Castles of Steel - Lesbians Good, Imperialism Bad

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Lieutenant Arisukawa Haruna

Balance Stats
❁ • ❁ Work / Life ❁ • ❁
❁ • ❁ Warrior / Princess ❁ • ❁
❁ • ❁ Radical / Respectable ❁ • ❁

Tactical Stats
Gunnery 0, Navigation +2, Command +2, Technology -4, Personal -2, Strategy +3

Stress: 3​


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PLEASE READ THE QUEST RULES BELOW

You collectively vote on the actions of Arisukawa Haruna, the first woman to serve openly in the Imperial Akitsukuni Navy.

This quest is set in a universe which is much like our own circa 1910, but with different politics, cultural norms, and ideas about gender and sexuality, as well as some unusual and advanced technology in places.

We are using this quest to explore themes like breaking the glass ceiling, divergent outlooks on gender and sexuality, colonialism and imperialism, and the place of royalty.

Content Warning
This quest goes some dark places.

There is violence, often explicit, often unfair, often against undeserving targets.

There are not always good options forward. The protagonist is not necessarily a good person.

There is implied content and discussion of sexual harassment and assault.

This is a world where people are often racist, sexist, queerphobic bigots. Sometimes, even the PC and the people they are friends with.

Voting Rules

We will tell you if write-in votes are allowed. If we do not say that write-ins are allowed, they are not. This is to prevent people from unrealistically hedging their bets.

You may proposal other options in a non-vote format, subject to approval, on non write-in votes.

We will tell you when a vote allows approved voting. If we don't say the answer is no, pick an option. We like making people commit.

Discussions makes the GM feel fuzzy.

Game Rules
When we ask you for a roll, roll 3d6. You are aiming to roll equal or under the value of your stat. If you succeed, Haruna gets through the situation with no real difficulties. If you roll above the target value, Haruna will still succeed, but this success will cost her something or add a complication.

Whenever Haruna loses something or faces hardship from a botched roll, she takes Stress. The more Stress Haruna has, the more the job and the circumstances she's in will get to her, and it'll be reflected in the narrative. Haruna must be kept under 10 Stress: if she reaches 10 Stress, she will suffer a breakdown and the results will not be great for her.

Haruna loses stress by taking time for herself, by making meaningful progress on her dreams, and by kissing tall, beautiful women.

Meta Rules
Author commentary is in italics so you know it's not story stuff.

Please don't complain about the system or the fact we have to roll dice. We've heard it before, we've heard it a thousand times across multiple quests. We're not going to change it, and it wears at our fucking souls.

Just going "oh noooo" or "Fish RNGesus Why!" is fun and fine. Complaining at length because you didn't get what you want less so.

If you have a question, tag both @open_sketchbook and @Artificial Girl. If you only tag one of us, you will be ignored. Seriously, we both write this quest.

And yes this is an alt-history type setting with openly gay and trans people, ahistoric medicine, and weird politics. Just... deal, please?

This quest employs a special system called Snippet Votes. Please read this post for more information.
 
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Artificial Girl said:
I don't think anyone is saying that Haruna would think that?
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It is my perception that there's a bit of cross-leakage for a few people between the OOC idea "it would have been better if a bunch of the soldiers had died" (not in-character for Haruna), the related OOC idea "Haruna's orders and the soldiers' actions after the captain was hit were morally blameworthy as such" (maybe somewhat in-character for Haruna)...

...Aaand the IC idea we're actually voting on, namely "this whole disastrous affair is primarily Haruna's fault," which IS a viable in-character thought for Haruna, if not the only thought she could think about the matter.

I could be wrong about the existence of such cross-leakage, but it was in the belief that said cross-leakage was going on that I made the post that I did. Since it seems that the two of us agree on the core matter of fact (that it would probably be out of character for Haruna to wish a bunch of her soldiers had died, even to lessen casualties among the rioters), it's probably a moot point.

...

I get that Haruna feels guilt because she expects the Imperial family, herself included, to display demigoddess-like levels of wisdom and foresight, though.

Dermon said:
[X] Yourself: For who else is there? You could have made your objection more stringent or insisted that the schedule be kept or found a way to avoid this becoming the bloodbath that it had.

I find compelling many of the arguments both for and against assigning blame to ourselves. However, in the end, I believe that this is not only what our character would do, but what should be done.
We want command. With command comes responsibility. To ourselves, to those under our command, and to those unfortunate enough to be caught in the crossfire.
We will make any and all difficult decisions that we must, and not look back from them, but neither will we displace responsibility for what happens.
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But today, someone else was in command. With command comes responsibility, and they had it.

