danieljeoneternalnovice

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

It’s quite something.

The funny thing about Mecha as a genre (both super and real robot) is that it basically gatekeeps itself

For the most part people bounce off of it due to their own preconcieved notions

and if someone ever tries to make a statement on Mecha despite having never actually interacted with the genre beyond a cursory level, it's immediately clear to everyone else that said person is talking out their ass.

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

Europa has an atmosphere now. That is bad.

Back in those days, when there was no color in the heavens sans Jove and Europa's siblings, the thermosuits actually worked. But now, the endless black is tainted with a faint blue. All the digging and boiling and rocketeering the war brought had given Europa an atmosphere.

That was no good for vacuum-rated equipment.

The nothing of space is a good insulator, even in a realm where the sun fails to give warmth, virtually acting as an all-encompassing thermos. The atmosphere ruined it. The cold could only invade from your soles before, but it's an all-round assault now.

There's been talks of providing improved suits like the ones on Titan, but they never come. Things will surely get worse as this war goes on.

The blue has only gotten thicker.

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

Many mechposters seem to either be ignorant of super robots or outright dislike them.

whenever i see those kinds of nsfw mechposts i always think about how theres never any for gattai/combiner type mechs (or super robo in general) but like. theyre there its the sentai and bravern and getter posts its not not a thing

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

If it didn't exist before, it exists now.

I am once again pretty enamored with a subgenre/collection of tropes that seems to have been invented almost entirely by unwell people on this website. First it was the eroticism of the machine and now this sort of grimdark/highly bdsm influenced transhumanist mecha settings? Where does this actually exist I'm losing my mind

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

One of the roots of mechposting, I guess.

I'm currently watching original gundam (now up through episode 11, vague cultural osmosis knowledge but no particular spoilers), some thoughts:

I appreciate how much piloting is fucking Amuro up. As he says, he's a fifteen year old civilian! Going into repeated battles is taking a serious toll on him. I like that he's sulky and rebellious and reluctant, he deserves to be! Shit's fucked and he's right that he shouldn't have to do any of this, except of course he does have to.

Because if he doesn't, they're all going to die.

Complicating things is how Amuro seems to be the only character experiencing this. Most of the rest of the cast are also teenagers dragged into this war, but they all seem to be pretty much fine with it. Now obviously the burden on Amuro is unique, since he's the only pilot for the Gundam, and so he's doing high-stress solo missions in every episode, and also getting a really high kill count, and there's also the meta-reason that he's our protagonist so gets more characterization.

I still think it's interesting the way this gestures at different people reacting to stressors in different ways: in episode 10 Fraw Bow suggests that she should pilot instead, and while that doesn't happen for sexism reasons, I think it would be really interesting. Because it's entirely possible that she'd then get hit with the same trauma symptoms as Amuro, but I think it's also possible that she wouldn't. People have different responses to the same/similar trauma, which here mainly sucks for Amuro because the obvious response to "I'm a teenager in a warzone and it's bad for me" is "so is everyone else and they're doing fine".

(Episode 10 also has a lot of gender in it, which is mostly sexism but it's hard to tell how much of it is in-universe vs out-of-universe. Gender roles seem to exist to make people miserable so far.)

I'm also really enjoying Sayla's role in this: she's acting as the comms person but that also seems to include tactics/fighter ops (entertainingly it's noted she was a medical student beforehand, but it doesn't seem like she's running medbay or anything). Bright will give a directive like "tell Amuro to return to the ship", then Saylah will add specifics, advice, more minute details. This also means that she ends up doing a certain amount of pilot emotional handling, which could admittedly feel glaringly sexist but is mostly working for me.

The fighter pilots are out in deeply stressful confusing situations, and someone needs to sit back and keep a broader view of the battle and relay information and instructions. And importantly, that person has to remain calm and in control so that the pilots have something to rely on. Sometimes this means telling Kai to stop whining and do his job, sometimes this means talking Amuro through panic to get him through a tough fight, or to get him back in the Gundam at all.

Which then can veer into some really excellent ethical crunchiness. It is not great, morally speaking, to pressure an unwilling fifteen year old back into the firefights that have been traumatizing him. In the paradigm Gundam presents, it is also absolutely necessary that Amuro continues to go out and fight. So then it becomes a vital task to talk him into it, again and again. And that seems to be part of her job!

(Fraw Bow also does this, but that seems more freelance)

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

Makes me want to know more about it. A post written in all caps has to mean something.

MY STEW TASTES SO GODDAMN DELICIOUS

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

Seems to be a rather common occurrence.

Sorry I am very predisposed to dislike the concept of super robot, even if I enjoyed Gurren Laggan and Promare before knowing the name.

The first description I got of super robot as a genre, comparing it to real robot and all that, really only made me think "oh so like power rangers" and that description has stuck in my mind.

