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

https://eli.li/gundam-is-just-the-same-as-jane-austen-but-happens-to-include-giant-mech-suits

by surprisetalk • 8 months ago

244 188 8 months ago

eli.li

rilindo• 7 months ago

Where is my janpla model kits, then?

0x4572• 7 months ago

Fine china tea sets.

underlipton5• 7 months ago

Jane Austen crossover series based around customizing your china sets.

inerte• 7 months ago

Moonrise Kingdom and Snow White too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARoKJ00cEZ8

fellowniusmonk2• 7 months ago

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.

underlipton5• 7 months ago

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 relatability therein, and the charisma and popularity of series antihero Char Aznable (a Zeon officer), there is an enthusiasm in fan circles (leaking into later productions) for humanizing grunts on the "villain" side while emphasizing the corruption of the side the heroes happen to be on. But this as subtext to the headline narrative of Zeon being mass-murderers and the Earth Federation trying to stop them.

There's also running, unspoken theme of the various corporate conglomerates playing governments and ideologues against each other for profit, and occasionally stepping in (usually with a particularly powerful prototype robot) when one side threatens to blow up the Earth Sphere for realsies.

The end result is a lot of people dying for no reason, and constant backsliding into a state of war, and main characters who realize how ridiculous such circumstances are, but (as per TFW) don't have much power to do anything other than try to survive and protect their loved ones. Viewers are able to see where the shape of that society is warped.

That's without speaking much to the alternate universes. In Gundam Wing, the greatest threat to a global aristocracy-cum-junta is a small, loosely-associated paramilitary group made up of 5 teenage boys and their supporters. The machinations of colonial-era Europe are so philosophically feeble as to be legitimately challenged by NSYNC and Greta Thunberg.

RobotToaster• 7 months ago

There's also that the republic of zeon was started as a legitimate independence movement, but was subverted by the Zabis.

panzagl• 7 months ago

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

jerf• 7 months ago

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 with the reductionistic claim that "everything is just a soap opera in the end", and leave it to the reader to determine whether or not the original link is making that mistake.

I would say it's more like salt in cooking for the vast majority of people; they expect a certain proper amount and trying to engage a normal human's taste without it is an uphill battle at best. As a result, across a wide variety of genres and styles, you'll find soap operas.

(I use soap opera as a bit of shorthand for things focusing on human relationships a lot. Soap operas tend to focus on the romantic end more than average, so the embedding is not quite perfect. But I use "soap opera" as the shorthand here because they are one of the more pure embodiments of the idea, because they are basically nothing but human relationships churning and spinning, with generally not much more going on. Yeah, a couple of them have a more exotic framing device, but all that does is move them slightly off the center of the genre, not really change them much.)

throw48472857• 7 months ago

Here's what's funny. You know what they used to call a book that foregrounded the soap opera elements you're talking about? A novel. That's why Tolstoy called Anna Karenina his first novel. Now, if you go to Wikipedia, War and Peace is also categorized as a novel. What else could you call it? But it's funny to imagine a time when novel was a genre.

thrdbndndn• 7 months ago

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

baruz3• 7 months ago

I think you mean romance? A romance used to be a Roman-style long narrative fictional work that described extraordinary deeds, soap opera plots. Novels were more concerned with realistic narratives describing the nitty gritty of everyday life.

bawolff• 7 months ago

I use soap opera as a bit of shorthand for things focusing on human relationships a lot.

I don't know if that's really fair. I don't think that's really what most people think the term soap opera denotes, and if you broaden it to mean any work that has any sort of relational elements, its almost a tautology that all fiction will meet the standard.

More to the point, i think its an unfair response to the article, as the author is not claiming that the similarity between these two works is merely that they have relationships in them.

Frotag• 7 months ago

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.

MichaelZuo• 7 months ago

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.

BalinKing• 7 months ago

Honestly, the SCP wiki might scratch this itch for you—it's sci-fi but with a lot of fantasy elements, and I'd put it on the "hard" side of the spectrum. Also, I think Greg Egan's books are pretty out there (the two I've read are Diaspora and Permutation City, whose settings aren't particularly "plausible" IMHO), and they really make you think.

jacobjwalters• 7 months ago

The Expanse (both a recently completed book series and a cancelled yet mostly complete TV adaptation) is pretty good at this; it sets up a world with complex political dynamics, and lets things mostly evolve as a result of those dynamics, with the main characters largely just along for the ride. It takes the science parts super seriously too: ships have to worry about acceleration and debris fields during battle, communications have to account for the speed of light, that sort of thing. There's only the occasional injection of new technologies to push things forward about once per book/season.

sungho_• 7 months ago

Orion's arm

ericmcer3• 7 months ago

Thats always my justification for not caring about football at all. I don't know any of the characters and I missed the first 20 episodes.

ErroneousBosh• 7 months ago

Avatar is Pocahontas repainted. Fight me.

redwall_hp• 7 months ago

I believe the comment I saw, back when the first one came out, was "PocaHalo."

