that seemed to praise the series. And years back I recall having a Good Time in the cinema with Fast Five. So it was disappointing when I saw Furious 7 (or whatever it's called) yesterday on Netflix and it was the most boring thing in existence. It begins with thirty minutes of depressed characters slowly looking at each other and brooding on things that happened earlier (of which I as a relative newcomer know nothing), then there were some fun but long action scenes (notably jumping with an expensive car through three buildings), and a loooong finale. There was nothing to it. Ironically, only the very ending managed to suddenly have enormous weight and substance, but a cast member literally had to die to get there. And it was a heartfelt moment, to be sure. The rest was such a drag, though.

  15. Posted

    At the end of the day it's also something so personal to you that it's mostly about how you feel about it. I still estimate that I fall somewhere in the, ha, well, gray area, notably on the 'it's just not all that important to me personally'-factor. Sex with another person, I mean. It's way complicated to figure out in any case, since sexuality is a fluid thing and how you feel about it can change from day to day. So, as long as I feel comfortable calling myself Gray Ace, it's fine.

     

    Cool news about your novel! Spectrum of Desire - that could be a James Bond title. Is it a physical release?

  16. Posted

    Thanks, Patrick! Strange addendum to what I wrote above: I just realized that my views on my own libido being lower than average are actually based on highly subjective thoughts and observations, but no real evidence. I mean, they're formed primarily on:

     

    1. The way sex is portrayed in media, spoonfed from an early age (men as hypersexualised people who'd love nothing more than to have sex at any time, any day).

    2. Observations from my own life, where I have, in fact, met my share of people who at least profess to desire sex a lot, and an earlier relationship that ended because my then-girlfriend was way more sexually driven than I was.

     

    That one-two-punch, coupled with the sudden realization after losing my virginity that I wasn't, as I had assumed all my life, all that interested or affected by actual sex, consolidated my impression that my libido was significantly lower than the norm. Now I'm wondering if this is actually true. What if my feelings towards sex are actually shared by most people, and we're all burdened by inflated notions on how much others desire it? How could you even measure this - since it's not just about how often you want sex, but also your enjoyment of it, the reasons you partake in it and in whatever way fantasies do or do not count?

  18. Posted

    Oh boy, I finally have a thing that totally warrants a post in Life again!

     

    Last week I was on the Dutch Yaycon convention, which is a small Japanese festival with a focus on LGBTQA themes and a handful of quality lectures and panels. I gave a writing workshop there and my newest book launched during the day, but that's not important. I attended a panel there on asexuality, featuring some of my friends. And the discussion there kind of hit me like a truck. The panelists were extremely frank and open about their bodies, their preferences, their attitude towards sexuality, masturbation, etc. I had a real lightbulb moment there, until I started feeling weird, possibly also because I had a livecast in the theater right after, so I fled the room to get some fresh air.

     

    I've known ever since my first girlfriend that I have a somewhat ambivalent relation with sex. Even though I like it in the moment, it doesn't really do a whole lot for me, and I don't really need to have sex all that often. Low drive. But I couldn't ever really bring myself to adopt the asexual moniker: that's just plain not me. I am sexual and I usually enjoy it to a certain extent, whenever I have it. I just don't need it that much and it's not a big part of my personality. My girlfriend knows this and it's not a problem, not an issue, we've established a rhythm that takes both our needs into account.

     

    But after the lecture I felt a need to reassess all this, because I was suddenly opened to how this panel of asexuals was very different in make-up: some masturbated a lot, others indulged in sexuality from an aesthetic viewpoint... I suddenly realized the whole thing was much wider than I thought. Today I visited one of the panelists in person and we had a long, beautiful, sincere conversation about all of this. And I dug through the AVEN archive to research a certain thing called Gray Asexuality, which I discovered kind of fits me. It's an intentionally vague umbrella term that seems perfect for people who affiliate with asexuals, like I do, but who still have a sexual side to them that they also pursue and nourish. I'm kind of happy with finding this term, because I always felt a little caught in the middle between either people with (I assume) normal, healthy sex drives and asexuals.

     

    I know in the end all of this is just another silly label, and it doesn't change anything about me. But sometimes a place to belong can go a way in making you feel a little less... unaccounted for, I guess.

  23. Posted

    I visited the Nintendo Switch press event in Amsterdam yesterday and got my hands on some Joy-Cons. And ate some veggie spring rolls in New Donk City, apparently. (I'm the guy in Luigi green.)

     

    16681708_1888193108118960_22392182035315

     

    Ahem. Some random thoughts.

     

    Breath of the Wild is great and I spent most of it running around in my underpants (because I could), chopping down trees (because I could) and taunting mokoblins without a weapon and then cliff-jumping to my death (because I could). It felt very fresh. Finally, Zelda is breaking out of that super stale formula they've been slavishly adhering to since Ocarina of Time. Before, I was a bit worried that the environments might feel a little sparse and empty, but when you play, it works. There's a sense of magic, wonder and exploration surrounding this game, and if that doesn't sound like the orginal NES Zelda, then I don't know what does.

     

    Snipperclips is just damn charming. Don't know if I'd want to get it for full price, but I had a lot of fun and I played it on the Switch screen itself. Which is neat. I hadn't really considered how nice it is to have a screen handy to put on a table. I thought I'd never use that mode, but now I'm not sure.

     

    1-2-Switch is a mixed bag and I don't know how much appeal it'll have on the long term. But I will say this: the minigame where you guess how many marbles are rolling around in the controller is an amazing trick. The HD Rumble is genuinely impressive, it feels like magic. The same magic that I felt putting on the Playstation VR helmet. All the more impressive, perhaps, because it seems so simple. Your mind just cannot believe that there aren't in fact actual marbles in the Joycon. There aren't! It's a trick! But still you feel them there, right there!

     

    Arms was fun, but to get any grasp on how deep this fighting game goes and how interesting/tactical it might be, I'd have to play a lot more. My first match was mainly a lot of flailing and punching in a boxing ring Nintendo built. Fun, but not nearly enough to say anything about it or the fidelity of the controls yet.

     

    Splatoon 2: big fun. I actually bounced off Splatoon 1 hard a few years ago when I tried it. And the first few matches yesterday I was still figuring out how to control it, and it wasn't enjoyable. Felt like the other team was way overpowered. But then it suddenly clicked when I got a little more familiar with the controls and I tried out the Splat Roller. Turns out that was just the weapon for me: focusing my attention on the floor instead of all over the place, and encouraging ninja sneaking skills to whack your opponent. I'd been hoping for the game to make sense to me at some point, and now I can't wait to play more. Definitely looking forward to its arrival in a few months.

     

    Finally, I was surprised by how different a game feels when you play it on the screen (possibly with a Pro Controller) versus when you switch it to handheld mode. Feels like two wildly separate experiences, and I think this is good. Some people and some games will prefer one over the other, and this means the Switch will provide a really diverse set of experiences. All in all, the hands-on time confirmed that the Switch plays great, has a lot of neat surprises and the games are solid. Exciting stuff!