Seto Kaiba

Okay guys... you've made it perfectly clear that you haven't forgotten all of the stupid, antagonistic stuff that Pizza the Hutt did during his tenure on Robotech.com and RobotechX.com, and that's fine. However, if all we're going to do is sit around and endlessly berate him for his past mistakes, then we're not really even giving him a chance to prove to us that he's changed (or is trying to change) his ways and wants to become a contributing member of the community. It seems a bit hypocritical for you guys to make a fuss about how we should give MEMO the opportunity to contribute when all he did was troll, and then raise a fuss when Pizza comes here, apologizes for his past behavior, and shows a genuine interest in learning more about Macross? As you might well have guessed, the moral of today's sermon is "Stop bitching and give the kid a chance". If we don't, and we ostracize him for past mistakes or being misled by Harmony Gold, then we're no better than the witch-hunting bellends on Robotech.com who started this whole mess. Now if we're going to tear into someone, tear into someone who's currently doing something to deserve it... may I suggest the "creative" staff at Harmony Gold as a starting point?

Honestly, I don't think it really matters whether or not Pizza knew what was going to come of his allegedly moderator-sanctioned behavior on Robotech.com. What's done is done, and frankly no amount of post facto finger-pointing will change the past. What matters now is what Pizza does next. So long as he's acknowledged his error and is making an honest effort to modify his behavior, we ought to give him a chance. If he's going to try to become a contributing member here, it's counterproductive to hold a grudge against him or shun him for his past mistakes. I'm not saying we should forget what he's done... but we should at least give him a chance. No, it doesn't look like they do. One would imagine if they had the merchandising rights to Macross: Flashback 2012 they would've used the actual VF-4 Lightning III design in Robotech: From the Stars instead of trying to come up with a transformation for the VF-X-4 model from that one episode of Super Dimension Fortress Macross.

's one of the reasons anyone who knows him will have a very difficult time believing that he turned down a moderator position at Robotech.com, and that he frequently advises the current moderators. For at least as long as I've known him, Rhade's always been a wannabe-moderator... the sort of member who, given half a chance, will pop up in any thread he sees a Terms of Use violation in and start lecturing people as though he was the one in charge. I don't doubt that if he'd ever actually gotten a mod post, he probably would've lost it right away by going on a banning spree. Assuming someone here can actually make something intelligible out of Captain Caps-Lock's usual gibberish... hearing his take on things is no good if all we get out of it is a bunch of fractured English typed all in caps. One thing I'll never understand is why Robotech fans keep trying to insist that Robotech is epic... it doesn't fit most of the characteristics of epic storytelling. It's not epic storytelling if you change the cast thrice over in the course of the story. Robotech is no epic... it's three pseudo-related shorter stories run one right after the other. As Gubaba put it... Legend of Galactic Heroes is epic, Robotech is just long.

All is not lost. As I said, Mr March has a copy of the site stored locally on his hard drive, so if briscojr84 doesn't want to renew the domain registration on new-un-spacy.com, he can still get the site put up somewhere else just as long as it'd take to upload the files. 's not lost... it's just temporarily unavailable. It'll be back.

Isn't this getting needlessly messianic? Somehow, all I can see myself doing is something very much akin to Saint Dogbert, Patron Saint of Technology... running into the room, waving a scepter, and shouting "OUT, DEMONS OF STUPIDITY!". EDIT: I'm totally using the above image as my new avatar... hehehehe

Like I said, BGP does some strange things sometimes... it may be that if you clear your browse cache you may no longer be able to access the site. I double-checked azrael's findings and the domain record expired 2/13/2010, so the domain doesn't seem to have been renewed. Doubt that'll do any good... does anyone know the site server's actual IP address?

