[RFC] Being You is Deculture

[Black Aeronaut]

Yeah, pretty much what I had in mind, except with Valkyries.... well, let's just say that the lines between being a fighter pilot and a ground pounder are very much blurred.

And it's not something Garrick is gonna half-ass. Once things initially settle down after the Rain of Death, he's going to go looking for old veterans - the ones who used to be the SEALS and Green Berets and Airborne Rangers and Marine Recon. He's not asking them to join. He's asking them to teach. And on top of it all, Garrick is going to ask Breetai for the Zentraedi's own elite. (EDIT: Oh, and let's not forget other outfits like the SAS and Spetsnaz. Can anyone think of others?)

And it won't be Kamjin or Azonia. Breetai himself becomes the school master here. And he will demand nothing less than perfection, especially after having read Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

"You show great promise, Lieutenant Grimm. But promise on its own is not enough. Prepare yourself, soldier. For I, Breetai, will now teach you to win."

Soooo.... No one's got anything to say about the thing with Minmei?

[Norgarth]

British SBS (Special Boat Services, their equivalent to SEALs I believe), French Foreign Legion,

While I couldn't name many, I'm sure most developed nations have their own Elite units.

[classicdrogn]

Man, it's been months now that I've been meaning to get back to this. Sorry about that, I know how frustrating it is to put something out there and not hear any response.

“I don’t believe you’ve met my fiance,” said Roy casually. “Grimm, this is Lieutenant Junior Grade Claudia LaSalle. Claudia, this is Perspective Petty-Officer Third-Class Garrick ‘Cradle Robber’ Grimm.”

This is a very odd title. Did you mean "Prospective" maybe?

It was another close one for us. Once again, while the Zentradi battle pods were not that great, they would always beat us down mercilessly with sheer numbers. And because no target worthy of the Main Gun never appeared, there was nothing to help clear the field except for the point defenses of the SDF-1.

ever appeared

Direct hit to the heartstrings! Mayday! Mayday!

I don't even know the song mentioned off the top of my head, but just the way you describe her acting makes this effective. Good writing there.

Minmei slugged me in the shoulder. I may have had it coming, but I'll be damned if I'm not gonna give as good as I get.

Being good friends first is the foundation for every successful romantic relationship I know of. Seeing Minmei and Garrick interacting here, I'm not worried about them either, as long as the "I'm actually a slider and alien royalty to a culture with not-quite-mandatory polyamory, and multiple fiancees with nearly as many children on the way, all waiting for me to find a way back to them" revelation goes all right.

The standard issue GU-15 gunpods were good stuff, but it was felt that we could use something for the designated marksmen such as myself. Thus, we have the GU-16.

Unlike the 15 with its tri-barrel rotary canon and 35mm shells, the GU-16 used a single-barrel canon based loosely on the venerable OTO Malera 76mm gun. It carried far fewer rounds than the GU-15, but its caliber and single-shot nature more than made up for it with it’s far greater range, outstanding accuracy, and devastating stopping power.

As a dedicated gun-bunny in the Artdink Macross games (Seriously, by default I strip all the missiles off my valks and put everything into the guns, in a MACROSS game) I must approve. I tend to prefer the VF-4 or VF-27 with their energy-based armament just because I tend to think in terms of RPG-style "you are stranded with no resupply but what you can improvise" long-term operations, but for this point in the timeline that sounds like a damn fine weapon.

I kept Hikaru covered like a mother hen. I was bouncing all over the place, from fighter, to gaurdian, to battloid, and back again, putting my VF-1A through its paces. I wasn't THE best pilot, but I was hell unleashed at keeping the Zentradi occupied.

"guardian" - though that's an invention of the Robotech dub, in pure Macross it's always "gerwalk," and I think supposed to be capitalized as an acronym (for what I can never remember) as well. I also don't remember which you're going for here, but the description of the fusion turbines for Washuu's letter lacking any mention of magic plant juice suggests Macross.
Speaking from that same basis of having hundreds of hours in the Macross action games, if you're not transforming frequently, you're doing it wrong, if for no other reason than to throw off enemy targeting with the changes in flight path and speed.

Minmei giggled at that. "Yeah, no kidding. So what about you then? No princess?"

"Are you kidding?" I grouched. "I already got more than enough princess to deal with as it is."

Minmei only giggled again and let it go at that.

Oh you have no idea, Minmei. Hopefully soon, though, since Gar has been warming up to you despite his best efforts.


And huh, looks like I did at least nominally respond to these before... They did feel a bit familiar as I went along. Eh, still pointed out a few more details this time, and now it's fresh in my mind for actual new stuff.

IT'S BIG DAMN HERO TIIIIIMMMME!!!

Yaaay! (Grabs bots, heads to the Theatre of Love)

Seven days in planetary orbit over Mars, and Kamjin was not letting up. Casualties had been picking up and SDF-1's point defense system, in spite of the pin-point barriers, had been reduced to nearly nothing. In order to compensate, we started deploying destroids along the hull. They don't have quite as much punch as some of the original point defenses, but their advantage is that they are mobile. It's not much, but we'll take it.

Not only can they dodge, they can walk themselves from the factory section to their combat station with just a pilot or two, rather than needing a work crew and transport/construction equipment to install. In the combat environment described, I expect the time savings alone is a significant advantage in its own right.

My reverie was interrupted by the 1MC speaker that had been installed in all rooms of all buildings in Macros City. A list of people who were to report to HQ was being rattled off. At first I paid it no real mind, up until I heard the words, "And also Petty-Officers Garrick Grim and Hikaru Ichijyo."

Macross City

We were directed to the main conference room in the Headquarters building where the top brass held their own briefings. I was as nervous as Hikaru was when he reached to knock on the door when it hit me.

I reccomend breaking that last sentence up somehow; as it stands it's a very odd mash-up of two thoughts. That may match how it feels to Gar as it happens, but is a bit of a wrench to the reader trying to follow along.

A female Yeoman with a huge volume of orange curls directed us to toe the line with all the other awardees. Before us in a large set of tables arrange in a U-shape sat all the senior officers of the SDF-1. So many Commanders and Lieutenants. Roy was there at the very end of one table, where he gave us a subtle wave. Hikaru's nervousness got worse, nonetheless.

Before us, at a set of large tables arranged in a U shape, sat (...)

"Fuzzy, knock it off," I hissed at him soto voiced. "We're not in trouble here, so get at attention."

sotto voce - it's adopted from Italian, though it's properly a single word there rather than being split into two.

Roy chuckled. "In dirty coveralls, huh? I don't think the Captain would have stood for that at all."

You should probably specify Gloval here, since the previous paragraph is Gar talking about a different Captain he served under previously. Well, unless you mean to say that Roy was surprised that other Captain put up with it, in which case it would be better phrased closer to the way I put it there. As it stands it's a little ambiguous.

Aaand you do explain, in the next paragraph. Fair enough, though having multiple captains on a ship is... yeah.

The SDF-1 was home to an entire flight of strike fighters, composed of four groups with four squadrons a piece, and each squadron with four wings a piece.

In this context, "apiece" should be one word. You could also replace one of those with "each," to avoid the repetition.

"Now, Fuzzy, what I'm going to do is that I'm going to put you in command of your own flight. Normally a flight only has one Lieutennant, but since I can't really split up you and Cradle Robber here, he's going to be your Exec." At this Roy gave me a meaningful look. "Any problems with that, Cradle Robber?"

Lieutenant

Miximillian Jeneus.

Dude. Maximillian Jenius. Good ol' Maxed-Out Max... going by the video games that are included in canon, he flies every single variable fighter from here to the VF-22, all in blue livery and kicking ass with every single one.

"Spaceman Max ‘Cornflower’ Stirling reporting as ordered, sir!" Roy, Hikaru, and I stood and returned the salute.

A few lines back you had him with the Macross surname - should probably stick to one or the other.

"Ah, don't let it get you down, sir!" said Hayao bawdily. "Why, with me in your wing you won't have to worry about anything. AH-HA-HA-HAH!"
Hooo boy. I had my work cut out for me.

Missing a carriage return here

"Well, at least we got introductions aside. Why don't you boys all go out and get acquainted with each other.

question mark

I rolled my eyes as I shrugged off the sudden assault of cloth napkins and said, "Okay, okay, yes, I got your a gift. Happy birthday Minmei."

got you a

Strips of red on the ruddervators along with our squadron number set us apart.

While I can't say this is technically totally wrong the VF-1 is more of a partially tailless design, as the tails don't really have enough of a cant to them to effectively act as elevators. The vertical thrust vectoring on the engines, or just the aerodynamic effect of the feet/vector flaps in case of a flame out, is pretty much responsible for pitch control.

“Aww man! We’re never gonna get any action back here.”

Man needs to learn to leave his ego behind at the flight line. That's not OOC for Kakizaki, but it's good that Gar is actively working on correcting his habits. Being brash and showy makes for a memorable shonen protagonist, but doesn't fly so well in even a soft-realism military setting.

And then it was just Kamjin and me, dancing in the vacuum and trying to get a bead on each other all while trying to herd each other with our secondaries. It was hard work - those Command Pods may be bigger, but they sure as hell ain’t slower.

Goddamn is he a pain in the ass in the games. You're all but giving me flashbacks here.

While I certainly had his attention, he wasn’t oblivious. He was definitely pushing us back towards the SDF-1. But I wasn’t going to let that be any sort of hinderance.

hindrance

And that was the gospel truth. The HWR-00 MkII Monsters lived up to their name with their massive 40cm canons and fiendish tri-barrel missile launchers on each arm.

However that is the extent of their armament. They have no real means to defend themselves when the fighting gets up close and personal. And I knew for a fact that just about every one of our precious Monsters were about to get wiped out if we didn’t do something about it.

I thought they had a coaxial machine gun on each arm as well? Maybe that's only the VB-6 canonically, but I know they do in the games.

“Birthday party? Oh! You mean that cute waitress at the Nyan-Nyan... then that means... HAH! Hey guys! Get a load of this! Cradle Robber is in Red Wing!”

I think I'm going to have to ask for an explanation of the joke here, because "red wing" has no meaning to me beyond the dictionary definition of the words.

There was a wrecked Defender next to me - no sign of the pilot. It had taken a direct hit to one of the magazines. Keeping an eye on Kamjin, I wrenched the pair of gun barrels off the wreck and tossed one to Kamjin. I kept the other and took my Jyuraian fencer’s stance.

Kamjin took up the gun barrel. There was a crackle of static and I heard his voice. He was speaking Zentran, but it was plainly evident from the tone in his voice that he definitely approved, and took his own fighting stance as well.

... No. You are not going to frenemies-flag motherfucking Kamjin Kravshera. Nowai!

TAKE THIS! ALL OF MY LOVE! ALL OF MY HATE! AND ALL OF MY MONEY!!!

to shame. I don’t think even the venerable hero, Lieutenant-Commander Fokker, could pull what you did out there today.

You've been switching between this and "Focker" here and there. I recommend a global search and replace for whichever one you decide is the mistake.

“Additionally, you managed, quite by accident I am sure, to single-handedly stopped that battle cold. You did so by making yourself known to their Commander on Mars, and continued to do so until he finally sought you out.

stop

I was Captain Gloval’s special project.

Sweet Tsunami, what have I gotten myself into?

Patronage, son. It's a dirty game, but the good ones play it to keep the bad ones from completely taking over.

Just about every Valkyrie and Destroid jockey had to be crammed into the place, along with the Bridge Bunnies, Misa Hayase, and Claudia LaSalle.

I suggest adding an explicit scope to this, rather than leaving "on the ship" implied. It's okay as is, but I always feel like it's better to be specific aside from gore, bathrooms, and sexytimes.

I held no pity for her, because she of all people should expect nothing less from a woman marrying a hot-dog fighter ace like Roy.

Oh, Claudia! Hopefully Gar can arrange things to keep her and Gloval alive this time around... suggest installing an escape pod for the bridge crew, at least.

I shrugged. “I’ve been looking around for a while now. Since you made sure to tell me when you birthday was long ago, I kept my eyes open for something that would be as unique and special as you.”

your birthday

And a very sweet ending to that one, too. Very perceptive girl, that Minmei, and persistent as well when she decides on a goal. Not like that's any surprise, you don't just fall into a career in music without a lot of effort and working from multiple angles.

The overall dynamic is going to be interesting, with Nanami being in overall charge of household affairs (and Garrick's final line of defense), Achika taking charge of the rank and file soldiers, leaving Minagi to take charge of the Body Guards. Yuki will occupy a very interesting niche: the Zeroth Line of Defense. She becomes something of a modern age Kunoichi (as well as the Clan's intelligence expert who is second in skill only to Funaho herself) and works to subvert plots against her Clan in any way she can.

Thoughts?

I feel a bit sad for Yuki, for the experiences that shaped her into this, but at the same time it's a necessary role, and within the family she has room to relax and enjoy peace and love so it's not too bad. Seriously though, fuck plotters and their plots.

Now, I want you to know that, of course, I’ll be performing the procedure myself, so you don’t need to worry for your daughters well being.

daughters'

However, this is going to upset your ladies biochemistry as this is going to feel like an abortion to them. I will do what I can, but they are going to need your love and reassurance. In fact, I’ve arrange for Airi to stay over for a few weeks. She herself has undergone the

While medically the results are probably about the same, I'd suggest changing this to "miscarriage" just to avoid the loaded politics of the word "abortion." Also, "arranged."

Just after your last letter had arrived, I received word about the attempt to kidnap Aeka by Prince Garyu of Oku II. While it was you’re forewarning to Washu that gave them the chance to prevent it from happening, it was Tenchi’s strong

your forewarning

I want you to know that we think of you always, Garrick. We greatly anticipate your homecoming, and the seat of you Clan on the council awaits you, occupied for now by Seto until Achika is able to do so in your stead.

your Clan

Everyday I tell myself, “Don’t worry. He’s coming. He’ll get here because he’s Garrick and he’s never going to give up.” Some days it works. Some days, I find myself crying on one of my sister’s shoulders.

sisters' - though of course, people don't always speak or write with perfect grammar, so it may be excused if it's an intentional error for the purposes of character.

As Mother told you, we all decided to put our daughters in stasis. We all have our reasons, but even so we all wanted to be sure that each of us was on board with the idea before we went through with it.

The consensus was that we either all do this together or none of us at all. And from there we all talk to each other, taking turns at ferreting out our honest feelings on the matter. Even Yuki, as she had interesting insights as well as her own feelings to express. (I can’t wait until we can see what her children are going to be like.)

Doing it all together is a kind thought, but I hope they only bring one out and to term at a time. Even with a six or so person household, just a single infant is a lot of work to deal with. The life spans they can expect with access to Jyuraian (and Washuu's) ultech mean there's no rush, so they can spread popping the sprogs out a bit and give themselves time to breathe.

were so aluring. Despite trying to kill be earlier, you felt soft and warm in my arms, and your scent was enticing.

alluring. Despite trying to kill me

And of course, there’s photos of my as well, along with my friends and even

photos of me

I’ve never been so glad to have Sasami-chan as a friend. She is a huge help in getting me through these days without you. BUt now with this, it’s almost more than I can take!

got a case of FAst TYpist SYndrome there

In fact, I’ll go one further for you: go ahead and look at echi and even H stuff. Get an idea of what kind of echi stuff you like - everyone has kinks. There is nothing wrong at all in trying to figure out what kind of person you are.

ecchi

Down that road lay consequences.

