History DarthWiki / WereAllGoingToDieYoungAnyway

* MeaningfulName: All the main characters have nicknames that sort of describe their powers - Sadsack is an empath, Halfwit can possess people, Dumbass feels no pain, etc.

In a distant future, mankind and its extraterrestrial allies are struggling to contain the Sea of Nightmares, a vast sentient psychic field that threatens to drive the entire galaxy mad. Already, the Earth has fallen under its sway, and humanity has been forced to relocate to other worlds, where they are essentially refugees. Every able-bodied youth now gets funneled into the Neural Navy, a military force trained to enter the Sea of Nightmares and fight its denizens, temporarily slowing its advance.

Into this war stumble Priya, Ingrid, Rumiko, and Alemania, four girls relegated to the much-safer sidelines by their respective parents. Bored out of their skulls, they kill time by training, which comes in handy when Priya's adopted sister goes missing from the front lines and she decides to embark on a mission to find her.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Priya and Ha'Lina's father has the Mahe equivalent of high-functioning autism.
* AmbiguousGender: Na'lane and their mentor Ha'rine are both non-binary.
* AmbiguouslyBrown: Ingrid is a Coloured South African, with a mix of Lemba, Dutch, and British ancestry.
* AmoralAfrikaner: Gerda Kruger is one of the nastier folks in Priya's class. Ingrid Steyn is more of a subversion.
* AncestralWeapon: Priya wields two weapons handed down through her family. In the normal world, she wields a ''ta'taka'' dagger that belonged to her adopted grandfather. In the Sea of Nightmares, she eventually manages to manifest ''Garu'zara'', a scythe handed down through her adopted mother's family.
* TheAntiNihilist: Priya has no illusions about how bad things actually are outside of her home island, but rather than be bitter about it, she is driven to befriend and help others.
-->'''Priya:''' The truth is, the whole galaxy is just a vast, storm-wracked ocean, and we're all caught in it without a life raft. A lot of people see that and decide to thrash about or give up, and they drown. I choose to try and help others tread water.
* {{Arcadia}}: Priya and Ha'Lina's home, Vise Ni'Hare, is a peaceful, warm island populated by well-to-do Mahe families.
* {{Asexuality}}: Ingrid Steyn is explicitly asexual.
* BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind: In the future in which the story takes place, combat takes place in the Sea of Nightmares, a sort of collective psychic battlefield.
* BiTheWay: Several of the characters are explicitly bisexual, including Ma'Tena and one of Pelly's two dads.
* BizarreAlienBiology: The Mahe'ta are capable of breathing underwater.
* BodyPaint: Towards the beginning of the book, Priya performs a dance with her upper torso painted.
* ButchLesbian: Meryl Houser is highly muscular and has short hair, and happens to prefer the company of women.
* CastFullOfGay: Very few of the main characters are entirely straight.
* AChildShallLeadThem: 16-year-old Haka Do'Reko Talama seeks to become the new Hala of the Mahe'ta. While the nobility largely consider him too soft and too green to lead, the other claimants for the throne all come with their own considerably worse baggage.
* ChildSoldiers: The military makes heavy use of teenage soldiery, because kids don't fully comprehend the dangers of going into the Sea of Nigthmares.
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Alemania's people have long been trained to infiltrate the Neural Navy in anticipation of an eventual coup. Many of them have a tendency to screw their fellow soldiers over to further their own goals.
* ChronicHeroSyndrome: Rumiko is driven to join the Neural Navy by a genuine belief that she can help people.
* TheClan: The Mahe'Ta have a nebulous concept of family, resulting in several large clans, including the Hare'Ta (Priya's adopted family), the Zave'Ta (Na'Lane's family), and the Talama'Ta (the old royal family).
* CondescendingCompassion: The very wealthy Rumiko frequently wanders into this territory, constantly offering generous gifts to her new friends on the assumption that they could not afford to buy such things themselves.
* ConvenientlyAnOrphan: Priya's biological parents are long dead by the time the story begins, allowing the Hare family to adopt her with few problems.