I mean, what if the exact mirror image of this scene plays out three years from now? Lieutenant Arisukawa is commanding a detachment of sailors and marines. Some civilian they're escorting suggests that the detachment do a thing. An Army sub-lieutenant or whatever makes a diffident statement indicating they're willing to go along with the idea but have some reservations.

Then we do the thing, and a riot starts, we get clocked over the head with a cobblestone, and the Army sub-lieutenant takes charge of our detachment and fights their way back to the ship with us in tow.

By the same logic that you're using to justify Haruna being responsible now, in that future incident it would be the Army sub-lieutenant's fault. How is that compatible with the idea that command takes responsibility? Here, we weren't even IN command, and you're having us take responsibility.

The ideal you're promoting here seems to be not so much "command has responsibility" as "Haruna is personally responsible for everything that happens around her, regardless of whether or not she's in charge."

10ebbor10 said:
Technically, the question is "who is to blame for this incident?". What the incident is never defined, and we kinda get to choose it. Defining the incident as the riot make sense, but so does defining it as the massacre that followed. Not because the authorities care about the people that died, but because they care about the unrest and embarassment that will follow.
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The thing is, we aren't somehow totally uninformed and unaware of what the authorities will think; we can make predictions.

The authorities care about the embarrassment, but the riot itself was the embarrassment. Even if somehow by a miracle, no one on our side OR their side had gotten hurt, the riot would have been an embarrassment. In 'reality,' from the point of view of the high command, it's an embarrassment mitigated by the fact that Princess Haruna got the troops to the trucks safely and without injuries.

Now, we COULD choose to spin the whole embarrassment as being our fault. But that isn't necessarily fair to Haruna, or objectively morally right, or in keeping with good military practices.
 
So, question for those who vote for blaming ourselves: what is the expected outcome?

Blaming the Joseon points to increased repraisals and oppression.

Blaming the press points towards removing the press from warfronts, and more controls in general, making it harder for the country to know what is actually happening.

Blaming the Army points towards army v. Navy political games.

Blaming ourselves points to...?

I'm on board with the reasoning that accepting blame for this officially is going to crush our dreams of command tracks, destroy any credit the Purity Club is giving us without getting any return, and will be held against every woman who tries to join the Navy in the future.

Is this just a vote for a clean conscience? Or is there a purpose beyond self-flagillation? Because we can do that privately.
 
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The Sandman said:
[] Yourself: For who else is there? You could have made your objection more stringent or insisted that the schedule be kept or found a way to avoid this becoming the bloodbath that it had.

This too is part of the duty of the Imperial Family.
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How exactly does that work again? How is it a duty of the Imperial Family to take the blame for things junior members of the family weren't in charge of at the time? How is it a duty of the Imperial Family to take responsibility for everything that happens in their vicinity regardless of whether they were the ones who made the relevant choices?

Also, it's the most likely to force the Akitsukuni government and military to actually think about the circumstances leading to this riot rather than just tying it off neatly and calling it a day, since we're simultaneously too important socially to officially blame, too junior in rank to reasonably blame, and our open acceptance of blame means they can't very well just reject it and blame someone else either.
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1) We're not too important socially to officially blame unless we start nakedly abusing our political status and maybe not even then. A princess gets respect, but isn't treated as infallible. At least we should certainly HOPE not, because we're trying to get our cousin, Captain Asshole, in trouble for the way he's mismanaging his ship, remember?

2) We're not too junior in rank to blame for an incident on this scale. Fuckups by very junior company-grade officers (like second lieutenants and ensigns) cause this kind of thing all the time. The blame will not somehow magically slide off of us after we grab it and hug it to ourselves like a big cuddly plushy.

3) This sounds very much like you think we can have our cake and eat it too- that we can accept blame without anyone actually blaming us. Given the whole "stereotyping women as unfit for the pressures of command" thing we're dealing with, I don't believe for a minute that we can have our cake and eat it too here.

...

I think we should take the curated vote options at face value. If we write a report blaming ourselves, the report blames ourselves. Anyone who reads the report and takes it seriously is likely to come away believing that we made serious errors of judgement and had the power to prevent the riot but failed to do so.

Remember that people won't exhaustively research this incident before reading the report every time. The report may be all they ever learn about the incident!
 
