clonecumber | (no subject)

So I started my TripZip re-read with the Targets short because 1) timeline and 2) who’s gonna stop me

and while I was reading there was that whole scene where Kal Skirata decides to go in as a hostage and Ordo is like “uh...don’t?” and skirata’s like “nah i’m gonna” and then does and then fi almost shoots him and spends the rest of forever feeling horrifically guilty about it? I have thoughts about that. I’m still not entirely sure where I’m going with this but...uh...

So right after Fi almost kills Skirata there’s this, which, on it’s own, I didn’t think much about. Skirata’s allowed to be human and have a bit of an emotion about staring bald-faced down the barrel of a friendly’s rifle while screaming desperately for them to stop. That’s a scary situation! He also immediately backtracks when Fi crumples and tries to reassure him that Skirata doesn’t blame him and isn’t angry and that Fi did the right thing.

However.

Shortly after that there’s this

...which immediately made me pause. Because. That is a very odd way to talk about this? The natural thing to say here would have been we. That’s not even a matter of opinion, I don’t think. He’s talking about an operation involving multiple departments, multiple people, a six-man reaction force who was actually on-scene in the building where at least five of them all had equal chances of being the one to shoot the Direx member, with at least three separate individuals trying to call the shots from the very beginning, and he makes a point to put the entire potential fallout on Fi? While Fi is in earshot? Literally, right after he says that, Fi hears and immediately feels like shit.

Skirata’s military, where using the collective is auto-default. For a reason. The fact Skirata’s the sergeant here and he tosses the name of one of his junior men out there in a conversation like that, with an outside party, is. Really fucking weird. Especially as Skirata typically performs as exceptionally protective.

So I can’t really take that as anything except a dig at Fi? Skirata might not even really notice he’s doing it, but to me it says something about how Skirata is thinking about Fi almost shooting him, that he’s subconsciously trying to steer punishment Fi’s way. Make him the guy who almost fucked up everything. Whatever he said to Fi earlier about not blaming him, whatever Skirata might believe himself, it’s sort of clear he does? It’s really, really subtle and really, really passive aggressive, but it’s there.

“Hey, guys, remember that time Fi almost fucked up the whole war and also almost shot me a civilian? I’m worried you might have forgotten so I’m gonna bring it up again. Just in case.”

This is from way later on in Triple Zero, where Skirata is STILL THINKING ABOUT IT, apparently. Man is not letting this thing go. He doesn’t say it in a way that could be taken as criticism, but he just. Doesn’t shut up about it either.

AND THAT’S NOT ALL. So, okay, with just that entire thing up there I probably wouldn’t bother making a post about this, because one situation does not a whole-ass character make and alone some of those conclusions are on shaky ground, but we ALSO have THIS

CUT TO ORDO

So Ordo wants to try his hand at talking to a politician guy (Mar Rugeyan) who Skirata already offended to try and get him to let clones have leave as a smokescreen for their operation on Coruscant. Skirata makes a quip about Ordo beating the man up instead of talking to him and how he doesn’t think Ordo would be able to charm him anyway, which clearly hurts Ordo. Skirata rushes to reassure him as soon as he notices (compare: the Fi convo), but.

Look, there is a lot in this book about how “everyone knows” Skirata “doesn’t mean the sharp things he says” but this sort of...points to the opposite of that. Ordo, who was very personally raised by this man in a way even the commandos weren’t and probably knows him best of anyone with the exception of maybe the other Nulls, is ready to find criticism in every innocuous comment to the point he goes from being in a notable good mood to nervous appeasement in the time it takes Skirata to open his mouth and doesn’t believe him when Skirata tries to reassure him.

Coupled with the Fi convo above, and there’s a bit of an unsettling pattern here, where Skirata makes a dig (deliberate or not), hurts someone, immediately backtracks, but then, coin-toss here, doesn’t actually let it go. Fi believed him when Skirata reassured him in Targets, but was then taken off guard by the little dagger thrown later when Skirata singles him out to Obrim about the potential political fallout in Fi’s earshot. Ordo, here, more experienced with Skirata, notably doesn’t believe him, doesn’t let his guard down, and that says to me that he knows Skirata does that sort of thing, and that he’s learned that between the hurtful words and the nice ones that follow, the hurtful ones are more likely to be the truth. Ordo’s more experienced reaction to the exact same situation Fi found himself in is to assume Skirata is still upset regardless of what he says and continue trying to placate him rather than trust him when he says he’s not upset or angry or disappointed. That’s a learned response.

ESPECIALLY WHEN HE DOES IT AGAIN

Literally how many times in ONE BOOK is this man going to have the exact same conversation?

I haven’t even finished the book.

