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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ancusohm said:
Uh... stupid (but serious) question. Is that actually a particularly harsh thing to say? I don't have a great sense of these things.

Anyways, Iha is long overdue for some kind of punishment for her reckless driving, but we shouldn't torment her just to appease the army. So, I'm voting for the third option. If anyone criticizes the decision, we can blame the other side for pressuring us.

[ ] The Navy is supposed to be above petty politics. Assign her the punishment you were planning to and let the chips fall where they will. Discipline and order in the Navy can't be subverted by some Army dogs or entitled foriegn interests. Sure, the Army will be angry and Miss Clara Rose Naylor's unhappiness might bleed into upcoming weapon contracts, but it's for the greater good.
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Aiko's dim view of (straight) marriage has her basically stating that Kenshin is robbing Koide of her agency and a part of her personhood. She views the institution as a kind of violence. It's not harsh objectively, but through the lens of Aiko's terrified worldview it paints a dim picture that Haruna objects to. To Haruna, Kenshin is her noble friend, who is just and kind and does his best for the people around him, while Aiko is of the view that if a man loves a woman, the best thing he can do for her is not trap her in this terrible institution. insert your own awful hyperbole about what kind of man that makes Kenshin here.

honestly like, look, Aiko is somebody who is neither handling her society's treatment of women very well at all, nor handling her own reaction to it very healthily, but she's not without a point here. Legally, the husband is the head of the household and is afforded a frankly terrifying level of authority and leeway over their wives and children according to the law, and while culturally a lot of the worst parts of this have waned... well, I'll be real. Female domestic abuse victims in Akitsukuni do not really have a legal path to safety or justice. Aiko is not wrong that an independent working woman marrying a man can experience a startling decline in her agency over her own life.

but... Aiko's worldview isn't really driven by facts like that, it's anger and fear and a cynical weariness with this element of the world that she developed at a young age. Aiko's a genius, she's always been too smart for just-so stories, so the order of her world has always been horrifying to her and its left a deep imprint.

(as an aside, i'm not sure if its been mentioned or not, but Aiko's worldview is based on my own when I was about 16 or 17. Writing her low moments is like taking a mental time machine back to the worst parts of my life.)
 
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On a tangent.

Is kenshin actually hot or is Haruna biased in his favor?

[x] The Navy is supposed to be above petty politics. Assign her the punishment you were planning to and let the chips fall where they will. Discipline and order in the Navy can't be subverted by some Army dogs or entitled foriegn interests. Sure, the Army will be angry and Miss Clara Rose Naylor's unhappiness might bleed into upcoming weapon contracts, but it's for the greater good.

Oh don't worry young miss. Iha isn't being punished, we just need her to attend a situational awareness workshop.
 
commando2341 said:
Goddamn that's a weird feeling, I know a Naylor IRL.

Anyway, for the story. I honestly kinda want to ask for a subvote for safe driving seminars to be held city wide, because that road situation sounds fucking ridiculous.
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Naylor was also the name of the original partner to Vickers.

You know the Vickers of Vickers, Sons & Maxim?
 
Ramble said:
On a tangent.

Is kenshin actually hot or is Haruna biased in his favor?

[x] The Navy is supposed to be above petty politics. Assign her the punishment you were planning to and let the chips fall where they will. Discipline and order in the Navy can't be subverted by some Army dogs or entitled foriegn interests. Sure, the Army will be angry and Miss Clara Rose Naylor's unhappiness might bleed into upcoming weapon contracts, but it's for the greater good.

Oh don't worry young miss. Iha isn't being punished, we just need her to attend a situational awareness workshop.
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Kenshin is based almost entirely on the way that Toshiruo Mifune looked in his youth.





So yeah he's pretty damn aesthetically pleasing.
 
To buck the trend, and since we all know the Navy is not above petty politics:

[X] Appease the Army and have her written up officially. It will spare your Shipmaids the harassment, and spare the future of women in the Navy an embarrassing setback. Other Navy officers might take umbrage with you for bending over backwards for the Army, and Iha's career, such as it is, might suffer but it's for the greater good.
 