* CrapsaccharineWorld: The human colonies on Zura Maja'ne are awash in propaganda intended to ensure that nearly every able-bodied person willingly joins the Neural Navy. Meanwhile, the Mahe government projects an image of stability even as its upper class fights for constantly dwindling power.
* DaddysGirl: Gerda Kruger positively worships her father, which is unfortunate, because he's a foul-mouthed, paranoid bigot, and she's absorbed a lot of his views.
* DarkSkinnedRedhead: Ingrid has a mix of African and European heritage, resulting in red hair and brown skin.
* DeadlyDecadentCourt: The Mahe upper class are pathologically obsessed with intrigue, which is one of the reasons they've been unable to secure a new Hala.
* DeepSouth: One of the major human colonies on Zura Maja'ne is Whitepit, which serves as that world's equivalent to the Deep South. Meryl jokes that it's one of the major sources of Neural Navy recruits because everyone with any sense wants to get the hell out of there.
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: The Mahe'ta have... complicated ideas about gender. This is a cause of much consternation when dealing with humans, particularly in the area of education; when the humans and Mahe'ta established an integrated school on Vise Ni'Hare, the Mahe parents were outraged when the human administrators tried to institute gender-segregated bathrooms and locker rooms, as Mahe belief holds that children are genderless.
* ExcusePlot: The plot, such as it is, is largely an excuse to explore anti-nihilism and to subvert the BuryYourGays trope.
* ExoticExtendedMarriage:
** Among the Mahe'ta, marriages are traditionally understood to be temporary, to the point that marriages come with predetermined expiration dates, after which the two parties must either renew the marriage or dissolve it.
** Commander Ar-Shoran has two wives back on her homeworld. This is not uncommon for the Liva.
* FantasticRacism: There's a lot of deeply-suppressed racial tension between the humans and the Mahe'Ta, although since they have to work together in the war, the tensions don't get expressed openly very often.
* FantasticReligiousWeirdness: With Earth having been largely abandoned, religious-minded refugees are still trying to figure out how to adapt to a new world where none of their surroundings have any innate religious significance. Two notable results of this are the spread of a new, slightly more socially-liberal version of Islam, and the founding of Habsburg-Seven, a bizarre post-Doomsday cult that claims a connection to the Habsburg royal line (the "seven" part refers to the fact that cult has collapsed and rebuilt itself seven times since its inception.)
* FantasticSlur: The Mahe'ta are sometimes called "goldfish" by less enlightened humans because of their gold skin, affinity to water, and perceived flightiness.
* TheFatalist: Having grown up in a brutal doomsday cult that turned her into a child soldier, Alemania doesn't really believe in ideas like free will, and is fascinated by people like Priya or Rumi who actually make choices about what they believe.
* FemaleMisogynist: Gerda ''hates'' other girls with a fiery passion.
* GoodOlBoy: Harlan Houser is a straight example, being loud and dim and gung-ho about everything. His sister Meryl flirts with the stereotype, playing dumb and crude to annoy some of her more uptight squadmates while being highly competent in her job.
* GirlyGirlWithATomboyStreak: Priya aspires to be a good Mahe'zara (despite being human), but she's also a strong swimmer, and a decent fighter.
* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: The Mahe'ta have gold skin, and the Liva have red skin.
* HappilyAdopted: Priya loves her adopted family dearly.
* HasTwoMommies: Pelly has two dads.
* HeteronormativeCrusader: Gerda hates lesbians, mainly because of her paranoid belief that a woman seduced her mother and ruined her parents' marriage.
* TheHorde: The Murder's foot soldiers attack in large swarms.
* IdiotHero: Bowser Brooklyn is forced into the Neural Navy after becoming an unwitting accomplice to a robbery.
* IHaveManyNames: As a result of being a human raised by a Mahe family, Priya has also acquired the localized name Puri'ya, the pet name Puri, and the Mahe name Ka'Lela.
* IncompatibleOrientation: Priya has a large crush on her childhood friend Ingrid. Unfortunately for her, Ingrid is asexual.
* InitiationCeremony: The book opens with Priya undergoing her initiation into Mahe womanhood.
