SHIN KIDOU SENKI GUNDAM WING

SAINAN NO KEKKA
Mission Log: Gerald Tarrant
The Betrayals Arc

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INTRODUCTION

          I'll bet you didn't expect that newest development, huh?
          The Betrayals Arc has the honor of being the longest arc, not in terms of content, but in how long we took to write it. We started on Act 7 in about November of 2001 and finished in May 2002. I'm not sure why we took so long to complete it, though I know a lot of it was because we posted 9.2 at the beginning of April and then didn't post anything until the last week of May. The end of spring is always hectic for everyone, no matter how old you are. I think it has to do with hormones and pollen and cabin fever. Heh.
          There were a lot of things going on in April and May that made it basically impossible for me (and QS) to write. At all. I apologize to all of you who were anxiously waiting each weekend to see if 9.3 was posted and came away empty handed. I'd also like to thank all of you who are reading this, especially if you've been with us since the beginning. We wouldn't have made it without you.

 
SAINAN NO KEKKA, WRITING, AND GUNDAM VS GUNDAM WING

          SnK is approaching its two-year anniversary, and I've come to discover slowly that no matter how long you've been writing, no matter how good you think your works are, you will always improve. And some day, you're going to go back and look at something you wrote a year ago, a month ago, even a week ago, and wonder how you managed to put out something as horrible as that. That's how I feel when I go back and read SnK sometimes, and I would like nothing more than to have another three years to go back and completely redo most of what I've written, because I don't believe that the writing quality is up to standard. I'm inclined to believe (and I hope this is true) that my writing in Act 9.3 with Li is much better quality than my writing in Act 1.1 with Wufei and Milliard.
          However, QS says, and I agree, that the longer timespan that we took writing the Betrayals Arc worked out well for the quality of the story. Gundam Wing by nature is not a shallow series in any sense of the word. I to this day cannot sit in front of the TV and watch more than two episodes of Gundam W at a time without getting a headache as to who is doing what and how this relates to whatever was going on two seconds earlier. I believe it was Katsu who said something to the effect of "the GW series is too short for the amount of content they tried to put into it," and I agree absolutely. And as a noncanon "sequel" to GW, SnK strives to take a deeper look at some of those topics that didn't have enough screen time in the TV series to fully be developed: topics such as nationalism, politics vs the military, the experience of the common soldier/civilian, and many more.
          Gundam Wing is a Gundam series that is completely different from any Gundam series I've ever seen. It's like Macross Plus - a series with the series moniker tagged onto it and some of the same technology to make people who were already fans of the original big name series want to see it, but the similarities are only skin-deep. Macross Plus hardly resembles the original Macross, and by the same token, Gundam Wing is nowhere close to the original Gundam. Ironically, both Macross Plus and Gundam Wing are the most well known shows of their respective series (the two biggest mecha series in Japan, actually) in the United States. However, while the Macross community acknowledges Macross Plus as a work of art in its own right, a part of the saga but with a different focus, many Gundam fans seem to resent the fact that this show called Gundam W carries the name "Gundam" but really has nothing to do with the Gundam plot, Amuro, Char, Shiro, and the rest of the UC crew, or even characters like Garrod from another AU series. Perhaps this is because Macross was brought over as Robotech (albeit slaughtered, chopped up, swallowed, digested, and then reconstructed from what was left) and already had a huge following when Macross Plus hit the shelves, whereas Gundam Wing was introduced as "THE" Gundam in the United States, with no indication otherwise. Or perhaps because Macross Plus was an OVA, with the requisite stellar animation and beautiful music, etc, while Gundam Wing was just another TV series.
          What do I think about all this? I think the original Gundam is an excellent mecha series, raising serious questions about war and its effects on humanity. All Gundam series do that. However, Gundam Wing is also an excellent series that takes that theme a little deeper. By discarding Newtypes, I think Gundam Wing brought the story a little closer to home. There are no people with special powers in Gundam Wing, no Amuro Reis or Tifa Adils (and no, Quatre doesn't count. He's not a Newtype. Not by a long shot.) The destruction in Gundam W is 100% caused by human nature alone, and that's frightening, if you compare it to the destruction caused by Newtypes in the other series. Frightening to think that humans are indeed capable of such mass, insane destruction by their own mortal abilities. In that same vein of thought, then, Gundam Wing is not as much of a mecha series as it is a philosophical series with some mecha elements. Very different from the other Gundam series.
          I do believe that where Gundam W suffers the most is its lack of romance. All the other Gundam series have a strong romance subplot that pull the viewer deeper into the main plot. Why the directors deliberately cut out any hint of romance in GW, we'll never truly know, since they're notorious for dodging the question. They are quoted as saying in interviews that they want the fans to make their "own interpretation" and that is probably the reason for much of the GW yaoi out there. I'm not against yaoi by any means. I wrote fanfiction for Weiss Kreuz and Tokyo Babylon for a while and I still write Fushigi Yuugi and jrock fanfiction. I just believe that there is more to Gundam Wing than yaoi, and that the yaoi has caused many people to not be able to grasp the true meaning of the series. I don't blame the creators, nor do I blame the fans. It's something that just happens, I suppose, but there is a serious deficiency in the Gundam W fan community of discussion relating to the nitty gritty political/military and philosophical questions that drew me to the series in the first place. Even a round-robin discussion on mecha specs would be nice. (I admit it, I'm a mecha head. I watch Macross. In class, I doodle pictures of starfighters in the margins of my notes. I play flight simulators on my computer. I'm in the Air Force. Give me a break. ^_~)
          So the way I see it is: Gundam Wing is not Gundam. But neither is it "fake" Gundam. It's a series that has taken the issues that have been addressed over and over in the other Gundam series and put them in a different light. I respect the directors for doing that. Writing SnK has really given me an appreciation of what they tried - and failed - to do with Gundam Wing, and I'm seeing a lot of that right now as we near the end of this fanfiction. There are many things that I wanted to write about that aren't going to make it in because we simply don't have time. Rather than try to squeeze everything in and end up with too much content and little plot in the end, QS and I believe that it's more beneficial to pick and choose. Some themes are more important than others, and the important ones are the ones that will make it into SnK.
          And really, that's all you need to know right now. =P

