Alien mecha designs

[Ford Prefect]

Which is again why I question Fuiki adding it as canon from UC 00. It means that it now affects all the UC shows, and that everyone from Scirocco to their mom can now retroactively be claimed as just "enforcing our rightful claim to independence via the Laplace treaty".

You're not the only person who's read it like that, but I think you're forgetting the spirit. Would Cardeas really speak about Laplace's Box 'unfreezing the Earth Sphere' and 'bringing light to the Universal Century' if the substance of the Box justified wars and actions and groups which he quite explicitly rejects?

[jollyreaper]

Well, I can see how the secret treaty would feel like a retcon. Midichlorians were mentioned nowhere in Star Wars right up to the point Lucas pulled it out of his ass. Doesn't fit with the world as presented thematically, breaks backstory and was just a bad idea.

I like the idea of secrets revealed and new facts that make you question everything you believed in a story but it has to feel legitimate. "What if the hero and villain ate actually long lost brothers?" If it's written that way from the start, sure. If there's support for it foreshadowed in the show, if there's no obvious impossibilities like having the birth mother portrayed by an actress ten years younger than her alleged son, etc.

A treaty about New Types before they could even be theorized would feel like a secret nuclear weapons treaty signed between the US and USSR in 1933.

Aside from that, I do like the complexity of trying to explain how even if one side was originally justified, it lost legitimacy by its own action. The One Week Battle went from zero to war crime in 6 seconds.

[Stark]

Spoilers, attn. And it changes nothing at all; it simply adds a perspective. Nothing you say is accurate about how it impacts the drama. Indeed, its the only way prequel content is ever justified - if it adds something new to everything else that happens. Unicorn adds context to the entire Universal Century in an effective way, right from the opening scene.

Frankly, if you want to piss and moan about TEH RETCONZ OMG, talking about how Vist Foundation literally appears from nowhere is probably a better place to start. Of course, it doesn't matter because there's no contradictions, but that doesn't stop people.

[jollyreaper]

As a rule, I tend to dislike prequels because there's no way to help but screwing up the continuity. Very rarely does prequel content that was not originally planned add nuance to a story rather than plot holes.

Frankly, I do like the idea of a metaseries like Gundam because if you want to play by the original's rules, bam, Universal Century. Want to do your own thing? Alternate universe, new timeline, same mecha. No need to break continuity to tell the story you want to tell, no need to twist established characters.

[Stark]

I tend to dislike people ignorantly gas bagging about things they obviously don't know anything about too, but here we are.

Please tell me where Unicorn 'breaks continuity' or requires and 'alternate universe'. It adds some content to the seventy eight years before the first show in a dramatic and powerful way that doesn't affect anything else because none of it had been mentioned or even alluded to.

Frankly, it's less narrative impact than replacing Beltorchika with Chan because of novelisations.

[jollyreaper]

Hiya, Stark! That was a general comment on prequels. How do you explain the contents of the box in particular if they predate the appearance of new types?

[Stark]

How do the contents of the box impact on any of the previous Gundam shows? Use spoiler tags if you have concrete examples, and if you don't, just shut the fuck up. Zinegata feels it has a negative impact because of what it says about the conflicts in the previous shows (ie, that it might provide some legal or moral justification for the unprecedented crimes), not because it somehow contradicts KNOWN CANON FACTZ.

And, in general terms, prequels suck because they're pure fanservice to milk OCD brandslaves for cash moneys. Prequels can be effective if - as I already said - they add something valuable or meaningful to the previous works. That's exactly what Unicorn does with the box; it casts the tragic events of the Universal Century in an even more tragic light, with an emphasis on how this distorted not just humanity in general, but the lives of everyone impacted by it.

[jollyreaper]

Starkums, that's inventing stuff that didn't already exist in the timeline in a noticable way. It's fine to tell a story about pilots serving on ship x that was lost in the battle of y. Their names were unimportant to history, it affects nothing. You can tell a good story. Something like that igloo supergun are more problematic. Why was it built? Why was it abandoned? Outmoded by mobile suits? Still seems pretty damn useful. Might need modifications to improve survivability. The emperor rebuilding the death star in Jedi was probably one of Lucas' most realistic moves. A weapon that works but for a small flaw? Let's fix it and give it another go!

Now can you explain away the potential anachronism of this plot device pretty please?

[Stark]

I'm starting to think you're just retarded. IGLOO makes it clear the gun was already canceled by the time it was deployed, for explicit and obvious reasons. Again, that ep (while it mangles the Battle of Loum) just adds context around the dramatic sea change in military doctrine represented by the use of mobile suits - something accessible to anyone. It even personalized the airplane/big gun conflict for crying out loud.

The weapon didn't 'work fine but have a small flaw', it was fundamentally unsuited to the modern battlefield and a waste of resources.

