Fraktal's attempts at pretending that he can write

[Fraktal]

...as if I didn't have enough concepts in the backburner, now I thought about a mecha story centered around a lost colony that has been isolated from Earth for centuries for some reason.

Specifically, I thought about the protag's tsundere love interest being an ace pilot... who gets acquainted with the protag by way of being a convict serving time in the penal company that gets attached to the protag's unit for the duration of a military operation.

 

[Fraktal]

Back in March, I mentioned a possible TTGL idea. I also mentioned that the runtime would be longer than the show, with the pre-Teppelin parts padded.

I've recently though of padding the post-timeskip part too. Namely, the duel between Simon and Lordgenome wrecks the surrounding terrain so badly that it unearths the Arc Gurren. Part of why humanity get back on their feet so fast is due to being able to study and understand the ship's technology. The padding comes in at the part where Simon comes up with the idea that since humanity used to be a spacefaring civilization, there might be other planets with human enclaves out there, so he might as well saddle up and see if he can't find some friends. Rossiu is initially opposed to the idea on the grounds that the Arc Gurren is the only interstellar vessel they have and it's needed for research, but relents when Leeron points out that they're going to spend decades chewing through the data they already have as it is, so it's really no biggie if Simon and co. go on a trip.

That, and Leeron is savvy enough to realize that Simon's real motivation for the expedition is that he can't really find his calling as a bureaucrat and feels like a caged animal if he's forced to stay put. After all, a drill cannot dig if it's not allowed to spin.

 

[Fraktal]

Came up with some more about that TTGL idea. This time, I went and threw together a tentative timeline.

2256
- Spiral energy is discovered as an extremely high-level quantum physics phenomenon.

2375
- Leonard Jerome is born.

2379
- Spiral energy is first successfully harnessed by humanity, triggering a technological singularity.

2380
- The Quantum Spiral Research Institute is founded as a think tank of humanity's greatest scientists to develop applications of Spiral energy. Leonard's grandfather is among them.

2381
- The QSRI prototypes and successfully tests an ultracompact Spiral reactor.

2382
- The first Ganmen prototype is showcased to the public.

2383
- The first interstellar spacecraft powered by Spiral energy is launched.

2385
- The QSRI launches Project Lagann with Leonard's grandfather as project lead.

2388
- The QSRI begins researching the usage of Spiral energy for real-time genetic manipulation.
- Preliminary plans for an infinitely scalable Spiral reactor are completed.

2389
- The First Spiral War.
- The Anti-Spirals discover humanity and immediately attack without warning. Humanity is reduced to a few scattered colonies.
- Leonard's grandfather suffers fatal injuries in the orbital bombardment of his laboratory but manages to pass on the newly completed Lagann Type-Z's Core Drill to his grandson before expiring.

2389-2400
- Leonard uses the Lagann Type-Z's power to pacify the Ganmen-wielding warlords controlling Earth in the aftermath of the war.

2400
- Earth is united under Leonard's leadership. He turns his attention to contacting the surviving colonies.

2404
- Leonard's scientists unearth the QSRI's research on using Spiral energy for genetic mutation and begin experimenting on creating artificial livestock that does not require an existing food chain.

2412
- Pigmoles are declared safe for human consumption and are immediately exported to the colonies as a bargaining chip during Leonard's negotiations with the colonial factions. By the end of the year, none of the colonies are suffering from famine and public opinion swings overwhelmingly in favor of accepting Leonard's rule.

2414
- All colonies formally accept Leonard's leadership, uniting the entirety of humanity under his banner.

2423
- Construction begins on the Cathedral Terra under Leonard's order.

2447
- A production version of the Lagann chassis enters service, but only sees limited use due to its notoriously finicky neural interface. The design subsequently receives several upgrades, all of which are prototyped and tested on the Type-Z by Leonard himself. The Type-Z is renamed Lazengann to differentiate it from the production version but all the differences are cosmetic due to Leonard deliberately not holding back any upgrades for himself in order to maximize his troops' combat strength.

2478
- Anti-Spiral agents sabotage the Cathedral Terra's construction site, setting progress back by several years.

2541
- The Cathedral Terra is sabotaged again amidst increasing protests that the activation of its Super Spiral Engine, developed off of the QSRI's unfinished 2388 schematics, will attract the Anti-Spirals' attention again. Leonard, still in charge due to his constant exposure to Spiral energy unnaturally lenghtening his lifespan, responds with a brutal crackdown on the dissenters despite lack of evidence of their responsibility in the sabotage.

