As someone who has seen (almost) every Gundam series, I’m kind of annoyed that people who pass themselves off as ‘long time fans’ act like the series is inherently a downer and always ends in tragedy and saying “that’s how Gundam is.” Most gundam endings are bittersweet, in that there was a lot lost to get to the end, but have positive, if not happy endings for the main cast that are still around. Most main couples survive and pair at the very end; the times a canon pairing has a member die is actually pretty low. 

Off the top of my head, the canon pairings that explicitly end up together:

Shiro and Aina

Amuro and Fraw / Sayla (depending on your continuity, though by the time Char’s Counterattack rolled around those got reversed)

Seabook and Cecillia

Garrod and Tiffa

Judau and Roux 

Loran and Diana

Heero and Relena

Kira and Lacus

Shinn and Lunamaria

Athrun and Cagali

(to be fair the last three are from SEED)

I sort of feel like people watched IBO as their entry to Gundam and just assumed that’s what the series is like, when it’s really, relatively, an outlier. 

That’s not to say that Gwitch will necessarily have a happy ending, or that Sulemio will be the end game, or that all Gundams have happy endings or whatever. But it’s kind of wild to see people be like “lol these idiots think there could possibly be a happy ending, never seen gundam” when it’s like, have *you* seen Gundam?? Because what people are hoping for is, actually, pretty standard for the franchise.

20 questions writer meme

Trying to get back into putting words onto a page, so why not do a bit of retrospective? Can't hurt, at least, lmao.

For anyone that isn't aware or would like to browse tags and summaries before clicking the direct links below, I am Pandelion on Ao3. My answers below are based on my Ao3 fics, for the most part. 1. How many works do you have on AO3? 35

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 207,935 (arguably, only 150k are mine due to cowritten fic)

3. What fandoms do you write for? Bleach and Yin Yang Master most recently, but I've previously written for SPN, MCU, Teen Wolf, LoTR and a number of other fandoms over the last almost twenty years.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1. Begins A New Beginning (Teen Wolf, 3.2k words, alternate canon)

2. The Captain And The Dragon (Avengers, 600 words, fantasy AU ficlet)

3. kiss with a fist (better than none) (Bleach, 5.5k words, canon divergent post-Aizen)

4. Here There Be Dragons (Vikings, 6.4k words, alt. canon, dragon!Athelstan)

5. Making It Work (Avengers, 5.2k words, daemon AU where Phil Coulson is Fury's daemon)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? I try to and I absolutely read every single comment I get, but answering them doesn't always happen for one reason or another.

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? I enjoy a good spot of angst, but I rarely end on it. That said, i will not replace (what i lost in you) and it's sequel hands shaking with regret (i've held this dream) for the Yin Yang Master fandom is probably the winner.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Hmm, probably 'neath the love-light gleam, which was written for a Bleach Secret Santa gift exchange and is almost entirely fluff.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Haven't yet!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? The kind that doesn't get posted in public fics lmao. Honestly, I think only 2 or 3 of the fics I've posted to Ao3 even have sexual content beyond like, kissing and holding hands. The one fic that is actually marked as Explicit is probably surprisingly non-vanilla-ish for being the only one I've posted? But yeah, most of my explicit writing happens outside of Ao3.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? I was going to say yes, but then realized that I haven't written an actual crossover since my LJ days. I usually write AUs based on other existing media, such as daemon AUs (His Dark Materials) or something like my rewriting of The Mummy (1999) with Bleach characters. That said, I once wrote a SPN/Gundam Wing crossover, that's probably the craziest one I've written.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I'm aware of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? I have! One of my fics was translated into Polish last year. I don't read Polish, so I haven't been able to read it, but I'm super thrilled that someone liked it enough to do so!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? I have one fic listed as co-written on Ao3, so technically yes, but I'm really on there more as part of the back-end development side, as my cowriter has done the vast majority of the actual writing. I love to rp, but actually co-writing is more difficult, in a way.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship? Oh man, um. I'm going to say Grimmjow/Ichigo from Bleach, since their dynamic keeps pulling me back in, but honestly there are so many pairings that I gravitate back to again and again.

15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? There are so many WIPs in my gdocs that will never see the light of day, honestly. So many snippets of ideas and concepts that won't get fleshed out. I have two WIPs currently posted and I'm praying to get the inspiration/ability to finish them, so hopefully they won't join the list of never to be finished fics.