@Crasian01
@Rockeye
@LonelyWolf999
@aceraptor

I would like to strongly recommend that you consider voting for your preference between the two front-runners, "blame yourself in the report" and "blame Captain Ienaga in the report." It is vanishingly unlikely that "blame the press" will win at this point, and the vote between the front-runners is extremely close. I suggest weighing the likely consequences of blaming ourselves versus blaming the captain, and picking whichever of those you think is a better choice.
 
The Sandman said:
[X] Yourself: For who else is there? You could have made your objection more stringent or insisted that the schedule be kept or found a way to avoid this becoming the bloodbath that it had.

This too is part of the duty of the Imperial Family.

Also, it's the most likely to force the Akitsukuni government and military to actually think about the circumstances leading to this riot rather than just tying it off neatly and calling it a day, since we're simultaneously too important socially to officially blame, too junior in rank to reasonably blame, and our open acceptance of blame means they can't very well just reject it and blame someone else either.
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You got it the wrong way. We absolutely are an enormous target for being blamed.

Because a big, big part of the Navy things we should be in the proverbial kitchen.

The danger of playing Officer Princess is that, if we fail, the general conclusion from that will be "well, if the Princess couldn't do it, women clearly aren't fit for the Navy".

And there is simply no weightier accusation than the one we levy against ourselves. If we author a report saying "this entire thing is on me", then that's what everyone will believe. And it will be game, set and match for the bigot faction.

Besides, like said, we are not responsible for this fuck up.

Blaming ourselves is self-flagellation. The problem is that we flagellate the dreams of every woman who was countin on Haruna to prove herself, too.

We will not get a pat on the head and a "don't be so hard on yourself, you did good".
 
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[x] Captain Ienaga: His acquiescence to a foolish request for political gain caused the riot.

It was tough. But, I feel like if we could see we had better things to do than pose for "just one more photograph", then surely the guy who's been in the military for much longer should have seen the same. Maybe this is self-serving logic. Maybe this is just the decision that makes me feel good. But, for better or for worse, it's what I'm going with.
 
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I believe it to be the morally correct choice, rather than throwing the protesters, our fellow officer, or the press under the bus (since we can't just blame the purity club).
 
Okay, fuck it. Let's throw the captain under the bus after all.

[x] Captain Ienaga: His acquiescence to a foolish request for political gain caused the riot.
 
I think @The Sandman made a not irrelevant point about what putting the blame on ourselves could mean - given that actually placing the blame on us publicly is likely to be politically untenable (seeing as we're a princess) it might force the government to actually take a good hard look at the circumstances and causes behind the riot.
 
I kinda disagree with the option to blame the Captain as written, because, as word-of-GM has stated, the riot was going to happen regardless of the Purity Club's stunt or not. However, he failed to maintain enough situational awareness to recognize the riot forming, and didn't act soon enough to remove his principal from the dangerous location before it became a crisis.

This is also the option that comes closest to blaming the Purity Club, because blaming the captain for going along with the political stunt also indirectly blames the Purity Club because it was their political stunt.
 
10ebbor10 said:
Technically, the question is "who is to blame for this incident?". What the incident is never defined, and we kinda get to choose it. Defining the incident as the riot make sense, but so does defining it as the massacre that followed. Not because the authorities care about the people that died, but because they care about the unrest and embarassment that will follow.
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That wasn't a massacre. That was a fight through a murderously* angry crowd that was not backing off. A fight we won because Haruna acted correctly. An after action report that apologises for what we did right would show a complete lack of understanding of what the job entails.

Further, the report is an internal document for our superiors not a press release to the Joseon public. That is the job of an entirely different branch of government and while they might mention "sadness for the loss of life" they certainly won't claim fault either, even if we write it in our report.

*Seriously, brick to the head is a potentially lethal attack.
 
Shebe Zuu said:
I think @The Sandman made a not irrelevant point about what putting the blame on ourselves could mean - given that actually placing the blame on us publicly is likely to be politically untenable (seeing as we're a princess) it might force the government to actually take a good hard look at the circumstances and causes behind the riot.
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We are a princess going against hundreds of years of tradition.

There are many, many people who have assumed we will fuck up, and are just waiting for it. And a lot of those people are our superiors in the Navy.

In fact, they are actively trying to make us fail. See our assignments.

Expect to have this held over our head forever.

Besides the fact that, well, we reacted in the best way we could have, and have nothing to apologize for besides not being omniscient and single-handedly saving the day (which we sort of did anyway, by preventing a massacre that would be the soldiers opening fire).
 
