[RFC] Being You is Deculture

[ECSNorway]

Huh.  I never thought of it that way.  They certainly gave themselves room to mess around, haven't they?

It nicely explains how Roy's facial structure is so different in Zero - they just hired a different actor than than the guy who played him in SDFMTV and DYRL

And why Exedore looks like his DYRL self in 7.

And, quite frankly, why DYRL used the ARMD platforms as the SDF-1's 'arms' instead of the Daedalus and Prometheus -- they didn't SFX it, they filmed aboard a live SDFN-type cruiser.

[Black Aeronaut]

Well, for now I think I got free reign to say "This is my own Macross canon. You no likey? You can go make your own - the creators have all but given us free creative license. (Though how far they'll let you get away with making Doujinshi, I dunno for sure...)"

And so far the reactions I've been getting in regards to Minmei, as well as characterizations for the rest of them, have been greatly encouraging for me.

I forget - in a previous thread did someone mention something about Gloval not actually being Russian in 'canon'? Because I recently discovered he's actually supposed to be Italian.

Wut.

No. Really. The characterization is completely off. For one thing, Italians, to my knowledge, take 'passive aggressive' to an artform. Gloval would not be taking even half the abuse he gets with that placid front he shows all the time. Instead he'd be doing a very good impression of an overstressed boiler getting ready to blow.

And on that note, if he were Italian there would be a helluva lot more fire in his repartee. Instead, everything he does is calm, cool, and measured. His attitude is the quintessential Russian sort of, "Well. This is bad. We'd better get to work, then and save what we can now. We can mourn the rest later." Granted, he is explicitly horrified when he realizes the wholesale death that must have occurred on the Prometheus and Daedalus after the spacefold. But after that moment, he simply sighs and starts directing people. Nichevo and all that.

[Black Aeronaut]

Okay, finally watched Macross Zero.

Man, that was some messed up shit.  Garrick would have been extremely unhappy with the 'Birdman' - Fighting, sorrow, and unhappiness are just one of those things about life.  It's sad and tragic, but you're never gonna be free of them.  Not completely.

So since it's not like Garrick can time travel...

"Wakey wakey you two love birds!"  Said Roy jubilantly.

Shin was the first to open his eyes.  Suddenly, he bolted upright in the bed.  "SARA!"

"nuh?" said the woman next to him as she slowly sat up and rubbed her eyes.

Shin didn't care about anything else.  He simply wrapped Sara Nome in a bone-crushing hug.

"Shin?" said Sara.  "But... where are we?  THE BIRDMAN!"

"Dealt with," I said with a grimm finality that was so vicious that it shocked the two into staring at me.

"Sorry," said Roy.  "Once I told Cradle Robber the story, he was out the nearest airlock so fast that it took me a second to figure out what he was doing."

"Roy!?" cried out Shin as he suddenly realized that not only was he not alone with only Sara, but also that his old commanding officer was present.  "What happened to you?  You look.... old."

Roy chuckled.  "It's been about twenty years, kid.  Besides, becoming a father will give you a few gray hairs."

"Father...  You mean...  Aries?"

Roy frowned with a wistful look in his eyes, then shook his head.

"Oh... Roy, who's this guy?"

Roy chuckled.  "This 'guy' is none other than the amazing Prince Garrick Grimm, Lord of Planet Abason, head of House Grimm, Forgemaster to the Throne of Jurai."

"What?"

"But we just call him Cradle Robber.  The dog."

"What?"

I sighed.  "Mother, quit laying it on so damn thick.  Sorry guys, name's Garrick and I was the one that pulled you two out of that fucking thing."

"The Birdman?" asked Shin.

"Yep.  And you don't need to worry about it any more.  It damn near killed itself once I explained how badly the Protoculture and itself fucked up."

"What do you mean?" asked Sara.  "Everyone was fighting over it!  It was horrible."

"Exactly," I said.  "They were fighting OVER IT."

Sara blinked.  "I don't understand."

I sighed.  Islander people.  So parochial.  "Okay.  What do you do with two little boys who found a sharp knife and are fighting over who gets to use it?"

Sara blinked again.  "I take the knife away from them before they can hurt themselves...  Oh!"

"Yeah.  It was a mistake to leave something like that lying around.  Even worse, it was PURPOSELY left there.  Imagine if that knife I was talking about suddenly exploded, killing the two boys just because they were fighting.  Goddamned pointless."

"But the war-"

"Was inevitable.  Trust me.  I know.  If the Anti-UN war didn't happen, then it would have been a different war over something else.  Besides, after the Birdman incident, what was left of the Anti-UN faction sat down with the leaders of the UN - figured that if there was the Birdman on our own world, then what other terrible things would be out there?  Everyone decided that it was in Humanity's best interests to set our differences aside and worry about the greater threat."

