Aldo Salt

@MichaelFKane ...but the more important statistic, I feel, is that Japanese media has more home-grown mecha franchises than the US does. Meaning that Japanese culture has more works of "super robot" media while still outnumbering US culture when it comes to "real robot" media.

@MichaelFKane I do wonder. When I think about American Mecha IPs, what comes immediately to mind is Battletech (which draws heavily from the Japan-made Macross and Fang of the Sun Dougram shows), followed by Transformers and Pacific Rim, which are more "super robot" coded (cont).

Okay I'll say it. Western Mech designs are way cooler than Eastern Mecha. For the record I have zero connection to either of these franchises and am not really interested in the genre in general, but the lumbering war machine is much cooler than human shaped robot with spikes. 🤷‍♂️

@Razgrizone0097 @armoredcoreSIX No lie, I once took part in a Super Robot Wars Journal RP where I played a Jade Falcon Mechwarrior who got conscripted into the Gurren Brigade. It was awesome!

@armoredcoreSIX Comparing a MadCat to Gurenn Lagann of all things is just stupid as well. They're pretty much on the extreme opposite ends of mechs.

bro done kicked the biggest beehive 🤣

It’s hard to overstate how extraordinary this is. Aid organization trucks are all lined up and ready to enter and Israel has not allowed them into Gaza for ~75 days. There is no way to describe this as anything other than the active, intentional, planned starvation of a people.

Read this. It's remarkable. The UN is begging - literally begging - Israel to allow it to deliver to Gaza 160,000 pallets of food aid it has ready to go. Israel will not allow that. There is only one inescapable conclusion: Israel is deliberately starving Gaza to death.

@MichaelFKane It feel like the same false dichotomy of "western RPGs and JRPGs," if that makes any sense? Western media has plenty of RPGs with turn-based battles and preset characters, while Japanese/Chinese/SEA media has plenty of real-time combat games with character customization...

@MichaelFKane I'm fully fine with your aesthetic likes, but I think that labeling "real robots" as Western and "super robots" as Eastern is a false paradigm. Japanese media is full of bulky, practical war mechs, and American media has plenty of mecha that break the laws of physics (cont).

@BarreraSabay @BasedLEDA That's a good point...! ...although that does make me wonder how travel between Earth and cislunar space works in this timeline: Side 6 and the other colonies are theoretically rogue states to the EF. Casual trips to Earth might be extremely difficult/expensive.

@BasedLEDA Funniest thing imo is that most of this shit could be skipped if one of them remember that sea biologist still exist (should still be a job). "Swimming in the Earth's sea... Y'know You could be a marine biologist and BE in the sea swimming and learning stuff about jellyfishes..."

I understand where Machu's mother is coming from. I also understand that she wishes for nothing but a bright, happy future for her daughter, someone so special that she works hard to give her everything she needs to fulfill her dreams and pursue a proper career. But this isn't what Machu wants. Not all kids have the same goals. Machu doesn't want to become a doctor or an engineer. She's a simple minded girl who wants to go to Earth and live under a real sky. She wants to feel what it's like to swim in the ocean. And maybe that's why she wants to become a jellyfish.. because they're free, and she's caged. Her mother needs to understand that, but unfortunately, she cares more about society than what her daughter wants. She's a good mother, but she needs to try to understand her daughter and what she really wants. Society will always judge you no matter what, anyway. To hell with society and social standards. Let your daughter become a jellyfish and come marry me, Ms. Tamaki.

@friendrashkin @RefinedPopulist @gaulicsmith Huh. That's right. The EU did try a "somehow, Palpatine returned" plot twist way before Disney did... ...and if I remember correctly, it came across as weak back then too?

@RefinedPopulist @gaulicsmith about six months during Palpatine's return and about seven years under Roan Fel and Darth Krayt. Not very serious

Realistic Star Wars would be the Empire collapsing into squabbles runt-kingdoms a-la the Foundarion Series by Asimov but of course then the heroes wouldn’t win

@JokeStarRE @CoachSaysGoLeft A guy with a single neglectful parent who desperately tries to please the people around him vs. a girl who has a single normal, if fussy, parent who doesn't give a s**t about other people's feelings? ...yeah that makes sense. (To clarify, I dig both characters, flaws and all)

@CoachSaysGoLeft she's the complete opposite of shinji lol

I like that GQuuuuuuX isn't afraid to make Machu look like an insanely unlikeable asshole

@chewedupdogtoy @whenwehaveeyes Ever seen Hidden Figures, my dude? Or read any articles about Hypatia or Ada Lovelace?

