Viva Globalism!
Heh. Okay, let me try some historical background.
The Oceanic Treaty Organization grew out of the twentieth century's NATO pacts, and at the time of its formal formation represented a genuinely shocking percentage of the world's monetary and technological resources. The OTO was named as it was because the most notable characteristic of its founding member states was that all of them lay on either the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans - the notable among those nations being the United States of America, the European Union, the Commonwealth of Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Mexican States, and the Federative Republic of Brazil. All of its member states traded heavily with each other and enjoyed a considerable and ever-rising amount of cultural exchange and learning thanks to an otherwise neglible line or two in the founding accords, which authorized the creation and budgeting of an international public service organization to advocate and facilitate same.
In short - and this statistic really says it all - in 2005, the eventual members of the OTO had a combined GDP of more than thirty trillion dollars.
Out of about fifty-five trillion world wide.
The Pan-Asian Alliance, in contrast, would have had about 14 trillion. And more than two and a half billion citizens. Most of the Alliance's member states were there because of paranoia - because they were afraid of being eaten by the OTO. (which it likely wouldn't have, except maybe by accident.) As a rule, its early members fell into a few categories - most numerous in terms of governments were nations that were heavily influenced or outright controlled by Muslim religious conservatives - Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc. The other three factions were really just single nations - the Russian Federation wanted to avoid having its economy entirely ripped apart by the 'tidal forces' of having the EU so near at hand, China was blatantly and agressively angling for a larger, even controlling share in world politics, and India... wanted to avoid having Pakistan talk the rest of the Alliance into declaring war on them. ^_^;
Nobody in any of the three coalitions ever tried to pretend that the Neutral Nations Group was anything but small fry - it was basically composed of those countries that were left over after the formation of the two major power blocks and wanted defensive partners but were too proud to go off with hat in hand, asking to be let it.
A quick glance at the relative virtues of the Alliance and the OTO will tell you very quickly that this war was really fucking messy - enough so that the Earth's population was actually lower in 2044 than it was thirty years earlier. Granted that most of that was because almost nobody was willing to bring kids into things with that big a clusterfuck on the horizon, but still.
The cultural climate in the wake of the formation of the EDTO is, I guess, a bit like the Roaring Twenties - like the world had walked out of hell and suddenly everybody was friends and the future was bright again. Yeah, okay, right, aliens, but still! They weren't here yet, right? Honey was home and the rationing was over...
Erm. Okay, that's it for now.
Moving on...
Lin Minmei, in the original, was, IIRC, three-quarters Chinese but born in Yokohama.
Obviously, here, Ningshui Jialan is more likely from Shanghai or someplace.
At the start of our series, she's eighteen and in her last year of high school, attending the one on Macross Island while her mother works on the last stages of the reconstruction of the SDF-1. She's a member of the school band and choir, as well as fronting for a moderately talented local act in her free time. Her father died in the war, which, combined with the fact that the Alliance was relatively strapped for cash, especially in the later stages of the war, means that she's got a much more realistic worldview than her counterpart - she had to do a lot of her growing up way too soon, and it shows.
She's not the queen of her school's social set or anything, but she does have a lot of friends and is known as a cheerful girl who can get along with almost anybody and often acts as a peacemaker between people who've got better memories and more dead relatives than the faculty would like them to.
For a twist, I might suggest that her occaisional meetings with her father when she was young might have instilled her with an attitude towards the military that's, well, just about opposite Hikaru's. Great respect for soldiers, pride that her father was one, etc. To start with, at least, she isn't planning on actually joining, partly because she and her little brother are all that's left of her family name and history for several generations on either side and partly just because she doesn't really think that her talents lie in that direction.
After the misfold, of course, the entire equation changes - which works out quite well, I think, since I seem to remember that air combat is organized according to pairs of planes. ^_^
Ooh. Thought: Timeline -
2023 - Lisa Hayes born.
2029 - Hikaru Ichijo born.
2033 - Lin Minmei born.
2044 - War ends, Visitor crashes, EDTO formed.
2051 - Superdimensional Fortress Macross launched.
...hmmm. Maybe should knock ten, twenty years off of that but otherwise?
