Alt-history writing project

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Captain Wheelgun
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Re: Alt-history writing project

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tfbncc wrote: Sat Sep 18, 2021 11:08 am Looking good. At this rate, how long till the complete book is done? And will you be self publishing on Amazon? I need to know so that you can earn a few measly pennies from this old sailor.

Ray
No idea when it will be done, but I will be self-publishing on Amazon. Thanks for your support.
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Captain Wheelgun
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Re: Alt-history writing project

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randy wrote: Sat Sep 18, 2021 4:16 pm The one thing that stuck out to me:
As I’m sure you are aware, the military attaches in any embassy are effectively legalized spies, whose job is to find out everything they can about their host nation’s military capabilities.
An admiral is going to know that, and having a subordinate use that phrasing could very easily come across as an insult.

I know you're trying to get the point across to the uninformed reader, but this does not quite work for me.

Maybe remove that sentence and modify the next one to something like:

As a military attache in the Berlin embassy I certainly saw a lot of what the Germans were doing, officially and otherwise. Do you think that the American and British military attaches here in Texas are less competent?
Thank you. That’s the kind of thing that is likely to trip me up, since I was never in the military myself. I had already rewritten that scene once because even to me he came off as insubordinate. Besides which, it was turning into a Weber-esque infodump. :geek: Consider it modified.

One of the main reasons I’m posting this here is to get sanity checks from the active or retired military folks here.
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Captain Wheelgun
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Re: Alt-history writing project

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Snippet deleted due to upcoming book release March 2, 2022.
Last edited by Captain Wheelgun on Wed Feb 16, 2022 8:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Alt-history writing project

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Snippet deleted due to upcoming book release March 2, 2022.
Last edited by Captain Wheelgun on Wed Feb 16, 2022 8:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"What is this, the Congress Avenue Independence Day Parade?" - Capt. Karl von Stahlberg, RTN
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tfbncc
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Re: Alt-history writing project

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Interesting. Does this come into play later on in the story?
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Re: Alt-history writing project

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tfbncc wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 11:09 am Interesting. Does this come into play later on in the story?
Of course it does. I can’t leave a Chekov’s Gun like that just lying around gathering dust. :twisted:
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Re: Alt-history writing project

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Snippet deleted due to upcoming book release March 2, 2022.
Last edited by Captain Wheelgun on Wed Feb 16, 2022 8:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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tfbncc
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Re: Alt-history writing project

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This is shaping up to be a pretty good story. You've hit on a point that is very rarely discussed outside of the navy. The inherent prejudice built into this service since it's inception. There's an old saying we have: "The US Navy. 200 years of tradition unimpeded by progress!".
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Re: Alt-history writing project

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tfbncc wrote: Tue Oct 05, 2021 5:52 am This is shaping up to be a pretty good story. You've hit on a point that is very rarely discussed outside of the navy. The inherent prejudice built into this service since it's inception. There's an old saying we have: "The US Navy. 200 years of tradition unimpeded by progress!".
Not even specifically racial prejudice

I spent 3 years in a joint service assignment where the Navy had a lot of influence. Being in the late 80s I did not see any explicit racial prejudice, especially not in official policy. I was however taken aback a bit at the explicit and casual way a lot of the Navy officers seemed to view enlisted folks the way a Eurotrash aristocrat would view a peasant.

I was even lectured once that I was "spoiling" some of the Navy enlisted troops who would be unprepared to deal with the "real world" when they went back to the fleet. (not by command staff, but by another JO*). The was especially jarring as I had just come from a MAJCOM where a smart officer looked at his NCOs as fellow professionals with different roles.

It seemed to me that the USN still retained more than a bit of the culture of the Royal Navy in viewing officers as aristocrats and enlisted as lower class. Now maybe it has to be that way on ship with constrained living and work spaces and 24/7 ops at sea, but I came away glad I didn't pursue an opportunity to go into the Navy. That's a feeling I have never had when dealing with the Army or Marines.

(* That same JO had a rude awakening once when trying to lecture me on something else and I wasn't playing, so he asked me what my Line Number was. How the hell would I know? I'm not sure the AF even has line numbers. In the AF we had the saying that "rank among Lieutenants was like virtue among whores". Or among Captains as I was an O-3 Captain at the time and he was wearing Navy Lieutenant rank. Turns out he was still an O-2 LT. JG just frocked (another thing we didn't do in the AF. I put on my rail road tracks on my date of rank) to LT. My date of rank to O-3 was just before he was commissioned. Didn't matter to me, but his attitude changed a lot in how he approached me).
...even before I read MHI, my response to seeing a poster for the stars of the latest Twilight movies was "I see 2 targets and a collaborator".
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Captain Wheelgun
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Re: Alt-history writing project

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tfbncc wrote: Tue Oct 05, 2021 5:52 am This is shaping up to be a pretty good story. You've hit on a point that is very rarely discussed outside of the navy. The inherent prejudice built into this service since it's inception. There's an old saying we have: "The US Navy. 200 years of tradition unimpeded by progress!".
Thanks. I realized that this was going to be a point of conflict when I decided that the Texas military wasn’t going to be segregated, and I wanted to deal with it without sounding 21st century woke. 🤮

Thank you for your comments.
"What is this, the Congress Avenue Independence Day Parade?" - Capt. Karl von Stahlberg, RTN
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