24 replies to this topic

[Brian Davion]

Kyle Travis, on 28 November 2015 - 08:24 AM, said:

For me it was a little sad that the writers tended to focus on the Federated Suns expertise in “everything” - especially the NAIS - when the earlier sourcebooks have equally interesting and important technological developments in the Lyran Commonwealth on the way.

even as a Davion fan I found myself wondering why the NAIS was the only talked about "think tank" in the fiction. every great house had their answer to the NAIS.
As for the arranged Marriage, those things happened. The Alliance was a good one over all. had the clans not disrupted the status quo it's a good bet the FedCom would have united the Inner Sphere, now that said I've come to the realization that the 4th sucession war was the start of a series of... mistakes on the part of the devs. if you opened up your original house book, you'd see that the House Lords are predicted as all being smart capable individuals etc. sadly the 4th war started off a tendancy towards "super factions" that dominate the story for a time period and can apparently do no wrong. their leaders are described as a "genius" but really what it is, is everyone else being depicted as a complete moron when facing them. we saw this with Hanse Davion in the 4th war, and they REALLY kicked it up a notch with SunTzu Liao (Hanse at least was forgiveable as his grand stragety amounted to "...... ya know I got a lot more mechs then this guy... I'm gonna take some worlds") and then of course you had Devlin "Deus ex machina" Stone.


this BTW brings me a bit further back to the point of women in battletech. I'd argue that the problem is more that Battletech's characterization has gone downhill lately.

[Koshirou]

Holy guacamole, this thread is still alive!

Kyle Travis, on 28 November 2015 - 08:24 AM, said:

Melissa is an interesting character

Can't agree there. I did not find her to be particularly interesting, or much of a character even. And that she was a non-Mechwarrior was just one more way to firmly establish her strictly secondary character. There's a rather cringeworthy scene between her and Lt. Whatshisname where he lectures her about the ugly truths of war or somesuch and then also implies that he won't get in trouble for it because Hanse Davion wouldn't cashier one of his officers over the complaints of a mere non-military woman (who just so happens to be the heir to the Lyran Commonwealth). And it's all played straight.
In the Blood of Kerensky trilogy, she's reduced to asking stupid questions to trigger expository dialogue among male characters, and after Hanse's death, she's killed off almost immediately.
Completely wasted potential with this character, same as with Katrina Steiner.

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looking at historical arranged matches it’s not that improbable that the marriage between her and Hanse actually worked and even flourished. Even large age differences can often work

The problem with that analogy being that arranged marriages between nobles were most decidedly not equal, since they all took part in patriarchal systems. This simply doesn't work for an allegedly gender-equal society as the allegedly enlightened houses of Davion and Steiner are supposed to be.
(Isn't it mildly ironic that the heir of House Kurita - which the other novels spare no effort in painting as backwards and woman-hating - marries a halfway respectable, even badass, female character who actually has scenes and a role apart from him?)

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and it is obvious they both worked hard on their relationship.

No, it's just obvious that the writers decided that this teenaged girl would of course be totes in love with their flawless shining hero, Hanse Davion, because he is so flawless and shining. (And don't give me any BS about he wasn't a flawless shining hero because they ostentatiously mentioned how he often "resorted" to trickery. These are in fact, positive characterisations with a dash of faux-humility. Among the oldest writing tricks in the book. Heh.)

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Given who she was both mother and daughter would have been at worst resigned to her marriage being political

Actually, there shouldn't be any reason for that. Katrina (according to the backstory) married purely out of love. Both she and her daughter are allegedly strong, independent females in a society which allegedly is gender equal. The appropriate response to the first suggestion of Hanse marrying Melissa should have been:
KS: "What are, some kind of pervert? She's twelve years old, by Blake!"
HD: "Oh, that's okay, I'll wait until she is eighteen..."
KS: "Listen up, if you don't drop the subject of you marrying my daughter right now, you risk irreparable damage to our tentative alliance. And your testicles, I should add. It's not going to help, anyway. Ascending to the rulership in the Lyran Commonwealth depends a lot more on Estates General support than on lineage - I should know - and I don't see how the Estates General are going to support Melissa when they see her as being firmly under your thumb as they inevitably and rationally will."