2591
- The beginning of the Second Spiral War.
- The Cathedral Terra completes construction and is powered up for the first time. Within days, Anti-Spiral vessels appear in Sol but are destroyed by the ship's massive firepower. Leonard personally leads humanity to war once again.

2635
- After several years of stalemate, the Anti-Spirals decide to flip the table by showing Leonard the truth about the Spiral Nemesis. Leonard immediately turns the power of the Cathedral Terra on humanity and by the end of the year, reduces them to a shadow of even the aftermath of the first war. Leonard himself settles down on the last colony world he purged to oversee the locals and stops using his birth name.

2693
- The first Beastmen are created by the self-styled Lordgenome.

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Thoughts? On this timeline, the pre-timeskip events of TTGL would be near the tail end of the 3690s.

I also came up with a tentative title: Twist of Fate, referencing both the spiral motifs and how events changed due to the seemingly small deviation of Kiyal interacting with Simon more than in canon.

 

[Fraktal]

...now I had a completely new story concept idea. Namely, take the idea of a Real Robot story but change the core genre from scifi to high fantasy.

Imagine a bog-standard fantasy setting with multiple human kingdoms and non-human races like elves - but for centuries or even millenia, the main way of waging war between these peoples have been magic-propelled mechas. No technology beyond magitek; the mechas are like golems but instead of having enough volition to follow orders, they have cockpits that allow a rider to direct their actions. As befitting of a Real Robot setting, the various models used by the various nations and races are mostly standardized but with race-specific touches - resulting in mechas ranging from hammer-wielding dwarven mechs to sword-and-crossbow human ones resembling medieval armor to slim, crystalline and almost angelic-looking elven mechs with enchanted bows as large as the mech itself.

And when two kingdoms at war with each other clash in a skirmish centered around a genre-classic Gundamjack operation, the bad guys get their asses kicked by the good guys' prototype... piloted by a filthy peasant girl with a magical amulet hanging from her neck, which she found half-buried in the bottom of the nearby river the day before. And no, this is not a fantasy land where women have already emancipated far before the plot ever began, so she has to struggle with the fact that even though destiny has her pegged for Jean d'Arc stuff, nobody takes her seriously just because she's a woman and barely more than a child and a lowborn commoner to boot!

This could be fun. What do you guys think?

 

[Fyrstorm]

I'd read it. The setting sounds pretty cool (especially because high fantasy and real robot at the same time is not something you see every day), and it seems like it'd be interesting to follow the protagonist and her challenges.

That said, I'd just hope that you don't do that obnoxious thing that some high fantasy stuff does of "oh, race x is always y alignment". I figure, given what I've seen of your writing, that such a thing would be unlikely-- I just felt like mentioning it. Other than that, zero complaints with this idea.

 

[Fraktal]

That said, I'd just hope that you don't do that obnoxious thing that some high fantasy stuff does of "oh, race x is always y alignment".

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Not objectively. Interspecies racism would be present, of course, but the accusations wouldn't necessarily be right.

If there would be token-bad-guy orcs deciding to play nice for once, it wouldn't be the Warcraft way. More like... well, the following quote from Starcraft II comes to mind: "Our god betrayed us and for this... he must DIE." Followed by the orcs and everyone else glaring at each other over the campfire until one of the dwarves challenges an orc to a drinking contest and the present representatives of the two races bond over sampling each other's alcohol, revealing that the orcs are even more of a bunch of hard drinkers than the dwarves because while the dwarves only drink for fun, orcs routinely use high-proof alcohol as a combat drug/anaesthetic/disinfectant to the point where by the time they reach adulthood, they have absurd tolerance to the stuff.

 

[EvaUnit01]

...now I had a completely new story concept idea. Namely, take the idea of a Real Robot story but change the core genre from scifi to high fantasy.

Imagine a bog-standard fantasy setting with multiple human kingdoms and non-human races like elves - but for centuries or even millenia, the main way of waging war between these peoples have been magic-propelled mechas. No technology beyond magitek; the mechas are like golems but instead of having enough volition to follow orders, they have cockpits that allow a rider to direct their actions. As befitting of a Real Robot setting, the various models used by the various nations and races are mostly standardized but with race-specific touches - resulting in mechas ranging from hammer-wielding dwarven mechs to sword-and-crossbow human ones resembling medieval armor to slim, crystalline and almost angelic-looking elven mechs with enchanted bows as large as the mech itself.

