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ikuzeminna · 11 months

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In my previous post I talked about the women of Gundam Wing not being treated as awards or reasons for man pain for the guys and I’m actually a little surprised that no one so far called me out on Meilan because at first glance, she falls right into that category. Because her death is specifically there to motivate Wufei and do nothing else. No one else knows about her, her death doesn’t affect anyone or anything else.

Except for her grandma who is apparently still so grief-stricken she blows up her entire colony. Thanks for more trauma, Master Long.

But I guess I’m gonna call myself out here then and derail this into a meta about Meilan’s portrayal actually being male-coded. Apparently I’m also gonna make up words while doing so lol

What do I mean? Let’s first clear up what I meant when I said the Wing women aren’t used for man pain. Man pain is quite an umbrella term that’s supposed to describe any instance of the narrative portraying a male’s emotional pain be of a higher magnitude than anyone else’s within his story. Especially women’s.

In my post I was referring to the very specific case where a woman’s suffering is stripped from her narratively and made exclusively a guy’s problem, to the point it only exists if it’s in relation to him. Think Gwen Stacy’s death affecting Spiderman or 2009‘s Spock’s mom dying or Aang burning Katara and then moping about never firebending again, necessitating her comforting him about his (accidental) assault on her. messed up doesn’t even begin to cover that last one The girl with the puppy is actually an example of this in Wing because her death only exists to make Heero feel bad. She isn't even given a name. The most classic example really is a guy’s mom dying though and him being forever sad about it. It’s the easy way for the writer to give his manly man something to cry over without making him a wimp. Otherwise Kira from Gundam Seed would be more popular.

But when we get asked to name a famous fictional death, I think most people will pick Mufasa, the prime example ever of a death affecting the audience. And it makes sense. Because not only was Mufasa a good parent, who sacrificed his life to save his son, Simba’s entire hero’s journey is basically living up to his father’s example. It's what drives the story.

And that’s the difference between men and women dying in fiction, especially parents. If a mother dies, it’s something to be sad over (i.e. Spock). If a father dies, it’s a legacy to uphold (i.e. Kirk). Simba is never worried about living up to Sarabi’s expectations. Hiccup spends three movies trying not to shame his father. Katniss won’t shut up about what a great person her dad was even though her mom is right there, being the medic for her entire district, but never being worth emulating in any way.

The same goes if it’s just a friend. A female friend’s death is a devastating event, a male friend’s death is a call to not let his sacrifice be in vain.

Which brings us back to Meilan. Meilan may have been written as just a device to give Wufei a tragic backstory, which lands her squarely in man pain territory, but narratively she is the same category as Mufasa, influencing Wufei to the degree he changes his entire way of life to live up to her memory and hold himself accountable during the series when he fails to do so, which yanks her right out of it again.

Besides, Wufei never goes around openly mourning her death. It’s hidden in aggressiveness and weird sexism towards Noin and his odd reverence of his Gundam. I love that it was supposed to be a secret that would have been revealed at the middle of the series, just like everyone else’s backstories, had the schedule not been crazy, giving us the recap episodes instead. Alas...

But this is one of the reasons I love Gundam Wing so much. The colony leader Heero Yuy and the late King Peacecraft may be revered figures within its universe, but by the end of the series, and definitely by EW, the person the entire galaxy admires is Relena. A girl. Which is completely deserved for all the things she manages to pull off, mind you.

I love most that Heero admiring Relena also has a very personal aspect to it. He knows her. He knows how bullheaded she can be. She’s not an abstract to him, he’s intimately familiar with that Gundanium backbone of hers. That scene on Libra where they keep throwing compliments at each other is great. Relena tries to transfer her accomplishments to Heero, playing into narrative tradition of gender roles here where the guy always gets all the glory, no matter how competent the girl may have been (glaring at you here, Hiccup and Astrid >_>) and Heero, the show’s male protagonist, bounces it right back, telling her he is nothing compared to her, landing a sweet blow to narrative sexism.

Gundam Wing is a weird little show where I don’t know if one could call it feminist considering how every woman is assigned to a man, with Treize and Zechs and Duo and Wufei standing above their female counterparts due to their strength or lineage or because they’re the series’ Char clone, but within the roles it assigned to everyone, it does a wonderful job of not being sexist about them. Une is portrayed as more competent than Treize, who is more of an opportunist. Zechs outright says Noin is better than him. Wufei won’t shut up about Nataku and what a failure he is. It's like the show apologizes for being Gundam and made in the 90s, explaining why the pilots and big bads all have to be male, but they'll make the female characters as cool as they can to make up for it. Here, have some Sally and Noin being a badass duo or Relena and Dorothy carrying the philosophical debate during the Cinq arc.

