Why the Clans from BattleTech would make better Macross antagonists than the current Macross rouges gallery......

[cheemingwan1234]

I have a feeling that the Clans from BattleTech would make for better antagonists for Macross than the current Macross rogues lineup because they are humanity (and for a Macross cross, they would incorporate the children of the Protoculture such as the Windermerans into their group as well) that due to interstellar distances, lack of resources on their home worlds and isolation managed to evolve into a culture completely alien from their progenitors, making them a fresh take on the human-like aliens in fiction that Macross is fond of.

This would also play into the culture theme that Macross has as the Clans are biologically human (or Zolan, Zentraedi, etc in this cross ) but due to the cultural drift involved in interstellar colonization and slowness in travel due to the length needed to prepare for fold space travel , they evolved a culture that would be considered alien to mainstream culture in the New United Nations government such as the Clans' honor code (zellbringen, bidding down and issuing batchalls.... you get the idea ) being considered a violation of common sense by the rest of the NUNS but evolved due to the relative lack of resources in Clan space.

Moreover, it allows for the original idea of music being a tool of culture that is used to bridge cultural/communication gaps between different groups , more similar to that in Frontier and SDF Macross rather than in 7 or Delta where the music theme is used to handwave things such as Sprita or treating Vars Syndrome. Here, music would be used to bridge the gaps between the cultures of the the New United Nations Government and the Clans but military force still has to be used to stop the Clan Invasion once enough knowledge of how the Clans work is gained from them.

Edited September 28, 2022 by cheemingwan1234

[Seto Kaiba]

57 minutes ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

I have a feeling that the Clans from BattleTech would make for better antagonists for Macross than the current Macross rogues lineup because they are humanity (and for a Macross cross, they would incorporate the children of the Protoculture such as the Windermerans into their group as well) that due to interstellar distances, lack of resources on their home worlds and isolation managed to evolve into a culture completely alien from their progenitors, making them a fresh take on the human-like aliens in fiction that Macross is fond of.

So, I see two reasons this won't work right off the bat.

First and foremost, the Macross setting is a fundamentally optimistic one like pre-Abrams/Kurtzman Star Trek was.  It's built on the fundamental premise that communication and mutual understanding can and will end or even prevent conflicts.  Music is the franchise's chosen method for that because the series grew out of the 80's idol boom.  It isn't, and it isn't meant to be, one of those western grimdark Forever War sci-fi settings like BattleTech, Warhammer 40,000, or Robotech.

Secondly, the BattleTech setting was able to develop in the manner you describe for two main reasons that are not at all compatible with Macross's setting:

• In BattleTech, the "present day" for the story is somewhere in the mid-31st century with the furthest extent of the official timeline being somewhere in the 32nd.  Humanity's been a FTL-capable spacefaring civilization for over 900 years at that point and that span of time.  That's a lot of time for the limitations of the Kearny-Fuchida drive to give colonist cultures the opportunity to diverge from their roots and each other.  Humanity in Macross has only been an interstellar civilization for 55 years by the "present day" of Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!!.  That's just not enough time for disparate and conflicting cultures like that to develop.
• In BattleTech, the various planets colonized by humanity were able to develop independently because the limitations of the Kearny-Fuchida drive make interstellar travel of more than 30 light years logistically difficult and prohibitively time consuming.  Traveling more than 30 light years means a week's down time to recharge the drive before a second jump.  Traveling just 100 light years involves 22 days of downtime in-transit to recharge the K-F drive.  Crossing a distance of 800 light years?  191 days.  Using K-F drives to go from Ragna to Windermere starting on January 1st would get you there on July 10th if all went well.  That kind of travel limitation enables cultural distances to form from isolation, especially when faster-than-light communications are nearly as limited (not more than 50ly one-way).  The space fold technology in Macross's setting hasn't got limitations like that.  Humanity's emigrant fleets and planets are spread out across tens of thousands of light years and nevertheless are still linked by a faster-than-light internet called the Galaxy Network that allows for rapid communication and the sharing of information and cultural exports.  Fold navigation technology c.2059 makes crossing distances of hundreds of light years in a civilian starliner no more onerous than a cross-country or transatlantic direct flight by jet airliner is today and the military's are implied to be even better.  That 800 light year trip that would take a K-F drive over half a year?  The work of a couple hours to a ship in Macross.  Fold system performance isn't static either, it continues to improve as humanity gets better at synthesizing fold carbon at higher purities and is poised to improve by a factor of 10 via adoption of fold quartz in its place as on the Super Fold Booster LAI trialed.

In short, the conditions that produced the Clans in BattleTech can't occur in the Macross setting as it's been presented thus far... both because there hasn't been enough time for humanity's emigrant fleets or planets to even begin to develop their own distinct cultures the way they do in BattleTech, and because faster-than-light technology is simply THAT much better in Macross that planets and fleets aren't likely to end up isolated enough to become clannish about it for any significant length of time.

 

Mind you, the Human vs. Human thing has already been done TWICE.  Macross VF-X2 depicted what later came to be called in-universe as the Second Unification War, where the logistical problems caused by the central government trying to exert more and more direct authority over worlds half a galaxy away led to a brief civil war.  Then, of course, there was the prequel Macross Zero depicting the original Unification Wars on Earth.  I guess it's more like four if you want to count Macross R and Macross 30... which respectively did plots involving a remnant of the forces that attempted to overthrow the government in 2051 attacking an emigrant fleet and a rogue New UN Spacy special forces unit teaming up with pirates to distract the military while they attempt to alter history using a temporal weapon the Protoculture left.  Or five if you wanna throw Macross E on there since its plot involves a human corporation trying to weaponize Var syndrome to take over a planet.

 

57 minutes ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

slowness in travel due to the length needed to prepare for fold space travel

As noted above, not a problem present in Macross.  Emigrant fleets take a long time between long-distance fold jumps of hundreds or thousands of light years so pilot fleets from their escort detail can explore nearby star systems for usable/valuable resources and potentially habitable worlds.  Not because they have to.

 

57 minutes ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Moreover, it allows for the original idea of music being a tool of culture that is used to bridge cultural/communication gaps between different groups , more similar to that in Frontier and SDF Macross rather than in 7 or Delta where the music theme is used to handwave things such as Sprita or treating Vars Syndrome. Here, music would be used to bridge the gaps between the cultures of the the New United Nations Government and the Clans but military force still has to be used to stop the Clan Invasion once enough knowledge of how the Clans work is gained from them.

... I hate to burst your bubble there, but Plus and 7 both introduced the idea of using music for more than just music.  Frontier built on what was laid down in 7 and refined in Zero, and Delta only very slightly expanded upon what was set down in Frontier.  There's no handwave going on, these are core mechanics the series spends a fair amount of time and exposition on.

[JB0]

8 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

better antagonists for Macross than the current Macross rogues lineup 

Macross doesn't really HAVE a rogues gallery. That sort of concept requires, fundamentally, a failure to come to an understanding, and Macross is largely more hopeful than that.

The franchise doesn't have recurring antagonists, because today's nemesis is tomorrow's friend. 

 

[TehPW]

Wait? Whut? The Clans are supposed to be all Black Hat wearing A**holes (save Clan Wolf, who wear very fashionable GREY hats, per Stackpole Fiat as i understand). You want to even try to interduce Battletech story concepts into the Macross extended universe?

*cracks knuckles* I'll just let TEX, from the Black Pants Legion explain the Inner Sphere (and everything else). WARNING: pROFAnity is used, liberally.

