Char meets Thrawn in my crossover and they stare at their coffee cups in awkward silences for 30 minutes because Char has never heard of anything Thrawn is into.
I get the impression that this is because Char is only looking ahead to the future, but part of me thinks it's really funny if Char was actually just kind of an uncultured dumb guy
The subordinate just a few paragraphs earlier compared Char's looks to Michelangelo's David in internal monologue, very funny to think that Char would just be like "Who's David? One of Dozle's men, perhaps?"
I definitley take both. Char was raised without the Deikun education he would've gotten, probably quite modestly on Earth, & as such is just kind of an uncultured ditz, but very smart & skilled at politicking & imagecraft.
See i dont take that as face value, I take that as post-Zeta Char coping like a sad incel after he almost had something good going during Zeta. The real Casval, to me, is that little boy, playing in a field, & the real Char is a stunted fool trying to claw his way back to thst place (I hate Origin)
The thing is, Origin REALLY leans into that fallen prince angle, but it's on full display as early as these Tomino novels. And that surprised me, because I feel like anime Char is ultimately a charismatic but insecure loser. The best he ever was was as Quattro, but the AEUG wanted him to be Char.
My take on Quattro has always been that Char wanted to diminish but his ego wouldn't let him be far from the action. Quattro was willing to nurture the next generation, was willing to reconcile with Amuro, but everyone wanted the legend of Char/Casval as a political tool. Hence the man in CCA.
Yeah im running fully in death of the author mode. Char is noble, I respect that about him, but his "fallen prince" angle reads more to me as "prince that could have been" rather than "secret prince hidden under roguishness". He never GOT to be Casval Deikun, & that wounds him deeply.
How did this murderous himbo spend most of his childhood living with a Spanish aristocrat in an actual manor and not pick up a familiarity with Renaissance painters? He couldn't have spent ALL of his time fencing
"Mr. Ral, who drew all these pretty pictures?"
"Losers. Now show me how to strip and clean a UC 0022 Federation issue squad automatic rifle. They only made a few hundred of them for spec ops troops & even those didn't work too well but you never know what weapon you're going to need in a firefight."
I once tried to get a Gundam FATE rpg campaign going set in 0080 on a wrecked colony jointly administered by the Feddies and the Republic of Zeon and made it canon that the RoZ military is dominated by "Ralists," basically Zekes who blamed the defeat on the Zabis but otherwise good Contolists.
RoZ ships are obligated by treaty to have high-albedo color schemes but the treaty didn't make the same provision for suits, & while many still wear factory paint more and more of them are Ral blue & some of them sport officially disapproved House of Ral crests. Crest shows up in RoZ tattoos as well
he just studied the blade. instead of reading, he studied the blade. instead of thinking, he studied the blade. instead of studying, he studied the blade
Comments
"Turtles? Aren't they from the middle ages?"
"Do you know the kanji for ninja? It's made from the characters for sword and heart."
...
"Come on! You at least know the ninja turtles right?"
"Losers. Now show me how to strip and clean a UC 0022 Federation issue squad automatic rifle. They only made a few hundred of them for spec ops troops & even those didn't work too well but you never know what weapon you're going to need in a firefight."
Had Leroy mentioned Cervantes, El Greco and Velaquez he migh've gotten a different response