Isn't it just? Honestly, until he started in with the drama queen act I really had no beef with Rhade. He might've been a bit high and mighty, and he was DEFINITELY a moderator-wannabe, but he could usually be relied upon to debate Robotech in at least a semi-logical fashion... though he was profoundly averse to P Thomassen's philosophy of using the OSM as one of the most authoritative sources of information in Robotech. Seeing him turn his formerly one-time thing of making huge, obviously false stories to exaggerate his influence and knowledge is kind of disconcerting... I didn't think he'd go that far. Truth be told, I'm used to Rhade acting a little more reasonable and mature than this... this hostility from him is kind of a surprise. An amusing surprise, but a surprise nonetheless. According to Tommy, you get MAGIC! According to reality, you get mediocre storytelling by committee. You'd be right... that happens in issue #1 of Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles. The Invid Regent's ugly-ass ship from Robotech II: the Sentinels shoots the bow off of the red turd SDF-3, forcing the REF to rebuild it over the course of a year in Tirol's orbit. I wouldn't go THAT far. Rhade's a bit of a blowhard, but Doug's just plain juvenile most of the time. Makes a sick amount of sense once you're familiar with MEMO's habit of using people, doesn't it? Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo- *drops to his knees* -ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! I don't wanna! I just got away from all that bullshit! Y'can't make me go back! Y'can't make me! Note who UEG credits for the "decision" to lock/delete the old thread... "The RobotechX Administration"... in other words... MEMO1DOMINION. The news that Harmony Gold was putting the squeeze on yet another fan project didn't make Harmony Gold look good, so MEMO couldn't let it stay up where everyone could see it. 's cool, just keep things anger-free and everybody'll have a good time. This thread really isn't that hostile (most of the time)... we just come in to shake our heads at the craziness in the Robotech fandom every now and again.

Dunno what's become of Mr. March, but I haven't seen him online in at least a few months. Either way, the domain name expiring wasn't his fault, as he wasn't the person who owned it in the first place. He was just sort of borrowing space on briscojr84's generally defunct U.N. Spacy Quartermaster's Tactical Database site. It looks like bridcojr84, who hasn't been on MacrossWorld since ~November, probably either forgot about it or deliberately let his web hosting service expire. I've e-mailed both of 'em, so we'll see what comes of it. If I can get ahold of March, M3 might get a new (at least temporary) home elsewhere on one of my servers. *shrug* The border gateway protocol does strange things sometimes...

Methinks I made Rhade mad when I criticized his "MacrossWorld is all haters all the time" stance... (On a side note, I received a very gracious "thank you" e-mail from the guy Rhade was misleading over on Robotech.com, good on that guy for asking the tough questions and not settling for weak or bullshit answers.) Comments in blue are mine, comments in red are Rhade's responses in an e-mail dated 2/13/2010 2:55pm EST. Caution, beware of excessive butthurt on Rhade's part in the following quotes. PTH, you might wanna just skip this post altogether, as he REALLY seems to hate you.

fart that noise. I'm enjoying my peace and quiet. Well, the obvious answer is that if Tommy acknowledged all of Macross's achievements in the past twenty-five years, it would make Robotech's few achievements in that same span seem uncomfortably pathetic by comparison. In the past twenty-five years, Robotech has had just one weekly TV series that consistently gets poor ratings, one moderately successful direct-to-DVD movie, one movie that bombed in test screenings, two weekly TV sequels that failed in production, two mediocre video games, some low quality comics that didn't sell, and a handful of mediocre toys. Now compare that to what Macross did in that same 25 year span between 1985 and 2010: two more highly successful weekly TV shows, three more movies, six OVAs, plenty of video game titles, several high-quality manga titles, and more merchandise than one can comfortably shake a stick at. Easy answer: The only thing that really holds the "Sagas" of Robotech together is the magical flower fuel macguffin they call protoculture. Unless it's scarce and/or imperiled in some way, they might as well not even bother calling the new feature Robotech. Because everything and everyone in Robotech revolves around protoculture, unless they throw their only remaining supply into harm's way they have no way to move the plot forward without it effectively turning into Mospeada II: the Search for More Money. Fighting over protoculture is pretty much the only primary plot device Robotech has. Now exactly how the "protoculture matrix" got onto the SDF-3 in the first place is anybody's guess... as in Robotech II: the Sentinels it was supposed to still be in the wreckage of the SDF-1 back on Earth...

It's exactly this sort of attitude that Macross is superfluous or inferior to Robotech that Harmony Gold has been fostering for years to keep the Robotech faithful faithful. Ultimately, what's kept the Robotech franchise limping along since the late 80s hasn't been the skills of Harmony Gold's creative staff or Robotech's merits as a story separate and distinct from the Japanese originals... it's been the ignorance of its fans. By keeping the fans ignorant of the show's origins, then turning around and making wild claims about how the originals were flawed, inferior shows that were improved by their inclusion in Robotech and that their sequels aren't worth looking into, Harmony Gold is actively maintaining a culture of ignorance among Robotech's fans. Harmony Gold's reasoning seems to be that if they keep Robotech fans in the dark about the Macross franchise, downplay its success and popularity, and keep Macross merchandise out of the US, they can minimize the danger of Robotech fans leaving the franchise and keep the fanatically loyal fans hanging on their every word even after they fail again and again to deliver on their promises.