(185) BattleTech 101: The Great Houses of the Inner Sphere - YouTube

(185) Battletech/Mechwarrior Lore : The Amaris Civil War / Collapse of Star League - Part 1 - YouTube

(185) Battletech/Mechwarrior Lore : The Amaris Civil War / Collapse of Star League - Part 2 - YouTube

Seta is extremely accurate (and i'm shocked that he's familiar with the setting). The only way a UNS/NUNS society could develop a direction tangent equal to what The Clans requires a story macguffin: a misfold into the past. Even then, you need at lot of things to happen... Actually that idea would be funny: A society based on Destroids? 

[TehPW]

14 hours ago, JB0 said:

Macross doesn't really HAVE a rogues gallery. That sort of concept requires, fundamentally, a failure to come to an understanding, and Macross is largely more hopeful than that.

The franchise doesn't have recurring antagonists, because today's nemesis is tomorrow's friend. 

 

That's actually a common theme in Battletech (or any fictional setting) but you are kinda wrong. The Zentradi, in general, are a reoccurring threat (often only mentioned in passing or implied) as well as the Anti-UN (later known as General Galaxy). What Macross lacks, compared to, say, Star Wars, is it's Palpatine and Darth Vader; Micronauts's Baron Karza; Stefan Amaris or The Word of Blake faction from Battletech. It's never gone particularly political, mostly because it was a japanese IP meant to sell toys and model kits. Yes, SW & BT/MW sell figurines/minuatures too but both settings have far more political polish than Macross ever had... Now i dont know if that's good or bad...

Edited September 29, 2022 by TehPW
usually Battletech being mentioned in bad terms here on MW?

[Bolt]

Completely incompatible. Battletech would be a sideline footnote, at best, within the Macross universe. 

[cheemingwan1234]

5 hours ago, TehPW said:

Wait? Whut? The Clans are supposed to be all Black Hat wearing A**holes (save Clan Wolf, who wear very fashionable GREY hats, per Stackpole Fiat as i understand). You want to even try to interduce Battletech story concepts into the Macross extended universe?

*cracks knuckles* I'll just let TEX, from the Black Pants Legion explain the Inner Sphere (and everything else). WARNING: pROFAnity is used, liberally.

(185) BattleTech 101: The Great Houses of the Inner Sphere - YouTube

(185) Battletech/Mechwarrior Lore : The Amaris Civil War / Collapse of Star League - Part 1 - YouTube

(185) Battletech/Mechwarrior Lore : The Amaris Civil War / Collapse of Star League - Part 2 - YouTube

Seta is extremely accurate (and i'm shocked that he's familiar with the setting). The only way a UNS/NUNS society could develop a direction tangent equal to what The Clans requires a story macguffin: a misfold into the past. Even then, you need at lot of things to happen... Actually that idea would be funny: A society based on Destroids? 

A Fold Fault that has centuries pass for those inside of it, enabling more time for our NUNS society to from the Clans ? That works...

[sketchley]

8 minutes ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

A Fold Fault that has centuries pass for those inside of it, enabling more time for our NUNS society to from the Clans ? That works...

Don't Fold Faults work the opposite way?  Time passes infinitesimally slower for those stuck in them?

[pengbuzz]

On 9/27/2022 at 9:54 PM, cheemingwan1234 said:

I have a feeling that the Clans from BattleTech would make for better antagonists for Macross than the current Macross rogues lineup because they are humanity (and for a Macross cross, they would incorporate the children of the Protoculture such as the Windermerans into their group as well) that due to interstellar distances, lack of resources on their home worlds and isolation managed to evolve into a culture completely alien from their progenitors, making them a fresh take on the human-like aliens in fiction that Macross is fond of.

This would also play into the culture theme that Macross has as the Clans are biologically human (or Zolan, Zentraedi, etc in this cross ) but due to the cultural drift involved in interstellar colonization and slowness in travel due to the length needed to prepare for fold space travel , they evolved a culture that would be considered alien to mainstream culture in the New United Nations government such as the Clans' honor code (zellbringen, bidding down and issuing batchalls.... you get the idea ) being considered a violation of common sense by the rest of the NUNS but evolved due to the relative lack of resources in Clan space.

Moreover, it allows for the original idea of music being a tool of culture that is used to bridge cultural/communication gaps between different groups , more similar to that in Frontier and SDF Macross rather than in 7 or Delta where the music theme is used to handwave things such as Sprita or treating Vars Syndrome. Here, music would be used to bridge the gaps between the cultures of the the New United Nations Government and the Clans but military force still has to be used to stop the Clan Invasion once enough knowledge of how the Clans work is gained from them.

In a word: NO.

In more words: the point of Battletech/ Mechwarrior (Mechwarrior is set in the Battletech universe) and the point of Macross are so different, that they would never work together unless you sacrificed what made either one special.

BT/MW is more like Game of Thrones meets The Fall of the Roman Empire. You're a mech pilot fighting your way up the ranks, and ultimately into one of the great houses. The point is conquest and who can basically reassemble the Star league that broke apart centuries ago. The morality is grey at best, and most clans are such jerks that ones like Littlefinger or Tywin would be impressed with their behavior.

Macross, on the other hand, is about the futility of war and the power of communication. In each iteration we see what wars (both personal and full-scale) accomplish. Civilizations have fallen, planets have died, and billions of lives were lost alone in SDFM. In each of the series, miscommunication and misunderstanding causes conflict until music can bridge those gaps and bring commonality. And unlike BT/MW, there is a strong morality that war is harmful, life is precious and fragile, and that we don't have to destroy ourselves to resolve differences.

Now, all of this is simply my opinion (and others may disagree as they will). But its' how I see the two, and its' for those reasons that I would not want such a crossover.

 

[cheemingwan1234]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

In a word: NO.

In more words: the point of Battletech/ Mechwarrior (Mechwarrior is set in the Battletech universe) and the point of Macross are so different, that they would never work together unless you sacrificed what made either one special.

BT/MW is more like Game of Thrones meets The Fall of the Roman Empire. You're a mech pilot fighting your way up the ranks, and ultimately into one of the great houses. The point is conquest and who can basically reassemble the Star league that broke apart centuries ago. The morality is grey at best, and most clans are such jerks that ones like Littlefinger or Tywin would be impressed with their behavior.

Macross, on the other hand, is about the futility of war and the power of communication. In each iteration we see what wars (both personal and full-scale) accomplish. Civilizations have fallen, planets have died, and billions of lives were lost alone in SDFM. In each of the series, miscommunication and misunderstanding causes conflict until music can bridge those gaps and bring commonality. And unlike BT/MW, there is a strong morality that war is harmful, life is precious and fragile, and that we don't have to destroy ourselves to resolve differences.

Now, all of this is simply my opinion (and others may disagree as they will). But its' how I see the two, and its' for those reasons that I would not want such a crossover.

 

The themes kinda supplement one another in  a sense. Music and other cultural commonalities can bring cultures together...but there will be people looking for a chance to start a punch up that will undo the peace that music brings.

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, TehPW said:

Seta is extremely accurate (and i'm shocked that he's familiar with the setting).

Full disclosure, I'm actually not very familiar with the setting at all.  Most of my exposure to that franchise outside of the legal situation is the 90's cartoon.

I wanted to give the OP a response since I figured the topic wouldn't draw much attention and did a fair bit of reading for research purposes while I was preparing the post.

