"I'm Offended!"

"I'm offended by your blog! You hate Christians/Catholics/Conservatives/etc!"

What does it mean to be offended? What is offense? The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that Offense is: "4 a : the act of displeasing or affronting b : the state of being insulted or morally outraged " This helps us a great deal, for it plays right into existentialism: A State of Being, which plays, in turn, right into the first question.

Offense is kind of a tricky thing, because it's been so long since I was ever personally offended by anything. Being offended shows, I would surmise, a defect of character, either as someone who has a deep-seated desire to get angry over something, or who holds his or her own views paramount to anyone else's. For if it were not those two things, why would there be any stink over books in the library ("Heather Has Two Mommies is bad because it's an affront to common decency! The Handmaid's Tale is anti-Christian! Fahrenheit 451 says 'damn' too many times! Harry Potter encourages witchcraft!" [Note: These are all true examples]). The funny thing about offense, too, especially in cases dealing with media, is that all too often the offended party has no idea what the defending party is actually about (notice Fahrenheit 451 in the examples). Also note that even To Kill A Mockingbird was once declared racist simply because Harper Lee had characters in the 1930s say "nigger." I'll give you a minute to digest that.

But then, there's another kind of offense, and that is the result of any kind of attack on an ethnicity or race. But I would propose that we aren't offended by the attack in itself, but because of the ignorance behind it. If someone tells a racist joke, for example, it isn't that he should be written off as a racist simply for that joke, but if he is a member of the KKK, has a Confederate flag on his pickup-truck, and is virulently nativist, then yes, we would have license to write him off as a racist and be offended not because of the attack, but because *he genuinely believes in it*; we find the person--not his attack--offensive.

The 'right' to offense is much like the 'right' to discriminate: There is none, because to act on one's views in this way would curtail another's right to express him- or herself. There are people, for example, who would want to prevent homosexuals (I enjoy using this example because it is the most pervasive and obvious one) from joining their organizations, such as the Christian Legal Society of Hastings College1, and they say that their right to prevent gays from joining their group trumps gays' right to join if they choose (because I can't see them wanting to join anyway, though that is entirely irrelevant). The case actually went up to the Supreme Court, and they struck down the idea.

In my case, any kind of "offense" at what I've written here would infringe upon my exercise of freedom of speech, which for me covers everything except one key provision: Death threats and calls to violence against others (political leaders especially) is *NOT* covered. Barring that, anything goes legally, though I impose two other regulations upon myself: 1) Don't swear (often, or unless in quotes), and 2) Back up what I say.

What about my own reactions? Do I find anything offensive? I'm hard to offend. I can get to the bottom of the encyclopediadramatica.com/offended************* page unfazed (you could either attribute that to a strong will or a heart with the composition of a comet flying through deep space, it's your choice), and my reaction to prejudice is often just to laugh, and then type angrily. On the off chance I am offended by something, it's usually by the profound ignorance exuded by the offending party. And even if I am offended, it is never to the point where I would want to remove that person's freedom of speech, for what then would I be but a hypocrite? When I turn on Fox News, I'm more concerned with people believing Glenn Beck than Glenn Beck himself. And we don't fight his followers by telling them that they can't listen to him. In fact, it is more helpful to me if I know who they are so that I can avoid talking to them and boarding a train to Crazyland.

If we didn't let people be racist or otherwise socially impaired, it isn't as though they wouldn't still hold those views, they would still cause problems in other ways. The best way to heal these people is through education and exposure to the cultures which they hate, though this would undoubtedly be a very long process. Really, it's nothing we as a society can accomplish; rather, they must somehow discover it on their own, much like I discovered that religious people aren't all bigots and xenophobes. The irony is that I was being one, too.

1) http://www.aclu.org/blog/lgbt-rights/supreme-court-strikes-blow-against-lgbt-discrimination
****************: DO NOT GO TO THIS PAGE.

Patriotism: A Farce

"What's this!? You unpatriotic, Communist Socialist Muslim fascist! HOW DARE YOU!"

