Macross Frontier Episode Guide 01: Cross Encounter
First off, a programming note. There are multiple versions of the initial episode of Macross Frontier. One was an early release with incomplete effects. Another was a slimmed down version for its regular tv slot. What you’re looking for is the Yack Deculture edition. It’s a little longer, at around 31:39 or so, and has a few more character scenes than the other versions. If your version is shorter than roughly 32 minutes keep looking as you’ll be missing out on some content.
Episode Summary:
When Macross Frontier debuted, it had been 14 years since the last full Macross series, Macross 7, and more than six years since the first episode of the five part OVA series Macross Zero had come out. Nobody really knew what to expect from this new series. SDF Macross had been about a lone Human ship on the run from an overwhelming force of enemies where our culture that included things beyond hatred and warfare had saved the day. Macross 7 had been about getting a very alien set of enemies to open their hearts to the power of rock. Macross Zero had been about the effects of the modern world intruding on a primitive island culture. So, what about Macross Frontier? What would it be about?
When Frontier opens, it does so back in space. Macross hasn’t been in space for almost a decade and a half! We get a beautiful view of the Frontier fleet and we first meet a young woman named Sheryl who is excited to see a ship containing an ocean out the window of her approaching starliner. Apparently, Sheryl is a songstress known as the Galactic Fairy, and she is ending her long tour with a series of concerts on Frontier.
We’re quickly introduced to our second main character, Alto Saotome, a young man who enjoys flying and aerial acrobatics but who is oddly bitter at the limit of the sky within Frontier’s main city being too low for his liking. Alto’s friends also tease him a little about looking like a girl and it is briefly mentioned that he used to be a kabuki actor. If one knows anything about Kabuki, one has got to wonder just what kind of role Alto played. At one point in time all parts in Kabuki dramas, even the female ones, were played by boys!
Soon, we get our first glimpse of our third main character, the somewhat younger green-haired Ranka Lee. She works at a restaurant called Nyan Nyan, and seems a bit clumsy, but we also learn that she is related to a pilot in an elite part of the Frontier’s military. Other than that, though, Ranka’s role in Frontier’s story is still very unclear.
Finally, part way into the episode, the Frontier fleet has what seems to be its first encounter with a new alien force not yet seen in Macross. Ranka’s brother and Frontier’s president seem to know them as Vajra. Ranka’s bother in particular makes a comment that seems to indicate he’s been waiting for this day. Possibly to get revenge?
This episode has everything it needs to make it a true Macross show. It has fighter pilots and transforming fighter planes and missiles and gunfire going every which way. It has what could be the very first stages of a love triangle between Sheryl, Alto, and Ranka. And, it has music galore thanks to an impressive opening number performed by Sheryl.
Macross 7 had been very repetitive using the same animation loops and songs over and over again across nearly fifty episodes. Macross Zero had been visually impressive and had good characters, but it’s pacific island setting had left fans wishing for a return to space and politics and more typical social interactions. So far, Frontier seemed to be checking all the boxes. Fans were impressed with the first episode of Frontier, but there were still a lot of unknowns about the series and its characters.
Specific Scenes I Loved:
- The introduction of the Macross Frontier fleet. The initial exterior shot shows just how massive a collection of ships Frontier is. There’s a main “Island 1” at the head of the fleet and then several (I counted 20 or more) smaller pill-shaped islands stretching along behind. Just from a rough guesstimate, I’d put the pill-shaped islands at maybe five miles long each with the main island being a little bigger. That’s a whole lot of land area complete with seas and mountains and at least one main city with a population that must be in the millions.
- I also love that initial shot of the trolley car and surrounding city. We’ll see even better shots of the city as the series progresses, but that long pan up the street along with the traditional trolley car makes it clear that the city is large and high tech, but is also a place where tradition and familiarity is at least as important as technology.
- The little history lesson at the beginning. Macross Frontier has these short segments near the start of its first few episodes in order to help get views up to speed on a few different aspects of the Macross universe.
Sheryl’s concert. The concerts in SDF Macross, and Macross 7 were far more static affairs probably due to budget and animation challenges of the times. Macross Zero did not have a typical pop/rock music idol as its songstress, so while most of the OVA’s animation was very impressive, there just wasn’t much to animate music wise. Only the trippy, psychedelic holographic performances of the artificial intelligence Sharon Apple in Macross Plus comes close to the level of art and animation that Macross Frontier just demonstrated. - Alto climbing into a downed Valkyrie seems to be a close parallel to Shin Kudo doing much the same in Macross Zero.
Episode Impressions:
Overall, I like this episode. It’s a little fast paced and certainly it doesn’t stop to explain every little thing, but it sets up our three main characters. The alien attack that is still in progress seems to be pointing the way to the overall conflict that the Frontier fleet will face. The artwork has some problems here and there, Alto flying with his paper airplane has what should be 3d buildings instead drawn as 2d textures on the ground and it’s a bit jarring, but aside from a few other minor animation errors most everything else looks excellent. We were left in something of a cliff hanger at the end of the episode, so it will be interesting to see what happens next.
I also like this opening. The song points very heavily to there being a typical Macross love triangle between Alto, Ranka, and Sheryl, but the imagery from the traffic on a busy street to the hectic battles in space are all pretty awesome. I think my favorite part is the Valkyrie taking off right beside Alto as he is launching off the roof of his school in his Ex-gear.
Since this is only the first episode, there aren’t a lot of plot points that need to be called out. Or, maybe, being the first episode, nearly everything that happens is important? The one standout plot point that this episode threw us was the reveal that the “Galactic Fairy” Sheryl refers to herself as and is known as Sheryl Nome. We could be in for a wild ride if Sheryl is somehow related to the Nome sisters of Macross Zero. Their bloodline nearly saw the earth destroyed by a left behind alien guardian, after all.
Aside from that, here are the moment to moment notes I jotted down during the episode. There were a couple of fun Easter eggs and a few good callbacks to past Macross series along with some lovely background animations that are worth admiring.
0:00 – This episode opens with the phrase “Yack. Deculture.” This is a Zentradi phrase that has a number of meanings. Back 50+ years ago, when the Zentradi attacked earth, this phrase of theirs was almost always used as an expletive. Zentradi would speak it when they saw something they could not comprehend or yell it when their fighters or ships were about to be destroyed. Since the end of the war, the Zentradi have largely integrated with humanity and the meaning of the phrase has shifted and softened. By the time of Macross Frontier, it has a wide range of uses from surprise, to excitement, to being a compliment. In rare cases, it is still used in its original connotation.
1:08 – The Frontier fleet is beautiful and massive. It’s one of my favorite all time fleets because of its size and complexity. Note that there are several “island” ships trailing the main “Island 1” in the distance. Surrounding the fleet is a large number of support vessels including quite a few carriers and warships. Though never directly stated in this series, the Macross colony ship fleets are always supported by a sizable military escort because even 50+ years after “Space War 1” back in 2009, there are still an unknown number of rogue, warlike Zentradi fleets in the galaxy. Traveling on a long term exploration mission without an escort would be ill-advised.
2:13 – The scene here depicts a scene in the Macross movie “Do You Remember Love?” where several of the main characters were captured and spoken to / interrogated by the leader of the Zentradi fleet that attacked Earth. On the left is Hikaru, a Valkyrie pilot and the original show’s protagonist. In the middle is Roy Focker who also appears in Macross Zero and Misa Hayase who plays a somewhat similar role to Lieutenant Glass who escorts Sheryl on Frontier. The original show’s main singer, Lynn Minmay is being held in the Zentradi’s hand to the right.