Again, room for character expression here, but the grammatically correct form would be "lies"

That is part of why it’s been hard on the rest of us. We see ourselves in their place, and we sometimes have that terribly selfish though: “I am glad that I do

thought

Everyone worked hard at this. Everyone played a crucial roll, for while Garyu may have been a spoiled brat of a prince, he was by no means an easy foe.

role

Onnii-sama

pretty sure this should be "onii" - I think you had it as "onni" in an earlier part too, so worth checking back

And yeah, Minmei definitely has moxy to spare. You’re gonna love her - she’s

Moxie - it's a brand name, so it should be capitalized too. Tastes somewhat like Coca-cola, but even more bitter.

I am happy for you and sad for your fiances. Big Sister Airi can’t get here quickly enough! I have no idea how to help with this.

fiancees, or fiancées. The one with the single e is specifically for the male side of a relationship, and pronounced differently the few times I've heard it spoken (fee-AN-say vs. FEE-an-SAY.)

Take care, Tenchi. There are still adverities for you to overcome, but with the

adversities

You’re going to need to talk to people. Find us allies and get them on board. I’ll have to figure out a way of making ‘public appearances...

MY ALTERNATE!!!

Find my Alternate!

Oddly enough, this is something I never, ever think of when considering the possibility of reality-hopping. I really must change that, I know I'd never forgive myself if I popped in to this universe for a while and didn't at least drop me a note to say that yes, sch things are possible. Preferably a Hero Makeover and Sliders' Starter Kit, but just the assurance that there's something out there besides bleak Standard Model physics would go a long way.

Respectfully, my I request that you give your wife my regards as well as my

may I

Ryouko is taking photobombing a little too seriously. (;^^)>

LOL

Oh no. Minaho looks like she's planning something. I'm told by Tenyo that Seto gets that same look on her face sometimes, too!

That is definitely the look of trouble brewing for someone...

I wanted to wear this for the first time you and I go out on a date. I hope Washu-sensei gets the transmat working before I grow out of it.

Ah, so cute. Good choice of pics!

Oh, something I think you guys might find interesting - a log of how many words I've been putting down over the last few weeks. I've been on quite the streak lately.

Congratulations! If only I could get my writing mojo defrosted again...

Of course, that ranked pretty low on the list of priorities. But seeing as it was for the citizen’s morale, it did get done nonetheless.

since it's now in the past, I believe this should be "that had ranked"

“Man, this sucks,” grumped Hikaru as we left the Prometheus behind us. “I wanted to see that beauty pagent.”

pageant

“Grimm practices kenjitsu?” said Misa in surprise.

It may just be a variation in romanization, but I've usually seen this as "kenjutsu." Unless it actually is a different word.

“Contact confirmed,” replied Misa. “They’re not radiating. LIDAR shows that they’re too big to be a lone fighter, but far too small for one of their capitol ships. I suspect that it’s a scouting vessel of some kind.”

capital ships

“Well, it’s the only damn thing that’s being broadcast. And the only communications have been between us and the SDF-1. We ain’t gotten anything out to Earth because they’ve been jamming us so much.

Missing a closing quote

Simply put, these guys were expecting Supervision Army and... well, the Supervision Army wasn’t the sort of outfit to take prisoners.

Well, depending on the Protodeviln in charge of the bunch you're up against the Supervision Army might well take prisoners... and turn them right into lunch and/or part of the next wave of mooks being thrown back at your own side.

and healthy. The supplies we were able to come bay at Mars are already being stretched.”

come by

“It is felt,” said the Commodore, with just a hint of weariness in his voice, “that any effort to promote some kind of understand between us may lead to a cessation of hostilities.”

understanding

I gave them a cheerful wave, and then began drawing on the tablet. As I did, the lines appeared on the much larger screen inside the cell. Slowly, it took shape. A Valkyrie in battroid mode with a stick in hand, facing off against a Zentradi standing outside of a Glaug. I then pointed at the Valkyrie, and then at myself.

I'm not sure how visually distinctive any particular Skull valk might be to alien eyes, but it seems like it would have been at least dropping a bigger hint if Gar walked his battroid in there since it's in the part of the ship suitably sized for it, then went G and hopped out to get get closer and do the talking.

It doesn’t matter. You’re people and so are we.

Hands Across the Galaxy? Can't do Voices while still not understanding the spoken language, I guess

“Commander.” greeted Exedore, the relatively tiny Zentradi archivist and good friend of many many years to Britai, as he entered the ready room of the Commander of the Autoclass Fleet.

“Ah, Exodore,” said Commander Breetai from his desk. “I’m glad you finally came. I was just finishing this paperwork.

Gotta pick one. Or maybe you could use Vrlitwhai, like it's romanized for the SDF in Macross 30?

What else, Exedor?”

(...)

Exedore shook his head. “The medical officer reports that aside from some bruises

Again, need to pick one spelling and make it stick

“Hello Gar-kun! I want you to know that I made this song just for you. I call this ‘My Boyfriend is a Pilot’... I love you, Garrick. Come back to me safely.”

And with that, the sounds of Minmei singing her trademark song filled the air.

ITYM, "WE ARE THE HUMANS. YOU WILL LOWER YOUR WEAPONS AND SURRENDER YOUR SHIPS. OUR CULTURAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS WILL ADAPT TO ASSIMILATE YOUR OWN. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE."

I think that the bombardment weapons are actually saturating the atmosphere with high-energy particles...

... yeah. Anyone caught out in the open is gonna have a horrible end.

GAAH! Bloody right they are. If anything, that's more horrifying than just hitting the ground with so many super-lasers they overlap, because it's not always an instant death, and definitely not clean.

That is to say, I was actually screening applicants for the actual job.

I suggest dropping the "actually" here

It was a wonderful meal as we enjoyed Pasta alla Norma

Looking this up to make sure it shouldn't be "ala" I found the recipe, and now I want to try it. It sounds quite tasty.

Minmei talked about her family’s history, that her family had fled China when the communists took over - her forebearers having been restaurateurs, their entire

forebears

“... Gunsight copies, Skull Actual. Red 2, Gunsight: return to base with your wingman and prepare to sortie again. I’m having the flight deck ready a D-model for Red-4.”

Oddly enough, the D has my favorite head design of all the VF-0 and VF-1 types. Maybe it's the double visor? I like the VF-5000T-G head a lot too.

“Ensign Ichijou! Forget about me!” came Misa’s voice over the radio as the Quel-Quallie neared the docking bay. “You won’t make it in time!”
Hikaru wasn’t having any of that, though. “Red Wing, we’re going in!”

Missing carriage return

That was okay, though. We may have been too close for me to get a fix with my GU-16, but I could use it as a blunt weapon readily enough. Breetai grimaced as he avoided my swings. Damn that old fart was fast.

Annnd we're back to boss fight flashbacks... Breetai will utterly wreck your shit if you don't stay way the heck out of range, and conserve your special attacks to trigger when his go off so you can tank them with the invulnerability as the animation plays. Gramps got serious game.

Kakizaki launched his last two missile, blowing the bulkhead open to vacuum, and Max used his gunpod to put Breetai in a chock hold and send him out into space before the emergency doors could seal the breech.

choke hold

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to keep him pinned down for long because that was when more soldierS showed up, and this time in force.

soldiers


Did Max get away with his valk this time, or is he caught too? The bit with him wandering around in a Commander-class uniform was always one of my favorite sequences.

“Hmm. Know this, then, Lieutennant Junior-Grade. You have been taken prisoner by Commander Breetai,

Lieutenant

leader of the Adoclass Expeditionary Fleet of the Zentradi Army. In some time, we

Its been a very long time since I watched SDFMTV - do they identify themselves as "the Zentreadi Army?" My impression was that they were the Inspection Army and the Protodeviln were the Supervision Army, but I suppose even if that was the case a few hundred thousand years ago, things might have changed after the Protoculture were gone.

I nodded. “Lucky as fuck. In my world, we never had ASS-1 crash land on South Ataria Island. Instead, on the date of September 11th, 2001, there was a terrorist attack by Islamic Jihadists the likes of which you guys could never, ever imagine.

ASS-1 did far worse than the 9/11 attack to cities all over the world while it was aerobraking, and then they had the Unification War on top of that. I think they can probably imagine pretty well, especially with how the Anti-UN Octos mecha-subs popped up to attack with surprise in Macross Zero.

But I was high on my own adrenaline and endorphins - Mother Nature’s gifts to us humans that grants us our perspicacity; the ability to keep going even in such a state.

perspicacity is probably not the word you you want here, adrenaline is a combat drug with many benefits but keen intelligence and insight are not among them

“Very well then, pilot. You may speak for us. And you better not screw this up or else I’ll make sure you’re up for Captain’s Mast. IF we somehow get back in one piece.”

“No worries, ma’am. The questioning has to happen. But the great escape is something that must happen as well. We’ll get home come hell or high water."

Overturning the order of the universe to make the comforting lies true and the awful truths false: this is the fate of a Hero.

Ensign Hikaru Ichijou. These two are mine and Hikaru’s subordinates; Petty-Officer Maxwell Jenius, and

Maximillian

I shrugged. “Sir, we all have varying talents. Ensign Ichijou is actually a much better pilot than I am. I’m just a helluva good marksman who knows how to fight dirty. Petty-Officer Kakizaki is pretty average but keeps up a bold front.

Actually, again drawing on the games for details but from what happens on screen as well, Kakizaki is actually well above average as a pilot - it's just that he's on a squad with Hikaru and Max and led by Roy, who are all goddamn freaks of nature. In the games his stats start at 42/99 across the board, while the player and the generic Beige Squadron pilots typically start in single digits or teens, and even Max's top areas are usually only around mid-70s as I recall for his SDFM/DYRL rookie version.

I showed Misa the ins and outs of the weapon and especially cautioned her to lower the flash glasses whenever she made ready to fire.
There was just one last thing I wanted to do before we left.

Probably should have another carriage return here as well... and oddly enough, I can totally see Misa with a BFG and a pair of wrap around shades, and a stern tilt to her mouth. Maybe in one of those sleeveless tanker tops, too.

“If you’d like to take it that way. Though I will offer the wisdom of one of our greatest strategian as a warning, Sir.

Up to you how your avatar talks, but "strategist" is the usual term.

Additionally, I finally found a source with a suitable enough description of the technology that I feel comfortable in using it in the fic.
http://www.macrossnewhorizon.org/mediawi...technology

Thoughts?

I don't know about the rest off the top of my head, but I am quite sure the VF-27 is the first fighter-scale craft to have an MDE Cannon, not the VF-19 or VF-22 and as far as I know no detailed information has ever been given for exactly how the big tuning fork guns work as such, so take the rest of the material with a grain of salt as well. That said, it looks like consistent and decently thought out fanon for someone's RP, so if you like it as the explanation for use in your story, full speed ahead.

“Queadluun-Rau. They’re high maneuverability battle suits used only by Meltrandi because only the females have the reaction times to handle them. They’re incredibly fast and nimble, but very lightly armored. They pack a helluva punch, though. Those blisters above the shoulders and at the knees? Missile pods. Each one packs a couple dozen micro-missiles that are every bit as maneuverable as the Rau itself.

Ammo capacity is one of those things that you definitely cannot count on the game stats for, but IIRC the Q-Rau has a triple stack of twelve on each shoulder pod and eight more in each knee according to the art, for a total of either 88 or 104 if it's eight in each side of each knee.

Honestly, I was sick of killing. These were people for Tsunami’s sake. Misguided, yes. But still very much people. And I wanted as many of these people to come to our side - to join us and take joy in life.

as many as what?

Many of these men have political careers to think about, and damming a war hero in such a way would not bring favor from any of their constituents.”

damning

“Well,” said Captain Gloval, “I think it’s best we moved on. We already covered the basics of what happened. Now I think it is best we got the details straight. Miz Hayase, what strength would you say this fleet is at?”

Misa ... or "miss" I suppose. Or is "Miz" supposed to be some non-marital-status dependent feminine title? It seems less silly to just call everyone "Mister" like Trek or Harringtonverse to me.

Hee, the spy trio are off to a great start with their secret mission, aren't they? While it's a great humor beat, from an intelligence perspective being found out like that means anything they bring back is suspect at best and highly likely to be disinformation, so it might have been better to just let them wander around thinking they were keeping cover.

No comment on bedroom games, except that there's a lot that can be done to express affection physically without the sort of contact that calls for birth control. Nothin' wrong with helping a very special person feel good, is all I'm saying.

Now, as to the two of them having a rough patch when he explains his situation to her... Honestly, it's no surprise at all. The Tenchiverse girls came at the whole thing from the perspective of a culture where polygamy was not just accepted but expected for the Juraians and whatever science girl's people are called, or for Yuki desperate to make herself fit into their unit and willing to mold herself in any way that would do the trick. Minmei on the other hand has a mostly-monogamous 90's style Earth background, even if there some traditional-eastern influences as well, and has gone this long without any idea of how much the details of Garrick's past have been hidden -- and even if those are mostly a matter of "where these people are from" and a higher SFX budget rather than the actual events, that makes very little difference emotionally.

Lynn Kaifun and his arrogant, self-righteous moral superiority, though... I get why it's narratively useful to have a foil that can't just be dealt with by hopping in a giant stompy robot and smacking him around or introducing him to any of a number of fine hand-forged blades, but I dearly hope you have some method of teaching him the difference between a fight started out of aggression and defending that which is precious. I'm honestly not sure how he got to his level of martial arts without some Honorable Elder Master beating the stupid out of him already, actually.

[robkelk]

...
Soooo....  No one's got anything to say about the thing with Minmei?

Well, it isn't as if you're taking things in a wildly different direction than what you've already shown us...

[itsune9tl]

...
Soooo....  No one's got anything to say about the thing with Minmei?

Well, it isn't as if you're taking things in a wildly different direction than what you've already shown us...

The Girl came across a bit "Clingy" from the Anime, so it seems about right.

Other than that, would Garrick like a "crow bar?"

[Black Aeronaut]

British SBS (Special Boat Services, their equivalent to SEALs I believe), French Foreign Legion,

While I couldn't name many, I'm sure most developed nations have their own Elite units.

Thanks!  That's still quite a help.  I'll try googling for others when the time comes.

Man, it's been months now that I've been meaning to get back to this. Sorry about that, I know how frustrating it is to put something out there and not hear any response.

Thanks. It has been frustrating, but I'm glad to have you here now.  I'll be leaving aside all the error correction stuff for the moment...  Honestly, I should have gone back and edited in those corrections, but you know...

“I don’t believe you’ve met my fiance,” said Roy casually.  “Grimm, this is Lieutenant Junior Grade Claudia LaSalle.  Claudia, this is Perspective Petty-Officer Third-Class Garrick ‘Cradle Robber’ Grimm.”

This is a very odd title. Did you mean "Prospective" maybe?

You're right.  And the whole 'Prospective' bit... well, becoming a noncom is kind of a big deal, so once you make rate as a Petty-Officer, you have to go through a bit of training that outlines your expanded responsibilities.  So, before the promotion is 'official' you're a 'Prospective Petty-Officer'.

Direct hit to the heartstrings!  Mayday!  Mayday!

I don't even know the song mentioned off the top of my head, but just the way you describe her acting makes this effective. Good writing there.

Thanks,  I've been working on polishing my craft, and I think it's starting to bear some real fruit.  Rob's reaction to my ideas for later plot-points involving Yuki are particularly telling.

Minmei slugged me in the shoulder.  I may have had it coming, but I'll be damned if I'm not gonna give as good as I get.

Being good friends first is the foundation for every successful romantic relationship I know of. Seeing Minmei and Garrick interacting here, I'm not worried about them either, as long as the "I'm actually a slider and alien royalty to a culture with not-quite-mandatory polyamory, and multiple fiancees with nearly as many children on the way, all waiting for me to find a way back to them" revelation goes all right.