"So...  The Birdman?"

"Is gone," said Roy with grimm satisfaction in his voice.  "For good.  Garrick made damn sure of it."

I nodded.  "I drop-kicked that damn thing into a black hole.  I don't think it's gonna be an issue for anyone, ever.  Which, by the way, is now standard operating procedure every time we find another world with intelligent life."

"What do you mean?" asked Sara.

"We're traveling the stars, Sara.  And finding many other worlds that the Protoculture seeded.  And every single one of them has a Birdman on it.  So we destroy the damn things before they can ever become an issue.  But enough about that.  You guys got some visitors."

I opened the door and a woman that looked very much like Sara shot straight for her side of the bed.  "SISTER!!!"

Followed by a stoutly built man with thick lips, swarthy skin, and his hair in dreadlocks.  "Hoi, Shin!  Still need a backseater?"

Basically?  Sometime after Megaroad-1 leaves, but before Garrick gets yoinked, they stumble across the Birdman, with both Sara and Shin inside and in a state of suspended animation.  Garrick gets the whole story from Roy and is all kinds of righteously cheesed off.  He was off in his VF-4S before anyone could do anything to stop him.

Imagine how Birdman reacts seeing the Valkyrie coming at him with a Lighthawk Sword in hand.

What really pisses Garrick off the most about the Protoculture's Birdman Contingency: How the hell do you expect your ideal pacifist species to survive once they comes across the Zentradi or worse, the Supervision Army?  And regardless, it's an impossible expectation unless the entire world is like Maya - and even then, they'd never have any interest in going anywhere and the first Extinction Level Event that comes along is gonna wipe them all out.  There's a reason why evolutionary dead-ends are a thing, and Garrick is honestly appalled that the Protoculture were that stupid.

Actually, from what you said about Mina from M30, they sound every bit like the sort of imperialistic fucktards that get hoisted by their own petard - which is pretty much what happened!

Garrick later say that they universe is probably better off without them, and Mina will wholeheartedly agree on the matter.

Oh, and Mao and Edgar are on board Megaroad-1 for reasons.  Mao's wanderlust wasn't satisfied with just seeing the rest of the world.  She had to see more, so she got onto the Megaroad-1 as one of the colonists.  Edgar?  Because his last name is LaSalle, which means he isn't gonna let his little sister head off into deep space - even if Roy is taking good care of her.  You know how brothers can be.

Not sure if Mao and Edgar would be an item.

[classicdrogn]

Hm, well, if Mao is on the Megaroad that does mean there's no Abel Nome (or Sally, depending on who married into the family) and then Sheryl Nome later on, though presumably someone will still poke the Vajra and contract the V-type infection while preggers. Eh, there'd be no point to writing fanfic if you don't change anything, though it wouldn't be a surprise if Mayan Island genetics are a component of many of the Parentless Generation's anima spiritia singer candidates... possibly of quite a bit of the post-SW1 clone population explosion, if whatever samples remained from the studies done aboard the carrier in Zero were later moved to the Macross as the center of alien and overtechnology research. Even if they weren't in canon, genetic samples of all types are probably pretty high up on the list of things to be sent aboard in this version.

[Black Aeronaut]

Well, consider that, canonically speaking, the only survivors on Earth were the very few that had taken shelter in one of the incomplete Grand Canons, and I seriously doubt that Mao would have been alive at that point without Garrick being there to butterfly things regardless.

Sheryl Nome, in this case, could only exist one of two ways: Either 1) Able was made through the mass cloning process, or B) There would be a limited (and highly expensive) space liner run between Earth and Megaroad-1.

The second is eminently doable because the main reason why they're plodding along so slowly is because they're not only out there as a colony ship, but also to scout ahead. Besides, long distance jumps like that have their own perils - it helps having a dimensional transponder to home in on, along with a designated space relative to that transponder's location for inbound space fold traffic.

EDIT: Also, I had no idea that Sheryl was a direct descendant of Mao, let alone so close that she's actually Mao's granddaughter. After all, it wasn't as if Mao and Sara could not have had cousins.

[Black Aeronaut]

ETA: You know, that actually makes Sharon Apple even more frightening now, because that AI was able to somehow recreate their singing powers.

I think in this case Humanity really managed to outdo themselves - something like Sharon Apple would have made all of the Protoculture collectively shit themselves in abject terror, even more so than the Proto-Devlin did. Reason being? It mean that you didn't need the genes that carried that ability. All you needed was sufficient technical ability. And the Protoculture strike me as being the sort that liked their status quo.

