#yaej.metas

[aenaxes]

i’d like to think that the clones teach themselves standard mando’a, but over time, the physical separation from mandalore and the uniqueness of their circumstance results in them developing their own distinct dialect.

to some extent, the slightly hardened vowel sounds, altered intonations, the idioms specific to the clone experience—they’re just inevitable parts of learning and practicing language in an environment that isn’t wholly “authentic.” but by nature of merely existing and being passed down as a core part of clone culture, the dialect becomes authentic.

and it’s more than happenstance that really cements the dialect in the clones. having their own language is empowering.

there’s a very special kind of safety and pride in talking with a brother and seeing your general struggle to pick up what little fragments they recognize. a clone’s existence is so cruel, devoid of control, slated for military initiative over the simplicity of living for living’s sake. they don’t truly own anything, not even their own bodies. so it’s only fair that they can have their language, this single thing, as theirs alone.

and it’s something to pass on to shinies that can’t be lost or replaced in the ways blasters and buckets can. the older clones teach the younger batches the basics, and the younger clones offer them hip new catchphrases in return (it’s how you can tell who’s really old).

companies have impromptu lessons on slang over dinner. captains offer feedback on informal oral exams between briefings. squadrons designate a specific comm channel for shinies to practice tongue placement exercises during uneventful patrols (to really nail those tricky sounds).

better yet, battalions create their own shorthand and develop their own accents. oh, you were under doom’s command? that’s why you rely so much on active articulation. wolffe? your alveolar t and d sounds are nearly indistinguishable (and it makes fox want to pull his hair out). your first deployment is with bacara? good fucking luck—his battalion’s accent might as well be its own new language entirely. but once the shinies have caught on, once they’ve completed that rite of passage, they emerge having forged one of the strongest bonds of kinship in the entire army.

language—their language—builds systems of support and trust. it shapes how they celebrate and grieve and nurture each other. soldiers they may be, but there are at least twenty different ways in the grand army to say ‘i love you’—colt tells his men ‘you are my pride,’ and monnk’s translates loosely to ‘let me be your shield.’ each means the same thing on a rudimentary level, and yet their nuances make them nothing alike. the words they share cannot truly be understood by anyone but themselves.

it lets them bond as much as it allows them what little measures of autonomy they can glean from the republic and the jedi. their dialect may be a clone of their mother tongue as much as they are clones themselves, but it is no less real. they are no less precious. (and it lets them talk shit about their generals.)

their language makes them unique, practiced in mirrors and shared in the waning tide of war. it makes them them. and it’s one of the first things to go after order 66.

#again not clonecest #i also use the word authentic loosely because authenticity is ? relative #it’s authentic to them and thats all that matters #linguistics is cool :-) #pity i couldnt major in it :/ #this was inspired by that last ask about kote but also my daegu cousins lol #먹읏노???ㅋㅋㅋ #the clone wars headcanons #tcw headcanons #yaej.metas

[aenaxes]

dogma was the friend with the camera—you know the one, snapping candids in between shots of good sunsets and particularly good bits of vandalism (because hey, it’s objectively funny, even if it’s not exactly legal). wherever he went, the camera went too, clipped securely to his hip.

fives and jesse like to give him a hard time about it: what, you think we’re gonna disappear overnight? put the camera down!

but they’re grateful, too. because even if no one remembers them in the grand scheme of the war, dogma’s little camera would. so they all scrap their credits together and manage to buy him a nice one with a holopixel and frame rate quality miles above his normal run of the mill reusable.

miraculously, it’s one of the few things that survives dogma’s defection. and it’s a good thing it does—that tiny camera has been his lifeline more than once, when giving in seemed easier than pushing back and fighting, fighting, fighting. it’s something to keep his brothers alive, to make him feel a little less alone.

so dogma doesn’t know what to do when he finds out face-to-face that “the other clone” wandering through the galaxy is rex. neither of them knows what to say for a few days (is it shame? guilt? how do you say sorry for something that was neither of your faults?)

but eventually, they break the ice when dogma seeks him out one night and wordlessly extends the same camera rex and the boys had gifted him. dusty, a little scuffed, but the light blinks on, and the memory’s intact. still good. (a little bit like them, huh.)

they sit under the shadow of rex’s y-wing, and they huddle close as dogma silently clicks through snapshot by snapshot:

tup strumming over an old guitar; a cringey selfie of dogma’s fresh tattoo when he thought lip biting was sexy; a shot of fives pretending to saber battle jesse with mop handles; out-of-focus pictures of hardcase and kix sake-bombing at 79’s; rex at dawn, looking tired and old but full of hope. overexposed and poorly timed outtakes—everything’s there.