4:42 – The fourth listing on the flight schedule “Satelight” is one of the two animation studios that worked on Macross Frontier.
5:27 – Nome? As in Sara and Mao Nome from Macross Zero? Up to this point, Frontier has only referred to Sheryl as “Sheryl” and here it drops the big twist that she might be related to the islander sisters who helped UN forces finally put an end to the destabilizing anti-UN forces a year prior to the launch of the original Macross ship at the beginning of Space War 1.
10:30 – The thought is that the Frontier fleet doesn’t make a lot of hyperspace folds because of just how huge it is. Instead, it makes long jumps from one candidate star system of potentially habitable worlds to the next, then it stops for long stretches at a time to refuel and resupply from asteroid belts and gas giants before making its next big jump.
14:14 – Looks like AI controlled Ghost fighters, which were in the initial prototype stage back in Macross Plus, have come into widespread use after all! Ace test pilot Isamau Dyson was so against the Ghost program that he went AWOL to earth in order to shoot down the first prototype Ghost fighter so as to prove that human pilots were better. That Ghost fighter was more than a match for Isamau and his rival/friend Gould, but they don’t do very well here thanks to the powerful jamming.
15:15 – I love the constant sparkling presence of the skycars traveling along their paths on Island 1’s outer dome. We’ll get brief up close glimpses of those trams and their shell stations later on in the series
15:41 – Nyan Nyan was the restaurant that Lynn Minmay worked at in SDF Macross. It was run by her uncle. I guess it survived and expanded into a franchise! Remember, anything that survives the original SDF Macross show or the “Do You Remember Love?” movie is very remarkable because the vast majority of the earth was destroyed in a single Zentradi fleet wide orbital bombardment.
15:53 – Ranka’s little song ends in “Deculture”, demonstrating one of the ways that phrase has slowly merged with everyday life. Now, what was once an expletive, is just part of a restaurant’s marketing jingle and its meaning has shifted to reference the quality of the food and dining at the restaurant.
16:43 – I love the carrier here that can launch fighters from the top and bottom decks. We saw some other novel launch methods in previous Macross works, but I think this one is by far the best as it uses spaces’ 3d nature to good effect.
21:48 – “Super Packs” are additional modules fitted to a Valkyrie that give it extra maneuvering thrusters, fuel, and armaments meant for space combat. “Armor Packs”, are similar but are more weighted towards the armament side of things. You can see the pilot that chases the red Vajra into Island 1’s dome jettison his pack just before he enters.
22:05 – Note that Sheryl’s appearance changes from an elaborate outfit to what almost looks like a skin tight diving suit when the evacuation order is issued. By this point in the Macross universe, full body holography is a thing. We saw it in “Do You Remember Love?”, the followup movie that retold the original Macross’ story, and saw extensive use of holograms in Macross Plus where the virtual idol “Sharon Apple” put on very trippy holographic concerts. It seems that Sheryl might not always be as provocative on stage as she first appears.
23:09 – Skull Squadron, first featured in SDF Macross, has a long history of being the best of the best within Macross. It also has a history of its leader dying. We’ll see how that goes.
27:32 The scene of the tanks shooting at the Vajra is an almost direct homage to an extremely similar scene in the original Neon Genesis Evangalion. Right down to the enemy firing back and obliterating the entire block.
29:41 Yep. Another inexperienced pilot climbs into a Valkyrie in the middle of a battle. This happens a lot in Macross. It happened in the original, in Macross Zero, here in Macross Frontier, and will happen again in Macross Delta, the show made after Frontier. It’s almost a trope unto itself now. It usually doesn’t go super well for the new Valkyrie pilot in their first outing… but maybe things will be different for Alto?
Normally, this is where I would pretend to speculate on what’s in store during the next episode based on the ending teaser, but for whatever reason, I don’t have a Next Episode section on the end of the Yak Deculture edition. So… I guess we’ll find out together!
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 worse, transitioning between realities devastated many of the Awoken’s electronics. From AI’s Mara’s Awoken made it back to our solar system, yes, but they did not arrive with a powerful post-Golden Age fleet. Instead, they limped to our asteroid belt in search of resources and shelter.
The first ship they find is an old, Golden Age, AI controlled “habitat tender”. That is, it’s a forest ship! During our Golden Age, this ship went out, snagged a comet, then built a domed forest on its surface. It would have been the perfect starting point for the Awoken if its forest had not caught fire some time before. Still, the ship had reactor power and gravity and was even continuing to support life in the form of insects and rats. I love this section because it is a reference back to one of the more cryptic original Destiny 1 Grimoire Cards “Ghost Fragment: Awoken”.
Soon, Uldren’s scouting flights find a large collection, a Reef, of other ships that had tried to congregate together for survival during the Collapse. Mara orders that they strip what remained of the Awoken’s battered Hulls in order to fix up this reef of still partially functional ghost ships. Once they restore gravity and power, the Awoken will be able to start building habitats and industry and start having children. Remember, the Awoken in our solar system number in the tens of thousands at most, and have no warships and few weapons. They do have some powerful personal and ship-based maltech weapons from the Distributary, but most of those are far to powerful to be used within the confines of delicate starships adrift in space.
Mara, being Mara, is serious about the whole thing, but Sjur is giddy. She’s already thinking about forging bladed weapons since they don’t have the spare resources to build firearms, and she is considering how to get ship to ship communications and sensors up and running without any spare fuel to launch satellites. It’s then that she starts talking excitedly about launching things into orbit around their ships and asteroids and even the sun without using rockets or explosives.
Amusingly, Sjur’s excitement is contagious and even gets Mara into the spirit of things. Even with serious work to be done, Mara can’t help but think of the sight of her partner straining mightily against her bow and launching communication satellites off the surface of their ships. Sjur is having the same thoughts:
I’ll be the first woman in the universe to place a comsat in heliocentric orbit with a longbow.
“You’re absurd,” Mara tells her, but even she is looking forward to exploring and rebuilding this new Reef with Sjur at her side. Somehow, even though Mara is outwardly calm, Sjur picks up on and comments on her excitement. Normally, this would just be a sign of two people knowing each other very well and picking up on subtle signs, but Mara responds with an odd question:
Sjur, can you hear what I’m thinking?
At first, Sjur begins to deny it. As special as the Awoken are, and as close as she and Mara have become, they cannot read each other’s minds… but then, Sjur gasps mid-sentence and scolds Mara playfully for something that Mara apparently just thought at her. One can only imagine what could cause that sort of reaction in Sjur.
As the Awoken start the long work of making the Reef habitable, they also begin experiencing strange, almost life-like visions. Faces and images of people they know or knew appear to them as they work and as they sleep. Some of these seem so real that they even drape shrouds over their statues to prevent the real, physical works of art from being mistaken for visions. All the Awoken feel a strange new hum of energy in their bodies, as if they are connected to something new and different than they were before. And many of these vision concern Mara.
Around this time, two amazing discoveries are brought to Mara’s attention:
The first comes from Kelda Wadj, the head of Mara’s Techeuns. “We’re all a bit magic now,” she tells Mara. She and her fellow thinkers and scientists have found evidence that the Awoken now have a small but measurable amount of acausal power. This limited ability for the Awoken to violate the laws of physics seems to be tied to their thoughts and emotions. This slight acausality will eventually be the reason that the Awoken persist and remember each cycle of the Dreaming City when a normal human or alien would have been reset each time the city goes through its loops.