 
TROWA BARTON: THE PERFECT SOLDIER

          "What?!" you say. "I thought that was Heero!"
          Well, for one thing, Heero is never ever called "the Perfect Soldier" in the series. Secondly, I do believe that while Heero definitely deserves that title, Trowa deserves it more.
          QS has mentioned that my take on Trowa is very different from her take on Trowa, as well as most fans' takes on Trowa...which is probably true, because what I've seen of most fans' points of view on him are that they really don't have one. He's always being paired with Quatre in fanfiction, which is nice in its own way, but when it comes down to it, Trowa doesn't have much of a personality, not in the TV series and definitely not in most Gundam Wing fanfiction, because how can you write about a character who really has no character development?
          The first time I watched GW, I thought Trowa seemed the most like a throwaway character out of the five pilots. If any of you have seen Fushigi Yuugi, you'll know what I'm talking about in this next illustration. Mitsukake, Chiriko, Miboshi, Tomo. Characters who have little to no character development, but are necessary to the plot because there needed to be 7 seishi for each god. Thus, bam! They're created. I thought that about Trowa for a long time...they needed five pilots, one for each colony, and ran out of personalities. So Trowa got the short end of the stick.
          I've come to revise my opinion a bit. Sure, that might have really been the case, but in a series as deep as Gundam Wing that makes you think for every second that you're watching it, I don't believe that throwaway characters exist. At least, not in main character form. Each of the pilots has a specific function, and Trowa definitely has one.
          His function in the series is simple: to be the perfect soldier.
          Raised on his own away from his family (and if you go away from SnK for a moment and take the EW canon, in a mercenary tribe), Trowa was trained early on to be a soldier and a spy and to take and follow orders. And that's what a good soldier is supposed to do best: follow orders. Trowa wasn't an officer and he certainly wasn't any kind of commander, not then and not in the GW TV series. What a lower ranking enlisted man is required to do, and what he is expected to do best, is to follow orders to the letter and see that everything his ranking superiors give him to do is carried out. From the beginning of the series, Trowa is following orders: the orders from Operation Meteor and the scientists. Anything that contradicts that all-important mission is disregarded by him as unimportant, which is why Quatre and Catherine, among others, have such a hard time getting through to him. Trowa regards himself as THE perfect soldier: fulfilling every mission to the letter and not questioning his superiors.
          That's not to say that Trowa is a robot, but out of all the pilots, he is definitely the one that has the hardest time innovating. Trowa's brain functions like the mind of an engineer: he has one goal in mind and he'll go after that goal until he has completed it, then moves on to the next one. Heero, who also is considered the perfect soldier, has a sense of the big picture and has an easy time of innovating on the spot, and thinking outside the box to do more than is expected of him at times. Trowa has none of that. For him, goals and their boundaries are defined very clearly, in stark black and white.
