DB Sommer wrote:
Now that I'm done writing something, I am finally getting to this
An interview with VADM Richard A. Hunter, REF (ret);
December 10, 2065.
Hmm. This should be interesting. Ever since 'To Be in Love' by
Richard Lawson, I am wary of far reaching post Robotech Novel
stuff. Never did like that particular work. Technically sound
and flowed reasonably well, save the middle dragging terribly.
I just completely disagreed with the reactions of almost
everybody in the fic. Not that it I'm saying he should not have
written it or was 'wrong' just that I personally couldn't see it
happening in the slightest. Gee. Maybe we should get on to your
fic instead of me ranting about his. :)
If you insist!
Historians and biographers paint you in the summer of 2009 as some
brash young hotshot with a chip on his shoulder and something to
prove. Looking back to that time, do you agree with them?
Interesting. I haven't seen an interview format style in a while.
Probably won't be able to give many grammar comments since people
don't speak grammatically correct as a general rule. Will keep an
extra eye open for typos.
Fair enough.
A. [Laughs self-consciously] For the most part, yeah. I know a
lot of people won't believe this, even after all of the
interviews I've given over the years, and all the tell-all
books that have come out about me,
Especially the one about the bachelor party Max Sterling threw for
me and how I ended up sleeping with Mirya and a couple of other
Quadrono aces on my last night of freedom, but that's not... what?
He didn't mention that bit? Whoops. Looks like I should have been
reading more closely. Umm...you aren't going to quote me on that,
are you?
Rick: I knew I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue...
but the fact is that I *was* an arrogant little prick going
into the First Robotech War.
Hmm. True.
Q. When did that change? When did Rick Hunter stop being that
"arrogant little prick"?
A. I don't know if I ever *stopped* being one.
Heh. Compared to most fighter pilots, he's downright sublime. :)
[Laughs for a moment,
then becomes quiet] I guess my first real wake-up call was my
first combat mission.
Odd. I thought it more likely to have come from being forced to
help repel the initial Zentradei attack on Macross Island. Blowing
away that Zentraedi out of his armor seemed to shock the hell out
of Rick.
I think there was just too much shock value involved with the initial
attack on Macross for him to get too deep into what was going on. I
was of the opinion that once Rick actually chose to go into combat
rather than ending up a reluctant part of a battle, the gravity of
his decision would then become more apparent to him. He's had time
to think about what was coming by the point of his first mission.
You know how all the biographies about me
go; how me and dozens of other rookies were slammed through a
crash course in VT piloting and small-unit tactics and then
thrown to the wolves in less than six weeks. I was totally
clueless out there, not even sure if I could pull the trigger
on someone - especially since I knew that the so-called aliens
we were fighting were practically just like you and me... Until
the Zentraedi showed up, I was nothing more than a young punk
whose entire world was encompassed by little hicktown aerodromes.
Now that fits his initial appearance.
Hindsight being what it is, I figure an older, more mature Rick would
be able to face this particular truth about himself.
It was humbling, fighting that war...
It always is except for the sick ones who enjoy it.
Q. You recently attended a function at the UEG's Fokker Aerospace
Academy to commemorate the anniversary of Commander Fokker's
death. Is there anything left to be said about him after all
this time?
A.
Well, he was my first partner in a homosexual relationship. I don't
think anyone has said that about him.
And hey, he's still better than Lisa when it comes to... never mind.
[Pauses] I think so. Even to this day, I find that Roy still
speaks to me.
It's sort of like that Sixth Sense thing, except Roy's the only one
I can see.
And Ben Dixon. Oh, and Bruce Willis too.
You would have never thought it having met him on
the streets of Macross City, or in the ready room waiting for a
mission, but Roy was one of the wisest and most clear-headed
people I've ever known. He had values and beliefs, and he lived
by them uncompromisingly.
Oh yes, and he was a miserable driver of anything that didn't fly.
Wrecked more military vehicles than I lost fighters that got shot
out from under me, and believe me, that's a lot.
Thank God he didn't need insurance to drive in Macross...
He was the kind of guy who would give
you advice about something, whether it was combat or girls, and
then *live* by that same advice. I think I learned as much from
him by watching him as I ever did listening to him, and I've
tried to live my life these many years the way he would have
done if he'd had the chance.
Nice answer.
Thank you.
A. Yeah, it's true that he had demons too, and sometimes you could
almost see them lurking over his shoulder, or hear them in his
voice. I know most of what I do about Roy and Claudia through
Lisa, and the talks she used to have with Claudia right before
her death. It's funny, but sometimes I wonder if she knew that
she was going to die soon, and her "advice to the lovelorn" that
she used to give Lisa about me was because she wanted us to have
something that she and Roy never got the chance to share.
