#just use the nato phonetic alphabet

[phantom-of-the-501st]

Anyone considered the fact that the Nato phonetic alphabetic just looks like a long list of names for the clones

Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot etc. etc.

[vuutarros]

I've been incredibly out of sorts this week...

I dislike this, I'm having to police my emotions to such a high degree 😡

And it's not just irritability, either. My emotions have been all over the place, hyper and happy and manic, next ready to snap at the slightest sound, then goofy again, before being very depressed. And on and on and on. 'Round and 'round we go, where we stop, heaven help us all.

[alexanderwales]

I've heard some people lauding the NATO phonetic alphabet, and am just sort of scratching my head about that.

Like, here were the criteria for words in the alphabet:

Be a live word in each of the three working languages.

Be easily pronounced and recognized by airmen of all languages.

Have good radio transmission and readability characteristics.

Have a similar spelling in at least English, French, and Spanish, and the initial letter must be the letter the word identifies.

Be free from any association with objectionable meanings.

But then you look at what they actually picked and it's like ... okay, you picked a bunch of names? You picked "Whiskey"? On the assumption that what, this is a drink that's common everywhere in the world? That everyone is fine having an alcoholic drink as one of the words? Nowadays I can pull up a global map of whiskey consumption, but that's not something they could do in the 50s, and I would guess that they were not considering e.g. Muslim pilots. (Some places do actually change out "Whiskey" for this reason, along with other regional variants, which are exactly the sort of thing you want in a standard everyone is supposed to be on the same page about.)

And alright, whatever, I think the list is kind of confusingly culturally bound given what the criteria were, but it served its purpose well enough ...

Except that as standards do, it began to be used in other places, including by civilians, and including by civilians when both parties have not agreed on the NATO phonetic alphabet. It would be great if we all had an agreed upon phonetic alphabet that everyone knew, but the fact that some people don't know it makes it a lot worse, particularly if you're on a customer service call, and particularly if you're on a customer service call with someone who is not a native English speaker and who was not raised in the same cultural context that the NATO phonetic alphabet assumes.

If you, like me, love terrible quality PDFs, then some helpful soul made a FOIA request for "The Evolution and Rationale of ICAO Spelling Alphabet", and you can read it. This is a fun read for me, because it's not just concerned with the phonetic alphabet, but the history of it, and in one case they're just like "welp, we have been completely unsuccessful in locating this file". And I'm sitting here in 2024 reading a ratty PDF of a file from 1959, thinking "yup, that's how it is sometimes, they do all that work making a report and then no one fucking preserves it".

(Most of the document is about whether they would use the US-UK version or the ICAO version, and then some modifications and why they were made, and this is all interesting, but I'm kind of still scratching my head about some of these, especially given what they say the criteria were. "An international alphabet designed to fit the multilingual requirements of all nations"? Maybe they really thought that's what they were doing in the 1950s.)

Anyway, this isn't to say that I think we need a new, better phonetic alphabet, just that I think the current one is not actually the pinnacle of standards that some people seem to think it is, and in fact, it contains a lot of baggage from the time and place it was made. Further, it's being used in places well outside the environment it was made for, and unless everyone is trained in it (and maybe even if they are) some of the deficiencies get magnified.

[a-bucket-of-trash]

Kelvin “military analysis” - Sons of the Forest

First rant: Everyone talk about how sad is that Kelvin is not entering to a cave with us, but dude... there is a good reason. He is DEAF, right? So his main way to avoid dangers is by SIGHT. Hell, he point the damn mutants way easier than us.

How in hell he will do anything inside a cave if WE BARELY CAN SEE SHIT? Half of the times inside caves, we have to HEAR the mutants because is dark af. Now, if the main Kelvin’s sense is his eyes, he, in a cave, will be not only full useless but also dangerous for him and to us.

Kelvin inside a cave is like he being deaf AND blind. Go and play in a cave with mutants, deaf and blind, without weapons, and see how long you will last.

He stay outside because is the logic action. He is not enough braindead to enter in a cave.

But now, what matters: what kind of soldier is Kelvin?

Someone point that in the opening, Fisheye and us are looking the info in the pc as Kelvin is chilling listening to music.

My theory is: Squads tend to have different “specialities” with different skills, which come extremely handy in a situation like in the game.  

Fisheye have part of his face covered. Usually, members of the Infantry would cover their faces to protect their identity in front of strangers. He is covered inside the helicopter can maybe be a hint of he being a “stranger” with any other member of the team (just like others members are covered too).

We don’t know if we are covered or not, but our skills on combat and weapons could be a hint that we are also Infantry. Plus, that both, as Infantry, be learning about the mission in the flight, at minutes to “deploy” is just a way to say “We are just muscles and guns, as soon we know how the subjects look, the rest don’t matter. We are here to shoot, kill and leave to our respective previous squads”. We are basic fight dogs.

Also, very high chances their (and our) names (Fisheye and Kelvin) are not real names, but codenames (Military call signs) based in the NATO phonetic alphabet (Each codename of each member start with a different letter to make it easier. F is Fisher, K is Kelvin, which it can be used in the trackers, so we can spot more easily the different members of the squad in the island).

Interesting fact, in some places, like the United Kingdom military, these letters also can tell what specialities they have. Fisheye use the F of Foxtrot/ Foxhound, this last one used to sign Infantry.

As also internet says about Kelvin: “His true name is speculated to be Robert, as he often appears in the game files as Rob or Robbie and in the game console as Robby.”

But our boy “Kelvin” is uncovered and chilling. That mean 2 basic things:

1 - Uncovered units are the ones who had to interact face to face with civilians. High chances he is one in charge of mediate with the Pufftons.

2 - He is not paying attention to the info in the pc, neither to the audible orders. The only reason to him to don’t pay attention is the fact that HE KNOWS the info. We are a militar squad rescuing a rich family, they will get the best of the best, so they will not get a lazy random Kelvin in the team. He is useful to the mision. He chills because he know the Pufftons already, knows the map (since he is not looking at it), and he knows the orders. Is not a civilian, or he wouldn’t have militar clothes, neither the previous info, neither will using the K Tag.

Now let’s add the fact that he doesn’t fight in the game, at all. He aims, run, hide, but don’t fight. But he do gather a lot, run fast, fish where is no fishes (lol) and find sticks in the nowhere.  

Putting his highly possible brain injury a little aside (which not only made him temporarily deaf and mute, but also could reduce a lot his capabilities), we can now speculate that his specialty is not in combat, is not from the Infantry because he don’t fight (not even as a instinct, many soldiers keep their fight reflex even after years out the field).

His skills in gather and build, carring logs for hours, even with his brain damage, can be a hint that his basic training was as Quartermaster. Hear this definition: The Quartermaster Corps officer plans and directs the activities of Army units and organizations engaged in the acquisition, receipt, storage, preservation, and issue of equipment, repair parts, fortification/construction material, subsistence, petroleum products, water, and other general supplies.

And his “chilling instead watch the info” can be a hint that he is now from some branch related to Intelligence or Logistics.

So, my theory is: Robert ak Kelvin - Logistics Quartermaster Officer with a Degree in Brain Injury.

And I love him.

[mentalisttraceur]

Speaking Hexadecimal

Fluently and Unambiguously

I previously proposed a way of saying hexadecimal numbers clearly and efficiently in English, but that was only good for situations where it was otherwise unambiguous that the numbers were in base-16, and it still had some room for getting "wires crossed" with base-10. Now I finally have a proposal I'm satisfied with to finish the job:

We first add distinct words for the six extra "digits":

A is alf, B is brav, C is char, D is delt, E is eck, and F is fost. These are based on the pronunciation of the first six NATO phonetic alphabet words: "alpha", "bravo", "charlie", "delta", "echo", and "foxtrot", except that: we simplify "foxt" to "fost" to make it easier to say, we change the spelling of "alph" to make it more accessible to people not familiar with English's "ph", and the spelling of "eck" makes it obvious that it's a K sound, not a CH sound.

Then we replace "-ty" with "-tex". "-tex" is meant to be evocative of "hex", but the "t" fits the pattern of English number words better:

So 20 in hexadecimal is twentex, not "twenty". 21 is twentex-one, 22 is twentex-two, and so on. 2A is twentex-alf, 2B is twentex-brav, and so on. 30 is thirtex, 31 is thirtex-one, [...], 3A is thirtex-alf, and so on. Fortex, fiftex, sixtex, seventex, eightex, ninetex, alftex, bravtex, chartex, deltex, ecktex, and fostex.

English has special words for 10-19, but we can just use the same regular pattern in hexadecimal for 10-1F as for 20-FF. So 10 is ontex. It's "ontex" and not "onetex" to match the speed and distinctiveness that we get with twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty having slightly different pronunciations and spellings versus two, three, four, and five. 11 is ontex-one, 12 is ontex-two, 13 is ontex-three, and so on.

100 is "hunhex". This continues the mnemonic pattern - English number word, with a hexadecimal-hinting ending. 101 is "one hunhex and one," or just "hunhex and one" for short, just like we say decimal hundreds. 201 is "two hunhex and one", 2D4 is "two hunhex and deltex-four", and so on, all the way up to FFF - "fost hunhex and fostex-fost".

Incidentally, the modern English quirk of saying a number like 2463 as "twenty-four (hundred), sixty-three" instead of "two-thousand, four-hundred, and sixty-three" works really well for hexadecimal numbers: for example, 1AD4 is often written as 1A D4, and can be read as "ontex-alf (hunhex), deltex-four".

In fact, unlike decimal, in hexadecimal it is far more natural and useful, especially given modern technology, to do groups of two. So we don't even bother with another irregular word like "thousand" - instead, we just go directly to using the same Latin prefixes that large numbers in English use (billion, trillion, quadrillion, and so on), for multiples of two more hex digits:

So 10000 is a bihex, 1000000 is a trihex, 100000000 is a quadrihex, 10000000000 is a quintihex, 1000000000000 is a sextihex, 100000000000000 is a septihex, 10000000000000000 is an octohex, and so on. Technical people will appreciate that we're basically counting bytes here, and that a hunhex is one larger than the maximum value in a 1-byte unsigned integer - ditto bihex for 2 bytes, quadrihex for 4 bytes, octohex for 8 bytes, and so on.

[docholligay]

Ironically, much like higher math, people rarely call IPA stupid or cast aspersions, because it's harder and less useful for many day to day things, so people just consider it "for smart people" though trust, anything i can learn is easy enough.

The useful-ass phonetic alphabet, however, created in a difficult time and since refined to fit an INCREDIBLY difficult ask? Extremely easy and accessible to learn? Let's talk about how stupid that is because I can't imagine the need to communicate quickly and clearly is more important than my right to say stupid shit like "e as in eddie"

I mean, truthfully my bad I was off the cuff and should have clarified, but yeah I meant the nato ahaha. people don't usually bitch about IPA unless they are taking an intro to linguistics class.

[fallershipping]

I know Anabel only has a Latios but I honestly like to imagine she has some small relative knowledge on flying an aircraft but mostly knows how to speak to air traffic control towers.

Would also make use of her ear piece!

She's got some language quirks, but I imagine Looker is also well versed in the NATO Phonetic Alphabet.

Hehe it's just fun to imagine them saying Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Fifteen-hundred hours.

[pocket-mobster]

btw since people are talking about the NATO phonetic alphabet now for some reason, here's a cursed infodump on that (according to this long ass pdf (pg. 14) i had to memorize*)

Papa is pronounced with stress on the second syllable rather than the first (i.e. "pah-PAH" like a bourgeois victorian child).

Quebec is pronounced canadianly despite the french being undeserving of respect

TECHNICALLY you're supposed to derhoticize all rhotic vowels (i.e. spontaneously develop a transatlantic accent when you pick up the radio. the new normal i guess) but like i doubt that happens in practice. the last thing emergency communications needs is theater and pizzazz especially in this economy.

A can be written out as either "Alpha" or "Alfa". I believe the latter's primarily used in non-English-speaking organizations, but I've seen both in English-language regulations.

Numbers/Figures cringe comp

9 - Niner (actually kinda fucks ngl)

3 - Tree (🌳)

4 - FOH-wer (this one's actually the worst)

5 - Fife (a town with arguably the most famous stabbing statistics)

0 - Zero (just putting this here to say it's not "oh")

[aquaquadrant]

hi, apologies if I’m using this wrong I’ve never really interacted on tumblr before.

but I’ve been following your HTP au and as many other previous asks have mentioned, it has consumed my soul and I love it.

however, I have been thinking about something and I wanted to ask if you/y’all. Apologies if you’ve been asked this before, but I didn’t see it anywhere.

