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Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

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Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#81

Post by [deleted] »

throw4847285 wrote: post #14
thrdbndndn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else would one call War and Peace at its time?

I don't speak Russian, but whatever the Russian word is for "book." Or maybe others called it a novel but Tolstoy rejected the label. I'm not sure. Either way, the word "novel" wasn't necessarily equivalent to how it is used today: any book length work of narrative fiction. Though watch out, this is a rabbit hole. Just look up novel on wikipedia. You'll see a big orange message at the top which is the first sign ther…

[deleted]

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#82

Post by vintagedave »

gabriel666smith wrote: post #36

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a robot suit to ride around and fight things with." I was visiting Jane Austen's House Museum last year and it always gives me pleasure to see how wildly popular her work remains. There always seem to be tourists there visiting from all over the world. That is really heartening. She was very innovative. Maybe…

Do you have an example of her writing moving into iambic pentameter in prose, please?

I googled for examples from her books but — search results are terrible.

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#83

Post by kibwen »

neaden wrote: post #39
Supermancho wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LaO doesn't always follow that forumula. In some LaO the trial is botched or the law doesn't protect the victims or the perps escape justice due to political influence, et al.

Still, cop shows generally are about the "the establishment wins, and for a good reason, and it's actually a good thing" which the other commentator said is a theme that is sorely missing.

As is most any other show where the protagonist works for the government, e.g. James Bond or Ghost In The Shell.

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#84

Post by Frotag »

jerf wrote: post #6

In the end, almost everything has a soap opera in it somewhere. People have a hard time processing stories that don't have a soap opera in them somewhere. For some people it's just impossible. There's really only a minority of people who are interested in stories that have no personal relationship stories in them at all. That's not to say that the parts that aren't soap opera aren't meaningfully different. I disagree…

I think a lot of character-centered conflicts boil down to the same set of problems, regardless of the setting. For instance, you often see "keep the status quo and die a slow death" vs "expensive, risky gamble". Sometimes the setting is a small midwest town, sometimes it's a spaceship on the way to Beta Virginis. Sometimes the solution is actually unique to the setting but often it's just "find a compromise, prevent the extremists from blowing up the deal". Replace the mayor with a captain and TNT with nuclear bombs and you basically have the same story.

> There's really only a minority of people who are interested in stories that have no personal relationship stories in them at all.

All that to say I wish there were more stories that are more focused on the plot / implications of the setting. What-ifs that aren't derailed by character drama. "What if telekinesis was real? How can we exploit it for energy / propulsion / everyday gadgets?" Like basically thought-experiments in narrative form, or a textbook with characters.

Or at least I wish I knew how to search for these types of stories. Searching for "hard sci-fi" comes close but it requires the science is plausible (no FTL, minimal new physics, etc). I don't think it's reasonable to expect authors to simulate an entire universe / provide plausibility proofs for every bit of engineering / physics. As long as the mechanics of whatever fantasy physics are consistent and developments are plausible, that's good enough for me. I don't even need a satisfying conclusion, if the protagonist rebels fail because the ultra-wealthy corpos are just better equipped, so be it, at least the ride was fun.

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#85

Post by panzagl »

underlipton wrote: post #42
fellowniusmonk wrote: post #5

Is it as funny and does it "make ridiculous" it's framing culture as much as Austen? I love Austen, still don't get why people consider P&P a romance primarily.

I haven't read Austen, but there's an infamous exchange in the original series where the ceremonial head of the Space Nazis compares his son, the acting head of the Space Nazis, to Hitler. The son replies, essentially, "Thanks." There's a tension in Mobile Suit Gundam and its direct descendants. The Space Nazis (Zeon) are also sort of, kind of a stand-in for Imperial Japan during WWII, and between the implicit relata…

That must have been in the BBC version of Pride...

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#86

Post by BLKNSLVR »

jpm_sd wrote: post #43

Patrick O'Brian (author of the Aubrey/Maturin series) was a huge Austen fan and intentionally modeled his writing style after hers. Post Captain (book 2) is the most explicit homage, with a number of character names borrowed from Austen's work.

I'm (very) slowly collecting the Aubrey/Martin series from second hand bookshops.

For some reason I stopped reading the first book 50-odd pages in, but I will be returning!

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#87

Post by throwaway290 »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #20
thrdbndndn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else would one call War and Peace at its time?

It is kind of like how modern art doesn't mean modern today. It means that time period where people called art "modern". Novel meant new as in "novel science results". It was used differentiate prose (the new style at the time) from epic poetry back in the 16 hundreds and stuck. How that translates to Russian IDK.

There is no "novel" (as like "new" thing) as genre in Russian lit. in russian things called "novel" in english are called a russian word that is a translation of "romance". and tbh "romance" makes tons more sense than "novel".

But "novella" (different genre) is a thing in russian.

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#88

Post by MichaelZuo »

Frotag wrote: post #84
jerf wrote: post #6

In the end, almost everything has a soap opera in it somewhere. People have a hard time processing stories that don't have a soap opera in them somewhere. For some people it's just impossible. There's really only a minority of people who are interested in stories that have no personal relationship stories in them at all. That's not to say that the parts that aren't soap opera aren't meaningfully different. I disagree…

I think a lot of character-centered conflicts boil down to the same set of problems, regardless of the setting. For instance, you often see "keep the status quo and die a slow death" vs "expensive, risky gamble". Sometimes the setting is a small midwest town, sometimes it's a spaceship on the way to Beta Virginis. Sometimes the solution is actually unique to the setting but often it's just "find a compromise, prevent…

How many very smart people with excellent writing skills and grasp of human relations would spend their time writing fiction?

There’s probably not even 50,000 of those on Earth per annual cohort coming of age. And of the remainder practically no one will turn down the 7 figure cushy hedge fund job or equivalent career path.

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#90

Post by gabriel666smith »

vintagedave wrote: post #82
gabriel666smith wrote: post #36

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a robot suit to ride around and fight things with." I was visiting Jane Austen's House Museum last year and it always gives me pleasure to see how wildly popular her work remains. There always seem to be tourists there visiting from all over the world. That is really heartening. She was very innovative. Maybe…

Do you have an example of her writing moving into iambic pentameter in prose, please? I googled for examples from her books but — search results are terrible.

Of course! This is my favourite example, from Sense and Sensibility, because it announces itself with "burst", and that's the novel where she deploys it most:

"Elinor could sit it no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease."

She 'tends towards Iambic' in literary criticism terminology. So it's not a strict Iambic, more like a 'soft Iambic' which is a term I can't remember if it's actually used in lit crit, or if I made it up.

You need to drop the "at" syllable, in that example (which you would do in vocal rhythms of English, then and now), for it to be a true Iambic.

There's lots of good writing on the King James Bible "tending towards" Iambic, which should be more Google-able, and her father was a preacher, so that's a likely influence there, I would speculate.

Some others I like that I remember:

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope." - Persuasion (I think?).

"Till this moment I never knew myself." - Sense and Sensibility again? I can't remember off the dome. That's a gorgeous strict Iambic.

There are much longer examples - whole paragraphs that close chapters of Sense and Sensibility specifically. I'll try and find the version I have notations on when I'm next around my books. She regularly slips into it to close moments of emotional crescendo - "Cursus" being the Latin term for an analogous technique, when it was more frequently used in a more stylised manner.

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