Definitely the impression I got from their Rainy Night chat post Rain
of Death.
I think dear Claudia actually comes out and says as much to Lisa, but
it's been years since I watched the episode.
A. [Fatalistic laugh] Sure. What the hell, I'm an old man now.
What's the harm? [Pause] Let's start by saying that I was
always an easy-going sort when it came to relationships, from
my wingmates to my lovers (all two of them!). I never wanted
to be too pushy, so in a lot of ways I let other people push
me around, and Lisa was no exception. The wrecks of the SDF-1
and 2 were barely covered up before she was bucking to get me
a staff job, and with the attrition rate of the RDF being what
it was, I found myself wearing stars on my collar before I
knew what hit me. Let me tell you, I hated it.
True. Never thought Rick was suited for anything other than fighter
combat and leading squadrons into battle.
I think that, given the chance to have actually completed "The
Sentinels," Macek of Borg would have made certain that Rick saw
plenty of combat. It was the Jacks McKinney who gave him a desk
job, in part I'm sure because of his rank going into "The Sentinels."
A. I'm gonna end up sleeping on the couch tonight for this, but
absolutely not! The reason I nearly got killed out there was
*because* she had parked me behind a desk for six damn years.
And don't give me that crap about being too old to fly in
combat. I was on the young end of my 30s; the same age as Max
and Miriya, who did some of their absolute best flying in that
time. If I had stood up to Lisa at my promotion to flag rank
and kept my squadron slot, that time over Fantoma would never
have happened.
Of course the downside to that is someone else would have had to
fill the position Rick held, and folks like T.R. Edwards would
have been eager to fill them and have been in a position of even
more power than they were.
Very true, but then I think that Rick wouldn't have thought about
that until after the fact.
correctly, I think) as a double standard that Lisa had set for
me. I mean, once the Sentinels showed up and we were operating
outside of the Plenipotentiary Council's oversight, she got a
little *too* liberated, if you know what I mean. It's not long
after she started talking to the Praxians that all of a sudden
she's part of the
'their' I think would be better there.
I think it works either way.
sister-act, belting on a sword, and discussing
ways to break someone's neck without breaking a sweat - and at
the same time jumping my shit about taking too many risks, and
why I can't I act more responsibly?
Heh.
Women! (...y-yes, dear?)
That really burned my ass,
but it took me years to realize why. As for where Susan Graham
fits into all of this, it all comes down to my general clueless
nature when it comes to women. She had this huge obsession with
me, and I never saw it. Lisa mistook my total ignorance of the
matter to mean that I was somehow encouraging this girl, and it
really cost us in our marriage.
Make sense.
Rick Hunter is a classic example of the Clueless Anime Guy.
the number of kids who grew up in Roy's generation with only one
or even no parents and still turned out normal. You could also
say that he was a kind of salve for Lisa's somewhat empty
emotional life,
Heh. I don't think that says much about the void he was filling for
her, then. :)
True.
and that's what turned her around. I mean, the
military had been her be-all end-all of existence for so long,
and having Roy meant that she was not just some cog in the war
machine, but a mother, a bringer of life instead of death.
You know, that cliche. Of course people talk in cliches, or else
they wouldn't be cliches, now would they?
:p
A. [Laughs] Okay, you pinned me down on that one! Uncle! [Laughs
again] Seriously, I think it did help in the end that we waited.
I think that being married to your superior officer is never
healthy for either person, and if we had tied the knot right
after Khyron's suicide attack, I think we would have called it
quits during the Malcontent Uprisings. I think that waiting gave
both of us the maturity and the patience to see past the stupid
things that were dividing us, and gave us a level of perspective
on the issues that ultimately let us work through our problems.
Makes sense. Sound reasoning there.
Of course it would be more like "...gave *me* the maturity..." etc, but
then, this is Rick we're talking about.
A. It's not so bad for me to talk about her anymore. Go ahead.
Q. Some commentators on the Robotech Wars have gone so far as to
suggest that had Minmei taken you seriously during those early
days of the war, that she would have never become Miss Macross,
and because of that, we'd all be long dead under the Zentraedi
bombardment, and the Robotech Masters tyranny would have been
restored by the protoculture matrix hidden within the bowels of
the SDF-1. Indeed, almost every aspect of the galaxy that we
now live in would be fundamentally different if Minmei had not
pursued her career as a star.