* InnocentFanserviceGirl: Priya is aware that her fellow humans wear clothing, and has no trouble with the concept in principle, but finds most other humans incredibly prudish.
* InnocentlyInsensitive: Rumiko is sort of the Muslim equivalent of a White Liberal, and is thus prone to saying things that unintentionally offend her teammates.
* InterspeciesRomance: Haka Te'Doro is in love with Hiro, a human.
* KnifeNut: Alemania's favored weapon is the knife, and God help anyone who ends up on the wrong end of it.
* TheLadette: Pelly can throw a mean punch and curse like a sailor, and claims that she can drink anyone under the table (although, since she's underage, she has yet to find anyone willing to challenge her on that last point.)
* LipstickLesbian: Priya and her sister Ha'Lina are both very elegant young women who happen to prefer the company of other women.
* {{Loincloth}}: The Mahe citizens of Vise Ni'Hare aren't usually big on underwear, so their version is basically a loincloth that's designed to cover the private parts. This causes some consternation for Priya when she is moved into a human-dominated area and finds that her fellow humans dress more modestly.
* LotusEaterMachine: The Sea of Nightmares began as an attempt to slow the Murder by trapping them in a large psychic field. Unfortunately, the Murder turned out to have a powerful HiveMind at its disposal, allowing it to take control of the field and expand it.
* MalignedMixedMarriage: One of the things that has been preventing more of the Mahe'ta from rallying around Haka Te'Doro is his open courtship of Kawatake Hiro, a human.
* MamaBear: La'Sale is extremely protective of her children. As a lawyer, she can also be highly creative in neutralizing threats to her family, which makes it all the more frustrating for her when she loses custody of Priya due to a technicality.
* MeaningfulName:
** "Alemania" is the Spanish name for "Germany". The leaders of Alemania's homeland claim to be descendants of the Habsburg royal line, who historically ruled both Germany and Spain.
** Priya's adopted surname, Hare, alludes to her adopted family's former rule over their home island, Vise Ni'Hare.
* MixedAncestry:
** Priya's exact ancestry is unknown, other than the fact that one of her biological parents was Indian and her father was apparently Swedish.
** As a Coloured South African, Ingrid has a mix of African and European ancestry.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: In the ShowWithinAShow, the Mahe heroine Ti'Halo was raised by the giantess Ge'Ryna, and was quite happy, until she was visited by the ghosts of her parents, who revealed to her that Ge'Ryna had killed them and they had placed a curse upon Ge'Ryna's kingdom that could only be broken if Ti'Halo killed her. Unwilling to kill her surrogate mother, Ti'Halo tried to commit suicide by poisoning herself... but Ge'Ryna had gotten wind of her plans and replaced the poison with a strong alcohol. The alcohol turned Ti'Halo into a mean drunk, and when she realized that Ge'Ryna had interfered with her plans, she flew into a rage and accidentally killed her. And because that wasn't devastating enough, Ti'Halo then discovered that Ge'Ryna's former subjects were happy that she was dead and considered Ti'Halo herself to be a hero. She spent the rest of her life trying to live up to the image, but none of her good deeds ever helped her forget her murder, and she ended up throwing herself into the ocean.
* NakedOnArrival: Priya spends about half of the first chapter topless as part of an initiation.
* NationalGeographicNudity: The Mahe'ta on Vise Ni'Hare think nothing of swimming or sunbathing naked, and communal bathing plays a role in both their social and spiritual lives.
* {{Ojou}}: Rumiko is treated as one back in Landan, due to her family's absurd wealth. One of the things that drives her to join the Neural Navy is the fear that unless she gets out of that kind of environment, she'll grow to accept such treatment as normal.
* ParentsAsPeople:
** As a young woman, La'Sala was overly ambitious and grew frustrated with her mother's embrace of soft power, diving into an unhappy first marriage in order to secure power for herself. As a mother, she tries to steer her three children away from making the same mistakes, but this causes her to be unsupportive of Na'Lane's political ambitions (which in turn causes Na'Lane to believe that she doesn't love them), and overly protective of Ha'Lina and Priya.
** Fe'Rase love his wife and daughters, but his condition causes him to isolate himself and bury himself in work.
* PretendPrejudice: For all that Commander Ar-Shoran talks about the stupidity of humans and Mahe'ta, she seems to be in no hurry to get transferred back to Liva space.
