>I'm pretty sure most of Hyūga's thing is a shtick. The scene in that
>one episode where she's alone with Takao, she's much calmer. I mean,
>she's eccentric, she wears a monocle. But I don't think she's
>actually crazy, just amusing herself.

Yeah, eccentricity amongst the Mental Models seems to be connected to boredom. Hyuuga was effectively confined to Iwo Jima, so she spent her time playing mad scientist. Think Brent Spiner's character in Independence Day, "They don't let us out much." Since being off the island, she's mellowed out, but she's still very much Iona-sexual.

And Fog carriers seem to have been let down by their aircraft not being able to fight on equal terms with human aircraft. So that left Zuikaku and Lexington with a lot of time on their hands, which the former put towards studying humans and the latter seems to have put towards scientific research.

>Now Kongō, on the other hand. By the last episode of the anime
>series she has plainly snapped like
>Gordon Freeman. She's a
>machine! An emotionless machine! She doesn't get happy! She
>doesn't get sad! She just runs programs! How many of you
>idiots does she have to kill before you
>understand that?!

Whereas in the manga, she seems to have gone into Queen Bitch mode and decided that if Iona won't die quietly, she'll just drop an entire fleet on her.

LAST EDITED ON Jul-03-15 AT 06:26 PM (EDT)
 
>Lexington has a schtick and it's a silly one, but you'll note that it
>doesn't seem to get in the way of her judgement - I mean, her reaction
>to A Problem Like Iona is a very sensible "Why don't we just shoot her
>a lot?".

Shades of the Original Haywire's signature line from back in the Elder Days, delivered in a high-pitched Starscream-ish screech:

"Shoot that ship! Blow that up! KIIIILLLL THEEEEMMMMMMM"

Which is also pretty much Rampant Kongō's strategy, come to think of it.

All of which reminds me, in an extremely oblique way, that one of the prime candidates for KanColle/Arpeggio hybridization in UF is Nagara. In Arpeggio, she doesn't have a Mental Model (evidently because canonical Fog ships smaller than heavy cruisers don't, except when they do), and is basically used as the clone trooper/Nameless Decepticon Jet of the Fleet of Fog. When you need hordes of hopelessly outclassed cannon fodder to be destroyed en masse, call Nagara! She doesn't have a Mental Model, so she can't even complain about the treatment, and there are mysteriously way more of her than there ever were actual Nagara-class cruisers (there were only six).

Meanwhile, over in KanColle, she does have a persona, and it is... what's the phrase? Genki as fuck. It's quite a contrast. :)

--G.
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Somewhere, Gryphon rereads those chapters and silently earmarks U-2501 for an Eyrie style rescue.

>Somewhere, Gryphon rereads those chapters and silently earmarks U-2501
>for an Eyrie style rescue.

Seriously, I've only read as much of the manga as has come out in official English translation, but what an asshole that Stark guy is.

--G.
No, not that Stark guy.
-><-
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>No, not that Stark guy.

Clearly, that's your answer.

>>No, not that Stark guy.
>
>Clearly, that's your answer.

"Pep, I was flying over the old harbour, and I just saw the poor submarine just sitting there. Rusting, markings peeling off, with no one to look after her! Of course I had to do something!"

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

Combined with Age of Ultron, I now envisage Tony having written an app for his phone where he takes a photo of something and Jarvis automatically goes ahead and buys whatever it was.

>Combined with Age of Ultron, I now envisage Tony having written an app
>for his phone where he takes a photo of something and Jarvis
>automatically goes ahead and buys whatever it was.

"Blondes are no longer purchasable, sir. Pepper's orders."

"The dress, Jarvis. I want the dress. And before you ask, for Pepper."

"Of course, sir. You don't have the legs for it."

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

>>Combined with Age of Ultron, I now envisage Tony having written an app
>>for his phone where he takes a photo of something and Jarvis
>>automatically goes ahead and buys whatever it was.
>
>"Blondes are no longer purchasable, sir. Pepper's orders."
>
>"The dress, Jarvis. I want the dress. And before you ask, for Pepper."
>
>"Of course, sir. You don't have the legs for it."
>

One wrong photo on that phone, and Tony's going to end up buying Coca-Cola. Or Cadillac. Or Armani. Or, possibly all three (hey, a guy in an Armani suit, sitting in a Cadillac, drinking a Coke... totally could happen. Probably is, somewhere in the world.)

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

>>>No, not that Stark guy.
>>
>>Clearly, that's your answer.
>
>"Pep, I was flying over the old harbour, and I just saw the poor
>submarine just sitting there. Rusting, markings peeling off, with no
>one to look after her! Of course I had to do something!"

Now that sounds like something Ben Stark would do...