[classicdrogn]

Grandma Mao is actually seen in a flashback still a couple times in F, or maybe an actual photo. Judging by the fake scanlines in the image on the wiki, a holo of some kind, probably.

2059

Along with Ranshe Mei and Grace O'Connor, Mao authored a thesis about the treatment and effects of the V-type infection with the 117th Long Distance Research Fleet. The fleet was attacked by the Vajra and it is presumed that she was among those that perished

Source

ETA: It's also sticking in my head that she was supposed to have hooked up with Shin, despite the way he seems to follow Sara in the AFOS into space with a separate fold of his own after it already winked out, and also after his engineless, shot-to-pieces VF-0 swoops back out of the water with a trail of anima spiritia gold sparklies and pulls up into a zoom climb like Dyson is so impressed with being able to do in the VF-19 forty years later...

I know I prefer the idea that he actually did chase after her and they ended up somewhere together, but the vague memory that canon is supposed to go the other way still persists. Of course, I already mentioned the official word on Macross canon, so...

[Black Aeronaut]

Indeed.

Meanwhile, I've had a fit of inspiration myself.

What if Garrick's final act in the Macross Universe is to thoroughly butterfly the hell out of the events of Macross Frontier?  I mean WAYYYY beyond what he's done already!

Okay, so here's how it would go.  Garrick hasn't been yoinked yet, and then they meet up with the Vajra on the Megaroad-1.

Garrick calls out a Pondstrider-Alert and clues everyone in on what's going to go down.  Sara and Mao are there for it.  He tells them all that he knows about the Vajra, as well as the problems with the V-Type infection.

What do we do?  Send you out to make peace?

That's exactly what should be done.

Garrick then reminds everyone that his immune system is downright super-human - it has been tuned like a fine engine to operate with utterly flawless precision.  Once Garrick has the V-Type Infection in his system, he will not succumb.  Instead, his immune response will create an antibody protein that will be 100% effective.  He can be the template upon which they can create an effective V-Type Infection Treatment.

More importantly, they can work out how to get the V-type bacterium where they belong: inside the gut.  Which means they will have a means of communicating with the Vajra, and hopefully develop a relationship that allows peaceful coexistence - perhaps even one that is mutually beneficial.  You would not only have a means to finally navigate around fold distortions that cause lag in communications and transits, but also native space dwellers that are only too happy to explore and find new worlds that can become potential breeding sites.

This would completely butterfly Grace O'Connor's plot to use the Vajra in a bid for galactic autocracy with everyone in it being her virtual slave.

And we all know how Garrick feels about people like that.  "If I ever get the chance and she happens to even twitch the wrong way, then I'm blowing her to hell with Sunspark."

What happens, though....  Garrick manages to accomplish his mission objective, though perhaps a bit too effectively.  He proceeds by making himself out as a helpful being, locating things the Vajra use for food, and while under close observation by Vajra drones he manages to get the idea of written communication across, and then begins to make demonstrations of basic mathematical principles with pictographs, and then proceeding to use mathematics as a basic primer.

Before he can get into more abstract ideas such as actual written language, though, he was severely infected with the V-Type organism and then taken in by the Vajra while he was helpless.  They actually nursed him back to health, teaching him how to communicate with them in the process.

The Vajra collective mind is simply astounded - they are reeling from the idea of 'Others' and 'Ones That Are Alone' - but are utterly stricken by the incredibly profound idea that despite each human being a consciousness unto itself, they are still very social beings that absolutely must have the company of others in order to thrive.  It nearly provokes existential crisis among the Vajra hive consciousness - am I really alone despite being many? - one which Garrick carefully talks it out of.  Yes, you are alone, but you do not have to be - we are many!  With many perspectives and many thoughts.  Yes, it is chaotic, but that is what is good about us.  We are always changing.  Always thinking.  Always adapting as best as we can.  And always looking for friends to keep us company.

And then the Vajra learn about him and Minmei.  The idea behind such a partnership is simply awe inspiring for the hive mind.  That two separate minds could be together like that - independent of each other, and yet still needing the other.  Though they're somewhat perplexed about the other four fiancees, but they simply chalk it up as a peculiarity among the 'Ones That Are Alone'.

What really gets them, though, is that Garrick is far from them.  It takes him a moment to communicate the idea of just how far away they are, and the Vajra are somewhat shocked - even for them, that is a phenomenal distance.  They actually wonder if there was a way to help.

And then irony strikes.  Garrick gets the warning signal - he's about to jump!  The Vajra sense his urgency and understand completely.  But there is one problem: they brought Garrick to the Vajra's homeworld.  He is days away, even by their standards.  Katherine is panicking.  She is desperately sending urgent messages back - DO NOT PULL DO NOT PULL WE NEED MORE TIME!!!  But it's already starting - she can feel the tension beginning to build and it's distorting the message.

The Vajra do what they can.  They summon up one of their very fastest, and using Garrick as a medium, Katherine passes power into the Vajra that's helping them as well as helping it to perform the complex calculations, learning as she goes how the Vajra do this so effectively.

Lastly they send an urgent message back to Megaroad-1:

"It's happening.  I don't have time to say goodbye - I am so sorry!  Please have Minmei ready!  She may need to wait outside in a space suit - that is how bad this is!  Included is all the data I've gathered, including what you need to recreate the V-Type Antibody, courtesy of Katherine.

"Please be ready for me!"

It is close.  But it's not close enough.  As Garrick was flung from the Vajra, desperately reaching for Minmei as she pushed her thruster pack beyond its safety limits, the Vajra could hear the anguished screams of Garrick and Katherine just before they are suddenly and abruptly gone.

And just like that, the Vajra suddenly knew loss and pain as humans do.

Sara and Mao are utterly stricken because they can feel the sorrow and remorse from the Vajra.  Besides Minmei, they are the first to know what happened.

The news hits the rest of the Megaroad-1 like a hammer to the head.  Minmei is not alone in her grieving.

But the Vajra themselves are not crippled by this emotion.  Instead, they are galvanized by it.

We may have caused this.  Even though it was never intended.  BUT WE WILL HELP FIX THIS.  He is far away now.  But we saw how it happened.  We can do this, too.  We only need a way to guide us to him.

The Vajra wait patiently.  The humans have the data they need.  They simply need to apply it.  Meanwhile, they make it clear they want to communicate.

Sara, Mao, and Minmei all voluntarily allow themselves to be infected by the V-Type organism while using Garrick's antibodies to keep it from being lethal.  Like Garrick, they are sick for a short time, but since they had his antibodies right away, it's nowhere as bad.  He's done the hard work for them and paved the road ahead.

Soon, the three are conversing with the Vajra and sharing songs with each other.  The Truth of Garrick is shared with the general populace of Megaroad-1.  Talk spreads.  There are people that want to go after him.  A lot of people.  Even if Garrick is a slider, he's earned his place as one of their own.  A digital sign-up sheet is posted for people volunteering to go with them.  Nearly everyone signs on.

There are a few outstanding ones that don't sign on.

Sara and Shin.  Mao and Egar.  Roy and Claudia.

For Sara and Mao, it's easy.  They know already that they have important roles to play.  Mao is already studying the Vajra.  Suddenly being able to communicate with them is going to make her into the foremost expert in the galaxy - more so than even the Protoculture could have believed.  Sara has vowed to help locate and dispose of other Birdmen.  She will not have history repeat itself.

Edgar won't go because he feels he has no dog in this fight.  Claudia does not want to be separated from her family and Roy abides, even as much as it's going to hurt saying goodbye to the others.

But there's a slim hope.

The Vajra can certainly do what they claim, and best of all they can show the humans how.  As Garrick told them - humans are adaptable and learn readily when given the right motivation.  The only question is how to find him - otherwise they could wind up anywhere in the Multiverse - even an antimatter universe is possible.  The risk of going without guidance is too great.

But once traveled, the road will be known.  The Vajra are certain of it.  A return trip, though needing a great deal of energy, can be done.  There is a chance that friends and loved ones can be reunited again.  And this becomes a potent driving force behind the Vajra's hive mind.

Minmei remembers the seed Garrick gave her for safe keeping.  It has to have some kind of connection.  They check.  It does.  They're not sure where it leads, but it's the only thing they have.

Preparations are made.  The fold drive is modified and optimized.  The Vajra, in a surprising show of solidarity, send a small clutch of Larva to the Megaroad-1.  They are special.  One is intended to become a new queen.  The others...  They will be capable of being their own persons, of deciding their own fates, but still tapping into the network.

Seperate beings, but never alone.

And who better to teach them than the ones who've been doing it since they could remember?

When asked why, the answer was simple.  We don't want you to go alone.  We want a part of us to be with you.  We want them to be there when Minmei and Garrick are reunited.  We hope that we will learn how this story ends, and that it has a good ending.

The last outbound space liner leaves the Megaroad-1, bearing the few who would not make the journey.

Everything is ready.  The Megaroad-1 makes it's fateful jump.

