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tinyozlion · 1 year ago

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I kiss this commentary a thousand times, i put it in my mouth, i carry it around gently like a baby bird, i am placing it in the pile of treasures

“Honor, Justice, Strength, Integrity” - Why Wufei’s 'Honor' is Different

Here’s an analogy:

Someone stands up proudly in the debate club. They say “Today I’m going to be arguing strenuously for a topic I know almost nothing about and can barely articulate my stance on, but I’m going to opine about it at length and with great authority.”

And you’re like: …Why?

Do you enjoy being humiliated? Do you like losing? Is this something you do often?

Why? Why stand up at all when you have absolutely no chance of making your point?

This is how Wufei feels about fighting. Wufei, after all, IS a debate kid.

People who have no way of defending their argument should stay seated. They shouldn’t be here in the first place. If you’re too weak to win, you’re only a detriment to your own cause; when you’re weak, you make your cause look weak, when you lose, your cause loses.

So sit down. You’re in the way. You’re embarrassing yourself.

--If most of us look in our hearts and think of something that we would, honestly, truly, stand up and throw a punch / take a punch for, our ability to WIN the fight isn’t necessarily part of our criteria for doing it. If you gotta punch a bully, you gotta punch a bully. We view that as having integrity.

Wufei would not agree– if you punch the bully and the bully wipes the floor with you, does it mean anything to anyone but you? And does your feeling of validation make it worthwhile to participate in a conflict that hands your enemy an easy victory? The bully is still Evil, he wouldn’t say otherwise. But you didn’t change that by getting your ass kicked; the bully lives to bully another day.

Why throw your life away for something you can't change? If the only thing you can do for you cause is die for it, then you need to get your priorities in order-- you should get better at fighting so you can WIN for what you believe in, or get out of the way of those who can, so you don't become a liability.

If a cause is worth fighting for, then as its champion you'd better commit to being strong enough not only to achieve victory, but to defend and enforce it– or don't you believe in your stance firmly enough to follow it through? If you can't bring yourself to implement it without hesitation, then your cause is not a worthy one. If you don't fully believe in the cause you're fighting for, then indecision will make you weak, and you will fail.

And it will be right that you fail. Because fighting without a unity of both commitment and moral authority is how you lose your way. It’s how unnecessary conflict and Evil are born: from the disorder left in the wake of those who fight without understanding of what they're trying to achieve or lack the resolve to implement it without compromise. To him, that internal unity of purpose is the measure of integrity. Never go to war without it.

“Honor” for Wufei is different from the “aretḗ” of Zechs and Treize. For Wufei, honor is a score you’re keeping with yourself and your family and your clan and your ancestors and your dead wife who’s spirit you idolize. It’s not glory, it’s not chivalry– honor is your reputation. It’s a designation of value assigned by your community; it keeps you accountable to them. If you are humiliated in battle, it disgraces you AND your community, and it is therefore their right to ostracize you. Honor is something you can lose-- not just by failing to meet your personal standards, but by by failure in general.

A circumstantial loss is one you can strengthen yourself against and bounce back from-- but a true defeat, one that ends with you knowing you've been bested by a far superior opponent? That is a failure. A deep and bruising mark of dishonor that makes you unfit to wield a weapon.

There’s an interesting, if perhaps cynical, description of “honor culture” that identifies it as a response to living in impoverished, tenuous, often remote conditions where there is minimal or no law enforcement. Your mileage may vary on that assessment, but one thing’s for sure, Wufei’s colony, the A0206 colony of the L5 cluster, fits all of those criteria.

The Long clan’s reputation for great strength led them to be exiled by an insecure government to a decrepit, 200 year old relic of a colony teetering on the brink of extinction at the very edge of civilization. They have no money and few resources, their population is dwindling, the life support systems grow more tenuous by the year. The Alliance / OZ think of the people still living in L5 as vermin skittering around space trash. The Barton Foundation’s original plan for Operation Meteor designated A0206 as the colony destined for earth drop. Both Earth and Space seem in agreement that his home is scrap metal waiting to be disposed of. The only resources of value Wufei's clan have are the few young people like him who are capable of fighting, and their honor as a people. (…And one Gundam with no ammunition.)