The second one developed its own story much better.

glitchc• 7 months ago

So that's where Master "Chief" comes from!

... I'll see myself out.

m4rtink• 7 months ago

And has humans doing Factorio as well as ecranoplans - ideal. :-)

LargeWu• 7 months ago

I mean, Avatar is a pretty on-the-nose allegory for the decimation of American Indian tribes and western colonization. I don't think this is at all a controversial take.

adrian_b• 7 months ago

Actually, when I saw the first Avatar, I thought that it was much closer to the "Treasure of Silver Lake" ("Der Schatz im Silbersee") by Karl May, combined with many scenes from the earlier novels of Karl May.

Many characters of that series of Karl May novels have a direct mapping, e.g.:

Old Shatterhand => Jake Sully

Winnetou => Neytiri (gender swapped)

tamed mustang => tamed flying dragon

and many others.

an0malous• 7 months ago

And Pocahontas is Fern Gully repainted

btown• 7 months ago

This was an incredibly mainstream meme, back in the day! https://mattbateman.net/writing/avatar-pocahontas.php describes his contribution to the comparison.

grehbies• 7 months ago

Smurfcat planetary immune response.

zdragnar• 7 months ago

Nah, Avatar is Dances With Wolves

shawn_w• 7 months ago

Dances With Smurfs was a common comparison at the time.

jimbokun• 7 months ago

Or Lawrence of Arabia or…

neogodless• 7 months ago

Fern Gully was 1992, three years before Pocahontas.

throw48472857• 7 months ago

What an excellent piece! I have some Gundam experience and I recently picked up Pride and Prejudice to try and fix the total lack of Austen in my life.

This article made me realize that despite writing stories that can be broad and melodramatic, Yoshiyuki Tomino has a keen sense of character. It's an interesting counterpart with his closest American counterpart, George Lucas. Both funneled 60s anti-war politics into their science fiction worlds, but Lucas was obsessed with Joseph Campbell and wrote plot driven stories while Tomino always puts the soap opera elements at the forefront.

Also, I suspect the author hasn't seen Turn A Gundam yet, and if not, they really should. That one is Tomino saying, "what if I took out 90% of the space combat and really just made a comedy of manners." It's wonderful.

stevenwoo• 7 months ago

I find I always have to lookup the value of the monetary stuff and Georgian British rules about inheritance whenever I go back and read Austen, it's the only part that's really dated, after one gets used to the sentence structure.

It's really deep in the series (about ten books deep) but Lois McMaster Bujold writes a sci fi space version of Jane Austen in a couple of the books of the Vorkosigan Saga one might appreciate more after reading a bit of Austen.

FuriouslyAdrift• 7 months ago

Glad they mentioned Iron Blooded Orphans... the best gundam (and very cynical and dark)

exBarrelSpoiler3• 7 months ago

This essay about it is a good watch- it concludes that IBO might be a cynical and dark show rooted in realism, but the ending is hopeful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNRjwktvPV8

kjkjadksj• 7 months ago

Which Jane Austen book has a character rip off their own arm and use it as a club?

entaloneralie• 7 months ago

That would be Fanny Price

toast0• 7 months ago

Didn't you read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?

arjie5• 7 months ago

Spoilers for Iron Blooded Orphans below.

I watched the one 'except' that OP has listed there "Iron Blooded Orphans". It's the only Gundam I've ever watched and I really liked it, to be honest. It was full of subversions of anime tropes. There's a prophecy, a stoic soldier like none other, a charismatic leader playing a dual role, another heroic leader trusted by his people. And there's the instrument of the establishment, playing the establishment role. And spoiler spoiler spoiler,

spoiler spoiler spoiler the establishment wins, the charismatic double-role leader dies trying to fulfill the prophecy which isn't real, the stoic soldier is cut apart in the final battle, and the remainder of the loyal band either gets their people rights in parliament or gets picked off in violent engagements over time in the denouement.

Fantastic story. You don't see that kind of thing very often. Western shows are all about the "you don't have to sacrifice anything to win" and Eastern shows are all about the "you're the chosen one" but this one was "the establishment is the establishment and most of the time it wins".

TeMPOraL2• 7 months ago

Western shows are all about the "you don't have to sacrifice anything to win" and Eastern shows are all about the "you're the chosen one" but this one was "the establishment is the establishment and most of the time it wins".

