EFFORTPOST [Effortpost] The Battle drama rages on

I love the franchise but I can’t imagine reading the books.

its fricking childrens toys get real hobbies jeez

its less about reading about a catapult hiding in the rurals launching missiles and more the political intrigue.

Which I thankfully don't give two shits about. A freelance does not care where the $$$ comes from.

BATTLE BROTHER TITUS'S BOLTGUN COUGHED ONCE, TWICE, THRICE AS AUTOGUN ROUNDS PLINKED USELESSLY OFF OF HIS BRAND NEW MARK SIX POWER ARMOUR. "GLORY AND STEEL!", TITUS ROARED AS THE FILTHY HERETICS BECAME CLOUDS OF PINK MIST. "BATTLE AND HONOUR", BROTHER-SERGEANT DIOMEDES AFFIRMED, A WET LEOPARD GROWL CREEPING INTO HIS VOICE, "VICTORY AND DEATH."

WHAT IS THE BATCHALL OF THE WET LEOPARDS QUIAFF QUINEG MASKIROVKA KERENSKY KERENSKIYY?!?

It’s basically space game of thrones and p decent for trash genera fiction. The writers also make the franchise and more or less dictate everything. Or at least it was 20 years ago when @HailVictory1776 read some of the novels long live the ccp

SPORK!!!

“So go ahead,” she hissed. “Get it out. Speak your mind. Are you going to go with ‘abomination,’ to make sure I get the insult? Or are you going to look at the freak and go old-school, call me a piggul or maybe a shekez, huh?”

He squinted at her.

“Oh, yeah, real surprised the stupid Muslim girl knows those ones? I’ve got a few more. I met another Goodman, bunked with him at the Academy, for a good, long, time. I’ve got years of this shit, ready? Well buckle up, buttercu—?”

“He’s wrong,” Goodman cut her off.

“…he’s…what?”

“He’s wrong. If I was going to go ‘old-school’ and call you an abomination, it would be a toebah, that’s the worst kind, and it’s what some Jews used to call folks who engaged in ‘perversion,’ like homosexuality. My grandmother, for instance, was fond of it,” he said, lightly, but the sort of light that a foil was. A sharp light. A cutting light. “But that would be wrong, too. So your Cadet Goodman – ope, sorry, Leutnant Goodman, now, I can’t forget that you all graduated nine whole days ago, nine days that Cho and I spent on half rations, to make sure we saved enough food for you – your Cadet Goodman was wrong, twice over. Once for not even knowing the insult to use, and once for using it.”

Hannah had lost all her momentum, now. Goodman had picked it up. He filled her doorway, broad shoulders almost touching both sides of the hatch, as he leaned in, but still didn’t step forward.

“A piggul’s just an illegal offering, and a shekez is what I’d call you for eating an unclean animal. But since I read your file, ‘stupid Muslim girl,’ and since I signed off on our food for this trip, I know you eat halal, which the War College considers close enough to my own kosher that the menus overlap, so I doubt that’s fitting either. So, no. No, he should have been going for toebah, this other, random, Goodman of yours, that I don’t share a brain with, if he just had to call you something awful, but found ‘abomination’ too hard to spit out.”

“He…yeah, well, he…” Hannah tripped up. She was finding everything too hard to spit out.

“But what he should have called you isn’t any of the old Hebrew words for abomination, but, rather, ‘Baronet,’ to respectfully reflect your future rank as Duchess, but if he just had to try and sound especially Jewish for some reason – oh! Is he one of those Donegal Jews, even my grandmother couldn’t stand those people – then he should have called you saris adam.”

“Saris what?” Hannah eyed him warily but, despite herself, curiously. “What’s that one accuse me of?”

“Saris adam,” he said again, carefully, pointedly. “And it doesn’t accuse you of anything. It’s not a type of abomination, it’s more an…observation. The halachal recognizes a whole bucketful of genders. Male, female, and a handful in between. Saris are someone who was identified as male at birth, but female later on. A ‘natural’ saris is a saris hamah, a saris through human intervention – say, someone taking advantage of the medical perks a cadet might be offered if her grandmother was good friends with the Leutnant-General of the military academy she was spending several years at – is a saris adam. The Talmud’s full of you people. Along with our old midrash, old law codes, you name it.”

He gave an off-handed wave.

“And please, don’t pull out the ‘Muslim’ thing again with my ‘you people,’ that’s not what I meant. Or your skin tone, either. We just left Buena, not New Capetown.”

Oh.

It hit her.

He hadn’t been smirking. His smiles hadn’t been fake. His good cheer hadn’t been forced. His greetings hadn’t been sarcastic. He’d been surprised, yes, no one had told him to expect a Hannah instead of a Yusuf, but he’d been…sincere, since then. Helpful. Polite. Protective of his crewmate. Determined to help everyone get along on a long flight. Determined to stock the galley with food his Muslim passenger would like. Determined to do a good job.

Decent.