The Long Clan is depicted as being very strict, proud, and extremely conservative. They adhere to a Confucian tradition that values obedience to social hierarchies, and the acceptance of one’s social role within that hierarchy. It is understood that those with superior standing should maintain virtuous and moral conduct, and that those who are subordinate should obey them as long as this remains true. Civil order and peace is the expected result of maintaining this propriety. It is also expected that people strive for perfection and harmony in every aspect of life, with the understanding that perfection is a state that can be achieved. It’s very likely that the strict adherence to these very traditional precepts is what helps A0206’s small, endangered population maintain cohesion in the face of constant peril, and it would explain why these traditions have close to a religious significance for those living there, including Wufei.

The hierarchies of this system are fundamentally patriarchal. Meilan is considered the “strongest in her clan”, but this seems to be something of a ceremonial designation, as she is repeatedly told not to fight in real battles on account of being a woman. In fact, it she seems to be the only woman with a visible presence in the colony. It’s possible that women are a rarity in the declining state of A0206, thus giving her increased value and status and making the rest of the clan overprotective of her-- but whatever the case, she must take on the spiritual mantle of Nataku to transcend her status as a woman and fight.

This is partly why Meilan finds Wufei so deeply infuriating when they first meet: she and Wufei are the strongest and perhaps ONLY members of their generation who are able to fight, and he (the one allowed and expected to fight by virtue of being male) refused to do so. Wufei did not see the point in fighting for a subjective concept– “Justice” lacks an absolute, universal definition, and therefore could not be defended.

--Like I said before: debate kid.

Besides being an infuriating nerd, Wufei risks his whole clan’s reputation by refusing to commit to the fight against the Evil. (…Also, they were about to be exterminated by the Alliance, so choosing to let everyone die rather than be rhetorically incorrect was a bit of a dick move– as his mentor Doctor O astutely observed). When Meilan shames him, it is specifically for being a failure as her husband, as well as for shirking his duties as the most capable member of the Long clan. For both of them, propriety is of key importance.

But unlike Wufei, Meilan has no trouble reconciling her conviction to fight with her sense of justice. To her, it’s obvious that the universality of justice is infinitely less important than making one’s own idea of justice a reality.

She isn’t having any of that what-about-ism bullshit– she is unhesitatingly ready to fight for what she understands to be true: that those who kill indiscriminately and oppress others for gain are Evil, and must be stopped so they cannot continue to do harm. And she fights also because… that is their way. The last and most enduring thing her people have is their identity, as ones who fight to uphold justice.

Ultimately, Meilan is killed while protecting the colony and Wufei. She is strong enough to win, but not strong enough to survive the victory. Their colony, their clan, and one the last few beautiful things they have managed to cultivate in spite of dereliction– their field of flowers, are safe for another day. If she hadn’t leapt to their defense first, Wufei would not have followed in the Gundam, and the population of the colony would likely have been killed en-masse by the Alliance, or decimated by OZ. She was directly responsible for their survival. Evil did not win, and yet, she died. She was strong, and yet she died. She was weak, and yet she was Justice embodied. Such a contradiction meant the universe had gone insane. It lost its way, it stood in need of correction.

Wufei does not handle contradictions well. His ideology consists of absolutes and has no room for failure or extenuation. When the weak fight, they die, or they get in the way, so they shouldn’t fight. But Meilan– Nataku, was strong, and so, her spirit must live on in the Gundam, undying. It is her strength, her justice, which carries HIM to victory by lending him the strength of the mobile suit she died protecting. He must believe this, not only to honor her memory, but to preserve the structure of his ideology.

