i've seen this term float around your blog (and some other blogs too) but i've done my google searching and i still can't find a definition for it: what's 'milwank' and what does it mean?
full disclosure: my pals and i are all really horny for supersoldiers with big guns
we also intellectually get off on military stuff, especially esotericism and jargon (and esotericism and jargon from other fields, too—a bunch of competence kinksters), and somehow the term gained traction in our chat.
I think I saw @tiender use it first a couple years ago, to describe the sort of armchair-general approach to seeking to write military fiction with a high degree of verisimilitude—a problem that’s exacerbated when then trying to map IRL military norms, terms, structures, &c. onto a fictional space army to make it more convincing and satisfying. Even if it’s just a circle-jerk pursuit between ~intellectual~ exhibitionists and voyeurs with a .mil kink.
As with all wank (e.g. fandom wank, which includes the self-pleasuring self-righteousness of antis), it’s more a statement about the masturbatory element of engaging with the content, rather than passing judgement on the content itself.
For example, I’d describe Republic Commando as milwanky, though the content is not. Karen Traviss served in the TA and Royal Navy, so while what she writes may not be wank (born from her lived and professional experience, it’s gonna be p accurate, if a little dated), and I can’t speak to whether or not writing RepComm was a competence-kink-scratching exercise for her (lbr if there was any wanking going on, it was in the direction of Kal Skirata—sorry for that mental image), *reading* it is a milwanky experience, at least for me. It’s just hott. It makes me want to pull out a WIP and just start rubbing out some commandos doing commando things, be it kicking-in doors or fucking with extreme prejudice. The resultant fic would be milwank.
imo, like masturbation, it’s hard for milwank to be *bad*. Bad milwank is a contradiction in terms. At the risk of completely overdoing the dick metaphors in this post, milwank is either solid enough that it’s there and I’ve mentally rubbed up against it (ideally, I’ve really enjoyed it) or it’s not there. “There was no milwank,” I might complain after backspacing from a Clone Wars fic with average-to-poor military worldbuilding. Translation: I didn’t intellectually get off reading this and no amount of cute clones could make it worth my time.
Reading a book on logistics in the Falklands War? Good for milwank. Massive meta about the how the GAR is an organizational clusterfuck? Milwank. Smut where you can smell the blaster polish? Milwanky. Trying to follow a lengthy #MilTwitter argument thread about doctrine that’s 75% acronym by wordcount? “What a bunch of milwank.” A gif from a boot blog with a spotter humping his sniper? #milwank.
tl;dr: milwank = active, self-indulgent appreciation of military aesthetics and functions, probably shrivels under professional inspection. vry srs bsns.
In turnabout is fair play Captain Dulkha is marking the locations of droid cysts on the map.
It’s on a planet/area of operations that the CIS have lost, and know they’ve lost. They’ve gotten most of their essential or important personnel away from the Republic forces, but why bother to evacuate all the B1s? Most are, but the few stragglers are easily replaced.
The remaining droids’ orders are to find somewhere safe. Somewhere the locals won’t discover them easily - a cave system, burial catacombs, abandoned industrial districts. There they fold up and go dormant. Unlike an organic soldier, they can be easily shut down until they’re needed. No stasis tanks or uninterruptible power needed.
If the CIS ever comes back, they’ve got embedded forward troops to soften up the enemy before they even break atmo. If not, a sleeper routine can wake them at random intervals with tasks such as destroying or sabotaging critical infrastructure, setting fire to cities, or just wandering into heavily populated areas and killing as many civilians as they can before they’re destroyed. The purpose is to terrorise the population and prove that the clones - and therefore the Republic - can’t keep them safe.
If they’re entirely inert, a EMP pulse won’t do anything to them. Only the sleeper agent would need to resist it, and that’d be cheaper than hardening every single B1. The sleeper agent would also have some infra-red and motion detectors on it; if someone tries to deactivate it, it’ll blow up the droids and itself, or wake them all up and once and have them scatter as fast as possible.
After the war is over, finding and destroying the remaining droid cysts would be a good way for the Empire to use up surplus clones while buying goodwill from affected planets. If it’s hard, dangerous work then killing droids is what they were made for, and if they’d done their jobs properly the first time they wouldn’t have to do this now.
