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Kantai Collection - Fanfic Idea and Recs

"The docks were on fire, but it wasn't my fault..."

Turns out having a public listing as a wizard in the phone book and a few official contacts among the police and other departments who know that it's not just card tricks and wires makes you a hot commodity when the angry spirits of sunken warships rise to claim the seas from humanity. Harry Dresden had his hands full dealing with the White Council and fae and vampires, why is everyone so eager to make him the point man on dealing with these new "Abyssal" creatures too?
 
"Harry, why there's several little girls staying in our-"

"Task Force 3, reporting for duty, Mama Murphy!"

"...Harry, why they call me Mama?"

*****

There's a big dinosaur on rampage chomping Abyssals Forces on street, and this was partially my fault.

*****

"Harry, why there's a naked girl with sharp claw, teeth and lizard tail eating my ham?"
 
Czlyydwr Llrngwl said:
"The docks were on fire, but it wasn't my fault..."

Turns out having a public listing as a wizard in the phone book and a few official contacts among the police and other departments who know that it's not just card tricks and wires makes you a hot commodity when the angry spirits of sunken warships rise to claim the seas from humanity. Harry Dresden had his hands full dealing with the White Council and fae and vampires, why is everyone so eager to make him the point man on dealing with these new "Abyssal" creatures too?
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As I recall, Chicago was the Home Port of a US training ship carrier.

en.m.wikipedia.org

USS Sable - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

Her sister Wolverine was also homeported in Chicago.
 
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... looking at her Wikipedia page, Greater Buffalo/Sable could make for a damn interesting shipgirl in her own right, having almost 20 years in civilian service before the attack on Pearl Harbor saw her bought and converted as a training ship; not unlike an airline stewardess enlisting as a WASP. Getting her, a training ship, as one of the first friendly summons would also be fitting; though they would still need some girls with actual combat ability as well her themes mesh with building a new force to fight the war that just started via being unexpectedly attacked.

Alternately, if she appeared as an Abyssal due to having been ripped out of her happy civilian life, disfigured with hasty wartime modifications and thrown away when she was no longer useful, she'd have all the strength, durability, and spookiness but no actual weapons beyond probably a handful of Fighter Mk.I's, however many could fit on her deck basically since she didn't have a hangar space either. This would let her be a menacing enemy against normal (mostly) humans and (somewhat) similar supernaturals but not so strong it's unbelievable she'd be held off when no one was expecting or prepared for that kind of assault.

That does assume that MSSB/SSAB is powerful enough that other major players can't just style all over them, I mean I wouldn't expect our girl here to win an arm wrestling match with Mab (well, maybe; six and a half thousand tons is a lot of weight to throw around in a humanoid frame) let alone a magical contest, but any Chicago local should be better served to run than fight her.
 
Sketching on an idea:

"I don't know the first thing about ships, what does the navy want me for?"
"Well, we figure we know ships. We don't know magic. When we don't know something we call experts, and you're listed and apparently highly recommended."
"So, what, you're gonna ship me off to the coast? East? West?"
"Oh, we've got people, good people, who're holding the line, learning as they go or making it up and seeing what sticks. And we're putting their efforts and experiences together and teaching more people. But we need someone to look it over, try and make some kind of sense of it, see if we can't figure out the hows and whys of it, so maybe we won't have to send the girls out to test unproven theories and wild ideas and pay a toll of blood to find out whether or not it works."
"The girls?"
"Yes. The ships, I mean. Look, they know stuff but can't explain it. We need you to see if you can't help give them the words, or make something up."
"From here in Chicago?"
"We've the naval training center and schools here already. And the local girls apparently heard of you already and want to work with you."
"Local girls?"
"You met them already, I think, when you helped them deal with Eddie Fitz? Sally and Winona. USS Sable and Wolverine."
 
Coming up with the standards and jargon for a whole new field is a big responsibility. Setting a bad precedent could be at the very least embarrassing and inconvenient for generations to come; just look at Ben Franklin messing up and now current flows from negative to positive.
 
There's also making sure the new jargon doesn't directly conflict with preexisting standards, since there is a hidden magical community already around. Like doing metric to imperial measurement conversions for equipment, or a brand of vehicles that puts left-handed lugnuts on one side of their cars (which at least one US auto maker did up until the 50s or 60s IIRC) except with magic's already arbitrary and harshly enforced rules backing it up.
 
Leechblade said:
Is there such thing as a male Ship Embodiment?
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In most of the cultures writing These fics, ships are traditionally referred to as "she/her". And almost every case we see of "shipboys", they are used to avoid having LGBT pairings that would normally result from shipping in such a mono-gender cast of characters, so the use of them is frequently frowned on in the fandom.
 
