[ocs] all right I'm getting in on Gundam Aeon, so far we've been pretty normal about female characters so I'm going to write a subplot that a lot of fans of this theoretical 51 episode show are gonna be really mad about. Makes it feel more like a Gundam show, you know?
They have a known ace pilot by the name of Scarlune Crisis. Everyone likes her! She's tough, she's gorgeous, she's quick witted, she does a lot of propaganda media that the faction relies on for morale. (She's also a really good pilot but that's not important)
he's nervous in social situations and he has a bad stutter and also he's not that good looking. He has an interesting face is a nice thing you could say about him
So they have him pilot the thing while the public story is that Scarlune is doing it. He likes this more than she does because he does not like attention and he gets to interact with her sometimes but it's still kind of Weird.
She doesn't care for it because while a Gundam is still better than even a really good pilot in a regular suit, it does mean that she isn't fighting and she's constantly lying and she can't even rant about it to anyone because it's either out of their clearance range or it's in their clearance range but she can't yell at the brass about it
She ends up appreciating him as a person, and recognizes that they're both kind of in bad situations but also she does need to yell at him sometimes because he has no battle experience. It's affectionate yelling.
Eventually they integrate some heavy life support into the cockpit and he just lives there now. He needs these machines to live and they aren't subtle. He's reported as dead and given a posthumous medal
She has a lot of mixed feelings here, gratitude and pity and resentment. Spends a lot of time in the cockpit which is both not enough time and too much time.
She probably gets into some sort of communication with one of the more idealistic characters and starts thinking about defecting so she can pilot and her partner can be acknowledged as a person who exists
But also this involves a meeting in a neutral location where they leave the Gundams behind as a show of faith which she is not super guarded about because she's not actually a Gundam pilot. It's fine.
I think there's a definite possibility of public global opinion being "if you kill a pilot but not the Gundam their vengeful ghost possesses it so we have to be SO careful about assassinations" after this
Later on it uses a tactic where sends them out early in battle and pulls them back for a multi-pronged surprise attack, which reflects Taru's more ruthless attitude and also how he's falling to pieces
So Gundam Yakshab is also kinda bit-heavy, but the Shell Feelers aren't nearly as Dive-reliant since they can't shoot. Yakshab might even have been devised as a sibling unit to Tindalos
I think he took up with his current faction because it offered stability but it also feels pretty Gundam to have some heavy family drama behind that kind of priority
Maybe their family was in some kind of gang territory and Asha's trauma response is "I will join a tougher gang and anybody who messes with me gets a free asskicking" and Taru's is "I will sign up for a situation where all I have to do is be quiet and do what people tell me to and nobody will mess with me because I am beneath their notice"
The faction associated with Tindalos is the Providential Collective. They like to think of themselves as the nice cool ethical faction around and put a lot of value on reputation - like, they'll help other factions out against Innsmouth. Some of the people in power are actually buying into this
Most of them care about the general population thinking that they're the "good" faction so they will keep working hard and putting up with conditions. Which are kind of bad because this is post-apocalyptic
They have some degree of self sufficiency but if they don't have outside help they don't have enough food to support all their people and selling combat power which they need to have anyway because this is a hellscape is so much more profitable than the other ways they can trade for resources.
Gundam isn't about economics but what they are most known for, as a group, is having an absolute fuckton of sheep, and there is at least one skirmish in which the stakes are
"we have to keep this fight out of that area because the grass is growing back over there and if we have a bunch of robots clomping over the new shoots because that will fuck up our grazing rotation and if that happens then nothing will happen immediately but we will be FUCKED in six months"
And you can't have a surplus of sheep because there's only so much grazing land you can defend at once especially since they have some good land and some fucked up land. Grass is also a resource and it is not infinite
sometimes because he has no battle experience. It's affectionate yelling.