by the fans for the fans

Any speculation is fine.
Mine is Mia is upset that her older sister is a tramp that caused the Earth to be invaded by the Invid because of her crush on Zor

HAHAHA,

REALLY DON'T KNOW SINCE MAIA IS A NEW CHARACTER. IT COULD BE AS EASY AS SIBLING RIVALRY DO TO THEIR CLOSENESS TO THEIR PARENTS. DANA WAS LEFT BACK ON EARTH WHILE MAIA LIVED WITH THE STERLING'S.

Dana has had a hard time accepting Michael's sex change.

So, you're the one and only halfbreed human/zentraedi on the planet earth, which has been viciously and savagely bombarded by the zentraedi. Sure, there are those zentraedi that defected to earth's side, but in general I can't possibly imagine that most survivors living in the hard new life that is post-apocalypse earth really care about that - if the zentraedi had never come, their home world wouldn't have been devastated. No matter what, kids your age are going to treat you like shit.

Then, your parents leave you behind to go avert further disaster. Sure, they're supposed to be back in a couple of years, but there's no way that's not rough (even with Rolf Emerson as your guardian). So your parents fold off to god knows where with nothing more than a vague idea as to what they might find with a bluff as their best option to prevent being blown right out of the Tirolian sky.

You spend the next few years in a post-apocalypse earth with no idea if your parents are alive or dead, while the army of the Southern Cross becomes ascendant on a policy of vicious xenophobia, and you're the one half-breed zentraedi out there. It has to be a crucible of abuse and loneliness (which would totally explain Dana's super bubbly personality - it's overcompensating to hide the hurt she's going through, and all the misery and loneliness).

And then the unthinkable happens - the very threat your parents abandoned you to protect you from shows up: The Robotech Masters. Not only is earth facing a second conflict, what does this mean for your parents? Are they alive? Dead? Sure, eventually you find out from Major Carpenter that they're alive, but that's it. In every way that matters, you've been abandoned by your parents. Your entire childhood was a betting chip in the pile thrown at the Master's homeworld, and humanity lost. Everything you went through was for fucking nothing.

And finally, when you connect with someone who is a stranger on the planet you call home, who might empathize with your plight, turns out to be a turncoat spy. The one time you've allowed yourself to feel love towards another person, real romantic love, and he ends up sacrificing himself to save you and everyone else - you know, the same way that your parents abandoned you to "save" you - and once again... it's for *nothing*. The flower gets seeded across the earth, and a third war is inevitable... and this time humanity is going to *lose* utterly, and earth will fall no matter what.

You find a way to finally make it to Tiresia to reunite with your family. You've lost your adoptive father, seeing him die in your arms. You've seen your first real love sacrifice himself for nothing, really. The last decade and change of your life has been one big joke, really - but maybe, at least, you can re-unite with your parents and put your family life on track....

.... only to find that they have another daughter, and they started that family life without you. Left you behind like second-best, and lavished all the love and care that should have been yours on someone else.

You were replaced. All the times you imagined your parents (if they were still alive, that is) yearning to get back to you, well, that's not really how it went, was it? And that's the last straw... the one thing you were holding out for, reuniting with them and having a touchstone back to before everything went wrong, that's it.

All the words in the galaxy from your parents won't even half-paper over the hurt, let alone begin to soothe it. And the person who took your place? Sure, part of you can understand that all of this is the fortunes of war, but the heart is not exactly a consumer of common sense, of logic.

And Maia, for whatever else she's become, and who she might be, is the living embodiment of the life you wanted and never had, and that she got. She'll always be the usurper, somewhere in Dana's heart.

You know, not that I've like thought about the characters motivations or anything.

(Cough).

The only thing I am not buying is "while the army of the Southern Cross becomes ascendant on a policy of vicious xenophobia". I am not saying there were not people like that but there is no evidence that was the policy of the Army of the Southern Cross.

My comments are from a tv series perspective, if you favor another version of Robotech or have invented your own then please disregard my comments.
Sushispook wrote:

So, you're the one and only halfbreed human/zentraedi on the planet earth, which has been viciously and savagely bombarded by the zentraedi. Sure, there are those zentraedi that defected to earth's side, but in general I can't possibly imagine that most survivors living in the hard new life that is post-apocalypse earth really care about that - if the zentraedi had never come, their home world wouldn't have been devastated. No matter what, kids your age are going to treat you like shit.