What's sorely missing is the very rare theme of "the establishment wins, and for a good reason, and it's actually a good thing".

neaden5• 7 months ago

Isn't that basically every cop show for instance? Like an episode of Law and Order is this person does something bad, the establishment finds and punishes them hurray.

arjie5• 7 months ago

SPOILER

There is actually a little bit of that in this. While the charismatic leader has some points about how the establishment has gotten weak and corrupt, overall it seems pretty par for the course. To be honest, it's better he didn't win. He was a bit demagoguey.

krapp• 7 months ago

We just call that "propaganda."

exhumet2• 7 months ago

gundam is probably one of my favorite pieces of media ever created, and yeah id say you nailed it! BUT this is pretty much true for almost every gundam show. They will usually end with a "but at what cost" or with 75% of the main cast dead and the protag in a worse position then they started. but yeah what you said rings true, it really is a special piece of media that is more than the genre/anime its made in but can only exist with anime if that makes sense.

expedition32• 7 months ago

Yeah original Gundam is about a never ending war in which the protagonists are just cogs in the machine. And it turns out every side is led by immoral scumbags.

aseipp• 7 months ago

War in the Pocket is also pretty good, if you haven't seen it. A bit dated now but I always thought of it as a "Business as usual" war story when I was young.

exhumet2• 7 months ago

war in the pocket is the best of them imo

rKarpinski• 7 months ago

Western shows are all about the "you don't have to sacrifice anything to win" and Eastern shows are all about the "you're the chosen one"

This probably has more to do with the type of content you are consuming. If you watch things for young adults, it will probably follow "the Heroes Journey" - wether it is LOTR, Harry Potter, Star Wars etc. (the West) or Naruto, Pokemon, Dragon Ball/Journey to the West (the East)

arjie5• 7 months ago

That's the point. AFAIK Gundam is a mecha-anime for young adults - the same audience as Marvel movies or the average Oscar winner. It's not East of Eden or The Remains of The Day.

isk517• 7 months ago

The subversion of tropes goes back all the way to the original Mobile Suit Gundam, though a little more subtle due to the studio wanting to make a show to sell toys and the director wanting to make something with a actual message. It has: -a 'good army' that could easily be the 'bad army' in a more optimistic show -the protagonists dealing with callus military leadership -sympathetic enemy soldiers dealing with their own incompetent and callus leadership -the war taking a huge psychological toll on the protagonist and all of them end up worse off for having been a part of it

brendoelfrendo• 7 months ago

And to your first point, the "good army" did become the "bad army" by the time of the sequel, Zeta Gundam. Once they're no longer on the back footing, the "good army" becomes a ruthless occupying force, operating almost entirely without oversight and under the direction of officers who are all too willing to cover up war crimes. But it still makes sense because you can see over the course of the show how such shift could happen in the inter-war period between the One Year War and the Gryps Conflict.

underlipton5• 7 months ago

IBO is super interesting. "The establishment is the establishment and most of the time it wins," is the final outcome, but the road there is actually rather fraught for that establishment, and it's alternately almost damned and just barely saved by aspects of its rule and operations. The winning agent of the establishment wins, in part, because he skillfully threads through the requirements of his station while strategically breaking taboo (but only once he's certain to have the political backing to do so). On the other side, the rebels are

driven by the circumstances the establishment has forced them to contend with for the entirety of their short lives (they're all child soldiers, btw)
are only able to find their successful path by rejecting establishment and forging what seem, at the time, to be canny ties with other groups on-the-margins
...right until they follow that path off a cliff.

The "heroes" and "villains" remain who they are at the end not just because of affinity bias (having spent more time with the rebels than the establishment), but because there's a tangible disconnect between the former feeling forced into the poor decisions that they make, and the latter's rather cold, and unforced, determinations.

Spoiler

So when Shino almost takes Rustal's bridge out, I am, of course, cheering, even while I know I'm watching him commit a war crime and sign his own death warrant. When Rustal orders atmosphere-braised pilot skewers, it still feels incredibly unfair, even when I know why he made that decision. They threaded the needle.

arjie5• 7 months ago

Couldn't agree more. I particularly enjoyed the ruthless exploitation of the symbolism that McGillis Fareed was attempting, only to be met by a similarly ruthless exploitation of political systems from Rustal Elion. This time this one won, and it was ultimately a close thing, but it could have gone the other way.

Overall, a very sophisticated show - on its own and definitely for its genre.

decafninja• 7 months ago

Another unique thing about IBO is that they mostly use old fashioned projectile weapons (ok, there are railguns) and physical melee weapons. Beam weapons are rare and no longer really used, and it’s the only Gundam subfranchise that doesn’t have beam sabers.

bsder• 7 months ago

Anime was probably my first introduction to "Heroes can both sacrifice and still lose. "Winning" may not be worth it but may be the only option."

I'm trying to think of the earliest "Western Literature" that you get introduced to that has the darker side of humanity and not coming up with anything until you hit 11th or 12th grade while I bumped into anime at something like 7th grade.

Hmmm, perhaps something by O'Henry or Roald Dahl would qualify. I hit them in 7th grade and liked them very much, too.

_carbyau_2• 7 months ago

Anime was probably my first introduction to "Heroes can both sacrifice and still lose. "Winning" may not be worth it but may be the only option."

One punch man, season 1. So chill, both pays homage to and is an amusing pisstake on the dragonballz kinda idea of heroes, training and "leveling up your power".

And then there is a double episode, around 7 or 8, that is a beautiful essay on "what defines a hero". For me, this was chefs kiss good and defined the series for me.