There is a long and dreadful silence, one where no time passes for what seems like an eternity.

And then, there is Earth.  And there is much shitting of platinum bricks.

So there you have it.  How Garrick's story in the Macross Universe ends, and how an entirely new journey with new friends and allies begins.  While I'm glad that I finally figured out the ending for this volume, I would dearly like to know what you guys think.

[ECSNorway]

It's certainly an interesting concept. Does this mean that there will eventually be two-way communication between Macrossverse and Tenchiverse?

[Black Aeronaut]

Not only that, but that it will be a beginning of a link between all the places Garrick has visited.

The Multiverse is about to become a VERY interesting place.

[classicdrogn]

That sounds great, BA. Not just tying up Garrick's own plot threads, but addressing what they can of the wider and longer-tern issues in the Macross setting as well, and the Vajra working to reunite Garrick with the friends he's made and then been torn away from ties in very well with their own development here from massmind to "separate but never alone," helping to ease the loneliness and reduce the separation between the members of his swarm to distances they can bridge themselves when desired.

[itsune9tl]

I wonder how Twilight Sparkle will feel about a Group of intelligent non changeling bugs that want to be friends?

[classicdrogn]

Depends on how many of the previous Lessons in Freindship have involved making judgements by appearances and how well they've sunk in, I'd expect. Don't forget that most of the Vajra forms are huge as well - the only ones we see that wouldn't utterly dwarf a pony are the squirrel-ish larva and the green crab adolescent it molted into. The little beige guys are about the size of the YF-24 family variable fighters and Reds are significantly larger, let alone the movie-only blue Hound (apparently the official name of the mantis-style one, which conveniently happened to have an "AFOS cockpit" sort of organ to abduct a human inside) or even a young Queen. Now, it's entirely possible that with anime magic biology a new morph was created to make interacting with humans easier along with the new plan for a looser telepathic interconnection, but they're among the more actually-alien fictional aliens as depicted. It would be kind of a shame to throw that away entirely in favor of green-blooded space hotties when there's already plenty of other choices to fill that role in and out of Macross.

... it wouldn't be weird if a Hound squadron was added to the Megaroad's air wing as part of the Vajra's outreach program, would it? They're pretty cool and well above the capabilities of early-era variable fighters even if they are kinda huge. Maybe just a few as the "honor guard"/personal mounts for the "human queens" that gained the ability to communicate via properly administered V-type infection...

[Black Aeronaut]

That sounds great, BA. Not just tying up Garrick's own plot threads, but addressing what they can of the wider and longer-tern issues in the Macross setting as well, and the Vajra working to reunite Garrick with the friends he's made and then been torn away from ties in very well with their own development here from massmind to "separate but never alone," helping to ease the loneliness and reduce the separation between the members of his swarm to distances they can bridge themselves when desired.

Indeed.  Really, there's not a whole lot left to really figure out.  Hopefully I will soon and having a buffer won't really matter much for this one.

It would be nice if I can wrap this sucker up before the fall 2018 term.

And then after this?

Heh-heh-heh...  I'll admit, it was tempting to make this next one be Darling in the Franxx now that it's ended its production run and we have the whole story.  But the turn things take towards the end demands a...  support network that Garrick would not quite have yet.  (Seriously.  For that?  Nothing less than his full entourage and with Katherine seated at the core of SDF-2 nee-Megaroad-1.  Tentative Name?  SDF-2 Dani California - because she's trouble wherever she goes!)

Instead, I'll be going with the originally planned step of VanDread, where Garrick is going to have PLENTY of targets to vent his rage upon.  Oh man, it's gonna be interesting to see the Earth boy react when Garrick completely shrugs off his gravity manipulation as he puts his enhanced strength to a real test for the first time since Equestria.

"Hey kid.  You wanna turn it up a notch?  I might actually break a sweat then."

"WHO ARE  YOU?"

"YOUR FUCKING ENDING, YOU JAILBATE FOR NAUGHTY PRIESTS!"

And this is to say nothing of the cat that it's gonna set amongst the canaries when Garrick can completely upend their culture.  Something that's going to be a thing is the simple fact that you can't force everyone into a sexual orientation that they don't fit in.  So there's going to be more than a few girls who are known as "Those Kinds of Girls" (that is, girls that while they seem to have a libido otherwise seem to have no interest in actual sex) who suddenly twig to this apparently little known fact amongst the Meijerians.  At least, once Garrick reveals it and buys himself a boatload of trouble. 

I might also pick up again on Being You is Convalescence since, as far as I can tell, things with MLP:FiM have settled down a bit more.

