作者： Morgane

Hi! Mary here. Since everyone’s out sick I thought I’d do a little update today.

What’s that? Shipgirls don’t get sick? Of course they don’t. I’m talking about the creators of the series, silly! We’re still pressing along even if it is flu season. In any case, now that our printers are back up, you will be able to find me in the latest U.S. Navy Food book. Hint hint. You should totally think about checking it out!

…Yes, those are my eyebrows. Next question.

Why am I not in a … bikini? You pervert it’s NOVEMBER! I’ll wear one if we ever get to that bit in Silent Service or if it’s summer, okay!

Anyways. Since today is a food-themed update, I thought it would be a good idea to pick my favorite food: the crab!

First things first. Why does Maryland have the best crabs in the entire country?

There’s a lot of answers to that question. Some say it’s because we lost the Oyster War against the Virginians. Some say it was the unique culture of the time. Some say it was the abundance of blue crabs in the region right around the First and Second World War that resulted in the explosion of crab consumption.

The simplest answer is that they’re delicious.

But, since we are talking about history and all, there are a few things I think we should think about. The first is this idea that crabs are somehow a by-product of more valuable catches. This is factually inaccurate (though not incorrect). While it is true that fishermen tended to have targets that aren’t crabs (oysters and scallops in particular was a very lucrative trade!) small-scale fisheries of crab definitely existed and people were definitely eating crab well before it got popular around the 1930s and 1940s.

The second idea is that somehow crabs were “poor people food.” I think it is tremendously dismissive of culinary traditions and create offensive stereotypes to suggest that certain common foods were consumed largely by members of specific classes. After all, almost everyone in America ate potatoes regularly and in some fashion throughout history. Are potatoes “poor people food” as well? Because what that sounds like to me is that you’re calling everyone who eat potatoes poor!

Crabs did not command the extraordinarily high prices we see on the market today. However, few food items at the time did. Even good cuts of steak were not out of reach (unlike today) for the average American family. What is true is that you can trace our current “tradition” of the crab boil to a specific culinary tradition belonging to a specific people. The “watermen,” which are the crab catchers of the time, routinely boiled their crabs and seasoned them with things like salt and pepper for taste.

Sure, the watermen were one of the poorest professions at the time, but they made an honest living, and even the rich who dined on Crab Imperial sought out crabs – be it in the form of stews, crunch, shell, cube, salad, cake, or the good old boil.

The third misconception is that crabs are novel food items. Again, as I mentioned up there, it isn’t. Plenty of old cookbooks popular on the coasts will tell housewives how to prepare crabs. This is strictly a matter of practicality because transportation was primitive and you were unlikely to have crab as a regular part of your access to seafood. What is novel, however, are a few inventions right around the time of World War II that made the crab tremendously popular. I’m going to count three.

The first is the ready to eat spice packet. The most famous one in Maryland is India Girl Shrimp and Crab Seasoning. You know this thing better as Old Bay.

The second is the almighty crab hammer. It made eating crabs a lot easier with a convenient way to crack open their shell.

The third is the refrigerator, which made it possible for Marylanders to eat crab and for Maryland watermen to sell more of their crabs. refrigeration not only allowed for foods to be preserved for longer, but in the crab’s case, it allowed much greater options for fresh seafood.

With that being said, let’s take a look at how the U.S. Navy ate their crabs. From the U.S. Navy Cookbook, 1941 edition:

Pretty simple, right? It looks exactly like how anyone else would have ate crabs at the time. One important thing to note, though, is that there is no spice mix or seasoning used. Each ship was free to decide individually just how often they served crab and how specifically they would prepare it. For the USS Maryland, we actually used a combination of malt vinegar and mayo! It doesn’t taste too bad on an open-face sandwich, but I suspect the men wouldn’t mind the regular salt-pepper-butter combination either.

Now, you’ll see that the Navy is also aware of the steamed crab. However, it wasn’t particularly clear to me whether this was more popular than the boiled crab or the deviled crab. Though, anything found in this book is pretty representative of what foods people are familiar with. After all, you would want your troops to feel as comfortable as possible. Familiar foods are comforting. It reminds people of home and why they’re out here fighting to begin with!

Of course, a single crab won’t feed a Shaw, much less a fighting man of the U.S. Navy. Given the size of the navy pots (I’ll find pictures sometime!) you can bet that they made a lot of crab so each man can eat his fill. From looking at logs by submariners, it seems that the ocean was more plentiful at the time… or maybe the crabs were dumber and easier to catch.