Or so their natural-born officers tell the clones, as they shimmy into another hole in the ground that’s too narrow to wear armour, and try not to think about making it out.
RE: RE: FWD: WTF: Our Mega Meta about the GAR, sins of omission, and how fast funny tooka videos would spread.
[Tiender]: My assumptions are a bit different from yours; although that might be true for Torrent, I don’t think there are enough Padawan overall to make it true at an overall level. Ahsoka also technically outranks Rex, and some of the other Jedi would not let a clone determine the duties of their Padawan, or a Padawan would just offload all the boring stuff onto the CC, as most of them are teenagers. I also figured an Adjutant role would be a good place for a sneaky (they’re all sneaky) CC to put another clone officer who couldn’t do field duty anymore. That takes the paperwork away from them and keeps a brother alive.
[Biscuit] ^ that is a very compelling argument which I may adopt for every regiment that doesn’t have a Padawan Commander.
And yeah, I didn’t make myself v. clear, I meant that Ahsoka doesn’t often get much regimental admin because Rex swipes it off her desk out of misplaced concern, not that he doles out work for her … because she definitely outranks him!
While I dispensed with Adjutants (for the moment), I do imagine there would need to be something like the Republic Adjutant Corps to oversee internal policing and handle courts martial (such as they are when the soldiers are literally owned by the army)? The Coruscant Guard is also frequently mentioned as being separate from the GAR – and according to Legends they were actually all bred in secret on Coruscant itself? – so I’ve placed them outside of it completely, as shown in the snip below. In the full chart, Republic Intelligence and the RAC sit horizontal with the GAR, Royal Corps of Engineers, Special Weapons Group, etc., with the War Office (and Supreme Chancellor) presiding over all. (the * indicates headcanon)
That is a very useful diagram and I have stolen it for my own use.
Torrent is different from the nominal setup in so many ways; Anakin is known to be favoured by the Chancellor so I bet they get sent a lot of things from people trying to curry favour with him. Mail pickets! I wonder if clones are allowed to recieve physical mail.
Rex would do that out of a misplaced sense of responsibility; I think he'd just need to know on one level that they were done right and the men under him were taken care of, just in case. Ahsoka probably doesn't know enough to know how much extra work he's taking on. Puberty is awful enough without Senate-generated paperwork.
We don't see MPs anywhere in TCW, and it's the Coruscant Guard who turn up at 79's to look for Fives (if there was anywhere for MPs to be, it should be there). I wonder if they have a non-aggression pact there - as long as the off-duty clones don't cause trouble anywhere else the Guard doesn't shut down 79's as hard as they would otherwise. Fox's nearly perpetual headache would become blinding if they were throwing bottles at cabs all over Coruscant.
I wonder if GAR command would even bother with courts martial as we understand them, or in an intensely depressing thought, just punt convicted miscreants off to penal battalions; put them out in front like the Russians did on the Eastern front, use them as the siegebreakers and the forlorn hopes. Pour encourager les autres. Do we know what happens in canon to Slick? He might be treated a bit different, like I think Dogma would be, if Kamino wants to figure out how it's possible that he could even begin to betray the Jedi.
Was that the Spaarti clones on Coruscant's moon or a cloning facility on the planet itself?
I also have a suspicion that 'support' 'officers' or 'advisors' would begin to pop up like mushrooms the longer the war went on, and the more vested interests began to try and establish power bases on the inside of the GAR or the Republic Navy. I'd be surprised if a Senator's office or two didn't send an aide or cultural attache if they could find a pretext.
Hadn't even thought about clone intelligence! Is that just slicers/datamongers or HUMINT as well? There's commandos for the wetwork.
On Equipment
[Tiender] Imagining the pork barrelling on a Galatic Senate level for Procurement is terrifying. You’re right about COs/NCOs, that was force of habit; they’re all commissioned as officers, although some are also promoted from the ranks? (Rex, Jesse). I wonder if there’s a culture split there.
Do your QMs also oversee medical supplies? I put that through my medical officer, who is also responsible for equipping the battalion medics.
