SHIN KIDOU SENKI GUNDAM WING

SAINAN NO KEKKA
Mission Log: Gerald Tarrant
The Revelation Arc

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INTRODUCTION

          It's not every day that a fanfiction author gets a chance to write something like Sainan no Kekka, and I can truthfully tell you that this is the best thing I've ever written, as far as series fics are concerned. I wouldn't even call SnK a "fic"...no, more like an "imaginative epic." Or, as I once said to QS, "Sainan no Kekka isn't as much a work of fanfiction as it is a way of life." ^^;;
          These mission logs will chronicle my thoughts on each arc of SnK, along with character opinions, thoughts on the particular issues and focuses of the arc, and sarcastic remarks about Quicksilver's and my sanity. ^__~
          SnK was actually Quicksilver's brainchild, and she always tries to dump the blame of starting it on me. HOWEVER, that is not the case. Actually, I'll never forget the day I came home from classes and started talking to her on IM, and she casually brought up the idea of starting a Gundam Wing fanfic that would be a sequel to the TV series and chronicle the further lives of the characters. I thought the idea sounded vaguely interesting, but at that time I only wrote Fushigi Yuugi fanfiction and I didn't want to be distracted, even though I was very into Gundam Wing at the time (I have a thing for series with angst and lots of cool mecha, especially cool mecha ^_~). So I made noncommittal comments and thought that was the end of that.
          But of course it wasn't. QS sent me Banks' part in Act 1 one day in email, asking me to read it over, and it was then I wondered exactly how far she wanted to go with this fic idea. She asked me if I wanted to start soon, to which I replied with various other non-committal nonsensical grunts, and again thought that was the end of that.
          Then one day I was bored. I was stuck on chapter 6 of my Fushigi Yuugi fanfiction "Fate" and I wanted to write, but I couldn't figure out what. I checked my email, rediscovered Banks' scene, and decided to humor QS and write something. Anything. I piddled around for a while before deciding to write Wufei, who happened to be my favorite Gundam Wing character at the time. I did it for the challenge more than anything else; I had never written anything for GW before, and I wanted to see if I could "get into Wufei's head," so to speak. I like to do that with all my favorite characters. It gives me a chance to understand why I like them.
          Needless to say, after I finished, the section...no, after I had written two lines of the section, I was hooked. I finished it in under two hours and sent it to QS. Then started to write Zechs. I quickly caught up to and then passed QS's amount of writing, and she had started her parts about two weeks ahead of me. ^^;; And that・s how it all started.

 
WRITING THE FIC

          As I began to see where QS wanted to take SnK, I threw in a few ideas of my own, fleshing out the plot and the characters. QS and I are very different in how we write, yet we complement each other very well. I'd like to think that this fic was "ready made" when we decided to become writing partners. (We've compared ourselves to Heero and Duo before...me as Heero and her as Duo. It's actually rather frightening)
          I tend to write in terms of the "here and now," to capture a certain mood, or an elusive feeling. I pay very close attention to detail of movement; how characters respond to other characters in a certain section, or the placement of body language within different contexts. I'm also primarily an angst writer and thus if you've ever wanted to tell who writes what in SnK, look for the sections/characters with large amounts of angst, depression, and general all-out suffering. Those are mine.
          A large part of my writing is dependent upon music. Music is a very important part of my life - in fact, I'm one of those "failed musicians," one who could have gone on to make a career out of music but decided to choose something else instead. I can't say I regret it - I love what I'm doing now with my life, but music continues to remain a driving force in everything else I do, especially anime and writing. Music for me is one of the most important qualities of any anime (which is why my favorite series is Macross - music and mecha, what more could you want? ^_~). If the anime, in my opinion, has a bad soundtrack, I won't watch it. A piece of music can also make or break a scene that I'm writing and it's very important for me to choose the right kind of background music to play while I'm working. Everything: a character's gestures, a character's words, or even a description of something within a certain paragraph is dependent upon music, either actually playing or just something I hear in my head. This obsession (?) manifests itself within SnK as the titles of the Acts (off the GW soundtracks), the lyric quotes at the beginning of each scene, and the SnK soundtrack itself.
          QS, on the other hand, looks more to the overall impact on the storyline of everything that is written. Sometimes we'll be just starting an act and she'll already be relating events to things that will happen six or more acts later. It took a while to get used to, but her way of thinking keeps me grounded and from dragging on too long with a particular scene. She writes with character relationships in mind, always trying to bring characters in and making them interact with each other. Her style of writing sometimes drives me crazy, since unlike me, she doesn't write one character, finish it, and then move on to the next. She sometimes has five or more scenes being written simultaneously at the same time, jumping from scene to scene when she runs out of ideas for one. But each to their own, I say ^_~