16. What are your writing strengths? World-building, for sure. I love settings, I love developing and establishing a world in a fic. And not in the, like, writing down all the details of the world sort of way, but in the broad strokes of character actions and interactions. I've also been told that my general style of writing is pretty great, but that might have been from a biased source lmao.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Pacing, most likely. Plot of any real sort. If you look at my Ao3, the vast majority of my fics are 5k or under, usually under 3k or so. I have such a hard time with long form fic, I have no idea how to properly pace things, I don't use outlines much at all, and constructing a plot is hard lmao. I much prefer to give little oneshots of a concept or something, leave the bigger plot implied and waiting in the wings.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? So hard! Doing a direct translation works for some things, but other stuff can be way too tangled up in the messiness of real language. I'd definitely prefer to have a native speaker that I can consult about it if I were to do anything with more than a phrase or two.

19. First fandom you wrote for? So, way back before I knew about ff.net or LiveJournal, way before Ao3 was a thing, I wrote what was effectively Dragonrider of Pern fic. After that, probably Rurouni Kenshin or Yu Yu Hakusho.

20. Favorite fic you've written? and the stars led me back to you (Bleach, 4.4k words, Grimmjow/Ichigo, space!au). I love all my fics, of course, but this one was just so good, very much a case of me writing something with myself as the intended audience. I reread it fairly often. kiss with a fist (better than none) is probably a fairly close runner-up, though, I am still so pleased with some of the dialogue and dynamics in that.

botany.......🌵🍄🌿

all things whicht to be found in vel's immediate areas i think maybe

🌵 ⇢ share the link to a playlist you love

man you can have the perpetually in progress playlist for jackrabbit brujo. fair warning that like, the first half of this is general vibes of the story whereas most of the second half contains specific storybeats and so are a bit...off? idk but. y'know. it needs more soda stereo but sin sobresaltos oh my god it's so hard to type with a cat settling on my typin fingers sin sobresaltos and take it easy battle each other for best opening song.

🍄 ⇢ share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings

for tserith? tseng secretly needs glasses but it's not good for assassin work. postcanon he wears them a bit more commonly but he has a habit of falling asleep with them on which very much delights aeris. for my characters it's just canon bitch and you know this but i'll tell the world this too, vel and laura went on a date and figured they'd work well together so they went on a second date, which was more of a test for vel where laura brought shoua along to vibe check for laura if vel was going to be ok esp due to their unusual (coincidental) meeting. this second date occurred on a karaoke night at a bar with a secret stipulation: vel would choose one song to sing and then laura and shoua would choose a second. regardless of whatever song vel chose to sing they'd choose an extremely gendered song to see if he'd swap the genders in singing it. vel's choice went first which he chose "take a chance on me" by ABBA, pleaded in between verses, sat down to laura laughing and going "WE WERE GOING TO HAVE YOU SING ABBA TOO" which caused him to laugh and then he killed it on 'gimme gimme gimme a man after midnight'. so that's when they started dating For Real

🌿 ⇢ give some advice on writer's block and low creativity

this is gonna suck so bad: wait it out. But Actively wait it out. Watch a new movie, binge a new topic, try out a new type of show you haven't tried before, cook something new (that's right it doesn't have to be story related!) build a gundam, do something else for a while. Exercise the other parts of your brain. Eventually it'll come back around, but just like how a machine overheats if it runs for too long, or muscles get tired, or cats can go from 100 to 0 in 5 minutes, your writing brain needs rest and the less you beat yourself up over that the gentler the rest will be and t he more revitalizing getting that creativity back will be also. Also, while i said try a lot of "new" things, i think at first if you're VERY blocked up just put something mindless or familiar on. I particularly enjoy basketball for the moment to moment sparks of joy that don't demand full attention, and if I find myself itching to do Something Else while watching the game (either during it or right after) then I know I'm ready to try smth newer and stuff. It takes time. The worst thing you can do is berate yourself. Only berate yourself when you're editing your work. it's really fun. pull a hunter s thompson and shoot your fucking typewriter.

