#wing watcher's toolkit

[tinyozlion]

Wait, How Many Wing Zeroes ARE There?!

“Three Wings for the Elven kings under the sky Seven for the Dwarf lords in their halls of stone...”

So, by the end of the series it seems like there must be a Gundam 01 parked conveniently wherever you need one. This isn’t a huge mystery or anything, it’s just a bit confusing because Gundam 01 has been updated, reconstructed, and rebuilt about a dozen times by just about everyone. 

The first Gundam 01 is what Heero comes to Earth in-- I'm going to refer to it as the "Wing Gundam".  (Back in the Colonies, the Doctors Five have made plans for an updated Wing Gundam that is bigger, badder, and more space-worthy; but that Gundam hasn’t been built yet, and the AI system that will be installed in its cockpit hasn’t been implemented *).

Heero uses the Wing Gundam until episode 10, whereupon he hits the switch that shoots it directly into God's grundle. 

Zechs, being the die-hard Mobile Suit nerd he is, sweeps up all the pieces, orders a bunch of extra Gundanium, and rebuilds it specifically with the intention of giving it back to Heero, who he senses is still alive.

The idea of giving the enemy death machine back to the enemy pilot understandably causes Romefeller’s monocle to pop out into its tea, and they tell Treize to make his boyfriend blow up the rebuilt Wing Gundam. Treize *wink* definitely *wink* tells him to do that right away *wink*. 

(Zechs is a political exile with a military salary; he does not have the kind of pocket change you need to buy two Gundam’s worth of Gundanium, express delivered from Outer Space. Do you know who DOES have generational wealth to throw around? Treize Khushrenada, a man who does not skimp when it comes to getting his friends everything they want.)

"The word better be 'flawless'."

Zechs blows up a Wing Gundam, but it’s not the real Wing Gundam, it’s a fake made from the spare parts of his Tallgeese MS, the rest of the supply of Gundanium, and 18,000 Gunpla kits he bought on Ebay. No one is really convinced by this performance: his reputation as a Mobile Suit nerd is too well cemented at this point. In any case, events unfold and Heero and Trowa take the reconstructed Wing Gundam. 

THIS IS WHERE A SWITCHEROO HAPPENS. The Gundam pilots attempt to head to space, which goes poorly for everyone. Heero dumps the Wing Gundam in a lake and goes to space without it. 

MEANWHILE: Quatre, who was forced to detonate the Sandrock Gundam and is having a bit of a rough time, finds the Doctors’ blueprints for the shiny, updated Wing Gundam, which is called the Wing Zero– because it has the ZERO system programmed into its cockpit.  

So now there is the Wing Zero in space, and the original/reconstructed Wing Gundam back on earth, chilling with the fishes. In fact, if everything else is too confusing, just remember: Wing Gundam stays on Earth. 

Stuff happens in space and Zero is left behind while the boys return to Earth. OZ now has the abandoned Wing Zero, which it plans to blow up. Zechs manifests out of the woodwork because once again he is a nerd who cannot let a good Mobile Suit go to waste. He changes out the Tallgeese (RIP) for the Wing Zero, and thoroughly enjoys having a shiny new Gundam to play with. 

Meanwhile, back on Earth, power team Sally-Noin recovers the original/reconstructed Wing Gundam from the soup, and gives it back to Heero. Unfortunately at this point, Wing Gundam is a little the worse for wear and underpowered for the waves and waves of VirgoMDs being sent its way. The tough old bird eventually meets its match and goes down under fire, but not before one Treize Khushrenada phones in to its pilot and tells him to meet him for a brunch-and-joint-suicide date over at the abandoned Disney Castle. 

Original Wing Gundam is toast, Heero gets the Gundam Epyon from Treize, and Zechs conveniently heads to Earth in the Wing Zero. 

Heero and Zechs fight, their Gundams (both running on the ZERO system) refuse to hurt each other because they’ve… never felt this way about another Mobile Suit before… is this what humans call… love? Zechs and Heero do not understand their Suits' beautiful relationship and refuse to let love bloom on the battlefield. 

Oh it's like THAT huh?

Heero gives Epyon to Zechs, and takes back Wing Zero, which he prefers piloting because it doesn’t have Treize-cooties on it, even if he has to re-adjust the seat because Zechs is taller than him. 

Heero stays in the Wing Zero for the remainder of the series– BUT! The wreckage of the Wing Gundam is still on the battlefield, where it is retrieved by OZ / the Treize Faction. The now twice-rebuilt Wing Gundam is patched up once again by nerds after Zechs’ own heart, who do it seemingly for the love of the game and the professional pride of a Gunpla enthusiast. 

Wing Gundam is left in the hangar with the keys in the ignition… awaiting the call of DESTINY. Destiny comes in the form of Lady Une, who, sensing Treize trying to die heroically in space, rushes to save him in what is truly the last flight of the Wing Gundam: taking the hit meant for TallgeeseII (itself rebuilt from the remains of the Tallgeese) and staying intact just enough to keep its pilot safe.