Full_Clark• 7 months ago

Western shows are all about the "you don't have to sacrifice anything to win" and Eastern shows are all about the "you're the chosen one" but this one was "the establishment is the establishment and most of the time it wins".

I think this is why The Wire captivated me. I'd been raised on a steady diet of hero's journey stories and then suddenly I ran into David Simon's buzzsaw of contravening those expectations.

In those years I'd just I started my working life and unfortunately the parallels were uncannily accurate.

arjie5• 7 months ago

I do love The Wire and just recently ended up watching Generation Kill with my dad. That's another amazing one from David Simon. Very real. Cpl. Ray Person still talks about his experience in the actual unit portrayed there on Reddit as /u/plasmata.

dluan2• 7 months ago

You have to be more specific because "Eastern" here does not include Chinese thematic tropes.

https://x.com/xlr8harder/status/1962768298153521202

Sun Wukong is the original "normal guy who grinds to greatness", which was the original plot of Dragonball before it turned more into Harry Potter (you are the chosen one).

neaden5• 7 months ago

I don't really agree with this authors analysis of Austen. Like on Pride and Prejudice, "Elizabeth Bennet wants to marry for love and respect, but in her world marriage is fundamentally about economic security and social alliance." Elizabeth grew up with her parents fairly disastrous marriage (where her Dad doesn't respect her Mom) and inability to think in the future which put the girls in such a bad situation (her father should have saved money up instead of just assuming he'd have a son eventually). She is reacting against that, wanting a husband that will have mutual respect AND the economic security of someone who is responsible. She wouldn't just want to marry someone for love who wasn't able to provide her economic security, just like she doesn't want to marry Darcy she doesn't respect him. This article makes it sound like she is rejecting the social expectations of her society, but only her mom really wants her to marry Mr. Collins and as seen by her own marriage and support of Lydia's marriage she is a pretty bad judge of what's going to make a good life.

Later they say "They also both, mostly, focus on characters who have enough privilege to have choices, but not enough power to escape circumstances. Characters in both aren’t peasants without agency, but they’re also caught in larger systems they can’t opt out of" But that just describes basically everyone, none of us have no agency, but all of us are also caught up in larger systems we can't opt out of. But even within Austen you have Emma, who is entirely economically and socially secure and doesn't need to worry about anything and Fanny who lives entirely at the whims of others.

macleginn• 7 months ago

Neveress all Austen's happy endings are due to the magical alignment of respect and love with security and social alliance. Jane's heroines are playing a (relatively, see below) high risk/high reward game of not wanting to sacrifice _anything_, which leads to their triumphs in the novels but most often led to loneliness and economic insecurity in the real world.

Similarly, all people have choices, but these choices are often pretty agonising ones, and Jane almost never has her protagonists or us confront such life-and-death, very-bad-vs-infinitely-worse choices. And this was a conscious choice since the novels of the 18th century had been more or less filled with them.

neaden5• 7 months ago

Agreed but I think "The best marriage is one where the spouses respect each other and the man is able to provide a comfortable and secure economic life for the woman." wasn't like, a counter-cultural ideal, while the author of the post has Jane set up in opposition to her societies ideal of what a marriage should be. She was willing to reject the certainty of Bingley for a chance at something better, but I also think Elizabeth would have rejected a poor suitor who she did feel respect for. She wouldn't have married a farmer like Robert Martin for instance.

Edit: And even on risk, the big risk is that if Elizabeth's dad dies the family would have to live on Mrs. Bennet's income of just 200 pounds a year, which to put in perspective was about what Jane Austen's father made as a clergyman when she was born, though he would go on to make more money later in life. It wouldn't be poverty and still put them in the upper few percent of English people at the time.

fellowniusmonk2• 7 months ago

That's because Austen had sense and not sensibility.

She herself never married, she absolutely rips on the state of affairs in her time but she wasn't going to advocate in her pop fiction that the women of the time make a move that would almost certainly ruin their prospects.

Austen was insanely clever and pragmatic at making her point and having it shared, as much credit as she gets it isn't nearly enough. In some of her other works you can see certain of her points presented with less nuance and memetic potential, she worked at it.

Let me make an outlandish assertion because I'm feeling froggy as I do truly love Austen. If we assumed that Jesus was God and was like a boring Mr. Roger's type and intentionally embedded his message in the most controversial wrapper possible to ensure that the real message was propagated into eternity, then Jesus narrowly edges out Austen in cleverness and only because he didn't have to put pen to paper, I don't think Austen can be overrated.

momojo• 7 months ago

But that just describes basically everyone, none of us have no agency, but all of us are also caught up in larger systems we can't opt out of.

But isn't the drama between the billionaire heiress and her starving-artist lover more interesting than the lawyer girlfriend deciding whether she wants to marry her below-average-salary boyfriend?

Or maybe I don't understand your complaint.

Starlevel004• 7 months ago

A friend recently asked how to get started watching Gundam, and as I tripped all over myself, equal parts excitement and not wanting to sound like a lunatic, I fumbled around for a good answer.