The thing is: I HATED power rangers as a kid. I hated the suits, I hated the setting, I hated the robot's appearance, I hated the monsters, I hated the combining, and I hated how loud everyone in it was. Little edgelord me didn't like the vibe at all.

I don't know why I still have a grudge about it, I still remember the disappointment every time I saw it on tv. I didn't have any interest in mecha stuff for years because I thought that was all there was.

So now that I know the name of its genre, those words have a permmanent mental note on them reading: "here lie all the mecha tropes that annoy me". You make me watch a super robot anime and I might not notice it, I could even enjoy it, but if you try selling it to me by describing it as "super robot" I will lose all interest.

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

They can really be anything, and also their own thing.

Can’t they?

I like how everyone compares mechs to a different vehicle

It's a car! it's a plane! it's a tank!

It's a 10m tall death machine!

Though I think in Armored Hearts it's probably "dogfighting jets with limbs"

...jets don't actually do that much dogfighting...

Warfare shouldn't be so depersonalized that two insane men can't have a multi-year-long murder boner for each other.

The men, they need it for mental enrichment.

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

Someday, I'll be able to discern analogous structures without the help of others.

That day is not today.

sburb: ive assigned each and every one of you an arbitrary mythological symbol and an associated colour upon your birth and i expect you to live up to the expectations that come with this. / aww, you're sweet ❤

alternia: ive assigned each and every one of you an arbitrary mythological symbol and an associated colour upon your birth and i expect you to / HELLO HUMAN RESOURCES?

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

I’d like to know of some as well.

As a lifelong lover of survival games like Minecraft, Terraria, Rust, and Raft, I'm generally looking for new games with similar concepts. But in terms of environmentalism and leftism - most of these games are based on the pristine wilderness myth, westward expansion, agriculture/monoculture, meat-as-default, and competition/individualism.

Aside from Eco (if anyone wants to get the game and play it, let me know - the game just requires 4+ people to be enjoyable), I haven't seen any survival games that work with cooperation, foraging, native plants, intercropping (like the three sisters, squash beans and corn), native plants, or food forests/selective planting and weeding.

It's a goal of mine one day to make a game like that but I'm working on acquiring the necessary knowledge first.

Farmers 2050 is actually a great game that does incorporate crop rotation, fertilizer alternatives, planting trees around your field as windbreaks, and community aspects like trading to a farmers market. They have educational little bits but it's still fun to play. You can't put animals next to water due to water pollution, for example - it's physically not possible within the game.

Great game! But it's a single player farming simulator (on mobile), and I tend to get bored of those after a while. I played Farmville for ages and if the game were closer to that, I'd probably still be playing it, but alas - I can only stay involved with NPCs in a farming sim for so long.

So - I just wish there was a sustainably-focused survival game already (aside from Eco). Sure there's the Tekkit mod for Minecraft (and it's a blast, I love it!), but that still relies on limitless resource extraction.

I have to wonder - if a video game were created with the restrictions we wish to see in real life - closed loop recycling, reusable materials only, animal fiber clothing, ethical farming practices, the whole shebang - if a game like that became popular, really popular, how would that change the way we see things? Could it become a vehicle for better conversations about the way we live our lives?

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

The return of leg speeds would be cool, too.

Is it a controversial opinion that despite the fact I love armored core 6 I don’t like armored cores ice skate approach to mech leg movement.

I want to see those legs move not just skid across the floor with jet boosters.

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

Perhaps the pupil takes more after the master than previously thought.

*hamster wheel accelerating* This word for watering plants could also be (mis)read as "Water Spear" which reminds me of Undyne, whose namesake is a water sprite known (in modern fiction, at least) to weaponize water. What's more, the literal meaning of "watering" accounts for a life-giving allegory underlying the Undying's violence: the spear she deploys (much like Homestuck's arrow ==>) functions as an emblem of de-termination, of un-death, of life. A save point sparkles in Undyne's unseen eye for this same reason. You are a suicidal flower, and as such life-giving friendliness pellets sprinkling from a watering can are anathema to you.

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

From what I know, the “real robot” craze of Japan existed independently from Battletech. Dougram and Votoms were the “mature” follow-ups of Gundam that probably did what you ascribe to it.

Votoms was especially influential towards Armored Core. The arena, for one, has allusions to the battle ring of Votoms. Both being a system that pits robots against others of their caliber.

I think you should give them a shot. The animes are a bit dated, but I believe their robots stand the test of time.