Ja, -n
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
Heh. Okay, let me try some historical background.
The Oceanic Treaty Organization grew out of the twentieth century's NATO pacts, and at the time of its formal formation represented a genuinely shocking percentage of the world's monetary and technological resources. The OTO was named as it was because the most notable characteristic of its founding member states was that all of them lay on either the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans - the notable among those nations being the United States of America, the European Union, the Commonwealth of Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Mexican States, and the Federative Republic of Brazil. All of its member states traded heavily with each other and enjoyed a considerable and ever-rising amount of cultural exchange and learning thanks to an otherwise neglible line or two in the founding accords, which authorized the creation and budgeting of an international public service organization to advocate and facilitate same.
In short - and this statistic really says it all - in 2005, the eventual members of the OTO had a combined GDP of more than thirty trillion dollars.
Out of about fifty-five trillion world wide.
The Pan-Asian Alliance, in contrast, would have had about 14 trillion. And more than two and a half billion citizens. Most of the Alliance's member states were there because of paranoia - because they were afraid of being eaten by the OTO. (which it likely wouldn't have, except maybe by accident.) As a rule, its early members fell into a few categories - most numerous in terms of governments were nations that were heavily influenced or outright controlled by Muslim religious conservatives - Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc. The other three factions were really just single nations - the Russian Federation wanted to avoid having its economy entirely ripped apart by the 'tidal forces' of having the EU so near at hand, China was blatantly and agressively angling for a larger, even controlling share in world politics, and India... wanted to avoid having Pakistan talk the rest of the Alliance into declaring war on them. ^_^;
Nobody in any of the three coalitions ever tried to pretend that the Neutral Nations Group was anything but small fry - it was basically composed of those countries that were left over after the formation of the two major power blocks and wanted defensive partners but were too proud to go off with hat in hand, asking to be let it.
A quick glance at the relative virtues of the Alliance and the OTO will tell you very quickly that this war was really fucking messy - enough so that the Earth's population was actually lower in 2044 than it was thirty years earlier. Granted that most of that was because almost nobody was willing to bring kids into things with that big a clusterfuck on the horizon, but still.
The cultural climate in the wake of the formation of the EDTO is, I guess, a bit like the Roaring Twenties - like the world had walked out of hell and suddenly everybody was friends and the future was bright again. Yeah, okay, right, aliens, but still! They weren't here yet, right? Honey was home and the rationing was over...
Erm. Okay, that's it for now.
Moving on...
Lin Minmei, in the original, was, IIRC, three-quarters Chinese but born in Yokohama.
Obviously, here, Ningshui Jialan is more likely from Shanghai or someplace.
At the start of our series, she's eighteen and in her last year of high school, attending the one on Macross Island while her mother works on the last stages of the reconstruction of the SDF-1. She's a member of the school band and choir, as well as fronting for a moderately talented local act in her free time. Her father died in the war, which, combined with the fact that the Alliance was relatively strapped for cash, especially in the later stages of the war, means that she's got a much more realistic worldview than her counterpart - she had to do a lot of her growing up way too soon, and it shows.
She's not the queen of her school's social set or anything, but she does have a lot of friends and is known as a cheerful girl who can get along with almost anybody and often acts as a peacemaker between people who've got better memories and more dead relatives than the faculty would like them to.
For a twist, I might suggest that her occaisional meetings with her father when she was young might have instilled her with an attitude towards the military that's, well, just about opposite Hikaru's. Great respect for soldiers, pride that her father was one, etc. To start with, at least, she isn't planning on actually joining, partly because she and her little brother are all that's left of her family name and history for several generations on either side and partly just because she doesn't really think that her talents lie in that direction.
After the misfold, of course, the entire equation changes - which works out quite well, I think, since I seem to remember that air combat is organized according to pairs of planes. ^_^
Ooh. Thought: Timeline -
2023 - Lisa Hayes born.
2029 - Hikaru Ichijo born.
2033 - Lin Minmei born.
2044 - War ends, Visitor crashes, EDTO formed.
2051 - Superdimensional Fortress Macross launched.
...hmmm. Maybe should knock ten, twenty years off of that but otherwise?
Ja, -n
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."