As usual, Mara seems to have some greater insight to this new power, but she says very little about it. Mara briefly mentions that this magic likely comes from the Traveler and possibly the Darkness or the mixing of the two, but she keeps whatever else she knows to herself. Kelda Wadj is more interested in how they will classify this new magic. Do they try to describe it in terms of physics? Do they just accept that it is space magic? But if this power can be influenced by thoughts, how exactly does one teach it or explain it? Kelda is like a scholar trying to decide how to explain the newest mystery they have fund.
At one point during their conversation, Kelda Wadj calls Mara “your majesty” to which Mara recoils. Mara says that she doesn’t wish to be called that. She insist that the Awoken are now part of a democracy. Sjur, Kelda Wadj, and the others around her all roll their eyes. After all, it was Mara’s multi-thousand year plan of cunning and ruthlessness and compassion that brought them all back to our solar system.But Mara still seems to seriously want to treat her fellow Awoken as equals. This will have some serious, disastrous implications within days or weeks. But first, the other amazing discovery barges into the room in the form of Mara’s brother.
Uldren has just returned from a scouting mission to Earth, and shockingly, he has a serious slash wound across he neck! But this is Uldren we’re talking about. Stubborn and adventurous. He’s holding a makeshift bandage of cytogel to his bleeding neck while grinning an excited grin.
“Aliens!” he rasped. “I found aliens, and one of them cut my throat!”
Chapters Referenced:
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 about it’s heat dissipating core never really overcame it’s small size and the feeling that it might not scale well. And then Apple forgot to update it and it languished for half a decade.
This new Mac Pro feels much better. Really, it feels like Apple back in the days of the Bondi Blue Power Mac G3 or the Graphite G4. Where form and function worked together to make Insanely Great machines… instead of form embarrassingly beating out function in the trash can’s design. What the new Mac Pro actually reminds me the most of is the glorious G4 Cube. The way the outer enclosure slips off revealing everything inside is just so familiar. This Mac Pro is the G4 Cube reborn as it always should have been, with overwhelming amounts of power, expansion potential, and airflow. (What was that old Crazy Apple Rumors prediction? Something about the Son of Pismo and the G4 Cube’s return. Whatever it was, I think we’re there now!)
I totally can’t afford one of these Mac Pros. I don’t even want to afford one, but the fact that it exist at all is heartwarming to those of us who longed for Apple to get with the program.
SwiftUI.
Just the other day Craig Hockenberry, among others, was talking up how neat it would be if the next Apple UI frameworks was based around declarative programming, and here we are with SwiftUI operating in a manner that almost feels like Swift merged with HTML or CSS. Creating a Table View in SwiftUI looks more like declaring you want a list, and then adding in modifiers and additions to it until it looks and behaves the way you want. I think somebody must have let the cat out of the bag a little early. As someone who mainly sticks to his Storyboards and Auto-layout, SwiftUI looks very cool, and also very mind bending.
When Apple showed the short story’s worth of code that made up a traditional Swift Table View and then showed the small paragraph of code needed to do the same thing in SwiftUI, I thought it was a misdirection. Sure, you can declare and style the view a little in that paragraph, but that can’t be it, right? There’s some mass of helper functions hiding in some other file, right? Not according to Apple’s SwiftUI tutorials! I do wonder how flexible SwiftUI will be out of the gate, but I also figure Apple probably knows what it is doing. I can’t wait to explore this more.
Oh, and that interactive tutorial page is one of the cooler things I’ve ever seen on the web. I don’t care if you can’t program, just scroll through it and watch as it shows you how to build an app scroll by scroll and step by step.
The Odds and Ends.
There’s so much other stuff that got announced, from the death of iTunes to ARKit 3 that supports walking in front of and behind the virtual elements, to Apple Maps finally getting its version of Street View in Look Around. But the thing that interested me the most is the new Find My app.
At first glance, Find My is just a combination of the Find iPhone and Find Friends apps. But then Apple threw in something really cool:
The new Find My app combines Find My iPhone and Find My Friends into a single, easy-to-use app on Mac, iPadOS, and iOS devices. Find My can help you locate a missing Mac — even if it’s offline and sleeping — by sending out Bluetooth signals that can be detected by Apple devices in use nearby. These devices then relay the detected location of your Mac to iCloud so you can locate it in the Find My app.
It’s all anonymous and end-to-end encrypted so no one, including Apple, knows the identity of any reporting device. And because the reporting happens silently using tiny bits of data that piggyback on existing network traffic, there’s no need to worry about your battery life, your data usage, or your privacy.
Wait… what?! So, if someone walks off with your MacBook Pro, you can go to the Find My app and when complete strangers walk by your lost laptop while using their iPhones those iPhones will pick up on signals being sent by the MacBook Pro and relay it’s location to you. All without breaching anyone’s privacy… except maybe the thief’s?! That’s really cool. Now some companies like Tile have been doing this for a while. If you stick a Tile onto something and then use their app to mark it as lost, other people with the Tile app installed would passively help you find it in much the same way this Find My feature works. Problem was, how many people really used Tile and its app vs the tens of millions of iPhone users that will be able to help you track down your stolen MacBook Pro?
Find My is also a little scary, but no more so than everyone’s iPhones working together in a privacy preserving fashion to give iOS users real time traffic reports even in smaller cities like mine. It will be interesting to see a list of which Macs this new Find My feature works with.
There’s been some good Macworld and WWDC keynotes over the years, but I can’t remember one as interesting and packed full of seemingly spot on decisions since maybe the iPhone’s 2007 debut. Apple is back in the Pro game. Apple is writing awesome frameworks for the future. It was never like Apple wasn’t doing cool, dare I say innovative, things over the past several years. But this year feels different in the best way.
Just like with the Music/Calendar/Safari/Dock-enabled iTunes shown on stage today, I think Apple just Nailed It.
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 itself as a turn-based, card deck building, roguelike. That last part is important, because instead of being something like Hearthstone where you need to build up your decks and strategies over long periods of time, in Pirates Outlaws, you deck resets at the end of each adventure you take.
On a basic level, Pirates Outlaws is a fun turn-based game where you battle AI controlled pirates across islands and beaches. Your single character is on the left, while up to three enemy pirates fill the right side of your screen. At the bottom you have five randomly chosen cards in your hand. Some cards attack and do damage to the enemy. Some apply defenses like armor or dodging to your character. And a wide variety apply buffs or debuffs to yourself or your enemies. Some cards are free to use, while others cost ammo that you generally get by playing an ammo card. It’s up to you to strategize on the fly from one round to the next in order to get through the battle.
At the end of very battle, you gain some Gold, and are given three new cards to add to your deck. Over the course of a single adventure you’ll go through several battles and, if luck is on your side, you’ll be able to tailor your deck to match your chosen character’s skill set.
Characters? As in more than one option? Yes! Although you start off as the Gunner class who generates one unit of Ammo per round, it doesn’t take long to unlock the second character, a Sword Master who converts 25% of the damage she deals to health for herself when her hp is below 50%. The six other characters will take longer to unlock, but each of them has their own unique skills that feel like they have a lot of promise.
