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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brmj said:
A good update with some really hard-hitting stuff in it. Takamitsu's dismissal was really rage inducing.

I really liked the use of the semi-drunken conversation. It worked for addressing some reader questions that could have felt really forced or out of place otherwise.

Where'd that book come from? This feels unusual and specific enough to have probably not been invented out of the blue, very superficial similarity to Animal Farm aside.

Also:

Absolutely wonderful.
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The book is based on I Am A Cat by Natsume Sōseki, though obviously the Akitsukuni version is different to account for different social issues.

Also fun shout-outs to Catgirl's Last Chance for Romance of course. :)
 
Well for my part i would say that your story is one of a kind (in a good way ^^) and i realy like the way your world is build (no utopia but no dystopia either).

as for the LGBT element i would say they feel natural in your story so good job. ;)
 
brmj said:
A good update with some really hard-hitting stuff in it. Takamitsu's dismissal was really rage inducing.

I really liked the use of the semi-drunken conversation. It worked for addressing some reader questions that could have felt really forced or out of place otherwise.

Where'd that book come from? This feels unusual and specific enough to have probably not been invented out of the blue, very superficial similarity to Animal Farm aside.

Also:

Absolutely wonderful.
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As soon as I looked up Jane's Fighting Ships and saw it was started by a guy named John F. T. Jane I knew what had to be done.
 
Khona Moshr said:
I will say I love the contrast of the lgbt friendly but very gender inequal Asian cultures and the anti lgbt, but very gender egalitarian European cultures, and it feels like you and Sketchbook have put alot of thought in to the setting and how the characters would act in their culture.
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Well if you peel back the curtain a bit, premodern societies(which after all define a lot of the foundations of modern social concepts) have to have mechanisms to make people play ball...or they stop being societies as someone who does do it take over.

So looking at the Gayaverse.
The Asian cultures are heavily caste-based. If you fit in the box, you do the associated job of the box, part of the big machine of society. Who you are don't matter, as long as the right stuff goes into the box and comes out of the box, what you do inside is your business.
Heavens forbid that you want a box that doesn't fit in. They'd build you a new box, but you're damned well getting IN a box.

But in our specific case I think it has more to do with being noble than social norms, and thus imperative to the continuation of the lineage for political reasons. Where a more ordinary girl only has to deal with the judgement of a peer group maybe 50-people large, our affairs are literally state affairs.

And so the whole country is judging the political qualities of your family based on who you fuck.
 
Artificial Girl said:
"Ready, sir." Akio's voice echoed through the speaking tube.

"Alright. I know that this has basically never worked in training, but we're going to give it a shot anyway. Lt. Kehara, flood two and three. Lt. Arisakawa, I need you to try to work out their heading and speed. If we can hit them in this weather, we'll be legends."

"And if we can't?" Takamitsu asked sardonically.
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On a side note, I have a feeling we're doing a lot of non-comms officer stuff.
 
I really enjoyed the "I am a cat" reference (as honestly I do with most of the cultural background you are creating here and in the other Gayaverse quests) and tge way you wove the snippet votes suggestions into a coherent narrative.

I started following this thread expecting naval battles, explosions and funny alt-history parallelism.

I found so much more.

An emotionally engaging narrative, an engrossing worldbuilding exercise which uses Gaya as a clever distorted mirror to help reflection on our own real world's prejudices and bigotry.

Plus extra cute, fun and sweet moments like the Vale code scene with Aiko or the discovery of chocolate icecream.


If I have to offer some criticism is that some storylines seem to have disappeared a bit, like the revolutionary conspiracy one from the minisub arc, but this also makes sense in-universe.
 
10ebbor10 said:
On a side note, I have a feeling we're doing a lot of non-comms officer stuff.
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Haruna is closer to the electronic warfare officer than a pure communication role, not that such an idea will exist for 50 years, as the sub doesn't actually talk to people that often. Mostly for wiring reasons, the radio and hydrophone stations are clustered, so Haruna is in charge of both on the grounds both involve headphones.
 
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Artificial Girl said:
If you want to stay a bachelor all your life, no one says a thing. That's normal, especially if you have a brother or two who has kids.
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Huh. Interesting. I had assumed both gay men and gay women would be expected to produce children, at least among nobles.

I wonder if this is also the expectation among the lower class. Historically, I'd think peasants would be happy to have non-reproducing siblings because they won't have any children to compete with your own to inherent a finite amount of land.

... Also, now I'm wondering about expectations for enbies. There's a taboo against them marrying binary folks, but are enbies pressured to wed other enbies that they could reproduce with?

Artificial Girl said:
John's All The World's Fighting Ships
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This is a real thing? This is a real thing! Neat!
 
ancusohm said:
I wonder if this is also the expectation among the lower class. Historically, I'd think peasants would be happy to have non-reproducing siblings because they won't have any children to compete with your own to inherent a finite amount of land.
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That's extremely dependent on what kind of inheritance scheme the local culture practice. Those tended to vary a lot and "split among all the children" wasn't that prevalent. If land is held communally or by the extended family, this wouldn't really be a thing.
 
ancusohm said:
Huh. Interesting. I had assumed both gay men and gay women would be expected to produce children, at least among nobles.

I wonder if this is also the expectation among the lower class. Historically, I'd think peasants would be happy to have non-reproducing siblings because they won't have any children to compete with your own to inherent a finite amount of land.

... Also, now I'm wondering about expectations for enbies. There's a taboo against them marrying binary folks, but are enbies pressured to wed other enbies that they could reproduce with?