* RaisedByNatives: Priya was raised by a Mahe family.
* ReformedBully: When she was little, Ingrid's family was struggling, and her home life was unhappy, and she took out her anger by stealing covertly things from Priya, but then became extremely guilty when one of the things she stole turned out to be extremely valuable to Priya, and thus returned it while claiming that someone else had stolen it, winning Priya's friendship. This one good act caused the Hare family to reward her own family... and also filled her with a shitload of remorse about her past behavior that continues to haunt her years later.
* RomanticTwoGirlFriendship: Priya and Ingrid are extremely close, and Priya has a poorly-concealed crush on Ingrid.
* RubberForeheadAliens: The Liva have pronounced brow ridges.
* ShoutOut:
** Ingrid's nickname for Priya, "Valentine", is a reference to Valentine Michael Smith, the protagonist of ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand'', who was similarly raised by aliens.
** Priya arrived on Zura Maja'ne via an escape pod that crashed on the island of Vise Ni'Hare, which inspired her human-culture-obsessed adopted father to give her the Mahe name [[Franchise/{{Superman}} Ka'Lela]].
* ShowWithinAShow: "Ti'Halo and the Giantess", a tragic rock operetta about family and revenge.
* SkinnyDipping: Swimming naked is a common pastime on Vise Ni'Hare.
* SkinshipGrope: At one point in their adventures in the Sea, the girls find a hot spring, where they elect to stop for a bath. Alemania invites the others to feel her up, in an attempt to appear more approachable. The others all find this extremely off-putting, given that Alemania seems like an ObviousJudas, but Priya good-naturedly goes along with it, assuming that it's some cultural thing.
* SuccessionCrisis: When the story begins, the Mahe'Ta are stuck in a protracted succession crisis due to the death of their Hala and an overabundance of candidates to replace him. Na'Lane becomes a casualty of this succession crisis after they are wrongly implicated in a failed attempt by their father to murder Haka Te'Doro.
* TemptingFate: Na'Lane first appears at Priya's party, where they boast about how they're bound for a high-level job under Haka Te'Doro. The next time they appear, they report for their first day, only to learn that their father has been accused of trying to assassinate Te'Doro, and thus the job has been rescinded.
* ThisIsMyNameOnForeign: Priya's name is transliterated as "Puri'ya" when it's written in Mahe, as the written form of the Mahe language doesn't have consonant clusters.
* TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior: In her first scene, 13-year-old Alemania is attacked by her classmates, forcing her to maim and even kill several of them, at which point she is informed that she's been promoted to the Soldiers of Cronus.
* TwoferTokenMinority: Each member of the main cast falls into multiple demographic groups - Priya is Indian and gay, Ingrid is mixed-race, Jewish, and asexual, Rumiko is a mixed-race (Egyptian-Japanese) Muslim, Pelly is mixed (Korean-Mexican) and bisexual, etc.
* TheUnfavorite: Na'Lane feels that they are less loved by their mother than their sisters Hali and Kala. La'Sala admits that she ''does'' give Na'Lane a harder time, but this is because Na'Lane behaves very much the way that she used to when she was young and ambitious, and the thought that she's passed that on to one of her children scares her.
* UnfortunateNames: Pelly's real first name is "Pellinora". One of her dads thought it would be a pretty name.
* UriahGambit: Na'Lane is sent off to the front lines as a punishment for their stepfather's treachery.
* VasquezAlwaysDies: Ingrid is well-aware of [[BlackDudeDiesFirst how things usually go for black people in fiction]], and thus assumes that she'll probably be the first one to die on the adventure.
* TheWhitestBlackGuy: Priya is a human of Indian descent, but has spent most of her life around the Mahe'ta, and has picked up many of their habits.
* TheWonderland: The Sea of Nightmares has rules to it. Unfortunately, the rule book isn't exactly publicized.