A lot of this is actually informed by personal experience as well as first- and second-hand observations.  Especially a couple of good IRL friends who practically adopted me as a younger brother to them both.  These two... they crack some of the most outrageous and utterly filthy jokes on each other, and they're one of the most stable relationships I've ever seen.

The standard issue GU-15 gunpods were good stuff, but it was felt that we could use something for the designated marksmen such as myself.  Thus, we have the GU-16.

Unlike the 15 with its tri-barrel rotary canon and 35mm shells, the GU-16 used a single-barrel canon based loosely on the venerable OTO Malera 76mm gun.  It carried far fewer rounds than the GU-15, but its caliber and single-shot nature more than made up for it with it’s far greater range, outstanding accuracy, and devastating stopping power.

As a dedicated gun-bunny in the Artdink Macross games (Seriously, by default I strip all the missiles off my valks and put everything into the guns, in a MACROSS game) I must approve. I tend to prefer the VF-4 or VF-27 with their energy-based armament just because I tend to think in terms of RPG-style "you are stranded with no resupply but what you can improvise" long-term operations, but for this point in the timeline that sounds like a damn fine weapon.

Glad you like it!  It just struck me as bug-fuck odd that they never had anything like unto a DM gun in Macross until Macross Frontier.  But I guess that's just the culture - for the Macross writers, it's all about the interpersonal relations, and details involving the military takes a back seat. (Except the Valks themselves, but that's mainly on the mecha designers and not the writers.)

I kept Hikaru covered like a mother hen.  I was bouncing all over the place, from fighter, to gaurdian, to battloid, and back again, putting my VF-1A through its paces.  I wasn't THE best pilot, but I was hell unleashed at keeping the Zentradi occupied.

"guardian" - though that's an invention of the Robotech dub, in pure Macross it's always "gerwalk," and I think supposed to be capitalized as an acronym (for what I can never remember) as well. I also don't remember which you're going for here, but the description of the fusion turbines for Washuu's letter lacking any mention of magic plant juice suggests Macross.

Yes, I'm trying for pure Macross here, though as I mentioned I am seriously considering snagging characters developed solely on Harmony Gold's side - kindofa 'take that!' at them.

Speaking from that same basis of having hundreds of hours in the Macross action games, if you're not transforming frequently, you're doing it wrong, if for no other reason than to throw off enemy targeting with the changes in flight path and speed.

Pretty much what as I thought.  Watching AdmiralTigerCla's video clips of him playing Ace Combat was pretty elucidating.  (It was like watching the Looney Tune Road Runner fly an F-15.)

What games games are these, BTW?

Minmei giggled at that.  "Yeah, no kidding.  So what about you then?  No princess?"

"Are you kidding?" I grouched.  "I already got more than enough princess to deal with as it is."

Minmei only giggled again and let it go at that.

Oh you have no idea, Minmei. Hopefully soon, though, since Gar has been warming up to you despite his best efforts.

I need to lampshade that joke a little better, honestly.  When I originally wrote that bit, it was for the Brothers Grimm group SI project and Minmei was the only 'princess' at the time.

And huh, looks like I did at least nominally respond to these before... They did feel a bit familiar as I went along. Eh, still pointed out a few more details this time, and now it's fresh in my mind for actual new stuff.

Really, thanks for that.  Now I got all this stuff on record that I need to fix...  though some of this stuff has already been fixed in the document file.

IT'S BIG DAMN HERO TIIIIIMMMME!!!

Yaaay! (Grabs bots, heads to the Theatre of Love)

Pfffft!  

Seven days in planetary orbit over Mars, and Kamjin was not letting up.  Casualties had been picking up and SDF-1's point defense system, in spite of the pin-point barriers, had been reduced to nearly nothing.  In order to compensate, we started deploying destroids along the hull.  They don't have quite as much punch as some of the original point defenses, but their advantage is that they are mobile.  It's not much, but we'll take it.

Not only can they dodge, they can walk themselves from the factory section to their combat station with just a pilot or two, rather than needing a work crew and transport/construction equipment to install. In the combat environment described, I expect the time savings alone is a significant advantage in its own right.

I'll go ahead and add in those points as well, but the trade-off is in that they lack the punch the original placements had.  Not that you need much, really, when dealing with rank and file Battle Pods, but still...

Miximillian Jeneus.

Dude. Maximillian Jenius. Good ol' Maxed-Out Max... going by the video games that are included in canon, he flies every single variable fighter from here to the VF-22, all in blue livery and kicking ass with every single one.

Yep.  And funny thing I noticed - Max is CATHOLIC!  I noticed that at one point in the anime he crossed himself as the Catholics usually do when something Dire has gone down.

"Spaceman Max ‘Cornflower’ Stirling reporting as ordered, sir!"  Roy, Hikaru, and I stood and returned the salute.

A few lines back you had him with the Macross surname - should probably stick to one or the other.

I've caught most of these gremlins so far, but later on I need to go through the thing with a fine-toothed comb and root them all out once and for all.

"Ah, don't let it get you down, sir!" said Hayao bawdily.  "Why, with me in your wing you won't have to worry about anything.  AH-HA-HA-HAH!"
Hooo boy.  I had my work cut out for me.

Missing a carriage return here

It should bear noting: in the document file, I don't double-return the paragraphs because it has indentations.  But here, I can't indent so every time I post I have to go through the whole damn thing and insert an extra return between each paragraph.

Strips of red on the ruddervators along with our squadron number set us apart.

While I can't say this is technically totally wrong the VF-1 is more of a partially tailless design, as the tails don't really have enough of a cant to them to effectively act as elevators. The vertical thrust vectoring on the engines, or just the aerodynamic effect of the feet/vector flaps in case of a flame out, is pretty much responsible for pitch control.

Well, either way, it was the best term I could find to fit them given that they're canted at a near-45-degree angle and lacks horizontal stabilizers.

“Aww man!  We’re never gonna get any action back here.”

Man needs to learn to leave his ego behind at the flight line. That's not OOC for Kakizaki, but it's good that Gar is actively working on correcting his habits. Being brash and showy makes for a memorable shonen protagonist, but doesn't fly so well in even a soft-realism military setting.

Yep.  He will eventually break that habit of his, though he'll never quite become the fantastic ace pilot the others are.  An ace, still, yes.  But nowhere nearly the same kill count.

One minor quandary for me was what do I do with him afterwards, because he's definitely not officer material, even by Macross's loose standards, and I can't see him leading a squadron of his own some day.

But then I remembered that these guys all start out as enlisted men.

Hayao won't make a good officer.

But he will make for a fucking outstanding Chief Petty-Officer.

And then it was just Kamjin and me, dancing in the vacuum and trying to get a bead on each other all while trying to herd each other with our secondaries.  It was hard work - those Command Pods may be bigger, but they sure as hell ain’t slower.

Goddamn is he a pain in the ass in the games. You're all but giving me flashbacks here.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.  *evil grin*

And that was the gospel truth.  The HWR-00 MkII Monsters lived up to their name with their massive 40cm canons and fiendish tri-barrel missile launchers on each arm.

However that is the extent of their armament.  They have no real means to defend themselves when the fighting gets up close and personal.  And I knew for a fact that just about every one of our precious Monsters were about to get wiped out if we didn’t do something about it.

I thought they had a coaxial machine gun on each arm as well? Maybe that's only the VB-6 canonically, but I know they do in the games.

For most of my information, I've been going by the venerable Macross Mecha Manual website, and according to that, there are no coaxial guns on it at the time of SDF Macross.  Maybe on a later block?

“Birthday party?  Oh!  You mean that cute waitress at the Nyan-Nyan...  then that means...  HAH!  Hey guys!  Get a load of this!  Cradle Robber is in Red Wing!”

I think I'm going to have to ask for an explanation of the joke here, because "red wing" has no meaning to me beyond the dictionary definition of the words.

Oh, trust me.  Earning your 'Red Wings' is an incredibly filthy joke about performing certain sex acts during your (female) partner's period.

There was a wrecked Defender next to me - no sign of the pilot.  It had taken a direct hit to one of the magazines.  Keeping an eye on Kamjin, I wrenched the pair of gun barrels off the wreck and tossed one to Kamjin.  I kept the other and took my Jyuraian fencer’s stance.

Kamjin took up the gun barrel.  There was a crackle of static and I heard his voice.  He was speaking Zentran, but it was plainly evident from the tone in his voice that he definitely approved, and took his own fighting stance as well.

... No. You are not going to frenemies-flag motherfucking Kamjin Kravshera. Nowai!

TAKE THIS! ALL OF MY LOVE! ALL OF MY HATE! AND ALL OF MY MONEY!!!

MISSION MUTHERFUCKIN' ACCOMPLISHED.

Seriously, I feel that Kamjin as a character is grossly underutilized despite the amount of screentime he gets, so I'm aiming to do something about that.

I was Captain Gloval’s special project.

Sweet Tsunami, what have I gotten myself into?

Patronage, son. It's a dirty game, but the good ones play it to keep the bad ones from completely taking over.

Yup, and we see this in action later on as well once Garrick spills the beans to the commanding officers where they start to already talk about how they're going to protect Garrick from Spacey High Command in Anchorage.

I held no pity for her, because she of all people should expect nothing less from a woman marrying a hot-dog fighter ace like Roy.

Oh, Claudia! Hopefully Gar can arrange things to keep her and Gloval alive this time around... suggest installing an escape pod for the bridge crew, at least.

I always thought that was just a Robotech-ism that saw to Gloval getting offed like that.  But no worries.  Things are gonna diverge to such an extent that this won't even be an issue.

And a very sweet ending to that one, too. Very perceptive girl, that Minmei, and persistent as well when she decides on a goal. Not like that's any surprise, you don't just fall into a career in music without a lot of effort and working from multiple angles.

Exactly.

And just like Kamjin, I feel that Minmei was also grossly underutilized.  Garrick will let her watch the anime at some point in time, and she's going to find it damn-near offensive how shallow the characterization was.

The overall dynamic is going to be interesting, with Nanami being in overall charge of household affairs (and Garrick's final line of defense), Achika taking charge of the rank and file soldiers, leaving Minagi to take charge of the Body Guards.  Yuki will occupy a very interesting niche: the Zeroth Line of Defense.  She becomes something of a modern age Kunoichi (as well as the Clan's intelligence expert who is second in skill only to Funaho herself) and works to subvert plots against her Clan in any way she can.

Thoughts?

I feel a bit sad for Yuki, for the experiences that shaped her into this, but at the same time it's a necessary role, and within the family she has room to relax and enjoy peace and love so it's not too bad. Seriously though, fuck plotters and their plots.

*Nods*  Yuki's lot is hardship and adversity.  But the crying shame of it all is that half the time she literally brings it on herself (IE: when she stowed away on Minagi's ship).  But the trade-off is that she becomes a much wiser person for the mistakes she's made, and she is going to have undying love, loyalty, and respect for the person that was there to grab her just as she was about to go over the edge.

However, this is going to upset your ladies biochemistry as this is going to feel like an abortion to them. I will do what I can, but they are going to need your love and reassurance.  In fact, I’ve arrange for Airi to stay over for a few weeks.  She herself has undergone the

While medically the results are probably about the same, I'd suggest changing this to "miscarriage" just to avoid the loaded politics of the word "abortion." Also, "arranged."

Thank you!  You're right, miscarriage would be far less inflammatory.

As Mother told you, we all decided to put our daughters in stasis.  We all have our reasons, but even so we all wanted to be sure that each of us was on board with the idea before we went through with it.

The consensus was that we either all do this together or none of us at all.  And from there we all talk to each other, taking turns at ferreting out our honest feelings on the matter.  Even Yuki, as she had interesting insights as well as her own feelings to express.  (I can’t wait until we can see what her children are going to be like.)

Doing it all together is a kind thought, but I hope they only bring one out and to term at a time. Even with a six or so person household, just a single infant is a lot of work to deal with. The life spans they can expect with access to Jyuraian (and Washuu's) ultech mean there's no rush, so they can spread popping the sprogs out a bit and give themselves time to breathe.

The idea here is that these three are going to become a cohort and will be quickly branded as "The Triplets".  Put it this way: Imagine if the Powerpuff Girls were his daughters.  (With Hikari as Blossom, Akatsuki as Bubbles, and Hotaru as Buttercup.)

Troublesome?  Oh hell yes.  But so very worth it, because as much trouble as they'll cause, they'll also generate just as much awesome.  At the very least they won't be superpowered from the word 'Go'.

And then there will be Garrick - the ready-made father, just add kids.  (Once again, I will reiterate: I have literally had a coworker scream at me "WHY ARE YOU NOT MARRIED YET!?!?" after seeing me interact with a customer's little girl in the store.)  While there will be moments of "... Okay, color me fucking impressed, because I'll be damned if that's not a new one on me", he will be able to take those in stride, nonetheless, once he gets past his initial "How the hell did you do that?" reaction.

And yeah, Minmei definitely has moxy to spare.  You’re gonna love her - she’s

Moxie - it's a brand name, so it should be capitalized too. Tastes somewhat like Coca-cola, but even more bitter.

Oh yeah, I did my research on that one - just missed the capitalization.  I even know about the Moxie Horse-Car.  Utterly batshit insane and ridiculous.  It's the perfect marketing gimmick.  

I am happy for you and sad for your fiances.  Big Sister Airi can’t get here quickly enough!  I have no idea how to help with this.

fiancees, or fiancées. The one with the single e is specifically for the male side of a relationship, and pronounced differently the few times I've heard it spoken (fee-AN-say vs. FEE-an-SAY.)

Ah, many thanks!

You’re going to need to talk to people.  Find us allies and get them on board.  I’ll have to figure out a way of making ‘public appearances...

MY ALTERNATE!!!

Find my Alternate!

Oddly enough, this is something I never, ever think of when considering the possibility of reality-hopping. I really must change that, I know I'd never forgive myself if I popped in to this universe for a while and didn't at least drop me a note to say that yes, sch things are possible. Preferably a Hero Makeover and Sliders' Starter Kit, but just the assurance that there's something out there besides bleak Standard Model physics would go a long way.

Yeah, this is something that I don't think very many SI's really touch on, because ironically, it's all about them.  Breaking fresh or seldom trodden ground is something that I try to do so my stories aren't "Just another self-indulgent self-insert."

Ryouko is taking photobombing a little too seriously.  (;^^)>

LOL

Mission accomplished.  

Oh no.  Minaho looks like she's planning something.  I'm told by Tenyo that Seto gets that same look on her face sometimes, too!

That is definitely the look of trouble brewing for someone...

Oh man, AND HOW!  That whole bit with Minaho becoming another prospective bride for Tenchi was not something I pulled out of my ass.  That is an actual plot point from the Fourth OVA, and Minaho is smug as fuck about it.

I wanted to wear this for the first time you and I go out on a date.  I hope Washu-sensei gets the transmat working before I grow out of it.

Ah, so cute. Good choice of pics!

Yeah, once I realized that Homura looks like a suitably more mature Yuki, I went DIGGING through the various 'boorus for pictures of her smiling and made out like a bandit.

Oh, something I think you guys might find interesting - a log of how many words I've been putting down over the last few weeks.  I've been on quite the streak lately.

Congratulations! If only I could get my writing mojo defrosted again...

Well, with my recent ideas and busy-as-hell schedule, I've had little time to figure out how to plot these new developments.  It will happen - this doesn't feel like the traditional writer's block.

It is a block, though.  A block that I must take some time to look at so I can discern how I'm going to sculpt it.  

Simply put, these guys were expecting Supervision Army and... well, the Supervision Army wasn’t the sort of outfit to take prisoners.