And when two kingdoms at war with each other clash in a skirmish centered around a genre-classic Gundamjack operation, the bad guys get their asses kicked by the good guys' prototype... piloted by a filthy peasant girl with a magical amulet hanging from her neck, which she found half-buried in the bottom of the nearby river the day before. And no, this is not a fantasy land where women have already emancipated far before the plot ever began, so she has to struggle with the fact that even though destiny has her pegged for Jean d'Arc stuff, nobody takes her seriously just because she's a woman and barely more than a child and a lowborn commoner to boot!

This could be fun. What do you guys think?

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It makes me think a little bit of Escaflowne, for all that I can barely remember anything about it.

That said? What I do remember, I remember very fondly.

I'd read this thing, definitely.

 

[CalumTraveler]

Would read it. Sounds like a fun story!

 

[Fraktal]

Some addendums I came up with in the meantime:

The mechs are kinda-sorta mass produced like Real Robots in the sense that while it takes some serious exertion by a mage to enchant one into quickening (albeit not enough to render the average mage incapable of performing it if he knows what he's doing), the foundries can roll them out fairly quickly and the mages work in shifts, so even the smallest nations tend to have several dozen of the things.

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Orcs are martial, tend to be rough with uninvited guests straying into their territory and commonly decide matters of leadership with ritual combat, but at least one ethnicity of them explicitly do not kill children and pregnant women (even in self-defense), approve of combat pragmatists and get extremely pissed if they see someone sending child soldiers into battle. Even the setting's closest equivalent to vampires are just a doomsday cult of elves who drain other people's magic to fuel their own in preparation for a coming apocalypse, at which point they'd side with the mortals in stopping the cataclysm anyway. That and they disapprove of the mortals' reliance on magic as something that will make them grow weak.

Click to shrink...

 

[EvaUnit01]

Some addendums I came up with in the meantime:

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....the not-vampires shit on other races for their reliance on magic, when their entire gimmick is stealing other peoples' magic to power up their own?

Am I understanding that correctly?

 

[Fraktal]

"We need this power to stop the apocalypse; it's not as if we're going to keep it. You, on the other hand, use it frivolously like toddlers playing with real knives. Take it away, what do you have left? Nothing but sticks and stones. Nothing but savages to whom might makes right."

They're well-meaning but arrogant as fuck about it, yes. As in, even more arrogant than the mainstream elves (and arrogant towards them too, for being more concerned with how the other races perceive them than with doing what needs to be done because of being skeptical about the apocalypse).

 

[EvaUnit01]

"We need this power to stop the apocalypse; it's not as if we're going to keep it. You, on the other hand, use it frivolously like toddlers playing with real knives. Take it away, what do you have left? Nothing but sticks and stones. Nothing but savages to whom might makes right."

They're well-meaning but arrogant as fuck about it, yes. As in, even more arrogant than the mainstream elves (and arrogant towards them too, for being more concerned with how the other races perceive them than with doing what needs to be done because of being skeptical about the apocalypse).

Click to shrink...

Ah. Gotcha.

 

[Fraktal]

... okay, I had a pretty crazy idea for this fantasy mecha concept.

You know those multiversal SI stories where an SI uses his real world knowledge and local technology to go on a conquering spree? Ever seen a story where the SI is not just not the viewpoint character but the antagonist the heroes have to beat back? How much effort would it take for a fantasy world with magitek mechas to fend off magic-powered actual mechas with autocannons and MLRS pods? After all, the bad guys might have superior dakka... but the good guys have the home field advantage and have been doing this mecha vs mecha shit for waaaay longer.

 

[EvaUnit01]

... okay, I had a pretty crazy idea for this fantasy mecha concept.

You know those multiversal SI stories where an SI uses his real world knowledge and local technology to go on a conquering spree? Ever seen a story where the SI is not just not the viewpoint character but the antagonist the heroes have to beat back? How much effort would it take for a fantasy world with magitek mechas to fend off magic-powered actual mechas with autocannons and MLRS pods? After all, the bad guys might have superior dakka... but the good guys have the home field advantage and have been doing this mecha vs mecha shit for waaaay longer.

Click to shrink...

