militaryson | i'd been in and out of choppers now for months } 𝙲𝚆 & 𝙾𝙿𝚃-𝙾𝚄𝚃.

〉And can you tell me, doctor, why I still can't get to sleep?
〉And why the Channel Seven chopper chills me to my feet?
〉And what's this rash that comes and goes?
〉Can you tell me what it means? █

In short: violent injury, war, misogyny, sexual assault, limb loss, internalized ableism, discussions of suicide/suicide watch.

— Peter's story is a darker one that leans into the 'Vietnam War allegory' part of the original trilogy era, more similar to the 'war realism' of the Medstar and Republic Commando novels than the films, and the killing and injury that send his life off of the rails are both rather grisly. He comes for warnings of graphic death/bleeding in flashbacks to his first 'real' kill, and mentions of compound fractures and infection—usually I tone it down for the sake of threads because most people are deeply unsettled by that kind of imagery, but if you need me to just refer to it as a fracture or be more vague than I already am feel free to let me know and I'll happily accommodate. I will never spring detailed descriptions of his injury on anyone without asking.

— Peter also drinks a little too heavily as a maladaptive coping mechanism, and he's on dialysis while awaiting a kidney transplant, though I'm squeamish about IV lines so it stays very vague if it comes up at all.

— Peter's father (and hospital staff) considered him high-risk for suicide and he spent about a week on unofficial suicide watch (not allowed near sharp objects, supervised, things like household cleaners locked away) when he was released from the hospital. Peter isn't actually suicidal, just depressed, but he makes jokes about it in a way that is very crass, insensitive, and blasé.

— Peter was raised in a fascist, imperialist society as the son of someone involved in the Empire's mass-murders. He's highly indoctrinated, and unlearning a lifetime of propaganda and conditioning in the military and at home is going to be a long process for him. He doesn't have any internalized homophobia and isn't transphobic, but he's misogynistic (including to trans women) without being aware of it - my take on the Empire, based on the gender balance we see in high command (virtually no women at all) and the way that women who do make it (like Ysanne Isard) have to divorce themselves from traditional indicators of femininity, is that it's pretty clearly extremely male-dominated. Though there's more gender diversity shown in the Rebel Alliance, their pilot corps (basing this on the films/Stackpole novels) are also almost exclusively male, so I'm imagining that's probably a carryover from the Empire.

The misogyny manifests less in misogynistic statements and more in unconscious biases. With rare exceptions, Peter doesn't see women and female combatants as a serious threat to him—part of why he fails to register his sexual assault at the hands of a female nurse as even nonconsensual/forced—and he sees things that are overtly feminine as less, e.g. drag performances in his unit are funny because a man is lowering himself by acting girly. He sees women as being less suited for combat and things necessitating aggression, and he falls into the real-world trap of respecting women in his field more if they downplay their femininity and become 'one of the boys', as one sees a lot in STEM in the real world.

— During his time in the hospital, Peter was also subjected to sexual assault in the form of unwanted touching of a sexual bent by a nurse, and there was an incident in which he received unwanted contact and sexual attention from a dancer during a performance for Imperial officers in the rehabilitation unit in a sort of Star Wars equivalent of the USO. Both of these are unlikely to come up outside of a sexual situation because he's repressed them so deeply, but they factor into his estrangement from his body and his anxiety in medical settings.

— Lastly, Peter is still in shock and grieving the loss of his limb. He has internalized ableism and sees his residual limb and the amputation as something disgusting. His inner narrative is reflective of his own pain and struggle to accept the change, not authorial opinion.

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