Is there any way to write fanfiction that isn't 100% autism?

>>15442306
Have you tried VOTOMS already? If you haven't check it out. It isn't all that "realistic" especially towards the end, but it does have that gritty, military machine feel to its mechs, almost to the point where it feels like they're disposable. It even has a Vietnam with robots scenario as its second arc

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also try Dougram
it still falls down to "dougramwinslol" but they try pretty hard at doing all that stuff

>>15442382

I have, but it was always kind of hard to get into what with the rather dated animation. The rollerblading robots thing is neat, though, and I like the way that VOTOMs handles their mechs less as walking tanks and more as heavy shock troops or small special forces teams.

I'm also just really fond of UC-era grunt suit designs.

>>15442306
You think a left handed Zaku exists?

>>15442306
Consider sometimes that ideas are better left as ideas
It might look better on paper than in execution

t. fetish writer

>>15442435
I'm a fucking idiot, that Zaku is left handed

>>15442464

I'm sure it's probably a shit idea to execute but at the same time I haven't written anything longer than a few paragraphs, prose-wise, in like six months.

>>15442306
You could just write your own original mecha universe
Or just watch Dougram, you should watch Dougram

>>15442306
>Is there any way to write fanfiction that isn't 100% autism
Write an original story

>>15442537

If he does that then even less people would care; he'd be in the negatives.

>>15442306
>they make an effort to make it believable from an operational standpoint
Also no

>>15442306
There's no reason you can't do it without releasing it. Plus, if you start it now, and you work on being a better writer, you can come back to it later and you'll have a base to work off of.

Just try it, you never know how it goes. Better than letting it rot in your mind.

>>15442563
At least he'd have his dignity

>>15442306
Just do it, then. Stop giving so much a damn for what other people might think, if you dont, you will never do anything at all. Like >>15442584 said.

I myself made a Gundam UC fanfiction long time ago. It was about two rival EFF divisional commanders during the Battle of Odessa competing to see who forces would reach the Dnieper first, while Zeon forces struggled to delay the EFF advance to give friendlly forces time to evacuate. Just remember to try to have at least some basic knowledge of technical aspects about what you are writing about, it will save you from some shame later and is always important and fun to study about what you are trying to write.

>>15442674

>try to have at least some basic knowledge of the technical aspects of what you are writing about

I actually know a decent bit about tanks and shit and the tactics involved in their usage, especially when operating alongside mechanized infantry. I was kind of hoping to apply that to mechs, and maybe try to handwave something about how mobile suits are actually controlled together.

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Don't include anyone from the series unless it's from a distance.

If you're using an all OC team then just stick to them being random mooks and pilots, if they were special we would have heard of them.

Remember to describe what weapon does to what part of the human body. Or what weapon does to what part of the mobile suit.

Don't be too overly gritty, it just comes off as try hard. But don't be afraid to get a little vicious with your descriptions either.

Remember that a pilot is inside a giant robot and controlling it, they're not the robot itself. describe actions as such like "He pulled on the controls and turned the mobile suit in the direction of the attack." shit like that. Not just "He turned towards the attack."

Remember that mobile suits are very large, keep that in mind when they're walking through an environment.

A problem I have with fanfiction is its always how the author thinks things should be, not necessarily how they are. Sure write whatever you want, give no fucks. Still if you write it as you think it should be, like MSG: Vietnam its not going to be Gundam its a Nam' story with a Gundam dressing.

>>15442865

I mean I don't imagine it'll be literally Vietnam with Robots, but I like a lot of the mechanical design and some of the ideas from MSG (like, Minovsky particles basically rendering long range guided weapons useless, forcing a return to relatively close-ranged gun fights and melee actions). Even 08th isn't strictly Vietnam With Robots, that's really only the first portion of the series.

>>15442398
speaking of dougram, why did the bushman only appear in like three episodes

One last question before 404: is there a better resource than MAHQ for a sort of technical-focus resource for differences between different mobile suits? Especially different variants of the Zaku I and II.