But there is a good answer. It's Gundam 79. That's not hard.

There are few forces in the world as strong as somebody seeing a long-running Japanese series and twisting and turning themselves into how to avoid release order.

nemomarx• 7 months ago

The memes around Fate were especially annoying for this. Anything but a "dated" entry, I guess.

terribleperson• 7 months ago

I think fate is a fair one to struggle with because not only is it a complex franchise, none of the Fate anime are even close to perfect. Zero tells an interesting story but you have to put up with Gen Urobuchi and it spoils parts of Stay Night. Stay Night is the classic, but calling the original anime dated is an understatement. Unlimited Blade Works (Ufotable) is very shiny and a lot of fun, but I think it's less interesting and more straight up shonen.

I started with Zero, and I feel it was a good way to start, but a lot of people disagree.

underlipton5• 7 months ago

Because most Americans started with Wing, which (for whatever reason) turned out to be a brilliant synergy between timing and executive choice. I think we almost got X or Turn A first, and I don't know what that timeline looks like.

MSG remains a masterpiece and a watershed and all of that, but it is possible to choose a Gundam series that incorporates many of its objective strengths without the aspects that can be hard for newcomers to approach. (But whichever one that happens to be depends on who you ask.)

exBarrelSpoiler3• 7 months ago

G Gundam might've been the most uncomplicated, yet wrong, series to introduce the American mass market to the franchise.

omoikane• 7 months ago

But there is a good answer. It's Gundam 79. That's not hard.

The hard part is that the older series relatively slow paced. I enjoyed most of them when I first saw them, but I am not sure I would have the patience to catch up from the beginning now if I had not watched them before.

Newer series are much faster paced, but they build on the foundations of the older series. Like GQuuuuuuX is great but you might have to watch Zeta Gundam first to fully appreciate it (50 episodes, maybe a few movies). It can be a lot of time commitment depending on where you enter the Gundam universe.

jjk166• 7 months ago

But for someone new to start, they have not watched them before. The goal isn't to get through it, the goal is to enjoy it.

gabriel666smith6• 7 months ago

"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 even underrated as a craftsperson at the sentence level. My favourite trick that I believe she invented is slipping from prose into a soft Iambic pentameter, essentially unnoticed. Lots of people have copied that from her.

And class-pressure narratives will never not be relevant to people's lives. She's a very very humane storyteller in that respect.

I am slightly biased - she's my great aunt (x 6). Used to find that embarrassing but now I feel quite proud.

mrsvanwinkle• 7 months ago

laughed and was warmed by the end reveal. i support gushing over literature in HN

pfdietz• 7 months ago

Go ahead, be proud! Be Austen-tatious!

vintagedave2• 7 months ago

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.

gabriel666smith6• 7 months ago

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.

ifh-hn2• 7 months ago

I'm not well read, and don't think I'd be able to finish any of the classics. As such I have no clue what "slipping from prose into a soft Iambic pentameter" means. I came here for the robots.

baruz3• 7 months ago

Not with that attitude you won’t! But dip your toe in, _Pride and prejudice_ is pretty light and breezy while having some depth to it.

altairprime3• 7 months ago

You know how in Disney movies they shift smoothly from talking to singing? It’s just like that, only instead of the bass beat to the character’s song starting to play, her ‘prose’ (think ‘non-poetry words’, aka what most people consider books to be full of) shifts smoothly into Shakespeare-like syllable emphasis patterns. Listen for the percussion notes starting about ten seconds into https://youtu.be/79DijItQXMM and imagine that instead of him bursting into musical song, he burst into chanting a limerick:

There once was a demi-god, Maui / Amazing and awesome: I’m Maui // Who stole you your fire / and made your days lighter // Yes, thank you, you’re welcome! Love: Maui

It’s a bit odd of an analogy, but limericks and “Iambic pentameter” are specific instances of an underlying language architectural thing, so it should be just enough to convey the basics of that “prose to Iambic” sentence. And: if you’ve ever watched “Much Ado About Nothing” from the mid-90s, that’s 100% Iambic.

(If you’re an English major, yes, I know, this is all wrong; it’s just a one-off popsicle-sticks context-unique mindset-conveyance analogy-bridge, not step-by-step directions to lit/ling coordinates in your field.)

justonceokay• 7 months ago

It’s like incel mentality except applied to literacy

keymasta• 7 months ago

Two broad categories, verse and prose.

Prose is mostly focused on describing meaning using any words that serve to do so.

Verse is more concerned with structural factors like rhythm, tonality, and structure within syllables, or within types of sound, or parts of speech. Other linguistic devices which look at details beyond the strict meaning of the words, like rhyme or many other factors (you could even use visual spacing for example) can be considered in verse.

Within verse there's the concept of iambs. I think of it as a tuple of two syllables which are said, weak-strong. Pentameter means ten syllables, and iambic means in groups of weak and strong. Most of Shakespeare is written like this. Also English naturally sounds iambic a lot of the time.