Roughly 240 years ago, a group of extremely intelligent and nearly selfless politicians (oxymoron, I know) drafted a series of documents, fought a long and difficult campaign against an avaricious king across the Atlantic, and successfully created the most amazing social experiment the world had ever seen. To this day, America is the only state to have freed both itself and its people from tyranny through bloodshed and to have prospered long afterward (even though I do not consider it a "revolution" by the proper definition, as the king of England at the time still sat in his ruinous throne after he left us alone).

But here's where trouble starts. The truth is, the common people during the time of the War for Independence and for a long time afterward, were the most feeble-minded sheep to ever wander the Earth. In fact, compared to the rest of the population at the time, Pat Robertson would have been inducted into MENSA.

When the Founding Fathers were busy drafting a decidedly secular system of government, the rest of the population were sitting in church listening to preachers paint the political struggle as apocalyptic in nature, about how we were New Israel.

Consider that we were the last developing democracy to abolish slavery, and we had a huge fight over it, one which continues to haunt us today. The French and the English both have had civil wars, and I'm quite certain the lines that divided them then have long since faded away, while in America, the Confederate flag--one that is both treasonous and inherently xenophobic in nature--is still flown proudly behind misplaced cries of patriotism.

Stupidity and ignorance is burned into our blood as Americans. Nowhere else on Earth, except for Uganda and maybe Russia, is religion so misused in our present age. In fact, only in the United States among all other developing democracies, homosexuality, abortion, and evolution are still hot-button issues. We rank among the bottom in such areas as:

Scientific literacy, effectiveness of education, effective use of resources, xenophobia (intolerance), and healthcare1.

Our political landscape is extremely unhealthy, and is an excellent illustration of the kind of stupidity America exudes on a regular basis. Yes, in the 1800s, we also had political slander, but nowhere near the kind of violent vitriol defecated out of our televisions today. And you know who I'm talking about.

The problem is--where America truly shows her gross ignorance and vulnerability to demagoguery--that people actually believe the stupidity that they hear. People come to believe that our President--to whom one would think, as the cornerstone of conservative ideology, they must swear their allegiance--was not born in the United States, and is working against the interests of the United States. Worse, there are elected officials who have actually endorsed anti-government violence. Granted, not everyone believes this, but the minority is still significant.

The talk of patriotism we see today is complete and utter garbage. A Marine Corps veteran who wants to close the VA hospitals because they are socialist in nature wraps himself in the American flag while trying to say that people who think differently from him should be killed indiscriminately2. Other so-called patriots seek to vindicate Joseph McCarthy, who was a figure that so damaged everything we supposedly stand for and is representative of the closest we've ever come to totalitarianism. Other figures seek to create a kind of tribalist electorate--a utopian "Real America" with Free-Market, Christian principles (no I will not explain the disparity between the two), and a "Fake America" consisting of slightly more egalitarian and secular values.

I want to like America, I really do. We have good as well as bad, but the bad is always louder. We have one Edward R Murrow for every 4 Rush Limbaughs, and the people we put in the legislature--nearly all of them--are of the most uneducated, avaricious, irresponsible, and xenophobic sort, regardless of party affiliation.

But maybe, just maybe, the fact that we can last 240+ years even as we're being dominated by The Stupid all the while is a testament to the resilience of the foundations devised all those years ago. America isn't great because we do great things--we rarely do good things these days, look at how long it took to pass healthcare reform, and even that was so watered down by fearmongerers that it's next to worthless--but because we still exist despite the kinds of people who participate. The Christian Right, one would think, would have established The Republic of Gilead at least 30 years ago, and all of the homosexuals and heathens would have been summarily executed, and women subjugated once again. But Jerry Falwell is dead, and our Constitution still stands. Not "Long Live America," but rather, "Long Live The Constitution!"

Which brings me to another point about these people, though that should have been my final paragraph. If they actually knew what the Constitution really says, they wouldn't be arguing for Christian theocratic governance, or complaining about healthcare, and it would be sufficiently proven that George W. Bush is the worst President we've ever had. The Onion wrote a story about a man who defends what he thinks the Constitution is3. The Onion? Satire? Sometimes I'm not so sure.

