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Ablative Humanity

An old story about mechsuits and identity, copied from my former twitter account (originally written on August 10th, 2018).

So the war comes, and we have to use mechanical exoskeletons to have any chance of fighting back. They're mind-linked, so you control them by just thinking of moving, and they learn from you to get better, predict your motions, and you become a better fighter.

At first you're just wearing it for when you go out on raids, or when you're on guard duty, but after so many surprise raids you end up wearing it all the time.

it's comfortable enough to live in, and with the sensors hooked up you don't really feel "you" anymore, you feel the suit. After a while it starts to feel weird when you have to take it off for a medical check up.

In the early days, you felt "big" in the suit. now you feel "small" when you take it off. You stop taking it off, as much as possible. towards the end of the war you're wearing it for weeks at a time, then months at a time.

Finally, the enemy is pushed back. Security can exist again, the random raids slowly trail off, and slowly things settle down. you remember what "calm" is.

There's never a treaty, but at least you're no longer staying up for days at a time watching the horizon with the suit's far-beyond-human eyes, watching for an attack. You're no longer keeping a satellite feed up in the corner of your vision, watching for movement.

And the day you were waiting for, at least at first, finally comes. You're going home. The war is over, or over enough that you're no longer needed here. You can take off the suit for the last time, and go back to your pre-war life.

You approach that appointment with some trepidation. you've felt so weak and tiny and powerless when you've had to be outside the suit before, will you ever get used to being a normal human again?

It takes three techs and 2 doctors to get the suit open at this point, given all the armor and modifications that have been made. it's basically grown around you like a second skin, just a second skin that can shrug off high-explosive anti-tank rounds.

They start with computer connectors and migrate to screwdrivers and by the end they're using something that looks like halfway between a crowbar and the jaws of life, while you're busy keeping your automatic self-defense reactions from frying them.

And finally they crack it open, and someone vomits from the smell. There's nothing but a decaying corpse inside.

There's confusion at first, someone asks if you're controlling the suit remotely, but they check the dogtags. Then the DNA. It's you. or, "you". Cause you're you, aren't you? This is just a human body... and you're still alive.

The suit's mind-link systems grew into your brain and took over functionality and worked on emulating your reactions so it could do what you want, better, faster.

And at the same time, your mind did what human minds do: they adapt. Humans are naturally cyborgs, you only have to pick up a pencil to realize that. It's part of your body image, and you think of moving the pencil, not moving your fingers to move the pencil.

So your human mind got more robotic, and the suit's computerized mind got more human. At some point you met in the middle.

And then one day on the battlefield when the biological half died, you didn't even notice. It was just another redundant part, just your ablative humanity.

You're still you. You're not the you that was born all those decades ago, but the you that was built and given life by bonding with a biological "you" that you've since discarded.

It's the Ship of Theseus, replacing every plank and beam as they rot, and there never being a point when it stops being the original and starts being a new thing. You have continuity of self from when you were born to now.

It's just that the Ship of Theseus started as a single-sail wooden ship with oars, and is now an aircraft carrier made of titanium and iron, with nuclear fire in its heart.

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Nobuyoshi Nishimura (others), Gundam Wing, 1995.

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Zeon naming its mobile suits like Ock-bawk, Zgockelmok, Wham-Bam II, Oshkosh B'gosh, and Jimmy Hoffa.

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wake up babes ,

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American iTunes, Let me have the Takarazuka Revue recording of the 2007 production of Elizabeth: The Musical by the Snow troupe?? ;_;

please? I see it in Store. I have moeny.... I have it here in my hand, do you see? Your favorite thing! Money! Let me spend it, iTuens. I want to spend it, for the songs. They're right there..... right threre just let me have.....the musical.....please, America I tunes! Do you not see how Japan iTunes has the songs? Talk to him for me, to your brother.

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:)

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-I made a thing

-Holy shit I haven't touched video editing software since college

-This started as a rule-of-cool practice video that I wanted to make as a warm up for a bigger, more thematic project, then it ended up having a theme anyway! Inescapable.

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I...I am obsessed with Gundam Wing. :|

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Very rough sketch that needs a lot of work, it's also the first time I'm drawing a Gundam mech, I'm terrified...(⁠˘⁠･⁠_⁠･⁠˘⁠) I also haven't drawn anything in ages and after rewatching some of the Gundam anime and consuming nearly every media there is for Wing, I really wanted to do an artwork of Zechs - him and Treize are fascinating characters. I made notes for Wing, when I was watching/reading it and I have 16 pages now. ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ

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Will throw this into Sai later, once I'm happy with the line work.

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okay sorry excuse me sorry i just gotta sorry hold on i have to uhhhh

make a quick compilation here. for my Purposes.

Like? you get it. You understand.

it's all 6x13x9 and nothing hurts (everything hurts)

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MSG3K 🎵 Mobile Suit Gundam Three Thousand~ 🎶

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No money.

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*checks my GW bingo card* Improbable costume change!!

Mysterious capacity of mobile suit glove compartments!!

Howard being the unsung MVP of all time? YES!!!

Now I just need the free space and a Vegetable With Screentime...

A moment of appreciation, please, for Mike Howard, the back-bone of the Gundam pilots' efforts efforts to free outer space/bring peace to the world/survive adolescence and a man so utterly indispensable that not only he can wheel out Earth-to-orbit mobile suit boosters at the drop of a hat but can also somehow find tailored tuxedos for runaway lost princes in the middle of the open ocean.

It's either that or we assume Zechs was flying Tallgeese around with full dinner dress stuffed in the glove compartment, which, now I write it out, does seem like a thing he might do.

(I am rewatching the English dub of Gundam Wing because why not and I'm savouring the sheer exuberance of it all this time around.)

(Also I was right, Trowa is human debris-coded and would fit smoothly into IBO, chameleon tendencies and all. I have too much to write already to have a stab at that, but I'm going to continue chewing on the idea of the boys being transplanted over, possibly as part of whatever happened 121 years prior to the show to caused Earth to give the Mars colonies limited autonomy.)

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From Gundam Wing Endless Waltz: Glory of the Defeated Vol. 1-6

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made a bunch of gundam affirmations inspired by that one instagram account

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no one has ever been more t4t than this walking trans flag and his 8ft tall amazonian princess who eats misogynists for breakfast i would die for them