[Biscuit] XD yeah, I really want to write the story of some poor sod in the Republic Defence Procurement Office à la The Thick of It.
Re: promoting from the ranks – as of this moment, it seems easier to just say CCs have a slightly different genetic makeup than CTs and are “born officers”; there’s a lot of good Legends material to back this up and it’s a fanon favorite that there are … perks to being CC material ;) All officers below CC would then be promoted (read: usually selected from a very young age) from the rank-and-file. Some folks use CP designations for your standard pilot, which is the only other variation of the CC/CT thing I think I could get behind, otherwise we’d have an alphabet soup of clones, lol.
I toyed with the idea of having the QMs also procure medical supplies, just to create exploitable tension between the QMs and CMOs … but what with ordnance, kit, rations, supplies and the rest of it, QMs already have enough to worry about, so yes, I’d say the medical officers (CMO or MO <– I like that addition) order bacta, bandages, prophylactics, medicine, creams, &c. &c. from the Republic Medical Corps or RDPO (tbd).
The US Army has a bunch of procurement documents on the 'net somewhere, and it's sort of fascinating in that reading through them you can sort of see the ways in which suppliers have tried to rip them off, leading them to overly define something else for the next time around. Horrifying and fascinating.
QMs are so important though! Their network of barter is such a time-honoured tradition everywhere. I expect for clones, who don't get paid, a QM who can dispose of the "surplus" would have huge unofficial leverage/bargaining power on top of that. Ditto a CMO who can hook a brother up with the good stuff. I have nearly decided to go with the idea of some of these supply chits needing to get countersigned higher up the chain of command but I'm not sure who and where; I think I just like the idea of a bored Padawan going stamp stamp stamp stamp mindlessly on piles of flimsi or padds, while a blank-faced QM pretends to be equally bored so's not to tip them off.
Making an enemy of a QM means your platoon is somehow only supplied with decaf in the field and everyone hates you
So that's why Rex is a CT, not a CC, even though he's technically a Commander, because he was promoted from rank-and-file, not tube-bred for it? That makes sense, and also means that Rex is special. Because he is.
On Units & Ranks
[Tiender] TCW also has “Captain” Rex commanding the entire 501st which, WHAT. NO. I kept Majors because I don’t have Fry’s and it was on Wookiepedia, basically. I also wanted my CMO to outrank the captains at the company level, but that’s totally subjective. There are some references to clone corporals - Jesse was one, at Umbara, IIRC. I also came across pictures of clone officers with different coloured markings on their armour, which I handwaved into non-existence. That’s what your helmet HUD is for; you don’t mark officers differently because that way they’re a target. Kama are different because they’re dead sexy. I can’t figure out what the pauldrons are; Echo and Fives were both ARC lieutenants and have different pauldrons, and Fives (and Dogma) have that little red triangle on their helmets. Why. Demo skills?
[Biscuit] Rex’s rank is … a funny one. (Some folks have mentioned how weird it is that his best friend is a marshal effing commander, who stands head and shoulders above him, but eh, it’s not his fault that his general and Cody’s general are attached at the hip :P naturally they spend a lot of time together.) I handwave it as the 501st Regiment having a CO in Anakin (who as a General could technically command a larger unit – and probably does off screen, but the show understandably has a limited scope) and a Commander in Ahsoka. So Rex as the Senior of 16 Captains and therefore defacto CO of a regiment when the Jedi aren’t around doesn’t keep me up at night. The 501st is just ~special~ that way, but you’re right, there definitely wouldn’t be enough Padawans to command every regiment in the GAR, and even if there were, some wouldn’t be given the responsibility. Little Caleb Dume, for instance, doesn’t hold the rank of Commander when he’s in the field with Depa and Commander Grey, so I assume Commander Grey is the CO of the unit shown in those comics.
Re: corporals, Fry’s Essential Warfare makes an interesting point about them: “the role of corporal was traditionally awarded to the best soldier in the squad, but in an army of identical men, it was often rotated among the troopers and carried no special insignia.” This was back when the Kaminoans were still trying to get officers to paint their armor certain colors (like you mention above) – captains were to have red flashes, lieutenants blue, and sergeants green. But that of course doesn’t last long. So maybe the role of corporal does continue to function this way in some units, where others may decide to codify it, as you’re right, there are a few mentioned in TCW.