[ask game prompt link]

001 for Sonic the Hedgehog, 003 for Chris Thorndyke, 002 for SonElise

001 Fandom Sonic

My favorite character is Tikal

My least favorite is Mephiles

5 Favorite ships: antoine x bunny, sallicole, khanally, Sonudis (sonic x @crusherthedoctor 's fancharacters Trudy) & Tom x Maddie

Character i find most attractive: Shadow

Character I would marry:

Character I would be best friends with: Rouge

A random thought: why aren't there any aquatic anthros :(

Unpopular Opinion: Marine > Sticks

Canon OTP: Khanally

Noncanon OTP: Sonic x Lani (my OC)

Most badass character: Too many to count but a quick shoutout to KNUCKLES

Most Epic Villain: EGGMAN OF COURSE I love how his inventions span from servants like Orbot to fucking GUNDAMS movie Eggman especially for actually having him be the main threat instead of getting Upstaged or written OOC "Eggdad"

Pairing I am not a fan of: Sonally, made them both OOC, too soap-opera for my tastes and personality clashes

Character i feel the writers screw up: Elise, could've gotten a badass equivalent to a disney princess (though they're already badass) instead we get a poorly thought out Self insert

Favorite friendship: Shadow and Rouge, Amy and that little bird. Also Blaze and Marine

Character i most identify with: Big the cat I just be minding my own business but get dragged into sum bullshit anyways 😫

Character I wish I could be: blaze because she's rich duh also fire is my birth element

002 Sonelise

When I started shipping them: a couple of years ago after seeing cute fanart. But coming across @solarhood 's blog really increased my liking for the pair.

My thoughts: Gets way too much hate, i see it has lots of potential in fanfics, it is not and never was bestiality, and it can be a good romance or a good friendship. Plus Amy isn't unfairly demonized.

What makes me happy about them: their interactions were so sweet, especially the scene in the meadows.

What makes me sad about them: that they had to give up their memories :(

Things done in fanfic that annoy me: when people try to improve Elise by making her a Blaze Clone. Or turning her into a hedgehog just to make her ship with sonic more "palatable" listen Elise can still be badass without being turned into another Blaze/Sally copy

Things I look for in fanfic: again better characterizing that isn't turning Elise into Xena, also amy not being demonized for melodrama. Sonic & Elise more time together (with in character Sonic)

My Wishlist: that elise comes back with a new design that (let 👏 her 👏 wear 👏 different clothes!!) & reuniting with Sonic

Who I'd be comfortable them ending up with if not each other: with Sonic I don't mind him with Amy or a new character. With Elise, Surprisingly KNUCKLES. Both were isolated and had to spend their childhood into roles they didn't ask for so the parallels are already there. Difference is Elise can help Knuckles be comfortable around girls without overstepping his boundaries, and he can help her learn to master her power and be more open with her emotions even especially the negative ones.

My happily ever after: Sonic and Elise somehow recovering their full memories and becoming friends again. Elise decides to travel the world with him not just for personal pleasure but to instill alliances and gain more life experience

003 alright last one and it's *uighh* chris....thorndyke 😒😒😒

How I feel about this character: TERRIBLE he's the reason why I made Noelani in the first place!! Unnecessary audience surrogate who didn't even do a good job in the role he was that hateable!

Any/all people i ship romantically with this character: the only person I ship him with is with a therapist!!

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Okay maybe his relationship with his servants were a little sweet then again not surprised if they forced to act like that because he signs their paychecks

My unpopular opinion about this character: he isn't the worse creator's pet I know he wasn't as awful as Kicker from Energon or Light Yagami

One thing I wished. Would happen/had happened with this character in canon: That he faced some actual damn consequences especially in the last episode of s2! Ground that boy! Don't just let him get away with dooming two planets!

Favorite friendship for this character: Surprisingly him and Tails, too bad it wasn't enough to salvage him

My crossover ship: him and Adrien would make great friends and that's not a compliment

Psssst. G Gundam. do it.