So Patriots! You can take your loud and pompous patriotism and eat it. For if to decry that the President is treasonous, and to believe that we are founded on a Christian theocratic system (see Treaty of Tripoli and the First Amendment) is patriotic, then I hereby declare that I am the most Unamerican insurgent who has ever lived. Happy Independence Day, Glenn Beck!

1) http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07398441_c.pdf
2) http://www.dlayphoto.com/post/548021091/this-teabagger-wants-to-close-the-va-hospital
3) http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-passionate-defender-of-what-he-imagines-c,2849/

The Alienator

I'm in the middle of a conversation with one of my fellow Counter-Strike clan members about growing up, and I was talking about my motivation for the rapid expansion of my intellect. At the current moment, however, I am not depressed, I am merely examining my own motives for why I started on this journey, and how I might have gone too far.

Most people who know me know that I wasn't a happy camper in high school and middle school. I will spare the details, but that is a gross understatement. What ended up happening was that I did the exact opposite of what everyone else did for two reasons of equal importance: 1) I learned vicariously and paid extreme attention to the consequences of their actions, and 2) I hated them. I did what I did to separate myself from them, and according to some reports from sparsely-seen friends, I was an asshole. I actually am glad I know that, in order to avoid it now. It was one of my good friends in high school, and I really should thank her for telling me.

I continued this behavior into college until I had a real group of friends (this did not take long), but I was still disappointed in my freshman and sophomore years when my classmates expressed blatant disinterest in what was going on. This is where I excelled, but I was upset that people could be so far behind, because I wished to meet people like me, though there were none. Sure I met good people, and I still like all of them, but I need more people who can really go toe-to-toe with me on my beloved topics.

It wasn't until junior and senior years in college that things really began to take shape in this essential area. Two major things happened:

1) My roommate in junior year, chosen by another great friend to whom I am eternally grateful for having selected him, was my first true equal, and at times he was actually smarter than I was, and was able to refine and discard rough--and sometimes altogether undesirable--views from my system. It was a long process, but it ultimately paid off a million-fold.

2) My classmates--the lesser ones having been filtered out from my classes, having gone their separate ways--were more active in class, and I began to finally value other people's opinions. Senior year was the greatest year in this regard, because that's truly when other people truly cared about what we were doing, and were as engaged in the material as I was.

I have, however, replaced my motives for my behavior from simple rebellion into something more constructive, if only just as alienating. The search for meaning, the inverse of Walter in The Big Lebowski, who plants meaning where there is none; great is the ability to recognize were there is no meaning. This is my gripe--at its core--with most American media generally. It means nothing to me. What may surprise some people is that I extend this to music--and even video games (hence my love for Gabriel Knight)--as well: I expect the same as what I get out of books and foreign or old movies from music and games. This is ultimately why I would give BE, 01011001, The Human Equation, or 10,000 Days (by an American band, but as they say, the exception proves the rule) "album of the decade."

Here's the problem, however:

I think I've gone too far. I think I have a hard time relating even to people my own age because of what I did/do. Hell, I talk to people in their 40s and 50s about The Brothers Karamazov; most people my age don't even know how to respond when I open my mouth. But much like any transformative life change, you can't be happy by regressing. I can't be happy listening to Lady Gaga, or watching comedy movies. It just isn't who I am.

I ended up, in a way, not only alienating those I did deliberately want to alienate, but I alienated even people my current age as well, and I'm sure quite many more as I grow older. Hell, even in jury duty, I was like that girl in the live-fire exercise in the first Men in Black movie, the girl Smith's character shot because she was holding an advanced physics textbook. What business does a 20-something have reading War & Peace and quoting Plato or Camus?

Is there any other way I can be seen other than as a potentially dangerous anachronism?

"Eewww...what's wrong with this kid? Doesn't he have a life?"