No dice... I tried everything up to and including purging my computer's DNS resolver cache and the site still doesn't load. So far, all I'm getting is a "Server not found" error, as are several friends of mine in different parts of the continental US.

I got nothin'... you sure?

Even if the parent site is down indefinitely, the material itself won't be lost. Mr. March's working copy is probably still safe on his hard drive, and if need be he knows he can always contact me and I'll get him a subdomain on my site with unlimited bandwidth for his use.

Good grief... what is it about Robotech that brings out the crazies? I'm betting it's the 20 years "the faithful" had to wait just to get a single half-assed movie. You don't get this kind of stupid poo in fandoms where the creators can get a product to market in a reasonable time.

Highly doubtful... I've experienced this a few times in the past... my guess would be it's regularly scheduled maintenance at their webhost. It'll probably be working again in a few hours. I'm not getting any response from the main part of the site either.

Not entirely surprising, thought Rhade does claim that he's sick of the "purists" on both sides and did all his own research. For reasons unknown, he's thoroughly convinced that this entire site is a monument to anti-Robotech sentiment, and that those of us who've done the research are twisting the truth to make Harmony Gold look bad. Kind of nonsensical, IMO... since Harmony Gold has never really needed anybody's help to make themselves look bad. Just look at their track record for screwing over fan projects out of spite. Honestly, what the Robotech fans need now is the kind of solidarity some of them had back in the early 90s when the promise of new Robotech animation was a distant "maybe" on the horizon and the steady trickle of comics and novels, regardless of quality, were what kept the fandom moving forward. These days, the fans are so busy looking for reasons to banish each other over opinions and personal preferences (Purists, Mckinneyists, Spanglerists, etc.) that the fanbase is slowly tearing itself apart and driving people away. A problem exacerbated by the very people who are, at least on paper, charged with stopping it... the Robotech.com moderators. Yeah, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. Generally speaking, the problem is that as the Robotech fanbase has been gradually whittled down to a hard core of devoted fans by Harmony Gold's indifference towards the brand and their inability to keep what little momentum they achieve... and that the remaining fans tend to react with overt hostility when they see someone who says they like the originals better than Robotech, which seems to be interpreted by them as "betraying the cause". I guess in a way they're right too, since every person who gives up on the franchise out of frustration is one less person to buy the products that keep the Robotech franchise limping along. Yeah, it looks pretty awful... but the sad-yet-hilarious part is that in terms of the CG model quality there really isn't that big a difference between that fan-film trailer and Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. Honestly, I feel kind of bad for the guys at UEG Productions, because they don't realize what they're doing (and have been doing for YEARS) is a total boondoggle. Not only are they apparently playing to the most hideously unpopular part of Robotech (Southern Cross), but they've managed to set themselves up for a fall by drawing the attention of Harmony Gold, who have put their foot down on anything that might outshine their current offerings. It certainly doesn't help that a lot of their CG models are ugly as hell, adding all kinds of extra detail and angles where none should be... presumably to cover their less-than-stellar texture work, and in some cases removing details from a lot of places where detail should be... the Zor/Tiresian ships being reduced from overly-busy designs to little more than a collection of floating elongated hexagons with one or two step pyramids on top.

Nah, if you listen to blokes like Maverick_LSC and Doug Bendo, who clearly know me much better than I know myself, I'm just here to enjoy the suffering of others between eating babies and causing earthquakes in third world countries.

The odds of which are practically nil... Exactly zero. Because the VF-1 design itself is copyrighted property of Big West, Harmony Gold and its licensees can't use the design in derivative works (new motion pictures) without obtaining license to do so from Big West. Only in the most general terms... you won't see anything recognizable as Macross, and you may notice omission of key terms like "Zentradi" as well.

In the Robotech fandom, who needs enemies when you have your fellow fans?

Well... it's certainly possible that other mass-produced Macross-class ships were reassigned to escort the long-range research fleets after the Megaroad colonization fleets they were originally tasked with defending located a suitable planet and established a settlement. At the moment I don't think the fates of the other SDFNs have been revealed, but it's still at least somewhat plausible that others would've been reassigned if the risks were high enough. The Global was likely assigned to the 117th Research Fleet because the fleet was setting out to research a particularly dangerous subject (the Vajra) and the U.N. Spacy felt that the extra firepower would be needed. None that I'm aware of... Since the creators of Macross like to play mix and match with designs from the original series and DYRL, it's hard to tell exactly what's going on sometimes. However, Macross Chronicle seems to be taking the line that generally the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series is the more accurate account of Space War 1. This would make it most likely that the mass-produced Macross-class ships were modeled on the post-2012 refit of the SDF-1 Macross, which pretty much is just the DYRL version. Exactly when they started building the SDFNs isn't known (yet) but it's likely that they started sometime around the launch of the Megaroad-01, as the SDFN-01 Hayase was supposedly completed in 2013. Not sure about "thousands"... the force disposition listed for the post-Space War 1 U.N. Spacy lists 100 functional Zentradi capital ships. Presumably it was easier or more efficient to build a ship for a miclone crew and colonists rather than try to convert existing Zentradi ships for miclones. Kawamori has alluded to the use of Zentradi warships as colony ships as well, albeit with giant crews.

