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ninjewtsu posted:This in particular is pretty dumb It's wierd that the gundam thread of all places gets the wierd dnd posting but denying history has causes and effects entirely is pretty funny.
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Dec 18, 2016 00:37
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ninjewtsu posted:
I agree with this all except it's definitely warporn; It doesn't glorify war but it does basically stylize every aspect of war in a somewhat fetishistic way. I don't say this as a criticism.
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Dec 18, 2016 00:55
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Sharkopath posted:It's wierd that the gundam thread of all places gets the wierd dnd posting but denying history has causes and effects entirely is pretty funny. Well, I have been known to say stupid things from time to time. Glad this bout of it at least amused someone. The thing for me is, the Federation created its own worst enemies, but Zeon just goes so far into supervillainy that it's hard for me to link it to the Federation's own shittiness. Creating rebellions and massacres, fine. That's on them. Degwin and Kycellia's Zeon, I can blame on them. But Gihren's plans to wipe out most of humanity to reign as a god, then seemingly endless armies of people going "You know who was the best guy ever? The genocidal maniac who wiped out half of humanity!" and forming an army of mobile suits to pull off a colony drop again just seem to go past anything they can take the blame for.
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Dec 18, 2016 01:03
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It's a fictional narrative handled by dozens of different writers and directors over a period of decades. It's going to carry a different tone from incarnation to incarnation and that includes how sympathetic the principal actors are.
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Dec 18, 2016 01:07
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I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
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Dec 18, 2016 01:11
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Sharkopath posted:I and the public know *in extremely ken burns documentary voice* those who do not learn from history, are doomed to get colonies dropped on them
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Dec 18, 2016 01:37
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DamnGlitch posted:I agree with this all except it's definitely warporn; It doesn't glorify war but it does basically stylize every aspect of war in a somewhat fetishistic way. I don't say this as a criticism. It's hard not to glorify war in fiction, especially when it's robot space war
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Dec 18, 2016 01:38
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Ok but as mentioned thunderbolt doesnt, which the person you're quoting is also saying Idgi do you disagree and think thunderbolt does glorify war?
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Dec 18, 2016 02:04
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What does something that depicts war but isn't warporn look like btw, if warporn isn't just glorification of war Is it warporn if it's about war and also looks good? Is that what warporn means?
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Dec 18, 2016 02:06
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ninjewtsu posted:What does something that depicts war but isn't warporn look like btw, if warporn isn't just glorification of war Come and See.
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Dec 18, 2016 02:26
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Beasts of No Nation comes to mind for me. Hard to argue war is glorified in that.
Raxivace fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Dec 18, 2016 |
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Dec 18, 2016 02:28
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muike posted:A better way to look at it would be this: the Federation's stagnation and mediocrity at best allowed Zeon's rise to power through hubris or disregard for the conditions of space colonists and at worst is directly responsible for the conditions that created Zeon. The conditions that created Zeon are are HEAVILY influenced by the ideology of a man who was convinced people in space are evolving, while people on Earth are not. When he was killed by the Zabis, they used his death and his ideology to conclude that under no uncertain terms the people of Earth are inferior, unlike the superior spaceman. And the average Zeonic citizen ate that poo poo right up. Again, a significant amount of the things we learn regarding how awful the Federation actually is comes in material after the original show was written, pretty regularly trying to justify after the fact why Zeon would take the extreme steps it did. The most extensive retconning of this sort of thing is Unicorn as a whole, where Laplace' Box is a message that says, in effect: "Hey, someday the people of space might be new, good, and cool, and if or when that happens then maybe we should also be cool too and allow them more of a say in things going forward, hmmkay?" And then it turns out that everything surrounding the Box is a Evil Bad Federation Plot that stretches all the way back to the beginning of the Universal Century, and the only reason things somewhat fell apart by 0100 is that one of the key players in the game of space thrones had a crisis of conscience. If not for that, then the Federation would still persist being a club for the elites who are all bad people and have always been bad so of cooooooourse Zeon/NeoZeon/Zeon Remnants would have no choice but to eventually come into existence in pursuit of a forever war against anyone who doesn't think like them. It's stupid, and not even the first time a UC story retroactively positions Zeon as being a reaction of victims, swayed by charismatic leaders and the evil deeds of the Federation. It just happens to be more egregious about it than things like Zeta or CCA. At some point, the "conditions" supposedly fostered by the corrupt Federation no longer matter, because the hate that Zeon embodies had become its own, self-perpetuating nightmare that there is no real safe, comfortable solution to. Some people think that this happened late in the UC timeline, but I'd argue that this mindset starts as early as the day the Principality was established. By that point, there is NOTHING the Federation can do that would satisfy the Zabis or their adherents. No amount of reform would be good enough, and the Principality was never interested in co-existence with the Federation and its citizens. They certainly weren't expecting reform, and the Zabis were practically hoping the Federation would provide more excuses to justify a massive military build up. And those that weren't provided, they were more than willing to manufacture. The Zabis created the Principality to crush the Federation, and they didn't care about who or what got in the way of it. It wasn't until the cost grew too personal for Degwin to withstand that he faltered in any way, and by then it was too late for him to sway Girhen. He was another monster of the times grown out of control. The thing is, the Zabis more or less fostered that ideology in the people of Zeon, and there's was nothing that could be done short of going into the past and assassinating them before they could ever gain power. In particular, the youthful spacenoid elite were being bred and trained into living, drinking, breathing this ideology. There's a very chilling sequence in Origin where Dolze and Girhen address incoming military cadets. Girhen, being Girhen, goes on a long tirade about how these children are The Elite, the Chosen, the Vanguard Against The Enemy. It is their duty to RISE UP in the face of TYRANNY, hint hint General Revil is in the room he's one of THEM. A decade before the war began, they were deliberately forming a mindset in the people that they were both victims of oppression, but also they are the best of all humanity and they can and will crush those who stand in their way. DamnGlitch posted:I agree with this all except it's definitely warporn; It doesn't glorify war but it does basically stylize every aspect of war in a somewhat fetishistic way. I don't say this as a criticism. The entire duel between the aces is warporn and mechporn through and through. The bit where Cornelius is begging for the Zeon to surrender, there's a huge amount of effort that goes into the set up and actual moment where the mobile suit puts its carefully targeted beam saber through the hull is also warporn of a different sort. And I would even argue the kids in the mobile suits getting iced by the better trained, more experienced soldiers is still war porn. Even as horrible as the deaths actually are, a significant aspect to those scenes is the mobile suits themselves. The suits that are dying and the ones doing the killing, they are the real focus. Io, in his first appearance, gives us that lovingly animated shot of his mobile suit's verniers going nuts as he rocks out to his jazz music. It was a creepy and awesome sequence.
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Dec 18, 2016 02:55
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ninjewtsu posted:Ok but as mentioned thunderbolt doesnt, which the person you're quoting is also saying I think that Thinderbolt is pretty effective at showing war as a horrible meatgrinder but it does so with really cool robot war sequences. I don't think it's a failing though, there's very little war media that doesn't have some aspects of glorification. Mostly I think the GMs and FA Gundam look really cool with the shield arms.
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Dec 18, 2016 03:31
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fivegears4reverse posted:The conditions that created Zeon are are HEAVILY influenced by the ideology of a man who was convinced people in space are evolving, while people on Earth are not. When he was killed by the Zabis, they used his death and his ideology to conclude that under no uncertain terms the people of Earth are inferior, unlike the superior spaceman. And the average Zeonic citizen ate that poo poo right up. i don't have any clue what you're trying to get here except saying zeon's bad. i don't think anyone here will say they aren't or that they were in the right to initiate a war that killed more people in a few dozen hours than are alive on earth right now. it is however also textual that the federation is inept and complacent, and in their complacency ignored the burgeoning nationalist sentiment of the sides furthest from their terrestrial comforts.
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Dec 18, 2016 05:07
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I can think of one cool robot sequence, and a whole bunch of beautifully animated sequences that are extremely uncomfortable and difficult to watch, and animated and directed and framed to be that way. A lot of effort was put into those scenes, but the result wasn't spectacle so much as a focused, well rendered depiction of the desperate last moments of some soldiers, which is really effective and I don't understand why high production value is somehow a mark against that I don't think "we spent time animating death" is really warporn. Or is that what warporn means? I'm pretty confused on the basic definition to be honest
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Dec 18, 2016 05:13
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ninjewtsu posted:I can think of one cool robot sequence, and a whole bunch of beautifully animated sequences that are extremely uncomfortable and difficult to watch, and animated and directed and framed to be that way. A lot of effort was put into those scenes, but the result wasn't spectacle so much as a focused, well rendered depiction of the desperate last moments of some soldiers, which is really effective and I don't understand why high production value is somehow a mark against that It seems to be pretty hard to nail down when it's anywhere between "No definitely not warporn" to "definitely war porn." You might not be able to define it easily, but you'll know it when you see it. Which I think was also used to explain what exactly "robot" meant. There's also a lot of debate on what exactly it means to glorify war and whether it's possible to create a work (film, novel, etc) that does NOT in some way glorify war. I don't know if there's a definitive answer, but it's a pretty worthwhile debate. I think a narrative alone lends itself well to creating an unreal depiction of war, and it's hard to tell a story without a narrative.
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Dec 18, 2016 05:17
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Like there's very few points in thunderbolt where there's fighting happening and the intended response is "wow this is so cool!" To be honest I thought they did a good job of making visually interesting sequences that also really de-emphasized that aspect of things.
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Dec 18, 2016 05:17
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Warporn is animation or whatever that makes fighting wars look cool. This does vary from viewer to viewer though, that's why there are stories of people cheering during Apocalypse Now screenings and the like. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Dec 18, 2016 |
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Dec 18, 2016 05:17
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ninjewtsu posted:I can think of one cool robot sequence, and a whole bunch of beautifully animated sequences that are extremely uncomfortable and difficult to watch, and animated and directed and framed to be that way. A lot of effort was put into those scenes, but the result wasn't spectacle so much as a focused, well rendered depiction of the desperate last moments of some soldiers, which is really effective and I don't understand why high production value is somehow a mark against that if it has war and i don't like it it's warporn. More seriously though, I feel like "it glorifies war" is a weird accusation to throw at thunderbolt specifically, since (whether or not it does so) that's something kind of inherent to gundam and mecha war dramas in general.
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Dec 18, 2016 05:19
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Raxivace posted:Warporn is animation or whatever that makes fighting wars look cool. Yeah I think I should change my phrasing to "does this glorify war?" from "is this war porn?" which are distinct concepts, even if related. Droyer posted:if it has war and i don't like it it's warporn. I don't think I would love mobile suits nearly as much as I do if they were real. They benefit from that level of removal from reality, while still being able to use them to tell war stories.
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Dec 18, 2016 05:19
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Well I mean outside of the final duel, I wouldn't say that any of the thunderbolt fight scenes look "cool." "Good," sure, because they spent a lot of time and effort on animating them, but it's very directed towards achieving a very negative emotional response. I guess you could call the designs warporn, or shots of the robots that don't involve fighting.
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Dec 18, 2016 05:21
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muike posted:I don't think I would love mobile suits nearly as much as I do if they were real. They benefit from that level of removal from reality, while still being able to use them to tell war stories. Yeah, same.
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Dec 18, 2016 05:22
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A mecha show, to some degree, is going to be warporn because mecha are inherently designed to be cool and interesting. Even the ones that do their damndest to be low-key like VOTOMS still have extremely cool robots. It is the execution that changes things. 0080 has some of the best mecha designs in the franchise and uses them very effectively but it's still a show which can't be called war porn because as effectively as it is used it is designed to make the battles uncomfortable and the outcomes tragic. You're not watching the fights and going "Man, that is awesome. i want to pilot a Zaku!!" and in fact the protagonist is someone who goes from feeling that way to watching two of his friends brutally slaughter each other.