* BiTheWay: Several of the characters are explicitly bisexual, including Malane and one of Pelly's two dads.
* BizarreAlienBiology: The Mahe'Ta are capable of breathing underwater. Humans, of course, can't. This leads to some danger when Priya undertakes a Mahe rite of passage of diving into a pool and staying under until she receives an epiphany.

* AChildShallLeadThem: 16-year-old Haka Do'Reko Talama seeks to become the new Hala of the Mahe'Ta. While the nobility largely consider him too soft and too green to lead, the other claimants for the throne all come with their own considerably worse baggage.

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: The Mahe'Ta have... complicated ideas about gender. This is a cause of much consternation when dealing with humans, particularly in the area of education; when the humans and Mahe'ta established an integrated school on Vise Ni'Hare, the Mahe parents were outraged when the human administrators tried to institute gender-segregated bathrooms and locker rooms, as Mahe belief holds that children are genderless.

** Among the Mahe'Ta, marriages are traditionally understood to be temporary, to the point that marriages come with predetermined expiration dates, after which the two parties must either renew the marriage or dissolve it.

* FantasticSlur: The Mahe'Ta are sometimes called "goldfish" by less enlightened humans because of their gold skin, affinity to water, and perceived flightiness.

* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: The Mahe'Ta have gold skin, and the Liva have red skin.

* InitiationCeremony: On Vise Ni'Hare, those seeking to become recognized as young women must perform a feat that demonstrates some talent associated with womanhood and then dive into a pool to "commune with the water" and receive an insight. The first chapter of the book has Priya undertaking this rite.

* InterspeciesRomance: Haka Do'Reko is in love with Hiro, a human.

* MalignedMixedMarriage: One of the things that has been preventing more of the Mahe'Ta from rallying around Haka Do'Reko is his open courtship of Kawatake Hiro, a human.
* MamaBear: La'Sale is extremely protective of her children. As a lawyer, she can also be highly creative in neutralizing threats to her family, which makes it all the more frustrating for her when

* PretendPrejudice: For all that Commander Ar-Shoran talks about the stupidity of humans and Mahe'Ta, she seems to be in no hurry to get transferred back to Liva space.

* SuccessionCrisis: When the story begins, the Mahe'Ta are stuck in a protracted succession crisis due to the death of their Hala and an overabundance of candidates to replace him. Na'Lane becomes a casualty of this succession crisis after they are wrongly implicated in a failed attempt by their father to murder Haka Do'Reko.
* TemptingFate: Na'Lane first appears at Priya's party, where they boast about how they're bound for a high-level job under Haka Do'Reko. The next time they appear, they report for their first day, only to learn that their father has been accused of trying to assassinate Do'Reko, and thus the job has been rescinded.
* ThisIsMyNameInForeign: Priya's name is transliterated as "Puri'ya" when it's written in Mahe, as the written form of the Mahe language doesn't have consonant clusters.

* UriahGambit: Na'Lane is sent off to the front lines as a punishment for their father's treachery.

* TheWhitestBlackGuy: Priya is a human of Indian descent, but has spent most of her life around the Mahe'Ta, and has picked up many of their habits.

* AmbiguouslyBrown: Ingrid is a Coloured South African, with a mix of Zulu, Dutch, and British ancestry.

-->:'''Priya:''' The truth is, the whole galaxy is just a vast, storm-wracked ocean, and we're all caught in it without a life raft. A lot of people see that and decide to thrash about or give up, and they drown. I choose to try and help others tread water.

* InnocentFanserviceGirl: Priya is aware that humans wear clothing, and has no trouble with the concept in principle, but as she moves farther away from her life on Vise Ni'Hare, she grows more nostalgic for the days when she could just throw off her clothes and jump in the nearest lake.

** "Alemania" is Spanish for "Germany". The leaders of Alemania's homeland claim to be descendants of the Habsburg royal line, who historically ruled both Germany and Spain.

* ChildSoldiers: The military makes heavy use of teenage soldiery, because they don't fully comprehend the dangers of going into the Sea of Nigthmares.

* NakedOnArrival: Priya spends about half of the chapter topless as part of an initiation.

** Priya's exact ancestry is unknown, other than the fact that one of her parents was Indian.

* NakedOnArrival: The first chapter opens with Priya and her Mahe friends swimming naked in a pond, and she spends about half of the chapter topless as part of an initiation.