I actually had an idea for an unconventional take on the SI concept as well, recently.

Okay, it would be a lot less unconventional than what you describe, but the premise I had is that because the SI (assumed to have SI'd into a canon character) has imperfect-as-hell metaknowledge, and pretty quickly gets outed as "not [character]"/"an impostor".

Where exactly it goes from there, is up to the setting in question and to the personal taste of the author.

 

[Fraktal]

The thing I proposed last night? It wouldn't really be an SI, as I despise SIs and would sooner die than write myself into any of my stories beyond an unnamed cameo. It was just the closest analogue to what I meant.

Anyway. Thinking a bit more about it, I realized that bringing sci-fi elements into a fantasy world might not be thematically appropriate. So I was thinking, what if the non-magitek mechas are basically steampunk with magic instead of steam? That is, the regular mechas are fully enchanted and move via magic; these ones run on a magical power source but move via conventional pistons, gears and stuff. Not as agile and such, but can be mass-produced far more readily due to not all of it being enchanted, thus requiring less magical input.

Also, I mentioned above that elven mechas would still use bows. That would be their hat, actually: elven mechas are feared for their apparent ability to kill you before you even see them. While they are indeed accurate enough to snipe someone from kilometers away, they can only do that if they have line of sight; however, they do have access to magical arrows that can home in on the magical signature of the target and automatically seek targets when blind-fired, allowing elven mechas to kill targets from beyond hills and such. Fun fact: the elves' equivalent of a memetic badass who lived a few centuries ago didn't need such arrows back in the day because he could just scry the target and nail it with an ordinary arrow fired on a ballistic trajectory over a mountain range. That is massively OP in a fantasy land and acknowledged so in-universe.

 

[Hojo Norem]

I really do like the sound of this? What kind of aesthetic are you going for? Magical Gundams vs Steam/MagicPunk battlemechs?

 

[Fraktal]

Articulate hands to allow melee weapons, but not flight. At least, the mass-produced ones can't.

Materials, I don't know. I stated above that elven mechas are crystalline and human-made ones are metallic, but I don't know the rest. Whatever the case, dwarven ones are so powerfully built that the only reliable way of stopping one on the warpath is legging and disarming it because the torso is nearly invulnerable and can soak up punishment that would completely shatter other races' models. Dwarven and elven ones are also the only ones with environmental proofing; all can shrug off rain and snow without discomfort for the pilot, but extreme temperatures, smoke inhalation and drowning if submerged are still a factor. Dwarven mechs, on the other hand, are airtight, can resist direct contact with lava for a few minutes and even cross rivers and smaller lakes by walking across the bottom; elven mechs are fully environmentally immune for as long as the pilot's magical endurance lasts.

 

[Fraktal]

Had an "establishing character moment" idea for the above story concept. Namely, the moment of the main protag's best friend.

So then. The good guys' army camps down in a village before heading to the capital for some R&R and one of the more assholish nobles naturally attempts to abuse his status via attempted sexual molestation of the main protag - the rationale being that since she's just a commoner, no one would care and no one would take her word over his. Except she's not the helpless wallflower kind and in the ensuing scuffle, grabs his dagger and shanks him in the thigh with it, which naturally causes enough of a commotion to have everyone in earshot burst into the room to see why exactly is a man howling like a stuck pig. As he expected, the audience is generally taking his word over her... when the frickin' queen walks into the room in full plate armor and asks for an explanation over everyone else bowing their heads.

The main protag states that the noble tried to defile her, the noble swears on his forebearers that he did no such thing and states that the girl should be whipped for not only backtalking to a noble but actually assaulting one, pointing at his still bleeding wound as evidence. The queen gives the two a long, hard look... then turns to her bodyguards.

"Take that man out to the front and cut his balls off. Then throw him into the nearest pig sty and make sure he doesn't sit anywhere other than the ground."

The noble naturally starts screaming in terror that she can't possibly take that commoner brat's word over a noble's, to which the queen simply replies that seeing how he's the one backtalking to his sovereign without said sovereign's permission, "I'll take her word over yours any day." and simply walks back out.

Yes, said queen is a kickass ace pilot who got the throne recently (she's in her early thirties) because she has no male siblings and no older sisters. And yes, the court very much disapproves of her basically taking a commoner girl as her unofficial squire, to which the queen literally replies "Last time I checked, sovereign beats noble, not the other way around. Your argument is invalid. "

 

[Fraktal]

Back in October, I had this mental image.