(The thing I HATE about working with a media franchise that is still developing its lore is that it can oh-so-easily reveal a new development that would retroactively invalidate something you do at an earlier timeframe in your fic.  And I feel you can only play the 'Discontinuity' card so far before it starts having an adverse effect.  Though granted, Macross is still ostensibly 'developing', but it's a foregone conclusion that we have ample wiggle room, and regardless the lore is already pretty well established.)

Regarding the Humanoid Vajra....

*Cackles evilly*

Seriously, I am THIS CLOSE to calling them 'Invid-class' Vajra, just to fuck with the Robotech-purists' heads.

But really, when you stop and think about it, there's a whole helluva a lot of commonality between Invid and Vajra.  Just sayin'.  

I'm still working on what direction they would take specifically.  In general, it's pretty much what it looks like on the tin - the Vajra have just been awakened to a whole other world.  And they are VERY curious to learn more about it.  Even if it means jumping into the deep end.  They already know the risks - the pain and anguish of the parting of Minmei and Garrick made that abundantly clear.  They've decided it's worth it.

[classicdrogn]

Mmmh... While I am an unabashed NOPEotech-class Macross purist, I am actually also an unabashed Genesis Climber MOSPEADA purist... so I don't mind adding it to the mega-crossover, though I'd prefer the Inbit be their own selves rather than combined with the Vajra. You're right that they've got a lot of similarities, though, even more so if you look at the original concept art that had them as gribbly biomecha rather than the simplified-for-animation final versions.

Heh, maybe MOSPEADA exists as in-continuity fiction in Macross, so the hominid Vajra could take the inspiration from and be named for it in character, if you really want to go that route?

[Black Aeronaut]

It's a thought. A very very tempting one.... Heeee~.

On another note, this sucker is gonna start getting real big soon. I mean, the document for BYiD(#3) is almost 100,000 words. By comparison, BYiS(#1) was about 140,000 words, and (#3) looks like it's gonna exceed that with a healthy lead.

And if this trend continues? That's a lot of commentary for a lot of stuff that I'll need to keep track of.

Eventually, with all the irons I have in the fire, I should probably eventually get my own forum to act as a sort of online nerve-center. Only problem is getting people to actually go there. >:T

But in sometime between now and then, I should probably ask Bob if he wouldn't mind giving me another subforum once things start to get hard to keep track of.

(Criminy, at this rate I'm gonna start to completely take over the OPFF forum! :V )

[classicdrogn]

Perhaps give one of them an actual Honda variable mospeeda? It's a Kawamori design too, though from something called "Mighty Agent" (about which I can find no further information except an out-of-print R2 DVD listed on yesasia.com which has four girls with guns on the cover image) not Macross...

[Black Aeronaut]

.... God, and I can just see someone in Japan making this IRL, too.

[Black Aeronaut]

Ooooooh boy.

Ohboyhoboyohboyohboyohboy....

WHAT IF MINMEI HAS A GRANDMOTHER!?

Grandmother Lynn - her Paternal Grandmother - suddenly shows up on the SDF-1 along with the sudden influx of Civilians.  She heard that they were looking for members of the Lynn family and decided to come along.  After all, the young ones are gonna need someone with wisdom to help guide them along.  This is especially felt so by those that know about the Mayflower Contingency - the elderly are living history, so those that are elderly, but hale and hearty are encouraged to come along.

Grandma Lynn is definitely a repository of history.  She remembers the Japanese invasion, the American 'Flying Tigers' that came to help them, and then the sudden spread of Communism in China - especially Mao Zedong and his platitudes of change and bloody violence.

So imagine everyone's surprise when she shows up.

Especially Kaifun's.

Why?

*EVIL-ASS SHIT EATING GRIN(tm)*

Because Grandma Lynn was Kaifun's first Sifu!

The idea is that Grandmother Lynn was the oldest daughter of a man that ran a school of Kung Fu - one that had fallen on hard times.  To help ease their financial burdens, Grandma Lynn had been married off to a wealthy local restaurant owner.  (We're gonna be nice about this and say that the man was truly smitten by her and eventually did win her affections.)

When the Communists came for her husband and her family, they fled, relying on her husband's clever mind to give the communists the slip, and her strong fist for the close calls.  Unfortunately, her father's school was destroyed as he had opposed the socialist regime for its moral bankruptcy.

She never reestablished the school, though she taught Kaifun for a time before he went on to a formal school.  This would be why she never got to disciplining him for his attitude problem.

But now...  Well...