* RomanticTwoGirlFriendship: Priya and Ingrid are extremely close, and Priya has a poorly-concealed crush on Ingrid. Unfortunately for her, Ingrid is asexual.

* AmbiguouslyBrown: Ingrid is a Coloured South African, with a mix of African and Dutch ancestry.
* AmicableExes: Ha'Lina is still close with Malane, her ex-girlfriend, in spite of Malane having moved on to another relationship.

* TheAntiNihilist: Pelly is well-aware that the war is mostly hopeless and she'll probably die young, but chooses to make the most of her life while she can.

* BringMeMyBrownPants: The Pilot Corps provides its trainees with highly-absorbent undergarments. Battle gets intense sometimes.

* INeedAFreakingDrink: Some of the more experienced troops have turned to alcohol to deal with the stress of the war.

* {{Loincloth}}: The Mahe women of Vise Ni'Hare aren't usually big on underwear, so their version is basically a large loincloth that's designed to cover the private parts. Priya is a bit shocked that humans don't wear the same.

** Priya's adopted surname, Hareta, alludes to her adopted family's former rule over their home island, Vise Ni'Hare.
* MixedAncestry: As a Coloured South African, Ingrid has a mix of African and European ancestry.

* NowOrNeverKiss: Pelly plants one on Priya when she thinks they're going to die during a battle.

* ShrinkingViolet: Priya is shy and reserved, even around her adopted family, to the point that she still insistently uses formal honorifics when addressing her adopted parents.

* BlackAndNerdy: Adede Mahlangu works in the Pilot Corps' science division.

* AChildShallLeadThem: 16-year-old Haka Do'Rane Alate seeks to become the new Hala of the Mahe'Ta. While the nobility largely consider him too soft and too green to lead, the other claimants for the throne all come with their own considerably worse baggage.

* TheClan: The Mahe'Ta have a nebulous concept of family, resulting in several large clans, including the Hareta (Priya's adopted family), the Zaveta (Na'Lane's family), and the Alate (the old royal family).

* ConvenientlyAnOrphan: Priya's biological parents are long dead by the time the story begins, allowing the Hareta family to adopt her with few problems.

* DeliberateValuesDissonance:
** Priya and Ingrid's school is built around a mix of human and Mahe educational traditions. One of the Mahe traditions is that gym class is conducted in the nude, as Mahe'Ta find the notion of gym clothes absurd.
** In a later scene, Priya is invited to join her Mahe friends for a communal bath - a perfectly normal thing in their culture - and invites her new friend Pelly to come along. Pelly initially agrees, assuming that they're all going to be wearing bathing suits, and gets spooked when she realizes that everyone else is getting naked.

* FantasticRacism:
** There's a lot of deeply-suppressed racial tension between the humans and the Mahe'Ta, although since they have to work together in the war, the tensions don't get expressed openly very often.

* HeteronormativeCrusader: Nearly every one of Gerda's insults involves references to lesbian sex. It could be inferred that she's not a fan of lesbians.

* IHaveManyNames: As a result of being a human raised by a Mahe family, Priya has also acquired the "Mahetized" name Puri'ya, the pet name Puri, and the Mahe name Ka'Lela.

* InterspeciesRomance: Haka Do'Rane is in love with Hiro, a human.

* MalignedMixedMarriage: One of the things that has been preventing more of the Mahe'Ta from rallying around Haka Do'Rane is his open relationship with Kawatake Hiro, a human.

* OneeSama: Priya sees her adopted big sister Ha'Lina as being far more beautiful, confident, and graceful than she is. Ha'Lina herself tries to discourage this, realizing that it's just making Priya's self-esteem issues worse. After getting promoted, Ha'Lina also receives this treatment from her friends, which makes her own issues worse.

* SkinshipGrope: At one point in their adventures in the Sea, the girls find a hot spring, where they elect to stop for a bath. Alemania invites the others to feel her up, in an attempt to appear more approachable. The others all find this extremely off-putting, but Priya good-naturedly goes along with it, assuming that it's some cultural thing.
* SuccessionCrisis: When the story begins, the Mahe'Ta are stuck in a protracted succession crisis due to the death of their Hala and an overabundance of candidates to replace him. Na'Lane becomes a casualty of this succession crisis after they are wrongly implicated in a failed attempt by their father to murder Haka Do'Rane.
* TemptingFate: Na'Lane first appears at the Hareta family party, where they boast about how they're bound for a high-level job under Haka Do'Rane. The next time they appear, they report for their first day, only to learn that their father has been accused of trying to assassinate Do'Rane, and thus the job has been rescinded.

