分类： 美舰本·Pacific

I normally do mail calls in order, but this one was juicy enough that I couldn’t resist. That, and we’re having computer issues. >< So here’s hoping everything works out.

Just a quick question on the picture with Iowa and the POW-MIA dinner, who are the other 4 girls/ships? A friend and I figured that the 3 at the table with her are the destroyers Hull, Monaghan, and Spence who all sank in a typhoon that Iowa was in, but the one at the other table is throwing us off. Any possible insight?

The POW-MIA dinner is probably one of my favorite ways to “advance” a particular character’s story. In other words, I love planting key details all over the place. My team often complains that the hints are so subtle they’re subterranean, but the instant they figure things out, it’s an “ooh! awesome” sort of moment.

So, thanks for writing in and thanks for checking out the art. I’m going to be simple and say that those are none of the shipgirls in the picture.

In fact, to understand that particular picture – and to look beyond the simple presentation of the Missing Man’s Table, you need to …

• Even without me telling you that the blond-haired girl is a good friend of Iowa’s, you could probably tell in the first frame that it’s someone important to Iowa. After all, there’s their picture on the wall together.
• Remember Pacific is a setting that’s relatively “high” in fantastic capabilities, while very “low” (in other words, very consistent within the universe) in unusual/miraculous occurrences. This image is either implying that the sort of “spirit vision” or whatever it may be is a regular occurrence, or it’s indeed one of the “rare” events that happen.
• Of the identity of the mysterious girls, other than Des Moines (Daisy Mae, which we spoilered), the other girls can be identified using what’s in their picture alone. For the two standing, look at their hair color, outfit “style,” and think to which particular cities those correspond to. Hint: they were both immediately recognizable styles (albeit somewhat obscure) found in fashion history. In addition, silver is another hint. For the one sitting, look no further than the style of her clothing (boots) and that drink she’s holding.
• Consider what you know of Iowa. Here’s a new clue. Unlike the “summoned” shipgirls (such as the ones in vol. 1 talking about their memories – look at Enterprise or Northampton), Iowa seems to have literally appeared out of nowhere. What’s more, she immediately went and sought out the human military command and explained – in extraordinary detail – the nature of the Abyssal threat. There’s no ambiguity here. She seems to understand what the Abyssals are capable of. It’s what managed to get STEC to start researching the right things.
• Now, think to yourself. Why is that? How would she know? Abyssal corpses disappear within minutes to seconds, and it’s been established that that particular Abyssal scout in 1950 was the first time humanity has encountered the Abyssal fleet. Iowa may be powerful, but even powerful shipgirls shouldn’t just curbstomp an empowered Abyssal like that – especially after it has gouged itself on thousands of soldiers. It’s almost as if Iowa knows what she’s doing because she might have done it before…
• Last panel.

“Why don’t you answer the question?”

I could, but I prefer that my readers figure it out on their own. I hope you understand that it’s not that I have no answer, but that I genuinely don’t want to give the answer away just yet.

After all, a small part of our “job” as a content creator is to create wonder for our audience. With the exception of core values which I do and consistently beat people over the head with (as I’ve said many, many, many times Pacific isn’t a thematically complex work), I generally prefer a hands-off approach.

In other words, I think in our day and age fiction tends to fall under two broad categories. Force-feeding you every little detail so that there is really only one way to interpret a narrative, or presenting something so skeletal that there’s barely anything there. Pacific is very much a work under construction. The foundations of which that makes up this tale is slowly being built. I’ve been taught a few simple tricks to essentially give the readers free reign in this world that I’ve built.

After all, there may be more than one correct answer. Sometimes there is only one. But, there are definitely wrong answers.

Again, to reiterate. I’m not a good writer. Nowhere close to good. Haven’t put in my hours yet. But I do know what good writing looks like. Recalling back to my college days – where my professors taught me just why myths and legends persist even to today – you can’t help but to try to replicate those tales.

In kancolle the abyssals are just trying to prevent the evil humans from destroying their ancestral homes. They just want o be left alone! Why are the abyssals evil when the shipgirls just kill them? they are only fighting back in self-denfse…

Okay. This is a very weird way of looking at it. Not to um, criticize but have you read any of KanColle’s materials at all? I mean, Tanaka even came out and said that these are vengeful spirits that attacked humans first. They hunt human ships for fun and sport. That’s part and parcel in the light novels which are still canonical as far as I’m aware.

Secondly, in case you haven’t noticed, we use our own Abyssal designs. Hoppou show up in OCEAN because OCEAN is a fun book. Half of that book is set outside of Pacific’s universe proper and is about the shipgirls visiting locations in our “world” referring to real-world events. Heck, we even have Roar and Margaret visit from Kannnu’s universe, as you can see below.

Secondly, I find the argument that the Abyssals are just fighting back in “self-defense” pretty hilarious. I mean, Japan only invaded China in “self-defense” too. So did Germany to Poland – remember how Polish saboteurs supposedly killed some German soldiers?

