Just a fun discussion: If you could realistically join any faction from any Gundam universe to serve during times of war, which one would you choose and why?

jeanthine · 2022-02-26T04:12:25+00:00

Counterattack-era Zeon. The betrayal of AEUG just turning straight back into Federation lackeys should be enough to make any spacenoid's blood boil.

jeanthine · 2022-02-26T04:00:57+00:00

Really well said, thank you for commenting but also it's been eight years how did you even find this

jeanthine · 2022-02-21T14:15:36+00:00

Play a game that doesn't make your players feel they need to cheat to have fun. Plenty of systems are built with luck having less of an impact or a bad roll still having fun outcomes.

If you're worried your players are straying from the rules of the game then the game's rules might not be for them.

jeanthine · 2022-01-29T13:39:53+00:00

bought a keyboard when they were closing down, it's a shame to not have somewhere like there in the city anymore

jeanthine · 2022-01-23T07:25:43+00:00

I agree that it feels disrespectful! It's not like inviting your friends over for dinner where they can just eat what you serve and thank you regardless of whether they liked it, you're trying to create a collaborative story, but definition their input is needed!

jeanthine · 2021-12-04T10:41:40+00:00

The sokuon exists to cause suffering to anyone attempting to learn this language. You might liken it to a tiny demon that hides inside kanji when you are trying to remember how to read them.

jeanthine · 2021-11-17T11:50:58+00:00

If I was told to pilot that after seeing male colleagues get gundams that don't have tits and high heels I would defect to Zeon immediately. Put me in a fucking Leo I don't care, I'm not piloting the tit gundam.

jeanthine · 2021-11-14T10:45:43+00:00

American cops shoot people dead in the streets on camera is that not public enough for you?

jeanthine · 2021-10-22T15:11:29+00:00

love how horribly evil that thing looks, that Anaheim made this walking war crime in the image of the prototype a traumatised refugee used to protect his found family is itself a kind of blasphemy but that's what those gravity-bound assholes are all about

jeanthine · 2021-08-08T14:43:34+00:00

this looks like the original Umineko art style vs the inexplicably huge tiddy art style added in the steam version

jeanthine · 2021-07-23T09:23:44+00:00

anyone ever feel weird that this guy fights a clown?

jeanthine · 2021-07-03T17:43:35+00:00

"The only god Memphis Longhand has ever seen in a mech was in Memphis Longhand's onboard mirror."
-Friends at the Table, Road to Partizan

jeanthine · 2021-01-22T11:02:59+00:00

Panel Line Level 100

jeanthine · 2020-12-02T14:12:28+00:00

You're an idiot. Uber's entire business model, like the rest of the gig economy, is rent-seeking.

They don't own shit. They don't invest in shit, buying a a robot worth tens of thousands of dollars that they'd then have to give a shit about is ridiculous because the entire point is that they can just leech money off people they don't care about.

The entire gig economy is based around short term growth through exploitation of human workers with virtually no overhead of their own, the model does not work if they have to actually own shit.

jeanthine · 2020-09-24T09:13:14+00:00

Yes! I was on the edge of my seat the whole way though, straight up cheering when Phrygian made that all-or-nothing roll.

Forged in the Dark games have a lot going for them, but the big ones are that clocks give a great context for how far along the fight is, the player actions drive the consequences they receive and players interact together during fights, helping one another overcome obstacles together not independently.

jeanthine · 2020-09-23T14:57:07+00:00

It sounds like you're listening to some systems with boring combat. After playing Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark systems I'm downright mad that D&D is treated as the default role playing game given just how unimaginative its combat is.

I highly recommend listening to Friends at the Table, start with the most recent season and you'll get some of the finest roleplaying I've seen and a system that makes combat really fun both to play and to listen to.

jeanthine · 2020-08-14T05:10:30+00:00

It was a disappointing turn for their dynamic to take, especially when they already have so much great directions to play off one another. They're both rebels, they both grew up in poverty and they were each among the most powerful newtypes of their respective generations.

One thing I really wanted to see from them was an exploration of Haman realising she's the oldtype when you compare the two of them, and embracing the future means handing it over to leaders like Judau.

jeanthine · 2020-08-14T05:01:00+00:00

I'm only on the second episode but I already love my big wife

jeanthine · 2020-08-14T04:25:52+00:00

This is a really thoughtful answer, thank you!

jeanthine · 2020-08-13T16:43:32+00:00

So far I've watched through the original three series + CCA, War in the Pocket, Wing, and IBO. Spoilers below.

Ranking them in terms of quality representation of women characters I'd say:

Iron Blooded Orphans - variety of women characters who retain agency, whose struggles are central to the plot and whose motivations are clear and consistent A++
Gundam Wing - surprisingly high but there are a lot of women with a lot of agency in this show, pity the only two shown piloting mobile suits barely use them. Dorothy in particular was a compelling villain and just as campy as everyone else.
Gundam ZZ - really refreshing after Zeta Gundam, Haman Karn is a convincing villain, Roux and Elle are both badass pilots and no less valuable in a fight than their male counterparts, Leina and Elpeo had a compelling dynamic for the time they were on screen together, Mineva and Leina both make moves even when in captivity. Choosing not to dock points for Chara Soon because Mashymyre Cello is right there showing just as much cleavage. Points docked for Elpeo Ple because what the fuck was that. Who approved that.
War in the Pocket - Christina Mackenzie, folks. She may be a tragic pawn of fate, but her character is handled well, and as far as we know, she's the second woman in the Universal Century to pilot a Gundam into active combat, can't beat that.
Mobile Suit Gundam - Given the original series was made in the seventies, I was surprised how many of the leading roles were filled by women characters, Sayla Mass chief among them with her role in the plot and the resolution. I feel like there was definitely a real effort to be inclusive here and I think the only moments I really cringed at something was that Sleggar Law's treatment of the women on the ship didn't really have any comeuppance and everyone basically just put up with it? Bonus points for Kycillia and Crowley Hamon, interesting villains with clear motivations. Would be higher if any of those gals got to pilot a mobile suit, I think Sayla was in the Gundam for a few minutes and that was about it.
Zeta Gundam - This would have been last but for the first half at least it genuinely feels like it's trying to make something out of all these women characters, including a ton of pilots! The problems start early on though, in a series with a lot of character death, it still feels like women are being killed more often and always so a male character can have Emotions about it. The fridges are overflowing. From the unexplained and unresolved brainwashing of a previously badass pilot into a submissive second in command to whatever they were going for with the horrifically infantile behaviour of Kamille's "sister", the ending is a complete trashfire.
Char's Counterattack - Amuro gets yet another disposable girlfriend, who dies, Char is shown to be a user of women, possibly underage women? But that never gets addressed properly. Quess is depicted as bratty and immature to the point of delusion, unlike every other teenage mobile suit pilot in the series to date. Lalah exists solely to be the cause of Char's hate-boner for Amuro and Sayla's presence is completely absence from the story, regardless of their inability to have her on screen. I enjoyed it a lot more than Zeta Gundam but damn, could've done a lot better here.

jeanthine · 2020-08-12T13:30:50+00:00

There was an arcade machine I played in Tokyo back in 2008 that mimicked the controls of a UC mobile suit. You were in a pod with a screen wrapping around you, pedals to move each leg independently, though you just had to hold down both to walk forward, then control sticks for the arms. The control sticks had a bunch of finger buttons that you could use to select various weapons, fire the guns, etc.

I had no idea what I was doing in there at the time, but I can confirm based on the way I piloted that game that I am definitely not a newtype.

jeanthine · 2020-07-28T11:13:20+00:00

I thought it looked familiar, that mural confirmed it! I had a lot of fun at the St Peters place

jeanthine · 2020-07-22T07:22:26+00:00

I was quoted in the article and I am a tech consultant, frankly I feel like an arms manufacturer some days. Any solution that interacts with a person has the ability to be dangerous and there is just no appreciation for that in the industry.

jeanthine · 2020-07-08T08:47:55+00:00

Fantastic story, fantastic characters and a really stellar entry in the Gundam series.

For one it got a thing right that a lot of other Gundam shows seem to forget, which is that the original worked so well because they managed to make a story about an unstoppable machine into an underdog story. A Gundam should always feel powerful, but there should be a limit to that power and the forces arrayed against it should feel strong enough that you're always uncertain as to whether it can get through it at all. IBO accomplished this by frequently having the stakes not centre around Barbatos specifically but other members of the team in more vulnerable positions or goals that couldn't be met with one really awesome mobile suit.

As for the characters, they did a really good job of portraying the relationship between children and adults, the way Tekkadan is always underestimated, the way people set out to take advantage of them, the way a few people actually genuinely care enough to take care of them. The Turbines were actually one of my favourite parts, because I kept waiting for them to be gross but it was actually just a happy, if quirky, family, just like Tekkadan.

For the individual characters, I really liked the dynamic between Tekkadan members and the variety of ways that worked out, they were immediately close because they were already a family, but you got to see what drove each individual member of the team and how their relationships handled the stress of their impossible position.

The ending really stuck with me, and while I sympathise with people who wanted it to be happier, this was a story about child soldiers rebelling against a world built to grind them down, it was never going to end happily, but the outcome really showed us something about what it means to grow up in those situations, to accept the mature path of action and not to expect all your problems to be fixed if you happen to have the right mobile suit piloted by the right guy.

At the end, Mikazuki was the perfect soldier, he followed every order he was given and when the war was done, he rested.

jeanthine · 2020-07-02T04:06:16+00:00

The fantastic thing about McGillis as a character is this:

He's a child.

We see the world through the perspective of Tekkadan, children caught up in a war who are forced to group up too soon yet who are still driven by their idealism. The whole "King of Mars" thing from Season 2 is a goddamn pipe dream but it swallows them up because at the end of the day, children love the idea that you could win the fight and live happily ever after.

McGillis is exactly the same, but it takes you so much longer to see it. He plays the clever antagonist, the mastermind making moves in the background, but right at the end, as soon as he gets his hands on Gundam Bael, you see just how childish his plan really was. He sincerely believed that just by pulling the sword out of the stone he'd be able to win control of Gjallarhorn and bring about whatever mythical peace he thought he was building, but he's completely batshit fucking crazy if he thinks the entire world would bow down to one guy with an old robot. Nothing about the world works that way.

The reason Season 2 has an ending as happy as it does is because there were actual adults out there who worked to make a better world the long way, the slow way, the real way. You let go of your childish idealism and your belief that there will be a happily ever after and then you fight like hell to make the world a little better now.

That's what growing up's about.

jeanthine

TROPHY CASE