So the helsmit’s names, very cool very cool (largishlegumes made me cackle when I read it for the first time) but for a while I was wondering why Bravo didn’t have a similar name to Tango, other than the fact that they’re from the military/NATO phonetic alphabet. However! I’m a nerd and I remembered something just now. Each of those words that represent a letter is also connected to a specific nautical flag used for signaling. And those flags have meanings! B - Bravo means “dangerous cargo”

T - Tango means “keep clear of me”

And that is hilarious. Also very fitting for their characters! And also kinda sad if you think about Tango’s whole attitude towards himself, “keep clear of me” definitely makes sense.

I know y’all have only vaguely mentioned this bc of spoilers but like something along the lines of reflecting how Tango’s more of a good person than Bravo is? Hmm

anyway, idk if y’all knew the flag meanings before you made this AU, but it’s very fitting which makes me think you did. If so, very smart! That’s a whole extra layer of thought and angst that others may or may not have recognized. If not, well that’s very fitting and a fun coincidence.

alright well that’s all from me for now. Keep up the great work both of y’all.

oh man i really wish i could claim that this had been the intent behind the names all along, but NOPE 😂 i was not, in fact, aware of the flag meanings. i literally just chose bravo because it’s part of the military alphabet and sounds similar phonetically (tan-go, bra-vo). plus, it’s higher up in the alphabet so it matches w bravo’s superiority complex. so, fitting and fun confidence!

i did originally consider a better corresponding name, like another dance term to match tango. see, i’ve had this au idea for a WHILE (like, since helsknight was a Thing) but in between then and now, there have been many hels!tango’s in the community and i didn’t wanna use any of the names that had been used already, so that kinda ruled out the dance terms approach (waltz was a personal fave of mine, as it’s a great contrast to the tango style of dance but both are partnered ballroom styles).

so this is where we landed. very neat to know there’s another meaning behind the names.

[natjennie]

I believe the captain speaks like 8 languages. and switches between them whenever convenient. like to express frustration in a language the people he's talking to won't know, or whatever. but also when he gets flustered or excited sometimes he slips into one. he's autistic so, sometimes you've just got to put on an accent or start speaking a different language. along with english and canon german, I think it's gotta be like. french. latin and/or greek. a scandinavian language idk which one, swedish maybe? russian. he knows morse code and the nato phonetic alphabet. his british sign language is out of date but he knows the old signs. anyway he mostly doesn't get a chance to use any of these skills because everyone just speaks english all the time, but one time the rest of the ghosts are all being really annoying, talking over each other stumbling for alison's attention and the captain complains under his breath about their lack of respect and the chaos of the house etc etc in like. welsh or something. and robin looks right at him and shrugs and responds in the same language like "yeah they're annoying but they're family. can't complain too much huh?" and cap just. whuh??!?!!!? because robin has been around for thousands of years and definitely knows allllll sorts of languages.

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 36 of Harrow the Ninth

I've spent most of Saturday entering 145 of my ~200 sims into a new family tree program, which is sort of like the mental equivalent of stimming, but I think it's time to take a break and do more Locked Tomb liveblog

The symbol on this chapter is, I gather, meant to be a Herald, or possibly something else that's resurrection-beast-adjacent. Also, we are at one week before the prologue, now, if we can trust these chronological notes

Harrow has an absolutely massive case of Former "Gifted Child" syndrome, but she's only 18

She's one week away from probably dying while fighting a resurrection beast and she's way more worried about who is betraying John. It's also interesting how she compares her various experiences to decide whether or not something was a hallucination

I kind of wonder if at some point she is going to come to the conclusion that BOE can perform resurrections, since she saw three apparently resurrected (based on her memories of them) people, who claimed to be with BOE, or if that would be too sacrilegious an idea for her

First of all, what does "G" stand for in "J. G."? If John has a cavalier, I'd expect it to be A.L., or possibly the soul of Earth, not someone whose name starts with G

