I generally don't ask authors to make significant changes to stories, but in this case I would request that you clarify this in the story. Generally, when an officer gives an ass-chewing, they are rather specific about the problem, and makes certain the chewee knows exactly what they did wrong, and WHY it was wrong, so if they do it again there are absolutely zero excuses.
Uh... Honestly I think Williams
was pretty specific about the problem. He could have been more specific still, admittedly.
Given canon relationships (Kongo/Goto and Richardson/his entire household) and the professionalism or lack thereof of the shipgirl officers (Taffy 3, for example); my money is on a rewrite that separates shipgirls from human personnel.
Unless you think JAG is really going to jump on a ship captain and an ashore yeoman in the parent unit in a personal relationship.
Honestly, I agree with MageOhki. If the Navy isn't going to try to apply the USMCJ (or at least it's most "DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE" provisions) to shipgirls, then they shouldn't be giving those shipgirls ranks, and they certainly shouldn't be handing out officer commissions. By definition, an officer has to be a thinking, planning 'adult' figure in the military's organization. Anyone incapable of that job should never receive a commission.
It would make more sense to put them in as junior enlisted, honestly, because the military's entire hierarchy is based around the assumption that junior enlisted aren't going to function effectively without people bossing them around.
Williams also has the problem of Wash/Gale.
I cannot, cannot tell you how much Williams is being intentionally blind. Gale knows better, to him, and Wash should. What they're doing is the big one of the anti frat regs.
That one, Williams is praying that the ball pen hammer he hit Jersey with, gets to Gale and Wash to remind them of the really serious trouble they're right at.
They're either subject to the USMCJ, or they're not. Choose. that's why they were given a position with rank involved.. Officers and enlisted ah... having a relationship is an pretty much INSTANT crash and burn, period. No ifs, ands or buts about it. That one isn't played around with.
Out of curiosity, if you were trying to figure out a solution that doesn't result in either Gale and Wash ending up in a heap of trouble or Gale and Wash being miserable... what would that solution be?
I'm suggesting this because you clearly have expert knowledge and insight to share. And sometimes people gain insight on the nature of a problem when the expert turns it around and saying "how could we make this not-a-problem-anymore?"
Cool! The solution you came up with is the same thing I was thinking of while reading your post!
to be honest by her being sent on convoy duty does add further punishment considering the battleships normally used for that duty in WW1 and WW2 were ones deemed to old/weak/untrustworthy for frontline work.
That's a good point, but in the Abyssal War there's an odd inversion, because the enemy has no land-based fleet which poses the primary threat.
Here,
nothing is more important than getting those convoys into Japan, because without more food and industrial supplies Japan will collapse and starve. There's a reason we're hearing talk of assigning Japan's biggest (and hardest to support) ships to that task.
Theory can only carry you so far. As my granduncle once said :
"A soldier truly becomes a veteran after facing hundreds of battles, not 1 battle, or 2 or 3 or a dozen, hundreds. And those that boast about their so-called combat record after just a handful of battles are arrogant ***** who either think it's a game or that they are God's number 1 soldier in the world."
I should elaborate on this, my family is very much a military family, the Indian side of my family served in the military as long as they could remember, first as Sepoys and soldiers under British colonial rule, then as part of the nascent Indian Army. The Malaysian side of my family had fought against the Japanese as part of the resistance against them, my grandfather had his head removed for this, and then against the communists in the Malayan Emergency. It's not that my hate for Musashi is baseless, it's the fact that she is conceited, arrogant and boasts about her relatively minimal accomplishments that grates in my nerves as it goes against everything i was thought.
Without disrespect to your relatives' combat record, I must point out that 'hundreds' can pretty easily become an exaggeration. As noted recently, front-line infantry serving on the Western Front from 1944-45, during a period of roughly a year, tended to spend no more than a couple of weeks of that time actually in combat.
Exactly how much Abyssal tonnage does Musashi have to face in battle, or sink, before you consider her a 'veteran?' I get the feeling that if she'd taken down half a dozen Abyssal battleships in seven or eight separate actions and had proven herself the rock of the Japanese battleline, you'd
still be talking about her like she was an overconfident rookie... because this isn't actually about her combat record, it's about her personality.
In which case bringing up her combat record (which contains no hint of anything being wrong with her) is pointless.
If this is sarcasm, i assure that it is not necessary, you can tell me my faults to my face, i won't mind, it was how i was brought up. Alternatively, if you're not joking, thank you for the compliment, and please accept my apology. ( The main problem with internet, you can't read people through a screen XD)
My apologies.
What I'm trying to get at is that you seem permanently determined to despise Musashi, and to want her to suffer. And it seems as though any new evidence that comes to light or any character development she hypothetically experiences is just... ignored. Or re-interpreted in terms of that existing despising, so that anything good she does is irrelevant and anything bad she does is proof of what a rat she is.
It further seems as though you have adopted a similar stance, to a lesser degree, towards Jersey.
And essentially, my objection is that if this is the way you "really, bluntly" think about the characters, it is virtually impossible that you would
ever be happy with them. In which case endlessly criticizing them, or for that matter even reading about them, is a pointless way to raise your blood pressure. It's just a way to be, as the others put it, "salty."
