A short one today, mostly because this post exists to introduce someone.
Somewhere along the way, building ACE, a character got made up for testing. She stuck. She refused to stay a test case, and now, honestly, everything revolves around her: when a feature gets designed, the question is what it means for her. When a system gets argued over, she's the example.
Her name is Mara. She's from Norway.
She's one of the young players you'll be able to pick up and guide. Close family, her brother also plays tennis, which tells you something about the dinners in that house. She has a boyfriend. She loves the sun, which is a slightly inconvenient thing for a Norwegian to love, and it matters more than you'd think once the calendar starts sending her chasing summer around the planet. She's made a couple of friends on tour already, the kind you warm up with in the morning and might have to beat in the afternoon.
She's just getting started. Ranked nowhere. Known by no one. Everything ahead of her.
If you choose her, the job is to make her train hard, play well, win something eventually, hopefully something big. But more than any of that: the job is to keep her healthy, keep her happy, help her have a good life inside a sport that doesn't hand those out for free.
If the other posts here made any sense, the depth, the slice of life, the two hearts, the events that actually matter: this is what it was all for. Not systems for the sake of systems. A person. A career. A life you're responsible for.
This is Mara. Be good to her.