The Entire Model of the RIAA/MPAA's Approach to Digital Piracy Is Bunk

Let's start with an amusing incident: Uwe Boll made a Far Cry movie. Yes, yes he did. I know, right? It follows almost automatically that his Far Cry made no money. What is Boll going to do? He's gonna sue you, that's what! He's going to sue you because you didn't watch his movie. He thinks you downloaded it. But the truth is, why in the hell would people download his movie in the first place?

Then the producer of The Hurt Locker, Nicholas Chartier, the small-minded, greedy tyrant he is, also wants to sue you because his movie was also a financial failure (it's not even technically his movie, it's Katheryne Bigelow's movie. He just stood around berating everyone.). But wait a minute, it was a limited release in theaters! How do you expect to make money if you don't get a wide release? (And if any evidence at all is needed to back up my charge that he is a small-minded, avaricious tyrant, here it is: http://goldderby.latimes.com/awards_goldderby/2010/02/the-hurt-locker-producer-apology-oscars-academy-awards-news.html . He was also banned from the Oscars after trying to solicit votes for his movie.)

The Hurt Locker, despite being aborted at the box office (via the limited release decision), went on to rank #2 in rentals, and did fairly well in BluRay sales as well (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60K0CL20100121).

When considering to fund a film, the decision is based primarily on the revenue to be gained ONLY at the theaters, which is why Opening Weekend for any film is such a big deal. There are no long-term considerations at all, save for the potential for a sequel. DVD sales and rentals do not at all factor in to the profitability at all. Why is this important? Well, who would download a handheld camcorder capture? You can't see anything!

People aren't downloading copies of films that are still in theaters. They're downloading movies when they come out on DVD. And despite the rampant downloading of The Hurt Locker, DVD sales are still pretty good, though they didn't even consider that when they actually decided to fund the movie.

It is a mistake to claim that filesharing is criminal theft, because actual theft is of a physical object: Someone breaks into a store or someone else's house, and takes something. It's subtraction. But with filesharing, that physical object still exists, nothing has been touched, what has been created is still physically accounted for.

The only argument that's even satisfactory against filesharing is the license argument, which basically says that we are paying for the "right" to view or use a product. The problem with this argument is that then absolutely EVERYTHING becomes theft. Did I violate copyright by letting my friend borrow In Bruges? Is it a violation that I rented a movie and watched it with two of my friends? Does the $5 rental fee cover multiple uses? What about selling items used on Amazon or eBay? Do I have the right, under this license argument, to sell my own property at a profit with no nod to the original creators? Will the person I bought Xenogears from at $60 be sued by Square-Enix because he took license to sell something that under this mode of thinking doesn't actually belong to him? The "license" argument, while trying to protect Intellectual Property, completely eliminates private property in a way that should make businesspeople cringe.

I think they're suing people because they're bitter that they made poor decisions on behalf of their media, and as such they have nowhere else to turn, as desperation has turned to blind panic, and greed is the only thing they know.

So you really want to stop piracy? OK. Let me tell you how BitTorrent works: You go on a torrent site, and you select what you want to download. You download a file that orders your Torrent program to find people who have what you want, and one full copy is constructed by constructing copies of that file. If there are more people with faster connections, then your file will be finished faster. That's from the client end.

Here's what you need to know: People upload files onto Torrent sites by ripping DVDs and CDs (or computer games/books/audiobooks/you name it) and uploading them onto sites. The tricky part is that more often than not these are the people who have actually purchased your media. In order to effectively stop filesharing, you would have to sue the pants off of people who actually gave you their money. The only person who probably doesn't have any misgivings about doing this is one Nicholas Chartier.

The RIAA, however, is much worse off simply because they know how badly their lawsuits have backfired because of the negative publicity and extremely negative popular opinion that they have garnered by ruining teenagers with exorbitant penalties (upwards of $1,000/song). Artists themselves immediately know that it is wrong, and advised others NOT to enter into a contract with record companies.

It's kind of like pimping, really. No, scratch that. It's exactly like pimping: The artist signs a contract that stipulates how much money s/he makes per record sale (usually around $1/album, and NOTHING for digital distribution outlets), and how much they have to borrow to use the studio in the first place. What ended up happening after the music industry lawsuits is that the artists themselves never got the money they had supposedly lost because of the downloads in the first place, because all of it went to astronomical legal fees and to "recover" company profits, thus defeating the original point of the lawsuits (the claim that the artists were being disenfranchised).