Kaifun will at first pay lip service to his Grandmother.  But word of the things he says and does gets back to her, and she then goes and just about breaks Kaifun into two.  No, really.  She completely destroys him with hardly any effort on her part.  And she makes damn sure to do it in front of Minmei, forcing him by provocation to reveal just how ugly he had become because, as usual, it was no secret to her that he wanted Minmei for himself.

And then Grandmother Lynn turns her gaze to Minmei and gives her this LOOK.  Minmei knows this look.  It is one that communicates quite clearly that her shit is fucked in a most profound manner.

"Granddaughter.  You will come to me at dawn.  It is all well and good that you have secured your future, but the time has come for you to learn to fight for yourself as my father had taught me."

Minmei will learn Kung Fu.  It will not be easy, but Minmei has inherited her grandmother's natural grace, so she has that working in her favor.  In the end, no one will be able to mess with her - not without walking away with a severe limp at the very least.  Or, in the worst case scenarios, her making sure that such persons can never bother anyone else ever again.

Oh, and she's just gonna fucking love Garrick.  His kind-hearted-warrior schtick reminds her strongly of her own father, and once she hears about how he shut down Kaifun in the first place, she'll fucking laugh her ass off.  Really, she feels that one of the best things about Garrick was how he was able to recognize Kaifun's attitude for what it was and go immediately on the offensive.  She'll start calling him 'Grandson' right away.

You know how normally an in-law is harped upon by Grandmother's such as Grandmother Lynn?  Garrick does the right thing.  He pays her the utmost respect in their first meeting and makes a good impression of himself.  He knows how things work: she is The Matriarch and her word is law in the Lynn family, and woe betide those that go against it - as Kaifun learns to his detriment.  Though it helps that she knows that American men tend to treat their women quite well, Garrick takes it to another level by honoring the cultural tics.

But the most impressive thing takes place when she goes sniffing around and learns that her younger son and his wife know more than they're letting on (at some point soon here, Garrick decides to let them in on the whole thing so he and Minmei can quit dancing around eggshells), and then calls him onto the carpet to explain.  She then learns about Garrick being a slider, and one who is eventually to come into a great deal of power once he makes it home.

And then there's THAT LOOK again.  She goes straight to Minmei and tells her to quit screwing around - that she was correct in her original assessment of Garrick and that she should not even be giving him a chance to slip away.

"I don't care if it's another dimension or Heaven itself, you will bring that man into our family, you will push yourself to become the best that you can be, and you will establish ours as a Clan of the Stars, or I will tan your backside from beyond my own grave!"

Poor Minmei. 

[Bob Schroeck]

Now I wish I had an "Approved" graphic handy, because, yeah.

[classicdrogn]

They say that you should be wary of an old man in a job where men die young - but even badass grandpas will yield to the grandma with (as Unwelcomestorm puts it in her fic Constellations) a very strong thumb. Likewise, they say the dark side has cookies, but in the end such promises are hollow and it makes you steal them from little old ladies yourself, while if you're on the good side she bakes you cookies... you don't want to know about being on her bad side.

[Norgarth]

*reads BA's idea*

[Inquisitive Raven]

They say that you should be wary of an old man in a job where men die young - but even badass grandpas will yield to the grandma with (as Unwelcomestorm puts it in her fic Constellations) a very strong thumb.

That's it, Minmei has to call her "Baachan."

[Black Aeronaut]

"Demo... Baa-chan!"

"Don't you 'Baa-chan' me, young lady!  Baa-chan is for sweets and candy.  You will bow and call me your 'Sifu' like a proper student!"

*Evil Grin(tm)*

[Black Aeronaut]

No worries, still working on this.  I've just been skipping around, going wherever the muse is pushing me to go.

As a treat, lemme show you something that I'd like a bit of commentary on before I get too carried away with it.  Basically, I want to know if this still seems in-character for Minmei as I have her so far.

It leads off with Garrick saying that Kaifun's logic is flawed, even if the UN weren't exactly paragons themselves, though that's likely going to change soon thanks to the bomb he just dropped on the British Ambassador...

“Good.  Maybe things will change for the better, then.  Maybe I can come back here to Yokohama...”  Minmei fell silent at what she had just implied - that she would come and live here.

Without me.

I know she didn't really mean it like that, but I wasn't a fool, either.  I knew this was one of the possibilities, and she knew that I knew as well.  Even so, I could never punish her for having such a thought.  It's a very human thing to do, and I'm not about to go around trying to get people to be what they're not.

I looked to her and smiled wanly, giving her hand a squeeze.

We walked on in silence for a moment before Minmei broke the silence between us again.

“How can you be so calm about this?” she asked suddenly.  “Here I am, really, honestly thinking about leaving you, and it almost feels like you’re giving up on me here!”