Your kama comment *wheezing* XD
Oh those jaunty pauldrons … such trouble, but they’re so swish. Personally, I give one white pauldron to my QMCs and other combat service/support officers above the rank of captain who want one. I figure top brass just gave up trying to fashion police officers’ accessories :P Clearly Cody likes the minimalist approach. Maybe a perk of being an ARC is the ability to wear whatever the hell you want.
Anakin has at least three Venator-classes at his disposal, which is Quite A Lot of people. People who're probably torn between wishing they were Torrent Company and being relieved they're not dying for some goddamn astromech droid who forgot to do backups to the cruiser mainframe.
I actually think that Rex and Cody are such good friends because they’re both the one that deals directly with the Jedi, and having someone across the room to roll your eyes at can make a hell of a difference to your morale. Even if you’re both in helmets. They *know*. I don’t mind him being in charge of the whole 501st, I just want someone in canon to admit that it’s weird.
Maybe ARCs and CCs are at particular risk for smashing their collarbones, so they just stuck pauldrons on them and called it done? Cody is too sensible for that so doesn't have to bother. ARCs, I agree, are like special forces in this world; they get to pick their own gear (and in some cases, their own camouflage). They get to try out new bits and pieces of armour, too; I think I remember Fives and Echo being a patchwork of Phase I and II without it being full katarn.
I stand by my comment on the kama and raise you Fives practising his walk in front of something reflective until he can get them to swing juuuuuust right. Echo is embarrassed but copies him almost immediately.
Sorry about mentioning the triangles. <zips it>
On Units
[Tiender] Oh, I see! That makes a lot of sense, actually: regiments are fluid like that rather than a strict numerical total like that through the Commonwealth Armies, if I recall correctly (because Empires). I think I decided that battalions are rotated in and out of regiments as necessary for particular tasks; managing that at company level just seemed to small to make a difference in a galaxy-sized war.
I think of a battalion as the smallest independent unit, where they get swapped in and out of regiments as needed. So same thing, difference scale.
[Biscuit] Yep, we just seem to headcanon a different scale for the smallest unit capable of limited independent ops – and to be fair, I still think operationally, my verse still uses the battalion in that manner, with the regiment just being the smallest administrative unit. Basically I try to codify things more at the regimental level and tend to handwave what happens in battalions as whatever the plot dictates mission-specific, especially when combined arms tactics generally require subunits to be smooshed together around battalion/company level.
When thinking about the basic unit too, I figured warfare on the galactic scale we see in TCW requires a lot of rapid insertion, with few pitched battles (mostly the dramatic ones we see in TCW … many of which weren’t supposed to be pitched, but DRAMA, MISCALCULATION, SEPARATIST SCHEMES!) and even fewer planet-wide sieges. I figure this minimizes, somewhat, the need for entire service/support companies in every regiment, to say nothing of your traditional “baggage train.” But then again, there is a fine line between overburdening units with support, log specs, specialized companies (engineers, artillery, recon, &c) what-have-you, and stripping them too much of those same support systems and leaving them completely incapable of independent action in a pinch (or when their cruiser skips the system) if the nearest friendly regiment is literally lightyears away. It’s that ratio that I am eternally toying with and why I love love LOVE these discussions!!! <3
I think we're agreeing more than we're disagreeing here, although I think a company, regardless of composition (sorry, Torrent) is too small to make much of a difference at the scale of combat we mostly see in TCW. I'm mostly shuffling things around at battalion level but that is also because of a Thing I Am Trying To Write so it's the scale I'm thinking at right now.
Rapid insertion is also a thing I was thinking about; a LAAT/i is a gunship, not a dropship; like in Aliens when they get as low as they can as fast as they can to make a smaller target. Maybe the capital ships also drop to provide cover with the ventral cannon, soften up the targets a bit? Could just do kinetic missiles/ordnance for a couple of days before dropping actual troops, assuming you can maintain control of the what, the not airspace. The space space? I tend to call it "the black" but I have NFI where I picked that up from.