... that is, if Katrina was not also a dumb secondary character with a "peace" schtick, but none of the drive and power consciousness a ruler with her history should realistically have. Her main positive characterisation is that she recognizes how great Hanse Davion is (this is written almost verbatim in sourcebooks.)

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For me it was a little sad that the writers tended to focus on the Federated Suns expertise in “everything” - especially the NAIS - when the earlier sourcebooks have equally interesting and important technological developments in the Lyran Commonwealth on the way.

Well... yes. That actually ties into the problems with the characters. Hanse Davion was setting's hero, and both he and his realm had to be the best at absolutely everything. A problem which was seeded very early on, but only ever became worse as the universe was fleshed out.

Edited by Koshirou, 17 December 2015 - 08:26 AM.

[Koshirou]

Brian Davion, on 17 December 2015 - 04:46 AM, said:

The Alliance was a good one over all. had the clans not disrupted the status quo it's a good bet the FedCom would have united the Inner Sphere, now that said I've come to the realization that the 4th sucession war was the start of a series of... mistakes on the part of the devs. if you opened up your original house book, you'd see that the House Lords are predicted as all being smart capable individuals etc.

Well... I used to look at the Housebooks more kindly. But nowadays, when I read the Kurita and Liao ones... the Yellow Peril is strong with them (some passages in HK are copy-pasted avant la lettre from 30s/40s era American works about Imperial Japan. In at least one case, they even forgot to replace "Emperor" with "Coordinator".)
OTOH, Davion was already the best and greatest by the first house book.

It goes beyond the scope of this thread, but the BattleTech Universe has some really good basic ideas. Hower, what FASA and their successors built upon these ideas is fairly terrible even by the standards of low-brow SF schlock. The best thing would be to tear it all down, take the aforementioned basic ideas and rebuild/reimagine the whole thing from scratch. But that's not going to happen due to the way geek culture fetishizes "canon" and continuity. Well, until Disney takes control of the BTU, I guess.

Edited by Koshirou, 17 December 2015 - 08:38 AM.

[Brian Davion]

Koshirou, on 17 December 2015 - 08:32 AM, said:

Well... I used to look at the Housebooks more kindly. But nowadays, when I read the Kurita and Liao ones... the Yellow Peril is strong with them (some passages in HK are copy-pasted avant la lettre from 30s/40s era American works about Imperial Japan. In at least one case, they even forgot to replace "Emperor" with "Coordinator".)
OTOH, Davion was already the best and greatest by the first house book.

It goes beyond the scope of this thread, but the BattleTech Universe has some really good basic ideas. Hower, what FASA and their successors built upon these ideas is fairly terrible even by the standards of low-brow SF schlock. The best thing would be to tear it all down, take the aforementioned basic ideas and rebuild/reimagine the whole thing from scratch. But that's not going to happen due to the way geek culture fetishizes "canon" and continuity. Well, until Disney takes control of the BTU, I guess.

yeah honestly I'd not mind seeing some "repair work" done to the great houses. I've often joked that Battletech as a setting would be greatly improved if you bought every writer for it a copy of crusader kings 2 the problem is despite the great houses all supposedly being feudal, none of them feel that way. the only one that even feels passingly feudal is the fedsuns. the Lyran Commonwealth sometimes does, but the Skye sepertists feel more federal then feudal. (that said, I'm Canadian so it might just be I'm sick of sepertist debates) the dracs feel pretty monolithic but have a lot of potential, and sometimes that potential has been realized. the FWL is mostly ignored, the cappies completly lack any feel of even a federal structure let alone a feudal one.

I've considered for my personal gaming group going back to 3025 and rewriting from there/ avoiding the giant "CHANGING ALL THE BORDERS" wars. which IMHO have done more harm then good. I've always belived the ideal gaming setting is one that focuses more on giving you background and tools to create your own stories, rather then tell you stories.

Edited by Brian Davion, 18 December 2015 - 02:23 AM.

[Natural Predator]

Another great woman would be the Commander of the Eridian Light horse. Who Lost her life on Huntress. She held together the task force sent to take the clan home world. A great women and commander.