...why does my brain find the mental image of Puru chasing and trying to nonlethally take down a truck with the Qubeley, set to Cowboy Bebop music, hilarious?

Judau: Watch it, you're gonna kill them at this rate!

Puru: Well, excuse me! I'm not exactly capable of treading lightly in this thing!

Judau: Just grab them and flip them over!

Puru: As if it's that easy!

Amuro: *facepalm* Not again...

Judau: Quit whining and just do it!

Puru: If your mouth is that big, maybe you should get your butt over here and do it yourself!

Kamille: Cut it out, you two! Of all the times-

Judau & Puru: YOU STAY OUT OF THIS!

Kamille: *blink* ...

Click to shrink...

Click to shrink...

Now, I had this mental image again. The team is hanging out at a town for some R&R when a bunch of Neo-Zeon soldiers who just emptied the local bank are streaking by them in a truck; seeing the parked AEUG mobile suits, they panic and step on the gas, almost turning Judau into roadkill for standing at the wrong spot at the wrong time. He's knocked over but other than being mildly scuffed, he's fine...

...not that it stops Puru from flashing a murderous expression and sprinting full-speed to the Qubeley. Cue the music as she jumps into the Qubeley and gives chase with all the righteous fury of a tsundere whose boyfriend just got hurt.

Neo-Zeon soldier: Get lost! (fires bazooka at the Qubeley overhead)

Puru: (rattled in the cockpit by the impact) FUCK YOU!!! (returns fire with the Qubeley's forearm beam gun, almost flipping the truck over with the blast wave)

Kamille: Careful! You're going to kill them at this rate!

Puru: They're dead either way once I get my hands on them!!

Kamille: Puru!

Puru: Hold still, you fucks!! Your assholes have a date with my funnels!

Beecha: (winces) Eugh...

Elle: Man, that girl's got a dirty mind... never would've thought she's into that.

Leina: Into what?

Roux: (very quickly) You don't want to know!

Click to shrink...

 

[EvaUnit01]

I don't care what anyone says, ZZ is a fucking treasure and fans need to do more with it.

 

[Fraktal]

FYI, this Puru is explicitly artificial like her sisters but unlike them, she received growth-acceleration to have the mental capacity for basic tactical thinking in order to act as squad leader for the others, so she's biologically in her mid-teens. Still somewhat immature and childish, but also affected by teenage hormones that make it obvious she and Puru Two are related as far as her temper goes.

 

[Fraktal]

Due to the overwhelming positive response I received to a recent post of mine about Speak of the Devil in the Gundam thread, I went over this one (and threadmarked all my stuff so far on the side) and noticed that aside from my above two posts, I never pitched it here. So... any interest? I realize that the idea of a Peggy Sue plot isn't new, but there are very few Universal Century fanfics to begin with thanks to the great majority of western audiences having cut their teeth on Wing and SEED and Japanese audiences who'd be more familiar with UC not bothering with non-Japanese websites in general.

So the post I was talking about (Kaiser, you're gonna love this stuff):

I already stated that there might be a post-CCA segment involving Banagher and Hathaway fighting a bunch of Zeon fanboys, basically the Zeon equivalent of Neo-Nazi skinheads. While I had not much details on the latter, just now I thought that it would eventually turn out that Char is leading them. That despite being married and an Axis citizen who can live his life in peace without fear of reprisal from the Federation, Char just can't sit on his ass and let things be. There would be a confrontation between him and Amuro at one point where Amuro, remembering the Second Neo-Zeon War from the original timeline, accuses Char of stirring shit up purely to drag him out for a rematch - but Char surprisingly denies it and goes on a motivational rant.

Namely, that every single one of the kids in his group joined on their own volition. They didn't do it merely to seem like cool dudes who fight the establishment, but because they were lost and disillusioned, lacking direction in life. People need something to aspire towards, a dream to desire, a cause to follow, something to give them the strength to keep moving - but after the One Year War, anyone who says that out loud is immediately branded an extremist. Hope and ambition has been replaced with fear and suspicion. The world is twisted and broken - and it was Amuro's, Char's and their parents' generation that broke it. Yet they refuse to owe up to it, going all "it was good for my parents, it was good for me, it will be good for my children too" without ever considering what those children would actually want or deserve. This leaves the children without anything to live for, leaving them ripe for corruption by actual extremists who thrive in a world of disillusioned masses (and since Char saw Gihren's rise with his own eyes and remembers Jimba Ral's rants, he knows what he's talking about). In such an atmosphere, it's only a matter of time before another madman sets the world on fire again and when that happens, it will be the old generation's fault. It's their mess and they owe it to the next generation to clean it up, yet all Char can see when he looks back is Kamille's generation fighting in a war the adults started over causes the adults forced them into.

