A couple years back, there blew up on the truth box the genre of robot wars. I was fairly into it, not for the product, but for the future. See, the wars were inevitably dominated by recent engineering-school grads, CalTech/MIT types who'd just gotten decent gigs and their own houses big enough to, y'know, build robots in their garages.
And who were these guys inevitably dominating? Midwestern hobbyists, mainly, of a sort I had thought long-disappeard. Popular Mechanics, Boy's Life kinds of Midwestern hobbyists. Usually it was a father-and-son combo, just a solid family, doing what families do: building remote-controlled minitanks with buzzsaw blades and sharpened stakes. At the end of the battle, you'd always get a priceless shot of the father and son, stunned, staring, holding each other up, their smoking ruin laying in the background while the victorious 'bot...yes, it's actually managing to strut somehow.
This brings me to the future. If I know anything from the comix I've read, it's that agonizing humiliation is the best motivation in the universe. See, right fucking now one of those children is fuming down in his basement, honing his plans, whetting his appetite for revenge and recognition, sharpening another buzzsaw blade, inventing gundaminum. Right now this second one of those boys is pioneering the next generation of doombots. He's transcending battery power and radio control, no doubt, and maxing out the number of hardpoints available for customization of his war machine.
Clearly, the kid will be too busy in the lab to pilot the damn' thing. This is where I come in. The prototype, the production model, whatever, I don't care. Just so I get my time at the controls, showing all the bastards, crushing all lesser foes, and so forth. I have, in this life, oft been wronged. I demand recompense. Only a giant robot can satisfy me.
This is a good start.
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