I'm not even talking about using one for the pairing value, just the idea of a male with the full power of a warship within his body.

Hell, maybe make him the only Fleetchild in existence for the fic....
 
Leechblade said:
I'm not even talking about using one for the pairing value, just the idea of a male with the full power of a warship within his body.

Hell, maybe make him the only Fleetchild in existence for the fic....
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From what I understand, India uses male pronouns for ships (but female for submarines), and Russia has them referred to as a gender matching their name. So, it might be best if you used a ship from one of those, rather than a Japanese, English/American or German one, where tradition uses female gender for them?

this is just advice, mind. I'm not trying to order you to write or not write something
 
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Leechblade said:
Is there such thing as a male Ship Embodiment?
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Not in Kantai Collection, but honestly I don't see why not. Some national traditions do hold ships as being male. And besides, the whole idea is the personification of an inanimate object. I don't see why male would be any different from female from an in-universe perspective.

That said, meta wise they're all female because being cute/sexy sells. This is based on a Japanese gatcha game after all, and ship personifications all being female is far less of a stretch than some other gatcha games.
 
It's not impossible, but doing so tends to attract a lot of naysayers, as (accused-of) special snowflakes tend to. Any attempt to have a shipboy would need a deft hand, even more so than usual.
 
I think Italian ships are considered male? ISTR something about that in some kancolle story thread. I know a lot of the words pertaining to ships in French and Spanish are masculine, but all their nouns are gendered unlike English, and no one expects furniture to be packing some junk under the tablecloth.
 
Czlyydwr Llrngwl said:
I think Italian ships are considered male? ISTR something about that in some kancolle story thread. I know a lot of the words pertaining to ships in French and Spanish are masculine, but all their nouns are gendered unlike English, and no one expects furniture to be packing some junk under the tablecloth.
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Merchant ships are refered as male in Italy, yes. Warships are customarily female, despite whatever name they bear.
 
Czlyydwr Llrngwl said:
I think Italian ships are considered male?
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Flare said:
Merchant ships are refered as male in Italy, yes. Warships are customarily female, despite whatever name they bear.
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Uh, no? We need to distinguish betwwen common parlance (in which the gender can change depending on the term used - such as nave/battello or incorciatore/cacciatorpediniere/corazzata) and official/customary speak where:
  • Ships of the merchant marine are customarily always female.
  • For ships of the military navy, things get a bit more confusing depending on the historical period:
    • up to ww1: prefix R.N. (Regia Nave - Royal Ship) and always female
    • from the advent of fascism to the end of ww2: prefix R.N. (Regia Nave - Royal Ship), officially male but customarily female for actual navy personnel and officers
    • after ww2: ships can be referred to as male (without any prefix) or as female (when preceded by the Nave (Ship) prefix)
 
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Might as well drop in for once.....

German ships are (almost) universally referred to as female. The only exception to this, that I'm at all aware of, is one of the old ocean liners. Which I distinctly remember reading that Kaiser Willy insisted on being referred to as male, but now wiki doesn't show that so maybe my memory sucks...

*blinks*

Anyway, German ships be female, yo. Bismarck included, Sabaton's song aside. The only one who insisted on Bismarck being male was her Captain, and basically everyone aboard just humored him because he was the captain. No one else subscribed to his entirely sexist mindset. Which is what it was, since he insisted 'Bismarck is too POWERFUL to be female, thus she is really a he!'

Sideral explained Italians better.

French and Russian ships can linguistically be considered male, but I've never seen any real evidence the average sailor in those countries consider them such. At least, I've never once read any source that calls (I dunno, Richelieu) male. Nor Kuznetzov. Though I'm not remotely Russian nor French.

At any rate, Ship Boys are something I'm not as inherently against as I once was. Blame Sheo for that. But the fact is simple, really. Outside of lewds where it doesn't matter because LEWD...you need a really good author to pull it off. Because you inherently have someone who is SPECIAL AND UNIQUE by virtue of...being male. In an entirely female cast. This, by itself, is something a lot of authors are going to really faceplant on. I'm not entirely sure I could pull it off, and I'm a character author. It's very, very difficult to write something like that without coming across as 'oh, I want a guy in an all-female cast for...reasons. Yes. 'Reasons'.

I'm still incredibly leery of the entire concept.
 
I mean, if it's, say, all the Russian ships, then you can have some balance in your cast and it's not so bad.

But if it's one, yeah, lots of ways to mess that up. Especially if that one is the protagonist.
 
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