....Except Hilde. I got nothing here because her and Duo are classic gender roles to a T, haha. But at least Duo is not being a jerk about it, which is more than can be said about most fictional guys trying to dictate a female’s actions. Duo lets Hilde make her own decisions.

#Duo is a gentleman #and epic #it still stinks that there couldn't be more to Meilan #but I'll give it a pass since 98% of Wufei's actions are based on her #gundam wing #gender roles #long meilan #chang wufei #duo maxwell #relena peacecraft #heero yuy #I don't wanna tag everyone I mentioned #that'd be 6 different fandoms #nah

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tinyozlion · 9 months

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“True Friends” - Understanding Mr. Treize and the Contradictions of OZ

“Treize himself has a tremendous disdain for any tactic that allows for excess casualties. Ignoble behavior on the battlefield sullies any victory, and civilian death makes a mockery of what a True Soldier fights and dies for. For Treize, there is nothing more hateful than removing the human component from battle, or the cowardly avoidance of responsibility for human death.”

Gosh! What a great quote! I wonder who said that? Oh right, that was me! I did. I wrote that in the entry about “True Soldiers: Aesthetics, Honor, and Chivalry”.

Let’s examine that a little more, shall we?

“His Excellency doesn’t want battles that involve civilians.”

Everyone who knows Treize best, his “True Friends”, who grew up with him, who were trained by him, who understand him, all seem to agree: His Excellency wouldn’t stand for needless casualties. OZ may be ruthlessly pragmatic and underhanded, but that couldn’t be Treize’s fault– no, it’s always Lady Une! It’s his fanatically devoted colonel who always chooses the path of greatest violence, heedless of any collateral damage– she’s the one to blame! Treize would never give an order that risked civilian lives.

…Right?

Surely he would stop her, admonish her, make her face serious consequences for the atrocities she was willing to commit. He’d leave no room for doubt that she had failed him and disappointed him.

...Right?

Yeah, that’s right, a firm slap on the wrist oughta do it. Tell her to try a little harder next time to understand the value of human life. Just do better! It’s alright to use mobile suits to attack a school, but we’re going to put a stop to it because I’ve changed my mind about killing a teenage girl, as a personal favor to a friend.

–Friends of His Excellency would certainly like to believe that he would never knowingly sacrifice civilians, but he sure doesn’t seem to mind benefiting from someone else doing it for him.

How well do Treize’s friends really understand him, when they seem unaware of how wide a margin of error he finds acceptable in pursuing his ideals?

Well, ideals are fine and all, but war is war, and some amount of pragmatism is necessary to stay on top. Treize isn’t the one calling all the shots (yet), and the organization he reports to expects results. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, right? That’s why it pays to have a Chief Omelet Maker working for you, so she can break all the eggs, and murder school children, and threaten nuclear assault, and you can come away still smelling like roses.

…But what sort of effect does that have on her?

It’s better for a ruler to be feared than loved; being hated is the perfect motivation to stay strong; fighting will never disappear from the world, so the strong should rule it for the sake of damage control; God was too lenient when he gave mankind the free will to rebel; people find comfort in being controlled by the powerful.

--These are some of Treize’s stated ideals.

So Lady Une devotes herself to fulfilling those ideals unflinchingly, no matter how much blood ends up on her hands. Better her hands than His. OZ has to be the strongest. OZ has to win. OZ must be victorious at any cost. Damn the Colonies, damn the politician’s daughter who made herself a liability, damn the wounded soldiers left behind at New Edwards Base– she’s going to make OZ so absolutely unfuckwithable that their enemies shit themselves at the mention of its name, and she’ll do it herself if no one else will. Because THAT is what His Excellency wants. She understands him.

...So why does he keep telling her– ever so gently, ever so gracefully, that she’s wrong? If making sure the strongest rule and the weak obey isn’t what pleases him, then what will?

Killing is simple– anyone is capable of killing anyone, so you mustn't abuse that capability. The Earth is fragile and infinitely beautiful. Human life is fragile and infinitely beautiful. One must always take responsibility for the fates of those who fight for you, and honor the sacrifice of those who die. Tragedy in war is inevitable.

