Sometimes I skip a question because it’s relevant to a future update. It’s not because I don’t want to answer it.

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“Since the abyssal thing is being kept hush-hush, I’m guessing shipgirls don’t appear at USO events?”

No.

At least, not in the way you’d expect. For starters, there is no reason to believe that the USO even know STEC has shipgirls. 🙂

Secondly, after STEC goes public, the answer is still probably no for the vast majority of the situation. There are only a handful of shipgirls and you need them fighting the Abyssals or performing other objectives. I don’t think the shipgirls themselves would object (and I have a feeling Tennsy concerts might be pretty popular), but you really have to think about the practical situation and whether or not it’d actually be sensible to pull the girls away from the frontlines.

Honestly, the best case for the USO might be waiting to see if USO-fairies pop out of Avalon. Those might be better suited for their objectives.

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“Makes me wonder whether or not Marble written her very own fan work or doujinshi during off duty.

Though, I wonder if her puns also transfers over to her works… XD”

Heeeeey. Are you saying I can’t write? I can write! I am a significant contributor to the Avalon Weekly! Langley sometimes put my stories up on the kitchen fridge!

…That’s because Langley needs a calendar, idiot. The Avalon Weekly’s literally the right size for the freezer compartments. 

Marby likes to write. It’s her hobby. As K9 mentions, she writes a large range of works. However, I’d like to point out that what passes for fanfiction for us (in the context of Pacific) is more like, Marby’s (sometimes very questionable) stories about her friends.

A shipgirl who declares herself a long-time reader of Marby (who, by the way, is definitely not Marby) speaks on conditions of anonymity. She describes her work as “tremendous,” but observes a distinctive tendency for her to veer off on very unusual directions.

Basically, coupled with her occasional head-in-the-clouds tendencies and you sort of “get” what kind of a girl she is. Marby’s a bit awkward in the sense that she has no real filter for what’s going on in her little head. If she thinks of something she’s likely to just blurt it out. It’s not that she doesn’t want to be social. It’s more like she’s BAD at recognizing that some things aren’t necessary, and she’s read far too much that her jokes end up either so esoteric that nobody gets them, or they’re basically really bad puns instead.

Naturally, Sune really likes to use Marby for her stories and the bits that she builds. She’s definitely one of the funner ones to use in that regard. The chibi Marby is definitely one of my favorite chibis because it just really, really fits her. 🙂

Some days, when I’ve had a long day, this is what I do in response. Literally I want to grab my pillow and go sleep.

But, then I take a look at the site, and went, hmm, what to show today…

Eh, a new shipgirl can be shown later. Some days I’m seriously tired and don’t want to answer questions. It’s not like I’ve stopped writing or reading, though. That is a sort of daily hobby at this point.

I think instead, I’m going to talk a little about one of the characters we plan for the next book. Unfortunately, much of what I know about her happens to be from family hearsay (and not to mention, family bias), since I have family members (still living!) who served on her during the war.

Yes, he’s aware of this project. In fact he’s made some very curious demands about her er, proportions.

No, I’m not going to have him pose with a cardboard cutout. I thought about it, and I don’t think the hilarity or the advertising it could bring is worth his peace and quiet. I’d rather that the character we created stand on her own, and said family member made it pretty clear that “his gal” was literally the best and doesn’t need anyone’s endorsement to be the best shipgirl ever.

Hoo boy. I know from lurking about that WWII veterans come in all shapes and sizes. Mine just happens to be … very open minded with the idea of shipgirls and whatnots. He loves the idea of Pacific, and absolutely finds this whole thing to be hilarious. In fact, he showed me some sketches from below decks (apparently the navy had a strict policy at the time about pin-ups and whatnots, but below decks where officers hardly lurk, that’s another story) and basically said, yeah, your girls need less clothing on them thanks.

(So in other words he basically think like Sune.)

… What, were you expecting some high-browed opinion? Not everyone’s got families of generals and admirals you know, though, come to think of it, a few did get fairly high up the food chain…

Anyways, should be interesting. We did sit down and basically lay out exactly what kind of a girl she’d be. To be honest once you hear some of these sea stories, I really, really, really can’t see her being written any other way.

And, yes, someone‘s got competition…

This isn’t really one question, but more like a variant of the following questions.

“Does Pacific still draw ________________ if she’s been drawn by ___________?”

The answer is of course! We do our own thing. We’ve had Saratoga drawn for one of our covers way before her announcement, for instance, and I had written a Bismarck back in 2014ish before she was introduced in game. Pacific’s Roma (another legacy character from 2014) exists in a number of side stories (mostly as Jer’s shopping buddy – she’s a lot more like say, Nero from the Fate series than the serious one we got in the event). Those are just a few of the examples, but I think it’s generally safe to say that we’ll go ahead and make a shipgirl if we feel like she belongs in Pacific’s setting.

This next bit is actually a sketch from November, showing some posture work with Sarah. November works very hard at each shipgirl, of course, and he spends a lot of time figuring out what pose would be good at communicating what we want to do with each character.

Now, because we already had Lexy figured out (Lexington herself hates that nickname), this one’s clothing was actually fairly easy to follow up with. Whatever we do with our girls, the one cardinal rule is that it has to please our own sensibilities. Let’s just say when we were sorting out the CV girl outfits a lot of work went into researching pin-up (and noseart) from the era. 🙂

I mean, we gotta get vol. 3 done for this summer, so you’ll see a lot more work roll out in the near future. See you next time. 🙂

Just another quick update from the front. I’ll probably resume tomorrow since Zero is tallying our results this run. 🙂

(Yeah, ironically, since we’re generally doing stuff on the weekends, weekend updates tends to be shorter than other times.)