Well, depending on the Protodeviln in charge of the bunch you're up against the Supervision Army might well take prisoners... and turn them right into lunch and/or part of the next wave of mooks being thrown back at your own side.

I need to lampshade that - not everyone that reads this is going to be intimately familiar with the in's and out's of Macross.

I gave them a cheerful wave, and then began drawing on the tablet.  As I did, the lines appeared on the much larger screen inside the cell.  Slowly, it took shape.  A Valkyrie in battroid mode with a stick in hand, facing off against a Zentradi standing outside of a Glaug.  I then pointed at the Valkyrie, and then at myself.

I'm not sure how visually distinctive any particular Skull valk might be to alien eyes, but it seems like it would have been at least dropping a bigger hint if Gar walked his battroid in there since it's in the part of the ship suitably sized for it, then went G and hopped out to get get closer and do the talking.

The thing is, the Zentraedi as a whole have only seen ONE Valkyrie answer a call to a duel thrown down by someone in a Glaug.

Garrick has been gaining much infamy among the Zentraedi - enough that Myria is gonna go after him first (this will be before she becomes micloned) and quickly realizes that he's not the ace everyone makes him out to be.  Oh, he's good enough to go toe-to-toe with Kamjin, and that is indeed saying something, but that's still not quite at Myria's level.  Like Garrick says later on, he's just gonna stall for time until Max can take over.

This will actually earn significant respect from Myria - he may not be as good as her, but he recognizes the fact readily.  And instead of trying to go down swinging, he fights solely on the defensive, not even attempting to get a shot in, and falling back until help comes along.  And Myria won't be shy about saying this.  A hundred aces of her caliber would be an incredible asset, but a hundred commanders like Garrick could completely change the outcome of entire wars.

"You remind me much of Breetai, only somewhat less tempered.  And he is a Zentran that I actually respect a great deal.  Should the day come that you exceed me in the ranks, then I would be honored to be your subordinate."

It doesn’t matter.  You’re people and so are we.

Hands Across the Galaxy? Can't do Voices while still not understanding the spoken language, I guess

Okay, apparently I just did something inadvertent.  Care to explain?  

“Commander.” greeted Exedore, the relatively tiny Zentradi archivist and good friend of many many years to Britai, as he entered the ready room of the Commander of the Autoclass Fleet.

“Ah, Exodore,” said Commander Breetai from his desk.  “I’m glad you finally came.  I was just finishing this paperwork.

Gotta pick one. Or maybe you could use Vrlitwhai, like it's romanized for the SDF in Macross 30?

That'd be a little too confusing for the people coming in out of the Robotech fandome.  I'll stick with Breetai for now.  

“Hello Gar-kun!  I want you to know that I made this song just for you.  I call this ‘My Boyfriend is a Pilot’...  I love you, Garrick.  Come back to me safely.”

And with that, the sounds of Minmei singing her trademark song filled the air.

ITYM, "WE ARE THE HUMANS. YOU WILL LOWER YOUR WEAPONS AND SURRENDER YOUR SHIPS. OUR CULTURAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS WILL ADAPT TO ASSIMILATE YOUR OWN. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE."

*Cackles Ominously*

I think that the bombardment weapons are actually saturating the atmosphere with high-energy particles...

... yeah.  Anyone caught out in the open is gonna have a horrible end.

GAAH! Bloody right they are. If anything, that's more horrifying than just hitting the ground with so many super-lasers they overlap, because it's not always an instant death, and definitely not clean.

We can thank the horror stories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the inspiration of this line of thought.  Those bombs may not have been terribly powerful by the standards of modern nuclear weapons, but for that weakness they exerted a terror far beyond anyone's imagination.  They literally brought Hell to Earth.

Today's nukes are far kinder by comparison - they're far more 'clean' for the sake of the yield-to-weight ratio, so people would only come out one of two ways - instantly incinerated, or instantly killed by the shockwave.

(Note: What we see in Sarah Connor's dream in Terminator 2 was much more akin to the first generation nukes.  The reality is that everything within a thousand feet of the epicenter the epicenter is just plain vaporized, and the shockwave from that will utterly destroy everything and instantly kill everyone within a mile or so.  As far away as that park was, they were far more likely to be killed by flying debris.)

It was a wonderful meal as we enjoyed Pasta alla Norma

Looking this up to make sure it shouldn't be "ala" I found the recipe, and now I want to try it. It sounds quite tasty.

Yeah, did a bit of research on actual Italian cuisine for that bit.  Glad that it's already having an impact.

“... Gunsight copies, Skull Actual.  Red 2, Gunsight: return to base with your wingman and prepare to sortie again.  I’m having the flight deck ready a D-model for Red-4.”

Oddly enough, the D has my favorite head design of all the VF-0 and VF-1 types. Maybe it's the double visor? I like the VF-5000T-G head a lot too.

You know, that's actually something that I kinda appreciate about Macross.  While the heads of the mecha are stylised, it's nowhere to the same degree of Gundam, which is like SAMURAI ARMOR IN SPAAAAAAACCEE!!!  :V

That was okay, though.  We may have been too close for me to get a fix with my GU-16, but I could use it as a blunt weapon readily enough.  Breetai grimaced as he avoided my swings.  Damn that old fart was fast.

Annnd we're back to boss fight flashbacks... Breetai will utterly wreck your shit if you don't stay way the heck out of range, and conserve your special attacks to trigger when his go off so you can tank them with the invulnerability as the animation plays. Gramps got serious game.

Indeed.  You do not get to being a Commander like him without being a seriously skilled veteran fighter.  And on that note, Buldoza loses a huge amount of respect from Breetai for his actions when interrogating Red Wing and Misa Hayase - acting out of anger like that, Breetai feels Buldoza is lucky to have only lost one hand instead of his freaking head.  (A shame, that.)

Did Max get away with his valk this time, or is he caught too? The bit with him wandering around in a Commander-class uniform was always one of my favorite sequences.

Sorry - for plot reasons he got captured as well.

leader of the Adoclass Expeditionary Fleet of the Zentradi Army.  In some time, we

Its been a very long time since I watched SDFMTV - do they identify themselves as "the Zentreadi Army?" My impression was that they were the Inspection Army and the Protodeviln were the Supervision Army, but I suppose even if that was the case a few hundred thousand years ago, things might have changed after the Protoculture were gone.

I'll have to do some research on that.  I'm pretty sure it's floating around there somewhere on the Internet.

I nodded.  “Lucky as fuck.  In my world, we never had ASS-1 crash land on South Ataria Island.  Instead, on the date of September 11th, 2001, there was a terrorist attack by Islamic Jihadists the likes of which you guys could never, ever imagine.

ASS-1 did far worse than the 9/11 attack to cities all over the world while it was aerobraking, and then they had the Unification War on top of that. I think they can probably imagine pretty well, especially with how the Anti-UN Octos mecha-subs popped up to attack with surprise in Macross Zero.

Ah, but the difference was that in our case, the battle was nowhere nearly as 'mechanized'.  It was visceral on a level that even they're having trouble imagining.  What they had was the open conflict that all the old school Cold War generals had been itching for all those decades.  What we had was downright murderous guerrilla insurgencies where every goddamn thing was hiding an IED rigged to blow at a fucking sneeze.

And on top of that was the outright implication that the USA, the people who are supposed to be the 'good guys', wound up stooping to their level in how they treated people in captured territory.

Additionally, there was the comparison to the Pearl Harbor attack - how it was focused primarily on the military facilities, whereas 9/11 had the implicit goal of mass civilian casualties.  And really, I think that's the biggest thing to set the War on Terror apart from the Anti-Unification War - the fact that civilians were a sought-after target.

But I was high on my own adrenaline and endorphins - Mother Nature’s gifts to us humans that grants us our perspicacity; the ability to keep going even in such a state.

perspicacity is probably not the word you you want here, adrenaline is a combat drug with many benefits but keen intelligence and insight are not among them

Huh.  For some reason I thought I read something else when I looked that one up.  Oh well.  I'll replace it with 'pertinacity' instead.  That was probably what I was after in the first place and probably got the two mixed up.

“Very well then, pilot.  You may speak for us.  And you better not screw this up or else I’ll make sure you’re up for Captain’s Mast.  IF we somehow get back in one piece.”

“No worries, ma’am.  The questioning has to happen.  But the great escape is something that must happen as well.  We’ll get home come hell or high water."

Overturning the order of the universe to make the comforting lies true and the awful truths false: this is the fate of a Hero.

Ain't that the everlovin' truth.

I shrugged.  “Sir, we all have varying talents.  Ensign Ichijou is actually a much better pilot than I am.  I’m just a helluva good marksman who knows how to fight dirty.  Petty-Officer Kakizaki is pretty average but keeps up a bold front.

Actually, again drawing on the games for details but from what happens on screen as well, Kakizaki is actually well above average as a pilot - it's just that he's on a squad with Hikaru and Max and led by Roy, who are all goddamn freaks of nature. In the games his stats start at 42/99 across the board, while the player and the generic Beige Squadron pilots typically start in single digits or teens, and even Max's top areas are usually only around mid-70s as I recall for his SDFM/DYRL rookie version.

Okay, noted.  Though I still think Hayao would be a better senior enlisted man than an officer.

I showed Misa the ins and outs of the weapon and especially cautioned her to lower the flash glasses whenever she made ready to fire.
There was just one last thing I wanted to do before we left.

Probably should have another carriage return here as well... and oddly enough, I can totally see Misa with a BFG and a pair of wrap around shades, and a stern tilt to her mouth. Maybe in one of those sleeveless tanker tops, too.

Misa is an interesting character once you really start digging into all the bits of background and subtle hints scattered here and there.  For example, if you go to the episode where they're captured and you stop the show at just the right moment, you really will see her name stenciled on the coaming around the radar operator's seat.  Which means that her actual job is as a radar operator on a Catseye.

This would mean that she can read a tactical radar consol like the back of her hand, and combined with all the line-officer training she's had, it really would make her ideally suited as an Air Boss.

Misa is more brains than brawn, but that makes her especially well suited for handling the BFG.  She would know the exact moment that level of firepower would be needed, and not a moment before.

Additionally, I finally found a source with a suitable enough description of the technology that I feel comfortable in using it in the fic.
http://www.macrossnewhorizon.org/mediawi...technology

Thoughts?

I don't know about the rest off the top of my head, but I am quite sure the VF-27 is the first fighter-scale craft to have an MDE Cannon, not the VF-19 or VF-22 and as far as I know no detailed information has ever been given for exactly how the big tuning fork guns work as such, so take the rest of the material with a grain of salt as well. That said, it looks like consistent and decently thought out fanon for someone's RP, so if you like it as the explanation for use in your story, full speed ahead.

It's more for the technology itself, as there are very few sources that actually get into the details of what makes everything tick without sounding too vague.  For the capabilities of the mecha, as I mentioned before, I will be referring to the Macross Mecha Manual website: http://macross2.net/m3/m3-index.htm

“Queadluun-Rau.  They’re high maneuverability battle suits used only by Meltrandi because only the females have the reaction times to handle them.  They’re incredibly fast and nimble, but very lightly armored.  They pack a helluva punch, though.  Those blisters above the shoulders and at the knees?  Missile pods.  Each one packs a couple dozen micro-missiles that are every bit as maneuverable as the Rau itself.

Ammo capacity is one of those things that you definitely cannot count on the game stats for, but IIRC the Q-Rau has a triple stack of twelve on each shoulder pod and eight more in each knee according to the art, for a total of either 88 or 104 if it's eight in each side of each knee.

Gotcha, thanks.

“Well,” said Captain Gloval, “I think it’s best we moved on.  We already covered the basics of what happened.  Now I think it is best we got the details straight.  Miz Hayase, what strength would you say this fleet is at?”

Misa ... or "miss" I suppose. Or is "Miz" supposed to be some non-marital-status dependent feminine title? It seems less silly to just call everyone "Mister" like Trek or Harringtonverse to me.

That's one of the somewhat more esoteric bits of English they hardly ever teach these days.  'Miz' is a sort of neutral ground between 'Miss' (which really only applies to YOUNG unmarried women) and Missus (which is specifically for married women only).  Miz is safe to use on an adult woman whose marital status you are uncertain of, or you know the woman is not married but is definitely not young enough to qualify for 'Miss'.

Hee, the spy trio are off to a great start with their secret mission, aren't they? While it's a great humor beat, from an intelligence perspective being found out like that means anything they bring back is suspect at best and highly likely to be disinformation, so it might have been better to just let them wander around thinking they were keeping cover.

Eh, they'll pretty much have the freedom to roam around as they please.  They'll just be getting properly set up so they don't have to live like hobos and instead get to actually -experience- what living as the humans do is really like.

There will certainly be doubt cast upon the report, but given that absolutely no one slips up (that is, fail to act as 'normal humans') lends a lot of credence because, statistically speaking, that's damn-near impossible.

And even Exedore is going to he hard pressed to find fault in their report - in the end he will endorse their report, but with the proviso that there's still something that they're missing on a fundamental level.  And that something, he is certain at this point, will not be something that makes Humanity into something that needs to be destroyed.  (Not unless, ya know, you think any sign of culture is a sign of Protoculture and thus a target to be eliminated.)

No comment on bedroom games, except that there's a lot that can be done to express affection physically without the sort of contact that calls for birth control. Nothin' wrong with helping a very special person feel good, is all I'm saying.

Eh, if you ask me that just makes the temptation all the worse, but all the same I felt it was best to not get too detailed in this scene.

Now, as to the two of them having a rough patch when he explains his situation to her... Honestly, it's no surprise at all. The Tenchiverse girls came at the whole thing from the perspective of a culture where polygamy was not just accepted but expected for the Jurriaans and whatever science girl's people are called, or for Yuki desperate to make herself fit into their unit and willing to mold herself in any way that would do the trick. Minmei on the other hand has a mostly-monogamous 90's style Earth background, even if there some traditional-eastern influences as well, and has gone this long without any idea of how much the details of Garrick's past have been hidden -- and even if those are mostly a matter of "where these people are from" and a higher SFX budget rather than the actual events, that makes very little difference emotionally.

Indeed.  Minmei will need to do some soul searching.  There's the background to consider, but also the base desire to have him all to herself.  But the thing that will eventually bring her around is when Garrick urges her to write letters to the others so she can learn for herself what is really being offered: a support network of other women that will become closer to her than just 'sisters', and a genuine voice among them in household matters.  The hierarchy is a mere technicality - something to satisfy the demand that the one who would nominally be 'in charge' would be the one with the closest ties to one of the other Royal Families.

It's going to be fun when we get to Katanagatari and the Yasuri Siblings force the issue without knowing the full implications.  (Yes, Nanami was fully expecting that there would be 'concubines' involved, but not the sort of package deal she's actually gonna get.)

Given that Nanami is like Seto in the sense that if he doesn't marry her then she may kill him out of spite, Garrick feels he doesn't have much choice.  And yes, Yasuri Nanami being able to kill Garrick outright is a very real possibility - by far, she will be the queen bitch of the Freaks of Nature pageant without any further qualifications besides her complete and total mastery of the Way of the Swordless Swordsman.  That said, she will fit into the arrangement with ease once she fully understands that the others are her peers and not simply her subordinates.

What will be especially amusing will be how she winds up terrorizing just about everyone back on Jurai except for Funaho, Misaki, and Seto.
For those three she will have nothing but the utmost respect for being loving family towards Garrick.  The fact that they don't act as typical in-laws and force her to march to their tune helps a lot - they simply inform her of the politics and let her decide how to handle it.  Long story short, it kicks off a cold war between House Amaki and House Grimm.