…Do you think Wing Gundam still had some of the old Tallgeese parts left in it? Do you think they remember each other? Am I getting emotional thinking about a Mobile Suit enemies-to-lovers arc? Do Epyon and Zero work out their differences before the end? These are questions I cannot answer; we must all decide for ourselves if the robots can kiss.

–OH! And you may be asking: Where does that sickass Gundam from Endless Waltz come from??  The one with the ACTUAL WINGS and robo-feathers and stuff! Don’t worry about it, it’s the same Wing Zero, everyone got a cool aesthetic redesign for the movie**.

____

*) …This actually depends on whether or not you take the events of Frozen Teardrop to be canonical. If you do, then the ZERO system predates the Gundams by a whole generation, and it’s based on the digitized clone of a Norwegian Forest Cat named ‘Sam’ who belongs to the Peacecraft family and was uploaded to a prototype MS by a young Doctor J and I am not joking. That is the original granddaddy of the ZERO system. It’s a digital cat-based user interface that lives in a Mobile Suit tamagotchi and communicates with the pilot by meowing. Is this insane? Undoubtedly. Do I love Sam very much? Yes sir I do. He’s a cat with a job. He’s the very best Meowble Suit combat AI, yes he is, yes he is. **) And THIS depends on whether or not you take the Glory of Losers rewrites as canon! Because in that version, the whole lineage of both the Tallgeese and Wing Gundams is slightly different, and the fancy robo wings are actually from the Tallgeese!

[tinyozlion]

“Honor, Justice, Strength, Integrity” - Why Wufei’s 'Honor' is Different

Here’s an analogy: 

Someone stands up proudly in the debate club. They say “Today I’m going to be arguing strenuously for a topic I know almost nothing about and can barely articulate my stance on, but I’m going to opine about it at length and with great authority.”  

And you’re like: …Why?

Do you enjoy being humiliated? Do you like losing? Is this something you do often?

Why? Why stand up at all when you have absolutely no chance of making your point?

This is how Wufei feels about fighting. Wufei, after all, IS a debate kid. 

People who have no way of defending their argument should stay seated. They shouldn’t be here in the first place. If you’re too weak to win, you’re only a detriment to your own cause; when you’re weak, you make your cause look weak, when you lose, your cause loses.

So sit down. You’re in the way. You’re embarrassing yourself.

--If most of us look in our hearts and think of something that we would, honestly, truly, stand up and throw a punch / take a punch for, our ability to WIN the fight isn’t necessarily part of our criteria for doing it. If you gotta punch a bully, you gotta punch a bully. We view that as having integrity. 

Wufei would not agree– if you punch the bully and the bully wipes the floor with you, does it mean anything to anyone but you? And does your feeling of validation make it worthwhile to participate in a conflict that hands your enemy an easy victory? The bully is still Evil, he wouldn’t say otherwise. But you didn’t change that by getting your ass kicked;  the bully lives to bully another day. 

Why throw your life away for something you can't change? If the only thing you can do for you cause is die for it, then you need to get your priorities in order-- you should get better at fighting so you can WIN for what you believe in, or get out of the way of those who can, so you don't become a liability.

If a cause is worth fighting for, then as its champion you'd better commit to being strong enough not only to achieve victory, but to defend and enforce it– or don't you believe in your stance firmly enough to follow it through? If you can't bring yourself to implement it without hesitation, then your cause is not a worthy one. If you don't fully believe in the cause you're fighting for, then indecision will make you weak, and you will fail.

And it will be right that you fail. Because fighting without a unity of both commitment and moral authority is how you lose your way. It’s how unnecessary conflict and Evil are born: from the disorder left in the wake of those who fight without understanding of what they're trying to achieve or lack the resolve to implement it without compromise. To him, that internal unity of purpose is the measure of integrity. Never go to war without it.

“Honor” for Wufei is different from the “aretḗ” of Zechs and Treize. For Wufei, honor is a score you’re keeping with yourself and your family and your clan and your ancestors and your dead wife who’s spirit you idolize. It’s not glory, it’s not chivalry– honor is your reputation. It’s a designation of value assigned by your community; it keeps you accountable to them. If you are humiliated in battle, it disgraces you AND your community, and it is therefore their right to ostracize you. Honor is something you can lose-- not just by failing to meet your personal standards, but by by failure in general.

A circumstantial loss is one you can strengthen yourself against and bounce back from-- but a true defeat, one that ends with you knowing you've been bested by a far superior opponent? That is a failure. A deep and bruising mark of dishonor that makes you unfit to wield a weapon.

There’s an interesting, if perhaps cynical, description of “honor culture” that identifies it as a response to living in impoverished, tenuous, often remote conditions where there is minimal or no law enforcement. Your mileage may vary on that assessment, but one thing’s for sure, Wufei’s colony, the A0206 colony of the L5 cluster, fits all of those criteria. 