--These are some of Treize’s stated ideals.

So Lady Une devotes herself to fulfilling those ideals with grace and empathy, to bring an end to needless bloodshed. The world needs a strong, compassionate leader, who is capable of loving humanity and guiding them to a peaceful future, where loss and war are tragedies of the past. Order and peace can be maintained without sacrifice, by using technical advancements to replace soldiers on the battlefield and keep them out of harm’s way. That is what His Excellency wants. She understands him.

...So why does he tell her– so sadly, plaintively, that she is wrong? That he is not who she thinks he is, that the future she has so carefully laid out for him is a fantasy of her own making? Why does he plead with her to come back to him, as the person he once knew so fondly?

Civility and honorable conduct on the battlefield is worth more than victory. To fight for something one believes in with perfect clarity is the purest endeavor of mankind. The tragedy of loss is what gives a battle meaning. Honoring the sacrifice of those who have died for your cause means being willing to die for it yourself. To fight, to lose, to die for a noble cause is to move the hearts of all humanity, to touch immortality.

--These are some of Treize’s stated ideals.

And so she does– she sacrifices herself to save the Gundam pilots and turn the tides in outer space, rejecting Romefeller, rejecting the Mobile Dolls. At last, she understands him.

…But didn’t she always?

Except perhaps in the case of using Mobile Dolls to replace soldiers (an idea that was easily manipulated by its inventors to fit into her worldview at the time), her understanding of Treize’s ideals wasn’t ever wrong, just fragmented. She focused on a single facet at a time, each time excluding the contradictions of the other sides– light bouncing off a solid plane without revealing the rest of the prism’s convoluted geometry.

She isn’t mistakenly interpreting him– HE is a mess, and she is representing him accurately, one dimension at a time.

What is more significant is that he finally understands this about her.

Treize is mortified to realize what sort of effect he has been having on someone he cares about, during a period where he is questioning the validity of his own beliefs and significance. He may mistakenly believe that he is responsible for having fragmented Lady Une’s personality– which is not how the condition she has operates– but he is not mistaken in taking responsibility for her distress, and the danger he has put her in.

Losing her, or believing that he has lost her, is devastating. Rather than moving him to action, it moves him to inaction; aware that he has come to represent ideals that are too easily manipulated by people who he fundamentally disagrees with, that the idea of him is too powerful to be used responsibly by the current rulers, he withdraws.

Treize cannot switch off the magnetic field of his charisma or its continuous pull on the soldiers who take inspiration from him, but he refuses to willingly lend himself to a cause that he finds irresponsible. In fact, he refuses to join any cause until one presents itself that he can have complete faith in– and complete control over.

The people whom Treize considers his True Friends are the ones who “understand” him– this includes his enemies, the ones who oppose him but nevertheless espouse values that he can respect. In fact, ANY strongly held ideal, even ones in opposition to him, and ANY display of courage, is more admirable in Treize’s estimation than lip service to his own ideals or those of his organization. The “fighting spirit” that is of paramount value in his worldview is not limited to combatants– he expresses immense respect for Relena Peacecraft, more so even than his respect for the Gundam pilots, who he comes to idolize. What matters is the strength of conviction. What matters is courage.

He respects and admires Lady Une, even when her errors in judgment have megaton consequences, because she is so singularly and ferociously dedicated to her goals. He tolerates the violence and inhumane actions of the Specials and OZ soldiers because they are fanatically ambitious and ready to die for their ideals. As long as the ultraviolence isn’t cowardly or self-serving, then Treize can and will overlook the body count– noble sacrifices, all. He’ll memorize their names later on today.

Treize’s ideals are flawed and contradictory. There is a tipping point in the series where he gains enough self-awareness to recognize this fact. This does not stop him from believing in his ideals– he can’t simply turn away completely from what he values and loves about humanity and its “fighting spirit”– but it does allow him to appreciate those who see his hypocrisy for what it is, and who despise him for it.

“You’re only capable of looking down on others; you’re only fighting to satisfy your ego. How many people have died because of you?”

The fact that Treize has memorized the names of all 99 thousand people who have died for him does not do anything to improve Wufei’s opinion. For Treize, that number is a sacred personal burden; to Wufei, it is evidence of offensive, monstrous egotism.