Either way, the Navy did leave out an important distinction: the male and female crabs. The navy most likely took what it got (which were probably male crabs) but with the free market you have much better choices.

He-crabs look like that. She-crabs look like that. Pretty simple, right?

“What’s the difference, Mary?”

Well, the taste is different! At least I can taste a difference. But the biggest bit is that She-crabs carry eggs (roe). While roe is considered a delicacy in East Asian cultures, it is actually a common ingredient found in soups and other rich dishes as well. She-crab soup, a crab-like bisque made from crab meat and crab roe (for that rich orange-ish color!) was a favorite of several of our Presidents and as famous as turtle soup.

He-crabs tend to be bigger. In fact, they can get to much larger sizes than the females. As such, their meat also taste slightly different. Some people say it tastes better. I’m not inclined to disagree, but I like both!

Now, the best part of the crab? Some will tell you it’s the parts where you pry the shell open. Let me tell you. It’s the claw. Trust me, the claw is the best part. Nothing tastes better than having a bunch of freshly steamed or boiled crab claws from freshly caught crabs. It’s great!

Oh, by the way, the best crabs are going to be alive right before you cook them. You shouldn’t be steaming dead crabs. The taste’s off. Always make sure your crabs are alive and kicking (or at least put on ice if you’re meek and timid) before you cook them –

MAAAAAAAAAAARY! HAAAAAAAALP! THE CRABS ARE REBELLING! IT’S IN MY HAIRRRRRRR AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!

…

Sorry, dear reader. Looks like I’ll have to cut this one short. Hope to see you all soon next time!

STEC Archives, Print Document Division
Curator signature: [Unknown]
Format: Textual Record
Object: Excerpt from defunct document collection “Preparedness in the Abyssal War”
Location (if known): STEC Archives
Time (if known): 1988

Note pinned to the document as below.

Okay. First things first. The Mark 52 isn’t even in production YET. Cusk barely got the prototype working as of a week ago. This isn’t quite the same as upgrades on your six inchers where if the fairies come up with a new formulation we can test it and bam, it’s in production in a day.

Secondly. we are NOT going to send out conventional forces on these missions until we have the Mark 52 and the Mark 53 READY and more importantly, our men TRAINED to use them. I understand you’re cooped up and bored but please put your literary talents to the dozens of writing projects we have on hand.

Thirdly. Couple of problems I have with the draft memo.

1. Pick a less threatening Abyssal for the cover please. Use one of the scouts and save the cruiser for the identification guide. I have zero issues with us being transparent but showing a kilometer-long monster is not going to help with morale at all.
2. Don’t sugarcoat things. We have on record one example of a submarine fighting an Abyssal and spoilers: the submarine’s torpedoes couldn’t penetrate the barrier, much less the armored skin. Let’assume that the Mark 53 works as we intend it. That means our SSNs have maybe 25 or so torpedo-tube launched weapons. They’re slower, far more vulnerable, and carries a lot less firepower than anything but the smallest Abyssals. Attacking with utmost vigor is fine. Maximum success is really stretching it.

I’d revise. Also this dossier should not go out until we complete the identification guide.

Jer

I thought I’d start drafting that report you said we were going to submit. How does this look?

THE SUBMARINE FORCE IN THE COMING PACIFIC WAR

Much has been said about the Abyssal Fleet. They are a terrifying opponent. They possess technological marvels. They are unrestricted by the rules of war. Their numbers are limitless and they can appear anywhere.

Not all of these are true. The Abyssals are not invincible. They can be killed. Their numbers are significant, but they are not limitless. They do seem to be able to appear anywhere, but the truth is that they rely on an extremely vulnerable network of underwater “nodes.” Without these nodes they cannot bring in powerful reinforcements. Without these reinforcements they cannot hope to overcome our forces on the open sea. 

In its current phase, our war is a war strictly of distances. We create distance by destroying these nodes wherever possible. This task is rendered difficult due to the presence of one or more Abyssal unit within its immediate vicinity. Our goal is to approach each target with utmost stealth, and attack at a safe distance.

Towards this purpose the Special Test and Evaluation Command has created a unique torpedo with a range of approximately 150 nm specifically designed for this mission. It is scheduled to be deployed within three months. 

Until then, we are to carry out our missions as directed. While our primary target is the destruction of stationary targets, any Abyssal units nearby are targets of opportunity and should be attacked with utmost vigor in order to ensure maximum success. 

Today is Veteran’s Day.

We’ve thought for a while about what we wanted to do this time. Then we thought, well, there is something that we can do that’s fairly unique to us. Veterans are a big part of our history. Without them, our country’s history wouldn’t exist.

