Article: the "Merits of these works" added

Some more text has been restored and added to the study guide in the form of a new and updated article called "the Merits of these works." This is an article that incorporates various bits and pieces of texts from previous sections of the old study guide - including "A Brief Overview", "Why This Study Guide?", the intro of the "Plot Analysis", the last part of the old History article that dealt with Xenoblade Chronicles, and some bits from other places - into a more fully fleshed out and complete text that deals with the merits of Xenogears and Xenosaga in general. It can be regarded as an introduction or the first page of this study guide readers are encouraged to read, but for various reasons it got postponed.

One of the reasons it got postponed was that I wasn't happy with the writing, and because of that I feel the need to share something. I honestly don't think my writing is all that good, but since nobody has complained yet I guess it's passable. You could say that my ambition was to learn how to write better about the series or things in general, by examining how actual academics and the "cultural elites" tend to write about famous and classical works. Thus part of my writings on the previous study guide was to emulate a bit of their style. However, I'm not sure I'm suited to write in that style and these days I find the academic jargon to be less interesting than I used to think. The most important thing is simply to be able to get things across in an understandable way. Of course, reading stuff you don't normally read is good for expanding your mind and ways of looking at things.

I'm also not that knowledgeable or talented in writing about stuff like music, game design, and so forth beyond the plot or story. And since it has been a while since I thought about the series I have also started to forget things about the works in general. And when it comes to the themes and influences on these works, there's just too much to keep track of. For example, I never researched Gnosticism all that in-depth and I don't know if Takahashi knows that much about it either or just got the concepts through Jung (he said something similar in regards to Norse mythology in an interview, that he got it through his interest in Nietzsche). Then there's the issue I have with not being able to fully figure out what Takahashi's ultimate message with the works really is.

My wish was always to read texts like this written by an actual academic or similar who is more knowledgeable about literature and cultural history. The material on the study guide was sort of put together for that purpose, to provide other authors, academics, fans and journalists to have access to proper material so as not to get certain facts or ideas wrong in their essays. It's funny, but I never actually wanted to be the one to write some of the articles that I did. I always wanted someone else to write this kind of stuff, someone more suitable. But since it appeared that wasn't going to happen, I decided to just go ahead and give it a shot myself. I figured it'd be good for learning practice if nothing else, and for sure it has been useful and ended up being a sort of fun thing to do. But these days I find it hard to return to the series and fix up some of the work that needs fixing in my articles. Which is why restoration work on the study guide is going so slow and often put on hold.

The article may need to be cleaned up some more in the future, because I don't know how well it actually manages to get to the point. But I think it provides some food for thought and should at least be a useful resource for people discussing the merits of the series or works in general.