[x] The Navy is supposed to be above petty politics. Assign her the punishment you were planning to and let the chips fall where they will. Discipline and order in the Navy can't be subverted by some Army dogs or entitled foriegn interests. Sure, the Army will be angry and Miss Clara Rose Naylor's unhappiness might bleed into upcoming weapon contracts, but it's for the greater good.
 
[x] The Navy is supposed to be above petty politics. Assign her the punishment you were planning to and let the chips fall where they will. Discipline and order in the Navy can't be subverted by some Army dogs or entitled foriegn interests. Sure, the Army will be angry and Miss Clara Rose Naylor's unhappiness might bleed into upcoming weapon contracts, but it's for the greater good.
 
Artificial Girl said:
"I agree," you said. "But only by the standards of Europa. And are those really the standards we wish to hold ourselves to? When it seems that they are designed to hold us back?" That landed well. There was a faint murmur of conversation between several of the men at the board table.
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This kind of reminds me of something I heard at a talk by Jocelyn Bell Burnell. She and some colleagues were trying to figure out a way to get universities to take gender equality in STEM academia more seriously, when one of them had a realisation: the best way to get a group of men from different institutions (in their case, university chancellors) to do something is to make it a competition.

[x] The Navy is supposed to be above petty politics. Assign her the punishment you were planning to and let the chips fall where they will. Discipline and order in the Navy can't be subverted by some Army dogs or entitled foriegn interests. Sure, the Army will be angry and Miss Clara Rose Naylor's unhappiness might bleed into upcoming weapon contracts, but it's for the greater good.
 
[x] The Navy is supposed to be above petty politics. Assign her the punishment you were planning to and let the chips fall where they will. Discipline and order in the Navy can't be subverted by some Army dogs or entitled foriegn interests. Sure, the Army will be angry and Miss Clara Rose Naylor's unhappiness might bleed into upcoming weapon contracts, but it's for the greater good.
 
[X] The Navy is supposed to be above petty politics. Assign her the punishment you were planning to and let the chips fall where they will. Discipline and order in the Navy can't be subverted by some Army dogs or entitled foriegn interests. Sure, the Army will be angry and Miss Clara Rose Naylor's unhappiness might bleed into upcoming weapon contracts, but it's for the greater good.
 
[x] Appease the Army and have her written up officially. It will spare your Shipmaids the harassment, and spare the future of women in the Navy an embarrassing setback. Other Navy officers might take umbrage with you for bending over backwards for the Army, and Iha's career, such as it is, might suffer but it's for the greater good.

We've already pissed off the navy plenty just by being who we are and being a woman. A little more isn't going to change anything.
 
So what does NJP in this case involve? In the US it would involve like, restriction to essential facilities (for not more than 14 days) or like, have her on latrine duty (for not more than 14 days).
 
Ramble said:
So what does NJP in this case involve? In the US it would involve like, restriction to essential facilities (for not more than 14 days) or like, have her on latrine duty (for not more than 14 days).
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I have some ideas, but essentially stuff like that. Revocation of weekend passes, assignment to KP, being made to stand extra night watch/sentry duty in the women's barracks, latrine duty, etc. etc. Technically flogging is still on the books as well as other corporal punishment but it is highly unlikely to be applied to the WNA. Like in the regular Navy it's still kind of institutionally normal for sailors to get smacked around by their petty officers as part of punishments.
 
So caught up again and can I say I love how Haruna and Aiko at times have very different opinions on things like tradition, art and politics, since sure Haruna wants to get rid of the sexism of the Akitsukuni empire and break free on restrictions on who she can love set on her by Society, she is still big on tradition and politics of being a princess, while also not getting some more modern things like modern art, technology, or some of the polictial ideas Aiko want.

while Aiko is more modern in many ways, as seen when she was able to enjoy the dynamic art while Haruna was frustrated by it, has often been the reason for talk on inventions like airplanes or street cars start, while she did not understand some of the more traditional ideas like why Haruna should bring a sword to the party even if she wasnt going to have it on her in the palace or why she had trouble understading why Kenshin wants to get married.

overall I feel like these differences help make the two feel more real? believable? on them being from very different upbringings and their small arguments? debates? are enjoyable to read and see how they give each other ideas and at times push the other to be a better person.
 