Family and team members being veterans aside, a big part of why we create historical content is to honor their service. We hope that through learning about the history of our country, our readers will gain a greater appreciation for all the sacrifices our veterans made.

So, we ended up taking a long time cleaning up the historically-related content and organizing it in a page. I even made a nifty button on the site so people can find it easier! It’s right under the mail call button below. It looks like that!

You can even click on it.

Today’s the day where we celebrate the service of our veterans! Of course, there are 364 other days in the year to do this as well, but today’s extra special. “Thank you for your service” may sound like such a tiny thing to say, but everything you do that could help, helps!

This is Shaw. On behalf of everyone here, thank you for your service.

Or what should probably be titled: design process of paper shipgirls. I’ve been pretty busy, so this’ll be split into multiple parts.

One of Sima’s first shipgirl designs came out about a year and a half ago. She happens to be Zao. How did she come about?

Well, what I can tell you is that it’s only partly due to WOWS. Just like how November decided to embark on Pacific because he couldn’t LSC Taihou after 19 tries, Sima was actually kind of interested in designing his own shipgirls. At the time, we had him working on Pacific’s Abyssals. However, one day, the conversation went something like this.

“Morgane~”

“Yes?”

“Can I draw cute girls too? I’m tired of drawing sea monsters~”

“Okay. What’s the plan?”

So, I basically sent Sune off to the archives to look for designs. It turns out that the design had some basis in reality, but the actual source of WOWS came out of a magazine in the 1980s in Japan where the creator explicitly stated that it is based on his personal conjecture. As such, her equipment was actually the easiest part to settle on. We’ll simple take WOWS’ turret layout and her assorted elements.

Now, the harder part is actually solidifying the shipgirl design. Zao’s creation has a purpose. If you think of Pacific’s story as taking form in arcs, she’s actually the centerpiece in what we tentatively called the Penglai Islands storyline. Set sometime after the main (ordinary human) cast has assembled, it’s a short arc dealing mostly with the Sino-Japanese dispute of a magical island that’s suddenly sprung up in the middle of the Eastern China Sea.

As the first character of this particular arc, it’s also meant to introduce China into Pacific’s storyline. Now, given the unique situation that we were in, the storyline was more or less on hold (you can look at the calendar or go check out the news to think about what’s happened. Our printers being shenanigan’d also has something to do with it). However, now that things are looking up, it’s a tale that we’re interested in starting up again.

Thematically, we wanted to make sure we have the option of connecting her to our own Yamato alternative designs. We also wanted to make her sexy. We’ve got two women on the team, and while I’m completely fine with many forms of fanservice (I have 0 problems with handsome half-naked shipmen so why would I have problems with attractive shipgirls?) Sune is infinitely, infinitely more uh… to put it into her words, “Japanese” when it comes to things.

Basically, as she describes it herself, her job is to minimize the amount of clothing our designs end up with or maximize our characters’ sex appeal. I, along with more conservative elements of the team, tends to serve as a direct counterbalance.

That being said, I actually think this is completely fine. First of, if you think about it, shipgirls are basically traveling on water. Until STEC figures out a way to waterproof their clothing, it’s going to get awfully uncomfortable fast if you’re wearing pants. It’s why we have a running joke that shipgirls don’t have pants in Pacific for a different reason (though the trend was broken by New York almost a year later) than that one particular mecha girl show.

You’ll notice too that Zao’s colors are a bit off than what we would normally expect. That’s because Sune pulled out historical colors found in traditional Japanese art. Since Pacific shipgirls are symbolic of a particular nation and culture, it’s natural that we would take cues from what’s out there. Every color you find in Zao’s art (even in the original version, made more pronounced in the revised art which Sima will probably post later) comes from that.

The little knee and arm guards are decorative in nature. Same with the torii-gate inspired gata-like heels. The default shipgirl clothing in Pacific are more or less magical in nature. There is no actual defensive property associated with them beyond the typical shielding a shipgirl gets (though some shipgirls can and will get creative by focusing energy into different parts) and fairy-associated powers that tends to be shipgirl specific.

Put it all together, and she looks kind of ninja-ish, right? Well, that’s what we would go for. WOWS meta on the Chinese servers aside, we want to pick visual elements that make it immediately clear to the reader that this is a ________. Ninja or kimono or hikimayu are all visual elements that should immediately be discernible as something visually “Japanese.”

After all, given what we designed her for initially, it’s what we would want. Now, Zao does indeed earn much more of screen time than what we might expect. But that tends to happen with pretty much every shipgirl we work on.