--- Philip

	Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here" Fandoms -- Fanart -- Fan Meta Discussions

>>>>No, not that Stark guy.
>>>
>>>Clearly, that's your answer.
>>
>>"Pep, I was flying over the old harbour, and I just saw the poor
>>submarine just sitting there. Rusting, markings peeling off, with no
>>one to look after her! Of course I had to do something!"
>
>Now that sounds like something Ben Stark would do...

Funnily enough, I was setting up for team Mega Tokyo to get hold of an old Soviet boomer when Hopelessly Lost ended. They were going to use it as a houseboat.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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>...I would expect that HMS
>Hood's wears a red traveling cloak. Possibly carries a picnic
>basket. Full of missiles. Because the Fog.
>

So, something like B. B. Hood from Darkstalkers, but more heavily armed.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>So, something like B. B. Hood from Darkstalkers, but more
>heavily armed.

She'd pretty much have to have a graviton cannon and spatial corrosion missiles to be more heavily armed than B. B. Hood.

------
Thy life is a riddle, to bear rapture and sorrow
To listen, to suffer, to entrust unto tomorrow
In one fleeting moment, from the Land doth life flow
Yet in one fleeting moment, for anew it doth grow
In the same fleeting moment thou must live, die and know

Would French warships, such as the Jean Bart, Richelieu, Jeanne d'Arc, Émile Bertin, Béarn, etc. be part of the Fleet of Frog?

>Would French warships, such as the Jean Bart, Richelieu, Jeanne d'Arc,
>Émile Bertin, Béarn, etc. be part of the Fleet of Frog?

That's just mean.

--G.
-><-
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>>Would French warships, such as the Jean Bart, Richelieu, Jeanne d'Arc,
>>Émile Bertin, Béarn, etc. be part of the Fleet of Frog?
>
>That's just mean.

Oui.

I think if the historical bases for those had any bearing in Arpeggio or Kantai Collection, those would be some really confused ships (or ship girls). All that interned, captured by the Axis, captured by the Allies, sailed away and joined the Free French, etc. stories might leave those ladies a little bewildered. Would the other mental models or ship girls wonder about their reliability/allegiance?

LAST EDITED ON Jul-06-15 AT 05:26 PM (EDT)
 
>I think if the historical bases for those had any bearing in Arpeggio
>or Kantai Collection, those would be some really confused ships (or
>ship girls). All that interned, captured by the Axis, captured by the
>Allies, sailed away and joined the Free French, etc. stories might
>leave those ladies a little bewildered. Would the other mental models
>or ship girls wonder about their reliability/allegiance?

In the case of the Fog, I doubt it. Unlike the fleet girls in KanColle (some of whom are downright obsessive about it; looking at you, Kaga), the Fog don't seem to give a shit about the histories of the ships they look like, probably because they're just imitating them for camouflage purposes; they aren't really supposed to be the ships they resemble, or embody their spirits, or whatever metaphor you prefer for the KanColle scenario. Their ship forms are more like clothes they're wearing than anything that defines their identities.

They don't seem to be broken up into opposed factions based on their original national origins, for instance. In the anime series, the Fog who spend most of the show trying to sink Iona are "Japanese" ships simply because it's a Japanese TV seriesmost of the story takes place in what were Japanese waters in WWII. When they reach the mid-Pacific they run into "American" Fog ships; but it's still the Fog, with the same goal as the ones who were the original antagonists had before they started running en masse into weird existential quandaries. :)

On the KanColle side, there's a bit of that. The very few ships in the game who aren't Japanese are from other Axis powers, so the question of divided loyalties based on historical echoes doesn't come into it, but they are occasionally confused (particularly submarine Ro-500, who is actually a Type IX U-boat the Germans gave to Japan during the war, and thus begins the game as U-511 until her remodel). And of course there's the previously mentioned destroyer Hibiki, who remodels into her postwar taken-by-the-Soviets form Verniy, but speaks Russian and has stereotypically Russian mannerisms even before that happens.

(At least the game designers didn't take her transformation to its logical extreme and make Verniy a boy. Russians call their ships "he", and Verniy is the masculine form of the word; the feminine would be Vernaya.)

--G.
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Actually, currently in the manga, the Fog is in the process of splitting into a number of factions based on their different interpertations of the Admiralty code and their interactions with humans.

>Actually, currently in the manga, the Fog is in the process of
>splitting into a number of factions based on their different
>interpertations of the Admiralty code and their interactions with
>humans.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about their start condition, which wasn't "Axis v. Allies".

--G.
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I just looked at the US submarine list and noticed one I can't believe I missed the first time. It's a good thing Fog ships are only patterned after types that were operational in World War II, or this poor girl would never live it down.

