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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open_sketch said:
Also here's a funny tweet I made while we struggled to write the scene.
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Okay I can't rate the whole post Funny for obvious reasons but this definitely got a good laugh out of me. Well played.

As for the vote...too many good options TBH. I guess for now I'll just allow myself to succumb to the siren song of a stat increase. May revisit later.

[X] You still had some of those primers on electricity, the ones you picked up so that you could understand what Aiko was studying. Maybe make a real effort on those? (+1 Technical)
 
The Laurent said:
I'd like to make an argument for Haruna working out. Hrm, how to make the argument, hmm, hmm.
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I would support the vote, but it competes with my preferred electronics vote.

I'd prefer to do both, but there's no competing with the letter.

Incidentally, I still haven't seen any good arguments for that. We already sent 2 letters a week. A single extra letter does not seem worth the cost of an option.
 
[X] Get whatever newspapers and articles together that you can and get the best idea possible what the overall war situation is. You're honestly not sure anymore.
[X] You still had some of those primers on electricity, the ones you picked up so that you could understand what Aiko was studying. Maybe make a real effort on those? (+1 Technical)

Current events is important to understanding what's going on in the world and at home.
If we know science, it would make Aiko swoon of having a smart partner understanding her interests.
 
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[X] Hey, you've done a lot of reading since the days of the minisub. Maybe you should find an excuse to hang out with Ota, practice your Joseon, and talk about the world.
[X] You still had some of those primers on electricity, the ones you picked up so that you could understand what Aiko was studying. Maybe make a real effort on those? (+1 Technical)
 
[X] Hey, you've done a lot of reading since the days of the minisub. Maybe you should find an excuse to hang out with Ota, practice your Joseon, and talk about the world.
[X] You weren't staying on top of your fitness when you were out of it. Time to do something about that and get back into shape proper. Aiko did say she thought you looked good in the photo! (+1 to the next roll involving physical prowess, buff Haruna.)
 
[X] You're already writing overly long letters to Aiko, though you let it slip when things were at their worst. She's probably worried about you. Write her a huge letter and make it lovely.
[X] You weren't staying on top of your fitness when you were out of it. Time to do something about that and get back into shape proper. Aiko did say she thought you looked good in the photo! (+1 to the next roll involving physical prowess, buff Haruna.)
 
Honestly, I sort of like that we've lost track of the date and of the war. It stops us from making out of character decisions that benefit Haruna because we know the course of events ahead of time.

Long Letter to me seems like it's an option about telling Aiko about our struggles with alcohol abuse and horrible men and if we don't do it we're just going to keep telling each other that the weather continues nice and next time I see you I'm going to smooch you so hard your face falls off.

...I do want buff Haruna though.
 
[X] You're already writing overly long letters to Aiko, though you let it slip when things were at their worst. She's probably worried about you. Write her a huge letter and make it lovely.

[X] You weren't staying on top of your fitness when you were out of it. Time to do something about that and get back into shape proper. Aiko did say she thought you looked good in the photo! (+1 to the next roll involving physical prowess, buff Haruna.)
 
The Laurent said:
A conditional snippet vote, if exercise wins.

[] She mentions to Aiko that she's working out, but casually and downplaying it to surprise Aiko later.

Less conditional:

[] A flock of birds causes everyone far too much trouble and grief.
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Did they try to run from the flock of birds, but couldn't get away?

[X] You still had some of those primers on electricity, the ones you picked up so that you could understand what Aiko was studying. Maybe make a real effort on those? (+1 Technical)
[X] You weren't staying on top of your fitness when you were out of it. Time to do something about that and get back into shape proper. Aiko did say she thought you looked good in the photo! (+1 to the next roll involving physical prowess, buff Haruna.)

[] Haruna discovers that one of the crewmen is a talented artist.
[] The crew tries to think of messages to write on the new torpedoes.
[] A notable civilian passes through the sleepy village.
[] Haruna watches the Northern lights during a late patrol.
 
[X] You weren't staying on top of your fitness when you were out of it. Time to do something about that and get back into shape proper. Aiko did say she thought you looked good in the photo! (+1 to the next roll involving physical prowess, buff Haruna.)
 
[] The floatplane pilots complain about their Akibara shitbuckets and wish they had the Army's Ohara aircraft
[] Haruna notices that similar birds on different islands around her patrol area have different looking beaks, which is one of those things you can't really draw conclusions from, sometimes stuff just happens
[] An Able Seaman buys an impractically large souvenir from the island and cannot get it into his berth unnoticed
 
[X] You still had some of those primers on electricity, the ones you picked up so that you could understand what Aiko was studying. Maybe make a real effort on those? (+1 Technical)

The others are good, but this is a MUST HAVE because technical is haruna's worst skill - also studying electrical stuff will give her more to talk about with the girlfriend, which is always a bonus. :D

[] An Able Seaman buys an impractically large souvenir from the island and cannot get it into his berth unnoticed

This honestly sounds amazing.

open_sketch said:
As an aside, the conversation with the boys was legit one of the hardest things we've written for Castles thus far.