Yeah, well. The Abyssals in KC canon doesn’t even have that. There is no “shipgirl/humanity attacking helpless Abyssal transport.” None. They just showed up one day and started to literally nom ships.

Sure, the Abyssals don’t seem to be doing much (because Tanaka need to spread out the events so KanColle can sell more figurines), but that’s an in-story decision made by the creative staff. They’ve chosen to freeze the storyline so that we can perpetually be on the cusp of victory/defeat, which means there’s always a reason to introduce more shipgirls.

Pacific is a little different. For starters, our Abyssal “swarm” hasn’t showed up yet at all. STEC is doing fine handling basically scouting (not even skirmishing elements) of the Abyssal fleet, but they’ve been fortifying and building up strength in anticipation for when the attack arrives.

You’d think that within 40 years someone might have thought about making diplomatic contact. Maybe try to talk to the Abyssals. Figure out why they want to do all this.

Well, consider Pacific Abyssal’s motivations.

They don’t want to rule over you. I mean, they don’t care.

They convert you into material and use you to make more of them, but given the interstellar/interdimensional nature of the Abyssal fleet, does one world really make much of a difference at all?

Even let’s say that they just want to nom you. Okay. You try to negotiate with them. How many people do you feed to the Abyssal Fleet? Ten thousand? A million? A billion?

Note that I’ve explicitly designed the Abyssals as a precise counterpart to the shipgirls. The shipgirls are paragons of morality. They represent humanity. The Abyssals have no such qualms. Morality is alien to them. Why would they honor this deal? Why don’t they just kill you?

See, therein lies the issue. We have a tendency to apply human rationality to our inhuman antagonists in an attempt to humanize them, ostensibly to create “depth.” Even STEC’s own internal understanding of the Abyssal (as well as my ability to describe them to you from the author’s perspective) basically chalks it down to “they hate us for what we are and want to destroy us and our way of life.”

That is not untrue. That’s exactly how I would explain it. But it only scratches the surface. The Abyssals exhibit certain biological behaviors (they respond to stimuli, they are drawn to concentrations of fairy energy in ways that STEC theorizes similar to animals on earth, they appear to display a moderate degree of self-preservation, etc) but any attempts to try to assign a human reason or a rationale to their action is going to be pointless at best and downright dangerous at worst.

Morality doesn’t exist for the Abyssals in Pacific. They create facsimiles of humanity to fulfill niches such as terror or demoralization. They cannot understand humanity in the same way as humanity cannot understand them.

In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that the instant a particularly intelligent Abyssal agent becomes aware or at least capable of understanding humans, that’s the instant where said agent might as well cease to be an Abyssal altogether. It would certifiably be insane if insanity exists in the Abyssal fleet’s “vocabulary.”

Some days it’s just not feasible for me to do daily updates. School and work gets busy, and I don’t always just want to put up a random post with a chibi or sketch. It’s one thing to post pre-written or stock writing, and it’s another thing to revise and correct – both of which you know everyone hates.

See, it even says “regular” updates and not “daily” updates.

Now, where are things? As it stands, the release order is still the same.

Navy foods: This is basically done. CN first, released early August at Zero’s hometown convention.

2016: EN first. Preorders probably soon, though (as I’ve wryly commented) logistics is always a nightmare and getting things to the states isn’t easy, period. There’s an ocean between China and the US, y’know.

A reminder that Pacific (the hon-haka team) is still literally one guy handling all of our actual logistics and printing, two artists, and a ragtag bunch of friends who write. In this day and age of triple-A production values and massive investments on everything, I’m just going to say that we’re pretty damned proud that we can hold our own in this field. It’s what we’re going to keep on trying.

Believe me, we’ve looked seriously at printing options everywhere across the continental US. At the volumes of books we create per printing run (thousands) it is still far, far, far cheaper for us to print in China and ship it over to the US. The decline of American manufacturing is no joke – why would I charge you more for a shoddier product if we already have access to excellent facilities overseas (something which most English-speaking creators don’t have access to?)

Which, not to rag on this point too much, but half these guys ship their stuff over to CHYNA anyways to print. “Made in the USA” my foot. Owned by Americans, certainly, but come on, we know the pricing of this industry. You could say we were born in it. Molded by it. 😉

(By the way, don’t get the wrong impression. We aren’t all knowing and we’re more than happy to look into additional sources for printing or further collaboration. It’s just … to put it simply, digging into the print “industry” here back home shattered my idealism. No wonder we don’t have a print media “doujin” thing over here. The …. it’s just insane. Absolutely insane.)

I mean, when we print anything it’s a sleepless night for Zero. He gets the proofs. He goes over them and makes sure the colors come out right.

Silent Service: EN first (sort of). Silent Service proper actually have a lot of very short pieces set in the Pacific universe proper. Layout is going to be a pain (as usual because anything I make is like the F-35. It quickly spirals out of control in terms of the amount of text present)

Well my lunch break’s over. See ya guys around. x)