Not so sure she's the only halfbreed on Earth, especially if her brother is with her. I'm sure kids treated her badly when then knew who and what she was, also imagine she beat their asses quite a bit.

Then, your parents leave you behind to go avert further disaster. Sure, they're supposed to be back in a couple of years, but there's no way that's not rough (even with Rolf Emerson as your guardian). So your parents fold off to god knows where with nothing more than a vague idea as to what they might find with a bluff as their best option to prevent being blown right out of the Tirolian sky.

Lisa knew it was going to be a very long stay away from Earth so why wouldn't Max and Miriya. Rolf Emerson wasn't her guardian in the tv series, he was Bowie's. I'm not even so sure she was on Earth all of those years, she talks about missing home and her brother. I wonder if they weren't living on at a colony where M&M could visit them, then Dana was sent to Earth's new Robotech Academy.

You spend the next few years in a post-apocalypse earth with no idea if your parents are alive or dead, while the army of the Southern Cross becomes ascendant on a policy of vicious xenophobia, and you're the one half-breed zentraedi out there. It has to be a crucible of abuse and loneliness (which would totally explain Dana's super bubbly personality - it's overcompensating to hide the hurt she's going through, and all the misery and loneliness).

I agree with aka, while there is some xenophobia I don't see that being the norm and certainly not a policy of the ASC. I think she probably had intermittent contact with her parents until the Masters cut Earth off from the REF, or at least until she was sent to Earth's Robotech Academy.

And then the unthinkable happens - the very threat your parents abandoned you to protect you from shows up: The Robotech Masters. Not only is earth facing a second conflict, what does this mean for your parents? Are they alive? Dead? Sure, eventually you find out from Major Carpenter that they're alive, but that's it. In every way that matters, you've been abandoned by your parents. Your entire childhood was a betting chip in the pile thrown at the Master's homeworld, and humanity lost. Everything you went through was for fucking nothing.

And finally, when you connect with someone who is a stranger on the planet you call home, who might empathize with your plight, turns out to be a turncoat spy. The one time you've allowed yourself to feel love towards another person, real romantic love, and he ends up sacrificing himself to save you and everyone else - you know, the same way that your parents abandoned you to "save" you - and once again... it's for *nothing*. The flower gets seeded across the earth, and a third war is inevitable... and this time humanity is going to *lose* utterly, and earth will fall no matter what.

I don't think his sacrifice was so much to save her and Earth but more to get revenge and destroy his creation. Which as you point out was a disaster. I'm sure it was very hard on her that he chose his tortured obsession over her and a life together.

Quite the analysis you've done, some interesting reading, and yeah I can see some of those motivations possibly leading to that look between them in PTTSC.

aka_s2h wrote:

The only thing I am not buying is "while the army of the Southern Cross becomes ascendant on a policy of vicious xenophobia". I am not saying there were not people like that but there is no evidence that was the policy of the Army of the Southern Cross.

Totally a good discussion point!

I'll freely admit that the novelizations have a lot to do with my own personal "headcanon" of what went on behind the scenes.

There's a lot to suggest that the Southern Cross tolerated anti-alien xenophobia. Leonard was clearly a xenophobe from early on (look at the animated portion of the sentinels for a good example), and his later actions of refusal to negotiate with aliens at all during the 2nd war re-inforce that. With that sort of attitude at the very top of the only military organization of import left on earth, it's definitely going to color the behavior of those under his command.

And let's not forget General Edwards, who was heavily affiliated with the Southern Cross, and was essentially the token Southern Cross brass sent along with the REF's expeditionary force. His xenophobia is well documented in the comics and novelizations.

The thing is, given that the source animation is separate television shows, there are some seriously giant plot holes. Where are the Zentraedi in the second war? They didn't all go with the pioneer mission back to Tirol, and they couldn't all just live in space - but you don't see them. From a narrative standpoint, it does make sense that the remaining Zentraedi on earth were chased away and not tolerated, if not outright killed - at least as a possible explanation for them not being there at all.

At least, that's how I view it. Standard "IMHO" disclaimer and all of that

My comments are from a tv series perspective, if you favor another version of Robotech or have invented your own then please disregard my comments.

You went to the trouble of replying! I'm not gonna disregard your comments, and I love hearing other people's viewpoints on character motivations - there's so much room for fun interpretation.

Not so sure she's the only halfbreed on Earth, especially if her brother is with her. I'm sure kids treated her badly when then knew who and what she was, also imagine she beat their asses quite a bit.