@whenwehaveeyes Asking a woman to understand history is tantamount to asking her to utilize math

Unless you’re descended from pure aristocracy, your female ancestors worked harder than many men do today. Smarten up, you’re not a wilting flower.

@ChrisAlvino I struggled with a similar thing back in college, i.e. I was tempted to avoid taking classes that were hard or outside of my speciality so my GPA would stay safe. In the end, I prioritized learning and challenging myself...but then, I didn't have student loans to worry about.

Looking back, it was probably my autism that prevented me from buying into these social pressures. I truly stopped giving AF about my GPA. I ONLY took the hardest classes that interested me, even though everyone (including school counselors and administrators) advised against it

This, to me, has been the inevitable end game of Western schooling practices, even before genAI was introduced. I've been speaking about this since I was a teenager, and seeing how the current educational systems were hurting my peers

@PengPengROC I'd recommend the Radahn Foot soldier helmet or the helmet from the Scaled Set to really pull off a cool Winged Hussar look.

I spent hours collecting for this guy's set but I never got his helmet and then six hours later I realized he had no head. Am I stupid ?

@AlgisKun @JellyfishGalaxi Considering that Gihren and Kycillla, the two Zabi-est Zabis that ever Zabied, are still alive in the GquuuX timeline, there's definitively going to be some oppression to fight against down the road...

@JellyfishGalaxi Difference here is that the oppressive environment that Kamille was in sparks the fire that quickly spirals out of control and that's in Ep1. GQu goes "Yea Zeon won the OYW, now what" so far the story is still missing that wrench that needs to be thrown and were 4 eps in.

Machu is a Kamille. She's a very priviliged girl that feels suffocated by the system and is willing to look down, Les Mis style, because she feels she can find freedom that way. She's not particularly complicated, just out of her depth. That's what makes her relatable, imo

@blacktron611 @Zobasalt @Jax277 ...but I'm not a killjoy, so I'll say that I feel that mecha technology is cool and should be pursued! Not to make weapons of war, but for stuff like construction, exploration, search and rescue, and, of course, combat sports

@blacktron611 @Zobasalt @Jax277 The killjoy rebuttal to the above would be that if technology existed to make mobile suits viable (neural interfaces, lightweight materials/synthetic muscles, super-compact generators, etc), you might as well use that tech on your tanks/fighter jets... (cont.)

I like how gelgoog calves were designed to hold fuel tanks Pretty neat

@jerkus110 I also dig how her internal conflict is an inversion of Suletta's conflict from WfM: instead of being an unnervingly obedient child trying to please a sinister, neglectful mom, she's a rebellious punk who takes her normal decent mom for granted.

Machu is so interesting as a character, because she's kinda a pretentious brat. She's going through the typical "gifted teenager" arc of hating her loving (if overworked) mom, crushing on an artsy bad boy, and inserting herself into the lives of desperate but "authentic" people

@blacktron611 @Zobasalt @Jax277 ...and tried to justify mech combat in that setting anyway with stuff like Minovsky particles, lunar titanium, Newtypes, and so on.

@blacktron611 @Zobasalt @Jax277 All good points! Evaluating the physics of UC Gundam is always tricky. On one hand, combat mechs are implausible. On the other hand, MSG was made by creators who knew what realistic space colonization/space combat would look like (cont.)...

@CypressDahlia I would genuinely be impressed if I ran into a person who believed in a "might-is-right" ethical philosophy and also believed that they belonged in the 'weak' category. Not holding my breath...

"I believe in a might-is-right world where the weak are controlled by the strong." "I'm gonna slap the shit out of you." "Wait you can't do that in the might-is-right world where the weak are controlled by the strong! We have very strict Reddit debate rules!"