Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Cuttlefish

General note: I am in fact going to make "Small Ship" available on Lulu.com or some place like that. I will need a little time to pull it all together and do some editing, but I'll post something here when it is ready.

Thank you so much for this novel, CF! It is indeed good to see that all the effort was maintained, without ever leaving your high standards of writing, until the very end of the game! You've transformed an excellent AAR into a work of art! And thank you too to your opponent, may he safely return home!

And what good news for the readers! Well done, and thanks from Vienna, Austria.

Hm, it seems that people are still finding this and reading it. I'm glad, as it was hard to leave it to just gather dust.

Work on a compiled edition is still in progress, by the way. One of these days it might even be completed!

CF,

For SOME REASON I have just had a chance to read the last 15 pages of the AAR. Well done and well written. I did chuckle at the following passage because I clearly heard Mr. Spock in it:

The Raytheon-manufactured radar makes her old equipment look as though it was made of stone knives and bearskins. The hull-mounted sonar is even better and both its passive and active capabilities would have astounded the old crew. Gone are the reviled 25mm AA guns; in their place are radar-guided 40mm mounts. She still has 5” guns fore and aft, and her lethal torpedo tubes, but there is little doubt that her main purpose is to hunt and kill enemy submarines.

Thanks for a great read. Truly reads as excellent history...

I just reread this tale from beginning to end. Once againj, it gave me hours of pure enjoyment--and I saw things I missed the first time. (Reading until you're almost falling asleep does that--and I couldn't STOP!!!)

I could see the evolution of your writing as the work progresed--glorious. If there's ever a book/movie/comiv based on this, I'd snap it up amazingly fast. This is far better than the likes of Tom Clancy and other profesional authors. Fantastic!

I've just signed up in the forum, but I've been lurking here in the shadows, and I've passed hours reading this AAR.
To say I'm awed would be an understatement. You should seriously consider to switch to professional writing; for what I've read, you would already have a number of aficionados here. Besides, the mere idea of a movie based on the Adventures of the Hibiki... it makes my mind go reeling.
I don't have enough words to express my appreciance and my compliments, kind sir, together with my gratitude for sharing with us such a beautiful masterpiece.
Thanks a lot!

[&o][&o][&o][&o][&o]

Thanks to everyone who has read and commented over the last couple of months. It is nice to see that the story is still being discovered and enjoyed. Since that last time I posted here there have been several developments:

First, my esteemed opponent, Michael Wolff, aka wolffpack, returned from his tour in Iraq a couple of weeks ago. It's good to have him back safe and sound and I hope to talk him into posting something here once he's gotten caught up with everything.

Second, the hit total here recently passed the 300,000 mark. I have never talked about the hit count here but that's an astounding number for any Matrix forum thread not titled The Thread.

Third, it does look as though "Small Ship, Big War" will be published in book form, one way or another. There's a good chance, anyway. I will post details when and if they become available.

Book form?
YEA!!!

WOW!!!

Just spent the last week reading the whole "AAR".
Was a really great story, caught myself a few times while at work, wondering what the crew on the Hibiki might be doing, only to remind myself that it was a story.

Had to laugh quite a few times too, but caught myself with a few tears building up. (The death of Izu's friend, the baseball match before the captains death.)

Never have I read such a grand AAR.

Just had to wonder at the end what happened to Okuba? (The "evil" crew member.)
And I can't wait to gear what Wolfpack has to say.


Thanks once again.
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Bought AE in December. Heard about this AAR a week ago. Just finished reading it. Thought I would keep the thread alive and say thanks CF.

The other day a photo of Hibiki flashed by on my screensaver. My boss noticed and asked me about it, I explained. He is now reading through the AAR and curious about the game. Thanks again for some of the best war fiction I've read.

You my friend have turned yourself into a master storyteller. If we were all in the same room now, you would recieve a standing ovation from all of us present.

i'll second that!

Well done. Again.

it does look as though "Small Ship, Big War" will be published in book form, one way or another. There's a good chance, anyway. I will post details when and if they become available.

and....?

Same question !

just finished reading.
2 thumbs up [&o]

If this story really makes it into a book form I would like to see the 2 last months covered more detailed.
I think these months give room for many side stories, just think of the families of all the major & minor Hibiki Chars, they must have had a hard time and to swing the spotlight to them would give an interesting view of Japans "Downfall".
Maybe a look into some high rank discussion on how the fight in these last months.
And something about the atomic bombs and the speech that the Japanese emperor Hirohito held("Jewel Voice Broadcast") would also spice things a bit up.

There... I just finished reading the whole story for the third time in two years, beginning to end.

Cuttlefish, you are truly one of the best.

The NavWeaps discussion board sent me here, and I only regret that I am now out of story. I suffered from a bad case of "read instead of..." which included "working" and "sleeping"for a week, a condition that strikes every few years when something truly outstanding comes along.

I am still ambivalent about the ending, though. It somewhat interfered with my willing suspension of disbelief. You gave every one of them a happy ending because you care about them and you could. No Ira Hayes* here. But we all want it to be that way in the real world. We just know it will not happen.

*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Hayes

I am still ambivalent about the ending, though. It somewhat interfered with my willing suspension of disbelief.

What can we say? Hibiki always was a lucky ship.[;)]

ORIGINAL: Smoky Stoker

The NavWeaps discussion board sent me here, and I only regret that I am now out of story. I suffered from a bad case of "read instead of..." which included "working" and "sleeping"for a week, a condition that strikes every few years when something truly outstanding comes along.

I am still ambivalent about the ending, though. It somewhat interfered with my willing suspension of disbelief. You gave every one of them a happy ending because you care about them and you could. No Ira Hayes* here. But we all want it to be that way in the real world. We just know it will not happen.

*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Hayes

I will have to plead guilty as charged here. Once the ship had survived the war, against all my expectations, I didn't have the heart to do ill to any of the characters in the epilogues.

I could argue that there almost certainly were some negative stories to come out of the post-war years. I just didn't chose to tell any of them. There were a fair number of crew who didn't appear in any tales beyond the end of the war and it is almost certain that some met with misfortune. Having endured all that they had endured, these were men who were not likely to be daunted by lesser challenges. But life is not always kind, or fair, and not all endings are happy ones.

All I can say, looking back, is that at the time it felt right to do it the way I did it. I was reluctant to say goodbye to the characters who had come so far with me and I wanted to leave them on something of a note of grace. I suspect many readers felt the same way. It wasn't necessarily realistic, but it seemed fitting.

I found this thread by change 3 days ago after i reinstalled WiP-AE on my new computer. Since then i got addicted to the small ship in the big war.
152 pages and still going strong ....