Second of all, why do they have callsigns? The purpose of callsigns (at least in ham radio, anyway) is to uniquely identify each individual radio geek, communicate their position in the radio geek hierarchy (and thus what frequencies they have access to, etc.), identify where they are from, and be relatively short because Morse Code is pretty verbose. But they are communicating in spoken language here, there's no reason for them to use Morse Code or a similar system, so there's no reason for them to shorten their names. Also, if this really is meant to be English, enunciating single letters over radio in English is notoriously prone to miscommunication due to how similar a lot of letter names sound, and for the purpose of being clear while doing this the NATO phonetic alphabet was invented, if you're actually going to do a radio thing in spoken language, you should be saying "Juliet Golf" instead of "J. G.", etc. Anyway, in addition to all this, this system is not even guaranteed to create a unique callsign for each Lyctor, it happens that all of these are unique, but that's just an accident. Goddammit, this pisses me off and I'm not even a real radio geek, I was just raised by radio geeks

So I'm guessing the resurrection beast/herald fear aura is directly related to guilt over the indelible sin, which makes sense if they specifically pursue people who committed the indelible sin. I believe when they were discussing how BOE hunted down a herald in order to make it into herald bullets (which I now retroactively realize means that BOE must use guns) they said that it affected all necromancers, so I wonder if it's more generally about gaining power from death

Also "it knows what you did to its kin", maybe referring to John consuming the soul of Earth? Or locking it in the Tomb? I'm not sure anymore

I mean, I think the Body going away probably has to do with the resurrection beast and not with Harrow, but haha, poor Harrow

You know, I've heard non-Americans complain that saying "Not!" after a sentence in this way is an Americanism, so I'm surprised to see this here. Or maybe it's only here to emphasize how grating Mercy's lecture is?

Is this a reference to the "it's for a church, honey, next!!" lady?

I know this is supposed to be a "Mercy is not fun at parties" thing, but honestly I feel this

I was curious how far that actually was, it turns out that is 33 and a half astronomical units. Yeah, that's pretty far away

That 2,000 kilometers is a mere 1 2.5 millionth of the total distance of 5 billion kilometers, though. I would think just covering that whole distance in a reasonable amount of time would be harder? Supposedly they don't have access to the stele system out here

This is the "Sex Pal" moment of this book, isn't it? I have no actual idea if John is lying about the peanuts or not, but I love the idea of Mercy just fuming over this one peanut incident for a significant part of 10,000 years

Also, the way describes this fantasy exchange between her and John feels like a bible story to me. Is it just me?

Ok, so this is interesting, because Number One has been mentioned, which means that if the beasts are numbered according to the way the Houses are numbered, then Earth can't be the missing beast. Previously we had only heard about Two, Six, Seven, and Eight, now we are up to One, Two, Four, Six, Seven, and Eight, which leaves Three, Five, and Nine. John said at the beginning of the book that there were three left to defeat, one of which is obviously Seven, and I guess the remaining two are Three, Five, or Nine. I wonder if the beasts are instead numbered based on their order from the sun, which would make Earth Three? That would make Seven actually be Uranus, which does match up with the 50,000 kilometer in diameter number from earlier, but I thought the point of that number was that the resurrection beast was supposed to be bigger than the original planet?

Does north/east/south/west even have any meaning in space, or in the River, without the presence of a magnetic field? I mean, the resurrection beast is a planet, so it might have a magnetic field, but we've established that they will not be attacking its actual body

Is this actually some missing information about what the fuck Mercy's powers even have to do with the rest of the Eighth House, or is Augustine just saying things to be saying things?

I wonder if it actually turns out to be something different, seeing as John literally has no intel on it

Also, you definitely do believe in sin, like, I don't think the concept of sin is necessarily universal across all religions, but it's definitely a big part of this one, necrophilia has been mentioned as a sin, we also have the indelible sin, and Mayonnaise Uncle definitely seemed to feel like some things were sins back in Gideon the Ninth

[mleemwyvern]

how good is every word of the nato phonetic alphabet for hels tango names? lets see! this is all my opinion, yours may vary

Alfa

i could see it working, but it wouldnt be an early pick for me. kinda mid.

Bravo

very good! a tried and true hels tango name, close in vibes and sound.

Charlie

a Regular Name, works pretty well. not to be confused with charlie of impulses chocolate factory from s8 (thats a helspulse).

Delta

i like this one. great for a particularly sciency hels, ive used it for my hels zed but it can fit a tango too.

Echo

quality vibes. i think this ones really underrated, i havent seen any echo hels tangos and i think there should be one.

Foxtrot

the only other dance option. 10/10 just for that.

Golf

i dont think this is a very good name but i could see it be good for crackfics.

Hotel

probably not.

India

hm... i wouldnt use this one, but i think i could see it.

Juliett

i mean if your hels tango is a girl than its a great option.

Kilo

....... maybe?

Lima

not.... completely horrible. but its not on my list. i could see it in crackfics.

Mike

great if you want a hels tango thats Just A Guy. this is a just a guy name.

November

i guess you could but. why.

Oscar

its a name! it doesnt have particularly tangoey vibes to me though. but you could definitely use it.

Papa

please no.

Quebec

dont like this one but if you're really going to call a hels tango this than you should make him speak french.

Romeo

a good one! has the Sounds and the Vibes. lends itself to a charmer type of hels, which could be interesting.

Sierra

i could see it.

Tango

the og. sometimes he can be the hels, if thats the case then you can use this list for his overworld counterpart!

Uniform

uh, no thank you.

Victor

love this one! used it for my hels tango and it fits him very well. would recommend.

Whiskey

..... why. just, why. i cant see this working.

Xray

yeah.... i dont think this is a good name.

Yankee

crackfic Only. i cannot take this one seriously.

Zulu

the vibes dont click with me but i guess i dont hate it.

in conclusion: the quality varies drastically. there are so many options. if you cant decide just make an au where there are 25 hels tangos (one for each name) it would be really funny.

[thekidsarentalright]

if theyre using the nato phonetic alphabet for code names for 8 ball songs and tango yeti is kintsugi kid im killing someone. btw. just fyi. just so u all know

[chameleonsallinvermillion]

Rating The NATO Alphabet As Names Cos I Saw That One Post About It

and also because when I was a teenager spending all my time on an airfield with a crew of other idiot teenagers, we all referred to each other by our first initial in "comms" as we always called it, because we thought that sounded cool and like having an air force call sign. Juliet, Delta, Charlie Tango and Charlie X-Ray, etc. The NATO Phonetic Alphabet feels nostalgic to me.

Alpha: - an extremely bold choice in this cultural moment but the right person could probably make it work. It would need to be very obvious it was ironic though and people who can be ironic 24/7 are few and far between. 2/10 for wearability, 8/10 for sheer gumption.

Bravo: - surprisingly viable, a good name perhaps for a soft-spoken butch. I have some vague idea that Americans have a cartoon character that it might remind people of but that is their cross to bear. A solid 6/10.

Charlie: - safe, reliable, the most basic and ordinary unisex name out there. A grand choice for people who want to be invisible on a register. 10/10 for sounding like a name, 0/10 for creativity.

Delta: - cute, fun, sounds like a character in a campy sci-fi movie. 8/10

Echo: - sweet, has the mythological connotations you can fall back on if you really want an explanation beyond the NATO alphabet. This feels like it could easily become a cliché androgynous name. 9/10

Foxtrot: - weird enough to raise eyebrows but it still feels like a name. Fun, charming, she probably talks a lot yet you never learn much about her. 8/10

Golf: - risky, very risky. It isn’t impossible that there is someone out there with the charisma to make it work but you would almost certainly have people saying “Geoff?” “Rolph?” and so on (accent depending, I suppose) and have to re-explain, every time, that the name is actually Golf and you will never have a good enough reason why. 4/10

Hotel: - bizarre, daring, avant garde. Feels like it’s making some sort of statement but that statement is incoherent. 7/10

India: - normal, safe, feminine I suppose. I knew three girls named India growing up and sometime in our teenage years they all subtly shifted to introducing themselves as Indigo. I feel like that’s a natural progression, in which case you might as well start from Indigo. 6/10

Juliet: - basic but not so basic that it won’t have people constantly assuming it’s a Romeo And Juliet thing. Pretty, though. A great name to give yourself, a bit more of a burden to give a child who’ll have to study the play at school. 8/10

Kilo: - I truly believe this could work. If you live in a country that doesn’t use the metric system, this could definitely work. You already have Kai, Lilo, Kiki, and so on. Why not Kilo? It blends in perfectly. My instinct is to hope someone will choose it precisely so that their name can be Kilo Watts but that is asking too much of the universe. 7/10

Lima: - a mixed big. City-inspired names aren’t uncommon. There’s no reason Lima shouldn’t show up alongside Paris, Dallas, London, and Milan. I take personal issue with it because as soon as I considered it as a name, I was imagining some sort of lima-bean-inspired anime girl, but that’s doesn’t have to be your mindset. 8/10

Mike: - it’s just Mike. 9/10

November: - elegant, beautiful, unusual, weird enough to invite questions but sensible enough for you to brush them off. Even better if you have no personal connection to the month of November at all. Month names are nothing new. I’m sure there are already Novembers out there. I certainly know an October. Why not? 10/10

Oscar: - every Oscar I have ever known was a pain in the arse but I’m sure some of them have grown up into very respectable men. It’s a solid name. 7/10

Papa: - a bold statement. I instinctively want to say “no” but who knows? Maybe it doesn’t have the same connotations everywhere. 2/10

Quebec: - very fun, very quirky, slightly masculine. You could apply crazed suburban mother spelling to it if you like. Extremely wearable. 10/10

Romeo: - soft, beautiful, literary, a bit too much to give a small child but perfect for somebody to choose for themselves. Putting a lot of pressure on yourself, of course, but there are plenty who could rise to that. 9/10

Sierra: - floating around in that low level of popularity where it’s common enough that everyone recognises it but there isn’t going to be one in every work space. A practical name for an ordinary person. 7/10

Tango: - fun, fruity, playful, extremely wearable. A great name for a dog, too. Highly recommended. 10/10

Uniform: - I cannot fathom how you could ever make this work. I can’t imagine the sort of person who would feel inspired by naming themselves or anyone else, say, Uniform Blakely. 0/10.

Victor: - a great name all round. Can feel perhaps a touch pretentious depending on who is wearing it but pretty much always a solid choice. Never becomes highly popular or goes all the way out of fashion. 9/10

Whiskey: - a very popular name for cats and therefore perfectly wearable for the bolder human. A few associations to deal with, perhaps, as many people will lump it in with Brandy, Destiny, and so on as “pageant girl names” or “stripper names” depending on their personal biases, but you shouldn’t let them stop you. 5/10

X-Ray: - if you still have an eleven-year-old’s idea of cool, this is a great choice. Enjoy persuading bureaucrats of the very simple fact that your name has a hyphen in it, something that is not unusual and yet always seems to put them off. 8/10

Yankee: - I have to ask any Americans if they’ve ever met someone called Yankee. It feels like some American must surely have named their poor daughter Yankee at some point but it is a very cruel thing to do. 1/10, and it gets the one purely for rolling off the tongue acceptably in terms of Yankee Jones or Yankee Smith-Wesson.

Zulu: - it would definitely be a brave choice. I think the success of this one would depend a lot on cultural background. 3/10

[nathansqueak]

my dad has been using "Paul" for the letter P in phonetic alphabet for my entire life, and I just found out the official NATO phonetic alphabet uses "Papa"

"Paul" was the name of my dad's dad

so he changed papa to Paul because his papa's name was Paul

I am suddenly emotional about this

[sashketter]

The Captain and the Senator Chapter 5 Footnotes

Kunta afa - fuck me (Twi’leki) (source)

My deepest and sincerest thanks to odekiisu for this handy reference guide on clone armor. It’s been absolutely indispensable 😚😚😚🤗🤗🤗

Holy frijoles, Batman! This is the longest chapter yet 😱 I really didn’t want any chapters to go over 6k, but I didn’t feel like splitting this one up, either, and I actually spent a week editing it down lolol 🤷🏻‍♀️ 

Chi Eekway becomes the Senator for Pantora sometime during the Imperial Era - that’s canon. I can’t imagine Riyo stepping down of her own volition; she seems like she’s at the height of her prowess during TBB. Obviously, I don’t want to kill her, and forcing her out would require a level of political gymnastics that I don’t feel capable of engineering right now lol But I think the clones would give her a good enough reason to not just step down but redirect her efforts, reflecting Papanoida’s claim in “Trespass” that sometimes the wheels of democracy turn too slowly. If the Senate won’t help the clones, then by Jove, she’ll do it on her own, just like Papanoida did with his daughters’ kidnappings.