Signs point to 'you're an idiot'. And no, I'm not going to 'explain away' something that you haven't established exists (and doesn't).

[jollyreaper]

And what if a subsequent series establishes the gun wasn't canceled because it was outdated and unsuitable but because mobile suit manufacturers were in tight with the military and provided kickbacks? Sure, there's no evidence of this to date but wouldn't that just add to the drama, Starky? Tragedy! Pathos! Robits! Pew pew!

[Ford Prefect]

Hiya, Stark! That was a general comment on prequels. How do you explain the contents of the box in particular if they predate the appearance of new types?

The contents of the Box does not actually mention Newtypes specifically. It predicts a new kind of human adapted to space, but it's just a prediction.

PS. you are a total lunatic.

[Stark]

And what if a subsequent series establishes the gun wasn't canceled because it was outdated and unsuitable but because mobile suit manufacturers were in tight with the military and provided kickbacks? Sure, there's no evidence of this to date but wouldn't that just add to the drama, Starky? Tragedy! Pathos! Robits! Pew pew!

Sorry I made the mistake of assuming you were discussing your actual feelings about something. I see now you're just clumsily trolling me because you personally dislike me.

In other news, the guys in IGLOO are low level and not informed by their government or military of the reasoning behind their decisions (ref. all the scenes of May being comically outraged and surprised). Just because something isn't explicitly outlined onscreen for the children in the audience to follow along doesn't make it bad or wrong. The biggest lol is that in Zeta the Mega Ultra Beam Particle Launcher Cannon is arguably a modern (and still clumsy and vulnerable) version of the same thing, so you couldn't be less right.

[Ford Prefect]

lol shit I hit the wrong button. That second quote is supposed to be a spoiler. Could a mod please change it?

[jollyreaper]

How is the prediction made, starkovich? Generic analysis? Some sort of evolutionary prognostication? Why would governments of Earth surrender sovereignty in the face of such a hypothetical? What do they get out of it? Did they think it was a cheap concession for an immediate benefit?

[Connor MacLeod]

How is the prediction made, starkovich? Generic analysis? Some sort of evolutionary prognostication? Why would governments of Earth surrender sovereignty in the face of such a hypothetical? What do they get out of it? Did they think it was a cheap concession for an immediate benefit?

If I can ask a question: are you trying to establish some sort of absolute 'facts' or absolute position or something here? Because it really sounds to me like you're arguing as if there is some sort of well-defined truth that you can use to 'win' here, on a subject where absolutes may not actually exist.

[jollyreaper]

I'm curious because it seems like a really oddball addition to the overall story. I'm not trying to prove its imperial apologistics or superb tragedy.

[Ford Prefect]

Why would governments of Earth surrender sovereignty in the face of such a hypothetical? What do they get out of it? Did they think it was a cheap concession for an immediate benefit?

They get the satisfaction of creating a vision for the Universal Century that will benefit humanity.

[Stark]

They started the UC with faith in the god called 'possibility' after all. It doesn't have to be a prediction anyway; the idea of stochastic prognostication is laughable.

[jollyreaper]

The thing I don't get is that this is a ratified treaty and yet a terrorist attack was able to keep the true contents secret? There are such things as secret treaties and secret alliances. But something like this secret provision would be the stuff of worldwide debate, we are talking three-fifths compromise. A secret pact between, say, Zeon and a major Federation member could make sense. We drop a colony on hq, you take over and help with reconstruction. Makes sense you want to keep that quiet. But was there ant rationale for this provision to be secret? Because it sounds like only the highest echelons on either side even knew the secret existed and the box is the only proof.

I read the wiki and nothing makes any of this clear.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm curious because it seems like a really oddball addition to the overall story. I'm not trying to prove its imperial apologistics or superb tragedy.

Okay, it may just be how you're phrasing things. So many arguments seem to pop up inadvertantly because of how people say things rather than what they say. These sorts of debates rely less on 'either/or' absolute type things (which is a more technical approach) but more on 'exchange of different viewpoints' sorts of things, because people don't always see things the same way or always see everything that may be there, or whatever.

Another way to put it I guess would be its more about perceptions than anything else. I think that makes sense?

[Stark]

The thing I don't get is that this is a ratified treaty and yet a terrorist attack was able to keep the true contents secret? There are such things as secret treaties and secret alliances. But something like this secret provision would be the stuff of worldwide debate, we are talking three-fifths compromise. A secret pact between, say, Zeon and a major Federation member could make sense. We drop a colony on hq, you take over and help with reconstruction. Makes sense you want to keep that quiet. But was there ant rationale for this provision to be secret? Because it sounds like only the highest echelons on either side even knew the secret existed and the box is the only proof.

I read the wiki and nothing makes any of this clear.

