History Fanfic / BelatedBattleships

* MoodWhiplash: One common criticism of the story is its tendency to alternate chapters of fluffy SliceOfLife with gritty, nightmare-fueling war scenes.

* TheLadette: Jersey's a impossibly foul-mouthed, notoriously lazy, and massively aggressive battleship. The only checkbox she's missing is the hard-drinking.
* TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers: In 31b, Jersey discusses with Nagato how she seems to be the only shipgirl whose human form mirrors how her ship incarnation was sunk.

** In a case of playing it straight and playing it very serious, some of the Taffy 3 go crying to Jersey because they think that, by hogging the computer, they've driven one of the Japanese ships to suicide. It was a simple misunderstanding; not knowing of the existence of "sudoku," a numeric puzzle game, and confusing it with "Seppuku," ritualistic Japanese suicide.

* CoolShades: Jersey brings out the mirrored aviators whenever she needs to look extra badass. Or when she's trying to [[HurtingHero hide her tears.]] White also has a pair of American Flag shutter-shades she'll pop on when she wants to.

* HurtingHero: For all her bravado, Jersey is constantly haunted by her failure of Samar and by how long it took her to answer her nation's call. In her words, she's just a "shitty old battleship". Nagato has elements to this, but hides it better – she's ashamed of the actions her nation took during World War II, mentioning Nanking and Bataan.

** Infamously flat-chested Ryuujou gets hit the hardest. But Jersey suffers from it as well, merely because she's not as [[GagBoobs ridiculously stacked]] as her Japanese compatriots. This becomes HilariousInHindsight after [[spoiler:her remodel comes with a cup size increase.]]
** Inverted with [[spoiler:Musashi]] when it comes to Jersey. While Jersey has generous cleavage, it's nothing compared to the GagBoobs of some of the Japanese ships... but even other, more top-heavy ships are jealous of Jersey's [[AmazonianBeauty other attributes.]]

* EverythingsBetterWithPlushies: Destroyers are occupationally cuddled in lieu of proper plushies, and Arizona keeps a whole escort fleet of stuffed ships to watch over her while she sleeps. In fact, they're the only way she can sleep though the night. (According to [[WordOfDante Old Iron]], she makes sure to tuck them all in before she heads out each morning.

* ShesGotLegs: As a fast-battleship, Jersey traded off a little bit of firepower and armor for the kind of speed that makes even destroyers jealous. As a shipgirl, this translated into amazing hips and legs.

* UncannyValley: InUniverse, those who have had the misfortune of getting close enough to abyssal avatars note consistently how said villainesses do a creepily poor job of acting human.

* KnifeNut: Borie, the destroyer who got into a literal knife-fight with a U-boat, carries around a pocket knife at all times. And at one point, threw it at an Abyssal Dreadnought. Just in case.

* RapunzelHair: Most of the battleships have long hair. Jersey's in particular is long enough to reach her butt even when it's in a braid. She's accidentally smacked herself or others in the face with it a few times.

** The taffies are amazed to see ComicBook/CaptainAmerica clothing on sale when they visit a mall, thinking he'd be long forgotten in the 21st century.

** American ship girls have thus far proven somewhat suspicious of cell phones.

** The Taffies proved ''immensely'' suspicious of the Japanese when they showed up, thinking that them being peaceful was a trick (coupled with some rather racist language, which, while common for the time, is not appropriate in the modern day). Heerman and Jersey, having survived the war, have to point out that if it is a trick, it's one that's been going on for ''sixty years.''

* FlatEarthAtheist: As the semi-canonical "Wolfbait's Daily Life" omakes show, not everyone is able to accept the supernatural nature of the shipgirl-abyssal war.

* FriendlyRivalry: Jersey has one with Musashi, referencing the real-life debates over which class of ship was superior, ''Yamato''-class (such as Musashi) or ''Iowa''-class (such as Jersey). Both have points -- Musashi's guns are bigger and her armor is thicker, but Jersey has better fire control, radar, and damage repair abilities. And then there's... [[FemaleGaze other reasons that they're jealous of one another.]]
* GentleGiant: Nagato's unfailingly sweet to anything of destroyer-tonnage or below, but she's also one of the fabled Big Seven battleships.
* GoshDangitToHeck: When she's happy, Jersey reverts to the very g-rated "Holy Hannah!"

* HurtingHero: For all her bravado, Jersey's constantly haunted by her failure of Samar and by how long it took her to answer her nation's call. In her words, she's just a "shitty old battleship." Nagato has elements to this, but hides it better -- she's ashamed of the actions her nation took during World War II, mentioning Nanking and Bataan.