And before you go and say that Char wouldn't be that selfless, do note that when Char says people need direction, he's referring to himself too. He fought in multiple wars but now, without Zabis to kill and with a legitimate Zeon government at Axis, he has no cause to fight for. So he made one.

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Amuro founded a special school for Newtype children and approached Kamille's parents with an offer to take him in, knowing that they're workaholics who don't really care about their son. His main goal was to prepare Kamille for Scirocco's parting gift in case it becomes necessary, but when the Titans wised up to Amuro being affiliated with AEUG and tried to arrest him, Kamille stubbornly stuck with Amuro instead of going into hiding with the other kids.

Char never joined AEUG in this timeline so he didn't know Kamille personally during the Gryps Conflict, but had quite a few run-ins with Judau's gang (plus Kamille) during the FIrst Neo-Zeon War.

Stardust failed because Amuro was present to assist Kou. The colony drop was stopped and the resulting positive PR protected Kou from getting court-martialed this time, but the Titans still got founded anyway (and immediately hand-picked Kou because going AWOL to fuck the Zeeks' shit up was the kind of guy they wanted); Amuro tried to prevent it, but Revil was on the side of those who insisted that safety measures must be taken to prevent the possibility of another Zeon remnant group trying this shit again. So Amuro resigned from the EFSF in protest and immediately sought out Blex Forer to create AEUG together, using "gone to scout potential Newtypes for the school" as an excuse to drop off the radar whenever he needed to go do some AEUG business (like raiding the Titans' Newtype research labs).

In fact, by the time Amuro's cover was blown and he was forced to go AEUG full-time, the Titans were actually gearing up to send an expeditionary force into the asteroid belt to preemptively invade Axis but Amuro's efforts unintentionally disrupted preparations long enough for the mission to be called off because Axis came to the Earth Sphere by themselves.

Once Amuro had hard evidence of the Titans' wrongdoings and showed it to Revil, Revil was the first to publicly denounce the Titans at Dakar and officially declared them a rogue organization; the Titans retaliated by carbombing him but Revil survived and had the Federation government hire on AEUG as a provisional PMC partly to bolster their efforts against the Titans and partly to rub the fact under the Titans' noses out of spite.

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In this timeline, the Neo-Zeon War (the first; there was no second, hence the lack of numbering) ended radically differently due to a long chain of events: due to Amuro's interference, Gihren failed to kill Degwin with the colony laser and Degwin basically gave Revil a free hand to deal with Gihren. So Gihren took over A Baoa Qu and launched a coup d' etat. Because of this, Kycilia wasn't at A Baoa Qu and Char consequently couldn't kill her. Because of that, Kycilia made it to Axis and assumed command instead of the Karns. To prevent a succession crisis, Kycilia deliberately remained single, designated Mineva as her official successor and when she found out about Glemy's existence, took great pains to have him raised into someone who's loyal to the dynasty but has no personal ambitions himself, kinda like Dozle.

Except due to being raised as a decent human being, Glemy recognized that there's no point in going down fighting a war and spending the rest of their lives on the run from Federation security, so he overthrew Kycilia in a coup and contacted the Federation to officially request a ceasefire and parlay as Mineva's acting regent. To distance themselves from the Titans' actions, the Federation agreed. Negotiations commenced and in the end, a peace treaty was signed, recognizing Axis as an independent state. In return, Glemy agreed to extradite Kycilia and a number of other individuals for war crimes trials, pay war reparations and clean up the shoal zones left over from the One Year War. As a result of said cleanup, by UC 0100 Axis is in the process of replacing Moussa with a Stanford Torus built around the asteroid's rim from salvaged materials and is a major spacecraft manufacturer; they even built a few improved Salamis Kais for the EFSF as a PR stunt.

