{"id":4548,"date":"2016-12-20T19:45:08","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T00:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/?p=4548"},"modified":"2016-12-20T19:45:08","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T00:45:08","slug":"a-lakota-free-colonist-fights-for-sovereignty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/2016\/a-lakota-free-colonist-fights-for-sovereignty","title":{"rendered":"A Lakota Free Colonist Fights for Sovereignty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richmont Gan, mechanical illustrator for both Mobile Frame Zero 001: Rapid Attack and 002: Intercept Orbit sent me these pictures the other day, of a Lakota-themed Free Colonies commander and his Hi-Leg mobile frame. He declined a licensing fee, so I\u2019m donating his usual fee to Standing Rock (you should too!<\/a>\u00a0Link is in the upper right) and, because Richmont\u00a0never charges me enough, I\u2019m matching his donation.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Gaming thrives on assumptions of imperialism, from Settlers of Catan\u2019s \u201cempty land\u201d model (except for the Bandit, who\u2019s a black piece) to Puerto Rico\u2019s \u201cworker\u201d pieces (more properly called \u201cslaves\u201d in the original edition) to Warcraft\u2019s Area Control model.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
The pilot wears a flak vest with a chest reinforcement styled after the traditional hairpipe breastplate. The Thunderbird’s his unit symbol.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mobile Frame Zero upsets this in a couple of ways. The first is that the Solar Union, easily interpreted as an \u201cevil empire\u201d, is designed to be a whole lot like our society. It prides itself on its democracy. Its objective is a high standard of living for its citizens. But, like our society, it\u2019s on a perpetual (and growing) quest to externalize its\u00a0entropy, to make sure the costs are borne by others. In short, empires must forever grow, because the perimeter grows linearly, while the interior grows as a square (or, in the case of a space empire, the frontier grows as a square while the interior grows as a cube). And that means that perpetual growth leads to more, not fewer, starving people.<\/p>\n

Another way MF\u00d8\u00a0upsets the model is that \u201cHuman\u201d doesn\u2019t describe a particular set of values, or even a particular set of material needs; indeed, neither does \u201cIjad\u201d. Free Colonies might be any combination of Human and Ijad, but the important thing is that they want control over their own economic destiny, for better or worse.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
The markings on the Hi-Leg are based on Native American horse war paint. Armament consists of a pair of autocannon (2Rd &d8), a pair of heavy ATGM’s (2xSSR) guided by the mast-mounted sight (1Y), and a five-tube countermeasures launcher on the top rear (1B).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So that puts our Lakota Free Colonists in a particular position: they\u2019re not obviously Ijad (though they might be). Their ancestors were non-indigenous at some point in the last couple of centuries, and we have no reason to believe that there\u2019s indigenous people they replaced. As of SC0238, they have a social order that stems from a value on their own sovereignty. As part of their deal with the Terran Transit Authority, the TTA assured them of\u00a0their sovereignty back before the Solar Union realized that their colony held something of value. Now, the Solar Union wants the colony for material and\/or strategic reasons, and they have necessarily taken up arms to protect the\u00a0sovereignty that not only do they need, but they were additionally promised.<\/p>\n

My heart, and that of Mobile Frame Zero, stands with the people of Standing Rock. May humans\u00a0someday no longer need to fight for our air, water, and land, paying in blood to assure\u00a0profit for the vanishingly few.<\/p>\n

I want to take this moment to point out the extraordinary characterization Richmont had put into this warrior here. I love the way his art is developing. You can see more of his work over here<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

I can afford to do things like donate to Standing Rock because of my Patreon<\/a>, which you can back. It’s also how I can afford to eat, thanks to The Fifth World, a shared world project with roleplaying games, novels, and tons of art. Go check it out!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richmont Gan, mechanical illustrator for both Mobile Frame Zero 001: Rapid Attack and 002: Intercept Orbit sent me these pictures the other day, of a Lakota-themed Free Colonies commander and his Hi-Leg mobile frame. He declined a licensing fee, so I\u2019m donating his usual fee to Standing Rock (you should too!\u00a0Link is in the upper … Continue reading “A Lakota Free Colonist Fights for Sovereignty”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":4553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12,13],"tags":[119,118],"class_list":["post-4548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-mobile-frame-zero","category-mobile-frame-zero-rapid-attack","tag-hi-leg","tag-richmont-gan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4548"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4554,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548\/revisions\/4554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}