In terms of gameplay, Pirates Outlaws has a similar loop to FTL: Faster Than Light. You start at a sea map of battles, taverns, and markets and have to pick and choose your way towards the top of the map where a random final boss waits. Your ship only has so much endurance so you need to pick your routes wisely. You can buy more health or a range of new items at the taverns and markets. A full game usually lasts from ten to twenty minutes, and when you are finally killed you receive a last round of Gold and Repute based on how far you progressed.
Overall, I’ve found Pirates Outlaws to be that perfect mix of turn-based decision making, card building strategizing, and roguelike freedom to screw up knowing that you’ll be free to give it another go next time around. The game cost $.99 on Apple’s App Store and is also available on Android. It has a variety of In-App Purchases to speed your way toward unlocking new characters. It looks like there’s also new world maps you can buy as well, but so far I’ve found the game to be very enjoyable with just the two early characters and the one randomly generated map.
One key for me is that the game runs without an internet connection. You can’t buy more Gold through in-app purchases when not online, of course, but other than that, it will happily play anywhere at any time.
So, if you’re looking for a fun, easy to play turn-based game that has a surprising amount of depth, you should check out Pirates Outlaws.
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 all the ships in her fleet respond to her whims. With nothing but a thought of the banyan trees far below her, Mara opens a channel to the rest of the fleet and starts a final systems check. This plays out much like our rocket launches of today, where Mara as the Flight Controller queries each team leader and gets a go or no go from them. FIDO (Flight Dynamics Officer), Guidance, INCO (Integrated Communications Officer), GEOD (ground tracking?), BIO (life support systems?), Sensors, and Weapons all report go for launch.
With everything ready, Mara takes one last look at the perfect world she is leading her people away from. Through the virtual, all encompassing point of view that the sensors and cameras of her sensorium provide her, Mara gazes back at the Distributary:
There it is. The world of her rebirth, shining water-blue and beautiful, wrapped like a gyroscope in its twin rings. World of laughing Corsairs, world of breathless forest hunts, world of mountains flickering with pale Cherenkov fire, world of sweet berry-stained lips and mathematical insight pure as a rhodium chime. She will never see it again.
And then, Mara thinks of her mother, and we learn that Osana decided not to go with her daughter on this new journey. For a moment, Mara finds herself caught up in the memory of the night her mother told her.
The two had shared a late night of drinks and conversation at Osana’s ranch, but as the sun began to come up, Mara’s mother broke the bad news. To Mara, it was like a nightmare come true. She never really considered carrying out her plan without her mother somewhere close by. When Mara asks why, her mother replies that Uldren isn’t speaking to her anymore.
“Because I already told him I wasn’t coming with you. I’m happy here.”
“Mom,” Mara says, with rising anger, “I’m happy here too. That’s not the point—” A conversation that did not so much end as beat itself to an unsustainable emotional pulp, hours later. No catharsis. No closure.
And so, after what seems to have been a long, painful argument, Mara and her mother are left hanging and disconnected from one another as Mara sets off to fulfill her plan.
Back in the present, Sjur’s urgent voice comes over the comms.
“Flight, Sensor,” Sjur Eido calls. “I have anomalous starfield occlusions, bearing—”
“Intercept!” Mara shouts. “They’re missiles!” It had to happen. Someone had to try to stop the departure, someone good and Paladin-pure who believes they are saving tens of thousands of Awoken from madness and doom.
Uldren, who is in charge of the fleet’s weapons warns Mara that they won’t be able to shoot down all the missiles. This forces Mara to make a painful choice. She orders Uldren to redirect their defensive fire to target the missiles aimed at the gateway that will take their ships back to our normal universe. It means that they will lose ships and hundreds if not thousands of brave Awoken who volunteered to go Mara’s mission, but it is either that or have the gateway destroyed and the mission stopped before it can even start.
With her next thought, Mara sends a command to the fleet ordering all of her ships to abort from the planned countdown and skip directly to launch. Mara’s fleet strains as it accelerates towards the gateway they built above the Distributary. Some of the ship are hit, damaged, maybe even destroyed, but the gateway remains undamaged by the attack.
We don’t get to see the implications or consequences of this new wave of Awoken on Awoken violence. Someone decided to attack Mara Sov, the most powerful figure in Awoken society. They killed hundreds of their own kind and I can only imagine what sorts of justifications and accusations will play out back on the Distributary once Mara is gone. Maybe this attack is smoothed over and the Awoken in their pocket universe go on about their peaceful lives? Or, maybe this violent act shatters Awoken society once more and the Distributary descends into a new civil war? We just don’t know.
Back on her ship, Mara braces against the hard acceleration. Her final thoughts, before her ship reenters the singularity that brought her to this strange hidden dimension, center on her mother. In response, her sensorium tries to open a channel to Osana, and the last thing Mara sees is the error:
No connection. No connection. No connection. Cannot connect to Osana.
And with that, Mara Sov and her Awoken are on their way back to our universe and our solar system.
Chapters Referenced:
Palingenesis I
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. I came away from this new, updated version of Aladdin entertained, but also fairly disappointed.
For the past few years, Disney has been remaking some of its most famous animated movies into live action films. This current wave of Disney remakes started, more or less, with 2014’s Maleficent which was highly successful and is soon getting a sequel. The Jungle Book in 2016 and 2017’s Beauty and the Beast were both worthy takes on their animated predecessors with the new version Beauty and the Best now ranking as one of my favorite films of all time.
In large part, I have enjoyed these Disney remakes. Some argue that there’s no point in updating classic films with live actors and large doses of CGI, but I think Disney has made some great choices so far, and added new scenes, songs, and substance to the films they first released decades ago.
Until now.
The long and the short of it is that this live action remake of Aladdin lost something. Honestly, I think it lost a lot of things that hurt it in a number of ways. Let’s start with the obvious. Yes, Robin Williams is dead. Yes, he was missed. But, contrary to my expectations, Will Smith did an ok job and even had some fun new moments of his own. The movie would have been better with a reprisal by Robin Williams, for sure, but Will Smith’s genie is not a reason to avoid this movie. I was never really worried about that. I think if Disney knew anything, it knew that it needed a strong performance by whoever it choose to replace Williams. And I think Will Smith mostly delivered.
Interesting, Aladdin is one of the biggest reasons I was disappointed by this movie. The animated version of Aladdin was clever, resourceful, honest, and, for the most part, charming. This live action version of Aladdin lacked those last two traits. 2019’s Aladdin got a lot of milage of being a great pickpocket, but I think maybe he got too much milage out of it. Aside from a few resourceful costume changes as he infiltrated the palace, this new version of Aladdin showed almost no smarts at all. Time after time, I longed for him to charm his way out of a situation, but time after time he either bumbled along until everyone else in the scene got fed up with him, or he managed to get Genie to bail him out at the last instant. The animated version of Aladdin wasn’t a brilliant charmer, but he had enough charisma that he could usually talk his way out of the trouble he got himself in. The more I saw of this updated version of Aladdin, the less I liked him. It’s not that Mena Massoud was bad in the role. He did a good job with what he was given. I think it was just bad writing that did not give him anything clever to do aside from a few instance of slight of hand that were almost never on camera.
I also didn’t like that they put more emphasis on Aladdin’s lack of moral character. 1992’s Aladdin wasn’t unimpeachable, he was lying about being a prince, after all, but this more modern Aladdin certainly succumbed more to the lure of power and greed than the original did. It was with sadness that the animated version of Aladdin told the Genie that he could not set him free. Live action Aladdin? His motive were both more about himself and he was somewhat more mean and less sympathetic about it. That made me sad because I feel it actually did some small amount of harm to the character.