It's been a while since I read battle tech but how do you think it impacted the gundam and mech genres and how much do you think it pioneered things for franchises like armoured core to exist despite never enjoying that level of popularity itself?

so i'm not certain how it impacted gundam, except that i think it showed there was a market for more adult-oriented mecha, something which gundam was already doing but battletech kind of accelerated into with the gray death books and the advanced politicking (i specifically think iron-blooded orphans takes some beats and inspiration from various battletech books with it's mercenary focus and cryptic techno-mythological past)

but armored core, especially the original games, HAD to be taking inspo from battletech. obvs there's more gundam in the design, but i still see a lot of battletech in the way they control, specifically it feels kinda like the early mechwarrior games. see also the way they treat vehicles: not something that'll match you blow for blow, but a threat nonetheless.

but ultimately i think battletech kind of served to pave the way for mecha to have a western following in the first place. it'd be an interesting thought experiment to see what western mecha scenes would've evolved into without battletech.

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

Well, it’s a first time for many people.

ill admit im kind of embittered towards AC6 for reasons that arent necessary to get into but i have to admit its kind of hilarious how it codified the "mech pilot's handler" character archetype into existence despite the fact that such a concept literally did not exist anywhere beforehand

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

I like this concept.

If self aware AI characters were integrated into the real world and had day jobs

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

In the end, that’s the answer.

Just yesterday while doing some research I cam across the social media of an extremist ARA who was bragging about the amount of mink they’d released from fur farms. They were actually proud of the fact that they’d released thousands of mink into the wild who would all either starve to death, or live long enough to cause huge environmental damage and kill thousands more native animals. 

As long as the mink aren’t in a cage and being turned into fur coats then that’s all fine, right? And yes, I’ve seen ARAs say it’s better for the mink to starve or damage the environment then be in a cage. They’re so blinded by their hatred of fur and fur farming that any alternative for the animals is better, even if it means causing more suffering and harm. It’s such a delusional and harmful mindset. 

[danieljeoneternalnovice]

Oh, joy!

This article is from 2022, but it came up in the context of Palestine:

Here are some striking passages, relevant to all colonial aftermaths but certainly also to the forms we see Zionist reaction taking at the moment:

Over the decade I lived in South Africa, I became fascinated by this white minority [i.e. the whole white population post-apartheid as a minority in the country], particularly its members who considered themselves progressive. They reminded me of my liberal peers in America, who had an apparently self-assured enthusiasm about the coming of a so-called majority-minority nation. As with white South Africans who had celebrated the end of apartheid, their enthusiasm often belied, just beneath the surface, a striking degree of fear, bewilderment, disillusionment, and dread.

[...]

Yet these progressives’ response to the end of apartheid was ambivalent. Contemplating South Africa after apartheid, an Economist correspondent observed that “the lives of many whites exude sadness.” The phenomenon perplexed him. In so many ways, white life remained more or less untouched, or had even improved. Despite apartheid’s horrors—and the regime’s violence against those who worked to dismantle it—the ANC encouraged an attitude of forgiveness. It left statues of Afrikaner heroes standing and helped institute the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which granted amnesty to some perpetrators of apartheid-era political crimes.

But as time wore on, even wealthy white South Africans began to radiate a degree of fear and frustration that did not match any simple economic analysis of their situation. A startling number of formerly anti-apartheid white people began to voice bitter criticisms of post-apartheid society. An Afrikaner poet who did prison time under apartheid for aiding the Black-liberation cause wrote an essay denouncing the new Black-led country as “a sewer of betrayed expectations and thievery, fear and unbridled greed.”

What accounted for this disillusionment? Many white South Africans told me that Black forgiveness felt like a slap on the face. By not acting toward you as you acted toward us, we’re showing you up, white South Africans seemed to hear. You’ll owe us a debt of gratitude forever.

The article goes on to discuss:

"Mau Mau anxiety," or the fear among whites of violent repercussions, and how this shows up in reported vs confirmed crime stats - possibly to the point of false memories of home invasion

A sense of irrelevance and alienation among this white population, leading to another anxiety: "do we still belong here?"

The sublimation of this anxiety into self-identification as a marginalized minority group, featuring such incredible statements as "I wanted to fight for Afrikaners, but I came to think of myself as a ‘liberal internationalist,’ not a white racist...I found such inspiration from the struggles of the Catalonians and the Basques. Even Tibet" and "[Martin Luther] King [Jr.] also fought for a people without much political representation … That’s why I consider him one of my most important forebears and heroes,” from a self-declared liberal environmentalist who also thinks Afrikaaners should take back government control because they are "naturally good" at governance

Some discussion of the dynamics underlying these reactions, particularly the fact that "admitting past sins seem[ed] to become harder even as they receded into history," and US parallels

And finally, in closing:

The Afrikaner journalist Rian Malan, who opposed apartheid, has written that, by most measures, its aftermath went better than almost any white person could have imagined. But, as with most white progressives, his experience of post-1994 South Africa has been complicated. [...]

He just couldn’t forgive Black people for forgiving him. Paradoxically, being left undisturbed served as an ever-present reminder of his guilt, of how wrongly he had treated his maid and other Black people under apartheid. “The Bible was right about a thing or two,” he wrote. “It is infinitely worse to receive than to give, especially if … the gift is mercy.”