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I have a confession to make. I hate Xenogears fans. Oh, it's not that I hate Xenogears or anything; it still has a spot near the top of the Azusa List O' Best Games Ever. It's just that in the past year or so, I've found myself increasingly possessed by an urge to stay very, very far away from any Xenogears-related forums or debates, or to engage anyone in conversation about it. I don't want to talk to them; I don't want to share message boards with them. I'm somewhat reticient at the thought of even approaching them unless they've proven to me that they're capable of thinking about and focusing on something which is not Xenogears. This is mainly because a disturbingly large proportion of Xenogears fans epitomize the notion of having a one-track mind. Remember that horny geek you knew in high school, the one with poor personal hygeine and bad skin who was the living antithesis of those How To Be Neat And Hygeinic educational films from the 50's, the one whose entire existence revolved around thinking about sex, making jokes about sex and trying to solicit sex? That's them. Er, except replace "sex" with "Xenogears," and there you have it. No, seriously. Xenogears is their entire existence in a way that it never was for me, even at my most obsessive, and folks, I was pretty damn obsessive back when it first came out. It's not uncommon to hear them spout lines like "I LIVE for Xenogears!" or "Xenogears is my LIFE!" At this point, I'm liable to run away twitching violently and barricade myself under my desk, babbling and muttering incoherently to myself until it goes away. I am very, very puzzled by this mentality. It's been almost three years since Xenogears came out in English. Fans have spent the last three years scrutinizing and nitpicking Xenogears to death, translating and re-translating Perfect Works, to the point where everyone who so desires can now know exactly what was going on in that game, except for the parts that no one understood, which, like FF7's ending, should best be left in the realm of "DAMMIT, NO ONE IS EVER GOING TO AGREE ABOUT IT, SO JUST SHUT UP ALREADY!" And yet they cling to it like remoras on a shark, to the point where they happily proclaim that they will never play any other game, because they just KNOW that Xenogears was the ultimate gaming experience and that there will never be a better game, ever. Nostradamus would have been impressed at their Amazing Powers of Prophecy. One marvels that Weekly World News hasn't caught on to them yet. And not only do they cling to it, they keep beating that dead horse even after the point where it's starting to bloat and smell really bad and the vultures have given up picking at it. And spam up message boards and discussion forums with tripe like "WHICH IS STRONGER, GEARS OR GUNDAMS?" or "ID VS. BATMAN, WHO WOULD WIN?" And carry on their annoying, endless, inane contest to one-up each other in proving Who Knows The Most About Xenogears. I like Xenogears. I consider myself a fan. But these people are a damned cult. Favorite game or not, there's only so much discussion material that can be wrung out of a single story. It's not as if you can't say, "Gee, that was the best game I've ever played," and MOVE ON. I mean, think about it this way. Let's say you eat a meal in a really, really good restaraunt. It's the best meal you've ever had. Are you going to starve yourself at all subsequent meals because you can't have that really good food from the really good restaraunt? (Well, if you are, I suppose that clears up the gene pool that much more for the rest of us, but...) I would also like to take the time to mention that that was the lamest metaphor I've ever contrived. Go me. But in the end, it all comes back down to one issue: why does liking Xenogears somehow bar your enjoyment of any other game, no matter how good? I liked FF9 just fine. I didn't like it as much as Xenogears, but that didn't stop me from enjoying what I could of it. Xenogears fans also irk me because many of them are bloated with ego and pretense. "Oooh, lookit me, lookit me! I can pick out all the Biblical references in Xenogears! BOW to my superior intellect and sophistication! I have Perfect Works! BOW DOWN to my superior Xenogears knowledge, plebians!" That, and honestly, folks, some of the translation in Xenogears sucked. It sucked big rusty nails. Fei is "schizophrenic" and "manicly depressed." Oy. Squaresoft's Translation Department: the ultimate fate of psychology school dropouts. So basically, what it comes down to is this: I've discussed everything I ever wanted to discuss about Xenogears and everything I didn't. It's time for me to give it a rest, even if a temporary one, and move on to new obsessions before my head explodes. I'm tired of hacking endlessly over the meaning of "you shall be as gods" with people who fancy themselves elite scholars despite being completely unable to type a complete proper sentence, and tired of seeing adolescent wankers defame my favorite characters by cannibalizing their names for message-board handles. (And yes, I mean that in the most literal sense. You can just envision them getting their keyboards sticky over the prospect of a naked Elly picture. It's no coincidence that it looks like they're all using one hand to type.) This isn't to say I won't still write fics from time to time if the inspiration hits me. It's just to say that I don't want to be associated with Xenogears fans, much in the same way that I don't want to be associated with anime fans, but that's another rant altogether, and one which indeed I have already done. But I suspect that staying away from Xenogears-related forums or discussions isn't going to bother me in the least. (And if you are one of those people who believes that Ramsus can be found having an orgy with the Elements in the Orphanage Bathroom on disc 2, please take a rusty nail and carve the words "I HAVE SNOT FOR BRAINS" into your copy of Xenogears. Thank you and have a nice day.) |