>>15443054
MAHQ has facts and figures, but on the Mechatalk forum, you might find interesting tidbits here and there about mechanical performance and differences.

http://mechatalk.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=16078

That's an index of threads by Mark Simmons, most of which try to explain some of the workings behind various things like weapons, fleet numbers, mobile suit variations, UC weapons development history, you name it. He cites databooks and other sources where possible. Scroll down and you'll see a technical data section.

E.g., here's a thread on "vintage MS" specs.

http://www.mechatalk.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=12962

>>15443096

>fucking thrust to weight figures
Shit like this is basically exactly what I'm looking for.

If I actually write this shit, I basically want it to read sort of like a war memoir, but one of the ones that cuts through the sappy melodrama shit and just tells the story. Robert Mason's Chickenhawk is probably my favorite model for this- very rarely does he ever go on about how horrible war is or whatever, and he does a lot to incorporate his UH-1 Huey as a character in the story as much as himself, going into detail about how he couldn't do certain things because of loaded weight, temperature, etc etc.

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>>15443052
It's a rather limited role CA, like the Blizzard Gunner and Mackerel.

It's best to think about it as Soltic variant meant explicitly for mountain use, but at heart it's still a Soltic and so it wouldn't be surprising if it simply stops appearing because Blockheads would fill its role about as well whilst being generally superior.

>>15443115
MAHQ used to include acceleration figures for most of their mecha profiles which would give you a suitable thrust to mass ratio (for space use), but some time last year, they removed all of them from the profiles. Still, it's not hard to figure it out. A simple high school formula to get acceleration figures would be to divide the thrust by the mass, and that gets you an idea of how quickly some suits might outpace each other if they were to race each other in a straight line.

E.g., the RX-78-2 has a gross mass of 60 metric tons, and its thrusters can produce a total of 55599 kilograms of thrust. Convert the 60 tons to kilograms (60000 kilograms) and then divide the thrust by the mass.

55599 / 60000 = 0.93

Acceleration can be measured in g, so the RX-78-2 has an acceleration of 0.93 g. The Gelgoog has something like 0.84 g of acceleration, so in a straight line, the Gundam could slowly outpace the Gelgoog and eventually get away if it was being chased by the Gelgoog.

>>15443160

I'm reasonably familiar with that kind of stuff from dealing with aircraft figures.

Something I'm looking for among these threads- is it ever specified what kind of armor, and what thickness it is, on different areas of different suits? Obviously in the anime it's just whatever it needs to be for whatever scene it's in, but is there ever a case where a non-gundam MS's armor would be worth anything against another MS?

>>15443200
You can usually find armor material type from the MAHQ profiles, but thickness is almost never stated and it's sort of never stated but there might be different grades of armor quality when it comes to different machines.

For certain Gundam series (mainly the AUs) there are fairly durable non-Gundam MS, but not so much for UC. You might notice a certain trend like head vulcans being only useful against sensors and exposed machinery or that certain grades of luna titanium armor being resistant to certain weapons, but that's about as consistent as it gets for weapon versus armor effectiveness, and even then it's not always consistent across different anime.

Not every story is for everyone

If you don't want to write fanfiction for autists, then don't be autistic.

If you do, then be autistic.

>>15443245

Yeah, I'm going through MAHQ right now and looking at that. Honestly, I'd usually just used it as a historical reference for different designs before- looking at the little blurbs they have written.

I'll probably... handwave a little bit of this, given how inconsistent stuff like armor protection and weapon effectiveness is in different shows and games, and just think of something that makes sense while respecting the general hierarchy of mobile suits (what with zakus and GMs being on the bottom, the gundam at the top, and the various zeon specialty/limited production suits somewhere in the middle).

Seriously though, thanks everyone who's posted in this thread, I honestly expected to just get laughed at.

>>15442306
I just think it's hard to write without some kind of feedback/reward system, however small. Writing just so I have my own personal private Gundam fan fiction feels like a waste of time. If you can at least submit it to an online community that would give a slight shit and read it, that could at least do a little something to justify the time spent.