          During the middle of the TV series, Trowa's perspective of himself starts to change. With the introduction of Quatre and Catherine, Trowa begins to realize that he is not just a soldier, but also a human being who must rely on the help of others to become stronger. At the beginning of SnK, Trowa is seen with Catherine, being her adoring little brother, and back at the circus, a place which is usually associated with innovation and experimentation. He even has a more creative job: acrobat instead of the lion tamer/dagger target which he was in the TV series. However, Trowa is still stuck pretty much in the same rut: he's with Catherine, which shows that he's opened up a little more, but all the creativity and ideas are still Catherine's, with Trowa carrying them out. The roles have just switched: instead of taking orders from the scientists, Trowa now takes them from Catherine. The world to Trowa is still black and white. He left the circus after the news of the pilots broke not because he felt any great idealistic sense of righteous anger, but because he realized his presence would endanger his sister.
          The Betrayals Arc takes Trowa and thrusts him into the real world. During the war, he had his Gundam and his friends and the scientists to help him. Here, out on his own once again but without even a mercenary troop or a clear sense of mission, Trowa for the first time has to truly come to terms with who he is, why he fights, and what Catherine and the other pilots mean to him. We purposely left him out of the storyline through the whole Relics Arc because Trowa didn't fit there. In the time of turmoil and old friends meeting friends, Trowa was and continues to be the odd man out. He has managed to accept that friends and family are important, but until he can let go of his inhibited view of himself as someone who exists mainly to carry out the will of others, he will not be able to move on.
          There are three Trowa scenes and a sidestory in this Arc. In the first scene, "Things that Blow Up in the Night," Trowa sets off explosions in the terrorist hideout of Enjolras, now in Milan. QS and I wanted to show Trowa the old Gundam soldier, and as Sally said about him, "just look for the biggest explosions." Trowa's "perfect soldier" mentality tells him: "when threatened, fight back." Without a true sense of how he fits into this picture of the new world, he falls back on his old ways. Just as he blew up the OZ base in the TV series, he blows up something here to make a statement. The terrorists were a danger, and thus they had to be gotten rid of.
          Or do they? Notice that Trowa didn't harm anyone; he simply set the explosions to damage the hideout. The next Trowa scene in Act 8, "Upholding the Lantern of the Damned," shows that Catherine has changed her brother more than she or he could imagine. Her words to Vanessa Curtis about why she thought that Trowa fought in the war can be considered very naive, idealistic, and a lot of it isn't right, but yet they strike a note within him. He might have not fought for the reasons Catherine thought he did, but the fact that she thinks so is a kind of wake-up call, pushing him to accept his role in the drama that is playing out. He's no longer Nanashi, but he's not yet Triton Bloom, Catherine's brother. He's somewhere in between, struggling to emerge from the shell of the perfect soldier of the TV series.
          The last Trowa scene in Act 9, "Do You Believe God is Dead?" is actually the Duo and Ilene scene, but Trowa's shooting of Ilene is a great turning point for him. In the sidestory "Reset," I compared Trowa's brain to a computer, and as he sees Ilene, the program goes awry. In the black and white world of Trowa's mind, people are either good or evil. And terrorists are evil. But yet he sees Ilene, a terrorist, who Duo claims was actually not a terrorist, but his friend. For the first time, Trowa is beginning to understand one of the greater themes of Gundam Wing, one that Trieze firmly believed in: that people are not entirely good or entirely evil, but that both natures are innate to man.
          How will all of this pan out? Trowa is both a very simple and incredibly complex character, and I'm enjoying the challenge. His finest hour in SnK is yet to come.