When he encounters women in combat who remind him of her, he reacts with outbursts of sublimated anger and grief that is redirected into misogynistic vitriol. Women who fight will die, don’t they understand? They continue to pick up arms and fight anyway, even when they’re weak, even when they cannot possibly win. They’ll foolishly rush ahead because they believe in what they fight for, and it will kill them. But he will not be the reason for it. He will make them understand that they are weak, so they will stop fighting.

--But they don’t. And he has no idea how to deal with it. Just as he has no idea how to deal with his own defeat, until once again, a woman finds it worthwhile to help him regain his conviction and sense of justice, by demonstrating her own.

He is a trad-i-tional boy, living in a trad-i-tional world.

<-Back! —————————- Onward!->

#parsing post #Additions from the People #Wufei #SALLY!!!! oh my god what a great point about Sally being part of his culture but not part of his specific echo chamber #It's funny how much the Long Clan and Romefeller have in common as traditionalist/patriarchal/warrior-deifying institutions. They'd HATE it #My headcanon is that the Long's pooled their money to send Wufei to school on earth #To probably an equally remote and traditionalist institution that maybe still had ties with their clan #so he's been off-colony for just long enough to develop that I-Studied-Abroad-For-A-Semester-And-It-Changed-Me complex #OOF oh my god you really hit it on the head with “lost AND gave up” to Treize being the real source of his shame #No you're right and should say it-- it's specifically Mariemaia he's hung up on; not Dekim's propaganda #it's inescapable that she's the daughter of his nemesis that he's still tormented by; it's so clearly an act of Destiny #It took me 20 years to come around to Wufei as an interesting and cool character & I still want to put him in a box and shake him vigorousl #I am looking at him in this terrarium and thinking about what kind of enrichment he needs to grow up into a reasonable and kind adult

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ikuzeminna · 1 year ago

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Why is crapping on Gundam Wing by people reviewing all the Gundam series such a trend? And in the silliest manner possible, because out of the million flaws Gundam Wing has, they never pick any of those. Instead they make stuff up. "The characters are flat." Oh yeah, sure, no depth at all to the guy who starts out as a merciless killer FUBARing every important mission he's sent on (and I love what a drama queen he is), gradually regaining his humanity once he's removed from the battlefield, only to end up horrified by being forced by a machine into becoming a ruthless killer again. Or the guy who spends the entire series preaching 'carpe diem' while he himself is the living embodiment of 'memento mori'.

Or the snarky mercenary with a massive Middle Child Syndrome who sacrifices the only thing he's fought for his entire life (himself) to keep another kid from turning out like him. Or said kid who goes through 50 shades of bonkers and every human emotion in existence during the show. Don't even get me started on the ladies. "Wufei is not interesting." Of course not. Why would the sole guy who doesn't fight for the freedom of the colonies but instead wages a personal war of revenge and a promise he's trying to keep to his late wife be interesting? Which explains why he's a wild card and fights on Mariemaia's side in EW. "The Gundams are overpowered. They never get any damage." Yeah, why didn't they send five suits made of Explodium against a world army? Also begs the question why we see them get repaired in the third episode already. And why every pilot is also a trained mechanic who can fix his own suit. Since the Gundams are indestructible anyway. Seriously. The show itself spells it out. Gundanium may be near indestructible but the electronics and other parts get fried perfectly fine which, surprise surprise, renders a Gundam useless. Never mind that Noin, in episode 4 already, was willing to use a weapon that could damage Gundanium but would overheat on Earth. "Relena's pacifism should never have worked against Romefeller. The show is dumb for presenting it as the solution." .....It didn't??? The whole Cinq arc made a point out of pacifism not working with Romefeller and the Mobile Dolls around. Just- what??? "Gundam Wing isn't realistic." This is like complaining about talking animals in The Lion King. Gundam Wing is supposed to be anti-UC. Being unrealistic was intentional. Being focused on ideologies was intentional. Not focusing on character struggles (too much) was intentional. Having a mess of a plot because you have one million different factions was intentional. If reviewers watch all the UC series and don't get that Gundam Wing has the exact opposite setup then I don't know what to tell them. Complain about talking animals while you watch a Disney movie, I guess. Pick on the horrid pacing. Pick on Relena and Heero being nutjobs in the beginning. Pick on yelling from cliffs. Pick on Noin being a doormat to Zechs. Pick on Zechs being a Char clone. Pick on there being way too many characters in the beginning. Pick on the Dorothy/Quatre connection coming out of nowhere or Une giving herself split personalities because of a dude.