--G.
-><-
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LAST EDITED ON Jul-08-15 AT 07:36 PM (EDT)
 
>I just looked at the US submarine list and noticed one I can't believe
>I missed the first time. It's a good thing Fog ships are only
>patterned after types that were operational in World War II, or this poor girl would
>never live it down.

I...have no words.

I find it really interesting to consider these early designs in the same vein as the Mercury, Vostok, etc capsules - the first attempts to build something that could operate, maneuver, and sustain human life in a completely new environment. And all the engineering challenges thereof.

Wow. Just...wow. That's almost worse than this, for you D&D people out there:

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

Hey, to a teenager in the 80s, back when there was only one edition of "Advanced" D&D, the apparatus of Kwalish was one of the coolest things on the DMG misc. magic item tables. Look at it! It's a steam/magicpunk crab submarine!

>Hey, to a teenager in the 80s, back when there was only one edition of
>"Advanced" D&D, the apparatus of Kwalish was one of the coolest
>things on the DMG misc. magic item tables. Look at it! It's a
>steam/magicpunk crab submarine!

Its only advantage was in a book of mostly fairly generic magic items, it really stood out as -interesting-. =)

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

>Hey, to a teenager in the 80s, back when there was only one edition of
>"Advanced" D&D, the apparatus of Kwalish was one of the coolest
>things on the DMG misc. magic item tables. Look at it! It's a
>steam/magicpunk crab submarine!

Amen! Plus, the pure WTF Factor was too good to pass on. Though, for me, the "must-have" was the Swiss Army Knife of magical weapons, the Rod of Lordly Might.

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

>>Hey, to a teenager in the 80s, back when there was only one edition of
>>"Advanced" D&D, the apparatus of Kwalish was one of the coolest
>>things on the DMG misc. magic item tables. Look at it! It's a
>>steam/magicpunk crab submarine!
>
>Amen! Plus, the pure WTF Factor was too good to pass on. Though, for
>me, the "must-have" was the Swiss Army Knife of magical weapons, the
>Rod of Lordly Might.

Second in teenage-snickering-at value only to Heward's Mystical Organ.

Although really, when you're a teenager with an abstruse cast of mind, all three are pretty evident dick jokes. :)

--G.
The BLANK of Vecna, Charles Nelson Reilly!
-><-
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

> Though, for
>me, the "must-have" was the Swiss Army Knife of magical weapons, the
>Rod of Lordly Might.

I rather liked The Rod of Lordly Might-Or-Might-Not, which showed up in a joke article once. It made things... interesting.

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

LAST EDITED ON Jul-25-15 AT 02:45 PM (EDT) by Gryphon (admin)
 
So, I was rewatching the first season of "Justice League" last night on Netflix - partially to have some noise in the background and partially because I was never able to watch it regularly when it as on - and encountered the first appearance of Aquaman. For those not familiar with the episode, it begins with the Atlanteans downing a nuclear submarine, the U.S.S. Defiant. Struck by the inaccuracy of the nomenclature (one of many glaring issues that the first season of the show seems to have), I remembered Gryphon's bemoaning of the United States fleet nomenclature. So, I decided to look up the U.S.S. Defiant, just to see if there was one. After filtering my search to remove the DS9 references, I found her.

She's a harbor tug.

I have to assume that the U.S. Navy gets some perverse entertainment out of their ship naming protocols. Also, I expect that, should either the Fleet of Fog or KanColle have harbor tugs among their ships with avatars, that Defiant is belligerent fireplug of a girl, who's aggressively good at her job, but those battleships better listen up when they're in her harbor, goddammit, or she'll smack them one.

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

>I have to assume that the U.S. Navy gets some perverse entertainment
>out of their ship naming protocols. Also, I expect that, should either
>the Fleet of Fog or KanColle have harbor tugs among their ships with
>avatars, that Defiant is belligerent fireplug of a girl, who's
>aggressively good at her job, but those battleships better listen up
>when they're in her harbor, goddammit, or she'll smack them one.
>

Most of the traditional (Wasp, Hornet, etc.) or virtue-style (i.e. Defiant, Valiant, etc.) names in the Navy are relegated to auxiliaries and amphibious ships anymore. The more modern tradition (late 19th century) tradition of naming battleships for states and cruisers for cities was transitioned to submarines.

However, presidents and politicians for carriers, and naval veterans or politicians for the rest of the surface combatants, are somewhat lame. There are a few special exceptions to this scheme - a replacement carrier named Enterprise and a new submarine named for Carter, who was in the submarine service when in the Navy.

Some of their namesakes are still alive. Ugh. Do Carter, Gabrielle Giffords, Bush I, etc. really need vessels named after them while still alive? And naming a ship after Cesar Chavez, who once said the worst years of his life were in the Navy, just seems weird.