This is a real thing? This is a real thing! Neat!
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Part of it is kinda left over from when Akitsukuni really was matrilineal (see: the Empress. Her family and close extended family still ollow a tradition of matrilineal descent) and part of it is that if you're a younger brother or something and you end up wanting to just shack up with best samurai buddy for the rest of your life it makes it a lot easier to not worry about succession crises in noble families. So only children tend to have more pressure but are also relatively rare in Akitsukuni still. Almost everyone has brothers or sisters of some kind.

Also yeah Jane's Fighting Ships is a real thing they also do an aircraft book now, I think. It's pretty cool and were used the same way that our characters are using them in this update because like, if you had an easily available dictionary of all the possible enemy warships why wouldn't you buy it?
 
Nyvis said:
That's extremely dependent on what kind of inheritance scheme the local culture practice. Those tended to vary a lot and "split among all the children" wasn't that prevalent. If land is held communally or by the extended family, this wouldn't really be a thing.
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So thanks for making it so that Akitsukuni peasant families all share familial land plots now.
 
Artificial Girl said:
Part of it is kinda left over from when Akitsukuni really was matrilineal (see: the Empress. Her family and close extended family still ollow a tradition of matrilineal descent) and part of it is that if you're a younger brother or something and you end up wanting to just shack up with best samurai buddy for the rest of your life it makes it a lot easier to not worry about succession crises in noble families. So only children tend to have more pressure but are also relatively rare in Akitsukuni still. Almost everyone has brothers or sisters of some kind.

Also yeah Jane's Fighting Ships is a real thing they also do an aircraft book now, I think. It's pretty cool and were used the same way that our characters are using them in this update because like, if you had an easily available dictionary of all the possible enemy warships why wouldn't you buy it?
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Jane's has been doing aircraft for ages actually, you can get editions all the way back to 1970 at least and I think it has 1956 if my memory is correct. It also has editions for historical aircraft. Also it's a legitimate engineering tool, we use it for regression analysis of aircraft maximum takeoff and empty weight to obtain estimates of what aircraft if a given type might weigh. Jane's also has aircraft engines, and this is very useful for getting regressions for Power as a function of dry weight, for example. You can then toss all these regressions into massive excel sheets and size an entire aircraft with a bit of macro writing.
 
Crasian01 said:
Jane's has been doing aircraft for ages actually, you can get editions all the way back to 1970 at least and I think it has 1956 if my memory is correct. It also has editions for historical aircraft. Also it's a legitimate engineering tool, we use it for regression analysis of aircraft maximum takeoff and empty weight to obtain estimates of what aircraft if a given type might weigh. Jane's also has aircraft engines, and this is very useful for getting regressions for Power as a function of dry weight, for example. You can then toss all these regressions into massive excel sheets and size an entire aircraft with a bit of macro writing.
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So Jane's is basically analogue CMANO?

#SorryNotSorry:p
 
ancusohm said:
Huh. Interesting. I had assumed both gay men and gay women would be expected to produce children, at least among nobles.

I wonder if this is also the expectation among the lower class. Historically, I'd think peasants would be happy to have non-reproducing siblings because they won't have any children to compete with your own to inherent a finite amount of land.
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I mean yes, and no.

On the one hand, Sibling A may be just as happy to have no nieces or nephews to compete for the inheritance. On the other hand, Sibling A and Sibling B's parents are probably not happy to have fewer grandchildren, especially since in a high-mortality society entire branches of a family can just die all at once from a single epidemic or famine. And the parents are likely to pressure their children (and the children of their neighbors) into a pro-natal attitude for that reason. Stopping, or trying to stop, your siblings from having kids isn't the best Darwinian strategy in most situations.

... Also, now I'm wondering about expectations for enbies. There's a taboo against them marrying binary folks, but are enbies pressured to wed other enbies that they could reproduce with?
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I dunno, I could totally see "they're not allowed to have legally recognized heirs" being one of the reasons they're trusted to move within the circles of power in the first place.

Akitsukuni nonbinaries' neither-this-nor-that among-but-not-of ambiguous-liminal gender role is more than a little reminiscent of the social role of eunuchs in many Asian societies (by which I mean everything from the Middle East to the Byzantine Empire through India and Central Asia all the way to China). Akitsukuni may not make "must be biologically sterile" a fundamental requirement for occupying that social role, but I could totally see them making "must not be allowed to have legal heirs" part of the role.

This is a real thing? This is a real thing! Neat!
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This is a real thing that originated exactly as described, only in real life it was compiled by John Jane instead of Jane John.

@Artificial Girl
@open_sketchbook

That said, be warned that the 1914-era copies of Jane's were RIDDLED with inaccuracies, because Mr. Jane often took foreign sources at face value when writing up descriptions of a ship, since he was a one-man information collating machine, not a one-man espionage service. The identification charts may have been largely accurate, but the ships' "stats" would be all over the map.
 
[ ] What's the duty of a submarine or warship to the people coming off of the ships it sinks?

I may or may not have been listening to a podcast on the Laconia incident.
 
Thanks for including my snippet vote! That was a really cool piece. I had wondered if it would be something like Jane's.

Actually, on that note..

[ ] Somebody takes up naval wargaming, carving tiny model ships to fight.
 
[x] what new ships is the navy building their is always some form of gossip.
[x] can we have more details on our hero's relationship with her family why is it so strained/ can we hear from her father we seem to only be talking with her mother.
[x] can we get the snippet vote added to aircraft design company

On a side note I really hope Haruna gets posted to an aircraft carrier when they become a thing. Second best being a ship that is testing the concept of ship launched aircraft
 
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