The Long clan’s reputation for great strength led them to be exiled by an insecure government to a decrepit, 200 year old relic of a colony teetering on the brink of extinction at the very edge of civilization. They have no money and few resources, their population is dwindling, the life support systems grow more tenuous by the year. The Alliance / OZ think of the people still living in L5 as vermin skittering around space trash. The Barton Foundation’s original plan for Operation Meteor designated A0206 as the colony destined for earth drop.  Both Earth and Space seem in agreement that his home is scrap metal waiting to be disposed of. The only resources of value Wufei's clan have are the few young people like him who are capable of fighting, and their honor as a people. (…And one Gundam with no ammunition.)

The Long Clan is depicted as being very strict, proud, and extremely conservative. They adhere to a Confucian tradition that values obedience to social hierarchies, and the acceptance of one’s social role within that hierarchy. It is understood that those with superior standing should maintain virtuous and moral conduct, and that those who are subordinate should obey them as long as this remains true. Civil order and peace is the expected result of maintaining this propriety. It is also expected that people strive for perfection and harmony in every aspect of life, with the understanding that perfection is a state that can be achieved. It’s very likely that the strict adherence to these very traditional precepts is what helps A0206’s small, endangered population maintain cohesion in the face of constant peril, and it would explain why these traditions have close to a religious significance for those living there, including Wufei. 

The hierarchies of this system are fundamentally patriarchal. Meilan is considered the “strongest in her clan”, but this seems to be something of a ceremonial designation, as she is repeatedly told not to fight in real battles on account of being a woman. In fact, it she seems to be the only woman with a visible presence in the colony. It’s possible that women are a rarity in the declining state of A0206, thus giving her increased value and status and making the rest of the clan overprotective of her-- but whatever the case, she must take on the spiritual mantle of Nataku to transcend her status as a woman and fight.

This is partly why Meilan finds Wufei so deeply infuriating when they first meet: she and Wufei are the strongest and perhaps ONLY members of their generation who are able to fight, and he (the one allowed and expected to fight by virtue of being male) refused to do so. Wufei did not see the point in fighting for a subjective concept– “Justice” lacks an absolute, universal definition, and therefore could not be defended.

--Like I said before: debate kid. 

Besides being an infuriating nerd, Wufei risks his whole clan’s reputation by refusing to commit to the fight against the Evil. (…Also, they were about to be exterminated by the Alliance, so choosing to let everyone die rather than be rhetorically incorrect was a bit of a dick move– as his mentor Doctor O astutely observed). When Meilan shames him, it is specifically for being a failure as her husband, as well as for shirking his duties as the most capable member of the Long clan. For both of them, propriety is of key importance.

But unlike Wufei, Meilan has no trouble reconciling her conviction to fight with her sense of justice. To her, it’s obvious that the universality of justice is infinitely less important than making one’s own idea of justice a reality. 

She isn’t having any of that what-about-ism bullshit– she is unhesitatingly ready to fight for what she understands to be true: that those who kill indiscriminately and oppress others for gain are Evil, and must be stopped so they cannot continue to do harm. And she fights also because… that is their way. The last and most enduring thing her people have is their identity, as ones who fight to uphold justice.

Ultimately, Meilan is killed while protecting the colony and Wufei. She is strong enough to win, but not strong enough to survive the victory. Their colony, their clan, and one the last few beautiful things they have managed to cultivate in spite of dereliction– their field of flowers, are safe for another day. If she hadn’t leapt to their defense first, Wufei would not have followed in the Gundam, and the population of the colony would likely have been killed en-masse by the Alliance, or decimated by OZ. She was directly responsible for their survival. Evil did not win, and yet, she died. She was strong, and yet she died. She was weak, and yet she was Justice embodied.  Such a contradiction meant the universe had gone insane. It lost its way, it stood in need of correction.

Wufei does not handle contradictions well. His ideology consists of absolutes and has no room for failure or extenuation. When the weak fight, they die, or they get in the way, so they shouldn’t fight. But Meilan– Nataku, was strong, and so, her spirit must live on in the Gundam, undying. It is her strength, her justice, which carries HIM to victory by lending him the strength of the mobile suit she died protecting. He must believe this, not only to honor her memory, but to preserve the structure of his ideology. 

When he encounters women in combat who remind him of her, he reacts with outbursts of sublimated anger and grief that is redirected into misogynistic vitriol. Women who fight will die, don’t they understand? They continue to pick up arms and fight anyway, even when they’re weak, even when they cannot possibly win. They’ll foolishly rush ahead because they believe in what they fight for, and it will kill them. But he will not be the reason for it. He will make them understand that they are weak, so they will stop fighting.

--But they don’t. And he has no idea how to deal with it. Just as he has no idea how to deal with his own defeat, until once again, a woman finds it worthwhile to help him regain his conviction and sense of justice, by demonstrating her own. 

He is a trad-i-tional boy, living in a trad-i-tional world.  

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