It also looks like acclamators go dirtside (I think that's what is happening in the prologue to S2E20) to exfil in controllable conditions. I'm still bit bothered about emergency evac up the gravity well. The new book says LAAT/i are for "low atmosphere flights" and that only later models can go into space.
Overburdening units and underequipping them is highly context-dependant, IMHO, in a map is not the terrrain sort of way, and where your campaign can go right off the rails depending on the weather. Can your field kitchen get everyone hot caf when they're on the edge of hypothermia?
Is is going to be an artillery duel which is going to be kinda boring while everyone else amps the sound baffles on their helmets and remembers it's never the one you hear that gets you? Do you have enough armour to support the infantry? Are you deploying armour without infantry? Do I even know enough about this to have an opinion? Will that even stop me?
On Heavy Weaponry
[Tiender] I forgot that the Republic Corps of Engineers existed; Kix says he used to be an engineer, so I just handwaved a few clone combat engineer battalions, who get floated around inside their armies as necessary. Anyone going planetside probably gets a company or so for fresh water and fortifications. I have a non-clone ex-padawan turned combat engineer OC but this was partly so I got to use an ongoing Force multiplier joke, and partly so I had an excuse for her to be wearing power armour. On the grounds that the Republic is more OK risking clone lives than anyone else’s, maybe the Republic Corps of Engineers goes in as part of a relief battalion after the fighting’s stopped to hook up infrastructure?
If it can be carried, clone infantry would totally try and carry it, I agree. Cackling with laughter all the way.
AT-RTs, AT-TEs, and speeder bikes; I decided go with the regiment, since you see them on Umbara/Saleucami/Ryloth painted up in 501st/212th colours, and if they were split off I’m guessing they’d have their own insignia and be very, very protective of it. They probably have their own QM at regimental level and a horribly convoluted maintenance and procurement program. I have just decided their QMs are how most of the parts for illicit alcohol stills end up on board.
AT-ATs and SPHA-Ts are definitely separate units, analogous to the Royal Artillery (?) and probably not deployed in most contacts with the enemy.
TBH I don’t think they use artillery/heavy cavalry very well at all in TCW, although there are a lot more knocking around that we don’t see in the series. Saber-class tanks, for instance. I just like tanks, OK?
[Biscuit] Engineer companies, yes good, I like this. The UT-ATs (repulsorlift AT-TEs) could be configured to carry bridge-laying equipment for infantry, one of the few mentions of any sort of combat engineering in the GAR I’ve ever come across. While I don’t think there would be any official non-clone units in the Republic Military, there’s a precedent for unaffiliated non-clones being given officer roles: Ahsoka with the 332nd – so yeah, more power to your OC! ♥
Solid point about the 501st/212th affiliated walkers and speeders; might have to make one or two armored companies of heavy gunners who are cross-trained in artillery and combat engineering, and another ARF/AT-RT company for recon, part of the standard regimental makeup.
Nothing wrong with tanks! Just to get all my own ducks in a row, I made a separate post about all the Republic heavy artillery (well, big guns and vehicles with big guns) to better gauge the optimum size of batteries, and therefore, units. (Saber-class tanks didn’t make the grade for me because they aren’t seen in the show or in the films … but yeah, they are awesome). I can’t make up my mind if I want to further complicate my life by sticking a Republic Artillery Corps somewhere in between the Engineering Corps and Defence Procurement… *ruminates some more about armored units*
I absolutely want a separate Republic Artillery Corps. The SPHA-Ts have their own command centres and probably require specialised skillsets to deploy and maintain. They probably have their own ships to move them from Jedi fleet to Jedi fleet depending on who is doing what planetside.
The ones I'm willing to admit go with their regiment are the "shoot and scoot" type, who have rapid mobiity to avoid counter-battery fire and don't need much logistical support; the SPHA-Ts on Geonosis are backed up by AT-TEs and infantry for kilometres, according to the star wars wikia. Having said that, it also said they can move on their own legs, which I imagine to be like that those immense mining rigs. But anyway: shoot and scoot goes with regiment, anything that requires co-ordination and support troops goes with the Artillery Corps.
