people talk a lot about what Mech fiction can emphasize but I want to shout it out into the tags that Mech fiction can also be about romanticizing and confronting the experience of being a tradesperson. I feel like it gets a little complicated by the implicit fact that so much of Mecha media is concerned with war, but the lives of people who labour on complicated machinery, who are instrumental in constructing any kind of titanic mechanism, are interesting. They give each other advice. They fuck around with one another and might even screw each other over. They’re melodramatic, they’re tough, they’re vulnerable, they’re icing each other out or they’re bringing someone in. It can be good or it can be bad, and every job is different.
I am not a tradesperson. I have only worked with them, mostly doing fire suppression (spark watch) for millwrights and welders. Even though I only did it for 3 years, their stories and attitudes have stayed with me because it still feels so unique.
I also think about this a lot, and it's part of why I'm working on some stories that feature mechs used in a non-combat capacity. Mechs for racing, for salvage, for search and rescue. Focusing on pilots who aren't the "ace hotshot, best in the galaxy" types. Trying to include mechanics, and squads, and buddies. Think about mass production models, and what's that one problem they all have that every mechanic between here and the next galaxy bodges the exact same way.
while I also want to write fiction that bends reality until it snaps, and mechs are a fun vehicle to do it in, sometimes it's just nice to think about what day-to-day life is like.
