Droners sideblog that I don't know if I'll use

Still not too happy with the way she looks but at least it's something. The Empress...or my vision of her...

She's younger than Wyatt, Scarlett and Lavinia, around Gavinda's age, and to be honest I think she's even a bit younger than her as well. This is a bit ironic considering the way she carries herself, seeing all of them - as she does almost everyone she encounters - as below her in one way or another. She doesn't usually rub it in people's face, it's just... felt every time you interact with her.

She tends to act really cheerful and relaxed, lulling some people into considering her unserious, hedonistic, almost a comic relief sometimes, and generally not a threatening ruler. This isn't really true, though, as she is a great strategist and diplomat, which really shows when the situation gets serious. It's not that she's two-faced or anything as a lot of her cheerfulness and enthusiasm is genuine, she just knows how and when to handle herself.

Speaking of enthusiasm - she was never a pilot or a part of a team. Instead, she's always been a fan of watching the races, and it's her favorite form of entertainment to this day. The word entertainment is crucial here - she doesn't underestimate how the races can tie into important matters, no, but the main reason she LIKES them is for fun, sometimes at the expense of the teams, and this is the main way in which she'd tie into the point of the show. I imagine she'd think of really challenging tracks just to see how the pilots handle them, similar to Wyatt and Scarlett, though I think the main difference is that eg. in the Magnetis race she wouldn't shut the challenge of jumping over it down. Maybe she'd even encourage it, if it wasn't a bad look for someone in her position to do that.

Also, the original idea they had for Sun of a blind character being tied to egyptian motifs with the Eye of Horus and such, having that band on his head probably being what allows him to see, was really fun. Though I am really glad they didn't go with that design.

My first thought was that the season could center around building the machinery they got the crystals for in s2, or more precisely around the fact that iirc it was supposed to be built in the colder part of Terraqua, and i CAN'T imagine Polaris would like that. In that case the goal of the season could be to convince them to allow the construction? (Also Gavinda could come back into the picture as a villain)

I think this could be cool, but I'm kind of stumped on why any of the other teams (except the Zealots) would assist the Whale Gang in their travels to Polaris. What would teams like the Pirates, Sirens, Bees or Tao Twins have to do there?

Because it feels redundant to say they're obviously not just any random team. She trusted them to be loyal to her enough to send them on industrial espionage, and they have a skillset specifically useful for that, too, with their illusions/invisibility tricks, the… ninja-like stunts they pull off sometimes (they even have special outfits for that??), and Adam's social skills (notably Hannah's not as good at that part, it seems, but thats a different topic). All of which must have been why she chose them for that (or she chose them for that and THEN they got some of these skills... What other reason would they have for the ninja stunts...)

Anyway. there's a very easy answer to all of this suggested in the manga:

Teach Tech looking for teams to sponsor. Safe to say it wouldn't make sense for this to be a singular exception done for Loopi. I'd more likely imagine this to be something done by Teach across the whole Terraqua once in a while, like opening submissions for a limited period and then filtering through them by checking their abilities like we see in Vol.1.

This started as a joke but at some point it started taking so long it became half-serious as well. Symetryczno-Liryczna Hanto AMV

For the non-polish people I translated the lyrics under the cut to the best of my ability: