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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A big perk of this is that he's equally fed up about this as we are, he has a lover he's evidently devoted to, and so if necessary arrangements come to pass hes likely to be understanding about things and vice versa.

Because Mom there isn't going to stop. Ever. Whether we play along or reject her.
This is her still playing insistent but soft, if it comes to that she's likely to be entirely willing to end our career for "our own good". And it wouldn't even be that hard. The organization as a whole is uncomfortable with us being there, they just lack the royal backing to blow us off.
 
veekie said:
Because Mom there isn't going to stop. Ever. Whether we play along or reject her.
This is her still playing insistent but soft, if it comes to that she's likely to be entirely willing to end our career for "our own good". And it wouldn't even be that hard. The organization as a whole is uncomfortable with us being there, they just lack the royal backing to blow us off.
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"If we don't go along with this our mother will probably end our career" is more than a little fearmonger-y.
 
open_sketchbook said:
"Or at least I should hope. One of the test pilots for the new scout took a dip not unlike mine during trials. I can't imagine she's eager to get back in the air."
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Heh.

You can no more keep an Ohara Satomi out of the air than you can keep the tide from coming in.

"Honestly, he has no idea. If it makes money for Akibara Group, then he's for it. Airplanes pull some decent money right now, so he allows me to indulge my habit. Especially because we're the only folks in the country that make any worth anything, and I doubt that'll change any time soon. Besides that, though, we have subsidiaries that do everything from toys to steel."
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ANGRY AIRPLANE NOISES
"Surviving. Submarine office isn't a place for the light-hearted, you know. Poor bastards have really been through the wringer so far. He's fighting tooth and nail for better reliability, because we're losing more subs to mechanical failure than to the enemy, but the yards just want to get them out faster."
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o7
The silent service continues to have appalling losses

[X] That'd be lovely, actually. And it might keep my mother distracted.

Bleh. This is not an easy decision. On the one hand, Haruna needs more friends. On the other, is he really going to be a friend?
 
Kinruush said:
"If we don't go along with this our mother will probably end our career" is more than a little fearmonger-y.
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No, its "if we don't go along with this, our mother will keep trying, and she's only going to keep escalating the longer she sees no results". Because we've seen that she's not happy with the current situation. Going along wouldn't stop her, it'd delay however, because she sees that this approach is sort of working, and she'd probably give it a couple of months to see whether it does work or not at least.

The question is when she puts something unacceptable up on the table.
Other softball tactics known to the archetype is offering Aiko a promising position which coincidentally puts her far from Haruna, putting pressure on reducing the presence of women in the Navy, etc. What gets in her way would eventually, get out of her way.

She knows better, according to her.
 
veekie said:
Going along wouldn't stop her, it'd delay however, because she sees that this approach is sort of working, and she'd probably give it a couple of months to see whether it does work or not at least.
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I fear that if we go along with this, she'll spin this in the worst possible way to Aiko, and the public in general. More than likely, she might start spreading rumors about our "courtship" with him in tabloids and stuff.
 
7ime1ock said:
I fear that if we go along with this, she'll spin this in the worst possible way to Aiko, and the public in general. More than likely, she might start spreading rumors about our "courtship" with him in tabloids and stuff.
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That's counterproductive to the goal of getting Haruna to settle down with a respectable boy. These sorts of rumors result in the de-respectification of the boy in question.
 
Crasian01 said:
That's counterproductive to the goal of getting Haruna to settle down with a respectable boy. These sorts of rumors result in the de-respectification of the boy in question.
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I didn't mean they'll be bad rumors. Just that Haruna's mom will try to put pressure on Haruna's and Aiko's relationship through them.
 
It occurs to me, the part of the traditionally expected sham marriage that Haruna really objects most strongly to is the expectation of having children and everything leading up to that, and not necessarily the mere existence of the marriage itself. The question that then suggests itself is just how these sets of marriage expectations work for trans people in the ruling class. Because if there's a gay transman of the right social status who has some use for a bogus straight marriage, then a solution suggests itself. Or a cis guy who is known to be infertile for whatever reason, but it would have to at least be common knowledge in ruling class gossip circles for that to be an adequate excuse for not even... trying. Haruna's mom probably wouldn't approve because of the whole grandkids thing, but it might just be possible to construct a situation where there isn't much she could do about it, and I don't see what she could do thereafter.
 
Infertility, for whatever reason, is the socially accepted reason for (straight couples) to adopt children. This was always kind of tenuous, though, and... well, the theory of evolution and genetics coming over from the west are not helping matters.
 
Going along is likely still resulting in pressure from the parents, but proper spin by Haruna could delay that pressure and reduce the intensity. Haruna should string along each marriage candidate for as long as possible under the guise of "trying to find the right man with the right alliance benefits." With time she maybe able to accrue leverage in the military or wait for/cause a shift in societal thinking to get what she really wants.

Shinzo's still trying to play the "there's a chance" game, let him do so and string this out. He's not stress inducing like other candidates might be. But definitely let Aiko know about the stall game so we can cut that "lack of communication" BS misunderstanding.
 
[X] That'd be lovely, actually. And it might keep my mother distracted.

I'm not happy about it but I see Haruna as too self-sacrificing a person to reject the chance off-hand.

Also that Asian mom stuff hits way too close to home, that reasoning makes sense.
 
[x] That'd be lovely, actually. And it might keep my mother distracted.

Strategic shipping, and a chance to make a new friend in the aviation business.
 
7ime1ock said:
I didn't mean they'll be bad rumors. Just that Haruna's mom will try to put pressure on Haruna's and Aiko's relationship through them.
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Yeah but how does that apply pressure? Either you have to generate rumors that Haruna is cheating on "her manly beloved" with Aiko (which isn't actually cheating) or impugn things about how Aiko is too low class for Haruna (which is sort of plausible but attacks a different problem). Furthermore, that last one is also counterproductive to maintaining Haruna's respectableness, which means it's not a good avenue of attack unless you really need to radically change the battlefield. It's sort of the rumor-mill equivalent of a tacnuke. This has several problems and means it won't be deployed unless something incredibly drastic happens.
 
Crasian01 said:
Yeah but how does that apply pressure? Either you have to generate rumors that Haruna is cheating on "her manly beloved" with Aiko (which isn't actually cheating) or impugn things about how Aiko is too low class for Haruna (which is sort of plausible but attacks a different problem). Furthermore, that last one is also counterproductive to maintaining Haruna's respectableness, which means it's not a good avenue of attack unless you really need to radically change the battlefield. It's sort of the rumor-mill equivalent of a tacnuke. This has several problems and means it won't be deployed unless something incredibly drastic happens.
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As a bit of clarification, since Cras didn't say this outright:

It is perfectly acceptable to have married a man and a woman. See: ADQ.

To be completely honest, I'm half-surprised that Mother didn't try pairing her with some rather nice ladies of an appropriate social stature for twice the number of political marriages. On the other hand, now that the relationship with Aiko exists, Mother might have decided that "one for politics, one for happiness" is more likely to lead to acceptance than "twice the arrangements".
 
[X] Perhaps, but I don't want to entertain this charade further.

I have no desire for this to continue, as I'm pretty sure it will cause Haruna's mother to start planning weddings.
 
AlphaDelta said:
As a bit of clarification, since Cras didn't say this outright:

It is perfectly acceptable to have married a man and a woman. See: ADQ.

To be completely honest, I'm half-surprised that Mother didn't try pairing her with some rather nice ladies of an appropriate social stature for twice the number of political marriages. On the other hand, now that the relationship with Aiko exists, Mother might have decided that "one for politics, one for happiness" is more likely to lead to acceptance than "twice the arrangements".
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Cos she wants grandchildren
 
AlphaDelta said:
To be completely honest, I'm half-surprised that Mother didn't try pairing her with some rather nice ladies of an appropriate social stature for twice the number of political marriages. On the other hand, now that the relationship with Aiko exists, Mother might have decided that "one for politics, one for happiness" is more likely to lead to acceptance than "twice the arrangements".
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I'm half expecting 'Mom' to line up a couple contenders to the Cathay throne so Haruna has her hat in the ring when the 100+ year old emperor checks out and the succession crisis/civil war kicks off.
 
[X] That'd be lovely, actually. And it might keep my mother distracted.
 
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