 

13 hours ago, TehPW said:

The only way a UNS/NUNS society could develop a direction tangent equal to what The Clans requires a story macguffin: a misfold into the past. Even then, you need at lot of things to happen... Actually that idea would be funny: A society based on Destroids? 

Funny story... you more or less described the premise of Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross.

The "alien" Zor in Southern Cross are the genetically-modified descendants of human space emigrees bound for Glorie whose ship(s) travelled into the past due to a botched warp (ala Yamato) jump.  They colonized and terraformed Glorie in the distant past, ruined the planet in a nuclear war, and abandoned it to let the nuclear winter clear up.  They returned to the Epsilon Eridani system to discover that their planet had been colonized by someone else (the second wave of settlers who'd left just after their ancestors did) and launched an invasion of the planet to reclaim resources vital to maintaining their civilization.

The series was cancelled before it got as far as the big reveal that the Zor were human all along, but the fact is still stated in the Japanese liner notes and one artbook the series got.

 

7 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

A Fold Fault that has centuries pass for those inside of it, enabling more time for our NUNS society to from the Clans ? That works...

Two problems there:

• Fold faults are spacetime disruptions that only exist in fold space (AKA super dimension space), a higher-dimension sub-universe adjacent to conventional reality that ships use to teleport by folding higher-dimensional spacetime.  The realspace equivalent phenomenon, produced artificially, is just an impassible wall of warped space.  The Vajra and the Protoculture's Sigur Berrentzs use them as a (better) equivalent of humanity's barrier technology.  Planets can be surrounded by fold faults, and it's implied that the ancient Protoculture did this to a few planets like Uroboros and Windermere IV on purpose, but the planet isn't inside the fold fault.  It works like a fence, preventing or just slowing down travel into or out of the vicinity of the planet.
• Fold faults slow down the subjective passage of time for ships (or other objects) attempting to cross them via fold navigation.  As seen in Macross Frontier, ships attempting to cross a fold fault will see a significant increase in the disparity between the passage of time inside and outside the ship during the jump, losing dozens or hundreds of hours of realspace time as a result.

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

The themes kinda supplement one another in  a sense. Music and other cultural commonalities can bring cultures together...but there will be people looking for a chance to start a punch up that will undo the peace that music brings.

I feel when you try to combine the two, you're not going to get the best of both, but rather a muddled mess. And more than just a bit forced.

Anyways, if you're so intent on a mash-up, do enjoy. I think nothing anyone has to say here is going to do much to sway you, and I have no "skin in the game".

-pengbuzz out.

[Seto Kaiba]

12 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

The themes kinda supplement one another in  a sense. Music and other cultural commonalities can bring cultures together...but there will be people looking for a chance to start a punch up that will undo the peace that music brings.

... and that's where it's thematically incompatible.

Macross is a fundamentally optimistic sci-fi (meta)series where love, peace, communication, and diplomacy triumph in the end.Macross could be described as a setting where there really are no "bad guys".  It's not a Good vs. Evil story.  There are no Emperor Palpatines, no Stefan Amarises, no irredeemable complete monster card-carrying Agent of Chaos villains waiting in the wings to make the galaxy a worse place Just Because.  Macross's antagonists are people doing what they're convinced is right for them and theirs:

Spoiler

• The Zentradi of the Boddole Zer main fleet weren't malicious in any way.  They were following the final orders received from their creators to seek and destroy the remaining Supervision Army forces when they found Earth.  Their eventual destruction of Earth was an act of fear and attempt to save themselves from the influence of Earth's culture that, to them, must have resembled the Supervision Army's mind control.
• The Mardook were a nomadic people strongly implied to be the descendants of Protoculture refugees from the destruction of their civilization.  Their destruction of other cultures was motivated by a desire to preserve their ancient culture in its original state.
• Sharon Apple was motivated by the emotions she inherited from Myung.  Her rampage in Macross City was, in no small part, an expression of her newly acquired sentience and her trying to give the object of her affections (Isamu) the ultimate adrenaline high.
• Gepernich's grand goal when he was accidentally released from stasis was to minimize the suffering required for the Protodeviln to survive in three-dimensional spacetime by developing a sustainable and renewable source of spiritia.
• Nora Polyansky and D.D. Ivanov were fighting against the Unification Government because they believed, not entirely without cause, that it was an abusive government that prioritized the needs of certain influential nations over others.  
• General Garland believed that humanity would not be able to react quickly and effectively to new and existing threats in the galaxy without centralized leadership and was at risk of destruction because of it.  Timothy Daldhanton was just completely correct that the VF-X Ravens were being manipulated by a fascist movement inside the New UN Forces and was committed to opposing it.
• Grace O'Connor and the Cyber Nobles from Macross Galaxy were trying, in their own way, to elevate humanity to the Protoculture's definition of societal perfection... uniting humanity into a group mind that would abolish conflict entirely.
• Colonel Todo was a traumatized old man trying to alter history in order to prevent Earth's destruction in the First Space War and save the lives of the billions of people who'd died in the conflict.  (To a lesser extent, Ganess Modora was just trying to impress the girl he liked in his own over-the-top macho way.)
• King Grammier Neirich Windermere VI believed his people had been taken advantage of by the New UN Government, which had prevented his people from developing their economy by heavily restricting the one valuable resource they had: fold quartz.  His chancellor, Roid Brehm, believed his people were chosen by the Protoculture to bring peace to the galaxy and tried to create the same endgame as Grace had eight years earlier with a galaxy-wide hive mind that would end all conflict.
• Spoiler

  Ian Cromwell believed Lady M was a corruptive influence on the New UN Government because she used her influence to manipulate government policy and to restrain the pace of technological development, something that he felt had a measurable cost in human lives.

BattleTech's Clans, on the other hand, are kind of just awful people 24/7.  It's not even a shades of gray thing... it's more varying shades of black, morally.  The closest they get to a non-awful motivation is wanting to reform the Star League and restore humanity's golden age, though with largely selfish motivations involving ruling it themselves.  Once that's off the table, they're just kind of jerks engaged in a decades-long interstellar dick-measuring contest.  The closest they get to non-awfulness is usually uniting against someone even worse than they are (e.g. the Blakists).  It's very much on the same narrative model as Warhammer's various incarnations, where the setting is deliberately full of awfulness so that every faction can fight itself or any other faction.

[TehPW]

even competition is different between Macross (the Ride) and Battletech... 

[SebastianP]

On 9/28/2022 at 3:54 AM, cheemingwan1234 said:

I have a feeling that the Clans from BattleTech would make for better antagonists for Macross than the current Macross rogues lineup because they are humanity (and for a Macross cross, they would incorporate the children of the Protoculture such as the Windermerans into their group as well) that due to interstellar distances, lack of resources on their home worlds and isolation managed to evolve into a culture completely alien from their progenitors, making them a fresh take on the human-like aliens in fiction that Macross is fond of.

This would also play into the culture theme that Macross has as the Clans are biologically human (or Zolan, Zentraedi, etc in this cross ) but due to the cultural drift involved in interstellar colonization and slowness in travel due to the length needed to prepare for fold space travel , they evolved a culture that would be considered alien to mainstream culture in the New United Nations government such as the Clans' honor code (zellbringen, bidding down and issuing batchalls.... you get the idea ) being considered a violation of common sense by the rest of the NUNS but evolved due to the relative lack of resources in Clan space.