>>15445810
Why?

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Firstly, I think you need to have an understanding of the show in terms of theme and plot. It doesnt necessarily need to be correct, just as long as you know what you are writing and what you are saying with that writing.

For example, if you were to write an early UC Gundam fanfic, you have to ask yourself: What are the themes the shows from early UC explored? What where they saying?

Early UC, to me at least, speaks about the evils of war and how it can whittle a person down, whether they're on the frontlines seeing their friends getting melted by lasers(0079) or seeing their homes and families blasted to hell, and being powerless to do anything(War in the Pocket). So, it would only make sense to understand what the official works are about, before trying to add your story to their universe.

Secondly, learn how to write a story. Just literally google pdf copies of The Screenwriter's Bible by David Trottier and Syd Field's Screenplay: The Foundation of Screenwriting. These have helped me immensely.

Now, dont look at these books as rigid step-by-step instructions(even the books themselves beg you not to), but more as a guide and a way to help peel back the curtain of mystery and magic taht seems to enshroud storytelling.

But, if you dont want to read these, just remember this: Your character and/or cast of characters must have an objective to work towards, and a type of character flaw or unconscious need they need to correct/satisfy. The drama, the excitement, the memorability of the story comes from other forces, be they bad guys or the cruel hands of fate and chance, opposing the character/characters.

And you keep putting them through hell. Oh, your character just dealt with this minor problem? Good! Now here's an even worse problem.

Generally, you'll want them(the character/characters) to be losing and caught off guard at first, and work their way to defeat the odds and gain their victory, whatever it may be.

But not necessarily. 1/2

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>>15451185
2/2

>But not necessarily

Just remember to have the main character/characters be introduced to a problem that the story hinges around(THE ZEEKS ARE INVADING ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH AUTISTIC TEENAGER TO KICK THEIR ASS?!), work towards solving the problem while dealing with their own personal problems(they are cowardly, they are in a strained relationship, yada yada) while being opposed by some force(asshole badguy/rival, nothing turning out right for them, ect), all up until there's a point where they cant back down, where it becomes do or die. Then, the final problem is encountered, endured, and solved.

Now, please not that for a story to be resolved does not necessarily mean taht it has to be happy. There just has to be closure. Shit, you could kill everyone in your story if you really want to, as long as the audience knows taht your character/characters tried and failed. Basically, dont make your sad ending nothing more than : "Rocks fall, everyone dies lol arent I so visionary and edgy by killing the good guys?".

THis is basic shit, and I could keep going on and on, but I think it would be more economic for you to just read the Screenwriter's bible as I mentioned in my previous post. It's just so fucking wonderful.

>inb4 shill

Hope this helps amigo.

>>15442306
Do what you like. Better yet, write your own story using your own ideas, even if Gundam is the basis for it, and publish it. That's not autistic.

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>>15451206
3/2

Oh, and if you want more of my shit opinions(I havent written anything yet because of your same fear. I wanna write macross stuff but I dont wanna go turbo autist), just post some questions about specific things and I'll give you my opinion. But honestly, the best way, for me at least, is to just watch movies and study them. Look for familiar beats. Look for the underlying structure of a narrative.

See, and then create.

>>15442306
I ain't no writer but I can give you >>15440456 as a negative example. So they are writing shit based on this established fictional setting, right? But almost every single post in that thread is inventing new shit, making up rules, or outright ignore the lore and write bullshit that doesn't work just so their little scenerios can happen.

It's like someone tries to write a fanfiction about the vietnam war, they want to introduce a scary powerful enemy for the MC to beat, to they write the bad guy as "chinese samurai using ninja moves to kill people with silenced grenade launcher in the rice fields" and the MC as "guy who uses black assault rifle with extended clipzine that shoots 300 special nuke rounds per second " That's wrong in so many fucking levels, it shows the writer has no idea about how pretty much anything works, and to write a story around that is a one way train to retard town.