There is a plethora of flaws to choose from. Also, get out of my face with UC being better. That salt episode was the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life and I've watched Seed Destiny.

#gundam wing #salt #I post something after a million years and it's a rant #of course it is

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gatormeister · 10 months ago

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Just finished Endless Waltz, and it is absolutely fantastic. I loved every second of that movie. Took everything that was good in Gundam Wing and turned the dial up to eleven. Got just that little bit extra backstory for the pilots. More Tallgeese is always a good thing. I like the TV versions of the suits better in every case other than the Deathscythe Hell, that one's about equal with the TV appearance I'd say. Give Heavyarms back it's orange damn it!

Absolute pacifism was always a weak ideal in the show, mostly because it just sort of worked all the time just by Relena talking. It was only ever really opposed by war mongers. Endless Waltz finally shows the struggle that is maintaining peace and peaceful attitudes in a way outside of having some cartoonish monarchist/fascist practically look at the camera and call it naive before being proven wrong very shortly after. Which was fine in the show really, as I said in a previous post, Wing tried doing a lot with it's plot that it couldn't fully support, and the end result was some plot points that just never sat quite right.

Mariemaia was a seven year old trying to become a world dictator. She was just a puppet of course. Sort of a Haman and Mineva situation there. But every time she'd open her mouth to try and sound smart I could only think, "You are literally seven, what the hell are you talking about?" Which was funny.

My favorite suits from the series and movie would be the Tallgeese with the Tallgeese II be my favorite iteration, the Wing Gundam of course with Unit 01 the first iteration being my favorite of those, the Sandrock, and the Deathscythe Hell TV version. I liked the Leos and Tauruses, but the rest of the grunt suits just weren't big hits with me. I'd put the Leo above the Taurus, but I would also say that everything I like about the Leo, the Graze from Iron Blooded Orphans does the same but better.

Over all an okay to good series with a fantastic ending. I don't know if I'd watch the whole series over again, but I'd absolutely re-watch Endless Waltz. Next up is War in the Pocket followed by Stardust Memory and Thunderbolt, but before that I'm going to take a small break from Gundam. I may have only just started posting about the shows with Turn A, but I have been watching Gundam basically nonstop since around the August last year. Going from G-Witch, to IBO, to The Origin, 0079 the series, Zeta, Double Zeta, Char's Counterattack, 08th MS Team, Unicorn, Narrative, Turn A, and now Wing and Endless Waltz. It's been a lot, and I am ready to watch some shorter shows without giant robots in them... for at least a little bit. I'm thinking I go back to Gundam in February. I'll still be posting pictures of Gunpla I build in the meantime, but that's a lot different than sitting down and watching multiple shows that are around fifty epsiodes each. See ya!

(Edited to add Narrative into the list. A movie so self contained I literally forgot to put it in with the rest of Gundam.)

#gundam #mobile suit gundam wing #Endless Waltz #mobile suit gundam #mobile suit gundam wing endless waltz

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ponycycle · 2 years ago

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bigger thoughts on WfM ep 12 later

but there's something I don't see being talked about anywhere. WHY did Aerial get such a powerful weapon during the refit? that's not like, a combat weapon. it's a siege weapon, capital weapon, whatever you wanna call it. it's for blowing up the underground bunker that Mariemaia Khushrenada is hiding in. and Aerial's not a secret anymore, Delling was literally present at the plant that the refit happened at. why would he TOLERATE Aerial being armed in such a way? the Dawn Of Fold guy remarks on it, the show definitely wants you to be thinking about it

#witch from mercury #spoilers #gundam spoilers

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theotherwesley · 7 months ago

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Character Opinion Bingo: Mariemaia Khushrenada?

