Is an Interstellar Civil-War inevitable?

[Gerli]

Having watch the event on both Frontier and Delta series, where the NUNS can't be at the level of threads emerging across the Galaxy, Do you guys think the Human Civilization is heading to the same fate as the Protoculture? We're approaching a massive Civil-War because of the incompetence of the NUNS and the growing of private military powers?

Let's have a nice thread to wildly speculate about 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, Gerli said:

Is a Interstellar Civil-War inevitable?

Sort of... in the sense that it actually already happened.

The period of increasing anti-government sentiment that occasionally erupted into armed conflicts in the 2040s and ended in 2051 with the Latence group's attempted coup d'etat on Earth in Macross VF-X2 has been dubbed the "Second Unification War" in-universe in subsequent works.  That conflict loosely mirrors the Protoculture's, with one side being in favor of more centralized government and one side being in favor of decentralizing governmental authority.  Latence, the Earth-supremacist group inside the New UN Gov't and military, were instrumental in manipulating the military into suppressing pro-autonomy movements on emigrant planets by branding them as terrorists.  They were exposed by the efforts of "rebel" groups like Black Rainbow and Vindirance, with the assistance of the VF-X Ravens and when Latence's coup attempt was foiled in 2051 the Second Unification War ended in a de facto victory for the pro-decentralization side.

[Gerli]

2 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Sort of... in the sense that it actually already happened.

 

Oh yeah... the Videogames... I always forgot those... 

So speaking about a TV Series or Movie... can a Civil War Happen across the whole Galaxy?

Edited July 18, 2020 by Gerli

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, Gerli said:

So speaking about a TV Series or Movie... can a Civil War Happen across the whole Galaxy?

Probably not for a very long time.

The galaxy is a really, mind-bogglingly massive place and humanity has only just started to explore and colonize it.  It's sparsely populated enough that there's more than enough space for anyone who doesn't want to get along to be left alone, and it's likely to stay that way for thousands of years to come.  Humanity's grasp of fold technology is improving, but it's not so good that it's easy to get across the galaxy.  Their farthest-flung settlements are said to be about ten years away from Earth by space fold.  That's a long damn trip to pick a fight.  It's also true that there are a fair number of outside threats to provide incentive to maintain a united front as well... nobody wants to repeat what happened on Earth in 2010.

We've seen or at least heard about various small civil war-type affairs like the isolated conflicts of the Second Unification War, Windermere IV's secession from the New UN Government, and Kaname Buccaneer's home planet of Divide being basically Planet Northern Ireland.

[Bolt]

Is a Interstellar Civil-War inevitable?

 

Yes. And a Zentradi singing idol is going to save us all!

31 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Humanity's grasp of fold technology is improving, but it's not so good that it's easy to get across the galaxy. 

Compared to the protoculture, isn't humanity a baby playing in a small part of a very large sand box? And humanity has only had fold technology for a minuscule amount of time as well. The protoculture had explored and habitated enough of the galaxy to pull off a "real time " war. Humanity would be lagging..

[Seto Kaiba]

15 minutes ago, Bolt said:

Compared to the protoculture, isn't humanity a baby playing in a small part of a very large sand box? And humanity has only had fold technology for a minuscule amount of time as well. The protoculture had explored and habitated enough of the galaxy to pull off a "real time " war. Humanity would be lagging..

Kinda, yeah... humanity has only colonized a few dozen planets, they don't have a very good grasp of terraforming yet, and they've only been at it for about half a century so far.  It took almost five hundred years of space colonization for the Protoculture's internal schisms to boil over into a civil war.

[sketchley]

My answer is "no", because from the available evidence: a) there have been relatively few independent movements or coups, and level-headed pragmatism tends to prevail in the long run, and b) there are far, far, far greater risks to humanity out there in the unknown—so, for the very preservation of the species, (a) happens.

[Gerli]

Maybe the threat of the thousands of rouge Zentradi fleets across the galaxy is enough to unite the Humanity?

[sketchley]

Not just Zentrādi, but the next unknown threat like the Protodevilun or Vajra.

[pengbuzz]

14 hours ago, sketchley said:

Not just Zentrādi, but the next unknown threat like the Protodevilun or Vajra.

 

Or someone like the Marduk, if you're into Macross II.

[jeniusornome]

I thought The Mardook were the protoculture In that continuity?

 

i like all of the various references to Macross II that have shown up recently. I’m actually just waiting for the next movie to have a guy named Feff in it or an idol named Ishtar. 

[Gerli]

17 hours ago, sketchley said:

Not just Zentrādi, but the next unknown threat like the Protodevilun or Vajra.

Sorry for the Off-Topic but....I'm very curious about the way you wrote "Zentrādi". It's more faithful to the original pronunciation to write that way? 

[Seto Kaiba]

41 minutes ago, Gerli said:

Sorry for the Off-Topic but....I'm very curious about the way you wrote "Zentrādi". It's more faithful to the original pronunciation to write that way? 

It's a bit more accurate to how it's written in katakana (ゼントラーディ, Ze-n-to-raa-di).  