Lynn Kaifun and his arrogant, self-righteous moral superiority, though... I get why it's narratively useful to have a foil that can't just be dealt with by hopping in a giant stompy robot and smacking him around or introducing him to any of a number of fine hand-forged blades, but I dearly hope you have some method of teaching him the difference between a fight started out of aggression and defending that which is precious. I'm honestly not sure how he got to his level of martial arts without some Honorable Elder Master beating the stupid out of him already, actually.

Kaifun is going to be difficult to deal with.  He's the type of personality that, upon hitting rock bottom, his first instinct is to lash out at all his perceived enemies, no matter how contrived his grievances against them are.  What's worse is that I suspect he's one of those 'For the greater good' types of Chinese that think nothing of lives spent, which is the only way I can see him 'peacefully' protesting against the UN in favor of the Anti-UN forces.

As for him being such a skilled martial artist without a good humbling from a teacher...  I figure that he's just that sort of prodigy that can advance through several black belt levels with ease and without his teachers being able to do anything to get him to put on the brakes or learn some real wisdom.

As for how Garrick might humble him...

*Garrick throws about 500,000 small ball bearings on the floor around Kaifun*  "Let's see you maintain your footing now."
*Kaifun's face goes purple* "I thought you said we were going to fight!"
"I did.  But I never said I would fight fair.  Ball's in your court, pretty boy.  Whatcha gonna do?"

As for how Garrick would maintain his footing?  Well, remember that 'Floor Lava' drill that he astounded Yosho with?  That, except that he has to be mindful that Kaifun will be shifting the ball ball bearings around as he flails ineffectually.

...
Soooo....  No one's got anything to say about the thing with Minmei?

Well, it isn't as if you're taking things in a wildly different direction than what you've already shown us...

In the end, no...  But in the meantime...  Shit's gonna get sour.  

...
Soooo....  No one's got anything to say about the thing with Minmei?

Well, it isn't as if you're taking things in a wildly different direction than what you've already shown us...

The Girl came across a bit "Clingy" from the Anime, so it seems about right.

Other than that, would Garrick like a "crow bar?"

HAH!  Maybe in the beginning, but now if anyone offers, he'll wisecrack with something like this: "Okay, you can try to pry her loose, but I think you'll just wind up losing a hand in the process, so don't blame me when it happens." 

[robkelk]

British SBS (Special Boat Services, their equivalent to SEALs I believe), French Foreign Legion,

While I couldn't name many, I'm sure most developed nations have their own Elite units.

Thanks!  That's still quite a help.  I'll try googling for others when the time comes.

Canada's is JTF2. There's a Wikipedia page about them, but almost zero official information.

[classicdrogn]

Again, sorry for taking so long to get back to this before. I can't really even plead much in the way of RL hassle as an excuse, just an excess of shiny objects vying for my attention.

Speaking from that same basis of having hundreds of hours in the Macross action games, if you're not transforming frequently, you're doing it wrong, if for no other reason than to throw off enemy targeting with the changes in flight path and speed.

Pretty much what as I thought.  Watching AdmiralTigerCla's video clips of him playing Ace Combat was pretty elucidating.  (It was like watching the Looney Tune Road Runner fly an F-15.)

What games games are these, BTW?

On PSP, Macross ___ Frontier, where you fill in the blank with Ace, Ultimate, or Triangle in order of release. If you're just going to get one, get Ultimate, because it has all the Ace content and more while Triangle has a visual novel mode for pilot creation that is damn hard to understand unless you can read Japanese and your stats/skills are locked once it's finished, unlike the other games where you improve them with use. The VFs (and destroids/power armor/etc.) themselves also gain "tuning points" from completed missions, which you can use to improve various aspects of their basic functions and the equipped weapons, which are generally some kind of gunpod or mounted gun for the primary, two flavors of missiles and a head/hip/etc. laser depending on equipment, and melee combat. Being able to strip out the base points to beef up other things even more is an unlockable, I think after you complete all the eras the first time? Maybe that's to use VFs outside their own time period. Each TV series has a couple dozen missions, while movies and OVAs tend to be more like 4-6 each. Macross II is also more or less included (I think only MTF has it as a full-up era rather than part of the Bonus Missions) but the pilot stats are all crap, even for Sylvie Gina who's supposed to be the Max of her generation.

As I understand it there are also some Gundam games that use basically the same game systems, though not being fond of Gundam aside from Mobile Fighter G Gundam I'm not really clear on the details.

On PS3, Macross 30, which uses similar controls and tuning with better graphics (Well, mostly, the landscapes are a little basic and empty) but there's only one playable pilot in the storyline (you can switch in a NG+) and he improves by your basic JRPG leveling system capped at Lv50, though you can switch freely between three different "classes" that apply different bonuses to each stat per level gained while they're selected. As a rule, you will probably hit Lv50 well before reaching the end of the game and will not max out any one stat even if not using the default "balanced growth" class. The speed of movement has been adjusted down across the board, so even at maxed out speed you can't quite outrun your own laser beams or enemy missiles, even in F

All of the "Let's play Macross 30" videos I've seen are by people who constantly sit in F when they're outside or B in the indoor levels, and it drives me utterly nuts to the point that I have literally yelled at the screen "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! TRANSFUCKINGFORM YOU IDIOT!" or "LEARN TO GERWALK GODDAMN IT!" a few times. Unlike many other Youtube users, however, I restrain myself from posting insulting comments, if mostly because the vids were all months to years old by the time I went looking for them.

There were also three-ish "Trial Frontier" demos released as bluray movie disk bonus material, with just a handful of levels each and no tuning or even save game functionality. I think they were for the two Frontier movies and the DYRL remastered edition, possibly pre-order or deluxe set only?

On PS Vita, Macross Delta Scramble, which covers the first 13 episodes of Macross Delta as shipped and the second half of the series as free DLC, though you have to have a Japanese PSN account to get it IIRC. I don't have a Vita so I don't know this one in as much detail, but apparently the tuning system has been "simplified" (read: crippled) compared to the earlier versions.

With it being about time for some new Macross material to come out (I've heard rumor of a Delta movie edition) we may well see at least an updated version of Delta Scramble, hopefully with a selection of other eras' VFs as in the previous games if not outright porting in the whole schlemiel of missions and plot lines. Being on one of the more modern consoles would also be appreciated, but apparently the Vita is still doing decently well in Japan so I'd be a bit surprised since Artdink is a smallish studio. I'd love to see it on Switch for example, but a PS4 port is probably about as much as you could reasonably even ask for, and then only because Sony has been pushing Vita as a PS4 companion unit so hard.

Strips of red on the ruddervators along with our squadron number set us apart.

While I can't say this is technically totally wrong the VF-1 is more of a partially tailless design, as the tails don't really have enough of a cant to them to effectively act as elevators. The vertical thrust vectoring on the engines, or just the aerodynamic effect of the feet/vector flaps in case of a flame out, is pretty much responsible for pitch control.

Well, either way, it was the best term I could find to fit them given that they're canted at a near-45-degree angle and lacks horizontal stabilizers.[/quote] ... I don't think they're canted anywhere near that much... (goes to check)

Yeah, no, they're like 10-15 degrees at most, definitely no elevator action there. Just call them "tails" or something, I'd say.

Hayao won't make a good officer.

But he will make for a fucking outstanding Chief Petty-Officer.

Sounds legit to me.

Earning your 'Red Wings' is an incredibly filthy joke about performing certain sex acts during your (female) partner's period.

Gotcha. Having no social circle in High School to banter with and pick them up from (and being out of the usual age range by the time I did college courses, to much the same effect) such colloquialisms slipped past me entirely.

MISSION MUTHERFUCKIN' ACCOMPLISHED.

Seriously, I feel that Kamjin as a character is grossly underutilized despite the amount of screentime he gets, so I'm aiming to do something about that.

I wholeheartedly agree, as my earlier comments about how his discovering what that "love" thing the Micronians had been blathering about all this time with Azonia over the course of that one epilogue episode and realizing it, like, less than a minute before they die is one of the most underdeveloped character arcs in the entire franchise should suggest. Heck, in M30 he falls for Mylene and joins the hero cast for the final boss fight. I'm loving what you're doing here so far.

I held no pity for her, because she of all people should expect nothing less from a woman marrying a hot-dog fighter ace like Roy.

Oh, Claudia! Hopefully Gar can arrange things to keep her and Gloval alive this time around... suggest installing an escape pod for the bridge crew, at least.

I always thought that was just a Robotech-ism that saw to Gloval getting offed like that.  But no worries.  Things are gonna diverge to such an extent that this won't even be an issue.

I'm not sure actually - like I said, it's been a very long time since I watched SDFM TV. I'm glad that you're planning on getting well off the rails, though. It's something that can be hard to do even with the best intentions since it means not being able to just lightly retool the set pieces every fan knows and loves (or loves to hate.)

The idea here is that these three are going to become a cohort and will be quickly branded as "The Triplets".  Put it this way: Imagine if the Powerpuff Girls were his daughters.  (With Hikari as Blossom, Akatsuki as Bubbles, and Hotaru as Buttercup.)

Troublesome?  Oh hell yes.  But so very worth it, because as much trouble as they'll cause, they'll also generate just as much awesome.  At the very least they won't be superpowered from the word 'Go'.

And then there will be Garrick - the ready-made father, just add kids.  (Once again, I will reiterate: I have literally had a coworker scream at me "WHY ARE YOU NOT MARRIED YET!?!?" after seeing me interact with a customer's little girl in the store.)  While there will be moments of "... Okay, color me fucking impressed, because I'll be damned if that's not a new one on me", he will be able to take those in stride, nonetheless, once he gets past his initial "How the hell did you do that?" reaction.

Heh, well, more troubles for the MC means more things to write about, so I'm hardly going to complain. Having a larger-than average family group should also mitigate the difficulty of multiple infants at once as well, since it at least means there's a pair of hands for each while still having enough spare that a couple of lucky souls can still pull the pillow over their head and go back to sleep until it's their turn.

It doesn’t matter.  You’re people and so are we.

Hands Across the Galaxy? Can't do Voices while still not understanding the spoken language, I guess

Okay, apparently I just did something inadvertent.  Care to explain?  

The subtitle of Macross 30 is "Voices Across the Galaxy," as the premise of the game is collecting the main singers from Zero through Frontier plus the new girl (who is apparently a Protoculture survivor, found in a stasis tube in the second or third mission) and using their song powers to unlock the mysterious ruins on the planet. Well, Basara is a PITA as usual and only shows up when he damn well feels like it, but the rest of them join your party and enable various combat status effects as SP Abilities when flying in the back seat. Which apparently all VFs now have regardless of model, or any form of logical sense in NG+ when you have access to Zentreadi and Meltran battle pods and power armor as well.

leader of the Adoclass Expeditionary Fleet of the Zentradi Army.  In some time, we

Its been a very long time since I watched SDFMTV - do they identify themselves as "the Zentreadi Army?" My impression was that they were the Inspection Army and the Protodeviln were the Supervision Army, but I suppose even if that was the case a few hundred thousand years ago, things might have changed after the Protoculture were gone.

I'll have to do some research on that.  I'm pretty sure it's floating around there somewhere on the Internet.

It's one of those things that's really unclear from everything I've read - sometimes it seems like it's just a variation on the terms for the same enemy (revealed later to be the Protodeviln mindslaves,) other times the "Supervision" versus "Inspection" seems like it's commenting on the difference in management style for the Protodeviln vs. Protoculture. Where Zero's "bird human" fits in just blurs the issue further.

I nodded.  “Lucky as fuck.  In my world, we never had ASS-1 crash land on South Ataria Island.  Instead, on the date of September 11th, 2001, there was a terrorist attack by Islamic Jihadists the likes of which you guys could never, ever imagine.

ASS-1 did far worse than the 9/11 attack to cities all over the world while it was aerobraking, and then they had the Unification War on top of that. I think they can probably imagine pretty well, especially with how the Anti-UN Octos mecha-subs popped up to attack with surprise in Macross Zero.

Ah, but the difference was that in our case, the battle was nowhere nearly as 'mechanized'.  It was visceral on a level that even they're having trouble imagining.  What they had was the open conflict that all the old school Cold War generals had been itching for all those decades.  What we had was downright murderous guerrilla insurgencies where every goddamn thing was hiding an IED rigged to blow at a fucking sneeze.

And on top of that was the outright implication that the USA, the people who are supposed to be the 'good guys', wound up stooping to their level in how they treated people in captured territory.

Additionally, there was the comparison to the Pearl Harbor attack - how it was focused primarily on the military facilities, whereas 9/11 had the implicit goal of mass civilian casualties.  And really, I think that's the biggest thing to set the War on Terror apart from the Anti-Unification War - the fact that civilians were a sought-after target.

Ah, okay, I see what you're saying here. The way it's written now though, it sounds like he's only referencing the 9/11 attack itself as beyond imagination, to which I'm mostly just seeing Misa's "Are you shitting me?" face.

“Queadluun-Rau.  They’re high maneuverability battle suits used only by Meltrandi because only the females have the reaction times to handle them.  They’re incredibly fast and nimble, but very lightly armored.  They pack a helluva punch, though.  Those blisters above the shoulders and at the knees?  Missile pods.  Each one packs a couple dozen micro-missiles that are every bit as maneuverable as the Rau itself.

Ammo capacity is one of those things that you definitely cannot count on the game stats for, but IIRC the Q-Rau has a triple stack of twelve on each shoulder pod and eight more in each knee according to the art, for a total of either 88 or 104 if it's eight in each side of each knee.

Gotcha, thanks.

the MMM site should have some views of the Q-Rau with its missile pods open under the supplementary line art section I'm pretty sure, so you can double check before taking my word for it. I'm more sure of the triple stacks in the shoulders than the exact number in each layer.

It's going to be fun when we get to Katanagatari and the Yasuri Siblings force the issue without knowing the full implications.  (Yes, Nanami was fully expecting that there would be 'concubines' involved, but not the sort of package deal she's actually gonna get.)

Given that Nanami is like Seto in the sense that if he doesn't marry her then she may kill him out of spite, Garrick feels he doesn't have much choice.  And yes, Yasuri Nanami being able to kill Garrick outright is a very real possibility - by far, she will be the queen bitch of the Freaks of Nature pageant without any further qualifications besides her complete and total mastery of the Way of the Swordless Swordsman.  That said, she will fit into the arrangement with ease once she fully understands that the others are her peers and not simply her subordinates.

I've never even heard of Katanagatari before, but it sounds interesting from what you say here. I really haven't followed visual media in the past decade, with very few exceptions. I think probably Macross F and Delta, Strike Witches, Konosuba, Danmachi, and One Punch Man are the only anime I've watched in that time period, aside from a few scattered first episodes of things I didn't continue to follow. Oh, right, Gurren Lagann too, because people told me it was Evangelion without being such a downer, which was mostly accurate.

[Norgarth]

British SBS (Special Boat Services, their equivalent to SEALs I believe), French Foreign Legion,

While I couldn't name many, I'm sure most developed nations have their own Elite units.

Thanks!  That's still quite a help.  I'll try googling for others when the time comes.

Canada's is JTF2. There's a Wikipedia page about them, but almost zero official information.

I believe Australia simply uses 'Australian SAS', New Zealand might be the same, I'm unsure.

[Rajvik]

Your right, as did Rhodesia, from what i understand Rhodisian SAS were complete badasses

[Norgarth]

And of course, there are the Gurkha.

[classicdrogn]

So, checking through my archives of Macross images (but not finding the VF-0 variant with a big-ass ani-ICBM laser on its back and replacing the head that I was actually looking for) I passed by a couple of Q-Rau images, and it turns out that, not unexpectedly, I was wrong again. They have 21 missiles per pallet on both shoulders (middle row of three, then four on either side, then three again, then two) and legs (outside of the knee only) and probably only a double stack in the shoulders given how much more drastically they narrow toward the center than I was remembering. That's still more of them than I thought, at 126 total.

Also, despite the intiial impression while not understanding the dialogue being what sticks in my mind, Mia-Mira-M-something from Macross 30 is supposedly the daughter of a colonist (miner?) who got put in a stasis tank in the ruins somehow, but not an actual Protoculture member. Exactly how that is supposed to have worked when they've been sealed with Anima Spiritia space magic for plot relevant reasons since sometime between the early development cycle of the Evil-series Zentreadi who later got possessed by superdimension energy beings and became the Protodeviln and when the Protoculture fell I cannot tell you.

[Black Aeronaut]

Again, sorry for taking so long to get back to this before. I can't really even plead much in the way of RL hassle as an excuse, just an excess of shiny objects vying for my attention.

Salright.  

<snip>*Stuff about games here* </snip>

Thanks.  Seeing as these are all probably Japanese language only (fuck you very much, Harmony Gold!) I'll have to see if anyone has done any English patches on these.  Given how big the Macross fandom is, I would be surprised if they didn't exist.

MISSION MUTHERFUCKIN' ACCOMPLISHED.

Seriously, I feel that Kamjin as a character is grossly underutilized despite the amount of screentime he gets, so I'm aiming to do something about that.

I wholeheartedly agree, as my earlier comments about how his discovering what that "love" thing the Micronians had been blathering about all this time with Azonia over the course of that one epilogue episode and realizing it, like, less than a minute before they die is one of the most underdeveloped character arcs in the entire franchise should suggest. Heck, in M30 he falls for Mylene and joins the hero cast for the final boss fight. I'm loving what you're doing here so far.

Well, I do plan on preserving the thing he gets going on with Azonia.  They really do make for a cute couple in a ways...

God, I can only imagine how they'd react when Azonia inevitably winds up pregnant.  They'll either become so outrageously dysfunctional that it circles back around to somehow being functional... Or they actually mellow out and become relatively normal parents...  Although I would expect that any children of theirs would come out highly disciplined.

I held no pity for her, because she of all people should expect nothing less from a woman marrying a hot-dog fighter ace like Roy.

Oh, Claudia! Hopefully Gar can arrange things to keep her and Gloval alive this time around... suggest installing an escape pod for the bridge crew, at least.

I always thought that was just a Robotech-ism that saw to Gloval getting offed like that.  But no worries.  Things are gonna diverge to such an extent that this won't even be an issue.

I'm not sure actually - like I said, it's been a very long time since I watched SDFM TV. I'm glad that you're planning on getting well off the rails, though. It's something that can be hard to do even with the best intentions since it means not being able to just lightly retool the set pieces every fan knows and loves (or loves to hate.)

Yeah, things are about to go wildly off the rails.

It will start with Gloval's debriefing in Anchorage... Basically, the top brass will demand that Garrick be remanded into their custody on charges of high treason.  Gloval and Misa both balk and they wind up getting confined to quarters pending a courts martial for insubordination and failure to obey orders, and the Brass starts looking for someone to send back to the SDF-1 in Gloval's place.  Of course, they're having a hard time of that because all the viable officers are taking one look at the situation and going "Oh HEEEEELLLLLLLL NAH!"  Not only because it would be a suicide mission, but one that knowingly condemns the civilians of Macross City to death.

Now that I think about it, this would cause a very profound schism to form in the UN Spacey - one that would gain the immediate attention of the UN General Assembly.  That, combined with Garrick's leaked information to the British diplomats, causes the UN to collectively field-day the hell out of UN Spacey High Command.  The Hague is about to see some very interesting legal actions go down.

Meanwhile, Garrick has sprung into action as he is won't to do and springs Captain Gloval using his C-Space.  But Misa opts to stay behind.  Her father wouldn't dream of holding her up on charges, especially if she refuses to go with them.  And someone needs to stay behind and do what they can for their situation.  The SDF-1 goes rogue, though it's not like as if anyone particularly cares at this point since the general knowledge is that they were supposed to be dead anyhow.  The incident where part of Canada gets vaporized by the overloading of the SDF-1's full coverage barrier doesn't happen.  As per Garrick's recommendation, they forego trying to off-load the civilians, based on his very sound argument that Kamjin would take the moment of vulnerability as an opportunity to attack.

Back on Earth, the entire upper-level leadership of the Spacey is shit-canned for the moment.  It's more of a "We'll deal with you pricks later - we got bigger fish to fry now no thanks to you!"

Basically, the whole of the UN has shat platinum bricks and they throw the whole world into a state of emergency - they nationalize just about every scrap of construction material and equipment on the planet and go full-bore on building shelters.  In fact, the entire planet goes full-on socialist mode as everyone suddenly has to ration everything.

Old shelters are inspected and reactivated.  New ones are built, but they are basic as all hell - just enough amenities to last about a week because they figure that if they gotta hold out any longer than that, they're screwed anyways.  Anything and everything that can be repurposed into a shelter is, such as the Wieliczka salt mines in Poland and various underground cities elsewhere in the world.

Once it's all said and done, Earth is still going to be missing a large majority of its original population, but it won't be so bad that they need to rely on cloning to repopulate.  There will be a massive wave of childbirths at the end of the first year, followed by a second smaller wave that is notable because it was mainly Meltrans giving birth.  Which will be interesting times because a good number of them were NOT micloned!

(Industry will be caught completely flat-footed here as there is a sudden need for infant products in Zentradi scale.  If it weren't for the implications for the new mothers and children it would have been funny as hell.  Fortunately, Zentradi are pragmatic people and made do by adapting wares they had on hand to the task.)

Kamjin, meanwhile, will have his Malcontents.  However, when he captures Minmei he agrees to at least parlay with Garrick.  Garrick offers them a two-front solution: remain as soldiers and train and drill as a proper military, and introduces them to Earth's athletic entertainment - primarily the various forms of Football.

It's not a perfect fix - Kamjin has no desire to ally with them just yet - but he welcomes the new forms of entertainment and comments that perhaps saving the micronians from total destruction was a worthwhile thing after all.

However, he doesn't relent on releasing Minmei until he and Garrick finally get to having that duel without anyone interfering.  Trouble is they can't decide for sure which way to go about it - maclonize Garrick, but have the very real risk that his proven cheating bastard ass won't pull something - or miclonize Kamjin, and I think we all know how he feels about that.

In the end, Garrick gets to be a Zentran for a day where he and Kamjin beat the ever-loving snot out of each other with no real victor.  Just think about the big fight between Sean Thornton and Red Danaher in The Quiet Man, complete with Minmei leaving just as the punches start flying ("I'll head over to the Nyan-Nyan and have dinner waiting for you, Gar-kun.") bets being taken on both sides (Exedore somehow winds up getting dragged in as the bookie), getting rip-snorting drunk afterwards ("No, I'm buying, dammit!"), and sharing drinking songs ("So we fired our gun and the British kept a-comin...").

The idea here is that these three are going to become a cohort and will be quickly branded as "The Triplets".  Put it this way: Imagine if the Powerpuff Girls were his daughters.  (With Hikari as Blossom, Akatsuki as Bubbles, and Hotaru as Buttercup.)

Troublesome?  Oh hell yes.  But so very worth it, because as much trouble as they'll cause, they'll also generate just as much awesome.  At the very least they won't be superpowered from the word 'Go'.

And then there will be Garrick - the ready-made father, just add kids.  (Once again, I will reiterate: I have literally had a coworker scream at me "WHY ARE YOU NOT MARRIED YET!?!?" after seeing me interact with a customer's little girl in the store.)  While there will be moments of "... Okay, color me fucking impressed, because I'll be damned if that's not a new one on me", he will be able to take those in stride, nonetheless, once he gets past his initial "How the hell did you do that?" reaction.

Heh, well, more troubles for the MC means more things to write about, so I'm hardly going to complain. Having a larger-than average family group should also mitigate the difficulty of multiple infants at once as well, since it at least means there's a pair of hands for each while still having enough spare that a couple of lucky souls can still pull the pillow over their head and go back to sleep until it's their turn.

Yep.  And I've had experience in this department, too.  My youngest brother had a tendency to stay awake after hours no matter what, so since I had no problems with staying up late, Mom and Dad would have me look after him after hours... unless something came up.  Like all the milk he'd had in the last few hours.  It's just one of those things you learn to take in stride in a family like mine, but even so moments like that call for backup.  Mom and Dad were a little annoyed, but perfectly understanding.

Besides, remember all those girls that chased Garrick through the palace?  At least two of them were childcare experts, and they fully intend on making it their mission in life to ensure that the parents aren't overburdened.

It doesn’t matter.  You’re people and so are we.

Hands Across the Galaxy? Can't do Voices while still not understanding the spoken language, I guess

Okay, apparently I just did something inadvertent.  Care to explain?  

The subtitle of Macross 30 is "Voices Across the Galaxy," as the premise of the game is collecting the main singers from Zero through Frontier plus the new girl (who is apparently a Protoculture survivor, found in a stasis tube in the second or third mission) and using their song powers to unlock the mysterious ruins on the planet. Well, Basara is a PITA as usual and only shows up when he damn well feels like it, but the rest of them join your party and enable various combat status effects as SP Abilities when flying in the back seat. Which apparently all VFs now have regardless of model, or any form of logical sense in NG+ when you have access to Zentreadi and Meltran battle pods and power armor as well.

Huh.  A Protoculture survivor?  That could have some interesting implications.

leader of the Adoclass Expeditionary Fleet of the Zentradi Army.  In some time, we

Its been a very long time since I watched SDFMTV - do they identify themselves as "the Zentreadi Army?" My impression was that they were the Inspection Army and the Protodeviln were the Supervision Army, but I suppose even if that was the case a few hundred thousand years ago, things might have changed after the Protoculture were gone.

I'll have to do some research on that.  I'm pretty sure it's floating around there somewhere on the Internet.

It's one of those things that's really unclear from everything I've read - sometimes it seems like it's just a variation on the terms for the same enemy (revealed later to be the Protodeviln mindslaves,) other times the "Supervision" versus "Inspection" seems like it's commenting on the difference in management style for the Protodeviln vs. Protoculture. Where Zero's "bird human" fits in just blurs the issue further.

Mostly I heard 'Supervision Army' from Macross 7.  And in Robotech they were fond of using stuff like 'Imperial Zentradi Army'.  ('Imperial'?  Really?)  So I think that just 'Zentradi Army' is relatively neutral enough.

I nodded.  “Lucky as fuck.  In my world, we never had ASS-1 crash land on South Ataria Island.  Instead, on the date of September 11th, 2001, there was a terrorist attack by Islamic Jihadists the likes of which you guys could never, ever imagine.

ASS-1 did far worse than the 9/11 attack to cities all over the world while it was aerobraking, and then they had the Unification War on top of that. I think they can probably imagine pretty well, especially with how the Anti-UN Octos mecha-subs popped up to attack with surprise in Macross Zero.

Ah, but the difference was that in our case, the battle was nowhere nearly as 'mechanized'.  It was visceral on a level that even they're having trouble imagining.  What they had was the open conflict that all the old school Cold War generals had been itching for all those decades.  What we had was downright murderous guerrilla insurgencies where every goddamn thing was hiding an IED rigged to blow at a fucking sneeze.

And on top of that was the outright implication that the USA, the people who are supposed to be the 'good guys', wound up stooping to their level in how they treated people in captured territory.

Additionally, there was the comparison to the Pearl Harbor attack - how it was focused primarily on the military facilities, whereas 9/11 had the implicit goal of mass civilian casualties.  And really, I think that's the biggest thing to set the War on Terror apart from the Anti-Unification War - the fact that civilians were a sought-after target.

Ah, okay, I see what you're saying here. The way it's written now though, it sounds like he's only referencing the 9/11 attack itself as beyond imagination, to which I'm mostly just seeing Misa's "Are you shitting me?" face.

I suppose I should be more clear about it in that bit.  I just figured that Garrick dropping the line, "...and America responded in kind" would have been enough, but I suppose that's a little too subtle.

It's going to be fun when we get to Katanagatari and the Yasuri Siblings force the issue without knowing the full implications.  (Yes, Nanami was fully expecting that there would be 'concubines' involved, but not the sort of package deal she's actually gonna get.)

Given that Nanami is like Seto in the sense that if he doesn't marry her then she may kill him out of spite, Garrick feels he doesn't have much choice.  And yes, Yasuri Nanami being able to kill Garrick outright is a very real possibility - by far, she will be the queen bitch of the Freaks of Nature pageant without any further qualifications besides her complete and total mastery of the Way of the Swordless Swordsman.  That said, she will fit into the arrangement with ease once she fully understands that the others are her peers and not simply her subordinates.

I've never even heard of Katanagatari before, but it sounds interesting from what you say here. I really haven't followed visual media in the past decade, with very few exceptions. I think probably Macross F and Delta, Strike Witches, Konosuba, Danmachi, and One Punch Man are the only anime I've watched in that time period, aside from a few scattered first episodes of things I didn't continue to follow. Oh, right, Gurren Lagann too, because people told me it was Evangelion without being such a downer, which was mostly accurate.

Oh man.  Fair warning: Katanagatari is a serious fucking tear-jerker at several points, but at the same time it manages to balance hilarity (Shichika and Togami's whimsical and witty tête-à-têtes are the stuff that legends are made of) with some seriously dark overtones.  And to top it all off, the characters are all lavishly drawn and have incredible development.  I can't recommend this anime enough.

And here behind the cut I break down Nanami's character...

Spoiler

As for Nanami and what makes her so spectacularly special?  I meant it when I said she'd be the Queen Bitch at the Freaks of Nature Pageant.  Think of the Uchiha from Naruto.  She has that basic Sharingan ability to copy techniques, only cranked to 11.  If she sees a technique performed once, then she can perform it just as well as the person she saw doing it.  But if she sees it performed a second time?  Complete and total mastery of the technique, and on top of that she is then able to further refine, enhance, and develop the technique.  This goes for both fighting techniques and ninja magic.

Oh, and what really makes her an utter nightmare to deal with?  She's been sickly for her entire life.  In fact, she was so sickly that she came all the way back around to fake normal behavior and appearances.  See, she really does have health issues, but she's such a monstrous Determinator that she's become able to completely ignore physical pain, exhaustion, and sickness.  Yes, she is all-but-dying, but her will is such that she will walk about and act perfectly normal.

One person that attacks her learns this to his detriment.  The poison he used on her - a double-dose even! - barely phases her at all.  So, in a fight the only way you make sure that Nanami stays down for the count is by making sure she's actually dead and not simply taking a moment to muster up her will power!

But the worst part is that the places a very low value on human life...  Which is actually par for the course during this time period.  Samurai Lords were capricious creatures.  They could be thanking you for a service well performed one day... and then be hacking your body to pieces the next day so you can't perform that service for anyone else afterwards!  Nanami will view a person as no more significant than a weed that needs to be removed from a garden should they stand in her way.  Weirdly enough, though, she absolutely adores her brother, Shichika (albeit in a very quiet and reserved way).  But even he's not safe.  When Shichika was little he had a habit of biting his nails.  Nanami fixed that by ripping out all his fingernails in one go!  And in her own defense, she will say that it worked - and she's not wrong about that.  Shichika never bit his nails again.