She's the only halfbreed that we know of. And while it's not stated explicitly as such in the TV show canon, it is in the novelizations. But either way, you're half-alien - of the aliens that roasted a chunk of your home planet's surface. Even if she successfully whoops the ass of all or most of the people who start fights with her, it's going to have a very serious effect on your worldview.

Brother? You mean legally brother, as in Bowie? Or...? Bowie was always depicted as a non-fighter, someone who never wanted to serve in the military. Even if he had Dana's back, he's not what you would call a scrapper.

Lisa knew it was going to be a very long stay away from Earth so why wouldn't Max and Miriya. Rolf Emerson wasn't her guardian in the tv series, he was Bowie's. I'm not even so sure she was on Earth all of those years, she talks about missing home and her brother. I wonder if they weren't living on at a colony where M&M could visit them, then Dana was sent to Earth's new Robotech Academy.

The amount of years I tossed out was from memory - that's a good point. I wrote all of this stream of consciousness without actually bothering to look at rt.com's timeline, so I expect the exact date ranges are off. Either way, a few years is a million years in kid-time (I've recently been reminded of this while hanging out with my friend's kids).

I thought they did leave Rolf as the legal guardian of both? If not Rolf, then who? I know in the novelizations, they said it was Konda, Rico, and Bron, but I think that's the only place that ever appeared.

I agree with aka, while there is some xenophobia I don't see that being the norm and certainly not a policy of the ASC. I think she probably had intermittent contact with her parents until the Masters cut Earth off from the REF, or at least until she was sent to Earth's Robotech Academy.

See, this is where I have to politely disagree. I cannot possibly imagine that there isn't a monstrous amount of resentment towards the remaining Zentraedi. I mean, they nearly turned the earth into a cinder in space, murdered billions in one stroke, and radically changed the shape of life on earth for anyone still alive. I figure the remaining people are in a desperate survival scenario (I'm drawing from memory here, as I recall there were episodes in the Macross saga showing riots over food, etc), and rational and objective thought are known to go right out the window when people are reduced to basic scenarios of fundamental life and death (this I know for a fact from my many friends in the mental health field).

Your life, as you have known it, is gone. It is very possible that many of the people you knew either died instantly in the initial salvos, or in some protracted and unpleasant post-apocalypse scenario. You may be able to look past the blood flowing in the veins of the Zentraedi you're working with side by side, but a lot of other people won't. The human mind wants easy explanations and excuses, and history is littered with the remains of sacrificial lambs and the victims misdirected rage.

I don't think his sacrifice was so much to save her and Earth but more to get revenge and destroy his creation. Which as you point out was a disaster. I'm sure it was very hard on her that he chose his tortured obsession over her and a life together.

Eh, splitting hairs, I sez. But I agree, that was a major, major factor.

Quite the analysis you've done, some interesting reading, and yeah I can see some of those motivations possibly leading to that look between them in PTTSC.

Thanks man! Though, as I said above, it was a sort of stream-of-consciousness response, because I could really completely and immediately understand Dana's reaction, and how Maia is the living embodiment of the life she wanted to have, yet was denied.

I appreciate your reply.

I was talking about her brother, who we know nothing about. People think of her and Bowie as like brother and sister but I don't see it that way. I think of them more like good friends, or maybe not even that, two people who needed a friend at the Academy and she leached onto him.
She never shows any familiarity toward Emerson nor address him even as her god-father while Bowie obviously has a relationship and is concerned about his father figure. Likewise he seems to address her in a completely different way than he does Bowie, sorta in a matter of fact way, he doesn't seem to share the same concerns for her. She even tries to manipulate Bowie into manipulating him. Besides that, Bowie doesn't even know the story about her parents. Who wouldn't have heard that tale, does he even know she's half alien?
I just have a hard time believing they grew up together and both with Emerson or even had him watching over her like he did with Bowie. I have no idea who was taking care of her before the Academy, the tv series leaves a lot unsaid or implied.

At times Scott hates the Invid with a vengeance and I'm sure a good number of Rain of Death survivors feel the same way about the Zentraedi. I think most people eventually forgave or at least learn to accept what happened as just another devastating war. I really like how Rand points out to Scott that humans have always killed each other, they don't need excuses for wars. That Marlene's death could have been at the hands of humans just as easily as the Invid, or something like that. By Rand's time they not only have to forgive the Invid but also the Masters plus they are dealing with an Invid occupation.

rtsurfer wrote:

Dana has had a hard time accepting Michael's sex change.

Nail. Head. Met.