 
HEERO, DARKFLIGHT, ATSUKI, AND WUFEI

          My pet project has finally come to a climax here in the Betrayals Arc, with Atsuki's death and Heero's self-epiphany. I never imagined it would get this big: QS and I agreed early on that Atsuki would die here at this point in the story, but all the little details that usually work themselves in later became bigger details than expected, and the whole thing kind of crescendoed into a big angst fest.
          Which, if you know me, is just peachy. ^_^;;
          "The Darkest Hour," the Heero scene in Act 9, was originally meant to be a kind of copy of QS' Zechs side "Trio." For the three Fates, I chose Atsuki, for the past, Relena, for the future, and Wufei, for the present. I guess you could work that around a little, too, but that's how I see them. However, I decided that a "Trio" structure wasn't the best, and I'd been wanting to put in the little girl with the puppy in the main story, so I changed it a bit. Atsuki and Relena are both the girl with the puppy, people that Heero are destroying without even knowing it, but unlike the real story, this story has a happier ending, with Wufei offering a way out, a return.
          QS and I agreed that Darkflight was probably much in love with Atsuki, albeit an admiring-from-a-distance kind of love, which is kind of ironic and little sad, because Wing/Heero pretty much had a monopoly on her the first time she laid eyes on the former pilot. In the long run, I don't think either of the guys would have been good for her had she lived. In the Breaks, their temperaments were pretty much the same, but now, out of that environment, they have changed dramatically. Wing/Heero has, as expected, finally confronted his demons and has accepted himself back into the circle of friends that he fled after the war. Besides the fact that Atsuki is no longer comfortable with her former family and thus would probably never adjust to Heero's change, Heero has Relena.
          Door closed, end of story? Not really, but I'm not really here to talk about the Queen of Cinq in this Mission Log. More on Relena in the next Arc.
          Darkflight, on the other hand, has proved to be extremely unstable and almost childish out of his native environment. In the Breaks, he had control of what happened to him, and as an good assassin, he was respected and even feared. On Earth, he doesn't have that anymore. Instead, he's just a homeless boy with really no ties to anyone, stuck in a place which is unfamiliar to him, watching as his only friend drifts further away. Atsuki wouldn't be good with this Darkflight. Nonetheless, they did strike up a kind of bond before the attack. The common factor that linked them was Heero, and as they sensed him moving away, they came closer together.
          Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, Wufei is the one that gets Heero back on his feet. Wufei is the grounded one, the one who is trying to bring everyone together and help out wherever he can. Some of this is still the penance he has been trying to heap on himself ever since Meilan died, but most of this is a desire to move on and help others move on. Out of everyone, he most realizes that "the war is just beginning," and is finally beginning to see why Treize died.
          Wufei tells Heero that "Two years ago, you taught me that other people are worth fighting for...no one man is an island, Heero. You can't survive alone. None of us can. You taught me that, too." The Solitary Dragon, no longer solitary, is determined to bring back the Heero Yuy he once knew. Wufei is strong, but he, like Quatre and Duo and Relena and all the others, knows that Heero can be much stronger. Because, as Duo said, "it's always been about Heero."
          Is it asking too much for Heero to be the savior of the colonies and the world once again? We will see...

 
WHAT'S IN A NAME?

          A name is something that defines a person, creates a definite shape, form and character. In many stories -from traditional folktales like Rumplestiltskin to the modern Harry Potter's You-Know-Who- knowing someone's name means power over that person, or speaking the true name gives power. In SNK, the power of a name is shown numerous ways. The GW universe itself is built upon the relationship between numbers and names. In SnK (and the TV series), Zechs' switch from "Zechs" to "Milliard" and back again or Ilene's adaptation of the name "Jamie" are examples of how names affect how certain people see themselves. There are a few characters in particular in SnK who have been affected very deeply by the names they have chosen and are listed below:

The Breaks

          The denizens of the Breaks -Wing, Darkflight, and Atsuki- define themselves by assumed names. Each of these names is not their real identity- Atsuki, of the trio, is the only one who remembers her real name. I imagine the Breaks to be a place cloaked in shadow, where people are expected to give aliases and where only the most powerful (ex: the Shionji family and the Seki family) may give their true names without fear. The use of flying creatures for assassin names (Wing, Darkflight) gave them a mysterious and frightening feeling, the kind of feeling you might get when looking up into the sky and spotting one of the Nazgul winged riders from the Lord of the Rings. Birds are also creatures that migrate, leaving one home for another. "Atsuki" is actually from the Japanese adjective "atsui," which means "hot, burning, passionate." You can draw your own conclusions from there.