And you never listen when I tell you I have better things to do with my time than deliver verbal thrashings to the deluded masses on Robotech.com. Right now, forcing the ignorant inhabitants of that den of bullshit and lies to see sense ranks a little below teaching myself to play the banjo and listening to paint dry on my list of priorities. One could argue that... but we're a much easier target to lay the blame on because we don't post our scathing criticisms of Robotech and Harmony Gold from behind the convenient veil of relative anonymity. It's a lot harder for them to ignore what we say because they can associate our remarks with an actual person. We also stand out because we don't just say "Robotech sucks", we offer a rationale to go with it. It's easy to ignore hate without context... but once an explanation for the dislike emerges it's a lot harder to discount it as irrational or petty. So... a Robotech fan who doesn't understand a situation is trying to speak about it as though he/she is an expert on every aspect of it. Business as usual. No wonder I still get at least two e-mails a week from people telling me they can't get straight answers to their questions on Robotech.com.

Logically... because they come here with the preconceived notion that we are THE ENEMY and that anything we do must ultimately involve hating on Robotech. I'd say the majority of them aren't coming here with an open mind, they're coming here looking for a reason to dislike the place so they can go back to hating on it as the ultimate source of the anti-Robotech sentiment they encounter all over the web. To them, we are the legions of the evil empire struggling to crush the last bastions of resistance in the world, and they, the Robotech fans, are the valiant rebellion struggling to free the world from our oppressive domination. It's an amusing fantasy, but fantasy is all it is.

Presumably yes... of course they're not even close to being the first fan project to have that happen. Even back in the 80s Harmony Gold was stomping all over fan projects at every opportunity. That they even thought Harmony Gold wouldn't is enough to rob me of any sympathy I might otherwise feel towards their plight. Oh its gets better... I e-mailed Rhade about his error expecting to hear it was an honest goof and he'd misremembered. Somehow, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he actually believes the provably-wrong tripe he wrote is factual, and started telling me that I was completely wrong. Among other things, he insisted that Studio Nue was "bought and absorbed" by Big West, that the "legal briefs" available on the web say that Tatsunoko was given the rights to the intellectual property of the series and that Big West only owns the rights to the story. He also repeated his claim that Macross is being kept out of the states because Harmony Gold owns the distribution rights to the entire franchise, rather than that it's being kept out by a trademark Harmony Gold filed for after the legal dispute started. He then fired back with this amusing little number: Now there's a butthurt Robotech fan who wants to keep living in a fairy-tale world. Of course, this is by the same guy who spent about six pages in the Robotech.com Lounge spinning an increasingly ridiculous yarn rather than admit that he'd made a mistake when he claimed that there was a dangerous new computer virus in circulation, which, when researched, turned out to be a five year old low-threat trojan horse. When confronted with this fact, he told everyone that it was a new variant, that the reason he knew about it before even Symantec and McAfee did was because he'd gotten the information through inside channels from back before he quit his job as a highly-paid security expert for Microsoft to become a hotel manager. (If your bullshit detector isn't redlining yet, wait a sec) When several people called "Bullshit" on that, he also claimed to be working a side job (or jobs) as a freelance viral code analyst for Microsoft, Symantec, and McAfee (all at the same time), and that they sent him viral code for analysis so he could develop countermeasures for it. Compared to that, this latest line from him really doesn't seem that bad by comparison. EDIT: I looked up Rhade's user account here. It looks like he's telling the truth when he claims he does have an account here, though he only used it for about a month after registering back in August '04. No posts, no profile views.

Another ignorant Robotech fan spews bullshit about a subject he doesn't understand... business as usual. I e-mailed the poor chap being misled by Rhade with the facts of the matter in simple, easy-to-understand terms, and also fired an e-mail off to Rhade pointing out where he went wrong and why. The fewer people misled by tripe like that, the better...