Of course you could always say of Zor had never started his
experiements with the Flower of Life none of this mess would have
been created either. :P
But then we get back to the paradox of Minmei being Zor's mother,
and if she had not pursued her singing career, yadda yadda yadda,
she would have been killed, and never have had the opportunity to
have Rem's son, and then... arrrgh. I hate time travel in fiction.
A. It's easy to speculate on that sort of thing for fun, but
seriously? I don't think that things could have turned out
any differently than they did.
Q. Taking a line from Emil Lang?
A: You mean, 'Hey baby, wanna pollinate with me?'
Q: No. The other line he was famous for.
Yes, that *is* a protoculture-veeblefeltzer in my pocket, and
yes, I *am* happy to see you...
Q. So the tell-alls about your brief time "playing house" together
weren't all they claim to be?
A. "Playing house" is probably the best way you could describe the
two weeks we lived together.
Perfectly, I'd say.
Q. What brought you both to that point? Was it the draining effect
of the war? Or the so-called "Reconstruction Blues"?
Heh. That did sum up the Macross post Rain of Death arc well, though.
It was the perfect title.
Or, "Since the fans in Japan weren't happy with the first ending to
Macross, let's REALLY bring on the pain..."
up like Janet whatsherface, you know, the woman who was
supposed to win the first Miss Macross contest, and instead
ended up becoming this wacko mystic, and the butt of
everyone's jokes. [Pauses to clear throat]
The above was an excellent paragraph on the events in the series.
Very nicely put.
Thank you again.
Excuse me... In the end, she wanted
what anyone wants when their life is falling apart - a chance
to start over. She went running back to me not because she
loved me, but because she was in love with the idea of how
her life could have been different from the train wreck it
had become if she had chosen me over her career.
And this as well.
Thanks thricely.
Q. You're referring to her partnership with the android, Janice
Em?
That became public knowledge? I'm surprised. Or did everyone know
in the end of the Sentinals series? It's been over a decade since
I've read it.
By 2065, this kind of information would have come out for certain.
Too many surviving REF'ers knew by the end, and they would have
talked. I believe it's mentioned in a few chapter header quotations
as well.
Global Civil War, right before the SDF-1 appeared; then, when
Dolza brought down the Rain of Death, we really were practically
wiped out as a species. The Robotech Masters would have enslaved
the people of Earth as clone-stock for their renewed war machine.
The Invid as well. I myself gave the order to sterilize the planet
with the Neutron-S weapons we had devised - and don't think for
a moment that I will ever forget THAT terrible decision.
Yep. Although it was part of what convinced the Regis to leave, as
I recall. It worked, but not in the way it was meant to.
She did leave because of the missiles, but it wouldn't have changed
the ending for humanity if the REF hadn't shown up. I'm sure Rick and
a lot of other REF officers were quite happy that they didn't end up
sterilizing their homeworld, to say nothing of the poor bastards on
the surface.
The inspiration for this really hit me out of the blue, and I was
compelled to run with it. In the process I found myself reexamining
the world of Robotech as told to us by the Jacks
Whoops. Stray 's'. Was afraid I would provide no corrections at all
there, for a moment.
No mistake, as Mister Sherman pointed out. I count Brian Daley as a
significant influence on my writing, and I mourn his death every
time I go through his novels. James Luceno was, in my opinion, the
lesser of the two writers, and since Brian's death, has unfortunately
inherited the burden of defending some of the things they chose to do
in the books to the Robotech fandom at large. (Albeit nit-picky
B.S. from people who just can't seem to understand that "Robotech"
and "Macross" are two vastly different concepts that just happen to
have used the same animation footage...)
McKinney, and how
I felt about the decisions they had made in bringing the saga to a
close. I also found myself refuting with Rick Hunter's voice a
certain fanfic written by Richard Lawson, where after a long and
rocky marriage, Rick and Lisa get a divorce.
I could never agree
with Mr. Lawson's conclusions regarding the two,
WAHAHAHA! Small world, isn't it. How every interesting that it
ends up cited by both of us for not particularly liking it and
for similar reasons.
You can count Mister Sandborn among us as well, if you want to keep
score. (No offense, Richard, we still love you!)
and while I
discussed the matter with him at the time, I only feel right now
that I have done anything positive to bring forward my feelings
on the matter.
Overall very nice work and restores my faith in post Novel fics.
Once G.L. gets cracking on more FOX Squadron, my Robotech fix
should be satiated for a while.
But like a junkie, you'll keep crawling back for more. (Isn't
there some kind of methadone-clinic for Robotech fans?)
D.B. Sommer
Thanks for your comments!
Jamie