Wufei, of all the Gundam pilots, is best acquainted with how wide the margin of error is in Treize’s ideal of chivalry. Nataku herself, the namesake for Wufei’s gundam, fell neatly into that margin and died in it. Long before they met and dueled, Wufei knew of Treize as the OZ official jointly responsible for an attack on his Colony. While General Septem of the Alliance (then in control) would have murdered everyone on the Colony indiscriminately with biological weapons, Treize’s solution was more sporting: OZ sent in Mobile Suit troops to directly eliminate the rebel element, who were armed with nothing but a single decrepit prototype Leo and an unfinished Gundam with no ammo-- a much more chivalrous way of sterilizing a Colony, allowing the largely unarmed group of dissidents to die fighting rather than be killed with the push of a button.

Would the deaths of the Long Clan have been meaningful sacrifices in Treize’s eyes? Was exterminating civilians for the sake of convenience a noble cause to fight for?

One could argue that the existence of the then-in-development Gundam was enough of a threat to justify an attack, but at the time the idea of gundanium mobile suits was no more than a rumor. Could Treize, back on Earth, have reasonably predicted its invention?

Not if we are to believe his own words, which clearly indicate that the Gundam’s existence was unknown to him until reported after the attack.

For those who fall outside of his cult of personality it is easier to see past the charisma to the reality: no matter what his soldiers think of him, Treize is not a god. He is only a man, and no one person has the right to decree some deaths necessary to the future.

–And Treize, for his part, would agree. He is a single individual, whose ideals people put too much faith in without fully realizing the essence of what they mean. But the belief people place in him gives Treize a level of power that must be acknowledged and used responsibly, and to the best of his ability, he tries to use it for the good of Earth and humankind.

As a symbol, he is far more influential than he could ever be as a man, and his awareness of that fact leads him to choose the path of martyrdom, knowing that his very existence is a threat to peace. The only way he can neutralize his own power as a military icon is to join the sacrifices to the cause. And what more iconic way to do that than with a duel?

Treize may have resigned himself to being an anachronism and a dreamer, but if he is going to die for the sake of the future, he will at least go out according to his ideals: gracefully, nobly, at the hands of an enemy he respects.

For personal and aesthetic reasons, Milliardo is Treize’s hopeful first choice as a dueling partner, but Milliardo had his own role to play in their final performance, which prevented him from participating in a duel for their mutual actualization. So Wufei is the right choice; Wufei both understands him and has a justified reason to want him dead. Besides, it’s an elegant, symmetrical solution– the continuation of a duel that he predicted they would be destined to finish in mobile suits.

--And what effect does that have on Wufei? Perhaps expectedly, a fracturing one.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Treize’s ideals resonate so powerfully with someone who was raised in a warrior culture, especially someone who only knows how to express his beliefs and sense his self worth through combat.

Wufei, too, lives with contradictions that he cannot fully unify.

Treize Khushrenada cannot live in the world he wishes to see realized.

If he were to win the war against White Fang, the cycle of oppression and resentment would continue. Even if he were to immediately relinquish his power to Relena and demilitarize the Earth Sphere, the end result would lead to more conflict; his refusal to take control of the Colonies would be seen as capitulation, and a betrayal of those who fought for him against the threat of annihilation from space. Even the considerable power of his charisma would evaporate overnight if he were to appear to be turning his back on the soldiers whose fanatic loyalty had allowed the unified mobilization of Earth’s military forces under his banner. But, as a general leading from the front lines in a noble defense of Earth, dying gloriously in battle for the sake of peace lends all that charisma to the future he fought for.

--The message left to the surviving soldiers is not: “His Excellency led us into battle and then abandoned us when he won”, but instead: “this is the peace His Excellency died protecting.”

Indeed, after his death, Treize’s name IS used in an attempt to lend legitimacy to the argument that soldiers have been devalued in a time of peace, and that continuous war to determine the strongest victor to lead humanity is his true legacy. But it doesn’t stick– the would-be dictator who tries to use Treize’s name in service of his military takeover is killed by a nameless soldier, whose change of heart is motivated by the memory of what Treize actually died for.

--It is not a victor who moved the hearts of the people, but a glorious loser.

#Gundam Wing #Treize Khushrenada #Lady Une #Chang Wufei #Endless Waltz #gundam wingtionary #wing watcher's toolkit #tinyozlion pgw #parsing post

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