[X] Appease the Army and have her written up officially. It will spare your Shipmaids the harassment, and spare the future of women in the Navy an embarrassing setback. Other Navy officers might take umbrage with you for bending over backwards for the Army, and Iha's career, such as it is, might suffer but it's for the greater good.

I don't exactly have a lot of patience for someone causing fucking traffic accidents because they were playing grab-ass in the driver's seat. Everything else is a secondary concern.
 
I really need to get caught up on ADCQ, don't I? Problem is, I don't rememer quite where I left it (page-wise)...
 
[X] Appease the Army and have her written up officially. It will spare your Shipmaids the harassment, and spare the future of women in the Navy an embarrassing setback. Other Navy officers might take umbrage with you for bending over backwards for the Army, and Iha's career, such as it is, might suffer but it's for the greater good.

I think that showing we can hold female servicemembers properly accountable would be a net plus as well, in the long run.
I mean really, letting a civilian into a military vehicle in the first place is probably not acceptable.
 
Dermon said:
I think that showing we can hold female servicemembers properly accountable would be a net plus as well, in the long run.
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Is it holding someone properly accountable if we're amping up their punishment to soothe some general's bruised ego/car?

The option is described as "bending over backwards", not as "do it properly".
 
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[x] The Navy is supposed to be above petty politics. Assign her the punishment you were planning to and let the chips fall where they will. Discipline and order in the Navy can't be subverted by some Army dogs or entitled foriegn interests. Sure, the Army will be angry and Miss Clara Rose Naylor's unhappiness might bleed into upcoming weapon contracts, but it's for the greater good.

We can write letter to Naylor that Miss Clara was put in jeopardy because of the Iha's actions and we cannot allow that to happen again.
 
[X] The Navy is supposed to be above petty politics. Assign her the punishment you were planning to and let the chips fall where they will. Discipline and order in the Navy can't be subverted by some Army dogs or entitled foriegn interests. Sure, the Army will be angry and Miss Clara Rose Naylor's unhappiness might bleed into upcoming weapon contracts, but it's for the greater good.

Surely this will satisfy everybody involved.
 
[X] The Navy is supposed to be above petty politics. Assign her the punishment you were planning to and let the chips fall where they will. Discipline and order in the Navy can't be subverted by some Army dogs or entitled foriegn interests. Sure, the Army will be angry and Miss Clara Rose Naylor's unhappiness might bleed into upcoming weapon contracts, but it's for the greater good.
 
I really do feel like the third option isn't the middle-ground but the "Worst of all worlds." But it's also winning, and it is kinda the thing Haruna might do... though considering her good Diplomacy and high Subterfuge, I'm surprised there isn't an option for, like, manipulating how things are viewed to make the exact same actions look less harsh.
 
Abuse cultural differences to create a punishment that looks like a slap on the wrist to Naylor but is a pretty serious slapdown to an Akitsukuni audience?

I still can't decide what I want to vote for.
 
The Laurent said:
I really do feel like the third option isn't the middle-ground but the "Worst of all worlds." But it's also winning, and it is kinda the thing Haruna might do... though considering her good Diplomacy and high Subterfuge, I'm surprised there isn't an option for, like, manipulating how things are viewed to make the exact same actions look less harsh.
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It is the middleground, but the middleground can be the worst of both worlds.
 
[X] Appease Mister William Naylor and let Iha off with a proverbial slap on the wrist. The Army will be furious, and your Shipmaids will likely bear the brunt of the hurt. Discipline in the unit might suffer, and Iha is almost certainly going to get worse after this incident, if that is at all possible, but it's for the greater good.

I'm going to be alone with voting this way... But the navy-army rivalry is an old entrenched thing now and this will just be one more stone in that wall, whereas pissing off foreign contacts who are actually well meaning right now would be a disaster.
 
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