* BizarreAlienBiology: The Mahe'Ta are capable of breathing underwater. Humans, of course, can't. This leads to some danger when one of Hy'Lona's friends decide picks a fight with her adopted human sister while the latter is swimming underwater.

* ChronicHeroSyndrome: Rumiko is driven to join the Pilot Corps by a genuine belief that she can help people.

* CrapsaccharineWorld: The human colonies on Last Stand are awash in propaganda intended to ensure that nearly every able-bodied person willingly joins the Pilot Corps. Meanwhile, the Mahe government projects an image of stability even as its upper class fights for constantly dwindling power.

* DeepSouth: One of the major human colonies on Last Stand is Whitepit, which serves as Last Stand's equivalent to the Deep South. Meryl jokes that it's one of the major sources of Neural Navy recruits because everyone with any sense wants to get the hell out of there.

* InitiationCeremony: On Vise Ni'Hare, girls celebrate their thirteenth birthday by swimming down into the local pond, touching the statue at the bottom, and then battling a "guardian of the idol" (actually just another girl) before resurfacing. The first chapter sees Priya undergoing a modified version of this ceremony, taking into account her inability to breath underwater.

* {{Loincloth}}: The Mahe women of Vise Ni'Hare aren't usually big on underwear, so their version is basically a large loincloth that's designed to cover the anus, genitalia, and nipples. Priya is a bit shocked that humans don't wear the same.

* NationalGeographicNudity: The Mahe'Ta on Vise Ni'Hare think nothing of swimming or sunbathing naked, and communal bathing plays a role in both their social and spiritual lives.

* ShoutOut: Ingrid's nickname for Priya, "Valentine", is a reference to Valentine Michael Smith, the protagonist of ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand'', who was similarly raised by aliens.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Priya and Hy'Lona's father has the Mahe equivalent of high-functioning autism.
* AmbiguousGender: Nalan and their mentor Harin are both non-binary.

* AmicableExes: Hy'Lona is still close with Malen, her ex-girlfriend, in spite of Malen having moved on to another relationship.

* {{Arcadia}}: Priya and Hy'Lona's home, Vis Ni'Heer, is a peaceful, warm island populated by well-to-do Mahe families.

* BiTheWay: Several of the characters are explicitly bisexual, including Malen and one of Pelly's two dads.
* BizarreAlienBiology: The Mahe'Tan are capable of breathing underwater. Humans, of course, can't. This leads to some danger when one of Hy'Lona's friends decide picks a fight with her adopted human sister while the latter is swimming underwater.

* AChildShallLeadThem: 16-year-old Ha'ek Orras Al'At seeks to become the new Ha'el of the Mahe'Tan. While the nobility largely consider him too soft and too green to lead, the other claimants for the throne all come with their own considerably worse baggage.

* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Alemania's people have long been trained to infiltrate the Pilot Corps in anticipation of an eventual coup. Many of them have a tendency to screw their fellow soldiers over to further their own goals.

* ConvenientlyAnOrphan: Priya's biological parents are long dead by the time the story begins, allowing the He'er family to adopt her with few problems.

* DeadlyDecadentCourt: The Mahe upper class are pathologically obsessed with intrigue, which is one of the reasons they've been unable to secure a new Ha'el.
* DeepSouth: One of the major human colonies on Last Stand is Whitepit, which serves as Last Stand's equivalent to the Deep South. Meryl jokes that it's one of the major sources of Pilot Corps recruits because everyone with any sense wants to get the hell out of there.

** Priya and Ingrid's school is built around a mix of human and Mahe educational traditions. One of the Mahe traditions is that gym class is conducted in the nude, as Mahe'Tan find the notion of gym clothes absurd.

* ExoticExtendedMarriage: Commander Ar-Shoran has two wives back on her homeworld. This is not uncommon for the Liva.