Naomi Scott as Princes Jasmine was a lot better written. She was smart. She was capable. She was resourceful. I largely appreciated the attempt this film made to expand Jasmine’s story. In the 1992 movie, she really didn’t have much of a role other than not being “a prize to be won.” This new, updated version of Jasmine had the intelligence and ambition to succeed her father as Sultan, if only her father and the law would let her. I don’t think Jasmine’s transition from trophy princess to potential Sultanness was quite as successful as expanded role Belle got in the new Beauty and the Beast, but I think Aladdin (2019) had a far lesser 90’s animated character to start with and did an ok job at trying to modernize her. I didn’t think Jasmine’s new songs fit anywhere near as well as the new songs in the 2017 version of Beauty and the Beast, but there’s no denying that Jasmine’s final song about not staying silent had some real power behind it.
If Aladdin’s character was poorly written, I think the second disappointment of this updated movie was the songs. The music and updated lyrics were both ok. There were some lines in “Friend Like Me” and “Prince Ali” that weren’t as good as Robin Williams’ in the animated version, but mostly it was the visuals, not the lyrics, that disappointed me. There were more visuals in the 2019 version, to be sure. 1992’s “Friend Like Me” has a surprising amount of blank, one color backgrounds. The 2019 version didn’t have that problem. There was a lot of stuff to see in every frame, but I felt like they didn’t do enough with that stuff. It’s 2019! Disney has all the money in the world! And yet it felt to me like both “Friend Like Me” and “Prince Ali” had less spectacle and less fun than their animated versions.
For instance, in 2019’s Prince Ali, the line “strong as ten regular men, definitely” was not accompanied with Genie granting Aladdin the brief ability to lift several men above his head. I was looking forward to that in live action to see how they’d do it. Likewise, in the same song, they replaced giant elephant Abu kicking open the palace door in exchange for the entire song pausing until the Sultan picked up the beat. I thought it was almost a fair trade, but the animated version was just a little spectacular. Even “A Whole New World” suffered a little, too. In the animated version, Aladdin, Jasmine, and Carpet do more loops and changes of direction. Their flight above the clouds and among the birds felt a little more magical. The live action was disappointingly tame by comparison.
Lastly, I felt that the 2019 movie just lacked some of the great pacing and scenes than were in the 1992 version. Just a few examples:
- I missed the moment where Jasmine made the same rooftop jump as Aladdin and then declared that she was a fast learner. In the 2019 version, she stops short and clings to a pole on the near side, instead. They actually managed to cut one of Jasmine’s few strong character moments in this new film.
- Aladdin and Jasmine’s conversation overlooking Agrabah was great in the 1992 version. Their back and forth and their contrasting views of life in the palace worked very well interleaved with each other. Most of that wonderful scene was lost in the live action version.
- Aladdin telling Genie about Jasmine for the first time is an excellent scene with good voice acting and animation in the ’92 version. It just wasn’t as good in the ’19 version.
- I was sad that we didn’t get to see Jasmine pretend to fall in love with Jafar like she did near the end of the 1992 film. Maybe it wasn’t in this new Jasmine’s character, but I was hoping to see that scene. The silly things Jasmine says to compliment Jafar in the animated movie was just delightful. She mentions his eyebrows and the gaps between his teeth and the line “Your beard is so… twisted.” was delivered amazingly well. Now, it’s not even in the 2019 version of the movie.
- We also didn’t get Jafar’s “Prince Ali” refrain which I was hoping to see.
But more than those specific scenes, I felt that the new movie changed too much of the pacing. Not just in the new scenes or the added gags. Much of the movie felt off to me. Ultimately, while the new version did make an attempt to add in the idea of the responsibility a leader should have towards his or her people, I think the animated version had a stronger, cleaner storyline that was lost somewhere along the way.
I didn’t hate this movie. It was nowhere near as disappointing as some other live action movie adaptations I’ve seen in recent years. (Ghost in the Shell, I’m looking at you…) It had a few great moments and plot points that I enjoyed. The Genie’s romance with Dalia, Jasmine’s handmaiden, was a highlight of the movie, for instance. And, even though Aladdin was overly defined by his slight of hand, it did generate some tender moments here and there. I also enjoyed that Jafar described himself as the same sort of pickpocket street rat as Aladdin, and that he was just one who fully gave into a need for power. And, you know what, turning the Genie into a human at the end did us the favor of sparing us a Return of Jafar or Prince of Thieves. That might be the best move the 2019 movie made!
Aladdin (2019) is not a movie that must be avoided at all cost. Kids will enjoy it, for sure. But, they will enjoy the animated version just as much, and the animated version is just all around a better movie. If you want to see a classic Disney movie redone in live action, I’d highly recommend 2017’s Beauty and the Beast. I thought it updated and added to its animated predecessor in ways that this new version of Aladdin largely failed to do. This new version of Aladdin more or less just made me wonder why it even existed.
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 revelations and some interesting changes but I could never shake the feeling that something was off
Was it the story? Maybe. While the story did advance, it seemed to do so slowly to the point that I almost wanted less episodes. It's not really a good thing when you want less of something you enjoy. If anything Season 5 was a downer chapter and the result of previous defeats, which is fine, but it never ever seemed to pick back up... which wasn't.
But maybe it was the combat? There wasn't a lot of combat and what combat there was wasn't always great. The battle at Blake's mansion was decent. I really enjoyed Yang's slow motion beatdown of Raven's lackeys, but the season's two biggest battles, that of Team Cinder vs Team RWBY and that of Raven vs Cinder, let me down. I appreciate a battle going against our heroes, but the long running battle at the academy basically saw none of our heroes land a solid hit. Weiss in particular fared extremely poorly to the point that she barely even put up a fight at all. And even when the tide of battle turned to favor the good guys we still didn't see them get any definitive shots in.
Plus, I continue to be dismayed at Ruby's lack of speed / rose petals.
The fight between Cinder and Raven was flashy, to be sure, but ultimately I felt it lacked substance. Again, no really good hits from either side. It was more like it kinda just ended without either side really changing. Yang talking her mother down was pretty interesting, though.
Overall, it felt to me that while Season 5 got from a Point A to a Point B, it just wasn't as fun as it should have or could have been. But oh, look, this post is titled "RWBY Season 6, isn't it? Why talk all about Season 5? Because I wanted to set the stage for this:
I really enjoyed RWBY Season 6.
Combat, Story, Fun, and even general Animation Quality seemed to kick up a good notch or two. I loved the two part fable episodes. I loved the fight between Blake, Yang, and Adam. I loved the silliness and the emotion and the seemingly impossible situation our heroes and the entire world now seem to be in. Oh! And Ruby got to zip around again, rose petals and all! Maybe my enjoyment also had something to do with Team RWBY finally getting back together. Maybe I can't pin down the exact reasons, but I really did feel that Season 6 was a lot more satisfying than Season 5, and that I am actually anxious for the next season to come out. I can't wait!
There is one other thing though. I like that it seems most of RWBY's cards are now on the table. I like that I don't yet see the way for our heroes to win. And... maybe somewhat oddly... I am hopeful that the series is starting the wind down. Yes, that's right. I want RWBY to wrap up. Not because I'm tired of it or dislike it, but because I feel like it's near the best it's ever been and because I feel like the best stories have beginnings, middles, and ends. I am hopeful that RWBY has a strong ending in mind and is working its way towards it. Better to go out with a BANG than with a whimper, right?
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 other Guardians have responded. We are the closest however, by at least an hour.”
“And that anti-air?” Tesni asked.
“We have a good read on it now, but getting in won’t be easy…” her Ghost replied.
“I’m ready. Drop us in as close as you can,” she ordered.
Two minutes later, Tesni completed her transmat on one knee, pulse rifle at the ready. She’d long since learned to be prepared for anything. Fortunately, the only thing moving, at the moment, was the rapidly shrinking glint of her Jumpship, the Anastasia, as it arced its way back into a safe orbit. Tesni quickly took in her surroundings. It was the usual, broken buildings, smashed streets, unreadable Russian signs. She did a second sweep to be sure then confidently moved forward into the city’s interior. She wasn’t the same woman she’d been twenty years before, when her Ghost had found her dead on a long forgotten beach. Back then, and for months afterward, she’d been reeling, trying to cope with everything. Now, she was one of the few Guardians of The City to have survived the ill-fated campaign against Crota, and one of the fewer still who had set foot on both Mars and Venus. She was, despite her insistence to the contrary, fast becoming a legend.
A patrol of Dreg and Vandals guarding a collapsed parking garage fell to her not even knowing what had hit them. Even the large Fallen squad she encountered next was easily pushed aside, and it had been lead by an experienced Captain. Tesni was moving fast through the empty streets,
maybe faster than even she should have been, but it was necessary. Time was running out. Of the three guardians who had been alive when she landed one, Mitya Durst, a friend of hers was dead, permanently dead, his indicator having blinked off minutes before. The second, identified as ‘xXHacker_NameXx’ had been taken down as well. His indicator was still active, but it marked him as revivable… a status that wouldn’t last long in the field without backup. And it didn’t. By the time Tesni finished fighting her way through another group, this one armed with a pair of Pikes, his indicator had blinked off as well.
That left one, a ‘Natela Murk.’ A name that seemed oddly familiar for some reason. Tesni was still a kilometer away, but at least now, armed with a Pike, she was hopeful she could reach the other woman in time. Racing along the abandoned streets wasn’t simple, but the long idle traffic was nothing compared to gridlock of Moscow. At five hundred meters out, Tesni keyed her mic.
“Natela, this is Tesni Jarmila. I’m inbound from the East, eta two minutes. What are you facing?” There was no substantive reply. The comlink was open and active, but all Tesni could make out was heavy breathing and Fallen gunfire. She tried again. “Natela, what is your situation? I’m one minute out, and I could use some help helping you…”
“I don’t know… I can’t move…” the other Guardian replied. Her young voice was pained and weak, but at least she was alive.
“Snipers then? Artillery?” Tesni asked.
“I don’t know!” the other voice insisted fearfully. “I can’t move my legs!”
“You can’t what?” Tesni asked, confused. The girl’s statement didn’t make any sense.
Tesni rocketed over the final hill between herself and her fellow Guardian. At the bottom of the downslope the roadway she’d been following split to curve around a large, long dormant fountain. The plaza was flanked on the
left by some sort of three story office complex and to the right by what looked to be a courthouse or administrative building. By the way the Fallen, both living and dead, were clustered, the building on the right was the one of interest. Tesni gunned her Pike’s engine and charged through as much of the small crowd as the could, guns blazing all the way. She mowed down three or four of them as she passed through, a decent accomplishment vs. the usually agile aliens. The rest turned to fire at her, bunching up as they did so. Tesni smiled. Their actions were as predictable as they were perfect. Perfect for her, that is. She leapt clear of her Pike, held herself aloft briefly with a burst of Light, then charged back into their midst, unleashing a devastating explosion of Arc Light as she impacted among them. All but one of the Fallen attackers died instantly in the blast with the final one dropping to her rifle a moment later.
“Natela, are there any snipers?” Tesni called out as she began scanning the windows of the office building. There were dozens if not hundred of dark spaces to cover, and searching each one visually was going to take time. She got her answer sooner than she’d wanted, as the tell tale glows of charging beam rifles made themselves known, one up high and to the right on the building’s roof, the other low and to the left. Tesni did the only thing she could do when faced with so much firepower spread so far apart. She turned and dashed towards the open door of the administration building. The first shot missed high, streaking by her head as one of the snipers overcompensated, but the other caught her in the back as she passed through the smashed doorway to safety. Tesni grimaced for a moment as she hid behind the wall nearest the entrance. Most Fallen weapons could barely scratch her armor, but those beam rifles… they hurt. Bad. She took in a few pained, shaky breaths but then clenched her fist and channeled some of The Traveler’s immense power to heal the damage the sniper had caused. Another second and she was fine, the only lingering effect being a slight numbness in her back as her brain tried to cope with the fact that she was no longer injured.
A sound to her right caused Tesni to spin, gun at the ready, but it was only her fellow Guardian. Oddly, the much younger woman was sitting on the floor near a window with her back propped up against the wall. More oddly
still, was the fact that her sniper rifle was laying on the ground more than a foot outside her reach. The girl had her helmet off, revealing her purple- dyed hair and making her face, and the intense pain she was in, quite clear even in the dark interior.
“Come on, let’s get you out of here,” Tesni said, offering her hand. The girl shook her head no.
“I can’t move…My legs or my arm…” she said once again.
It was obvious to Tesni what had happened. The girl had been pinned down and had been trying to snipe her way out when she’d been counter sniped in return. The large hole melted through the center of her light chest piece spoke to that. But why hadn’t she healed herself? That was the confusing part.
“Heal and let’s go,” Tesni all but commanded.
“You… don’t think… I’ve tried?” Natela replied, resting her head against the wall behind her. Her breathing was shallow now. Her voice, dangerously weak. “It… hurts…” the girl continued slowly.
“Damn rookie,” Tesni groaned. The girl was suffering needlessly against a wall when she should have been right as rain with only the slightest effort. Tesni readied her pulse rifle and took aim without waiting for permission.
“No! Wai…” the younger girl squawked pitifully before a three round burst silenced her. Her Ghost expanded, lighting the hallway as it caught her.
“Bring her back,” Tesni ordered it angrily. An instant later the shorter girl was standing again, sniper rifle in hand, helmet in place, body fully restored. “Whoever thinks they trained you didn’t do jack all,” Tesni snarled. “When we get back, me and you and them are going to have a long, long talk. And then me and you are going to spend some time in the Crucible where you can learn to deal with the pain without getting others killed.”
“I…” the younger girl began, but fell silent under Tesni’s glare. Tesni summoned her Ghost to her hand and asked, “Status on those guns?”
“Three of the guns have been successfully neutralized by other Guardians. I have the Anastasia standing by,” her Ghost replied.
“Bring it in. I’m taking this one back to the tower for a long debriefing,” Tesni responded.
The flight back didn’t take an hour, but it felt much longer to both of the Guardians. Tesni spent the time trying to cool her anger, while Natela worked on staying as far away as possible from her incensed rescuer. Their debriefing session, too, seemed to stretch on as Natela had each of her mistakes and their resultant consequences, pointed out to her. Two Guardians had died, in part thanks to her. Their Ghosts had been permanently lost, not to mention one of The City’s few viable Jumpships. When it was all over Natela walked down the hallway, dejected, helmet in hand, unsure what she was going to do next. But then the Titan who’d walked out of the office with her called her name from across the hall.
“I realized during the briefing that we had met before,” Tesni said calmly as she approached. “In one of the locker rooms. You were… having a tough time.”
Natela nodded. “I’d just died for the first time. It wasn’t fun.”
“More or less fun than being hit by an anti-ship round and then drowning? That’s how I first died.”
“Um…” Natela answered, unsure of what to say. “Wait, why are you even talking to me?”
“Because I think I can help you stop having tough times,” Tesni replied. “I’ve been where you are and…”
“Help me? Why would you want to help me? You’re a legend. I’m just…I
just…You were there. You heard all about my mistakes,” Natela said accusingly.
“Because now I also know who you are Natela Tamaya Murk. You’re one of the ‘chosen living’, and a natural blade dancer. We haven’t seen one with your talent in years. You may not be a legend yet, but if you live long enough you will be. And I can make sure you do live long enough.”
“I never fought in the Crucible because I don’t want to… I’ll look foolish and worse than I already do,” Natela said, voicing her worries.
“Not if you’re fighting beside me,” Tesni countered. “I don’t do this often, but I do outrank you. Meet me on the deck of The Tower tomorrow morning at 10:00 prepared for combat. That’s an order.”
“Yes ma’am…” Natela replied, holding a convincing frown until her new mentor disappeared around the corner. “I’m going to be trained by Tesni Jarmila?!” she said, laughing to herself once the coast was clear.
“I’m going to be a legend!”
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 rusted scraps of washed up metal, and the glistening water that stretched out to the horizon. She watched the next wave wash in, closer and closer towards her until it swept gently over her… armored boots?! She’d never owned these! Her hands, too, were encased in thick, protective gloves. She’d never worn these! Something similar maybe, tattered and torn, but not these! It only took a moment for her troubled mind to realize she was entirely suited in heavy armor the likes of which she’d never seen before!
The last things she remembered were a boat, overflowing with people… refugees… and herself, firing a rifle at something largely unseen across the water, through the black of night… It must have fired back… and been bigger… There was an explosion. Bodies and debris flew then splashed in the darkness. Then another flash and… she’d been thrown into the air and gone under too!
The unwanted memory knocked Tesni back onto the sand, had her scrambling backwards away from the wave until her back pressed up against something hard and segmented… a rock, or a tree maybe… that prevented her further retreat.
She clenched her eyes shut and dug her fingers into the soft dirt as she remembered and felt her own final moments. There was pain, intense pain and darkness, and the heavy, semi-restricted feeling of being immersed in and surrounded by water. There was no up, or down, or escape. At first she’d thrashed and struggled… as best she could… with which of her limbs remained… but it was no use. She’d given up. And then…. and then…
“Keep calm, Guardian,” an articulate voice urged her in the present.
…and then there was a sense of calm, of serenity even. After everything she’d been through she was finally done. Done with searching. Done with fighting. Done with suffering. Done with protecting. Done with surviving… She’d closed her eyes and almost relaxed. Some small part of her had still been in panic, but mostly… For a few brief seconds, she’d actually enjoyed the warmth of the water, and the way the currents had pushed and pulled on her as waves rolled by somewhere unseen overhead. ‘No one can hurt me now,’ she remembered thinking just before the end. And then… she’d Awoken here!
“Everything will be all right,” the nearby voice reassured her amongst a distracting backdrop of electronic clicks and distortions. “The City you were hoping to find back then? It’s just found you.”
“Back… then…?” Tesni asked as she opened her eyes. She was expecting to find a person kneeling in front of her. Instead she saw a piece of… floating geometry. That’s what it was, floating geometry, all angles and interlocking pieces hanging effortlessly in the air… with a single expressive eye marking its center.
“You died a long time ago, centuries ago, but I brought you back,” the strange machine said, moving and pulsing slightly with each word it spoke.
“Why?”
“I’m a Ghost. Now, I’m your Ghost,” it explained unhelpfully.
“No. Why bring me back?” Tesni asked as she examined her intact gloved hand and armored legs more closely.
“The Darkness, the thing that nearly wiped us out, is coming back. Guardians, people like you, have the power to stop it.”
Tesni sighed in disbelief. “The Darkness… it’s real?” she asked.
Her Ghost nodded but she just scoffed.
‘The Darkness’ had just been an unimaginative way to explain the wars that had engulfed the world after a great conflict or tragedy had torn apart civilization. The fictional idea had come from the same places as legends of ancient marathons, or myths of light speed travel, or the demon-like oni, or… she laughed a little inside… angels with glowing halos. But if Darkness was real, that meant that The City was real… and The Traveler? It was real too? The legends were true?! She brought a hand up to cover her mouth as tears pooled in her brightly colored eyes.
“We’d… always hoped. It’s why we fought and ran… But I never really thought… It was just, any place was better than where we were…” she said as she began to cry. “How close did I… did we… get?” she asked.
“Not as close as some, but closer than many,” her Ghost replied. It turned to gaze seaward and said, “Your ride’s almost here.”
Sure enough, an unfamiliar aircraft had just appeared on the horizon, racing towards her, keeping low over the water. A minute later it hovered over the beach then sat down, it’s engines at idle, waiting for her. Tesni wiped her eyes and clenched her jaw. She’d always been strong, no matter the situation. She’d stared down warlords, escorted families, broken through ambushes, and given hope of a safe city even when she herself hadn’t truly believed. After all that, now didn’t seem like a very good time to show weakness.
“Welcome aboard, Guardian,” one of the pilots greeted her as she hauled herself up into the back of the waiting aircraft.
“Happy to be here,” Tesni replied, meaning it. “Now, take me home,” she ordered, “I’d like to see The Traveler.”
“Yes ma’am,” the pilot replied.
The sight of it, hours later, peaking up over the horizon as they got close, and then the sight of it gleaming above The Last Safe City…
It was everything the legends said it would be.
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 completely serious. Not a single one is rhetorical or played up. Alis Li is as furious and as serious about them as she has been about anything in either of her two lives. But how did we get here? It must have taken something extremely extraordinary to provoke the normally staid first queen of the Awoken to lash out with such hatred. Let’s rewind just a bit and find out.
Things have been moving rapidly forward since Mara’s broadcast. Undoubtedly, all of Mara’s teams and companies and hosts of engineers and experts are now hard at work on the technologies and ships needed to leave the Distributary and its pocket universe. Given how much Mara put in personally to the development of new technologies back before Sjur confronted her, it seems likely that she would be right there working along side them. But on this particular day, Mara has taken leave of her work and journeyed with Sjur out to the beautiful Pearl Groves that contain the Sanctuary of Former Queens.
…she looks out across mazes of channel and tidal pond to the compounds of ancient silver-white stone beyond. Two-ton oysters glitter in the shallows, their shells jeweled with mineral inclusions. Seabirds peck and fret along narrow white beaches.
They touch down some two kilometers from the retreat, and, after ignoring a warning from Uldren to not go alone, Mara walks that distance through the heat, dressed in black no less, with nothing but a small parasol to shield her from the sun. Up in the sky, Mara thinks she can just make out the glittering specks of her hulls, advanced starships…
built under eutech supervision to the specifications of radically post-conscious AI that will one day fly between worlds.
This is the first we’ve heard of AIs that did not originate in Humanity’s Golden Age or the Eliksni in the form of their Servitors. I wonder if anything became of them… (There’s a chance this question is actually playing out in Forsaken’s Dreaming City right now… and its answer might be: “yes!”)
