Bite-sized Backstory 49: The Long Unquiet Night
The transit through the portal back to our normal universe all but trashes the specialized ships Mara and her Awoken had designed for the voyage. The advanced materials making up their ships’ hulls were stretched, and warped, and torn away by the passage through the micro singularity, not to mention the five ships that had suffered missile impacts and still survived the journey. Perhaps even…
The Best Keynote In Years?
I’m still trying to take in everything Apple announced at 2019’s WWDC Keynote. It was a lot, and a lot of it was awesome. Here’s my personal highlights: The new Mac Pro. The old “trash can” Mac Pro was always a baffling head scratcher. When it was new it was… interesting, perhaps even somewhat powerful, but it always felt constrained. Even Apple’s talk…
Review: Pirates Outlaws
This morning, I ran aground on a fun new game for my iPhone and iPad called Pirates Outlaws. I’ve always had a soft spot for turn-based games, and always wanted a good card-deck-baed game that I didn’t have to struggle too much with collecting the cards or battling real people with way more time on their hands. Pirate Outlaws has fulfilled both of these wants for me. The game bills…
Bite-sized Backstory 48: Departure
When we next see Mara Sov, she is far from former Queen Alis Li’s retreat and far above the perfect Awoken world that has been her home for the past several thousand years. Mara, and all that have chosen to take up her call to return to earth, are aboard the massive starships Mara spent millennia working towards. Embedded in her sensorium, all Mara has to do is think and the systems built into…
Review: Aladdin (2019)
When the credits began to roll on the Aladdin (2019) showing I went to see, there was a small, but significant amount of applause. There were children and adults dancing to the music. On the way out of the theater I heard someone mention to someone else that they were glad that they had come to see the new movie. Unfortunately, I did not share the enthusiasm that gripped many of those around me.…
Review: RWBY Volume 6
It's been a while since I watched RWBY. I like to wait until all the episodes are out and binge it rather than follow week to week... and I usually end up sorta forgetting about it for a while. No big deal. It's always there when I want to see it. There was a thing though going on with RWBY, something about it made it less satisfying to me than it had been in the past. Season 5 had some fun…
The Legend 2
“The Fallen have set up significant anti-air defenses within Arkhangelsk,” Tesni Jarmila’s Ghost briefed her enroute. “We lost one Jumpship already, though its pilot survived, and another two Guardians are currently pinned somewhere within the city ruins. Whatever Nordavia was doing there it clearly has the Fallen interested,” “Any more reinforcements coming or is it just me?” “Several…
The Legend 1
Tesni Jarmila blinked. The scene before her: an island shore, crashing waves, and washed up bits of wreckage large and small… It all made some sort of sense… didn’t it? The tall, blue-skinned woman took in and released a series of shaky breaths as she looked a little to her left, then a little to her right, then straight ahead once more. There was nothing to see except the bright sandy beach, the…
Bite-sized Backstory 47: The Best Thing I Can Think To Be
“You’re the devil,” Alis Li whispers. “I remember… in one of the old tongues, Mara means death.” “You realize,” Alis Li says, breathing hard, “that this is the worst thing ever done. Worse than stealing a few thousand people from heaven. Worse than that thing we fled, before we were Awoken—” The words above, spoken by Alis Li to Mara Sov, are…
Bite-sized Backstory 46: Per Audacia Ad Astra
In the years after Uldren’s victory over Sjur, the Awoken have returned to working on their ambitious dream of space flight. And this time, instead of living on a distant mountain top or remaining hidden in the woods, Mara Sov is out in the open, at the forefront of it all. And Sjur and Uldren are there with her. In Uldren, Mara had an enforcer who could win battles and put down opposition with…