What's worse is that VP Joe Biden has come on record as having been drafting a plan to vindicate the avarice of these two acronyms at the expense of innocent people (http://www.dailytech.com/Obama%20Administration%20Announces%20Massive%20Piracy%20Crackdown/article18815.htm)
From that same article: "Another noteworthy study from three years back notes that virtually every citizen violates intellectual property laws in some way on a daily basis."

Great. We're all criminals.

Is it Really Obama's Katrina?

The BP oil spill has poisoned the Gulf of Mexico for over two months now, and not only has the leak not been stopped, but all efforts seem to have more potential to exacerbate the problem instead of fixing it as we discover that BP ignored safety warnings in the final hour and installed sub-par emergency equipment at their installation.

Everyone is pointing fingers at Obama, and in a sense, they're right to do so--he's the President! But there comes a point where even I, though I favor a bigger government that can get things done, recognize that government may not be able to solve all of society's problems. The point is to employ it when it can. To echo Rachel Maddow, we do not currently have the knowledge or the technology to stop this disaster.

BP has continually made promises that it knows it cannot keep, such as siphoning a miraculous amount of barrels per day from the sea, and it's credit in the bank of public trust had truly gone bust when Tony Hayward went to some yacht club after that farce some describe as a congressional hearing. Reminds me of some other people we saw recently.... "I'm truly sorry [for all I want to do is go home and isolate myself with my money. Ayn Rand says I don't have to listen to you insects!]"

The problem here is that nothing is working, and we can't figure out whether BP is actually trying to clean it up, or if they're just fooling around. But I don't really think its fair to pin everything on Obama. And look who's doing it: The people who don't have any confidence in government to start with! On Meet the Press last Sunday, Californian GOP Congressional candidate Carly Fiorina felt incensed: "Where were the regulators on this?" Thankfully, Rep. Debbie Wasserman of Florida was there to set her straight: "What right do you people have to talk about regulation?" [meaning Republicans], and she continued to recall how the regulators under a certain previous administration...allowed energy companies like BP to get away with what I described above (faulty equipment and incomplete emergency procedures).

What right to people who don't have confidence in government have to complain when government fails them? Shouldn't the GOP be celebrating right about now? No, it doesn't make sense. But those disenfranchised racists need to come to power somehow and fight any way they can against the Evil Black Man. Its a bizarre circus, really: A slightly-veiled anarchist party 1) still wants to tell people when, with whom, and under what conditions they can have sex, and 2) actually gets angry when conditions serve to seem to prove them right, even when it doesn't, really.

What do I mean? Well, did the government cause the oil spill? Is Obama doing nothing? I don't think so. To say that the BP spill is Obama's Katrina is to ignore the fact that Bush could have had the National Guard down there in 30 minutes, and it was the job of the government to clean up after a natural disaster.

"Wait, what? What about all that stuff you talk about in previous posts about how the government had to clean up the economic mess? You better not be backpedaling!" I'm not backpedaling. Consider the fact that the oil industry--we could assume, but that's stretching it, given BP's "attempts"--I'll use "supposedly"-- has the best people to deal with this crisis: The engineers, the mechanics, the geologists, and the operators--to control the machines in case something goes terribly wrong. The banks were not in any position to repair the damage they caused to our economy. BP is in a position where it can be held accountable for its irresponsibility and at the very least stop the leak. The government is getting involved where it should--holding BP legally responsible and overseeing the cleanup effort. The government should not be the entity that plugs the leak because, as I said before, it is entirely BP's responsibility given that BP is in the best position to be able to solve the problem.

This isn't like the economy, because our regulatory system in that sector is long-established for about 70-80 years since the Great Depression. This is THE WORST oil spill in our history, and it would truly be hoping for too much to believe that we have the equipment and expertise to deal with it before being exposed to enormous risk, the same way 9/11 woke us up to the true violence of the Middle East, or Columbine to teen psychopathy.