 
THE MILITARY IN AC 197

          Our writing partnership has one distinct advantage, and that is that QS knows a lot about politics, while I know a lot about the military. I'm actually in the military, so I can claim a certain amount of expertise in that area, which most Gundam Wing fans probably don't have. I also used to write Star Wars fanfiction and got quite good at describing space battles and sounding technical without actually being technical ^^;;. On top of that, I'm a huge mecha fan. You can bet that most of the battle scenes involving explosions and mecha will be mine ^^
          The military in AC 197 has evolved from what it was before the war. For one thing, we have the new peacekeeping agency, the Preventers, who essentially are the military. There are no separate branches, no carefully structured military presence within the colonies and on the planet. The Preventers are the only force that can be called on in times of danger. Their rise to power comes at the end of a war that devastated all of humankind, and naturally everyone, including the new World Nation government, is a little wary of the power of the military. Lady Une is in an odd position of being one of the most powerful people in the world and having little room to use that power.
          The Preventers of SnK is very different from the Preventers of Endless Waltz. As SnK is a spinoff of the TV series that discards Endless Waltz, QS and I as authors have been able to pick and choose what events we want incorporated into the canon world of SnK and which we choose to ignore. In Endless Waltz, the Preventers is more of a small, contained organization, with highly trained professionals using code names. It has more the feel of an FBI or intelligence agency than a true military. In SnK, it is the opposite. The Preventers are the official military force of the World Nation, and Une is the commander in chief. The Preventers is structured like the traditional military, covering all departments (operations, support, logistics, medical), uses military rank, and is, in the minds of its founders, a nobler version of what OZ and the Federation military once were.
          One of the things that bothered me in Gundam Wing, and in all anime, actually, is the inconsistent use of military rank. Perhaps it's the subtitles, but one minute someone will be a captain, and the next he/she will be a commander. For one thing, commander is a naval rank only, while captain as mostly used in anime is an army rank. Sometimes there will also be mix and match of different ranks from different services. Another nit-pick is the overabundance of saluting. In the military today, you only salute out of doors while wearing a hat (called a "cover"). People in GW, however, salute all over the place・utside, inside, wearing hats, not wearing hats・he last complaint I have is the use of first names instead of last names. The use of first names in the military is very personal, and not to be taken lightly. Using someone's first name means that you actually know him/her personally, and first names alone are NEVER used with rank. If I were to be absolutely correct, Zechs would be referred to in Gundam Wing as "Lieutenant Merquise" and not "Lieutenant Zechs," and Treize would be "Commander Khushrenada" and not "Commander Treize."
          In light of all of this, I've tried to make the military in SnK as true to both the "real-world' military and the GW military as possible. QS and I have agreed to use Air Force/Army rank for the characters, but you'll notice that people sometimes refer to Zechs as "commander," thus hearkening back to his old days as the commander of White Fang. I do revert back to using their last names with the rank rather than the first names, but I've let the saluting thing go, since being salute-happy seems to be one of the trademarks of most shounen anime.

 
THE CHARACTERS

          So what happens to each of the characters after the war anyway? How did we end up characterizing each of them as they appear at the beginning of SnK?

Heero Yuy/Wing

          Heero is my own little "personal project," the character on whom I want to focus the most on. There are many reasons for this: one being that he is really the main character of Gundam Wing, however you want to look at it. Another reason is that he is my favorite character, and out of all the characters I identify with him the most. I am very good at reading Heero, which is something that most fanfiction authors can't say with ease, but writing his thoughts seems like second nature to me. Thus my fascination with him.
          Heero and Wufei are the two characters of mine who can't let the war go and who are still "living in the past." Heero does this by pure abandon, letting himself go entirely, willingly seeking the path of his own self-destruction. He's always had, as one person said in feedback, "a kamikaze type mindset," and I think that describes a lot of his actions in SnK. The lifestyle he's chosen, of assassin and drug addict, has a lot to do with his perception of himself at the end of the war. All his life he's been trained for one thing only, and now that's over, he's lost his sense of identity.

Duo Maxwell

          Duo is QS' character, and out of all the characters of Gundam Wing, I'd have to say that besides Quatre, he's the one I understand the least. His happy-go-lucky mentality has definitely matured into a more confident adult air by Act I, when we see him at Cliffside. Unlike Heero, Duo has a definite desire to be normal, to fit in, and to find a place where he can be happy. He also craves the company of people, and while the pilots are all to one degree or another introverts, Duo's extrovert personality can't keep from shining through.