Shinobu

          The kanji I chose for Shinobu's name literally mean "death and life." "Shi" is Japanese for "death," the "no" (not the possessive "no" particle) is an archaic character meaning "and," and "bu" is the pronunciation here for the kanji character meaning "life" ("sheng" in Mandarin) that makes up the verbs "ikiru" ("to live"), "naru" ("to bear fruit"), and "umareru" ("to be born"), among others. For obvious reasons, I thought this would be an appropriate name for Seki Takeru to adopt when coming to Earth. And yes, this kanji combination IS a viable spelling option for the name "Shinobu." (though I doubt anyone would ever name their kid this - it's kind of morbid XD)

Heero and Superman: Drawing from a Modern American Fairy Tale

          Our portrayal of Heero is met with two primary reactions: people either think he is entirely IN character, or so far out of character that he has become unrecognizable. We (obviously) fall into the first group. Many GW fans seem to prefer that the characters remain somewhat static, but the fact is that no real person remains static, and we want our characters to be real. I admit it was kind of a stretch at times, but it was necessary to do this for the "redemption" portion of the story to be fleshed out. Kind of a "fall and redemption of the savior," even.
          "Superman" is a modern American legend. The image of a man who has a secret identity, is invulnerable, yet strangely weak for the love of a woman, an alien to his surroundings, the only one of his kind. This certainly fits in well with Heero and comes up repeatedly throughout SNK. A lot of the songs we picked for Heero on the soundtracks have to do with Superman in one way or another. Heero is trying to shed the image people have of him as the superhuman hero, going to extreme lengths to do so, yet finds in the end that even though he isn't as heroic as everyone thought, he still has that inside of him.

Li: The Aidoru

          Based on William Gibson's novel Idoru and the anime Macross Plus, Li is the human personification of Gibson's Rei Toei and Macross' Sharon Apple. These two virtual idols, both superstars and seemingly untouchable, are portrayed as seeking human contact, wanting to be real women instead of a program inside a box. Li is the opposite: she seeks to move away from human contact and into her virtual world of the internet, hiding herself away behind the mask she has created for herself. Like Wing, Atsuki, and Shinobu, who have taken names that reflect the person they see themselves to be, Li takes the name of Aidoru (actually "Idoru" is a mis-romanization of the Japanese katakana and technically the title of Gibson's book should be "Aidoru") to become the idol of the internet world.

 
IDEALISM AND THE ART OF WAR

          I once told someone that I thought people needed to be at least a little bit idealistic to serve in the military. How else do you justify killing for a greater good? It's a moral dilemma that has puzzled many people for millennia and probably will never be resolved, but members of the military believe that fighting for the right motives (ex: for peace and justice) is justification for the military's existence.
          The characters of SnK have their own degrees of idealism. Chris and Relena, the pacifists, were brought up in an ideology of the total renunciation of war. Ilene's idealism in her view of war is similar, but instead of taking a pacifist stance, she takes one of revenge instead, believing in "an eye for an eye." Muhammad Ali Banks, our old friend from the first Arc, is a burning idealist for the cause of truth. As he sees it, all people have the right to know the whole truth, no matter how much it may hurt them. And now in our latest case, Sally Po's ideals require her to break from the World Nation and the Preventers, to fight for what she believes is freedom from tyranny.
          These are examples, however, of what we may call "mistaken" idealism. These people have passionate beliefs, but they don't stop to think of how their actions may affect others. The pilots in the TV series had a similar set of beliefs, but in SnK, we've seen them grow up, no longer burning idealistic warriors, but adults who realize that, as Wufei said, "no one man is an island." In trying to understand why they fight, they have each developed a set of beliefs very different from the ideals they each carried with them at the beginning of the series. Their views on war:

Heero

"He had been a killing machine, a single-minded assassin, the perfect soldier. He had killed thousands. He was guilty. They were all guilty." [Act 5, Scene 9]

          Heero sees the end of the war as a soiling of his ideal. He was the hope of the colonies, their shining star, the salvation of the world, and as long as he could justify his actions by telling himself to push on, to strive for the greater goal, he was fine. When the war ended, Heero lost his goal. Being a warrior and assassin all his life, genetically engineered and trained to kill, he understandably feels great guilt for all that he did. While the rest of the world is embracing their new peace, Heero mourns because he feels that by killing for this new society, he had become really nothing more than a murderer because he doesn't see a future for himself in the new peace he fought to create.