Iambic pentameter sounds like this:

  I watched a bird attempt its beak upon
  The end of fake too-moist baguette in vain
  For it was sick of stale McDicks tossed on
  It endlessly maintained its rationed pain

  While others in its bobbing flock for scraps
  Of birds fought for the thrill squawked on and on
  Till cannibals among their kind rejoiced
  To find cousins in mayonnaise so long

Normally you'd also look at rhyme structure if writing a legit Shakespearean sonnet [2] but I fired this one out as in the style of fast food. So this is technically iambic pentameter but not technically a sonnet.

Or like a particular Shakespearean sonnet [0]. Or like any of them, [1]

[0] https://shakespeare.mit.edu/Poetry/sonnet.I.html

[1] https://shakespeare.mit.edu/Poetry/sonnets.html

[2] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/shakespe...

neilv• 7 months ago

I upvoted for the perfect first line for this HN post. That you're related, makes sense.

viraptor• 7 months ago

to see how wildly popular her work remains

There's an annual Jane Austen festival there too - it really brings people from all over the world. Very fun event even if you're just +1 to someone who's into it.

WalterBright• 7 months ago

I recall this from one of Donald Westlake's books:

"He stopped on a dime and collected 5 cents change."

hodgesrm3• 7 months ago

That sounds like a line Raymond Chandler would have used. His turn of phrase is also delightful.

scandox• 7 months ago

She made free indirect speech [1] the cornerstone of the English language novel. She is recognized as a titanic figure. I don't know who would underrate her!

What I find strange is that people enjoy her books as romantic comedies because the world she represents is incredibly claustrophobic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_indirect_speech

Edited for clarification

hodgesrm3• 7 months ago

I was visiting Jane Austen's House Museum last year and it always gives me pleasure to see how wildly popular her work remains.

I have believed for a long time that Austen is broadly popular because her works deal with issues of human relations and economic prosperity at the heart of modern, bourgeois existence. The draw is summed up in this excellent quote from the article:

They also both, mostly, focus on characters who have enough privilege to have choices, but not enough power to escape circumstances.

That's a perceptive description of middle class life. The movie "Clueless" is an illustration of how easily Austen's insights translate to a society that is superficially very different from hers. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clueless

PapstJL4U• 7 months ago

She is although simply a joy to read. Witty remarks and well written.

"Elinor agreed with it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition". - from S&S

Who wasn't in a situtation where they felt arguing would do nothing? John Green asked: "Who doesn't want a friend as witty as Jane Austin to comment on life?

jpm_sd• 7 months ago

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.

BLKNSLVR• 7 months ago

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!

dghf• 7 months ago

The early books in particular are Austen with sailing, swearing, and sex.

BoxOfRain• 7 months ago

I couldn't recommend Patrick O'Brian more, I binged the entire Aubrey-Maturin series during lockdown and was genuinely sad for a week when I reached the end of it.

Onavo• 7 months ago

The Witch from Mercury is excellent. It's almost like a space opera version of Open AI board drama.

PaulHoule4• 7 months ago

Was funny, I was using Copilot to analyze a certain light novel to reverse engineer the storytelling techniques so I could write a fanfiction the other day and I asked it if it could apply a certain method to any other stories and it said, yeah, The Catcher in the Rye, The Bell Jar, The Great Gatbsy and Neon Genesis Evangelion

Funny after a lot of this I think I broke it because it now loads a personalization context where it tries to apply this framework to everything and can't quit talking about a character that we seem to share a crush on.

popalchemist2• 7 months ago

This comment is literally delusional.

PaulHoule4• 7 months ago

I'll agree it is the product of a schizotypal mind and one might think the whole project is wrong-headed and there might be a wrong interpretation here but it is factual that:

1) I got that list of stories

2) It has kept mentioning the same character for a few days even when I am talking about something else, even in other conversations (I would do that if I "had a crush")

3) It has been trying the same 'mini-framework' for analyzing problems using the same vocabulary over and over again

In the last few months, for me at least, Copilot does make some attempt to build a personalization context (RAG?) and it quite often talks about something I talked about the day before or offers a suggestions about how the current discussion relates to a prior one and if I ask "remember how we talked about X?" it sometimes seems to respond accordingly.

It is really fun and probably does increase the risk of rabbit holing, but my experience with agentic coding is that if you talk with an agent long enough the context does have a way of going bad and pretty soon you are arguing about things and going and circles and the only way out is to start a new session.

vl2• 7 months ago

A friend recently asked how to get started watching Gundam

So what is good order to watch Gundam in 2025? What should be skipped?