Hilde Schbeiker

          We decided to establish Duo and Hilde as a couple because they seemed the most plausible out of any of the pilots and their female "counterparts" to have a relationship. Hilde is also a good character foil for Duo - she keeps him grounded, but at the same time she shares his enthusiasm for life in general. As QS, remarked, "those two are in LOVE," and when she sends Duo away, it's obvious that they can't stay separated for long.

Trowa Barton

          Trowa is QS' but she admits that she has a hard time with him. I can't say I understand where Trowa is coming from, but he out of all the pilots seems to me fit for a military life・f military life consists of only taking orders and following them. Trowa, I think, is quiet and doesn't speak his own mind because he's been trained to believe that individuality can undermine a team effort. Where Heero and Duo and Wufei are almost maniacal in their individuality, Trowa can only be motivated to do something if others are already doing it and he sees that they are succeeding.

Catherine Bloom

          As far as SnK goes, Catherine is still a rather static character. Her sole purpose is to act as a mentor to her brother Trowa (for SnK we do assume that Trowa is really Triton Bloom, Catherine's lost brother), and most of her personality is shaped upon Trowa's needs.

Quatre Raberba Winner

          I don't see where Quatre is coming from at all. He's actually my least favorite character of the series, but I think QS is doing an excellent job with his character as portraying him as young and old at the same time. Quatre may be young, but he is definitely not innocent or na・e. He knows exactly what is going on, and he has been trained to deal with it. However, he's also someone who, I think, depends greatly on others, and his sisters come into the picture here.

Dorothy Catalonia

          Dorothy is an interesting character: idealistic, yet cynical. I think she grew up a lot during the war, when her grandfather and then Treize was killed. With two members of her family killed in war, it probably gave her at least a small eye-opener. Dorothy doesn't really know what she wants out of life. Somewhat like Heero, she loses her purpose after the war ends, but she keeps her uncertainty all inside, focusing on things that keep her busy instead of examining her direction in life. Her fascination with Zechs isn't a mere idealistic relationship ideal, like Heero and Relena, but neither is it "true love," as with Duo and Hilde. Dorothy still has a lot of growing up to do.

Chang Wufei

          I mentioned to QS that I thought that Wufei was the one who suffered most because of the war. Not that Wufei's troubles are any more than any of the other characters in the series, because, as she said, "each of them goes through their own private hell." It has to do more with Wufei's character than anything else. Wufei appears to me as the character with the most clear-cut definition of right and wrong, and his ranting on justice isn't just nonsensical ranting. It's his way of convincing himself that what he's doing (killing people, destroying things, etc) is right. Unfortunately, the things he's fighting for are just memories now: Meilan, his colony, even Treize. No matter what he does, the guilt over those memories will not go away.
          In SnK, this burden of guilt that he's been slowly piling on himself collapses. Wufei, as both a scholar and a soldier as well as being Chinese, has an enormous amount of discipline, but instead of using this discipline to build a new life for himself, he hangs onto the memories while daily tormenting himself for everything he has ever done wrong. Like Heero, he lives in the past, but unlike Heero, who punishes himself by forcing himself to forget everything and surrender to pure abandonment, Wufei pushes himself to greater limits to keep up his rigid lifestyle, setting everything into a pattern and a cycle of blame and self-penance. Like QS said, Wufei isn't entirely right in the head these days, and his scenes in SnK show his detachment from reality.

[A small note, since people seem to be nitpicky on this issue: I personally think that the name for Wufei's remodeled Gundam, "Altron," is nowhere near as cool as "Shenlong." ^_^ Therefore, I have taken the liberty of referring to the Gundam as Shenlong in SnK, even though its official designation in the later part of the TV series is Altron.]

Sally Po

          Thrust into a position of power where she least wants it, Sally has reason to be wary of Lady Une, since they were enemies during the war. However, Sally's nature is not to judge before she actually sees what someone can do. Sally and Une have very different philosophies on the direction of the Preventers, but as commander and second-in-command, they balance each other out.

Treize Khushrenada

          The death of Treize, and also his life, have affected each of the following three characters in different ways. Though he is no longer alive, Treize's legacy lives on in Zechs, Noin, and Une. Each of them has a different interpretation of Treize's vision and a different philosophy on the way that Treize would have wanted them to go.