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brmj said:
Okay, fuck it. Let's throw the captain under the bus after all.

[] Captain Ienaga: His acquiescence to a foolish request for political gain caused the riot.
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If it's any consolation, as @Shadows pointed out, becoming an ablative layer of bus-meat in case of disaster is one of the things you sign up for when you take command of an independent military detachment.

Rat King said:
cool strawman bro
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Well no, seriously. A lot of the logic being used to justify Haruna being responsible here could be used to justify her being responsible for anything. Anything she could hypothetically have prevented, even if she didn't know it was going to happen, and even if she wasn't in charge.

Your own specific reason for voting 'blame yourself' may not have that problem, but other people's reasons do.

Shebe Zuu said:
I think @The Sandman made a not irrelevant point about what putting the blame on ourselves could mean - given that actually placing the blame on us publicly is likely to be politically untenable (seeing as we're a princess) it might force the government to actually take a good hard look at the circumstances and causes behind the riot.
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No, because they'll just say "turns out women are unfit for command in the armed forces, surprise surprise." Then they'll yawn, bar women from key military and government positions for another couple of decades, and continue doing everything they were already doing anyway.

At least, you'd better HOPE that being a collateral cousin of the Imperial family doesn't make people completely immune to consequences, because I'm pretty sure you want us to be able to get our cousin, Captain Abusive Jerk, into trouble. I know I do.
 
Shebe Zuu said:
I think @The Sandman made a not irrelevant point about what putting the blame on ourselves could mean - given that actually placing the blame on us publicly is likely to be politically untenable (seeing as we're a princess) it might force the government to actually take a good hard look at the circumstances and causes behind the riot.
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You seem overly optimistic on our political bulletproof armor.

The navy is trying to make us fail. Hence why they assigned us to the supply vessel of doom, and why the next choice included no less than 3 death traps.

Besides, surely it can't be incorrect to believe the princesses own words.
 
Rat King said:
I believe it to be the morally correct choice, rather than throwing the protesters, our fellow officer, or the press under the bus (since we can't just blame the purity club).
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I'm actually in agreement with Rat King here. That would be the morally correct choice. It also leads inevitably away from power and out of the Navy, which is, again, the morally correct path in this setting.

I'm voting for a Machiavellian move that is morally grey in the hopes that it opens up future options to even the scales. It is entirely possible that fails.
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
We are a princess going against hundreds of years of tradition.

There are many, many people who have assumed we will fuck up, and are just waiting for it. And a lot of those people are our superiors in the Navy.

Expect to have this held over our head forever.

Besides the fact that, well, we reacted in the best way we could have, and have nothing to apologize for besides not being omniscient and single-handedly saving the day (which we sort of did, by preventing a massacre that would be the soldiers opening fire).
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Simon_Jester said:
If it's any consolation, as @Shadows pointed out, becoming an ablative layer of bus-meat in case of disaster is one of the things you sign up for when you take command of an independent military detachment.

Well no, seriously. A lot of the logic being used to justify Haruna being responsible here could be used to justify her being responsible for anything. Anything she could hypothetically have prevented, even if she didn't know it was going to happen, and even if she wasn't in charge.

Your own specific reason for voting 'blame yourself' may not have that problem, but other people's reasons do.

No, because they'll just say "turns out women are unfit for command in the armed forces, surprise surprise." Then they'll yawn, bar women from key military and government positions for another couple of decades, and continue doing everything they were already doing anyway.

At least, you'd better HOPE that being a collateral cousin of the Imperial family doesn't make people completely immune to consequences, because I'm pretty sure you want us to be able to get our cousin, Captain Abusive Jerk, into trouble. I know I do.
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Well, another thing about them trying to blame us it that it would require them to actually acknowledge what we did as a bad thing, which seems out of character for the Empire.
 
noliar said:
That wasn't a massacre. That was a fight through a murderously* angry crowd that was not backing off. A fight we won because Haruna acted correctly. An after action report that apologises for what we did right would show a complete lack of understanding of what the job entails.

Further, the report is an internal document for our superiors not a press release to the Joseon public. That is the job of an entirely different branch of government and while they might mention "sadness for the loss of life" they certainly won't claim fault either, even if we write it in our report.

*Seriously, brick to the head is a potentially lethal attack.
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A group of soldiers used bayonets to cut through a crowd of broadly unarmed and panicked civilians. That's a massacre.
 
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