Are mangas/novels worth it or is it better just to watch anime?

ranger207• 7 months ago

Gundam is several universes that are unrelated except they have giant robots colored in primary colors. The main universe is called Universal Century (UC), and started with the original Mobile Suit Gundam show in 1979. It's retroactively called 0079 ("double-oh seventy nine") after its in-universe date. It's good but has significant lumps, like the haphazard animation and villain of the week fillers. I'd recommend starting with one of the 90s OVAs: War in the Pocket (0080), Stardust Memory (0083), or 08th MS Team, as they're fairly short, self contained, and have fantastic animation. Alternatively a modern UC show is Unicorn, but there's a lot of references in it you won't get unless you've seen some of the older shows. Another option is the latest Gundam series, The Witch from Mercury. It's set in a new universe unconnected from UC so there's no prior knowledge necessary.

Gazoche• 7 months ago

Witch from Mercury isn't the latest show, FYI. The latest is Gundam GQuuuuuuX (yes, really, that's the name). But I wouldn't recommend it as a first entry. Despite being set in its own universe, it's supposed to be a sort of alternate version of UC and assumes viewers are already familiar with the original.

Barrin92• 7 months ago

if in doubt watch it in release order but here's a good overview of the in-universe timelines (https://imgur.com/a/v5FNHoq) for a bit of orientation.

The shows outside of the UC timeline are their own thing, a lot of folks outside of Japan saw Wing first, those you can watch in whatever order you like. I'd say start with the universal timeline in order, it's the backbone of the Gundam universe. The shows between Mobile Suit Gundam and Zeta are side stories during the events of the original show but don't skip them (except for IGLOO) because they're straight up some of the best shows in the Gundam universe.

The "core" of Gundam is the original show, Zeta, ZZ and Char's Counterattack. Those in particular are one story and Zeta is widely considered (one of the) strongest Gundam shows.

yomismoaqui3• 7 months ago

I started with some series from the alternate universes and I fully recommend them:

- Gundam 00: Gundam as a terrorist - Iron Blooded Orphans: Gundam as a (child) mercenary

After this I you want to watch the original universe (Universal Century) you can start with the 3 movies that summarize the OG series. They are legally on YouTube (search for gundaminfo)

vl2• 7 months ago

Does it make sense to start with the movies?

0x4572• 7 months ago

Iron Blooded Orphans: Gundam as a (child) mercenary

I know what you're saying, but except for Hathaway, child mercenaries are in every Gundam installment?

I love those alternate universes, but those are so different to other gundams (UC and Seed?) both are very "what ever is cool now, but with gundams"

kasool3• 7 months ago

The original 0079 and then on (Zeta, ZZ, CCA) is the strongest and best way to understand Gundam, its themes, and its legacy. I'd also argue that Unicorn is a strong entry and puts a nice cap on that era of UC but typically people don't group it with the original 4.

ge962• 7 months ago

Love the lore in gundam, usually ends in sadness but yeah

Watched almost all of them except igloo/build fighter type

Hathaway had a great fight sequence where you felt the scale of Gundam and the violence/heat

the soundfx tooo ahhhh

https://youtu.be/oiiIkSuiios?si=ylHdAqVnE2pPeSKv&t=202

Thunderbolt has great graphics too and the jazz

And unicorn the bell pepper gundam

frmersdog4• 7 months ago

GBF is a love letter to the franchise and to the gunpla subculture. Its animation quality is high, the characters are fun, and Easter eggs are fun to look out for - including more than one where characters who met unhappy fates in their original series seem to be living happily in "our" world. Highly recommended.

The Build Divers series is not very good, but I still recommend it to people who have some time to spare, because Re:Rise retroactively makes it so satisfying. Re:Rise itself is deceptively sophisticated, and touches on some mature themes that even most serious Gundam series don't get to.

ge962• 7 months ago

Alright I'll try GBF again

I forgot to mention the hype of that Zgok lol in Seed Freedom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvyAa4CgaOs

ugh I don't like these 60FPS things on YT makes it look worse my bad, updated

kasool3• 7 months ago

Hathaway honestly blew me away the first time I saw it. One of the few movies I've watched 3-4 times now. It's exactly like you say, you can really _feel_ the weight and scale of mobile suits. It's honestly a fantastic start to this new era of UC.

Also lol @ kshatriya being called bell pepper. It's probably my favorite non-gundam mobile suit. I wish they'd make an MG kit for it despite how massive it is.

wisty• 7 months ago

I read somewhere that Code Geass originally didn't have mechs in the script.

Every anime has a production committee who figures out how they pay for it (anime make miney from a wide range of sources) and they told the writers they needed to write mechs in to get the gunpla bucks.

femiagbabiaka• 7 months ago

If you are someone for whom this article resonates, you should watch Legend of the Galactic Heroes, the old one, not the new one.

skybrian4• 7 months ago

When reading Jane Austen you learn a fair bit about the English upper classes of that time period. What do you learn from Gundam?

_carbyau_2• 7 months ago

The many Gundam series are not a historical account obviously.

From what I gather - having never actually watched any - there are anti-war themes (IE armies are commanded by people who don't have to sacrifice, how that corrupts), sacrifice vs outcomes and more. It's a thematic experience rather than an education in robotics or history.

I like stompy robots. I have to yet to start on Gundam because I am hesitant as to where to start and which path to follow in watching it all and I know it would consume me once I start.