Ordo’s around him most often, so Ordo gets it the worst, but Skirata never learns to watch his tongue with anyone (unless he needs them) no matter how many times he hurts them. He knows Ordo is sensitive to perceived criticism from him. He knows Ordo is hurt when he makes comments like this. He has noted this himself in his own POV. And he doesn’t stop. He just keep making the same apologies, trotting out the same platitudes, and then doing nothing to change his behavior. He doesn’t even try?

Anyway, for those following back home, I think it’s safe to say I'm no longer unsure over how to feel about this.

Now for the round-up:

Final set of images I promise. With all of the above the two scenarios here take a really uncomfortable turn, I think? Which is why I wanted to talk about it.

The top one is when Skirata walks into the barracks the Nulls took over and the second is right before going into the hostage situation. Both times here Skirata’s making a show about being a tough guy, but I think it really says something that he keeps pulling this card, and how he reacted the one time it turns out he might actually die.

Okay, so, Skirata’s reaction to Fi being a shaky, “You really would have slotted me, wouldn’t you?” as a human response like yeeeeah, sure, fair, but then couple that with his passive aggressiveness in other conversations/the passive aggressiveness his kids expect from him/his very well-defined manipulative tendencies and the way he himself is the one to knowingly put Fi in that position, who told Fi to kill him if he had to, and then STILL comes to him afterward all shocked and horrified that Fi might actually have gone through with it is. Yeah, it’s fucked up, honestly. In light of that, it almost feels like a deliberate dig, like he wanted to make Fi feel guilty. It also speaks to the fact that he apparently didn’t really think one of “his boys” would ever actually shoot to kill if it was him, that he sort of...assumes he’s the super special exception somehow? That they’ll just magically make a choice he’s spent their entire lives training them not to make? That they’ll throw a whole mission just to spare him even if he’s deliberately trying to do the whole stoic hardass martyr thing? Like he doesn’t ever expect to actually have to pay up to the shit he says? Because yeah, sure, he says he expects them to slot him if they have to, but he clearly doesn’t believe it, and it makes him put himself and them into some pretty fucked up situations.

And he keeps doing it.

I don’t know, friends, it sort of reads like a man who raised six highly intelligent little boys who all immediately saw and rightfully understood that this man was their one defense on Kamino, while the man in question didn’t seem to understand/deliberately ignore that this means those little boys would have a vested interest in staying on his good side, that they would go out of their way to appease him for fear of what would happen if he decided that, actually, they ARE too much trouble, or maybe just that he wasn’t getting sufficient returns on this investment. Every instance of Kal Skirata’s disapproval, disappointment, or even just disinterest could easily have been a death sentence to the Nulls while they were growing up. Skirata might never have thought about it that way, sure, because he knows he would never (and he absolutely would not have, it’s true), but his desire not to have to acknowledge the unhealthy amount of power he has over the clones and the potentials for abuse there ends where the well-being of the kids begins, and whatever Skirata knows about himself, it’s unreasonable, unfair, and grossly neglectful to expect the traumatized children not to take the worst case scenario under consideration and respond accordingly. Especially in those early days. It’s their lives on the line.

And I might sympathize with the incredibly fucked up situation Skirata found himself in, because who the hell is actually prepared for that, but then the man, though he should have known better, went on to ALLOW these extreme shows of appeasement and exclusive loyalty and declarations of “we’ll always serve you” (yikes?!?) (as though that’s a perfectly acceptable thing for a child to say to their parent) (Or, if not acceptable, then at least something that was somehow entirely outside of Skriata’s control and he just happened to find himself on this pedestal no IDEA how that happened all aw shucks guys you didn’t have to while doing absolutely nothing to climb down from it whatsoever.) That’s the result of a life-long pattern. And the fact Skirata never actually dissuades any of his sons from those sort of shows says a lot about how he views the situation.

Skirata might not intend for his kids to treat him like the man who holds their lives in his hands and can drop the guillotine anytime he damn well pleases, but as long as he doesn’t have to acknowledge his own place in the gross power imbalance he sure is content to benefit from it. Which means! Getting back to the point:

A watered down version of the above seems to extend to all the clones, to an extent. He didn’t expect the Nulls to ever fire on him (”...turned his back on them for a few moments, unafraid...”), so he expects the same from all the kids he raised, even though he’s taught them to do the exact opposite. Even though he tells them to do the exact opposite. The Nulls at least (”at least”) have been allowed to think of themselves as “Skirata’s private army” and therefore know what’s actually expected of them, but the commandos don’t have the same benefit here. Skirata raised them one way, has trained them all to be one way on pain of death, but has all along seemed to be operating under the assumption that they’ll just magically toss that out the window when the time comes, entirely of their own accord, since he seems to be operating under a gross misunderstanding of what exactly a healthy parent-child relationship looks like. Whatever he says about his discomfort with “being a god”, he clearly expects an absolute Skirata/buir-first sort of zealous devotion from his “children” as a matter of course, and is taken completely off guard when he doesn’t get it.

Fi was in a no-win scenario the second Skirata went into that building, basically.