I can only give you the same answer i gave
@PAGDTenno :
Theory can only carry you so far. As my granduncle once said :
"A soldier truly becomes a veteran after facing hundreds of battles, not 1 battle, or 2 or 3 or a dozen, hundreds. And those that boast about their so-called combat record after just a handful of battles are arrogant ***** who either think it's a game or that they are God's number 1 soldier in the world."
I should elaborate on this, my family is very much a military family, the Indian side of my family served in the military as long as they could remember, first as Sepoys and soldiers under British colonial rule, then as part of the nascent Indian Army. The Malaysian side of my family had fought against the Japanese as part of the resistance against them, my grandfather had his head removed for this, and then against the communists in the Malayan Emergency. It's not that my hate for Musashi is baseless, it's the fact that she is conceited, arrogant and boasts about her relatively minimal accomplishments that grates in my nerves as it goes against everything i was thought.
This is how i was molded in my life. This is how i grew up in.
I do not consider your hate for her baseless. She has a personality that is easy to dislike. I don't blame anyone who finds her obnoxious, and I have no desire to make excuses for her obnoxious behavior
as such.
On the other hand, I also believe in disliking people only because of things about them that are true. Denigrating Musashi because she has a terrible personality is justified. Denigrating Musashi because she has a poor combat record or is not a useful warship... is not justified.
Furthermore, I do consider it pointless to even pay attention to a fictional character that one has permanent dislike for.
I didn't realise Musashi is an "ultimate gamebreaker of a weapon", which can, somehow make or break the entire war, as though all the other summoned shipgirls are nothing more than bystanders. Because that's what it sounds like.
No, that's not what it sounds like. However, the
Yamatos are the heaviest capital ships Japan can potentially have in this war. "Below" their weight class are the two
Nagatos, which have significantly lighter armor and somewhat lesser firepower. Below them are a host of ships armed with 14" guns that cannot reliably penetrate the heaviest Abyssals' armor, and which are in turn
not reliably armored against the very common 14" and 15" capital ship gunfire they may face in return.
It is not unreasonable to divide the Japanese battleline, on its combination of firepower and armor, into 'heavy' and 'light' components. And the 'heavy' component consists entirely of Nagato, Mutsu... and Musashi.
There could very easily come a day when it could make the difference for Japan's victory or defeat whether they have two such ships, or three.
It's not that Musashi is fighting, or ever will, or ever could, fight the whole war by herself. But this is a war where Japan's entire fate depends on roughly a dozen capital ships (roughly the number Japan appears to have at the moment). The single strongest of those ships is a very important military asset. Not something they can replace, or ignore, or denigrate. They simply do not have that luxury.
Also, i didn't realise that Musashi is the only fast, heavily armored battleship they have at the moment. I mean, the Kongou's aren't battleships right?, or Jersey, her direct rival, is nothing more than figment of public imagination. Seriously man, Musashi is important as a symbol, and i do admit she did well in those 2 battles (or was it 1 ?, eh no matter.), but to make it sound like she is the LYNCHPIN for the entire conflict is a bit much right?....or the fact that she is somehow the only fast, heavily armored BB they have?.
As noted, the Kongous aren't heavily armored. They have eight or nine inch belts. Furthermore, they are armed with 14" guns, as is most of the Japanese battleline. A lot of ships the Abyssals show up with are protected well enough to withstand 14" shell hits fairly well.
This is one of the reasons the fight against Battleship Princess (one of Old Iron's arcs) was unlikely to go well for Japan- because the ships present were not heavily armed enough to easily handle the
Tosa-class's armor scheme. Conversely, Battleship Princess's 16" shells were going through their armor like it wasn't even there.
Had Jersey or Musashi been there, things would probably have gone very differently. As it is, Battleship Princess remains a threat.
In terms of ships that are protected and armed well enough to be able to meet and defeat any single Abyssal battleship they encounter, Japan has (or could have) the
Yamatos, the
Nagatos... and that's about it. Below that you get into the
Ises,
Kongous, and
Fusous, all of which are important and significant ships, but none of which have the firepower and protection I'm talking about.
You make it sound as though i want Goto to lynch Musashi, that's not the case, if anything i want Musashi's arrogance and conceit to bite her in the ass, no more no less...that's her fault if such a thing happens.
That's pretty much what happened here.
Goto came up with a punishment that will sting Musashi, without striking hard enough to break her morale or cause her to resent the authority figure that imposed the punishment. And one that will force her to confront the nature of her mistake, much more effectively than scrubbing toilets or being totally confined to quarters ever could.
I admire him for it.
Now then, since when did i blame the author for anything??. That's what it sounds like, with the whole " TheJMPer is not responsible for your decision to deliberately interpret his characters' words in the most unfavorable possible light" thing....or better yet, i didn't realise an alternate interpretation of these characters is wrong, negative it may be, but is an alternative interpretation nonetheless....and more importantly, i didn't realise my own experiences count as prejudices and is therefore BAD.....that's something new.
Suffice to say that this really is how you sound to me. If you can be honest about what you think, so can I.
It's not that your judgment is bad, it's that it really doesn't sound like you are ever going to be happy with this situation. In which case hanging around in an Internet thread repeatedly talking about how you want Musashi to be humiliated and broken or whatever is just... at best, it's pointless.