I just watched a bit of Weapons Factory (S2E6) again and the AV-7 gunners aren't in Luminara Unduli or Anakin Skywalker's colours; they look like they're a sort of khaki with a design on their shoulder pads, and should also be behind ray shields if crew survivability had been one of the main design briefs.
OH FUCK I JUST REALISED A THING
You actually can't have laser artillery. Lasers travel in straight lines; artillery goes in parabolic arches to deal with the curvature of the planet. Laser artillery would just go off into space or hit terrain depending, so I guess you could use it as a ground-air/ground near-space system but with limited range depending on where your horizon is. What the fuck. Are IRL lasers affected by the Coriolis effect? I mean, I guess so, but I can’t find an answer on the internet.
TCW tanks go a lot slower than tanks in real life, ridiculously slow. This is probably due to the limitations of the animation but it's a bit silly especially when it comes to being targets. A modern Abrams can go about 45mph/75mph indefinitely, not the pause and stomp of the SW armour. They also prefer legged vehicles to tracked/half-tracked. Here they are wrong, because you need tracks to do donuts, and donuts in a tank is one of the things Conan and I agree on as being best in life.
On Special Forces
[Tiender] This is all a mess, and how do ARCs fit in, Echo and Fives are still in 501st colours but are they down at Arca Barracks or at the 501st? And Kit Fisto works with SCUBA people a lot, although I handwave that as Jedi being good at self-awareness (ahahahaharrrrrgh) and appropriating special forces into “their” units, like Anakin does with the pilots.
[Biscuit] For the sake of sanity, I’m just going to shove ARCs to one side for the moment. ARFs I mentioned above as maybe being a specialized company within your basic affiliated unit (whether that is a battalion or regiment)?
Commandos … the one piece of canon material we have about these dudes says they are affiliated: Gregor is 212th. Now this may be the perfect example of dismissing a very minor canonical reference in favor of an otherwise solid tome of Legends evidence… but I need to finish RepComm before I’ll pass judgment on that, lol.
SCUBA – your theory is as good as mine.
I am getting the idea we’ve put more effort into it by now than they have, and also that I need to read RepComm even though it is Problematic.
ARCs probably do get split off a bit, probably with a bit more more surveillance than the line troopers. Just because you want them to act independently some of the time doesn’t mean you appreciate it all of the time, and of course they’d cover for each other when off shenaniganising.
On Dental
[Tiender] I got a lot of headcanon from this post about the Siege of Sarajevo. Common contraband would be salt, chili flakes, anything small and light but packing a lot of flavour. I kind of like the idea of very dense toffee being a favoured sweet because you can chew it for a long time inside your helmet while no one knows what’s going on and it packs a lot of calories. With the occasional trooper suddenly ripping their helmet off to cough it out, or picking a hardened lump off the inside of the visor afterwards (and still eating it). You could also stash it against a molar when an officer interrupts, and unstash it afterwards without them being the wiser.
GAR dental is also available in the bathroom at 79’s for when you get your stupid face punched in.
[Biscuit] YES TO ALL OF THE ABOVE. Hornet’s new colleague is Yank, regimental dentist and QMC Sticky’s nemesis; “Service with a Smile” saw more popularity as nose art but Yank’s awful proud of convincing Fisto to sponsor the GAR-wide dental-hygiene campaign in the first place :P
I AM HAVING SO MUCH FUN WITH THIS ♥
(And if anyone besides tiender has made it to the bottom of this post, join us over on GAR Clones Chat and let’s talk shop: https://discord.gg/YfVQgxK)
That was the wrong post, actually, it was supposed to be this one, although both are amazing in terms of what it’s like living in a war zone.
I imagine not having bad breath is a priority when you’re rebreathing your own air for hours in a helmet. It’s all minty fresh, sir, my sinuses are nice and clear.
How do I tell the rice purity test that what actually gets me going is the way that Jason Momoa’s sleeve is surrounded by a collar where it joins the body of his flightsuit in the hangar scene of Dune (2020)