I know I keep repeating this, but maybe you should actually just watch the show instead of struggling to understand things from crap secondhand information.

Every wiki about Gundam I have ever seen has been hilariously broken, either through cut and paste from irrelevant crap from the 80s or inclusion of all kinds of useless fanon nonsense. Unicorn is like four and a half hours; just watch it.

[Zinegata]

Which is again why I question Fuiki adding it as canon from UC 00. It means that it now affects all the UC shows, and that everyone from Scirocco to their mom can now retroactively be claimed as just "enforcing our rightful claim to independence via the Laplace treaty".

You're not the only person who's read it like that, but I think you're forgetting the spirit. Would Cardeas really speak about Laplace's Box 'unfreezing the Earth Sphere' and 'bringing light to the Universal Century' if the substance of the Box justified wars and actions and groups which he quite explicitly rejects?

I don't disagree that it's against the spirit of the law to either prevent its enforcement, or wage war to have it enforced.

But the bigger issue is that the spirit of things is almost inevitably corrupted in the Universal Century. Which is why I'm leery of having something that says "This was the correct path for everyone!" that's an actual binding treaty.

In another Gundam universe without such a consistent record of "perverting the spirit of high ideals", the Laplace Box would have been fine (it would have been fine in Gundam Wing for instance); and I get why you don't think it's a big deal. But within the Universal Century, it's at best glaringly out of place, and at worst it's something that's just begging to be exploited.

Also, re whether the retcon makes sense... personally it's a stretch. Not contradictory, but a stretch.

[jollyreaper]

I've got a tremendous backlog of fiction I'm working through which is why I try to triage the material before diving in. There's nothing less satisfying than getting through a series and saying "I can now tell myself with authority that this was a waste of time." Gundam is a fairly intimidating wall of material. Sometimes reading the Cliff notes tells you everything you need to know, other times you're robbing yourself of the sheer pleasure of enjoying it firsthand. A series meta-discussion can save some time, especially if someone says "Imagine if you took everything good out of Robotech/Macross and filled in the space with Minmay, nothing but wall-to-wall Minmay. That's what this series is." There you go, crisis averted. Other times you find out you're in for a treat.

[Stark]

Gundam Unicorn a) requires no prior knowledge and b) is short. I don't care what your personal time management is like and not wanting to watch Gundam shows is fine. Talking complete lines of bullshit from a position of ignorance ... isn't.

And frankly, anyone who relies on fucking wikis to judge fiction has wasted a huge amount of time.

Zinegata, that's actually the way I see the climax - that twisting and avoiding the box is directly related to the lies, bullshit, pressure, extremism and narrow-mindedness that drove the UC. They turned away from hope in favour of power and all the consequences; Banagher's personal quest is to relight the torch.

[jollyreaper]

Okay, it may just be how you're phrasing things. So many arguments seem to pop up inadvertantly because of how people say things rather than what they say.

This can be very true. "If ghosts are real, what follows logically in this series?" Ghosts aren't real. "I know! Given that they're real, this being the operative assumption..." But they aren't real in real life. "Given this assumption in the bloody fictional series we know isn't real, people!"

These sorts of debates rely less on 'either/or' absolute type things (which is a more technical approach) but more on 'exchange of different viewpoints' sorts of things, because people don't always see things the same way or always see everything that may be there, or whatever.

Right. It's trying to lay the groundwork. There's trying to separate what we know from the real world, what we know from the fictional world as presented, and trying to filter common sense and the like through those two separate filters.

"Hey, Biff the Slayer just found out his wife was cheating on him with Strang the Conjurer."

"Don't worry, he'll be cool with it, this is fantasy."

"Doesn't matter. The guy just got cheated on by his woman."

"But the world is filled with magic. He's the Chosen one of Prophecy."

"Doesn't matter. He just got cucked. Unless he's got a thing for it, he's gonna be pissed. This isn't a question of fantasy, this is a question of how men think."

"Technically he's a walfarian barbarian lord. They're demi-human but not completely human."

"Oh for fuck's sake, he's going to be pissed and want vengeance!"

Another way to put it I guess would be its more about perceptions than anything else. I think that makes sense?

Right. It depends on the kind of story being told and the rules of fiction the series is operating under. We'll accept ghosts in a gothic horror tale but will be really fucking put out if they pop up in a Tom Clancy novel. We'll accept aliens showing up in a scifi novel but will not be pleased if martian war machines show up in high fantasy.

So going with the assumption in fiction that, unless otherwise stated, things work as we're used to, the whole secret box thing doesn't seem to make sense. Minovsky physics, can't really argue with that because it's a fundamental assumption of the universe. Bitching about that is like bitching about FTL in Star Trek. The box thing, that just seems to go against every way we know governments operate and treaties are debated.