It is extremely unfortunate that something has to happen before we collectively act, but the major problem here and now with this BP spill is that we cannot act. Where our collective frustration comes from is that we--even myself, though I sometimes seem to believe that government can do everything--understand that neither BP or the federal government of the most powerful nation on Earth do not have the capacity to act.

Harlequin Forest Analysis

"'What' Forest?" Harlequin Forest is my current favorite song by Opeth, and in this post, I want to figure out what the song actually means, much like I did in "American Bands Have Become Boring Pt II." The meaning of the song is not immediately obvious, and only in the second half of the song do we get any indication of what's really going on.

Without further ado, Harlequin Forest:

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1
Into the trees
Past meadow grounds
And further away from my home
Baying behind me
I hear the hounds
Flock's chasing to find me alone

2
A trail of sickness
Leading to me
If I am haunted
Then you will see

3
Searching the darkness
And emptiness
I'm hiding away from the sun
Will never rest
Will never be at ease
All my matter's expired so I run

4
There falls another
Vapor hands released the blade
Insane regrets at the drop
Instruments of death before me

5
Lose all to save a little
At your peril it's justified
And dismiss your demons
As death becomes a jest
You are the laughing stock
Of the absinthe minded
Confessions stuck in your mouth
And long gone fevers reappear

---------------------------------

It's not until this stanza where things start to get interesting, when it might be that the song really isn't talking about any literal forest. This stanza is the first hint that the song is about religious belief, as was the theme in Still Life (1999), which featured Face of Melinda. "Lose all to save a little" and "Dismiss your demons" makes me think of how one may not be living fully, discarding this life in favor of the next, and this hypothesis seems to be backed up by "As death becomes a jest". I'm not entirely sure at all, however, where the next two lines fit in to this notion, however, for absinthe is a hallucinogenic, and the point of the song--if I'm right--would be that he is hallucinating, then why would others with the same ideas be laughing at him? "Confessions stuck in your mouth / And long gone fevers reappear" would indicate, continuing with my hypothesis, that our narrator has strayed somehow from his religious doctrine...

----------------------------------------------------

6
Nocturnally helpless
And weak in the light
Depending on a prayer
Pacing deserted roads to find
A seed of hope

---------------------------------------------------

This is where it begins to fall apart. Why would our narrator hide from the sun (light), as in Stanza 3? Something has gone seriously wrong. He's terrified of the truth: "Depending on a prayer / Pacing deserted roads to find / A seed of hope" is fairly straightforward in my view. Praying may save his faith, but he finds it deserted; he may not receive any sign that could save him.

--------------------------------------------------

7
They are the trees
Rotten pulp inside and never well
Roots sucking, thieving from my source
Tired boughs reaching for the light

--------------------------------------------------

Who are the trees? Wake up! It is worth noting that the song is completely different between stanzas 5 and 6, with a beautiful, slow bridge lasting about 1-2 minutes between them. Our narrator has awoken, and he sees the forest for the [rotting] trees. He sees the truth now, and the song is calm. The trees are the people with whom he believed, who tried to keep him in darkness, siphoning from his life. I am unsure, however, whether the final line is talking about him or his parasitic community.

--------------------------------------------------

8
It is all false pretension
Harlequin forest
Awaiting redemption for a lifetime
As they die alone
With no one by their side
Are they forgiven?

--------------------------------------------------

Jackpot! The word Harlequin may either mean a foolish yet nimble character, or may be rooted into "Hellequin", which means, "a black-faced emissary of the devil, is said to have roamed the countryside with a group of demons chasing the damned souls of evil people to Hell."1 If we choose the root Hellequin, it puts us in for quite a ride. Consider the possibility, then, that all of these people are damned as emissaries of Satan, then it would follow that our narrator is vindicated in a far worse manner than he could have possibly imagined. He was being led by some collective evil, and now he sees it for what it is.