Oh, Baby Strawberry Dictator-sama? I'm very normal about her thank you for asking

#lifeblogging #character opinion bingo #sometimes this is a gundam blog #Feel Strongly About / Will Protect / Will Cherish #She's going to have a cherry-red racing wheelchair and raise hell as an activist #she'll grow into her eyebrows as a teen #She's going to be the head of the Preventers when her foster mom retires

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astragifs · 1 year ago

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#relena peacecraft #mariemaia khushrenada #新機動戦記ガンダムW: ENDLESS WALTZ #gundam wing endless waltz #gundam wing #mobile suit gundam wing #🔮☆gif.#90s anime #animangaladies #anisource #dailyanimatedgifs #animeedit #fyeahmovies #shonenedit #dailyanime #fyeahanimegifs #oldanimeedit #tw flashing

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expewrites · 2 years ago

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A little wintery 3x4x3 fic for @theboringbluecrayon, my gift this year for the GW Holiday Gift Exchange of 2022! ❄️☃️❄️

While helping in the aftermath of Mariemaia's Rebellion, Quatre and Trowa discuss where to go from there, and a snowball fight... sort of ensues.

Thanks to @thisweekingundamevents for organizing! 😘

#trowa x quatre #3x4x3 #trowa barton #quatre raberba winner #gundam wing #fanfiction

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thisweekingundamwing · 1 year ago

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This Week in Gundam Wing 17- 30 September 2023

Here’s the roundup for September 17th - 30th, 2023!

Remember to give your content creators some love! Be sure to join in on the events at the bottom! And remember to send in any new works you see or make next week!

~Mod Hel

Fanfiction/Ideas/Snippets:

@noirangetrois

Green Mischief https://archiveofourown.org/works/50260426

Gen, Trowa Barton & Duo Maxwell

Sally Po, Trowa Barton, Duo Maxwell, Heero Yuy

Teen And Up Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Cocktail Friday, Alcohol, Trowa and Duo being little shits, bad star wars references, Wufei will not be pleased

Sally is unimpressed by the creepy-looking cocktail Trowa and Duo serve her, especially when they start talking nonsense. Before long, however, her own plan begins to form.

Wine and Hugs https://archiveofourown.org/works/50416243

F/F, Sally Po & Lady Une,Lucrezia Noin & Lady Une, Lucrezia Noin/Sally Po

Lady Une, Sally Po, Lucrezia Noin, Mariemaia Khushrenada (mentioned)

Teen And Up Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Cocktail Friday, Alcohol, Wine, Birthday, Friendship, Post-Canon, Not Gundam Wing: Frozen Teardrop Compliant

Sally and Noin bring Une a belated birthday gift.

Fandom Discourse:

gwpromptmeme

GW Prompt Meme event

Rules: https://gwpromptmeme.dreamwidth.org/408.html

Main Page: https://gwpromptmeme.dreamwidth.org/

Calendar Events:

@gwcocktailfriday

Cocktail Fridays!

Post responses on Friday, during Happy Hour between 3 & 5 pm in your own timezone.

Here’s the prompts for Friday, October 6th! https://gwcocktailfriday.tumblr.com/post/730182557559291904/cocktail-friday-post-responses-on-friday-october

In need of prompts!

@thisweekingundamevents

Events Calendar https://thisweekingundamevents.tumblr.com/post/730188053636841472/updated-events-calendar

If you are hosting an event currently, or are planning on one, hit us up with links and dates! We’ll add them to the Calendar and reblog your notices to get the word out!

GW Holiday Gift Exchange 2023

Participants List https://thisweekingundamevents.tumblr.com/post/730187822630322176/participants

GW Hallows

https://thisweekingundamevents.tumblr.com/post/729978476539559936/gw-hallows-2023-heres-the-prompt-list-for-this

#Gundam Wing #This Week in Gundam Wing #Weekly Roundup #17-30 September 2023

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