Relena Darlian Peacecraft

          Relena is not as idealistic as she was in the TV series, but she still has a lot to learn. Her fixation on Heero has lessened somewhat, and having been thrust into a position of real power, she has proved that she is capable of handling such a position well. She pretty much realizes that Heero is lost to her for the time being, and while she continues to think of him, her focus is now on her brother Milliard. Learning that he was her brother in the middle of the war probably didn't give her a whole lot of time to think on the situation, and now that she has more time on her hands, she begins to wonder what exactly their relationship means to him. There is a lot of bitterness inside her against him for "leaving her" and joining OZ, making her run the country while he is really the legitimate heir. She doesn't understand why he would abandon his vision of the Cinq Kingdom, and takes it very personally.

Zechs Merquise/Milliard Peacecraft

          None of the former members of OZ can leave the past behind, and Zechs is the first example of this. He should have died in the war, but he's still alive and he wonders why he was left and not Treize. The changing of his name to Milliard represents his conscious effort to change who he is, granting a request to Relena in hopes that she can help him start a new life outside of OZ.

Lucrezia Noin

          In Acts 1-3, the main focus of Noin's part is to illuminate her relationship with Zechs when they were cadets and then officers. Noin lives in the past through her memories of Zechs, believing that he is dead. She is still in mourning for him, regretting all the things that were left unsaid, and basically has lost the will to do much of anything because he was a main focus of her life for so long.

Lady Une

          Treize's death is what haunts Une. In the Revelation Arc, she's portrayed as a very strong woman, and most of this is because she wants Treize's legacy to live on, and she believes that she is the one who will make that happen. As the head of the Preventers, Une is one of the most powerful people in the world, and she has a very creative team behind her to back her up. Mental breakdown during the series aside, Une is a woman who is fully in control of everything she does, and a perfectionist at that.

 
ORIGINAL CHARACTERS

          The thing I hate most with original characters in fanfic is many times they are undercharacterized, stereotyped, and generally created to fall in love with the lead character ("Mary Sue" types). I've tried to avoid that as much as possible in SnK. With many acts, of course, QS and I can afford to make the original characters as dynamic as we care to, which is a definite advantage. All the characters listed below are mine, except for Ilene.

Atsuki

          At first, Atsuki was simply going to be a very minor character who was meant to flesh out Heero's new "Wing" personality. Then QS and I got started talking about Quatre's sisters, and I thought it would be interesting if Atsuki was actually one of the sisters who had rebelled against that lifestyle and run away to find something better. She would definitely cast an interesting light on another side of the situation, if she were ever found by Quatre. Atsuki represents the downtrodden "common" folk of the world and the colonies, the ones who know of the war only as a peripheral thing. The people of the Breaks have no instant access to news like the rest of L1, and most of them have more important things to worry about. Atsuki is also a character foil to Relena, both of them in love with Heero but on opposite sides of the social and personality spectrum.

Darkflight

          I decided that Heero needed an assassin partner who had grown up in the slums and was the best assassin there was around, so Darkflight was created. Darkflight was, before Heero came, one of the top in his trade, but someone of Heero's training easily tops that (as Heero did). Darkflight wants to be a friend to Heero, but "Wing's" antisocial personality and the fact that he has no memory of what he did before the war prevents them from becoming too close. Darkflight is also rather in awe of his partner, and a little frightened of Wing's capabilities.

Ilene

          Ilene is QS' character, but I see her as the typical hyper anime girl, squealing over the "cute new guy" and in general a bubbly and fun person to be around. She is, however, very immature, as her reaction to Duo's news shows, and is also rather shallow in her thinking, unable to look beyond the bare facts and see things for herself. She is very easily influenced, as the riot scene showed, and someone like her may end up being the most dangerous threat.

Gustavson

          Gustavson is my take on the "common" soldier of the post-war era. As the commander of the free rebels on A007, he has a lot on his hands. As with most of the Preventers and other soldiers, Gustavson was also involved in the war as a member of White Fang, and he has definitely picked up a lot of values from his stint there.

 
WHY REVELATION?

          Well, simple. The Revelation Arc is the beginning arc of SnK, used to show how the characters have progressed since the war ended. The "revelation" of course is the revelation of the pilots' identities.

 
CLOSING NOTES

          We have 13 Acts planned for SnK, and Acts 1-3 are just the beginning. Next we hope to focus more on what actually happened after the war ended, dig a little deeper into the motives of the pilots and the Preventers, and see what the rest of the world has to say about the truth that has suddenly come to light.

 
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