#imperial commando: 501st

[cienie-isengardu]

Kal Skirata and Walon Vau’s relationship: a summary one of many

[izzyovercoffee]

“I don’t think the Empire’s seen me before,” Prudii said, deadpan. “Or Kom’rk. Eh, ner vod? The great thing about being a clone is that we’ve got literally millions of places to hide. Grab the right armor, and no mongrel’s any the wiser.”   “Son, you know how many times we’ve pulled that stunt?” Skirata asked.   “Yes. You know how many times it’s worked?”   Kom’rk inspected his fingernails. “Well, that’s another problem they’ve brought upon themselves—it’s not like they can take our DNA to prove who we are. Or stick us in a lineup.”   “Well, they could,” Mereel said. “Because we develop differences but—”   “Okay, point taken.”

Imperial Commando: 501st, pp. 57

in which Mereel info-dumps about genetics because, well, actually—and gets cut off before he gets carried away. 

what’s not shown, and what I think is hilarious and comes up in a different part of the book, is someone @ Mereel giving him the: “yeah, yeah, we know, you told us already!” line.  👌

[hezenkoss]

Annnd the baby madness that occasionally surfaced in the Republic Commando books was annoying, too

The whole thing with Mandos was that they love adoption! Kal running around collecting new kids left and right is more or less the entire premise of the series!

But then they’ve got to go and have Atin and Laseema apparently angsting about being unable to have kids because he’s human and she’s Twi’lek? Go out and adopt a gaggle of children if this is something they’re concerned with! They’ve just been in the middle of a war, and I don’t even want to think about how many war orphans there must be.

There are going to be more kids to adopt than you could ever hope to take care of, no matter how hard you tried. Kal demonstrates that with his hopelessness in trying to adopt all 3 million clones.

[hezenkoss]

I didn’t really have any hopes to begin with, but the heteronormativity just got worse and worse the more of Republic Commando I read, pretty much every single character striking up a het romance, and I’m glad Imperial Commando #2 never went ahead because at LEAST Bardan/Arla was never a thing

[hezenkoss]

What the hell, you can't just end the Republic Commando books there. RIP cancelled Imperial Commando book #2. At least this way I can imagine everyone ends up happy without any diabolical authors coming around to mess things up

[hezenkoss]

And what do you know, sudden strong Maze/Zey shipping heck

[hezenkoss]

“So Dar and Niner are Five-oh-first Legion. Vader’s Fist, my shebs. Who is this Vader, anyhow? Never heard of him.”

“Palpatine’s right-hand man. Red lightsaber, Teekay-O says.”

“Shab, another Sith. Same old feud. Why don’t all the Sith and Jedi move to some planet nobody’s ever heard of and slug it out in private, and leave the rest of the galaxy in peace?”

---Imperial Commando: 501st by Karen Traviss

Hey, sounds good to me

(I live for just how done everyone, especially Kal, is with the Jedi and Sith in this book, considering the movies were so wrapped up in them to the exclusion of pretty much everyone else in the galaxy)

[hezenkoss]

Only a Mando would create a musical instrument that doubled as a weapon.

Wad’e Tay’haai had shown up with his bes’bev, an ancient flute made out of beskar, playing tunes that Jusik didn’t recognize. He thought he didn’t, anyway. It was only when he tried to hum them to himself that he realized what they were. The marching song “Vode An”—learned by all clone troopers bred on Kamino, the only Mando’a language that most of them ever heard—sounded totally different played as a lament.

Tay’haai held out the flute to Jusik. It was painted a deep violet, like the man’s beskar’gam. “Want a go?”

“I’m not musical.” Jusik took it anyway, held it as Tay’haai demonstrated, and blew across the lip plate. The bes’bev remained stubbornly silent. When he balanced it in his hand, it had a pleasant heft to it. “So you can use this as a club. Which is probably the only use I’d get out of it.”

“It’s made for stabbing.” Tay’haai ran his fingertip along the end to indicate the diagonal cut, like a quill stylus. “Bleeds out someone very efficiently.”

“Why have a flute that’s a weapon?”

“Maybe we just don’t like music critics.”

---Imperial Commando: 501st by Karen Traviss

Mandalorians are really fucking hardcore

(*beskar: a type of iron, beskar’gam: Mandalorian armor)