I sighed.  “Minmei...  I don’t know what you want me to do here.  I’ve already shown you everything I can.  You know whats on the horizon.  You know what the possibilities are.  The only thing I can do now is wait for you to make your choice.”

“So... you won’t fight for me?”

“Fight for you?” I said.  “Against who?  Your family?  I’m pretty sure you were just about to tell your father where to shove it just earlier.”  I then sighed.  “You really were about to say ‘Yes’ back there, weren’t you?  And then Kaifun showed up.”

“What about Kaifun?” said Minmei hotly.

I took a deep breath because I knew this was something of a land mine for her.  “Minmei... I don’t trust him.  He’s read way too much Ayn Rand.”

“How can you tell?”

“His entire attitude screams it.  This idea that the entire world is supposed to order itself before you just because you think it’s... that it’s righteous, when really it isn’t.”

“I don’t get it, Garrick.  What’s so bad about wanting the world to be a better place?”

“What Kaifun wants is a logical fallacy.  Look, you confirmed that he’s read a lot of Ayn Rand, so you probably know about Atlas Shrugged.  The scene where the protagonist is being tortured, and he makes some bold speech about... I don’t know -WHAT- and somehow his torturers are suddenly in awe of what an incredible man he is?  That’s not how it works.  Real life?  They would have let him go on for a few seconds, and then laughed as they clubbed him halfway to death.”

“But it’s-”

“It doesn’t matter what the message is.  It’s fiction.  Real life doesn’t work that way.  I told you about everything that happened back when I was taken prisoner, right?  You think that my words had any effect on Budolza?  He almost killed the Lieutenant and I had to cut his hand off to save her.  That is real life.

“What Kaifun wants would be like trying to argue with a typhoon.  It’s not gonna care.  It’s going to come, and if you’re still there when it does, it’s going to wash you away with the storm surge.  And if Kaifun doesn’t watch it, that’s pretty much what’s going to happen to him.”

“How can you say that!  There’s no way Kaifun would do something so dumb!”

“Minmei, I’m sorry, but Kaifun is nowhere nearly as bright as he thinks he is.”

“And you are!?” she snapped angrily.

I stopped and turned to look Minmei in the eyes.  She was genuinely peeved at me.  In fact, she never said a word about when she slapped me earlier.

“I would like to that that me being as old as I am would at least mean I have more life experience than Kaifun does.  I’ll admit, I went through a similar phase when I was young, but when I was confronted with reality, I didn’t try to scream down the storm.  I learned and became wiser for my experience.”

“You don’t seem all that smart now, though,” she said with a glare.

Shit.  She was doubling down on this.  Before, I’ve always been able to get people to see reason, and in the times I couldn’t I could usually just stand back and let them learn from their mistakes.

But with Minmei?  Now?  Regarding this?  She was about to make a very poor choice, one that I knew she would regret for the rest of her life.  And I didn’t wish that kind of fate on her.  The only problem was how do I defuse this situation?  I had to take some kind of action because ignoring it was as  good as handing Minmei over to Kaifun, gift wrapped.

“I’m not about to sit here and try to prove how wrong you are about that.  You know already how wrong it is.  It was one of the things you liked the most about me.  And by the way?  You said that I wasn’t fighting for you?  Congratulations: you just gave me an opponent.”

“Is that so then?” said Minmei with an enraged glare.  “The only reason your not going back alone is because there’s no way I can get back there without you!”

“Alright then,” I said evenly.  “We’d better stop making a scene of ourselves and get going.  I promised your parents and Kaifun that I would deliver these letters, and that is exactly what I’ll do.”

“You had better if you know what’s good for you.”

And then during the flight back, Garrick and Katherine deconstruct what had just happened a bit...

The flight back was a quiet one.  But that was fine.  I needed the time to figure out how I was supposed to handle this.  I knew that Minmei loved her cousin, but I never imagined that she’d defend him so vehemently, even though he was so horribly in the wrong.

She really is angry, isn’t she? asked Katherine quietly.

Yeah, Sprout.  Don’t ask me how I missed this.

It never was such a big issue in the anime.  I mean, yes, she stuck to her guns about Kaifun.  But even then, she was also showing signs of getting tired of him.

Yes... but that took a while, though.  Katherine, I fucked up.  I should have seen this coming.

But what could you have done?

I’m not sure, Sprout.  But I would have thought of something.

By the way, we just got another batch of letters.  Do you want to read them now?

Thanks, Sprout, but I need to stay at least somewhat focused here.  I’d never forgive myself if anything happened now.

Alright, Gar-kun.

So, thoughts?