See, we've both been present for conversations like this, but for Some Reason they've always made up uncomfortable so we'd never really been participants. That made figuring out what it should sound like hard, and we kept stalling and hedging.

Eventually, I ended up writing the start of it in a different document and pasting it in, because I managed to get into that foul headspace but I was so ashamed at the idea of @Artificial Girl watching me write it.

I've witnessed conversations like this. I've mumbled along uncomfortably in them and then done my best to forget them. It's not the crudeness that's bad, I write pornography as writing warm-ups these days. I can do crude. But like... Haruna's right about the rape joke thing.

A quote that's stuck in my head a while now is that when a guy makes a rape joke, and the nine men around him laugh, one of those men didn't hear a joke, he heard a gesture of solidarity.

One of the weird parts of being a trans woman is... while you don't experience girlhood sexism, for which I count myself impossibly lucky, you get to spend years being treated as an insider to the fucked up shit men say about women, and then you gotta take a run at being a woman yourself and disentangling all that shit, coming to terms with the magnitude of it. The last place I worked was an all-male kitchen, and they talked like this. I quit when I realized I was going to transition, because my coworkers had told me, with a wink and a nod, with jokes, that it wouldn't be safe.

God these conversations sucked, and I'm so glad I kind of definitionally never have to be present for them again.

It has been my experience that, unless there is active pushback from men in these spaces, the conversation in any social group where men talk about women unobserved will become dominated by men who talk about us like this. It's true along other axis of oppression as well. Guys, please call this shit out when it happens around you. Yeah, you'll be the joyless buzz kill., it'll be awkward, but that's the place where real, lasting social change is made, in millions of tiny interactions.

Also here's a funny tweet I made while we struggled to write the scene.
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I... empathize so hard with this. I've never had a lot of guy friends, so I don't think I've been in a position to hear something so blatant, but there have been other, smaller things... and the worst part about it is that I don't see it coming... like someone will say something and I'll just... freeze, and the moment will pass before I can work up the courage to say something and I feel guilty for not saying anything and too awkward to say anything now. :( I can really disappoint myself sometimes.
 
[X] Hey, you've done a lot of reading since the days of the minisub. Maybe you should find an excuse to hang out with Ota, practice your Joseon, and talk about the world.
[X] You still had some of those primers on electricity, the ones you picked up so that you could understand what Aiko was studying. Maybe make a real effort on those? (+1 Technical)


we're writing letters anyway, so...
 
I mean, I don't think the Technical vote is that bad, but it honestly feels kinda bland compared to most of the other choices, IMO. Again, none of them are bad, but I don't really get it that much beyond, "Raise stats." It's not entirely that, but we really honestly don't need to have all the skills at 10?

Eh.
 
It's a character thing, we've been saying to Aiko for, like, a year that we're totally 100% deffo gonna look at your books and try to stop glazing over when you tell us what you're doing. We haven't done that. Here's an opportunity.

Furthermore I think that the battle is the first time Haruna has used the power of tactical radio communication and when she gets the official AAR I suspect she'll find that her radio call helped the other escorts and if they had also used their radios the convoy could have come out better. A night action in this period should teach powerful lessons about the importance of an officer understanding their modern equipment.
 
FrangibleCover said:
It's a character thing, we've been saying to Aiko for, like, a year that we're totally 100% deffo gonna look at your books and try to stop glazing over when you tell us what you're doing. We haven't done that. Here's an opportunity.

Furthermore I think that the battle is the first time Haruna has used the power of tactical radio communication and when she gets the official AAR I suspect she'll find that her radio call helped the other escorts and if they had also used their radios the convoy could have come out better. A night action in this period should teach powerful lessons about the importance of an officer understanding their modern equipment.
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Maybe, I admittedly am kinda choosing the options I'm choosing for our shore leave relaxation. Plus, you could make the same argument with physique, considering how many times we've had to basically work through completely exhaustion, pain, and physically demanding tasks, even though we're an officer and theoretically shouldn't be seeing as many of them. But we are.
 
The Laurent said:
Maybe, I admittedly am kinda choosing the options I'm choosing for our shore leave relaxation. Plus, you could make the same argument with physique, considering how many times we've had to basically work through completely exhaustion, pain, and physically demanding tasks, even though we're an officer and theoretically shouldn't be seeing as many of them. But we are.
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I mean, we can have both options.

It just requires that we send only 2 overly long letters a week to Aiko instead of 2 letters and 1 bigger letter.
 
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FrangibleCover said:
I'm thinking more Floatplane Dragonfly. Yes, I know that would wreck the aircraft completely but they don't.
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I mean, the Dragonfly and the current seaplane do different things. The sea-plane is a longer range scout vs the Dragonfly which is specifically designed to hunt enemy planes. Correct me if I'm wrong here, @open_sketch
 
open_sketch said:
The Dragonfly is also an Army plane, and thus filthy and unlovable.
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Counterpoint: The Dragonfly is amazing and I can't believe those Army bastards have stolen planes that should rightfully be ours to piss about looking at trenches. They're trenches! They're there every day. What sort of skilled observer do you need for that?

...Well, I suppose they'd need to be more intelligent than most soldiers.
 
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