>>15451335

That's a bad example of a bad example seeing as how the thread is making fun of the inconsistencies in Build Fighters brought about how easy it is to make OP suits in the game.

>I stuck a metal rod in my gun, now it fires like a Twin Buster Rifle!
>My Zaku uses a tank turret as a rifle, it can one shot SUMOs now and ignores Phase Shift completely!
>We somehow made EXAM work on an MS that doesn't share a single piece with the BD01

These are all canon examples in the show that never, ever were explained or made sense.

Then we have Try were we have attacks visible from outside the galaxy because fuck you.

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>>15451185

Holy shit I didn't realize how slow /m/ moves I didn't expect my crappy thread to still be here. I actually dig that a lot though work has had me bent over a table for the past few days.

ANYWAY- Is it bad that I actually kind of disagree with the first part of your post, that writing in a fictional setting requires you to follow the same thematic and tonal lines the original and all that? Specifically, part of the reason I /want/ to write some of this stuff is that I feel that certain areas of the One Year War are really underexplored. BILLIONS died in the war, entire populations were committed to the war effort, a new type of fighting machine and a new form of warfare was pioneered, and the closest we ever get to a boots-on-the-ground perspective of all this is 08th MS Team, which is cool and all but still kind of suffers from Hero Suit Syndrome and gets muddled in the most hamfisted LOVE CAN BLOOM shit I've seen in anything that was produced for profit.

I really, really dig stuff that shows warfare from the perspective of the men and women doing the fighting. I love stories that delve into the day-to-day stuff, the "boring" parts of war, the technical details of fighting formations and the war machines themselves. Fuckin' Team Yankee, which is a pretty good book if you're into late 80s/early 90s Cold War stuff and/or tanks, includes goddamn diagrams showing the exact positioning of different vehicles and weapons teams and the axes of attack and advance and shit using what I assume to be pretty realistic iconography, and reasonably sound tactics and planning.

Now I don't plan on going that in-depth with anything, because A) I'm really out of my depth setting up fighting positions for an entire group of vehicles/infantry groups/mobile suits, and B) I'd have to start explaining why the hell mobile suits are in use at all in a setting realistic enough that I'm about to start slapping NATO sandtable shit in, but you get the gist of it.

>>15453196
>Is it bad that I actually kind of disagree with the first part of your post, that writing in a fictional setting requires you to follow the same thematic and tonal lines the original and all that?

Not really, but you should understand. You can only properly and effectively subvert the tried and true themes once you understand what you are subverting.

>>15442306
One the best ways to do fanfiction is to just use the universe. Trying to portray the characters like the original creator did can often end in disaster, for example 99% of fanfiction. Not saying it can't be done, it just take a lot of practice and research. I'd try writing a smaller story within the universe that carries either it's own sharp message in a smaller package, or a message that reinforces the original work's message.

>>15442306
no

Any good mecha fics?

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>>15454583

I think you misunderstand the scope of what I want to do. I don't want to subvert any themes, I don't intend for anything I write to be taken at anything other than face value really. I mean there will be themes and tonal stuff, yeah, you can't really have fictional prose without it, but I don't intend to give any subtext beyond maybe echoing the common war memoir subtext that soldiers are usually apolitical, nationalism is bad, and war sucks.

>>15454684

Yeah, I'm going to stay away from named characters in their entirely. I'd really like to stay away from major events, really- all I really want is to create more content with a somewhat realistic tone in the One Year War era. Maybe use it as an excuse to try and figure out how different technical aspects of mobile suits work, and to explore potential tactics of using a giant robot in combat.

Also, is there any way possible that you could cram an ejection system into a Zaku or similarly-built Zeon suit? I know that canonically, they probably don't have them, but not having a pilot escape system on something so large and likely to get shot the fuck up really bugs me, and the Zeonic Front PS2 game has friendly team leaders "eject" when they get shot down so I think that's an acceptable thing to try and jam in.

