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Ohhhh I really waited this particular scene for a very long time because this these particular quotes are very much center of many discourse. :D But I'm mostly here to talk about my interpretations.
"They spend so much time and trouble making us perfect and then they don’t give us what we need to do the job.You remember what Sergeant Kal used to say?” (<- Fi, OP notes)
“He used to swear a lot, I remember that.” (<- Niner, OP notes)
“No, he used to get upset when he’d had a few drinks and say that he could make us better soldiers if we had time to go out and live. Data-rich, experience-poor. That’s what he used to say.”
“He used to slur the words quite a bit, too. And he didn’t like clones.”
“That was all bluster. And you know it.”
It's so interesting that despite Niner is the one who inherited Kal's physical and verbal quirks, therefor this man affected Niner the most out of them, he thinks Kal hated the clones, while Fi insisting that is a lie and Fi insists that Niner should look BEHIND the behavior. But then there is entire paragraph describing why Niner could be confused about Kal: It's because Kal's behaviour is very contradictive and confusing. His spoken words don't align with his actual actions and this can confuse even adults, not just children.
Yes, Kal Skirata said awful things about clones, but it never sounded as if he meant them, not to the clones, anyway. He got uj cake from home, no easy feat on secret, sealed Kamino, and shared it with the commando squads he was responsible for training. He called them his Dead Men, his Wet Droids, all kinds of abusive things.
THEORY 1: Kal Skirata feels like a very affectionate cat owner but the petnames are whore, little shit, fucker, etc. I mean look at sentence. HIS Dead Men. HIS Wet Droids. These are affectionate slurs.
THEORY 2: Dead Man and Wet Droid refers their status as a Mandalorian person. They have no soul. (According to Kal)
THEORY 3: Kal Skirata tried to maintain emotional distance by being verbally abusive but was terrible at it because he loved his boys very much.
THEORY 4: Similiar to theory 3, but he tried to do the same training tactic as Munin did to him when he was a child. Being verbally abusive during training to artifically induce ANGER in them to make them surpass their own limits. Munin was also very kind to Kal OUTSIDE of the training. And to make sure the boys know Kal loves them, he fed them with cake. -> This could look a cycle of lovebombing where the cadets associates the pain and harm with the reward of being loved and cared for afterwards.
But if you caught him off duty in his cabin, he would sometimes fight back tears and make you eat some delicacy smuggled in for him, or encourage you to read one of his illicit texts that wasn’t on the accelerated training curriculum. They were often stories of soldiers who could have done many other things, but chose to fight. Sergeant Kal was especially eager for his Wet Droids to read stuff about a culture called Mandalorian. He admired Jango Fett. “This is who you really are,” he’d say. “Be proud, however much these ugly gray freaks treat you like cattle.”What do we get to know about this section?
1. This section implies that Kal welcomed cadets into his cabin (flat?) after training.
2. Kal not just smuggled sweets to the cadets. He smuggled Mandalorian literature to make cadets read it.
3. Kal is a heavily spiritual, religious man: From Triple Zero Chapter 1, we got to know the reasons that Kal had ONE ULTERIOR MOTIVE with his cadets: to raise them as Mandalorians. Why? Because he felt sorry and pity for these SOUL-LESS CHILDREN. He believed that these little cattle soldiers didn't have SOUL. And he made it to his mission to GIVE THEM ONE, so when his Commandos die in a battle later, they soul will march along with the warriors of the past and future. For him being a Mandalorian is not just a lifestyle, it's a religion.
⮞ Question1: Was he ominous about it? Did he do the predatory thing of: hey I have cake in my room, you can have a slice if you come after training, but you can't tell about to anyone <3 And then while the cadets ate the cake, he fed them Mandalorian propaganda too. Observation for question1: Don't forget that Kal Skirata is really good at psychology. Intense smells and taste are very effective way to make something MEMORABLE.
⮞ Question2: Was it by chance like the text is implying? Caught him off duty in his cabin implies that cadets were welcomed into his flat outside of training, the Kal lived with the chance to feed the cadets with sweets and made them read the Mando stories.
⮞ Question3: Did the cadets found him a safe person THIS MUCH to simply just visit him after training so they can just catch him off duty?
Observation: Mandalorian culture is not about bloodlines and heritage, but Kal thinks that through Jango Fett, the clones inherited the Mandalorian soul, they just need help to unlock it.
Once he signed up with the Kaminoans, he said, they never let him go home again. But he’d told Niner that he didn’t want to. He couldn’t leave his boys now, not since he knew. “Brief,” he’d say, gesturing with a glass of colorless alcohol, “is never glorious.” Niner was determined to work out what Kal Skirata had come to understand, and why it upset him so much.What do we get to know baout this section?
1. Niner WAS IN THE ROOM OF KAL AT LEAST ONCE and witnessed Kal drinking. The text often implies in the book that Niner knows the most intimate things about Kal.
2. Kal DIDN'T want to train them, and he was constantly sad about it so much, he drunk. But he couldn't turn down the job now that he was there.
3. Even if Kal wanted to leave, and he had a chance, he couldn't have done it because then he would have had to leave his cadets behind.
Theory: To being able to live with himself, Kal decided to give a purpose of this madness. If he raises the kids as Mandalorians, it would make it look like, he wouldn't raise a cattle to be slain down, but warriors. Like Mandalorian parents would do with their children. A longterm project so he won't got crazy from doing something that is a massive moral failure.
“Nobody has all the answers,” Niner said. “The trouble with getting used to being powerful is that you can forget the small details that’ll bring you down.”
Fi made that ffff sound as if he was about to start laughing. “I know who you’re quoting.”
Niner didn’t even realize he’d said it. It was Sergeant Kal all right. He’d even started using the word son.
He missed him.
I really love Niner's complicated feelings and maybe this unsureness whether Kal loved them in the first place or not. Whether he believes what Kal's mouth said or not, one thing we know for sure: Niner loves and adores Kal.
(damn this post was a ride to write...)
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Date: 2026-04-03 10:42 pm (UTC)From:And totally yes, KAl is very religious about being mandalorian and I think he deeply installed this FAITH into his "kids", Nulls and commando cadets alike. I mean in the book they all think of themselves AS MANDALORIAN. In the later books I remember they even get into fight with other clones, who are offended by their mando spirit, because they had to fight MAndalorian mercenaries on CIS side (and they were damn good at killing clones ahahahahaha my stupid buckety people <3).
The questions you raise are so fun and I really loved your aboservations / answers regarding them :D For my part, I don't think he baited them into his apartment, but probably either told (herded) them to come after a hard day a bg achivement, just like he instructed the Nulls in the first chapter when he first met with them. For the cadets he had authority, so I bet they'd follow his instructions without question, but also very much love your statement that they found him a SAFE PERSON that much.
And oh it just came to my mind about Kal and his religious mando-mania this quote from the Legacy of the Force - Bloodlines:
"Yes, he remembered Kal Skirata, all right. Sometimes his father swore he was the best of the bunch; sometimes he just swore at him and lashed out. Jango Fett rarely lost his temper, but Skirata had a talent for making that happen. He was ferociously and uncompromisingly Mandalorian. As a lonely kid on Kamino, Fett had narrowly escaped
being forced to learn Mando’a from Skirata’s wildly unpredictable special forces trainees, six cloned ARC troopers who answered only to him."
I mean I bet this man made mandalorian warriors of ALL HIS CADETS with this mindset and tenacity ahahahahahaha