Duo

"We were soldiers, just like your brother. We may have been on opposite sides during the war, but we had that in common. A soldier knows that they may die." [Act 8, Scene 12]

          Fighting for the memory of his friends at Maxwell Church, Duo might very well have had the most pure motive out of all the pilots despite his Shinigami persona. He accepts fighting as a fact of life, recognizing Shinigami as a mantle to put on and shed at need. Unlike Heero, he moves on with his life because he doesn't overly dwell on why he fights or his fighting affects the world; Duo is a far-sighted person, content to let fate take care of itself. War does not define him, and thus he is able to put it aside when needed.

Trowa

"Going to war isn't as much of a conscious decision to go out and kill people as it is an act of courage to stand up for what you believe. I saw what needed to be done, and I did it." [Act 8, Scene 4]

          Hearkening back to his upbringing as the perfect soldier coupled with his dawning realization of who he is, Trowa sees his part in the war as a kind of necessary evil. He had no ties to L3 and really no ties to any of the pilots he fought with, because he fought to define himself. Now that he has Catherine, he no longer needs war to define himself. He speaks of it as an act of courage, which it became for him in the end, because he now fights to defend Catherine from harm. There is a conflict in him - on one hand, he was raised to believe that he was fighting for the colony, for the sake of the people. But Trowa in the end doesn't really grasp the implications of that. He needs people to make it real for him, and before Quatre and Catherine, the grand ideal was just that: an ideal. What makes Trowa effective as a soldier is not the greater good for the sake of humankind. Trowa fights for intensely personal reasons.

Quatre

"I'm not a businessman. I'm not a villain. I'm not a martyr - I'm a hero. We all were." [Act 6, Scene 11]

          The backlash from Banks' story has hit Quatre the hardest, and he out of all the pilots must be ready to defend why he became a Gundam pilot during the war. Believing that the pilots were heroes is not just a product of Quatre's desperation in trying to prove his innocence, but rather an answer that he has thought out long and hard. Because of his involvement with the war and the pilots, Quatre has been able to strengthen his belief in the innate goodness of mankind. He tells Rashid when he first meets the pilots that "they're all good people," but being a good person is more than just being friendly. Quatre's perceptiveness is a great guide, and it is almost appropriate that he is the first one to be arrested, because he is the one out of all five of them that has the most insight on character.

Wufei

"I'm not a hero. I've never considered myself one. If anything, I see myself as a terrorist who just happened to be on the right side. That's all." [Heroes]

          Wufei takes the opposite view of Quatre's position. He doesn't believe that he deserves to be called a hero and doesn't believe that his part in the war should be made a big deal of. Besides his guilt over Treize's death, Wufei doesn't understand war. For all his talk of justice, Wufei is still the same scholar boy who scoffed at his wife's ideas and any show of violence. He can't bring himself to believe that fighting should be glorified, can't believe that his "sins" can be called heroic in any sense of the word.

          Five pilots, five very different philosophies. In order to become a team, they must first reconcile all these opinions into one common goal, as they did during the war. The next Arc will bring some of this into play.

 
THE REBIRTH ARC

          At long last, this monster fic is drawing to a close. Or at least, kind of...we estimate that we'll still be working on this thing for at least another year if things pan out the way they usually do with time for writing. In the Rebirth Arc, all the threads that we've been weaving come together for a grand conclusion. Expect lots of mecha action from me. Ever since A007 went away, there hasn't been much in the way of mecha, and I love mecha. ^_~
          Thanks for reading, have a great summer, and you'd better be ready for us when we come back in the fall, because we're going in with all barrels blazing!

 
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