** There's a lot of deeply-suppressed racial tension between the humans and the Mahe'Tan, although since they have to work together in the war, the tensions don't get expressed openly very often.

* FantasticSlur: The Mahe'Tan are sometimes called "goldfish" by less enlightened humans because of their gold skin, affinity to water, and perceived flightiness.

* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: The Mahe'Tan have gold skin, and the Liva have red skin.

* InitiationCeremony: On Vis Ni'Heer, girls celebrate their thirteenth birthday by swimming down into the local pond, touching the statue at the bottom, and then battling a "guardian of the idol" (actually just another girl) before resurfacing. The first chapter sees Priya undergoing a modified version of this ceremony, taking into account her inability to breath underwater.

* InterspeciesRomance: Ha'ek Orras is in love with Hiro, a human.

* LipstickLesbian: Priya and her sister Hy'Lona are both very elegant young women who happen to prefer the company of other women.

* MalignedMixedMarriage: One of the things that has been preventing more of the Mahe'Tan from rallying around Ha'ek Orras is his open relationship with Kawatake Hiro, a human.
* MeaningfulName: "Alemania" is Spanish for "Germany". The leaders of Alemania's homeland claim to be descendants of the Habsburg royal line, who historically ruled both Germany and Spain.
* NationalGeographicNudity: The Mahe'Tan on Vis Ni'Heer think nothing of swimming or sunbathing naked, and communal bathing plays a role in both their social and spiritual lives.

* {{Ojou}}: Rumiko is treated as one back in Landan, due to her family's absurd wealth. One of the things that drives her to join the Pilot Corps is the fear that unless she gets out of that kind of environment, she'll grow to accept such treatment as normal.
* OneeSama: Priya sees her adopted big sister Hy'Lona as being far more beautiful, confident, and graceful than she is. Hy'Lona herself tries to discourage this, realizing that it's just making Priya's self-esteem issues worse. After getting promoted, Hy'Lona also receives this treatment from her friends, which makes her own issues worse.
* PretendPrejudice: For all that Commander Ar-Shoran talks about the stupidity of humans and Mahe'Tan, she seems to be in no hurry to get transferred back to Liva space.

* SuccessionCrisis: When the story begins, the Mahe'Tan are stuck in a protracted succession crisis due to the death of their Ha'el and an overabundance of candidates to replace him. Nalan becomes a casualty of this succession crisis after they are wrongly implicated in a failed attempt by their father to murder Ha'ek Orras.

* UriahGambit: Nalan is sent off to the front lines as a punishment for their father's treachery.
* TheWhitestBlackGuy: Priya is a human of Indian descent, but has spent most of her life around the Mahe'Tan, and has picked up many of their habits.

* TheWhitestBlackGuy: Priya is a human of Indian descent, but has spent most of her life around the Mahe'Tan, and has picked up many of their habits.

* InnocentFanserviceGirl: The Mahe'Tan think nothing of swimming or sunbathing naked, and communal bathing plays a role in both their social and spiritual lives.

* LipstickLesbian: Hy'Lona is a very elegant young woman who happens to prefer the company of other women.

* DeathSeeker: Alemania starts off as one. Since surviving her stint in the Pilot Corps means she gets to go home and become the bride of a cruel, abusive prince who may or may not be planning to murder her, dying in combat seems like a very attractive prospect to her.

* PlatonicLifePartners: Ingrid and Adede spend a lot of time together, which has naturally inspired some questions about their relationship, but they're just good friends; Ingrid is asexual and Adede is secretly dating a Mahe boy.

* RomanticTwoGirlFriendship: Priya and Pelly's friendship initially falls mostly in this territory. Later on, Pelly becomes a genuine love interest for Priya. Prior to that, Priya harbors a poorly-concealed crush on Ingrid, but that peters out when she realizes that Ingrid doesn't feel the same way.

* StarterVillain: Deirdre Sharpe serves as a entry-level antagonist for Priya, singling her out for abuse because she resents Hy'Lona for becoming the new hero of the Pilot Corps.

* SurvivorsGuilt: Priya secretly believes that she should have died in the accident that killed her parents.