12 Strong

by on January 22, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Many of those who will see this movie were not alive when the Twin Towers were brought down. Many will never understand the world we lived in before that day. And they will not understand how we reacted. But this movie might just show them a piece of that.

I watched it. It was a good movie. It showed war in a way few movies that I’ve watched ever have. It wasn’t portrayed as glorious or despicable. It was portrayed as close to reality as I think most civilians can recognize. Dirty, difficult, and scary. With moments of loss, confusion, and bravery. And it does not shrink from showing us a glimpse of the horrible evils the Taliban and their ilk commit when they can. Just a glimpse. No movie could show it all and still be watchable to most of us.

The battle scenes are some of the best I’ve seen in film, showing the randomness and chaos of battle. And just how powerful organization and training can be when pointed at such chaos. It also shows something I hadn’t thought to see when I went into the movie. Why the cavalry charge was the most dangerous weapon on Earth for thousands of years. We think we are so far beyond that now, that we have forever supplanted the horse cavalry as a thing that will ever again be relevant to war. We are wrong, and this movie shows us that in living, and dying, color.

This is a good movie. I give it two smart bombs held high. Don’t be too close when the fall. That might be dangerous…

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San Lucas

by on January 21, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

The Mount Inferno eruption brought all number of humans from every major nation to San Lucas. It also brought news coverage that showed the local intelligent cats to the broad scope of humanity for the first time. Aid transports landed on the western continent of Gangani to help them dig out from the ashfall that was covering them. Only the hardiest of ships traveled to Hankou, where the devastation was far worse. Mount Inferno pumped lava out onto the surrounding lands for years, and they measured the ashfall in meters. The lowlands were completely uninhabitable, and all of the survivors crowded the low mountain ranges spiraling out towards the coasts, where they probably would have died if we had not helped them.

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Jack

by on January 20, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

There were certain basic courses I had to finish before I could graduate from High School, but they weren’t the challenge some make them out to be. Reading, writing, and rhetoric is pretty easy to master. Math and science can be a bit harder if you’re going into the more advanced forms, but we only needed the basic levels to graduate. Music and sports were the ones I loved the most. It was on history that the schools really concentrated though. It was their job to teach us how we got to where we were, how we built the worlds we all lived in. They taught us why the Declaration of Independence, and the Gettysburg Address were important. Why the words “I have a dream,” “Tear down this wall,” and “Build the wall” all affected how we grew up. How the race and debt riots changed everything. Why the First Great Depression hobbled unbridled Capitalism, and the Second Great Depression starved Socialism. They taught us what it meant to be American, so we could go to college and learn the skills we needed for our chosen profession. I passed the basics with ease, but was always more interested in studying the intricacies of girls than anything else. Unless the two came together. Then, I assure you, I could focus on the relevant subjects with remarkable success.

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Lucas Cats

by on January 19, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

The jaguar-derived cats of San Lucas were in the middle of a long-term rebellion against their panther-derived overlords when they made Contact with us. Both the Uaithni and the Gangani wanted our aid in ending the war, by helping them defeat the others of course, but the local colonists kept their aid limited to humanitarian relief. And to stopping atrocities. The cats on both sides quickly realized that we had no stomach for watching either side killing entire villages, or burning major cities. And now that they knew what to look for, the colonists could find the cat towns. The various Uaithni rebellions quickly began to moderate their tactics, officially ending their support of suicide bombings against civilian targets. And the Gangani responded by limiting their own punitive raids against suspected Uaithni towns thought to harbor rebels. Which further reduced rebellious sentiments in the Uaithni communities, and improved the quality of life for everyone involved.

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San Lucas

by on January 18, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

We discovered the cats who lived on San Lucas’ eastern continent not long after the natives of the western continent made Contact with us. We studied the cats of Hankou to find that they were in a decades-long civil and religious war for supremacy under the grumbling of the central volcano. Then Mount Inferno blew its top in an explosion that sent ash far into the upper atmosphere. Continuing eruptions covered the entire world in darkness for months, causing an ecological crisis even on the other side of the world where most humans lived. It was the single greatest planetary ecological disaster witnessed in all the worlds of humanity until The War came upon us all. We dispatched relief fleets through Asgard with food, air purifiers, power satellites and other necessities to keep the colonists alive. It was the largest Pre-War movement of supplies and people, with ships coming from every single human nation. It would be too much to say that the disaster united humanity in common bonds of friendship. But there was a time when a Chinese food transport could park next to an American warship protecting Russian troop transports whose soldiers were operating under South American commanders while giving aid to starving colonists.

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