LELELEL

The first character I first fell in love with: Well I mean, we were gay as Hell for Nastasha from the word go, but if by 'fell in love' it means 'the first character you got attached to' then that was probably Chibodee. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Probably Schwarz. We liked him a lot in the first watch you took us through, but the second time around we weren't expecting for that to amplify and to want to do shit with him like we do now. But in that case, I'm not entirely sure if that's because we love him any more than we did already, or because the slate is now clean and we're ABLE to do shit with him when we couldn't before. The character everyone else loves that I don’t: I don't really know how to answer this because as you well know the fandom is pretty small and we don't really participate or follow along with it outside of you, given that we have,,,markedly different ideas than most everyone else, from what we've heard. XD The character I love that everyone else hates: Same as above. The character I used to love but don’t any longer: No one, really! The character I would totally smooch: Well, I DID say that if I were ever to go for a canon character, it'd probably be Hans-- The character I’d want to be like: Nastasha The character I’d slap: Wong A pairing that I love: Operating Circuits (RainxSchwarz) with Royal Flush (DomonxChibodee) as an honourable mention. I mean,,,come on. There's no heterosexual explanation for anything they do, especially their final Gundam fight. A pairing that I despise: Hearts (DomonxRain). Sorry, but I have no idea how I'm supposed to believe he actually cares about her, let alone loves her when he treats her like absolute dogshit almost the entire series and only sometimes seems to feel sorry about it. But even then I wouldn't hate it as much as I do if the entire series finale didn't completely hinge on the ship and how much he's supposed to love her.

I agree with the anon I'm not someone that ships every two male characters that look at each other Even if they are very close friends But Stucky just worked for me I thought their relationship was one of the most touching in the MCU I think they work as a romance because the writers weren't trying to write one but there was still so much intimacy and emotion in their storytelling I've noticed that most of the ships I love aren't canon and I think its because one character isn't the designated love interest and both characters in the ship get to be... well characters Anyway I was disappointed that Steve and Bucky were separated at the end of every movie they were in I guess because Disney/Marvel had a gay panic when the ship got so popular They weren't allowed to ever really be a team or be together (romantically or platonically) and that was a big shame because I feel that there story was the best in the MCU I honestly could have watched a movie featuring the two with no villains but just a drama I'll take Stucky romantic or platonic but they are one of the few M/M ships that I really loved Its to the point that whenever I see them in a relationship or an attempted relationship with other characters I'm left disappointed because that ship just can't compare to Stucky's story I wouldn't be surprised if Marvel knows this and will try to recreate the Winter Soldier story line with Steve and Peggy in What If season 2

Same anon. I rarely ship, and this is despite me growing up with all kinds of ship-heavy manga and anime like the glorious Gundam Wing/Evangelion days or anything from CLAMP which has homoeroticism baked in. When I watched EG I was not a shipper or even a Steve or Bucky fan, but I walked out really disappointed with what they did to Steve (and by association Bucky).

I definitely agree the Steve-Bucky relationship is one of the most poignant in the whole of MCU. It has a sense of poetry and tragedy to it that elevates it above the rest. Their arcs fit around each other's in a way that was inseparable, which I think is also why I find it less meaningful when they have arcs that ignore the other person's existence (e.g. What If).

Both their stories are also highly romantic, regardless of how you interpret the word "romantic".

In the strictest academic terms, a romance is a narrative genre in literature that involves a mysterious, adventurous, or spiritual story line where the focus is on a quest that involves bravery and strong values, not always a love interest. (Source)

Both of them went on a larger-than-life adventure with the objective of their quest being the other person, and the ultimate resolution lying in how they manifested their own bravery and resilience and love. The stories are romantic even if you don't take "romance" to also refer to the nature of their relationship.

A good tragedy lies in the inevitability of its events. We might say "if only Bucky didn't get on the train..." but we know that Bucky would never choose to let Steve on the train by himself. He would always choose to lead the danger away from Steve, which was the two times he left in CATWS and CACW. The inevitability comes from Bucky's love and loyalty to Steve.

Even relationship wise, it hits different, you know? Most of the other relationships either have an antagonistic element (e.g. Thor and Loki, Gamora and Nebula) or there's a courtship (all the other romantic relationships). Stucky was introduced as an established relationship, and the rest of it was about overcoming the reluctant separations. There was never any doubt that they loved each other, and each time they come back together they are just so comfortable with each other's presence. (I also think that MCU just can't write courtship or women, which is why most of the canonical het pairings come across stilted and uncomfortable.) Unlike other relationships, Stucky was central for all three movies and continued to evolve, without ever losing the core of what made their bond special. To be honest -- Thor and Loki also had something poignant if they didn't decide to sitcom the last movie to minimise Loki's importance.

So yeah...Stucky has a level of melodrama, tragedy and romance that none of the other core MCU relationships come close to, and when you then look at the appeal of their individual personalities and personal values, it's not surprising that they resonated with so many people.