Moreover, it allows for the original idea of music being a tool of culture that is used to bridge cultural/communication gaps between different groups , more similar to that in Frontier and SDF Macross rather than in 7 or Delta where the music theme is used to handwave things such as Sprita or treating Vars Syndrome. Here, music would be used to bridge the gaps between the cultures of the the New United Nations Government and the Clans but military force still has to be used to stop the Clan Invasion once enough knowledge of how the Clans work is gained from them.

From what I remember of reading Battletech fanfiction, the Clans are mostly a threat because they have technological superiority (especially in military-applicable fields) and believe their culture is the be-all, end-all, and everyone else slots into the bottom of their caste system. Kind of like the Draka but in space. And the technological superiority they do have is because they spent one less century trying to blow each other up to decide who's on top of the heap than the rest of humanity, meaning they *lost* less tech, rather than developed it.

The situation in Macross? They've spent 55 years engaging in absolutely breakneck technological progression, and while not everyone is sharing everything with everyone else, it's been a concerted effort with only minor disagreements on the whole, because everyone is acutely aware of the scale of the threat that surrounds the humans and their allies - namely, that there are thousands of fleets identical to the one that slagged Earth out there, and any one of them could decide humanity is too big a threat and try to finish the job at any moment. There's no way for a breakaway faction to have developed *even faster* in those 55 years to the point where they'd be a large-scale military threat to the forces we see in the shows and movies. 

The only way for Macross to run into something that would be a Clan-like antithesis to themselves is if they somehow get invaded by a Star Trek-like Mirror Universe or something.

Also, the Clans as is? If they dropped into Macross, worlds and all, they'd be missing presumed eradicated due to pissing off the Zentraedi. Because the Zentraedi are just plain better at this whole "warrior race" thing. 

[pengbuzz]

On 9/29/2022 at 10:34 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

... and that's where it's thematically incompatible.

Macross is a fundamentally optimistic sci-fi (meta)series where love, peace, communication, and diplomacy triumph in the end.Macross could be described as a setting where there really are no "bad guys".  It's not a Good vs. Evil story.  There are no Emperor Palpatines, no Stefan Amarises, no irredeemable complete monster card-carrying Agent of Chaos villains waiting in the wings to make the galaxy a worse place Just Because.  Macross's antagonists are people doing what they're convinced is right for them and theirs:

  Hide contents

 

• The Zentradi of the Boddole Zer main fleet weren't malicious in any way.  They were following the final orders received from their creators to seek and destroy the remaining Supervision Army forces when they found Earth.  Their eventual destruction of Earth was an act of fear and attempt to save themselves from the influence of Earth's culture that, to them, must have resembled the Supervision Army's mind control.
• The Mardook were a nomadic people strongly implied to be the descendants of Protoculture refugees from the destruction of their civilization.  Their destruction of other cultures was motivated by a desire to preserve their ancient culture in its original state.
• Sharon Apple was motivated by the emotions she inherited from Myung.  Her rampage in Macross City was, in no small part, an expression of her newly acquired sentience and her trying to give the object of her affections (Isamu) the ultimate adrenaline high.
• Gepernich's grand goal when he was accidentally released from stasis was to minimize the suffering required for the Protodeviln to survive in three-dimensional spacetime by developing a sustainable and renewable source of spiritia.
• Nora Polyansky and D.D. Ivanov were fighting against the Unification Government because they believed, not entirely without cause, that it was an abusive government that prioritized the needs of certain influential nations over others.  
• General Garland believed that humanity would not be able to react quickly and effectively to new and existing threats in the galaxy without centralized leadership and was at risk of destruction because of it.  Timothy Daldhanton was just completely correct that the VF-X Ravens were being manipulated by a fascist movement inside the New UN Forces and was committed to opposing it.
• Grace O'Connor and the Cyber Nobles from Macross Galaxy were trying, in their own way, to elevate humanity to the Protoculture's definition of societal perfection... uniting humanity into a group mind that would abolish conflict entirely.
• Colonel Todo was a traumatized old man trying to alter history in order to prevent Earth's destruction in the First Space War and save the lives of the billions of people who'd died in the conflict.  (To a lesser extent, Ganess Modora was just trying to impress the girl he liked in his own over-the-top macho way.)
• King Grammier Neirich Windermere VI believed his people had been taken advantage of by the New UN Government, which had prevented his people from developing their economy by heavily restricting the one valuable resource they had: fold quartz.  His chancellor, Roid Brehm, believed his people were chosen by the Protoculture to bring peace to the galaxy and tried to create the same endgame as Grace had eight years earlier with a galaxy-wide hive mind that would end all conflict.
•   Reveal hidden contents

  Ian Cromwell believed Lady M was a corruptive influence on the New UN Government because she used her influence to manipulate government policy and to restrain the pace of technological development, something that he felt had a measurable cost in human lives.

No true villains here then; that being the case, it's a shame that under the right circumstances, they couldn't just sit down and talk.

The lesson I see in all of this: maybe there was never a good reason for war to begin with.

[SebastianP]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

No true villains here then; that being the case, it's a shame that under the right circumstances, they couldn't just sit down and talk.

The lesson I see in all of this: maybe there was never a good reason for war to begin with.

I disagree with Seto Kaiba's description of the motives of some of these factions as in any way noble, because there's some monstrous "means" being justified by those "noble" ends. 

Like the "I have no mouth and I must scream" remote control used by Macross Galaxy and by Havamal where the victims were basically looking on in horror as their bodies did things they didn't agree with (see Brera's *immediate* turnaround the moment the control implant broke, both in the show and the movies, especially the movie version which immediately went straight for the Galaxy brains to terminate them with extreme prejudice even if it cost him his life because he was that violated).

Or the human experimentation and that they even discussed implanting parts of Ranka in to Sheryl to keep her useful before deciding to discard her and use Ranka as is instead.

There was a *reason* why no one exactly batted an eye at all of Galaxy's leadership biting the dust in the movie; or that executing Grace in the TV series was considered a righteous move (since in the TV series she was portrayed as one of the masterminds, rather than a puppet of the cyber hivemind).

There is a *reason* why no one disagrees Bodole Zer had to be put down.

There is a *reason* why Keith decided to sacrifice himself to take out Roid. And why Windermere doesn't get more in-universe heat after the instigators of this whole thing are all dead.

It's not your ends that decide if you're a monster. It's your means.

I feel like Macross teaches us that most people would not choose war if they had a choice, and it's the people who take that choice away from others who are the monsters. 

[pengbuzz]

21 minutes ago, SebastianP said:

I disagree with Seto Kaiba's description of the motives of some of these factions as in any way noble, because there's some monstrous "means" being justified by those "noble" ends. 

Like the "I have no mouth and I must scream" remote control used by Macross Galaxy and by Havamal where the victims were basically looking on in horror as their bodies did things they didn't agree with (see Brera's *immediate* turnaround the moment the control implant broke, both in the show and the movies, especially the movie version which immediately went straight for the Galaxy brains to terminate them with extreme prejudice even if it cost him his life because he was that violated).

Or the human experimentation and that they even discussed implanting parts of Ranka in to Sheryl to keep her useful before deciding to discard her and use Ranka as is instead.

There was a *reason* why no one exactly batted an eye at all of Galaxy's leadership biting the dust in the movie; or that executing Grace in the TV series was considered a righteous move (since in the TV series she was portrayed as one of the masterminds, rather than a puppet of the cyber hivemind).

There is a *reason* why no one disagrees Bodole Zer had to be put down.

There is a *reason* why Keith decided to sacrifice himself to take out Roid. And why Windermere doesn't get more in-universe heat after the instigators of this whole thing are all dead.

It's not your ends that decide if you're a monster. It's your means.

I feel like Macross teaches us that most people would not choose war if they had a choice, and it's the people who take that choice away from others who are the monsters. 

I actually do agree with Seto's description, since even the best of people can be forced into drastic and even heinous acts when left with no alternatives.

From experience: what makes one a monster is more than means and ends; motive  must also be considered.

As for your cited examples: the reason why no one argued with the destruction of Boddole Zer, Roid, Galaxy's leadership, Grace and such is that they had become threats that were detrimental to the survival of populations.

On that note: taken as a whole, the reason why Hitler was a monster is that he threatened entire populations, his motives were cruel and inhumane, and his methods were utterly inhuman to the extreme. Why someone is a monster is more than just one vector or avenue. It must also be that they have consistently done these things as well.

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, SebastianP said:

I disagree with Seto Kaiba's description of the motives of some of these factions as in any way noble, because there's some monstrous "means" being justified by those "noble" ends. 

History is nothing if not replete with examples of frankly awful things being done to achieve great and noble ends... many of which have had long-term benefits for humanity as a whole.  The history of modern medicine is especially horrific in that regard but that doesn't stop people from reaping the benefits gleaned from that past awfulness.

Mind you, it's not merely the means that make a monster... it's the motive.  Good people can and will do horrible things if there's no alternative available or they simply don't know any better.  A monster chooses horribleness in spite of the alternatives available.

There are no monsters in the Macross setting.  Misguided people, sure, but no Stefan Amarises or Sheev Palpatines cackling with villainous glee as they overthrow governments and commit all manner of atrocities for funsies.

 

 

4 hours ago, SebastianP said:

Like the "I have no mouth and I must scream" remote control used by Macross Galaxy and by Havamal where the victims were basically looking on in horror as their bodies did things they didn't agree with (see Brera's *immediate* turnaround the moment the control implant broke, both in the show and the movies, especially the movie version which immediately went straight for the Galaxy brains to terminate them with extreme prejudice even if it cost him his life because he was that violated).

Only actually true for the Macross Galaxy side... and that was limited to the soldiers in their corporate army in a last ditch effort to protect the Vajra Queen, on which their entire plan to save humanity from being destroyed by its internal conflicts hinged.  It was not done out of malice, but out of necessity.  There is some other stuff they did along the way (e.g. in Wired Warrior) that is questionable in terms of medical ethics... but at least theoretically non-evil given that it was done to avoid risking the lives of living people.

Havamal used Sharon Apple's unique flavor of manipulation, which is more making people incredibly chill with mild hypnosis.  Not exactly "I have no mouth and I must scream" territory, but also done in order to defend their plan to alter history and retroactively save the entire population of Earth and its many cultures.  Pretty understandable, especially considering the plan was motivated by the trauma and survivor's guilt of its ringleaders not any kind of actual malice.

 

4 hours ago, SebastianP said:

Or the human experimentation and that they even discussed implanting parts of Ranka in to Sheryl to keep her useful before deciding to discard her and use Ranka as is instead.

That was pretty awful, granted, but the stakes were (in the minds of the Galaxy fleet) the preservation of the entire human species.  

Mind you, it is explicitly indicated in both the audio dramas and movies that Grace truly does care about Sheryl in a parental manner.  In the audio dramas, Grace can't bring herself to betray and abandon Sheryl until she uses her implants to edit her own personality for the sake of the mission.  You could say movie Grace was proposing a radical method to save her adoptive daughter from a premature death out of familial love as much as out of being manipulated.

 

4 hours ago, SebastianP said:

There was a *reason* why no one exactly batted an eye at all of Galaxy's leadership biting the dust in the movie; or that executing Grace in the TV series was considered a righteous move (since in the TV series she was portrayed as one of the masterminds, rather than a puppet of the cyber hivemind).

There is a *reason* why no one disagrees Bodole Zer had to be put down.

There is a *reason* why Keith decided to sacrifice himself to take out Roid. And why Windermere doesn't get more in-universe heat after the instigators of this whole thing are all dead.

That's... untrue on almost all counts.

Nobody really dwells on the fate of the Galaxy Executives in the movie version because there's no time to... and they disappear with the Queen Frontier when it folds away, so from the perspective of the Frontier government their deaths are unconfirmed.  Grace, well, same reason more or less... but it's a safe bet that people were actually bothered by it since she was close with several people including Sheryl, Ranka, and Nanase.  Even Leon was probably upset by it, though for his own more selfish reasons... but he did seem to have a good working relationship with her to the extent that some of the more fun albums have them singing duets together and playing card games.

Boddole Zer, for his part, is similarly not portrayed as evil or destroying Earth out of malice.  We know after Macross 7 that his real motive was probably fear that he was seeing his troops fall victim to something akin to a Protodeviln attack.  Something so horrible that it instilled almost Lovecraftian levels of instant fear in the Zentradi themselves half a million years after the Protodeviln were defeated.  In the movie version, it's an honest mistake where he destroyed the planet thinking it was a Meltrandi Army base.  The only reason the UN Forces had to kill him was purely strategic.  Standard operating practice for Zentradi fleets is to retreat when their flagship is sunk.  The UN Forces had no chance of defeating his Main Fleet as a whole, but by sinking his flagship they could force his unbeatably vast force to quit the field entirely and en masse.  

Keith and Roid... well... that's a very poorly executed scene that doesn't actually make a ton of sense in-context or out.  Keith could have just disconnected Roid from the shrine and kept him alive, but for whatever reason he decided he'd really rather they died together.

Edited November 20, 2022 by Seto Kaiba

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

History is nothing if not replete with examples of frankly awful things being done to achieve great and noble ends... many of which have had long-term benefits for humanity as a whole.  The history of modern medicine is especially horrific in that regard but that doesn't stop people from reaping the benefits gleaned from that past awfulness.

Mind you, it's not merely the means that make a monster... it's the motive.  Good people can and will do horrible things if there's no alternative available or they simply don't know any better.  A monster chooses horribleness in spite of the alternatives available.

There are no monsters in the Macross setting.  Misguided people, sure, but no Stefan Amarises or Sheev Palpatines cackling with villainous glee as they overthrow governments and commit all manner of atrocities for funsies.

 

 

Only actually true for the Macross Galaxy side... and that was limited to the soldiers in their corporate army in a last ditch effort to protect the Vajra Queen, on which their entire plan to save humanity from being destroyed by its internal conflicts hinged.  It was not done out of malice, but out of necessity.  There is some other stuff they did along the way (e.g. in Wired Warrior) that is questionable in terms of medical ethics... but at least theoretically non-evil given that it was done to avoid risking the lives of living people.

Havamal used Sharon Apple's unique flavor of manipulation, which is more making people incredibly chill with mild hypnosis.  Not exactly "I have no mouth and I must scream" territory, but also done in order to defend their plan to alter history and retroactively save the entire population of Earth and its many cultures.  Pretty understandable, especially considering the plan was motivated by the trauma and survivor's guilt of its ringleaders not any kind of actual malice.

 

That was pretty awful, granted, but the stakes were (in the minds of the Galaxy fleet) the preservation of the entire human species.  