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Dec 18, 2016 05:23
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I always looked a little askance at how bad the pre-OYW Federation's supposed corruption and indifference was on a systemic level. The fact that Zeon launched a war for colonial independence and all of the other major colony sides either remained loyal to the Federation or expressed neutrality - to the point where Zeon's very first war objective was slaughtering their fellow colonists to use their homes as ballistic missiles - suggests that the day to day state of affairs on the colonies in general wasn't really one of unlivable oppression. The Zeon uprising was based around the philosophy of a crazed political radical basically ranting about the genetic superiority of those raised in space before he died and his philosophy was co-opted for political gain by the Zabis rather than an outcry for equal rights or economic privileges. We see a lot of corruption and assholery in the later Federation such as the Titans, but I'm not entirely convinced that the pre-OYW Federation was all that bad. Even the Origin mostly just portrays incompetent Feddie officers as arrogant morons rather than outright malicious.
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Dec 18, 2016 05:25
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 I will always be glad for the existence of this.
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Dec 18, 2016 05:27
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i know thge originator of that will appreciate the jpg artifacting
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Dec 18, 2016 05:28
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Kanos posted:I always looked a little askance at how bad the pre-OYW Federation's supposed corruption and indifference was on a systemic level. The fact that Zeon launched a war for colonial independence and all of the other major colony sides either remained loyal to the Federation or expressed neutrality - to the point where Zeon's very first war objective was slaughtering their fellow colonists to use their homes as ballistic missiles - suggests that the day to day state of affairs on the colonies in general wasn't really one of unlivable oppression. The Zeon uprising was based around the philosophy of a crazed political radical basically ranting about the genetic superiority of those raised in space before he died and his philosophy was co-opted for political gain by the Zabis rather than an outcry for equal rights or economic privileges. Admittedly it's been a while, but the feeling I got from watching the original show was that Deikun was supposed to be a good person, and dictators usurping him being a heightened level of tragedy to the whole thing. Much like a lot of the bad stuff the federation did, his fanaticism is something that was invented later and retconned in. Also Newtypes are explicitly real and explicitly A Good Thing.
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Dec 18, 2016 05:35
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I can believe in the Federation's corruption and such on account of it being A Government.
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Dec 18, 2016 06:05
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StalkofWheat posted:
Like I don't think Amuro ever leaves his room and gets over himself if Char's squadron never comes to Side 7. It's kind of a contradictory message in a way- "War is bad, but it can make you a better, more mature person for having experienced it". I'm guessing a lot of nerds want the potential for self-growth and therefore kind of willingly overlook the horror of that first part.
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Dec 18, 2016 06:13
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Raxivace posted:I think part of the issue isn't just that these shows have a "war is bad" message that people miss, but that a lot of characters (And societies even, in some of the shows) in Gundam seemingly need war in order to mature. I don't think that war is ever actually good for anyone in gundam. It forces them to mature but it often ends up breaking them in a variety of ways. Nobody who is a pilot in Gundam ever comes out of it really BETTER for the experience except for G Gundam and maybe Setsuna.
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Dec 18, 2016 06:28
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ImpAtom posted:A mecha show, to some degree, is going to be warporn because mecha are inherently designed to be cool and interesting. Even the ones that do their damndest to be low-key like VOTOMS still have extremely cool robots. It is the execution that changes things. I know that we all sit in drum circles and praise 0080 pretty much daily, but man. 0080 does things right. The standard accusation for Gundam is that it goes "War is bad! Now watch as the good guys shoot the bad guys with cool lasers while yelling about peace, solving all war forever!" 0080 banks hard in the opposite direction. It treats war as a necessary evil, with every named pilot fighting to protect innocent lives and the characters who give A Message treating soldiering as a potentially honest and even occasionally noble profession. Bernie makes a point to tell Al not to blame the Gundam pilot, even though he thinks it's just Joe Fed instead of the woman he's falling for, because he's just a guy trying to do his job. You're encouraged to think of Hardy, Bernie, and Chris as heroes, people who put their lives on the line for those who can't, not just cogs in the war machine. But in the end, their heroism doesn't matter, because war is horrible and doesn't give any particular fucks about you. The colony is saved by what might as well be blind chance from our viewpoint, and all Bernie and Hardy's heroism, cunning, and sacrifice did was get good people killed. Mobile suits exist to make large quantities of people very loving dead, and although sometimes the miserable state of this fallen world means a lot of people need to be dead so they can't do the same to you, it's still something to be avoided, not celebrated. Thunderbolt, meanwhile, has a nihilism to it that, to the extent it's anti-war, comes from the exact opposite angle. War in the Pocket has deaths be incidentally pointless, and never meaningless. Every body hitting the floor hurts someone else. Every sacrifice says something about the soul offering it. In Thunderbolt, death isn't confirmed to be pointless, but it's meaningless. The Thunderbolt sector is where a few more of the damned are thrown at each other until they stop moving. Although it may influence the war (unlike War In The Pocket which confirms repeatedly that none of the actions in the show changed anything for Amuro and company) the people in it are too broken for any kind of peace. To go in for metaphor, War in the Pocket is a painting of a gorgeous, bustling cityscape with a ugly gash torn through it with a combat knife. Thunderbolt is just a carved up canvas.
