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Sonja Hemphill

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Re: Sonja Hemphill
Post by Jonathan_S   » Thu May 12, 2022 6:45 pm

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Shannon_Foraker wrote:I'd say that Sonja's politics have moderated since the court-martial. After all, she and Shannon get along, despite
CA Honorverse wiki entry wrote:Their foreign policy was isolationist, seeing involvement in foreign affairs as risky and dangerous.


She also is able to be in a meeting with those who don't share her political views and not restart a war, as of ART.

She's a much saner CA peer than High Ridge, even at her worst (HoS, with the near-duel incident), in my opinion.

Despite her not enjoying politics, could she potentially someday lead a saner and more moderate CA? Or would she lean toward another party?

New CA (under someone with a good brain)policy could extend to being friends with Haven and the SEM's allies.

As I don't remember Hemphill being particularly politically involved - it wasn't a core component of her identity - she was more interested in the Navy, naval theory, and weapons development.

As best I recall she was a member of the Conservatives not because of any deeply held belief but because her family, and extended family, were Conservatives and thus she just more or less defaulted into that party. (And as politics weren't her focus probably nothing had come along to make her focus any significant thought on her leanings there)


I'm not sure if she's since acquired enough interest in politics (nor been convinced politics would be her duty; even in the face of lack of interest) to really be a leader in the future CA
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Re: Sonja Hemphill
Post by cthia   » Fri May 13, 2022 1:02 am

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Shannon_Foraker wrote:I'd say that Sonja's politics have moderated since the court-martial. After all, she and Shannon get along, despite
CA Honorverse wiki entry wrote:Their foreign policy was isolationist, seeing involvement in foreign affairs as risky and dangerous.


She also is able to be in a meeting with those who don't share her political views and not restart a war, as of ART.

She's a much saner CA peer than High Ridge, even at her worst (HoS, with the near-duel incident), in my opinion.

Despite her not enjoying politics, could she potentially someday lead a saner and more moderate CA? Or would she lean toward another party?

New CA (under someone with a good brain)policy could extend to being friends with Haven and the SEM's allies.

Jonathan_S wrote:As I don't remember Hemphill being particularly politically involved - it wasn't a core component of her identity - she was more interested in the Navy, naval theory, and weapons development.

As best I recall she was a member of the Conservatives not because of any deeply held belief but because her family, and extended family, were Conservatives and thus she just more or less defaulted into that party. (And as politics weren't her focus probably nothing had come along to make her focus any significant thought on her leanings there)


I'm not sure if she's since acquired enough interest in politics (nor been convinced politics would be her duty; even in the face of lack of interest) to really be a leader in the future CA

I would bet the farm that she has acquired an interest in politics. That interest being forged in fire. She can blame Pavel Young for that.

The interest may not be in serving in the political arena, but in being more aware of it, and how to make it work for her. I would say it may be more of a peripheral interest.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Sonja Hemphill
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Fri May 13, 2022 10:03 am

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cthia wrote:I would bet the farm that she has acquired an interest in politics. That interest being forged in fire. She can blame Pavel Young for that.

The interest may not be in serving in the political arena, but in being more aware of it, and how to make it work for her. I would say it may be more of a peripheral interest.


Oh, yeah. This makes complete sense, given what we know of her and her intelligence. The first time some buffoon stopped her from getting what she thought she deserved (right or wrong), she learnt how to make the politics work for her so it wouldn't happen again. So she may have traded on her dear cousin's name to get things done. In fact, I'd even expect that Admiral Adcock helped and incentivised her on this.
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Re: Sonja Hemphill
Post by Jonathan_S   » Fri May 13, 2022 10:20 am

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Also of interest (and this may have already been mentioned earlier - I didn't reread through the entire thread; it stretches back 8 years :D)

An archived post from David Weber (RFC) that I hadn't looked at in quite a while just came up again in the NEED TO KNOW thread and it has some interesting things on Hemphill (and comparison to Foraker) and I thought it worth sharing here.

From the 2004 infodump (https://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/e ... gton/37/0/) on Hemphill and Fearless enjoy these interesting tidbits. (But it's worth reading the entire post)

Admiral Hemphil and Fearless' deployment wrote:Basically, Sonja has an abrasive personality, a huge amount of faith and her own judgment on technical matters, and a certain narrowness of focus which drives her directly from Point A to Point B. She is at least as intolerant of people unable to keep up with her mental processes as Hamish Alexander is intolerant of those unable to keep up with him. And while she is nowhere near the tactical incompetent some people seem to assume she must be, she is definitely a proponent of the theory that quantity has a quality all its own. Her entire approach to the evolution of new war-fighting technology stemmed from her analysis of just how bloody and indecisive traditional fleet combat had become. Since the "traditionalists" seemed unable to find a tactical solution to the problem, she approached it by looking for a technological solution.

