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Jayce's Interstellar: State of the Romulan Republic Military
ambassadorkael
Member, Administrator Posts: 2,679 Community Manager
It's time for another round of insights from Jayce's Interstellar! This time, in a guest blog by SirBoulevard, we take a deeper look at the state of the Romulan Military in 2410.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/11234503
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/11234503
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It's also pretty clear that there's no flavour to the Romulans here. It's good that Nadel used the term that D'Tan himself said, Mol'Rihan. But Kererek defaults to New Romulus? Also, this entire quote from Kererek is full of human terms and slang (bolded for emphasis):
It would've been a lot nicer to see some references to Romulan terms. Like "By the Elements, we have captured shipyards to use." STO leans heavilliy on the Rihannsu novels, especially in names of planets and such. And Kererek sounds like he might as well being a human wearing pointy ears. The writer absolutely should have spent some time browsing Memory Beta before trying to write for Romulans.
> so new T6 of existing rom ships with various specializations?
That’s one idea, and an interesting one at that. I could fly the TRIBBLE out of a Piloting Morrigu.
We won’t have to wait for long. The last time a dev blog like this was posted, the Warship announcement and stats blogs came within the week.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
I really think STO would make a lot more sense if they would just space out the timeline more. This is the most blatant violation of logic, but I've thought for a long time that it makes little to no sense for the entire game to have taken place in such a bizarrely short time. This is simply the straw that snaps the suspension of disbelief.
As the writer of this piece, I can tell you right now the majority of the RRN is defected T'Varo, T'liss, Mogai, and D'Deridex-class warbirds. Fresh builds are done to fill a specific role that might be required short term, but as far as the intent goes - most ships are captured Imperial Warbirds or finished captured Imperial Spaceframes. New bundle ship classes are considered joint ops with allied forces, so the design goals are shared in the project. Usually around a specific piece of technology (typically representative of a console)
The intention is that Kererek is aware he's speaking to a primarily Federation audience (as the primary reader base of JNI) and is using Federation vernacular (or the closest Romulan equivalent to be translated the same way) to seem more accessible. As for misspelling his name, that's my bad.
I'm still around. I just don't hang out on the forums so much anymore.
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
Besides, having aliens talk exactly like us is very simplistic sci-fi writing. It removes the need for them to be aliens at all.
Sorry, but this guest Blog was not posted directly in Mos... eh, Ten Forward.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Because they're still allies and trading partners. Diplomacy doesn't mean you go out and throw a temper tantrum because an agreement needed to be suspended due to a crisis. People don't look at a guy cutting off relations because they're not getting parts from a factory that was just lost in an Earthquake as rational.
The Federation is still supplying the Republic with their starship classes, they just can't spare the facilities at the moment for Romulan ship classes. And that's not factoring in anything else the Federation and Klingon Empire trade the Romulan Republic: food, raw materials, dilithium, latinum, open borders travel, access to diplomatic corps, auxillary officer exchanges... The Republic is getting a really good deal out of their arrangement.
And yes, that means playing politics. Kererek in this piece, is to a degree, appealing to the Federation civilian populous. "Look how good we are surviving! We're strong allies!" It makes powerful people throughout the Alliance want to help the Romulans for good PR. Philanthropists supporting the "poor downtrodden Romulans" triggers political support in the Federation Council, and maybe next month they get two or three of those shipyards back.
You don't need to be smug to play Realpolitik like Romulans do. Sometimes you do it with a smile and a gesture of appreciation.
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
Sorry, maybe I didn't word things right. I'm not saying Kererek would go off on the Feds. That wouldn't help anyone, you're right. It's just for him to sound exactly like a human, using slang (which for anyone who's tried to learn another language, slang is the hardest part), I just don't see the point. Why write for an alien character, especially one we haven't heard from much save for mission-giver text, just to make the alien as human-sounding as possible? You didn't add anything to the character at all, and as I said, you fueled the fire for anyone saying the Romulan Republic is just a Fed clone.
Kerererererereeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek is so grossly incompetent that he ignores warnings from every "expert" his government invites as well as his own engineering team to turn on a dangerous piece of technology "on time" because he can't bear the embarrassment of missing the timetable for safety's sake...... Its pretty obvious imo that he doesn't "consider" much.
Liked the blog, its a nice in universe excuse to explain lazy devs not bothering with warbirds for two frikkin years and how we're still missing a city and updated Mol'Rihan map. Sadly all it did was re-ignite my irritation at these things.
I'm not saying Kererek's a good character, at all. I'm just asking why make him as Fed-sounding as possible?
actually he's not as stupid as you imply he is. He would know that doing the diplomatic equalevant of mooning your audience would back fire badly as the Republic is more dependent of the alliance then the alliance is on them. The risk of destroying the trade-agreements with the Federation and the Klingon Empire for the sake of childish pride could be devestating to the Romulan Republic as their infrastructure is nowhere close to being able to withstand that.
The accessibility is so he can regain the Federation support after the current issues have been solved, since as major military commander in the alliance Kererek would be well aware of the state of Starfleet and the klingon defence force and their need to rebuild.
Remember that there's long standing doubt as to the motives of romulans (and not without reason either) so Republic officials must tread very carefully to not be seen as RSE 2.0 (since that would end the support of the Federation and Klingon Empire).
Okay, sure, that can explain the existing designs. (Given the numbers, it would seem as if every ship in the RSE defected, and the RRN has suffered no losses despite a war that supposedly almost destroyed the Alliance, but whatever.) There's still been one heck of a lot of new ones just since the beginning of 2410--or even 2409, if you want to go back that far. Shared design goals does not remotely explain so many so fast. Research and development takes time. Extra heads on a project can only go so far.