There’s a whole lot of exposition about clones on Pantora that I could have saved for the epilogue because some of it technically takes place after the events of TBB, but I wanted to show how important Riyo and New Kamino would be to the clones and set up her momentary distance from Rex but continuing involvement in his activities. Hopefully, a little flashforward isn’t too disruptive.

I’m of the growing opinion that Teth was the only base for the Clone Underground and Rex wasn’t exaggerating about how thinly spread his men are. So, I fixed it 😊 More bases, more clones rescued.

But that also means more chances of failure, which we already see in “Infiltration” and “Extraction,” but I like the idea of them chasing dead ends, never giving up hope, being so close to the center of other characters’ stories that could’ve changed their own trajectory but never quite catching on. I like the idea of ghosts or remnants of the Republic haunting the Empire.

Cody’s message about “making up for what he did” is taken from an abandoned subplot for the Obi Wan Kenobi show. It’s also an allusion to/continuation of what he said to Crosshair in “The Solitary Clone”: “We make our own decisions. Our own choices. And we have to live with them, too.” Clearly, he regrets something, enough to go AWOL, and if Rex hasn’t already found him, then it’s because he’s trying to right a wrong. Tbh, I’m still kind of on the fence about including Cody.

“BUT WHAT ABOUT THE INHIBITOR CHIPS???” You hypothetically say lol I probably didn’t need to bring them up, but I’d argue that bringing in more clones means reckoning with the chips eventually. I still can’t believe how TBB centered the chips all season 1 and then did nothing with them again 💀 I’ve said this before, but that might be the biggest loose end from the show. We know Kanan knows about the chips, and by the way he describes it, their reveal sounds like a public outing, not a confidential confession to surviving Jedi only. Would Rex and Echo have told Riyo!? I honestly don’t know. I can see their existence being argued in the Senate and the arguments working for and against the clones, so I left that open for now 😉 

The idea of having Rex transmit safe coordinates through coded radio messages comes from real-life spy craft. Another WWII parallel. I used the NATO phonetic alphabet, “Papa” for P and “Uniform” for U, to signify the letter part of the galactic grid points for Pantora and Teth.

I wanted at least one scene with Rex, Echo, Howzer, and Gregor together and not talking about missions. Just bros being bros.

I didn’t intend for Howzer to constantly cockblock Rex lolol but between silly “Captain Traitor” and the vigilant Mom of the Bad Batch who probably put up with a lot of antics from Fives, Howzer was the best candidate to keep Rex and Riyo from fucking off into the sunset and keeping them on point.

A running motif in my clone fics is that the boys just hit and smack each other whenever they’re the least bit annoyed or excited. I’m an only child, but I’m told this is typical sibling behavior? Correct me if I’m wrong. Either way, it also reminds me of real-life soldiers and athletes, these physically fit men who are wholly incapable of showing each other affection softer than a punch 💀 I won’t go into the homoerotic, toxic masculinity of it all, but my intent is pure and simple slapstick humor. I’ve got Fives hitting Jesse on the shoulder on a loop in my head 😌

I originally wanted to end the chapter with Rex sleeping in the barracks with his brothers and the boys teasing each other about their (s)exploits, but I’m too damn determined to stick to this stupid idea of each chapter beginning with Rex and ending with Riyo lol Maybe I’ll write an alternative chapter or something, a separate fic, so keep a weather eye open.

I would like to reiterate for the record, after the footnotes for Chapter 1, that I have absolutely nothing against Echiyo and think it’s actually a worthy ship. My intent with the first scene wasn’t to laugh at Echiyo like Rex did, but to highlight how closely those three work together and just wink and nod at Echiyo shippers. Live and let ship 🫡

What’s more power couple coded than talking strategy after fucking?

I’m sure we’ve all wanted to suck the life out of Rex at one point or another. I just hope I did our fantasies justice.

Remember, in my footnotes for Chapter 3, how I wanted to return to Riyo’s slip of saying “love you” to Rex? I lied lolol I was originally going to do it in this chapter, but I just couldn’t find an organic way of doing it. Maybe in later chapters, IDK yet.

Oh, and in case it’s not abundantly clear by now, I love alliteration.

Do y’all understand now why I saved “infiltration” for the title of this chapter? Because Riyo infiltrated the base, and then Rex infiltrated Riyo 😇