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Would it be too unbelievable or "sueish" to have a story in SEED that follows a small Earth Alliance unit centered around a Windam pilot, a Dagger pilot, a tanker and a female trio of pilots that operate a Gells-Ghe, all dispatched to Eurasia to stem the ZAFT advance?

>>15459856
As far as real life goes, most mechanized units are outfitted with the same gear and vehicles so as to simplify logisitics as they can share ammo, spare parts, etc.

By the time Windams were available, regular Daggers were discontinued and replaced long ago. Not sure if you meant the original Dagger or one of the later models.

Mobile suit teams tend to be a group of threes or fours. A commander and then two or three wingmen. It's just one Windam and one Dagger? And why do they have a mobile armor, which in the show were usually deployed independently? That's like saying in real life there are two tanks (that are different model) and an attack helicopter in a single unit together?

I sort of guess your unit composition would be fine if it were a result of battlefield chaos (e.g., cut off from command, they link up as survivors with whatever equipment they have to work together), but that would most likely be a temporary situation? It's just really irregular. Sure, Phantom Pain exists and they had some irregular squads with mismatching weapons, but then again those squads have skills and Gundams which produce such amazing results that they don't mind keeping it as an irregular squad. And even then Phantom Pain still has some kind of normality going on, since they have normal troops in Slaughter Daggers, all outfitted in the same gear.

I mean, what would have been the reasoning for sending an irregular squad consisting of one Windam, one Dagger, one Gells-Ghe, and their support personnel together instead of a normal MS team?

>>15442306
Then... do it?

I mean fanfiction is only as autistic as you make it. Being based on a pre-existing narrative voids it of creative merit, maybe, but I mean you'd enjoy it and likely someone will get a kick out of reading it.

>>15442841
>That Zaku using an old battered repurposed Feddie shield
MUH

>>15459879

>which in the show were usually deployed independently?

I thought the Gells-Ghe was an exception to that as it was seen covering other units in defensive actions a few times?

I make what you would call "fan fiction" or "original content" but as I do art professionally I'm allowed to call it something else.

I design everything, even the MS, but I'd never post them here.

>>15460048
I meant that in general, mobile armors are assigned and fielded separately from mobile suits. You won't see the Gells-Ghe as part of an MS team, but that doesn't mean they can't assist each other in battle.

What >>15459856 was suggesting is that they were specifically assigned to the same team.

>>15459879

> Not sure if you meant the original Dagger or one of the later models.

One of the later models. An N Dagger N perhaps?


>I mean, what would have been the reasoning for sending an irregular squad consisting of one Windam, one Dagger, one Gells-Ghe, and their support personnel together instead of a normal MS team?

Maybe they were all that could be mustered under short notice?

Alternatively, maybe they could be a unit that's aiding in or covering the withdraw of Earth Alliance personal in besieged areas? Was thinking they could have been an experiment in doing such that was carried out during the Atlantic Federation's conflict with South America (with strong success), before being implemented and tested further in Eurasia, beginning with areas being menaced by the remnants of those ZAFT forces that supported Patrick Zala (like the ones that showed up in Stargazer), and moving on to areas being hit by the ZAFT invasion proper.


I suppose you're right about the composition though.

And I suppose the Gells-Ghe could just be there for assistance reasons or attached to operate alongside the unit, but not as part of the Mobile Suit teams.

>>15442306
those poor fucking guntank pilots

>>15457743

Some are gonna accuse me of trolling, but I legitimately love Zeonquest. It should be still on the suptg archives.

>>15442841
>>15451185
>>15451206

This is all really good advice, I can second that.

>>15453196
>>15458642

I think you really have the hang of things. I suggest you start writing/outlining, then post a draft to pastebin or something for review.

An Amazon's life is still a life.

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>>15460009

>not knowing about the tragedy of Topp Team

too bad Arth (the one with the shield) was such a fucko. Seriously, that whole Vignette is fucking wicked. The Zakus are all beat up and awesome looking and the tactics used to bring them down are fuckin VC as shit.

Also Topp herself was the realest and deserved better