Welcome to Gaia! ::

Controversy is good, right? Well, let's get right to it and start some off...

So, what do you guys think on the issue of Relena piloting? There are a few schools of thought on this regard...

+There aren't a lot of women pilots in GW, and another one would be cool.
+Her brother's a pretty good pilot; maybe it's in the blood.
+She doesn't consider herself a pacifist, as per EW's ending.
+Heero's out there risking his life for her ideal; it's unfair for her to ask him to do something she won't do herself.

-She's still a pacifist.
-She's untrained; odds are she'd just get hurt or killed.
-Heero (and Zechs, and the other guys) would never let her do it.
-It would undermine her status as a symbol of peace if she used a weapon willingly.

It's really a toss-up, but IMO, if the right set of circumstances were to come along, I could easily see Relena piloting and remaining faithful to her original character. But this isn't about what I think it's about what y'all think. So...?

"Jailhouse chatter"? That's actually quite an interesting idea, one that I'd never even considered...heck, I mentioned it to a friend of mine who's familiar with fanfiction and such and he said it was very original.

Well, a big part of being a combat soldier is the instinct. I could crack a joke about the intercepted *****-slap from EW proving that she's got the instinct, but that would just be silly. In all seriousness, Zechs has it, so there's a good chance Relena does too.

And it wouldn't have to be a womens' jail...if it's a male supporter of hers, I'm sure he wouldn't try anything really despicable. Either that, or maybe she'd ask what it's like to pilot, since it's one of the biggest things she's never experienced.

Of course, I'm guilty of pulling something silly myself...I wrote a cute little mini-fic where Relena had a game system with a video game based off of the boys' adventures, which she plays in secret when she wants to blow off steam (don't ask how she got it, it's a fourth wall-breaking joke). Maybe she could learn like that. whee

Sometimes people throw prisoners of mixed gender in together. If they really don't care about the well-being of the prisoners, it's more likely.

And I'll avoid parodies and silliness, I just wanted to mention that because that fic doesn't get a lot of exposure. razz

Treize probably got house arrest because Dermail realized that things would be even worse if he were thrown in jail or executed. House arrest was a reasonable way of getting him out of the way without badly offending his loyalists.

Relena, however...her imprisonment would probably depend on how the captors felt towards her. She seemed fairly well-treated by Mariemaia, all things considered. (Still don't get why they thought she'd up and declare Marie ruler of the world...) Someone who thought she was useful, or feared an uprising, would probably put her in house arrest and have her seen to as a guest, albeit one who can't leave. Someone who disrespected her, or was planning on killing her, or something else like that, would probably just throw her butt in a cell or whatever room was handy.

Another way of looking at it...do you think Relena might already know how to pilot? Only her haters will deny that she's a smart young woman. Maybe somewhere along the line, she decided that piloting might be useful some day, and at least learned the basics. Hey, maybe she even got someone like Noin to give her some instruction. It could happen.

(Man, we're the only ones talking here...where's everyone else? I figure a controversial topic like this would draw more attention...)

I don't think she would have learned during the series. It's not so much that I can't see her being interested as I can't see anyone teaching her. I think she'd want to know how the suits work, if only so she would know what Heero was doing and to better understand him. Noin was careful to not even let Relena know there were MSes in the Sanc Kingdom fighting under her command, so I doubt she'd explain to Relena how to operate one. True, Relena wasn't to know about the MSes so that she would continue to act as though her kingdom was totally pacifist and so as not to cause scandal, but I think letting her in on the secrets of how to pilot an Ares or Leo would fall under the same heading of things not to do.

That said, I agree with you two and can totally see Relena learning how to pilot an MS in order to escape or for a similar reason.

Yeah, that's more or less what I thought. Actually, I doubt she has much of a background in mechanics at all. She's not old enough to have her license during the series and hasn't really had the opportunies to work with cars or anything like that.

Wow....um

I don't see Relena as a pilot. I suppose that's because I see her as an equal to Heero in the sense of skills, just...in her own arena. Politics. In this respect, their relation to one another in the series is balanced. If she were to be master politician and MS supremest...where would poor Heero fit in?

Ok that's a little extreme...no one is saying she would be equivalent to or better than Heero anyways but even if she was simply decent in piloting a MS...the two characters wouldn't compliment each other as well.

If Heero wasn't in the equation, I could see the possibility a little more easily but I still think it would conflict with the framework of Relena's personality. She is a pacifist who wants all weapons destroyed. One would think that her ability to pilot any said weapon would tarnish her name with seeming hypocrisy. However, she did believe peace to be worth fighting for...

*scratches head* and I have always wondered what type of other fighting skills she did possess that are never revealed. I mean, she did shoot that rose off of Lady Une's uniform. With the context of the previous conversation and the fact that Relena is against killing, I can't convince myself that the accuracy was coincidental. If she could be that deadly accurate with a gun, who's to say she couldn't pilot a MS too?