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Dec 18, 2016 06:30
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ImpAtom posted:I don't think that war is ever actually good for anyone in gundam. It forces them to mature but it often ends up breaking them in a variety of ways. Nobody who is a pilot in Gundam ever comes out of it really BETTER for the experience except for G Gundam and maybe Setsuna. Pretty much everyone who survives to the end of G-Reco comes out of it a better person
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Dec 18, 2016 06:34
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Guy Goodbody posted:Pretty much everyone who survives to the end of G-Reco comes out of it a better person While that is true it kind of isn't because of war itself except insomuch as they learn that war is pretty loving awful and they want no part of it.
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Dec 18, 2016 06:35
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Raxivace posted:
Amuro becomes a murder machine who is so terrified of what the war did to him that he regressed and hid on Earth's surface for years. He also failed to have any meaningful relationships, with anyone who loved him either abandoning him or dying. And he ends up dying preventing an apocalypse, only for the world to continue being lovely after he made the ultimate sacrifice. Amuro is the posterchild for war destroying youth and loving people up
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Dec 18, 2016 06:40
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ImpAtom posted:While that is true it kind of isn't because of war itself except insomuch as they learn that war is pretty loving awful and they want no part of it. one thing I like about Gundam is that the people who end up okay seem to be the ones that just go "gently caress this" and leave it's why I can't bring myself to hate 08th's ending and like kamille's "nah gently caress it i'm out" novel ending e: judau's life quality improved immensely immediately after he left too e2: i thought this was more how sunrise sees gundam/gundam fans more than anything Yinlock fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Dec 18, 2016 |
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Dec 18, 2016 06:43
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Yinlock posted:i thought this was more how sunrise sees gundam/gundam fans more than anything It's responding directly to that guy at the top of the image, not sure how you can misinterpret that.
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Dec 18, 2016 06:58
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Droyer posted:It's responding directly to that guy at the top of the image, not sure how you can misinterpret that. i didn't mean the purpose of the image itself, just that that's how sunrise tends to see gundam
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Dec 18, 2016 07:04
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I mean, war is bad, but I've always felt like the war message was secondary to Tomino hating old people. Like, I think "old people ruin everything" was his main focus, and a really stupid war being waged/won by children was the best way to show that.
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Dec 18, 2016 07:23
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ImpAtom posted:I don't think that war is ever actually good for anyone in gundam. It forces them to mature but it often ends up breaking them in a variety of ways. Nobody who is a pilot in Gundam ever comes out of it really BETTER for the experience except for G Gundam and maybe Setsuna. I think Loran might have. Yeah, he went through hell, and he had to do things he really didn't want to do (I can't imagine any circumstances short of a war where Loran would have a bodycount.) but in the end he was more capable of standing up for himself, and knew his convictions could take any pressure. I also doubt he and Diana would have had any relationship beyond a congratulatory handshake if he hadn't wound up dead center for the whole mess. Don't get me wrong. Loran's life without the war would have still been pretty drat good, and even with the happy ending, the war was a major net negative, but a lot of the personal happy endings only came about because of how people mingled in the worst circumstances.
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Dec 18, 2016 07:29
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A big part of turn a is that the war wasn't inevitable and the thrust was in trying to end it before it got larger. An acceptable and peaceful return of mooninites to earth was what most people wanted, and how the series ends. If it wasn't for the people actively courting a war in search of ways to increase their own power or just because war is fun Loran would have probably ended up with sochie though, assuming he ended up in the same place on landing.
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Dec 18, 2016 07:44
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