As for the family technique, the Kyotouryu...  Wheeew.  It is something else.  They are literally swordless swordsmen.  In fact, having a weapon in-hand simply gets in their way.  The school is based around sword-breaking techniques, sword deflection techniques, blade catching, and using your hands in piercing (literally!) or crushing blows.  In short, as a practitioner of the Kyotouryu, your body is literally your sword, and young practitioners are taught to think of themselves as swords.

Combine all that into the synthesis that is Yasuri Nanami and you have an absolute demon in human skin on your hands.  Garrick knows he needs to be incredibly careful about her, but she and her brother metaphorically pin him down.  Why?  Garrick has fighting techniques that has never been seen - ones that can actually be effective against the Kyotouryu.  This winds up being demonstrated by accident the moment he arrives and is attacked by Shichika as an intruder.  Additionally, the Yasuri siblings have been living on an isolated island by order of the current Shogun for a crime committed by their father, and Shichika is worried about the family line being carried on.

Shichika forces the issue of marriage on him, giving him no realistic way out without offending them or revealing his status as a slider.

The Juraians will have to make do with the fact that Achika will not be his first wife as originally planned... and also the fact that he is holding the leash of a monster that only happens to look like a beautiful little woman.  It's a good thing that she's sworn herself to him completely and takes that oath seriously, otherwise there'd be no end to the bloodshed.

[classicdrogn]

<snip>*Stuff about games here* </snip>

Thanks.  Seeing as these are all probably Japanese language only (fuck you very much, Harmony Gold!) I'll have to see if anyone has done any English patches on these.  Given how big the Macross fandom is, I would be surprised if they didn't exist.

You'd need a physically hacked PS3 to use patches, though you're correct, they don't exist. MWulf made a really good translation guide for M30 that can be found via the GameFAQs page, where he still occasionally drops by and is a cool dude, or by googling "redwings translation guide" for the version on his web site. The ones of GF and his blog are not the most recent, though, that's on googledocs and linked from both.

I generally prefer the blog version because it's easier to have open in multiple tabs at once and navigate around than multiple copies of a combined word processor document and the only really important inaccuracies are easy enough to remember when I get to those missions. An actual translation of the game script has never happened because while the data can be ripped from the disk all the dialogue is mixed in with Lua scripting for it and all the other game events, and no one has gone to the effort of untangling that mess. Those who can speak Japanese have repeatedly assured me that the plot and dialogue you imagine to fit the actions Marvel Method comics style will be better than the very bland and generic JRPG fare that the game actually contains, however.

Oh, and see my immediately previous post for a couple of corrections, Mina's origin in particular. While it would be much more interesting if she was a Protoculture survivor and that's what stick in my memory, officially it is not the case. Either way she's got a bad case of protagonist amnesia (the role is shared relatively evenly between Leon, Mina, and Aisha, and they are not a love triangle for once - Leon and Aisha's relationship progresses mostly smoothly, with Mina in a younger sister type role to both) and pretty much only knows what the stasis tube naughty tentacled out of Leon (the mandatory PC) when he found her until various plot-relevant information is later pulled out of another old Protoculture computer system, and then it's not so much about her (aside from the line that I can't help but imagine is "Mama and papa were... Mama and papa were perverts! Ain't nobody wants to see that!" before she passes out) as about how the final boss was sealed in a superdimensional space dumpster for 500,000 years and why.

Still, I'd really love to have seen the look on Lord Roid's face in Delta when after explaining his stupid plan and giving the justification that the Windamians are the true inheritors of the Protoculture so they get to decide, Grown Up Mina turned out to be Walkure and Chaos's mysterious backer Lady M and said, "Yeah, no. I'm actually from the Protoculture, and it's not like that. Now sit down, shut up, and listen to my song!"

It's more likely I think that Lady M is actually Minmei, though there's no iron clad justification for that either, and I really lost enthusiasm in the second half of the series when the padding became obvious (it was originally intended for 13 episodes and got doubled after production had already started, and it really, really shows) so they may even have explained it and I just forgot.

If you've got a PS3, though, and the discretionary funds to buy a copy of M30, I'd say to go for it. It's not THAT hard to deal with it untranslated, and where else are you going to see a plaid Messiah or Durandal, let alone get to fly one? Sadly, none of my favorite mecha (VF-4, 9, 14, Varauta units, Macross II units) were included even if realistically the only one on that list that was even a possibility would be the VF-4 and the Hikaru who shows up is from too early to have been flying that bird, but the VF-19F has a nifty silver skin, the VF-27a and g have a good one each in blue and zebra stripes plus what's-her-name the Hunters Guild leader's ride that you get in NG+, and there's a few not-horrible or so-horrible-it's-cute versions of the VF-0, VF-1, and SV-51a.

The VF-25 family has a couple nice white/purple and white/blue skins on models I forget, and Ozma's YF-29 is decent in black and gold, along with being the hardest hitter in the game thanks to it's third-slot weapon being replaced by a quad damage buff. The YF-30 Chronos is okay in default Macross Protagonist White w/Red Trim but the reversed Milia red with white trim, or black with purple really pop; out of the game's selection I'd usually pick that, the blue VF-27a, or the silver VF-19F for aesthetics. Everything has a camoflage paint job too, and a Bad Guy Squadron navy-charcoal-and-gold as well that you can access in NG+. (Okay, character customs only have one skin, but I'm talking about the generics, which get five including Havemal colors.)

You still can't fly a Zentraedi Yard Dart either, though they do appear in the game as enemy units. That, the Vajra, the end boss, and the Dyaus (Vajra-like Protoculture security robots) are the only ones that are not playable IIRC, and the Yard Dart doesn't have the excuse of being a creature or creature-mimicking AI drone. No, wait, you can't fly the Macross Quarter either, unlike the PSP games. Of course, you could be a Vajra or Protodeviln or DYRL Boldolza in the PSP games as well, though giant units were restricted to outdoor maps.

Anyway, I've gotten distracted from talking about the translation guides. Dragon Knight Tonal checks on the game boards even more frequently than Wolfie and IIRC was the creator of the original PSP trilogy guides, which don't really cover the plot but the PSP games generally only have the objective of "kill all enemy craft" anyway, though there are exceptions. It does cover all the system stuff you need to know, at least, in a generally concise and easy to follow format. I don't have a Vita so I never looked too hard at Delta Scramble, but from things said in conversation either the PSP game guides are still close enough to valid or a new one was made by adapting them to it.

the top brass will demand that Garrick be remanded into their custody on charges of high treason.

Uh... how? He's served faithfully ever since joining the Spacy. I mean, they could get him for being an illegal immigrant easy, but treason? I suppose that's another point for why everyone else is, as you put it,

going "Oh HEEEEELLLLLLLL NAH!"

Now that I think about it, this would cause

The author is thinking about and refining ideas based on my comments! Yay!

I helped!

The SDF-1 goes rogue, though it's not like as if anyone particularly cares at this point since the general knowledge is that they were supposed to be dead anyhow.

Apparently the bit where the SDF-1 is cruising around the surface of Earth was supposed to be a lot longer in the initial conceptions of the show, basically doing a tour of all the world's most significant natural and architectural wonders and collecting recordings and souvenirs (to have after they get blown away in the bombardment) before being chased off by UN units. With how long your story is already committed to being, something like this would probably be best handled as a time skip montage of one to three paragraph scenes for a few representative samples before moving on to the next stage of the plot with something like "our world tour was brought to an end by..." etc. if you do it at all, but I think it would be cool, especially with the warning they got to bunker up NOW in this version.

I do hope you still use the Ottowa location though. With them steadfastly refusing to fully join the UN it would be a chance to see some SV-51 (or more likely at this piont the re-engined, space capable SV-52) units in action, maybe have Roy give a whistle and say something about how he's glad they're on his side this time, and that they hold up surprisingly well even compared to the VF-1 rather than its predecessor. Even better if he gets to give one a test flight, naturally just before an attack rolls in and he's stuck fighting in it like Hikaru in the VF-1D back at the beginning. The most immediate difference is that the SV-51 is a GIANT compared to any other unit in this time frame, head and shoulders taller than a VF-0 let alone a runty VF-1, and it has its secondary guns in the wing roots/chest rather than head turrets.

RE Kamjin and Azonia, the thing that amuses me most is that she looks basically exactly like Sylia Stingray (2030s, not remake) with a dye job. Giving them something more than that and a barely-hinted plot is one of the major points to look forward to here.

Katanagatari

Well, I'll probably at least remember the title after this, but it doesn't really sound like my cuppa from your description. Eh, we'll see when Garrick gets there. (The real world has all the darkness and pushy assholes I need, and then many, many more... and only in anime does biology and willpower work that way. Yes yes, I know, think of the catgirls. Still. "Be careful with all that edge, you might cut yourself!" )

[classicdrogn]

Over on the GameFAQs M30 board, Tonal just posted the most detailed story summary I've seen yet of the game. (Granted, that's not saying much, but still.)

Spoiler

Dragon Knight Tonal said: the planet Ouroboros became the home to one of Earth's early expeditionary mining colonies. The colonists uncovered a set of Protoculture Ruins at some point. These are the same as the type from Macross Delta, by the way, and work via Song Energy. One of the first generation colonists, Mina, was poking around in one of the ruins and accidentally activated it. In doing so, she was sealed inside of a temporal barrier and the world became enwrapped in intermittent, pulsating fold faults.

Sometime later, in 2060 (one year after Macross Frontier), Leon Sakaki was making a delivery from his SMS Saphira branch to the one on Ouroboros. He gets shot down. Aisha Blanchett, the head of the local SMS branch, disassembles the remains of Leon's YF-25 to use in her own personal project. Since he can't leave due to both that and the currently-heavy fold faults, Aisha drafts him in to her team.

Aisha and Leon go about exploring the ruins. They find Mina and release her. Due to her long stasis, she has amnesia. She knows that she had been in the ruins for a reason, but cannot remember what it was. Freeing Mina also has the effect of activating the ruins. The Protoculture machinery inside alters the fold faults surrounding the planet. They begin punching hole in space-time, yanking in to the present strong sources of Anima Spiritia, namely the musicians from the various series and those that were around them at the time that they were pulled to Ouroboros.

With these new sources of Anima Spiritia, Aisha decides to try to investigate the Protoculture Ruins. All of them agree to aid SMS in hopes of finding a way home, except for Nekki Basara, who refuses to help because he only sings when he wants to.

They go from place to place, activating all of Ruins that they come across. This occasionally puts them at odds with the local NUNS military command leader, Ushio Todo, and his Special Forces division, Hamaval. They have their own objectives.

After all of the ruins become active, a massive Protoculture facility is unlocked. It is at this point that Aisha and her team discovers the point of the ruins. They were designed to seal away Yurva Arga. Yurva Arga is one of the EVIL-Series Zentraedi. When the Protodeviln began taking over the EVIL-Series, the Protoculture locked away the most powerful one that had yet to become a host. Yurva Arga’s special ability, as all EVIL-Series have one, is the power to manipulate space-time. It was he who had been pulling people from different time periods, and not the ruins. Although, he was not aware that he was doing it.

Ushio Todo had discovered Yurva Arga while it was in stasis. He had been working to infuse himself with the EVIL’s essence, giving himself the power to control time. Todo could only gain so much control while Yurva Arga was in stasis, so he manipulated the sleeping creature in to pulling the Anima Spiritia in to the present, and allowing Aisha to unlock the ruins, and thus the seals, for him.

Todo’s ultimate plan is go to back in time and prevent the Zentraedi from performing the Rain Of Death upon Earth. This would, of course, save the majority of humans from dying. Likewise, our heroes cannot allow this to happen. So Todo fuses with Yurva Arga. Since the EVIL has not been taken over by a Protodeviln, it still has fusion pockets for “pilots” much like AFOS back in Macross Zero. He uses Yurva Arga’s power to create a temporal barrier to protect them as they prepare to enact Todo’s plan.

The ending you can find out on your own.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/687...753?page=1

[ECSNorway]

Likewise, our heroes cannot allow this to happen.

... do they happen to give a -reason- for this? It seems... questionable.

[classicdrogn]

Likewise, our heroes cannot allow this to happen.

... do they happen to give a -reason- for this? It seems... questionable.

Making everyone born since 2010 never have existed? Because "natural" events are always better than "unnatural" things? Because it's "going too far" doing things "man was not meant to know" and "playing god?" Honestly, I feel it's pretty weak too aside from the first, as you can probably tell from all the air-quote sarcasm. The ending actually makes it even worse, since the boss is retroactively killed it means none of the character development or effort put into the game ever happened, most likely Leon wasn't even sent to Oroborus (yes, I know, but it's how it's spelled in the game) at that time to meet Aisha if she was even there herself, and if Mina didn't live out a normal life she's still stuck in a stasis tube underground somewhere... assuming the Protoculture even built all the ruins in the first place without anything but the odd local minerals that extend partly into the superdimension to study. Basically, history is altered with either outcome, so really the only difference is saving their own generation's existence rather than the one that historically died.

There was a fanfic that started on SB where instead of being returned to their original places in the timeline everyone (or nearly everyone? I don't recall the issue of what to do with any of the antagonists who only flip for the final battle like D.D., Nora, Kamjin, or (Ganef? Ganoosh? The annoying bandit with a torch for Aisha) being addressed, but the rest of the hero cast and both the Macross Quarter and Aisha's up-armed and automated Northhampton-class ship) present at the final boss battle is sent back to ... I want to say the SDF-1's arrival at Pluto, but maybe a bit later in the original trek back to Earth? ... which seemed like a much more interesting result to me, but it died off after just a few story posts. It was also supposed to be an alternate timeline to begin with IIRC, DYRL or maybe Roboblecch.

It did have a very nice bit where the protagonist-side leaders decided that since they were here now and only figured out what happened after being hailed by the SDF-1, there was no point trying to "preserve teh timeline" as if it wouldn't change just from their presence anyway, and move on to debating what to actually do now. I dunno, it's been too long since I read it, all I remember is suggesting that along with the doctrine and intelligence transfers getting production data on the VF-4 over to the Macross would let them skip ahead a generation in VF tech while still being within the reach of their known manufacturing and training. It was also the model with the longest service life as the UNS's main variable fighter, from 2012 to the mid 2030s IIRC, so a very well tested and proven unit and one that was intentionally designed with a lot of parts in common with the VF-1 to make the changeover easier.

And this really doesn't have much to do with BlackAeronaut's fic, does it? Sorry, BA.

[Black Aeronaut]

<snip>*Stuff about games here* </snip>

Thanks.  Seeing as these are all probably Japanese language only (fuck you very much, Harmony Gold!) I'll have to see if anyone has done any English patches on these.  Given how big the Macross fandom is, I would be surprised if they didn't exist.

<yet more snippage>

I was planning on using an emulator anyhow, that way I don't need to worry about getting a hacked unit.  Though I'll need a PC with plenty of horsies under the hood to handle all that.

I generally prefer the blog version because it's easier to have open in multiple tabs at once and navigate around than multiple copies of a combined word processor document and the only really important inaccuracies are easy enough to remember when I get to those missions. An actual translation of the game script has never happened because while the data can be ripped from the disk all the dialogue is mixed in with Lua scripting for it and all the other game events, and no one has gone to the effort of untangling that mess. Those who can speak Japanese have repeatedly assured me that the plot and dialogue you imagine to fit the actions Marvel Method comics style will be better than the very bland and generic JRPG fare that the game actually contains, however.

Ahhh.  Well then, maybe someone should write that instead of the original script?  It wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened, though this time it would be for the great good.