Mind you, it is explicitly indicated in both the audio dramas and movies that Grace truly does care about Sheryl in a parental manner.  In the audio dramas, Grace can't bring herself to betray and abandon Sheryl until she uses her implants to edit her own personality for the sake of the mission.  You could say movie Grace was proposing a radical method to save her adoptive daughter from a premature death out of familial love as much as out of being manipulated.

 

That's... untrue on almost all counts.

Nobody really dwells on the fate of the Galaxy Executives in the movie version because there's no time to... and they disappear with the Queen Frontier when it folds away, so from the perspective of the Frontier government their deaths are unconfirmed.  Grace, well, same reason more or less... but it's a safe bet that people were actually bothered by it since she was close with several people including Sheryl, Ranka, and Nanase.  Even Leon was probably upset by it, though for his own more selfish reasons... but he did seem to have a good working relationship with her to the extent that some of the more fun albums have them singing duets together and playing card games.

Boddole Zer, for his part, is similarly not portrayed as evil or destroying Earth out of malice.  We know after Macross 7 that his real motive was probably fear that he was seeing his troops fall victim to something akin to a Protodeviln attack.  Something so horrible that it instilled almost Lovecraftian levels of instant fear in the Zentradi themselves half a million years after the Protodeviln were defeated.  In the movie version, it's an honest mistake where he destroyed the planet thinking it was a Supervision Army base.  The only reason the UN Forces had to kill him was purely strategic.  Standard operating practice for Zentradi fleets is to retreat when their flagship is sunk.  The UN Forces had no chance of defeating his Main Fleet as a whole, but by sinking his flagship they could force his unbeatably vast force to quit the field entirely and en masse.  

Keith and Roid... well... that's a very poorly executed scene that doesn't actually make a ton of sense in-context or out.  Keith could have just disconnected Roid from the shrine and kept him alive, but for whatever reason he decided he'd really rather they died together.

Thank you.

[SebastianP]

On 11/19/2022 at 11:23 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Only actually true for the Macross Galaxy side... and that was limited to the soldiers in their corporate army in a last ditch effort to protect the Vajra Queen, on which their entire plan to save humanity from being destroyed by its internal conflicts hinged.  It was not done out of malice, but out of necessity.  There is some other stuff they did along the way (e.g. in Wired Warrior) that is questionable in terms of medical ethics... but at least theoretically non-evil given that it was done to avoid risking the lives of living people.

Havamal used Sharon Apple's unique flavor of manipulation, which is more making people incredibly chill with mild hypnosis.  Not exactly "I have no mouth and I must scream" territory, but also done in order to defend their plan to alter history and retroactively save the entire population of Earth and its many cultures.  Pretty understandable, especially considering the plan was motivated by the trauma and survivor's guilt of its ringleaders not any kind of actual malice.

Since the thread was already Godwinned by someone - the Nazis goals were noble and their means justified in their own heads as well. Everyone else disagreed, all their leaders which were still alive to be captured and tried were hung for it, and both post-war power blocks rubbed their entire nation's noses in it for several decades afterwards. We literally invented the concept of "crimes against humanity" to cover their *means*, as opposed to their motives or their ends. "Do not instigate genocide or you will be hung."

Galaxy wants to turn everyone in to drones for the collective, with them on top. That is very clear from their own statements in the movie. Some of the voices in the brain collective are positively gleeful that soon it will be them on top. Setting aside all the murdering they went through in order to put themselves at the top, what they'd be doing is forcible brainwashing and deletion of culture because everyone will join them or die. Brera couldn't hang a computer full of cyberbrains so he blew them up instead, and Alto didn't have anything else on hand except a sniper rifle that's a memento of someone who was turned into a corpse to be stepped over for Galaxy's ambitions, but I'll take those. 

Todo wants to undo an *unsuccessful* genocide (the cultures survived - not intact, but not unrecognizable) - by performing a *total* genoicide (by erasing history the cultures that developed in the mean time would cease to have ever been without a trace), and he's duping most of his underlings into going along by playing it up as if they'd still *exist* after he was done rewriting a history in which they were never born in the first place. His trauma does not excuse his attempt to murder *billions*. Do not commit genocide. It cannot be justified. Ever.

And he does indeed use "I must scream" type remote control, specifically on Aisha, who is still awake and aware and pleading for help while fighting her own limbs as she shoots Leon and clobbers Mina over the head and carries her off, at least in the game version. And he'd have to engage in even more mind control to put himself in as leader of Earth so he can enact his dream of making Humanity the top dogs in the Galaxy and subjugating the Zentraedi. 

 

Edited November 22, 2022 by SebastianP

[pengbuzz]

57 minutes ago, SebastianP said:

Since the thread was already Godwinned by someone - the Nazis goals were noble and their means justified in their own heads as well. Everyone else disagreed, all their leaders which were still alive to be captured and tried were hung for it, and both post-war power blocks rubbed their entire nation's noses in it for several decades afterwards. We literally invented the concept of "crimes against humanity" to cover their *means*, as opposed to their motives or their ends. "Do not instigate genocide or you will be hung."

Galaxy wants to turn everyone in to drones for the collective, with them on top. That is very clear from their own statements in the movie. Some of the voices in the brain collective are positively gleeful that soon it will be them on top. Setting aside all the murdering they went through in order to put themselves at the top, what they'd be doing is forcible brainwashing and deletion of culture because everyone will join them or die. Brera couldn't hang a computer full of cyberbrains so he blew them up instead, and Alto didn't have anything else on hand except a sniper rifle that's a memento of someone who was turned into a corpse to be stepped over for Galaxy's ambitions, but I'll take those. 

Todo wants to undo an *unsuccessful* genocide (the cultures survived - not intact, but not unrecognizable) - by performing a *total* genoicide (by erasing history the cultures that developed in the mean time would cease to have ever been without a trace), and he's duping most of his underlings into going along by playing it up as if they'd still *exist* after he was done rewriting a history in which they were never born in the first place. His trauma does not excuse his attempt to murder *billions*. Do not commit genocide. It cannot be justified. Ever.

And he does indeed use "I must scream" type remote control, specifically on Aisha, who is still awake and aware and pleading for help while fighting her own limbs as she shoots Leon and clobbers Mina over the head and carries her off, at least in the game version. And he'd have to engage in even more mind control to put himself in as leader of Earth so he can enact his dream of making Humanity the top dogs in the Galaxy and subjugating the Zentraedi. 

 

So, the Nazi's can never be brought up without it being "Godwinned", eh? I suppose their evil makes them sacrosanct from ever being used as an example then?

If motive doesn't matter but simply means, then any surgeon would be considered a murderous psycho because they "cut open living , breathing people". Never mind the intent is to repair structures inside the human body; the means damns them regardless according to that logic!

After your replies here (and the ones in my other topic where you tore apart the permission I got from the Navy for the illustration), I'm afraid that any dialogue with you is just pointless.

*11/21/2022 Member SebastianP placed on Ignore*

 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, SebastianP said:

Since the thread was already Godwinned by someone

Nobody did.  Believe me, the history of medicine is quite unpleasant enough without getting into that particular pit of insanity.  

Macross's creators have been pretty damned clear about the fundamentally optimistic nature of the series from its inception.  The antagonists in any given Macross storyline are not evil.  They might be misguided, desperate, afraid, or even unaware of the harm they're causing.  None of them are card-carrying villains out to dominate others or destroy things for no reason or because it makes their balls feel big like Stefan Amaris, Gihren Zabi, Sheev Palpatine, etc.  That precondition of malice just isn't there in Macross.