Most of the moderate Zeonic resistance members on Earth who were in it for the patriotism rather than the ideology disarmed and emigrated to Axis (which is partly why the Federation allowed Axis independence: to get rid of these elements without having to lift a finger), but there were still a number of radicals left planetside. Knowing that he's related to Gihren, people were skeptical that Glemy would actually resign upon Mineva coming of age as he pledged - but to their surprise, he did just that and left Mineva a constitutional monarchy rather than a dictatorship. Even so, relations between Axis and the Republic of Zeon were initially rather cool, but improved after Mineva, as her first act as Sovereign of Axis, extended diplomatic recognition to the Republic along with a binding legal document where she, as both Sovereign and head of the Zabi family, formally forfeits any and all territorial or economical claims to the entirety of Side 3 and all other domains held currently by the Republic or formerly by the Principality. This latter part naturally draws sighs of relief from Federation citizens, as it means that the Principality of Zeon is finally dead and buried for good and the rot that has been cut out by the One Year War is finally healing; it also prompts the Federation to cautiously take a wait-and-see stance and temporarily suspend the Republic of Zeon's dissolution in UC 0100 to see whether it's actually possible for multiple states to coexist in the Earth Sphere without going at each other's throats after a few years.

Some of the radical diehard elements of the Zeonic resistance still holed up on Earth tried to get Axis' assistance in their struggle but after Axis arrested and extradited a few of them to the Federation, they stopped trying and declared Mineva and Glemy to be Feddie lapdogs and a disgrace to the Zabi name. In response to which Mineva pulled out the steel beneath the silk and reminded the Federation that former Principality citizens do not get implicit Axis citizenship, ergo Axis will not lift a finger to save their asses from execution as terrorists. They fuck with the Federation, the Federation has every right to fuck right back and Axis will stay out of it. And as she's declaring that, Revil has a flashback of Degwin (who has since died of old age while in house arrest) similarly giving him a free hand with Gihren after the assassination attempt by colony laser and wonders whether the daybreak after humanity's nightmare has finally come after all...


Basically, if you consider the Principality of Zeon as Nazi Germany and canon Republic of Zeon as West Germany, in this timeline the Republic is East Germany and Axis is "West Germany with the British royal family".

Click to shrink...

 

[Fraktal]

...okay, now this realization blew my mind.

While discussing Speak of the Devil's above planned plot, the question of why the Titans would be still bad guys with Revil around to rein them in came up. I tried to defend my position by pointing out that even though Revil is popular and a war hero, he still doesn't have absolute power and can't just have everything in the Federation military go the way he wants because general or not, he's just one guy. He may have popular opinion behind him, but popular opinion isn't everything; I brought up MacArthur as an example here, seeing how he ended up relieved of command against public opinion after he overstepped himself and nearly caused WWIII.

But @maguado87 was adamant that even if Revil doesn't prevent the Titans' formation, he still has the authority to put someone like Bright or Blex in command, which would possibly entice Amuro to join...

...and it was at this moment that a lightbulb went off in my head like the flash of Trinity.

If Amuro and co. are in the Titans, Jamitov and Bask could go AWOL and form the local equivalent of AEUG as an earthnoid supremacist organization after having tried and failed to turn the Titans into one!!

How. In the hell. Did that not occur to me before?!

 

[maguado87]

...okay, now this realization blew my mind.

While discussing Speak of the Devil's above planned plot, the question of why the Titans would be still bad guys with Revil around to rein them in came up. I tried to defend my position by pointing out that even though Revil is popular and a war hero, he still doesn't have absolute power and can't just have everything in the Federation military go the way he wants because general or not, he's just one guy. He may have popular opinion behind him, but popular opinion isn't everything; I brought up MacArthur as an example here, seeing how he ended up relieved of command against public opinion after he overstepped himself and nearly caused WWIII.

But @maguado87 was adamant that even if Revil doesn't prevent the Titans' formation, he still has the authority to put someone like Bright or Blex in command, which would possibly entice Amuro to join...

...and it was at this moment that a lightbulb went off in my head like the flash of Trinity.

If Amuro and co. are in the Titans, Jamitov and Bask could go AWOL and form the local equivalent of AEUG as an earthnoid supremacist organization after having tried and failed to turn the Titans into one!!

How. In the hell. Did that not occur to me before?!

Click to shrink...

Original Timeline hinder your view?

 

[Fraktal]

No. It's just... good guys all on one side, bad guys all on the other side, and the odds are stacked in the good guys' favor? It just doesn't feel right. Doesn't feel Gundam.