Maybe after Xmas, in my break, I'll "waste" some time with it.

rsynnott2• 7 months ago

Learning stuff is a weird primary motivator to read fiction.

(I’m not sure you learn as much as you think; I mean some context leaks through but Austin’s characters aren’t necessarily _that_ archetypical. If you want that you might be better with a social history.)

skybrian4• 7 months ago

Sometimes it’s the fiction itself along with other commentary that helps you understand the historical background. There’s plenty written about Jane Austen’s novels.

Also, Austen was definitely commenting on society of that time, though sometimes you need other background knowledge to get the reference.

throw48472857• 7 months ago

You learn a lot about post-War Japan and the New Left. Just because a writer dresses their story up in futuristic or fantastical trappings does not mean that they aren't writing about their own cultural milieu. Tomino is explicit about this in the interviews compiled for the supplementary material in the Gundam Origin manga. They are a fantastic read (and the manga is a masterpiece).

skybrian4• 7 months ago

Interesting. Do you know any good articles online that talk about this history?

ericmcer3• 7 months ago

Interesting. It is a shame that you can't really experience art correctly unless you have the context of living in that time & place. I will never experience Anime, Russian literature, early English literature, etc. fully because my lens is always gonna be an American in the 2000s.

I am curious how people 100 years from now will perceive art from the last 20 years, much of it feels like a thinly veiled commentary on whatever hot button social issue was prevalent at the time.

ndesaulniers2• 7 months ago

I feel attacked.

Where my Gundam Wing fans at? (there are literally dozens of us...dozens!)

hinkley• 7 months ago

There are only so many stories and we are all telling variations on them.

How much of Hollywood is bad copies of Shakespeare?

yomismoaqui3• 7 months ago

Obligatory meme about what really Gudam is about:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Gundam/comments/y3766d/i_just_watch...

zhivota• 7 months ago

Now someone tell me the equivalent of P.G. Wodehouse and I'll check it out. Wodehouse feels like the lighthearted successor of Austen, focused more on the comedy and farcical plots, than serious romance. Funny enough, I started reading his stuff on the recommendation of Paul Graham.

underlipton5• 7 months ago

I can't speak to Wodehouse's style, but as far as mecha series that weave comedy into plots that are fairly serious but also genre-aware (and ready and willing to take the piss out of them), in a well-constructed setting, I would look at Martian Successor Nadesico for old-school, Majestic Prince for a newer series.

3r3rni9• 7 months ago

Posting because someone has to say that "Witch From Mercury" was literally Shakespeare's Tempest (which I thought was amazing). I mean the Gundam's name is Ariel.

quanto• 7 months ago

A mech eng PhD said that he watches Gundam/Macross for drama and Romance (as in Romanticism).

dluan2• 7 months ago

I thought it was pretty well known that Gundam is a commentary on class and the effects of imperialist wars on normal people. The OG series didn't glorify violence and instead showed a lot of gratuitous civilian deaths, and most of the main characters are the poor-orphan-becoming-a-knight archetype.

Plus Jane Austen at the time was a sharp critique of English nobility and high class, but presenting it in a stylized and popular way.

khelavastr• 7 months ago

Gundam Seed is 1000% emo.

HelloNurse• 7 months ago

Weapons and violence in Jane Austen's novels include characters hunting with shotguns and (remotely implied) armed Navy ships.

Nothing comparable to treating a mobile suit like an extension of the body, or killing people, or both at the same time (e.g. the "duel" between Char Aznable and Kycilia Zabi).

stuaxo• 7 months ago

Ah, so thats why I find Gundam boring.

6P58r3MXJSLi• 7 months ago

just the same as Jane Austen is one hell of a statement.

Gundam actual influences are well known, Tomino himself talked about it, more than one time. Gundam was inspired by WWII stories, but the direct source of inspiration is Gerard O’Neill’s “The High Frontier”, in which there is depicted the O'Neil Cylinder, whose design has been literally copied verbatim for Gundam's space stations/colonies.

rsynnott2• 7 months ago

But does Gundam have an awful vicar? If not, not interested.

otikik• 7 months ago

Jane Austen

No idea who that is, but I assume she writes Gundam stories without mechs.

miladyincontrol• 7 months ago

On a note of Gundam, an unpopular opinion but I actually do really enjoy how in the moment G Reco is, and while not quite Gundam another of Tomino's works similarly, Overman King Gainer. The latter being vaguely based off of La Compagnie des glaces.

Some people find it harder to follow along in light of a rather anti-expository method of storytelling, personally I find it all the more compelling for story occurring during wartime. Combat is complex, people take action in the moment, not everyone's thoughts or plans need to be spelled out, leaving plenty to inference rather than narration builds for a better story.

ericmcer3• 7 months ago

"the tragedy isn’t just that war is bad, but that institutional logic and personal desire are fundamentally incompatible"

Pretty good quote from the article and a succinct way to sum up the human dilemma of existing in a society.

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

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