 

1 hour ago, SebastianP said:

Galaxy wants to [...]

*sigh*  We've been over this.  Yes, Macross Galaxy uses questionable methods.  The point you keep overlooking is that their questionable methods were exercised in the (misguided) pursuit of the otherwise noble goal of preventing the human species from destroying itself the same way the Protoculture did and achieving the Protoculture's definition of societal perfection. 

 

1 hour ago, SebastianP said:

Todo wants to undo an *unsuccessful* genocide (the cultures survived - not intact, but not unrecognizable) - by performing a *total* genoicide (by erasing history the cultures that developed in the mean time would cease to have ever been without a trace), and he's duping most of his underlings into going along by playing it up as if they'd still *exist* after he was done rewriting a history in which they were never born in the first place. His trauma does not excuse his attempt to murder *billions*. Do not commit genocide. It cannot be justified. Ever.

That's not quite accurate either.

Todo is an extremely damaged person.  He's running on survivor's guilt and trauma from the First Space War, and his goal is to go back and change history to make the First Space War un-happen and prevent the destruction of virtually every human society and culture.  It does, as you say, come at the expense of retrocausally erasing the people born after the war (maybe, if that's how time travel works in this setting) but his mental calculus is probably aligned to the idea of erasing millions to save billions and ensure humanity is a good deal more prepared for the first contact event when it ultimately happens.  It's misguided, sure... but it's not evil.  He's not doing it to screw anyone over.  He's trying to recover what was lost in the First Space War (in terms of both lives and culture) and give humanity a more peaceful existence.

 

That's very, VERY different from the kind of thing we're talking about here WRT the BattleTech setting where pretty much everyone's motivations are sh*tty, selfish, and generally full of horribleness because it's a Forever War setting and that horribleness allows everyone to fight everyone else plausibly.  

Edited November 22, 2022 by Seto Kaiba

[SebastianP]

29 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Nobody did.  Believe me, the history of medicine is quite unpleasant enough without getting into that particular pit of insanity.  

Macross's creators have been pretty damned clear about the fundamentally optimistic nature of the series from its inception.  The antagonists in any given Macross storyline are not evil.  They might be misguided, desperate, afraid, or even unaware of the harm they're causing.  None of them are card-carrying villains out to dominate others or destroy things for no reason or because it makes their balls feel big like Stefan Amaris, Gihren Zabi, Sheev Palpatine, etc.  That precondition of malice just isn't there in Macross.

Pengbuzz brought up the German dictator first, hence my saying the thread was Godwinned already. 

And the antagonists in Macross can certainly be evil - not on a per faction level, but certainly on the individual level. And a traumatic backstory *does not excuse* attempted genocide, or else the Failed Austrian Painter would be excused due what he witnessed in WW1. We don't excuse him. We don't excuse any of the historical despots who engaged in similar behavior, or ordered it to happen. Some actions are evil in themselves and no motive can excuse them - torture, slavery and genocide being among the ones we've basically agreed on as a species. Oh, and IIRC non-consensual non-lifesaving medical procedures is on that list somewhere... like forcibly or stealthily installed mind control implants (though the definition is originally meant to cover things like forcible sterilization or mutilations). 

That there are no designated "always chaotic evil" factions, or that there are no "stupid evil" or "evil for evil's sake" villains doesn't mean there aren't outright evil villains in the setting - they're typically the ones that end up killed by the protagonists instead of Defeat-is-Friendshipped or "heroic sacrificed". Leon Mishima from Frontier TV was evil because he was willing to have his president murdered (and in the novels, his VP too) so he could be the leader of Frontier in their glorious conquest of the Vajra homeworld and be "King Macross" like he'd dreamed of since he was a kid in the slums. The Galaxy Cabal from the Frontier movies were evil because they were treating human beings as parts in their machine - quite literally discussing harvesting organs from Ranka to stick in Sheryl before deciding to just take control of Ranka instead and discard Sheryl. Ushio Todo is evil because he's only interested in his own selfish goal, where his revised timeline ends up with him getting everything he ever wanted and a HFY future afterwards, and frakk everyone who got deleted because they'll never be born in his new timeline - including all his henchpeople, since it wasn't clear that he actually *had* any protection from getting them paradoxed out of existence or if he was spinning a yarn to make his pawns go along.

That Mishima and Todo have traumas does not excuse them - they're still rational sane individuals who are accountable for their actions. 

 

[SebastianP]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

So, the Nazi's can never be brought up without it being "Godwinned", eh? I suppose their evil makes them sacrosanct from ever being used as an example then?

If motive doesn't matter but simply means, then any surgeon would be considered a murderous psycho because they "cut open living , breathing people". Never mind the intent is to repair structures inside the human body; the means damns them regardless according to that logic!

After your replies here (and the ones in my other topic where you tore apart the permission I got from the Navy for the illustration), I'm afraid that any dialogue with you is just pointless.

"Godwin's law: As an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1".

I was just remarking that since you already brought him up, I didn't have to restrain myself because the damage was done. I'm *not* trying to invoke any of the corollaries (such as the "someone mentioned the H word, thread over" that we used to have on USENET), but we're running close to invoking one of the others (any discussion in which Godwin's law is invoked will devolve into either discussion about Godwin's law itself, or whether the comparison to Hitler was valid). 

Anyway, there's a difference of scope, and consequences of actions. And the range of possible intents that would justify the action.

Cutting someone open *can* be justified, it's potentially a lifesaving procedure after all.

Murdering every member of a culture? You'll find that much, much harder to find a justification for without going full fantasy "they breed sapients as cattle to eat their babies as a delicacy" - which is in itself a form of genocide. 

 

 

[TehPW]

Its funny. Is Sebastian's POV of Macross Galaxy possibly based on his own bias (based on his nationality, which might not be Japanese)? Because i do agree with his position that the cyberminds of Galaxy are not even remotely grey with their intent. They were no different from any other fictional (or non-fictional, to which many fictional foes are derived from) human faction with the simple goal of wanting POWER over other humans. That's been the basis of all the major Black Hat factions in Battletech, regardless of who was the Line Lead of the company at the time...

 

Mods, this might be avery good time to put the cabash on this topic. It has clearly derailed and leaking highly toxic chemicals into all our blood streams...

[Bolt]

19 minutes ago, TehPW said:

Mods, this might be avery good time to put the cabash on this topic. It has clearly derailed and leaking highly toxic chemicals into all our blood streams...

off the rails off topic. 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, TehPW said:

Its funny. Is Sebastian's POV of Macross Galaxy possibly based on his own bias (based on his nationality, which might not be Japanese)? Because i do agree with his position that the cyberminds of Galaxy are not even remotely grey with their intent. They were no different from any other fictional (or non-fictional, to which many fictional foes are derived from) human faction with the simple goal of wanting POWER over other humans. That's been the basis of all the major Black Hat factions in Battletech, regardless of who was the Line Lead of the company at the time...

As questionable as the Macross Galaxy fleet's executives can be at times, it's an understandable view.

As previous posters noted, something like BattleTech's clans wouldn't fit into the Macross setting on a motive level because it's thematically incompatible with Macross.  The Clans are all driven by Nietzchean will to power and not a hell of a lot else.  Even the ones that profess more noble goals like reforming the Star League are really only doing it for their own power and prestige.  After all, what's more prestigious than returning humanity to its golden age as the restorer and undisputed ruler of its greatest civilization?  The antagonists in the Macross franchise tend to have more relatable motivations that are intended to keep them redeemable or at least understandable.  Galaxy's executives are arguably chasing the polar opposite, since their endgame is not individual power but ego extinction via the creation of a unifying human hive mind.

