Hopefully I'll have a vacation coming up in two weeks, which means I'll be able to get some serious writing done, and maybe even catch up on some gaming. The latest patch in WoW has seen me playing more. People that don't know about or don't care about WoW can skip the next paragraph.
The Argent Tournament is a lot of fun so far. It's a bit shallow, but there's a lot of potential here, and as far as dailies go, it's a fantastic departure from the standards (kill 10 of this, gather 8 of that, loot this item, etc). I would have liked to have seen some sort of Ahn'Qiraj-esque war effort with regard to building the tournament facility, but I guess it will be ready when it's ready. As far as Ulduar itself, the difficulty is definitely a huge step up from Naxx 2.0. Sure, the world's best guilds have cleared it already, but for us normal people, the challenge is definitely a rope dangling from a steep wall. Daunting, difficult, perhaps frustrating at times, but not insurmountable. Well, it had better not be, or I'm going to kick the asses of the people that are making it so.
My lunchbreaks at work have been filled with Luminous Arc as of late, which is a really quite charming tactical RPG. The gameplay is pretty good, but ultimately the characters steal the spotlight, as most of them are reasonably likeable. Otherwise, it plays just like any other tactical RPG (think Final Fantasy Tactics or ... oh hell, on consoles everyone compares tac games to FFT). The difficulty ramps up curiously fast right in the middle of the game, where gear upgrades become sparse. Grinding is of course one way around this. I feel like better planning from the get-go would have aided as well, but I tried to maintain a very balanced party, and my characters' levels are dramatically below the mobs I'm fighting. Well, we'll see how this turns out when I'm done with the game.
I have other thoughts that beg to be expunged from my mind onto paper or screen but the nature is rather morbid. Still, I suppose no one really reads this anyhow, so perhaps it doesn't really matter anyhow. But for some reason I found myself pondering Catholicism, the Catechism, and suicide. And I started to wonder about the whole Christian concept of Jesus Christ forgiving sins.
So here, obvious to any Christian, Protestant or Catholic of course, Jesus Christ is writ to forgive any sin if one accepts him as true lord and savior (and asks, naturally). But suicide is said to be an unforgiveable sin, since one cannot ask for forgiveness after the fact, and since the last act committed is a sin, one's soul is condemened to Hell. Apparently asking for forgiveness in advance of the act is not sufficient to absolve oneself of the sin of murder, even if of thine own body.
So here's where my question of morality arose. Since you can't be forgiven after the fact for a sin that you have committed after you're already dead, why would you be forgiven for any sin which is premeditated? According to Scripture, if you commit first degree murder, that is to say, think about the crime, plan it, then actually carry it out, but ask for forgiveness, that's okay. So first degree murder is forgiveable, killing 6 million Jews is potentially forgiveable, raping small children is potentially forgiveable, but killing yourself is not.
It really seems strange to me.
I guess (and please don't worry about me, should anyone actually read this) that I just don't view suicide as that horrible of a thing. It's just something that humans have the potential for, as so many things are. Other animals don't share our twisted sense of morality that can force our sense of emotion to take precendence over rational decisions. So we can't honestly say that suicide is against the laws of nature, because there is no basis for that. It makes a difficult moral argument, if you ask me, because the only person being physically hurt is victim, who happens to be the perpetrator.
Sure, the argument can be (and often is) made that the act is selfish, and hurts only those close to the victim. I can't profess to fully understand the feelings of one who has committed suicide (obviously) or one that has been truly close (I mean nuclear family, significant other, that sort of thing) to one that has, but it would seem to me that even if such a wound never healed completely, it could at least start to close over time. Regardless, such a pain probably couldn't compare to the pain someone must feel to actually end one's own life. I could be entirely mistaken about that, but I've heard at least one story of a person that wanted to end everything only to turn around for the love of those closest to him. If the bonds of family or friendship can prevent such a thing, then a person that chooses the other path must feel truly alone.
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