Admittedly, there have been several different official romanizations floating around for almost as long as Macross has been a thing, including Zentradi, Zentraadi, Zentrady, and the downright impossible to spell correctly Zjentohlauedy.  Most people just write "Zentradi" because it's easiest.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, jeniusornome said:

I thought The Mardook were the protoculture In that continuity?

They're strongly implied to be the descendants of a surviving group of Protoculture, but it's never stated outright.

[sketchley]

3 hours ago, Gerli said:

Sorry for the Off-Topic but....I'm very curious about the way you wrote "Zentrādi". It's more faithful to the original pronunciation to write that way? 

Good question!  It's the modified Hepburn way of writing Japanese long vowels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization#A_+_A

As it involves copy-pasting (on my keyboard/computer), it's a bit of a pain in the butt at times...

 

Nevertheless, if you need a handy source to copy-paste from (as well as to see the original Japanese text, etc.), please refer to the Glossary/Disambiguation page I made for my Macross Translation's site: http://sdfyodogawa.mywebcommunity.org/Glossary.php

For example, Mardūk (for Marduk & Mardook).

Edited July 20, 2020 by sketchley

[jeniusornome]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

They're strongly implied to be the descendants of a surviving group of Protoculture, but it's never stated outright.

Ha! I hadn't picked up on that, but it makes the Windermereans, their eerie songs and the glowy tattoo outfit that Mikumo wears in a few scenes towards the end of the show (that looks an awful lot like Ishtar's emulator garb) even more of an MII reference than I'd initially thought.

I bet they're having fun with all that.

[pengbuzz]

Huh...wouldn't it be something if they actually found a way to link up to MII?

[camk4evr]

If you want Macross II references you might want to watch M7 again. A lot of the background music in the first few episodes come from MII.

 

[jeniusornome]

Yeah. Some of the BGM from it is used in the radio drama played through M7 Dynamite too.

MII was my first "Macross" outside of Robotech, so it will always have a special early 90s cheese anime place in my heart.

[DewPoint]

I'll go with "Yes."  In Science Fiction it is very easy to use the "self-centered bastard that only cares about furthering their own goals at the expense of the good of the group/community/population."  You can't ever fully trust Humans as they have a high potential of screwing you over because the "MacGuffin" is far too desirable.

[Lexomatic]

IMHO, the more cogent question is: Can an interstellar war make for an interesting story in a future TV series (or other medium), one with the signature elements of Macross (love story, music, fancy aircraft)? We've all seen plenty of interstellar wars -- Star Wars (mostly the Clone Wars TV series), Star Trek DS9, Babylon 5, Space Battleship Yamato, Legend of Galactic Heroes, Crest of the Stars -- but the themes they explore tend to be more political, philosophical, or pure action-oriented set piece. (The secret marriage of Anakin and Padmé isn't quite the same flavor of flirting-infatuation favored by Macross.)

Frontier and Delta show conflict on an interstellar scale, but both are initiated by small cabals and the "hot" phase is resolved quickly. What we haven't seen is a prolonged war, with entire colonized star-clusters and emigrant fleets lined up on one side or another, with hostilities and attrition that require new ship construction and troop recruitment. We also haven't seen the allied Zentraedi put to use. (Heck, we've barely seen Zentraedi mecha, apart from Ranka's off-planet concert in Frontier and the Vajra-infected troops at the start of Delta. And post-Space War I-designed models like the Variable Glaug have appeared only in games.)

Who would fight in such a war? The galaxy has numerous Zentraedi Main Fleets, leftover Protoculture prototype superweapons, Vajra (well, not anymore), Terran-clade polities, various sub-Protoculture races (all of them inferior to Earth's pre-ASS technology). But the galaxy's a big place -- is there another sub-Protoculture race that has achieved interstellar capability and hasn't been whomped by the Zentraedi? (Say, with fusion and antimatter but not the superdimension technologies that draw Zentraedi attention.) Or a non-Protoculture-derived race that either evolved in the past 500,000 years, or which even the Protoculture didn't know about. (The galaxy's a big place even for the Stellar Union.) Did the Vajra engage in uplift? If the aliens are utterly unconnected to Vajra or the Vajra-inspired Protoculture, would they lack the fold-wave biology that makes song an effective avenue of communication between species?

Edited July 21, 2020 by Lexomatic

[RedWolf]

The situation between the Protoculture and Humanity is different. The Protoculture at their height had a population of hundreds of billions. Zentradi which are their proxies were in the billions per Main Fleet and there were thousands of them. Millions of Factory Satellites pumping out war material. There are two known reasons for conflict. The Stellar Republic/Galactic Empire over extended itself to control it's territory. Cloning brought conflict. 

The Terrans are not even in the billions. Cloning has been largely stopped because of hereditary complications. Terrans do not rely on disposable proxies. While Fold Quartz monopolies are a concern new treaty restricted it's harvesting and sale. Decentralization prevents Earth from over extending itself while the Galaxy Treaty ensures those states out on the frontier has each other's back. While there are factions stewing in the background like Macross Galaxy, Lactence remnants like Fasces , and Windermere they are outnumbered and outgunned by the NUN. And there is no way these groups would unite with each other. Which is why these groups are turning to mind control as a trump card.