A story that's thematically all about the power of communication wouldn't work very well if the antagonist was nothing more than irrational and power hungry, y'know?

That's why even when you get factions that woud ordinarily be in the very dark gray or the black like the fascist Latence movement or the Macross Galaxy fleet, they're kept clear of card-carrying villain territory by giving them a rational motive for their misguided actions.  In both cases, their misguided actions were taken because they sincerely believed their chosen course of action was The Only Way to save humanity from imminent destruction... whether that destruction was external or self-inflicted.

 

1 hour ago, TehPW said:

Mods, this might be avery good time to put the cabash on this topic. It has clearly derailed and leaking highly toxic chemicals into all our blood streams...

Quite possibly.  I'm actually surprised it lasted this long, considering it's almost a "Vs" thread.

Edited November 22, 2022 by Seto Kaiba

[RedWolf]

Why bother as Macross already has analogs to Battletech setting? The Protoculture Stellar Republic is the equivalent of the Star League. The Zentradi are both the equivalent of the Succesor States and Clans. 

In Macross the Ride Naresuan a Zentradi views Earth culture is the legacy of the Protoculture as such seeks to unite all nations under a centralized interstellar  government with Earth calling the shots. In short a Second Stellar Republic. 

In 2031 tens of thousands of Anti-Earth Zentradi left Earth in exile never to be heard from again. This is a year after the Second Defensive Battle of Macoss City a revolt which led to a ban on Earth of giant sized Zentradi. Mutineers of the 63254109th Zentradi Outer Space Army left Earth and came back in 2047. Kidnapping an idol group Milky Dolls which is a precursor to Walkure only under the UN Forces and reactivation a Bodolle class Mobile Fortress that was buried in an abandoned colony to invade Earth. 

Rogue Zentradi are still a threat as mentioned in Macross 30, Macross Delta prequel manga Black Wings, and Macoss Zettai Live!. 

And there is the Supervision Army which as far as we know the NUN has not made formal First Contact yet.

 

 

 

 

[pengbuzz]

45 minutes ago, RedWolf said:

And there is the Supervision Army which as far as we know the NUN has not made formal First Contact yet.

Wait, wasn't the Supervision Army the forces under command of the Protodevlin? If that's the case, then the Macross 7 fleet encountered them.

[RedWolf]

22 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Wait, wasn't the Supervision Army the forces under command of the Protodevlin? If that's the case, then the Macross 7 fleet encountered them.

That was the Varauta Army which was brainwashed from the Megaroad-13 colony initially. The Supervsion Army was the Protodevlin's ancient brainashed army that the Zentradi Army has been mopping up these past 500,000 years. They are giants just like the Zentradi. 

Edited November 25, 2022 by RedWolf

[Seto Kaiba]

52 minutes ago, RedWolf said:

Why bother as Macross already has analogs to Battletech setting?

Eh... I'm with ya on the "Why bother?", but the OP pretty clearly meant "for a Macross series" not for the backstory. 

 

52 minutes ago, RedWolf said:

The Protoculture Stellar Republic is the equivalent of the Star League.

Yes and no.  The Stellar Republic is a vanished golden age civilization, but it's not really equivalent to the Star League of BattleTech in any meaningful way.  

None of the civilizations depicted in the main Macross continuity were once a part of the Stellar Republic.  Only two cultures encountered in the series had any kind of a significant mytho-historical association with the ancient Protoculture, the Mayan islanders on Earth and the Windermereans of Windermere IV.  Neither party has any designs on restoring the Stellar Republic.  The Mayan's mytho-historical "memory" of the Protoculture is not exactly positive (it centers on the Birdman's aborted attempt to destroy them) while the natives on Windermere IV were almost certainly created long after the Protoculture's Stellar Republic fell given that the Brisingr star cluster is believed to have been their final enclave late in their slide into extinction.

Another key difference is that nobody is trying to recreate the Protoculture's Stellar Republic.  The New UN Government's space emigration program is driven mainly by the fear of extinction at the hands of the Protoculture's rogue creations, and the Zentradi have no knowledge of cultural pursuits outside of their strictly military function.  It wouldn't be much of a stretch to say the more humanity learns about the Protoculture the more it sees the Stellar Republic as a pack of irresponsible maniacs who left the galaxy absolutely littered with incredibly dangerous abandoned weapons.  Nobody even really knows what the Stellar Republic's actual system of government was.  Can't very well recreate a government you know nothing about.

 

52 minutes ago, RedWolf said:

The Zentradi are both the equivalent of the Succesor States and Clans. 

Not even close.  The Zentradi may be divided into thousands of Main Fleets and each of those divided into thousands of Branch Fleets, but they're all effectively on the same side.

They have no culture of their own, and the closest they have to "traditions" are the military regulations laid down for them by the long-vanished Protoculture that include a built-in prohibition on matters pertaining to culture.  They're not driven by honor, or a desire for dominance, territory, or resources.  They're not the least bit interested in trying to recreate the Stellar Republic and don't even have a proper concept of what it was.  Their only interest is in continuing to carry out their orders to seek and destroy the Supervision Army.  

 

52 minutes ago, RedWolf said:

In Macross the Ride Naresuan a Zentradi views Earth culture is the legacy of the Protoculture as such seeks to unite all nations under a centralized interstellar  government with Earth calling the shots. In short a Second Stellar Republic. 

Naresuan's motive is not linked to any such notion of reviving the Stellar Republic or creating a new one.

He's an otaku who adores Earth's culture, but his terrorist organization Fasces (subtle, no?) is a surviving remnant of the Latence faction that lost the Second Unification War and its motives and aims are the same as its parent organization.  It's a fascist movement that grew out of the fear of the unknown and of imminent extinction that resulted from the First Space War and was driven to a fever pitch by the events of the Varauta conflict.  It really doesn't seek to "unite all nations under a centralized government".  Its actual aim is the overthrow of the New UN Government and the imposition of direct or indirect rule by the military in the name of coordinating defenses against threats to humanity.

[JB0]

34 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Nobody even really knows what the Stellar Republic's actual system of government was.  Can't very well recreate a government you know nothing about.

So they just call it a republic because it sounds good?

Or is it a case of not knowing if it was a republic or a "democratic people's republic"? Truth in advertising is admittedly hard to find at times.

Edited November 25, 2022 by JB0

[Seto Kaiba]

13 minutes ago, JB0 said:

So they just call it a republic because it sounds good?

Or is it a case of not knowing if it was a republic or a "democratic people's republic"? Truth in advertising is admittedly hard to find at times.

The latter... with a further caveat.

Not only do we not know what kind of Republic the (Inter)Stellar Republic was (or if it was even truly a republic and not a People's Republic of Tyranny)... it's not always referred to as a Republic either.  

Sometimes it's 星間共和国 (seikan kyouwakoku, "Interstellar Republic") and sometimes it's 銀河帝国 (ginga teikoku, "Galactic Empire").  The latter is more common in early works, but Macross Chronicle expressly acknowledges both terms.  It's possible that both are correct and either the government changed its name or those existed concurrently as the two factions in the Protoculture's civil war.

[JB0]

Honestly, I was already thinking Galactic Empire sounds more accurate just based on how many superweapons they made.