Not to mention, even if you accept something like building entire ships with replicators--and I find that to be implausible even by Star Trek standards, frankly--the mass still has to come from somewhere. Which means mining, which means another step before those magically-fast designs can actually be built. Then you have testing. And individual shakedowns of the specific ships.
There are, incidentally, even if you only count T6s without lower-tier variants and only one each of three packs, eleven "new" Romulan Republic designs. If you do add in the variants--and some of the T6 upgrades of lower tier ships are explicitly Iconian War or later--that number gets a lot bigger. Yeah, yeah, replicators, advanced mining tech, supercomputers to help with the designs, etc. I'm sorry, but it has the reached the point long since where "high-tech solutions" for the problem are the equivalent of "Dumbledore did it".
Logistically speaking, two years is simply not long enough.
Because this piece isn't about his character? Its about what's going on with the RRN as a whole. Not Kererek. He's talking to a Federation news agency, and probably had weeks of preparation before hand. He's speaking deliberately to an audience he's had time to research and prepare for. Plus no one ever bats an eye when a Klingon or a Ferengi uses Federation Standard slang.
I didn't make him an overt Romulan stereotype, I made him someone whose trying to make a good impression to Federation citizens. He probably leaned back in his chair at the end of the interview and went "By the elements, I'm glad that's over!" If context is for kings, the context here is he's trying on a Federation-facing persona for the Republic's political gain if possible.
And there's historical precendent for things like this. Probably most infamously with Reagan's "I isk Berliner!" Fortunately, Kererek has good enough officers to make him not say he is a jelly doughnut. Probably was even given help from a Federation exchange officer.
In-universe, the Republic and Kererek are using this piece as a wounded gazelle gambit. "Help us, we're so poor our starships cannot afford singularity cores!" Out-of-universe, largely I wanted to discuss the Republic's infrastructure issues and that was my primary focus. Maybe I could have done better with the Romulan presentation, but I also wouldn't get so in your face with it anyways because then the piece could start to have misunderstood intentions. And I've had enough of those today!
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
The Jelly Donut thing was Kennedy and a myth, starting with the fact that that people in Berlin don't call them "berliner".
...The "Berliner" line was JFK, not Reagan. And it was "Ich bin ein Berliner", to be exact.
Eh, comes with the territory. Honestly, everyone who writes or does art for JNI does it out of passion. I'm not mad or upset or anything. I'll still write more in the future, if Cryptic will still want them
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
I recognize the name, sirboulevard, & another, idaho something, from being mods for Cryptic's live-streaming on Twitch. I think it was back in June, forget which day, but those 2 were almost fanatical in censoring chatters it seemed. but I got there after the beginning, but it was a bit shocking how aggressive it all seemed.
I'm a writer. I'm going to critique what I see as errors in writing. And due respect to the people involved, but with the clear lack of proofreading going on in the average Cryptic blog these days--their habit of messing up dates is the most common and visible, but far from the only--those errors are not exactly uncommon. I sincerely think Cryptic should see about getting a professional editor, if nothing else.
Also, I remember coming across this tweet from sirboulevard doing a lot more than criticizing, so I think it's fair game to criticize his work when he's gone off on STO before.
EDIT: I should say I don't follow sirboulevard on Twitter, so this might not be representative. I originally came across this when looking up stuff about the episodes, and remembered it when I saw today's post. And I commented on it, because I felt he was being way too harsh (and using terrible language) on the dev's for their handling of a TRIBBLE death that I thought was beautiful. It just stuck with me, because instead of talking about it and giving actual criticism, he got angry and assumed it was bad writing. Whereas I, as a trans woman and a TRIBBLE, really thought that seeing a TRIBBLE woman sacrifice herself for her love, just as hetero Star Trek officers often do, was something pretty powerful.
(Attempt at circumventing the censor removed. - BMR)
As a TRIBBLE Man, I didn't like the fact that a prominent celebrity guest character was being revealed as a TRIBBLE person whose lover was killed off to make them angsty. It is a stereotype and a harmful one. TRIBBLE persons are killed off in media all the time. I would object to Cryptic using stereotypes about POCs, persons with disabilities, or any other minority group. Bury Your TRIBBLES is a trope I very strongly want to see buried. TRIBBLE people deserve characters who get to live happily ever after and we frequently don't. Straight couples get happy endings at least 50% of the time, TRIBBLE couples get maybe 10% on a very good day. Until that number equalizes, yeah, I will be harsh. And especially when a TRIBBLE couple is the headline feature of a major two-parter with a celebrity guest star and one's death is critical to the plotline? That's very unfortunate implications.
I may have friends at Cryptic, but that doesn't make actions above reproach on that regard. And they know I say those things with a blunt hammer, 'cause that's usually how I roll. But I've never not been honest or straight forward about it. And I still stand by that tweet.
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
From the TV perspective, you're completely wrong.
TOS: The Romulans were pretty much Romans. The Romulan Commander in "The Enterprise Incident" seemed like a Vulcan/Human hybrid.
Next Generation: Tomalak didn't seem very alien. Sela seemed like "evil Yar". And even Bochra seemed like a typical Human.
Deep Space Nine: The Romulan assigned to the Defiant seemed 100% Human. The various Romulan diplomats seemed like Humans, though with shorter tempers.
Voyager: Can't remember if there were any Romulans.
Enterprise: The Romulans on there seemed like a cross between TOS and Next Gen Romulans.
Nemesis: They let a Human become Praetor. That says something about how similar they are.
So, as far as the TV shows are concerned, Romulans and Humans are very similar. In fact, I suspect that was intentional. Romulans and Vulcans split long ago. Vulcans buried their emotions while Romulans embraced them. That's pretty much Spock's definition of Humans. Seems like this was intended to create Romulans as the villainous version of Humanity.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"