Finally, after walking for quite a while, Mara reaches the place Alis Li has been living for the past several hundred years ever since she gave up the position of Queen. From its description, it sounds like it might be the structure Mara first woke up in a few thousand years before. Alis and Mara sit down for tea served from that same tea service that Captain Alice Li of the Yang Liwei once used to serve tea to Mara and her mother a very long time ago.
The two sit and drink their tea and converse. It’s not a friendly conversation, really, but Mara and Alis are at least respectful of each other. As they talk, we learn that Mara did indeed get Devna Tel elected as the new Queen, but also that Queen Tel took that authority and then decided not to support Mara’s expedition back to earth.
Alis kinda rubs this in Mara’s face. She sorta mocks Mara by pretending to be surprised that Queen Tel doesn’t want thousands of Awoken ripped away from their home on the Distributary.
Mara argues that she isn’t ripping anyone away because all of her people are volunteers. In reply, Alis reminds Mara of what her mother told her during that meeting on the Yang Liwei way back then: “….that it is one thing for you to have a particular power over people, but another thing entirely to deny that you are using it.”
Mara snipes back, quoting Alis’ own words back at her:
“You once told me,” Mara counters, “that I had to consider the symbol people made out of me, and that if it were good, then I had to be that symbol for them. I had to perform as they required. I have done so. I have been the best thing I can think to be.”
Alis’ reply?
Is this the best thing you could think to be?
For a while, the two drink in silence. Then, finally, Alis gets to the important matters. She first asks about the Diasyrm and the Theodicy War and demands to know if Mara arranged it all. Mara admits she nurtured the Eccaleist and made sure she always had a group of Awoken who were not satisfied with the heaven they lived in so that she would have people willing to follow her back. But Mara denies that she arranged it all. Which we’re told is a lie.
Alis, growing more furious, wants to know why Mara is asking so many to sacrifice so much. She wants to know why Mara is asking these people to die for a home that was doomed. She wants to know why Mara wants to go back and try to save Earth when 891 members of the Yang Liwei’s crew voted to abandon it. Alis reminds Mara of the Amrita charter and how it directed them to explore new worlds and how it was that same charter that Alis used to shape the creation of the Awoken and the Distributary.
Mara agrees, that the first one to awaken was the one who got to set the rules. This satisfies Alis for a moment. She sort of releases her anger and sits back in her chair and asks why Mara really came out to see her.
“To ask you for that boon you owe me.” Mara says.
Alis knew this must be coming. Certainly she suspected Mara would call in her favor after her worldwide broadcast. Alis speculates aloud, saying she is sure that Mara has come to her to ask her to endorse the expedition to earth. It all makes sense to Alis. Devna Tel turned Mara down, but if Mara can get Alis’ backing, the backing of the first Awoken queen, well that would be far more powerful that having the support of the Awoken’s newest queen. All in all, Alis is sure this is just more political gamesmanship from Mara. Except, Mara says no. The real reason she has come to see Alis Li is something Alis probably never expected.
“The boon I ask is your forgiveness.”
Then she explains the truth. She tells Alis Li what she did: about the choice Alis Li would have made, if Mara had not made her own first. It’s only an extension of what Alis has already deduced.
When she’s finished, her ancient captain’s jaw trembles. Her hands shake. A keen slips between her clamped teeth. The oldest woman in the world conjures up all the grief she has ever felt, and still it is not enough to match Mara’s crime.
“You’re the devil,” Alis Li whispers. “I remember… in one of the old tongues, Mara means death. Oh, that’s too perfect. That’s too much.”
She laughs for a while. Mara closes her eyes and waits.
“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—”
“Please,” Mara begs. “Please don’t say that.”
There it is! There is Mara’s biggest darkest secret? Did you catch it? I’ll highlight it again for you:
She tells Alis Li what she did: about the choice Alis Li would have made, if Mara had not made her own first.
Alis Li has lived for thousands of years thinking she was the first Awoken. She remembers defining her own name and her own existence. She remembers creating the Distributary and restoring herself to a physical body. She remembers being there when she pulled Mara back from the void. But now Mara is telling Alis that yes, she did make those choices. She did all of those things, but that she was only able to make those choices because Mara made her own choices first. That in reality, Mara was the first Awoken, and that she kept that fact secret from everyone, including Alis.
We’ve been leading up to this for a while. Think back to the times Mara has protected or revealed some important, unspoken secret:
- When the Light and Darkness clashed and formed the strange black hole near the Yang Liwei it was Mara who detached from her fifty kilometer tether and purposely fell into that black hole before Uldwyn, the Yang Liwei, or Alice Li and the rest of the colony ship’s crew.
- When Alis Li pulled Mara back from the void she wondered aloud why Mara in particular was second, to which Mara lied, saying she didn’t know.
- When Mara’s mother met her in the forest and accused her of being behind “it all” Mara flinched, thinking her mother had somehow figured out her secret. It turned out the “it all” Mara’s mother was referring to was merely the atrocity of the Theodicy War, where the “it all” Mara flinched at was truly “it all.”
- When Mara let her brother in on the secret during that same campfire meeting, she did so by reminding him of the Yang Liwei and the tether and that she went in to the black hole ahead of him.
So, what exactly is Mara asking forgiveness for? Well, now we know that it was Mara who set the very initial ground rules of existence for everyone, including Alis Li. She set it up so that Alis Li would remember the Amrita Charter and create a world and a people to the best of her ability. But, knowing that a creator who stole godhood away from the Awoken would be seen as evil by many, Mara hid that knowledge from everyone and instead arranged it so that Alis Li would be the one to take the blame. Mara manipulated Alis so that everyone, even Alis herself, believed that Alis was the one who allowed suffering and death into their perfect world. Mara even arranged a war among her peaceful planet of immortals to further her own agenda and she again set Alis up as the one to take the blame.
Maybe, in the end, it turns out that Mara did all this to help save Humanity and fight The Darkness, but what she did to Alis Li is one hell of a thing to ask forgiveness for. And, maybe rightly so, Alis does not forgive Mara. Not in the slightest!
Alis Li rises from her chair. “I’ll support your fleet,” she says. “I’ll use every favor and connection I have to get your Hulls completed and through the gateway—and I will do it so that I can hasten your departure from this world. I will do it out of hate for you; I will do it so that every good and great thing we achieve here will ever after be denied to you, you snake. No forgiveness. Do you understand me? It is unforgivable. Go. Go!”
“I’d be very glad if you didn’t tell my mother,” Mara says.
Alis Li hurls the pitcher of blackberry tea over Mara, turns, and goes inside, leaving her to trudge, wet and sticky but unbowed, back to her ship. She leaves her tea-stained parasol on the deck, but when she remembers it and looks back, it is already gone.
So now there are two people who know Mara’s secret. Her brother Uldren, and her sort of rival, former queen Alis Li. Uldren accepted the secret and its implications but has such faith in his sister that he buried it away from everyone. Alis Li called Mara the devil and promised to do everything in her power to send Mara far away where she will die.
But what about Sjur? She doesn’t know. And she is someone who switched sides during the Theodicy War because she believed punishing Alis Li for denying the Awoken their godhood was more important than any other loyalty or responsibility she had to her Queen or her people. She fought and killed and was prepared to murder Mara or Uldren all for that belief. What will she do if she ever learns Mara’s secret?
The answer is actually out there. We’ll explore it eventually, but next time, we’ll close out this first book of Awoken history and get a hint at what’s to come.