Oh, and see my immediately previous post for a couple of corrections, Mina's origin in particular. While it would be much more interesting if she was a Protoculture survivor and that's what stick in my memory, officially it is not the case. Either way she's got a bad case of protagonist amnesia (the role is shared relatively evenly between Leon, Mina, and Aisha, and they are not a love triangle for once - Leon and Aisha's relationship progresses mostly smoothly, with Mina in a younger sister type role to both) and pretty much only knows what the stasis tube naughty tentacled out of Leon (the mandatory PC) when he found her until various plot-relevant information is later pulled out of another old Protoculture computer system, and then it's not so much about her (aside from the line that I can't help but imagine is "Mama and papa were... Mama and papa were perverts! Ain't nobody wants to see that!" before she passes out) as about how the final boss was sealed in a superdimensional space dumpster for 500,000 years and why.

Still, I'd really love to have seen the look on Lord Roid's face in Delta when after explaining his stupid plan and giving the justification that the Windamians are the true inheritors of the Protoculture so they get to decide, Grown Up Mina turned out to be Walkure and Chaos's mysterious backer Lady M and said, "Yeah, no. I'm actually from the Protoculture, and it's not like that. Now sit down, shut up, and listen to my song!"

HAH!!!

It's more likely I think that Lady M is actually Minmei, though there's no iron clad justification for that either, and I really lost enthusiasm in the second half of the series when the padding became obvious (it was originally intended for 13 episodes and got doubled after production had already started, and it really, really shows) so they may even have explained it and I just forgot.

Weird.  I kinda got that vibe from Delta just the first few episodes in.  That and it just felt waaayyyy too much like it was aping AKB0048, and doing a terrible job of it.

Someone should do an unironic abridged version of Delta if this is really the case.

But I'm still gonna roll with the idea that the reason MEGAROAD 1 disappears with all hands is because meeting up with the Vajra gave them a HUGE hint about how to use Katherine's backup-seed as a means to find Garrick.

And it's going to be FUN FUN FUN when the MEGAROAD shows up in Tenchiverse Earth's cislunar space and everyone shits a platinum brick.  I already went over this before earlier in the thread, but in case you skipped over it...

They use Katherine's back-up seed as a sort of means to pull them to Katherine by way of a controlled mis-fold - punching out through their universe and into whatever universe Garrick is in at the time.  But instead, they get dragged all the way to Tenchiverse instead because that's where the connection actually leads - back to Funaho-no-ki where Katherine sources her power.

So imagine these colonists all showing up to just-shy-of-21st-century Earth - more or less just as they remember it, only without some of the more spectacular craters left by the Anti-UN war.  Yeah, cue the massive outcry of catharsis from the ones that remember, and the wonder and joy of the ones who were too young to see it before.  Some of them are gonna quietly settle back on Earth and subtly begin introducing Overtechnology.  It'll upset some apple carts, but after a decade or two Earth will begin building its very own Super Dimensional Fortresses which are potent enough to allow Earth to stand on its own in the political spheres of the Galaxy Alliance and the Empire of Jurai.  As well as a total barrier system for the entirety of Earth along with a healthy smattering of Grand Cannons.

("Oh, you brought a planet-sized battleship?  Nice job, but we'll be calling that bluff of yours - we've turned our planet into the galaxy's biggest weapon system.  Not even the goddamn Death Star has shit on us.")

the top brass will demand that Garrick be remanded into their custody on charges of high treason.

Uh... how? He's served faithfully ever since joining the Spacy. I mean, they could get him for being an illegal immigrant easy, but treason? I suppose that's another point for why everyone else is, as you put it,

It's more or less BS, but basically they're making a technicality of Garrick explaining the Human race to Buldoza.  And in a sense, they're not wrong.  Buldoza decided based on what he heard that Earth should be destroyed before it can do anymore damage to the Zentradi.

going "Oh HEEEEELLLLLLLL NAH!"

Now that I think about it, this would cause

The author is thinking about and refining ideas based on my comments! Yay!

I helped!

Indeed.

And upon further reflection, once the Spacey's high command has been relieved of duty, the interim command will is going to change things up a bit.

However, no one is going to be disembarking.

Why?

Because if Earth is in the crosshairs, then the Macross is probably the safest place in the galaxy for those people.  In fact, they asked if they can take on more people - namely family members of people on the Macross.  Which means not only Kaifun, but also Minmei's parents will be aboard the SDF-1.

Now this is gonna be incredibly interesting to see what it's gonna do to Minmei.  On one side she'll have her parents trying to pull her away from the career she has her heart set on.  On another side, she'll have Garrick holding his hand out to her, and telling her she can be anything she wants and he'll love her no matter what.  And then on a third side, there will be safe, familiar Lynn Kaifun.

But only familiar to a point.

As I mentioned before, Garrick warns Minmei about Kaifun.  And while this really does upset her - How can her precious cousin who she thinks of as a brother be such a horrible and perverted person? - but on the other hand, Garrick has never lied to her.  He dressed up some of the details, and he even told her that he was holding back on some things.  And over the course of Minmei's soul searching, she comes to the realization that Garrick has NEVER given her any reason to distrust him.

And that's when that warning Garrick left her with starts to echo in her mind.  Even if Garrick was lying, it had been a couple of years since she last saw Kaifun.  People do change.  So she watches Kaifun carefully, and finds that she is horrified by the person he has become - rude, egotistical, narcissistic, and more worrying of all, possessive.

Over her.

She thought it was strange when he tried to talk Mr. Truant into letting him be her manager, but it never sounded any warning bells until now.

Feeling torn, she goes to Garrick.  Even if she is upset with him, he always had good insights, and that had just steered her from getting into a really unsavory situation.  Of course, she apologizes to him for not believing him, but then turns around and asks him just how is she to know that she can get along with the fiancees?

Garrick hands her a tablet.  "You can ask them yourself."  Cue a rapid-fire exchange of letters as Minmei asks questions, gets answers, and gets to know the women who would be her sister-wives if she did take Garrick up on his offer.

Later, Minmei will say that it was ironic that they had gone from her chasing him to him chasing her, and that it was weird to have the shoe on the other foot, even if Garrick wasn't pursuing her as actively as she pursued him.

Aside from that...  The SDF-1 is going to get massively reinforced.  It still won't hold a candle to the Main Fleet, but it will be far better than what they had in the original timeline.  They even repair as much damage to the ship as they can, and they even replace the fold drive with the one that was intended to go into the SDF-2 (later MEGAROAD-1).  Which means that they can now fire the main gun in both configurations.

As for why go to the trouble of replacing to fold drive?  Simple: a Final Contingency.  Should things come to the worse case scenario, then their orders are to get the hell out of dodge and find a new world to reestablish humanity upon.

Oh, and they also fix that pesky little problem with not being able to fire the main gun when using the pin-point barriers, and this time simply fire a hole through Buldoza's fortress so they can enter without messing the SDF-1 up six ways to Sunday.  Yes, that's right.  Once it's all said and done, the Macross is STILL going to be a viable battlewagon for the Spacey.

Apparently the bit where the SDF-1 is cruising around the surface of Earth was supposed to be a lot longer in the initial conceptions of the show, basically doing a tour of all the world's most significant natural and architectural wonders and collecting recordings and souvenirs (to have after they get blown away in the bombardment) before being chased off by UN units. With how long your story is already committed to being, something like this would probably be best handled as a time skip montage of one to three paragraph scenes for a few representative samples before moving on to the next stage of the plot with something like "our world tour was brought to an end by..." etc. if you do it at all, but I think it would be cool, especially with the warning they got to bunker up NOW in this version.

I do hope you still use the Ottowa location though. With them steadfastly refusing to fully join the UN it would be a chance to see some SV-51 (or more likely at this piont the re-engined, space capable SV-52) units in action, maybe have Roy give a whistle and say something about how he's glad they're on his side this time, and that they hold up surprisingly well even compared to the VF-1 rather than its predecessor. Even better if he gets to give one a test flight, naturally just before an attack rolls in and he's stuck fighting in it like Hikaru in the VF-1D back at the beginning. The most immediate difference is that the SV-51 is a GIANT compared to any other unit in this time frame, head and shoulders taller than a VF-0 let alone a runty VF-1, and it has its secondary guns in the wing roots/chest rather than head turrets.

RE Kamjin and Azonia, the thing that amuses me most is that she looks basically exactly like Sylia Stingray (2030s, not remake) with a dye job. Giving them something more than that and a barely-hinted plot is one of the major points to look forward to here.

Heh.  Hikaru and Garrick would have this moment...

"Betcha twenty ration credits that Max can take 'em."

"Sucker bet."

Well, I'll probably at least remember the title after this, but it doesn't really sound like my cuppa from your description. Eh, we'll see when Garrick gets there. (The real world has all the darkness and pushy assholes I need, and then many, many more... and only in anime does biology and willpower work that way. Yes yes, I know, think of the catgirls. Still. "Be careful with all that edge, you might cut yourself!" )

Eh, it's not so bad.  At the very least, it's not Greek Tragedy levels.  More like a lighter version of a Shakespearean Tragedy.  And it is definitely not the same sort of messed up that is Code Geass.  Man, I hate the direction that one went.

And this really doesn't have much to do with BlackAeronaut's fic, does it? Sorry, BA.

It's alright.  I asked anyhow.  And I've decided that they might be interesting to have in the story, but if they do show up, then my story would go much differently from the game.

[classicdrogn]

I remember you mentioning the Megaroad showing up over Tenchiverse earth before, yeah - I'm pretty sure I laid out some of my own thoughts on the reactions from those aboard, when there's a living, green, fully populated Earth below them, after seeing their own version wrecked by the bombardment. Even by 2040 all we see is barren brown badlands when the action moves there at the end of Macross Plus, and skies hazy and reddish at the horizon (and brilliant beautiful sunsets, so small bonus at least) from atmospheric dust. I rather expect the orbital and system defenses are gong to start at extreme and rapidly progress to ludicrous, because NEVER AGAIN. That kind of weapons build up would be alarming to other galactic powers, but they're all "fixed" (as much as things in orbit can be called that) defensive emplacements, not anything that could be taken for an enthusiastic walk around the stellar neighborhood and used aggressively.

As for using the M30 people in the story, well, that's up to you if you want to; I do think it would be really cool but also adding a whole new layer of complication to the plot. The Macross does replace the Vrlitwhai Kridonik (SDF-7 I think? Maybe 15, but also a Macross class.) for about the last third or so of the game, which I had somehow forgotten when talking about it earlier, so if you want to draw on M30 for part of the story it's easy enough - just follow the altered timeline and you're there with another sixty years of potential mecha technology to draw on, and a ready source of superdimensionally-active materials similar to Fold Quartz as well. Orobous Stone is everywhere, and Frost Crystals from the glacier area are specifically useful as high-grade engine components in the crafting system, which I take to include any high-energy systems like beam weapons, fold drives, and so on.

With no fan-patch version available anyway, there's no need for a hacked console - the PSP and PS3 have no region locking, and my impression is that the Vita is the same. The M30 trophies even sync up to my US PSN account just fine.

Oh, a question - are you using the SDFMTV visual designs here, or DYRL? Official continuity has used the more detailed DYRL style with TV events, but since I don't think you've mentioned whether the Macross was grey or white and blue, it's so for open to interpretation.

[robkelk]

...
I was planning on using an emulator anyhow, ...

Random comment: When discussing Macross and somebody mentions an emulator, I immediately think of Macross II.

[classicdrogn]

You're not the only one, though as near as I can figure it the use of the word in MII was an engrish construct intended to mean "one who instills emotion," along the lines of "motivator."

[Black Aeronaut]

I remember you mentioning the Megaroad showing up over Tenchiverse earth before...

Oh yeah, that was you!  Sorry about that - it's just been that long for me.  

As for using the M30 people in the story, well, that's up to you if you want to; I do think it would be really cool but also adding a whole new layer of complication to the plot. The Macross does replace the Vrlitwhai Kridonik (SDF-7 I think? Maybe 15, but also a Macross class.) for about the last third or so of the game, which I had somehow forgotten when talking about it earlier, so if you want to draw on M30 for part of the story it's easy enough - just follow the altered timeline and you're there with another sixty years of potential mecha technology to draw on, and a ready source of superdimensionally-active materials similar to Fold Quartz as well. Orobous Stone is everywhere, and Frost Crystals from the glacier area are specifically useful as high-grade engine components in the crafting system, which I take to include any high-energy systems like beam weapons, fold drives, and so on.

Yeah, I certainly need to do my research.  The fun part is going to be getting a better idea of what the world-building of Tenchi-verse is really like so I can see about where I can insert those superdimensional materials as something that was never really noticed, or was simply overlooked because reasons.  BUt don't worry, I'm sure I'll figure something out.

Really, this stuff is all probably going to be part of a side-story that I'll tackle later on - what goes on in Macross-verse after Garrick blips out of there.  And I suspect that things that Garrick says and does would have some serious knock-on effects that would affect the outcome of the M30 storyline, even if that was taken without me altering it to my tastes.

With no fan-patch version available anyway, there's no need for a hacked console - the PSP and PS3 have no region locking, and my impression is that the Vita is the same. The M30 trophies even sync up to my US PSN account just fine.

Unfortunately, I have neither of those systems, nor any disposable income to buy either one - even if they are previous gen systems.

Oh, a question - are you using the SDFMTV visual designs here, or DYRL? Official continuity has used the more detailed DYRL style with TV events, but since I don't think you've mentioned whether the Macross was grey or white and blue, it's so for open to interpretation.

Honestly, I've never seen DYRL - mainly because of how they make the Zentradi look like green men from another planet at the time it was produced.  (I thought what they did to Exedore in Macross 7 was just plain ridiculous.)  But I guess that I should, just for the mecha designs if nothing else.  Oh, and Macross Zero as well.

[classicdrogn]

DYRL you can probably take or leave - if you've seen Plus, you've seen the SDF-1 as rendered there, and the only other really major thing is Boldolza's giant base-ship, seen briefly as a wreck in Frontier. At the same time, it's just a movie, so not a major time sink. It is officially not canon for the main continutiy, however, and the maclone Zentreadi seen in Frontier and even the Macross Seven movie (Kamjin in M30 too) are back to being like SDFMTV. Zero is a whole lot of fun, though, and the VF-0 design really shows how the state of animation (and Kawamori-sensei's own technique) have improved since its nominal successor the VF-1. Basically, it's the VF-1 but with all those annoying little gotchas that had to be adjusted by changing proportions from one mode to another fixed, though I believe they still do cheat just a bit with the size of the hands, if not nearly as much. The combat scenes in it are good enough to watch it for all on their own, though, and I like the Sv-51 a lot as well, gawky teenager limbs and all.

[Black Aeronaut]

Having seen Frontier, I know what you been about bringing back original flavor Zentradi character designs. Although it honestly felt kinda off in how they seemed to not only ape elements from SDFM, but even lampshade a lot of it.

One of the bits that I loved from Frontier was how Klan Klang says that while some of the older era Zentradi weapons were not quite as potent as their contemporaries, the build quality was much better as they hardly ever needed any maintenance over their absurdly long lifetimes which could be measured in millenia.

Hence all the more reason to be careful of any Zentradi or Supervision Army wreckage they come across - even after thousands of years there could be booby traps left behind that are not only active, but haven't lost their edge.

As for Zero.... I'll see if I can track down a fansub of it. While Harmony Gold has lost their stranglehold of the property here in the USA, it's going to take some time before it all officially starts to come down the pipeline.

[robkelk]

...  While Harmony Gold has lost their stranglehold of the property here in the USA, ...

Er... Anime News Network says Harmony Gold holds a license for Macross until March 14, 2021. They also hold a trademark on the name "Macross" until December 26, 2022, but the license terms might or might not affect that.