mahiwaga

I’m still not really in the right frame of mind to write a well-thought out blog post to explicate the thoughts that led me to stop visiting Friendfeed for now.

Even people who claim to be very tolerant of diversity of thoughts have their limits, and I’m certainly no saint. Sometimes I will stumble upon someone’s idea that, in my worldview, sounds so patently insane and wrong as to be insulting to me. Usually, it’s not a problem because, frankly, the Internet is overpopulated by all sorts of trolls, morons, and people with severe mental illness, so the strategy of ignoring it and moving on with life is probably the sanest decision. The reason why this particular incident bothers me is that the offending idea comes from someone whose ideas I have generally found to be reasonable.

But you can’t really expect to agree with anyone all of the time.

The idea that sparked such rage inside of me, which I still seem to be unable to let go of, is the idea that incorrectly saying that something someone said, or that something someone did is racist is exactly the same as calling a person-of-color a racial slur.

The absurdity of this is so self-evident to me that I was frankly completely insulted that someone who I thought was fairly reasonable could come up with such a cockamamie idea. At this point I’m really not ready to deconstruct the idea with any sort of rationality and even-temper, so I’m just going to leave it at that.

One of the other reasons why playing Final Fantasy XIII has been therapeutic to my mind is that I don’t have to be online to play it. I don’t have to read the idiocy that is part and parcel of World of Warcraft’s Trade Chat, where racism, homophobia, and misogyny are frequent features. I don’t feel the need to Command-Tab over to some social media site and read about atheists bashing Christians, Ayn Rand-inspired insanity, and people jumping all over other people who happen to react viscerally to racist terms, even when they realize it’s being used ironically, and not in a malicious manner at all. Instead, all I have to do is watch the pretty animation and mash on a limited number of buttons.

I realize that the Internet is susceptible to the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory and even though a lot of people use their real names on social media sites, clearly it isn’t in-real-life. Face-to-face, where you can actually see people’s body language and pick up on their paralinguistic cues (assuming you don’t have an autistic spectrum disorder), certain conversations might go differently. The only problem is that I have had these discussions in in-real-life—often with family members—and they don’t really turn out any better.

Maybe I really am a masochist.

But I’m not out to win any Nobel Peace Prizes here, so it is what it is, if I can’t change it, so be it.

I’m a total sucker for this series, having played the very first one on the original 8-bit NES, back when I was still in 8th grade. I played FFIV (originally released in the U.S. as FFII) right before I started college, FFVI (originally released in the U.S. as FFIII) in my (I think) sophomore year. When FFVII came out, I ended up buying myself a Sony Playstation my senior year in college. I played FFVIII during my first year in med school. I skipped FFIX and FFX/FFX-2, and have never played the MMORPG FFXI, but I played FFXII during my 3rd year in residency, while on vacation, right after one of my cousins died and I was feeling decidedly antisocial. It’s kind of weird realizing how all these games bring back these memories of things that happened right around the time I played them.

I’ve been waiting for this newest installment for a while, though. I haven’t gotten very far into the game, really, and I’m just getting used to the battle system, which is really different from any of the systems that’ve come before.

But, just some random thoughts about the game:

1. It’s kind of neat how the beginning of FFXIII kind of mirrors the beginning of FFVII, involving a train entering the city. I guess it shouldn’t be that surprising, since Lightning was supposedly created as a female version of Cloud Strife.

2. The zone I’m in right now, the Gapra Whitewood, reminds me of the Nexus from World of Warcraft for some reason.

3. The opening song and recurring theme “The Promise” sounds kind of like a mash-up of the A.D. 600 Guardia Overworld Theme from Chrono Trigger and part of “The Highwind Takes to the Skies” from Final Fantasy VII (starting at around 0:52) or maybe Aerith’s Theme (starting around 1:55)