Sonja is not the equal of Shannon Foraker when it comes to extrapolating tactical applications of technological advances. She is, however, almost certainly Shannon's superior when it comes to driving through those technological advances in the first place.
(Note this was written after War of Honor was published. So RFC had already had Foraker out in charge of Bolthole when he wrote this -- this wasn't comparing a tac officer to WDB member, Foraker was already in charge of building Haven's new fleet at this point)

And
Admiral Hemphil and Fearless' deployment wrote:Where Sonja sometimes does herself a disservice in these exchanges is that she may react to something she thinks someone said, rather than to what they actually said. This is partly a consequence of how long and how hard she has had to fight against a basically closed mindset.
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Re: Sonja Hemphill
Post by Shannon_Foraker   » Mon Jul 11, 2022 9:44 am

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cthia wrote:Does anyone else besides cthia have any good ideas for the Duo's backstory prior to joining the Navy (or offscreen moments of them in the Navy)?

Sonja's background is expanded upon in House of Steel. She was part of Project Gram, under Captain (later Admiral) Adcock, and worked closely with then Prince Roger Winton. I'm guessing she was part of Gram for the entire duration of that secret programme, though that's not explicit in the text. There's a scene when a confrontation of hers with Hamish Alexander (who was not yet Earl White Haven) is recounted, which gives also some background on her personality.

She's also much older than Shannon. Sonja was Lieutenant Commander in 1855; Shannon was only a Lieutenant in 1907.

I know her friendship with Shannon was intergenerational. I haven't read House of Steel, but know I need to. I'd love to see House of Lies someday!

I always imagined it was more of a "I see myself in you" kind of thing for Sonja. Shannon was exactly what Sonja used to be. A young upstart that came in and upset the status quo.

On that note, I always wondered if Sonja was singlehandedly responsible for creating the jeune ecole? Or did the jeune ecole exist before Sonja?

I can't remember the specific details, but textev commented on the ongoing score being kept between the two schools of thought's success in the wargames. Were the jeune ecoles ahead?

Can you imagine the point in the wargames which made young Shannon stand out? She must have picked the OpForce's tactics apart. I imagine her first brutal handling of the OpForce at tactical put her in very high demand.

Maybe as Tourville's staff ops officer, she gets to lead the ops force, and Tourville think it'll be easy (because he's barely known Shannon, and mainly known her as the tac officer from a disaster, and is wondering what Giscard sees in her), and then Tourville discovers her brain behind the techno nerd.
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Re: Sonja Hemphill
Post by penny   » Mon Sep 25, 2023 10:41 am

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I remain ashamed about my initial reaction to Sonja's vote at Young's trial. I never considered what she must have gone through the night before. Talk about a lack of sleep. Poor thing. My heart goes out to you sweet girl.
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The artist formerly known as cthia.

Now I can talk in the third person.
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Re: Sonja Hemphill
Post by tlb   » Wed Sep 27, 2023 2:38 pm

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penny wrote:The artist formerly known as cthia.

Now I can talk in the third person.

I am curious about your signature. Does this mean you know the forum member with the sign-on of cthia? We have not heard from him for some time (about a year).

Although you have been a member for almost half a year, this Monday was the first we have heard from you (I believe). So welcome.

Edit: Oops, I see in the other thread that you really are cthia. May I be so bold as to ask why the name change? Back when I began I had a second sign-on for a little bit, but that was only because I forgot what I had used the first time. Neither were very creative name choices.
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Re: Sonja Hemphill
Post by Shannon_Foraker   » Fri Sep 29, 2023 9:25 pm

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tlb wrote:
penny wrote:The artist formerly known as cthia.

Now I can talk in the third person.

I am curious about your signature. Does this mean you know the forum member with the sign-on of cthia? We have not heard from him for some time (about a year).

Although you have been a member for almost half a year, this Monday was the first we have heard from you (I believe). So welcome.

Edit: Oops, I see in the other thread that you really are cthia. May I be so bold as to ask why the name change? Back when I began I had a second sign-on for a little bit, but that was only because I forgot what I had used the first time. Neither were very creative name choices.


Which thread? Why are you using penny now?
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Re: Sonja Hemphill
Post by penny   » Fri Sep 29, 2023 9:44 pm

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I guess I need to explain the penny ID.

I went on an extended vacation. I needed it. The pandemic had stifled me and I needed to reconnect with lots of people. Right before my hiatus, I changed my password and I didn't use it for quite some time. When I finally tried to log back in I couldn't remember my password and the email address I had given (yahoo) had not been logged into for too long. So the site is sending my reset password to a now inactive email address. It happened before and Duckk got me back in. I am now told it is impossible to do so.

The problem is when I tried to log back in on my phone and couldn't remember my password, the site locked me out after so many attempts and then it requires you to respond to a Captcha WHICH DOES NOT DISPLAY PROPERLY ON A SMARTPHONE!

So, don't blame me. Management won't assist me this time. For whatever reason.
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The artist formerly known as cthia.

Now I can talk in the third person.
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Re: Sonja Hemphill
Post by tlb   » Fri Sep 29, 2023 10:02 pm

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Shannon_Foraker wrote:Which thread?

At the time, the other thread was "The Alamo Contingency has already failed".

So this is somewhat similar to why I briefly had two sign-in IDs, except I had the same password for both and just could not remember what the first name was that I had used. After I came across an earlier post with the first name, I switched to it and the second has aged away.

Note: If you select the Advanced Search under the search box in the upper right on entering the forum, then among other things you can find posts for a given user-id: at this moment "Penny" is used in three threads.
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