** Washington. Beautiful, graceful, deadly... which actually causes problems when her proper eating habits, coupled with the extreme BigEater tendencies of ship girls means that a single meal for her can last about four hours.
** And then averted, hilariously, with New Jersey. Japanese ship girls, hearing about an American "Fast Battleship", think that she'll be a LadyOfWar like their battleships are. What they get is a foul-mouthed, angry, blunt ship woman covered in blood. Oddly enough, Akatsuki still claims that Jersey -- despite all of her flaws -- is still a Lady of War, just of a different kind, since even though Jersey is, well, ''[[JerkWithAHeartOfGold Jersey]],'' she still goes out of her way to make sure that those under her command are cared for and are supported in battle.

* MaleGaze: Quite a bit of text is dedicated to emphasising the shipgirls' attributes.

* MoodWhiplash: One common criticism of the story is its tendency to alternate chapters of fluffy SliceOfLife with gritty, nightmare-fuelling war scenes.

* MustHaveCaffeine: Jersey accidentally drinks a carafe full of decaf and suffers the after-effects for several chapters.
* MyGreatestFailure: Jersey's haunted by the Battle Off Samar, a historical naval engagement where a cluster of destroyers, destroyer escorts, and escort carriers fought off the might of the Japanese Center Force. Jersey was close enough to have rendered aid, but her Admiral at the time kept her back after he misinterpreted a question from Admiral Nimitz as a damming statement.
** FromBadToWorse: she didn't come back as a shipgirl until numerous summoning attempts failed, which only intensified her guilt.

** In "Old Iron Writeup 7", Arizona recognises something's up when Hiei's mood darkens and she refers to her by full rank and name.
** In chapter 34, Naka freaks when she realises the implications of Jersey being not just awake but coherent at 5.00am.
* OhCrap: [[spoiler: Akron after she recognizes that the Battlecruiser Princess is CC-3 USS Saratoga]]

* RuleOfFunny: much of the impossible abilities of Shipgirls, from being able to eat a warehouse full of food without putting on a single ounce, to being able to pull airplanes [[{{Hammerspace}} seemingly from nowhere]], to the confusion on how to summon them, to how the transition between "Girl" and "Ship" happens is filed under "Sparkly Magical Shipgirl Bullshit." Admiral Williams has standing orders that none of it is allowed to cross his desk.

* SleevesAreForWimps: The taffies believe this, and insist on tearing the sleeves off of anything they wear.

** Arizona's reaction to the skimpy Japanese girls is the famous-in-universe "Prude Rage."

* TankTopTomboy: the taffies try to be like this with their sleeveless uniforms, but they frequently revert back to being lovable little girls.
* ThirdLineSomeWaiting: There is a main plotline starring Jersey, Crowning and the inhabitants of Everett and Yokosuka, a B-plot mostly written by Old Iron starring Mutsu, RADM Richardson and the inhabitants of Sasebo that sometimes interlinks with the A-plot, and a C-plot of shenanigans from the US Gulf Coast that has mostly been fodder for questionably canon sidestories.
* ThrowawayCountry: China is briefly mentioned as having descended into a giant food riot months ago following her military's sacrifices defending evacuation efforts and being radio silent from then on.

** Musashi tweeting about [[spoiler:having sex with Jersey]] in " Social Media will be the downfall of us all" eventually blows up on her terribly.

* VillainessesWantHeroes: Both Tosa Princess and American Raider Princess attempt to capture human officers to become their “Admirals”, acting like very frightening [[StalkerWithACrush stalkers with a crush]].
* WeHaveReserves: Averted. Despite having a near-ridiculous number of ships in [=WW2=] (as the author pointed out, the US had 24 ''Essex''-class carriers during the conflict -- more than the total number of ships summoned back by America even after the Summoning Mysteries are mostly solved), the US Navy has had no success summoning shipgirls until Jersey showed up. Figuring out why takes up a good portion of the early story, and continues to be a problem even later on, as summoning ship girls is not an exact science.
* WhamLine: [[spoiler: Wisconsin’s gone]]
* WrongGenreSavvy: Most of the naval characters. They're ''ship''girls after all. Crowning's the only one who's been consistently able to see the obvious solution, because naval doctrine isn't hard-wired into his brain. As an example, when Heermann is badly damaged, the naval personnel and Jersey start making preparations to tow her (and worry about whether she'd capsize while towing). It's Crowning who suggests Jersey simply ''carry'' Heermann, since they're both ''girls''.

''[[https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/belated-battleships-a-kancolle-snip-dump.358673/ Belated Battleships]]'' ([[https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/belated-battleships-2-the-battleshippening-kancolle.426988/ second thread]], [[https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/belated-battleships-3-the-third-one.702931/ third]]) is a ''VideoGame/KantaiCollection'' fan-fiction written by [=theJMPer=].

* CosmicHorrorReveal: The story starts out like most ''VideoGame/KantaiCollection'' fanfic as the struggle between magical anthromorphised warships defending humanity and the demon warships trying to kill us all. [[spoiler:Then it turns out there are higher powers involved with an agenda characters and audience alike can only guess at.]]