Even without Hellequin, the meaning of the stanza is fairly obvious, and it refers back to what I said about Stanza 5. Forgiven may not even refer to any specific god(s), or even merely some Karmic metaphysic. Later on in the song, our narrator himself passes judgment upon his oppressors...

-----------------------------------------------

9
Stark determination
Poisoning the soul
Unfettered beast inside
Claiming sovereign control

---------------------------------------------

I'm not sure about "Poisoning the soul" because up to now, it has been for good that the narrator has broken free of his binds, but "unfettered beast" may refer to his anger at having been kept in ignorance for so long, as we will see in the final stanza...

----------------------------------------------

10
And now the woods are burning
Tearing life crops asunder
Useless blackened remains
Still pyre smoldering

---------------------------------------------

Here is where "Poisoning the soul" and the Unfettered Beast may have negative consequences, as would it not have been good enough for him to simply flee the Harlequin Forest? There is reason to believe that he is responsible for its destruction, much like The Moor went berserk in Still Life after Melinda was executed. Here, however, the narrator had considered the possibility of forgiveness (Stanza 8), and ruled against it with "stark determination."

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I like doing these, and you can expect more of them, as news these days is quite slow. I'm considering doing Fandango by Pain of Salvation next, but I also fear that I may be giving myself away. Still, it is a lovely song.

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlequin#cite_note-Grantham-2

Xenogears: 20 Hours In

I've been posting about this game intermittently on Facebook, and I'm maybe 75-80% through disc 1, and I thought I would tell you guys what it's actually like.

Xenogears is both similar and different from most RPGs I've played, for it's not often that we get to control towering mechs in combat.

The first thing you really notice playing the game is the linearity. My only problem with the pacing is that though in terms of storytelling, the pacing ranges from very good to excellent, I occasionally worry that I am not strong enough for where I am, and the game does not give many opportunities at all to farm (grind). Grind when you can, and get as much money as you can so you can improve your mechs (Gears; think, strangely, Metal Gear Solid). It is also IMPERATIVE that you upgrade your gear equipment at every available opportunity.

However, having only played for 20 hours, I will tell you that I feel like a lot of things have happened. The game even to a degree outpaces even Final Fantasy 8, which, as we all remember, had an incredibly epic first disc (from Dollet to Timbre to the assassination attempt on the Sorceress). Granted, Xenogears is only 2 discs as opposed to FF8's 4 discs, but even still, a lot of things are happening.

The plot reminds me a little of Evangelion, and I could write a paper on how Fei Fong Wong is simply a less-depressed Shinji Ikari, but you probably don't quite care enough about that for me to actually do it. The narrative is quite confusing, and all of these different characters and factions are introduced but never adequately explained (hopefully that will be taken care of in the second disc), but still I hold on, because the game's real strong point is its character development. I really like these characters, and I really like how they're dealing with their problems (unlike Vanille in FF13 being an oblivious little kid for half the friggin game).

One character is a military officer who encounters Fei early in the game, but she returns to her homeland soon after we meet up with her, and the whole game she expresses the desire to flee, but she is unable to, because at least she has somewhere to belong, except: There is one sequence where this character's country commences an operation to *NUKE!* the enemy capital city, and Fei is able to show her the destruction her complacency has caused, and she finally joins with you to change the course of the main bomber and save the city. This is the coolest event in the game thus far.

On an aesthetic front, the characters are sprites, but they are beautifully animated, and this especially evident during combat: Models will fall when hit, and execute intricate combos (more on that later) with a level of detail normally reserved for fighting games. They may be "miniature" RPG sprites, but never before have they been so well-animated.

The game's soundtrack is much the same as what we would expect from a Square-Enix (-Soft) title, except for one small problem: There are spots in the game without any music. I don't immediately care about there being no music, but it's the fact that the music is so good otherwise that I miss it when it isn't there.

There's one thing that's funny about the Gears: It's sometimes as if you're carrying them in your pocket, and you can simply board or disembark from them at any time (even during combat, which, while occasionally extremely necessary, is sometimes ridiculous).

I haven't decided if Xenogears is better than Final Fantasy, but it absolutely has my attention and I love it enough to want to see it through.

A+