*stage dance music* It's the ~*~Intergenerational Cycle of Abuse~*~!

[clonecumber]

I wanted to talk a little about the hauling 8-year-olds into active war zones thing, and how I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that it’s not even remotely standard practice. It seems to me it’s more likely very specifically a “those Skiratas are weird as fuck but they keep to themselves so we don’t really do anything about it” kind of a deal instead. 

Prime evidence: Munin.

This Isn’t Normal, says the other actual Mandalorian.

This guy (a man who raised a guy deemed Too Extreme For The Death Watch) is saying directly and in public that he thinks Munin is overdoing it. He’s using a jovial tone and body language to try and prevent an escalation, but he’s not joking.

You can tell because when Munin pushes back, Hokan doesn’t back down:

And not only does he not back down, he’s actually extremely blunt.

He then follows it up with this, which is where my “this isn’t normal” bells really started ringing:

“until he was eight”

Which is about when Kal says is the “normal” age Mandalorians take their kids into battle? Except here we have another Mandalorian, who flat-out says he wasn’t even starting his kid on any serious training until he was eight.

(A slightly off-topic reminder that Hokan’s kid would have been raised to the culture and probably playing training games prior to this to help set the groundwork for basic skills and fitness. Something a kid pulled literally just out of a warzone wouldn’t have. So not only is Kal being made to do “proper” training too young, he’s not even benefiting from any basic conditioning prior to this - is actually noted to be underfed. And that’s something a professional soldier would absolutely notice and be disturbed by, because Munin might never have actually hit Kal, but he’s absolutely hurting him. Anyway, back to the point.)

Even in a fictional universe where fourteen-year-olds command armies, I highly doubt professional mercenaries are going to be stupid or cruel enough to bring an untrained/barely trained child to war, so which is it?

The only other example we have of a Mandalorian parent with a child roughly the right age is Jango from the movies, with Boba. Boba’s about ten when the prequels kick off. We know Jango’s trained Boba, absolutely, and we know he brings Boba out and about sometimes, but. That’s about it. Even though Boba is already two years past Kal’s stated age, Jango still leaves Boba behind - on Kamino, on the ship - when shit’s about to get real, when he might have to assassinate someone, when the bolts are really likely to fly, and when Jango dies Boba’s left sort of floundering over how to handle the business side of things, where he actually has to find and negotiate contracts on his own, and sort of runs into problems trying to deal with the psychological impact of some of the things bounty hunting and mercenary work entail.

The typical age for the Mandalorian coming of age trial is thirteen-ish, if you’ve been raised to the culture. Okay, sure. 

Considering where Boba is at in his training, that he still had another two or three years ideally, and that Jango would have been preparing him for it and  accordingly looking at the things he does and does not expect Boba to handle, I’m sort of taking the verd’goten as a sort of...adulthood with some serious training wheels. Letting everyone know that, okay, if separated from their adult this kid can probably manage to stay alive and can be trusted to take care of themself to an extent. You can even rely on them as a very green partner in some jobs. You should trust them with more responsibility and they should be allowed to have more say in their life. They’re green, but they’re not helpless. Here Is Your Official Sidekick License Good Job Slugger. This is not the same thing as actually being an adult mercenary.

To me, it makes more sense to think that achieving verd’goten might just be a sign that the kid is ready for the more serious kind of training, and therefore the more serious kind of jobs. Like war. Like cold-blooded killing. Like dealing close-up with the cutthroat politics of Hutts. Prove you can handle the easier stuff well enough, prove you’ve achieved some degree of responsibility, and then move on to the work that’s most likely to get you killed. In that case, most Mandalorian kids wouldn’t start campaigning until they were at least thirteen, likely with an experienced adult at their side to mentor them. (This like...isn’t much better but at least isn’t eight goddamn years old). Compare Skirata’s clan, where they seem to try to get their children through verd’goten nearly as soon as they develop something approaching decent hand-eye-coordination, and would therefore need to start serious training (what Munin is trying to have Kal do) much earlier in that kid’s life to achieve this.

One of those age-ranges makes way more sense than the other, is what I’m saying.

So circling back around to how Munin is handling this shit and the reaction of his fellows, even Mandalorians have some concept of “age-appropriate” activities and what Munin is having Kal do isn’t it. It wouldn’t be surprising to me if all the other things Munin decided Kal was the right age for also weren’t age-appropriate. Like going to war.

Also here’s...just. Whatever the hell this is:

(”sort of makes sense” what the fuck)

(I genuinely think there is something very wrong with Munin, but at the same time he sort of reads like someone who already has these very set ideas about what Mandalorian is supposed to look like that we see echoed in Kal later on, and these aren’t things that really show up anywhere else in the culture. The “man, wife, son” thing.)

(...also pointing out that he tells Kal the only reason he didn’t kill him was because he thought Kal would make a good son, which shades his last sentence as a sort of...Well. Do or die, isn’t it? That Kal sort of echoes with the Nulls later without really registering it?)

(...Do I even have to. Say anything, or-)

(comparison: “they loved him and made him feel safe”. Munin doesn’t. Also the fact Kal barely even thinks about or remembers them later in his life.)

(*bangs pots and pans* ABUSE TACTIC)

(Also, a thing Kal pulls later as well a lot, but especially with Etain - seriously, read how many times Etain goes in expecting Kal to have one reaction and gets an entirely different one and how it leaves her twitchy and feeling weird and sort of disconnected from the situation and subdued because she’s afraid of him suddenly switching back just as fast. I can think of two off the top of my head. 

Making it hard to tell exactly what sort of reaction someone will give you is a way of forcing people to walk on eggshells and never really catch their balance, it’s a way of holding on to power in a relationship, and treating people like this is incredibly toxic. They can pull this kind of thing in Basic, but with the caveat that they’re talking to adult volunteers who can leave and the relationship is a very, very temporary one, and the instructors are doing it on purpose in a controlled environment to deliberately create stress. It is in no way a good model for any sort of personal relationship, much less a parent-child relationship.)

Actually I’m going to call this my “Cult Indoctrination 101 Compilation” with a side-helping of deliberately instilled Stockholm Syndrome, and then point out that this is the man who taught Kal everything he knows about being a Mandalorian. Like. No WONDER Skirata’s whole-ass deal looks so alarming and shady and sets off fifty-thousand red-ringing alarm bells.

Anyway, Munin can’t be trusted, everything Kal was taught to take as normal is suspect as hell, and if Kal tries to “early starter” Kad I need someone to yeet him into the damn lake. Thanks.

 

And, okay, I call this Kal Skirata Critical, but really it's Munin Skirata Critical with Kal getting hit by proxy.

Also I refuse to make a Munin tag. Nope.