The Brits do a better job naming their warships, IMHO.

LAST EDITED ON Jul-24-15 AT 04:29 PM (EDT)
 
>The more modern tradition (late 19th
>century) tradition of naming battleships for states and cruisers for
>cities was transitioned to submarines.

Well, you can thank Hyman Rickover for that - not only for changing the naming convention for submarines, but also for changing the intent behind the older surface-ship naming convention he was appropriating for them. Cruisers and battleships were named after cities and states for reasons of national sentimentality; submarines are so named because, as Admiral Rickover put it, "Fish don't vote."

Yes, you really could count on Rickover to put the bluntest, most cynical possible spin on... basically everything.

>There are a few special exceptions to this scheme - a
>replacement carrier named Enterprise

Well, there would be riots in the streets if the US Navy didn't have a ship named Enterprise. It would be like the Japanese Navy - excuse me, Maritime Self-Defense Force - dispensing with the name Kongō.

>Some of their namesakes are still alive. Ugh.

I get the same feeling from that which I used to get from people registering domain names with inappropriate TLDs when I was an ISP hostmaster (e.g., non-Internet-related companies with ".net" addresses). Then Stupid TLD Proliferation started and it was like, "OK, well, I guess I'm the only one left in the world who actually cares about RFC 1591 any more - ICANN certainly doesn't seem to," so I was able to stop giving a shit. Similarly, if the US Navy itself doesn't care about the conventions of naming warships any longer, I guess I don't really have any business being bothered about it. :)

>The Brits do a better job naming their warships, IMHO.

Oh, inarguably. Mind you, many Royal Navy ship names can be construed as simply asking for it - only an organization either oblivious to reality or supremely unconcerned with same would call a ship Invulnerable or Victorious. It's got a certain panache, though. :)

That said, the Japanese also have a certain flair for naming their ships, as I've become increasingly aware while exploring the complexities (er... as it were) of the Kantai Collection cast. The way the Japanese language works lends itself to naming groups of ships with similar names - the many IJN destroyers named (something)kaze, for instance, or -gumo, or -shio ("wind", "cloud", and "tide", respectively).

--G.
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>She's a harbor tug.

What's amusing to me is that, if you look at the list of Valiant-class harbor tugs to which Defiant belongs, you can see that they only kept up the -iant naming convention for three hulls and then apparently said, "What the hell are we doing?" and started naming them after Native American tribes instead. I'm not sure if that's a naming mine the Navy has been to before, but the Army has been naming helicopters after them for ages now.

--G.
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LAST EDITED ON Jul-25-15 AT 04:13 PM (EDT)
 
>What's amusing to me is that, if you look at the list of
>Valiant-class to which Defiant belongs, you can see that they
>only kept up the -iant naming convention for three hulls and
>then apparently said, "What the hell are we doing?" and started naming
>them after Native American tribes instead. I'm not sure if that's a
>naming mine the Navy has been to before, but the Army has been naming
>helicopters after them for ages now.
>

Interesting, those first three names were also used by Starfleet ships that featured prominently in movies or TV.

Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I lists tugs named Arapaho, Iroquois, Mohave, Patapsco, Patuxent, and Piscataqua, as well as several named for prominent historical Native Americans. The same convention was also followed by the Coast Guard for a good number of cutters of the same vintage.

Also, total non-sequitur, in looking this up I ran across the gunboat U.S.S. Don Juan de Austria, a prize from the Spanish-American War.

>Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I lists tugs named
>Arapaho, Iroquois, Mohave, Patapsco, Patuxent, and
>Piscataqua, as well as several named for prominent historical
>Native Americans.

Most, though not all, of those are also rivers (presumably rivers named for the most prominent tribe in whose historical territory they were; that's certainly the case with the Piscataqua, which forms part of the border between Maine and New Hampshire), so there is perhaps a certain amount of overlap there.

The IJN had a habit of naming cruisers after rivers (e.g., Mogami, Sendai, Nagara), in much the same way that the USN named them after cities.

Nautical naming conventions are fun! One of my favorite examples is the Cunard Line, which for many years named all its ships after Roman provinces, whose names virtually all end in -ia (the most famous examples of Cunard ships so named are probably Lusitania, , and Carpathia). Later, after merging with the White Star Line (which named all its ships something ending in -ic, e.g., Titanic), they decided to start naming their biggest ships after queens of England instead (Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary and so forth).

The reason this amuses me is because there was a transitional ship in the Cunard fleet. Originally the Hamburg America Line liner Imperator, she was handed over to Cunard after World War I as war reparations, and they renamed her RMS Berengaria.

Which ends in -ia... and is also the name of a queen of England. Well played, Cunard!

--G.
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