(there’s a conspicuous gap after umbara. if rex notices, he says nothing.)

every now and then, they come across fake vlogs and snippets of inside jokes where dogma and a digital ghost of one of their brothers pretended that they were twenty-something year-old civvies enjoying youth and life instead of brothers aged too fast and lost too soon. (tup grins into the camera lens, “welcome back to our channel!” dogma’s vision blurs.)

photo by photo, conversation returns to them, awkward and rusty from unuse but no less warm than they remember.

they both laugh harder than they have in years as they watch echo and dogma’s blurry smack cam compilation on fives and jesse, poor imitations of wookiee cries, perfectly cut screams right as rex came into the frame.

and they tell themselves that their tears are because they’re laughing the kind of laughter that aches in your stomach and doubles you over. the haggard sob that leaves dogma’s chest is just him gasping for air. they tell themselves that they’re hugging each other so so tight because it’s good to be brothers in arms again. (they’re all that’s left.)

they’ve mourned somber for too long.

they’ll do away with the grieving for tonight.

#HI REQUESTS IM SORRY IM BEHIND ㅠㅠ I WILL GRIND SOME OUT TMR #i developed a soft spot for dogma almost overnight #i also hc that dogma was the Way he was on umbara bc echo wasn’t there #as in he felt that pressure to step into echo’s role without having properly grieved the loss of one of his closest brothers #dogma #dogma headcanons #the clone wars headcanons #tcw headcanons #yaej.metas

[aenaxes]

thinking about batchmates howzer and rex as arc troopers under cody’s command before they were promoted to their own companies.

the og arc twins with one left pauldron and one right, because mirror images were still their own part of a whole. same heart, same blood, chiral.

they have the classic rough and tumble start of any archetypal duo; always pulling the high risk missions that earned them scoldings as much as it earned them praise; balanced in howzer’s level calm and rex’s sharp tactical sense; playing teasing games of one-upmanship on who could take out more droids, who could down the most shots at 79’s, who could hold a staring contest while the hull of a gunship rattled around them because they could never be too sure if this was the battle that would leave one the soul-crushing burden of burying the other.

and they mellow out. they get old. they lose parts of themselves to every jedi, every shiny, every brother they see fall, and eventually they lose each other when their combined strategic efficiency and battlefield know-how get them promoted to captains, each different shades of a dusty plastoid blue.

it’s not a complete loss, no. there are still the same planetside drinking games and occasional holocall rendezvous, but it isn’t the same when the truest thing to a brother you’ve had is a few hundred star systems away. there’s no rex to drop down and break up howzer’s carefully waxed hair. there’s no howzer to touch up rex’s roots and wash out the bleach. there’s no twin beacon of hope to climb onto a landed ship’s roof and map out the stars and fall asleep shoulder-to-shoulder under the cool night sky because even if they didn’t know what would happen to them tomorrow—much less after the war—they knew that they would have each other.

but they do their best, they care for their men the same way they remember caring for each other: leader, brother, friend. the loss doesn’t get any easier, but their respective companies flourish.

and then order 66 hits. howzer watches in mute horror as his brothers suddenly go cold—men with whom he’d shared blaster tricks and heart-to-hearts and tipsy paint days; suddenly they look at him glassy-eyed and brusque, and they don’t see a brother where he stands, much less a human. and it’s terrifying, sure, but that’s not what has him sprinting to the records once the blaster smoke clears and the bodies are pushed aside.

when the records show that rex is dead, maybe the relief that floods from the top of his head to the pit in his gut isn’t because rex is gone, but because death has always been that one looming force above their heads. the thing they’ve prepared for with letters and holorecordings and promises that would live on beyond a beating heart. maybe it was because dying in battle was a better way to lose rex than to have to confront a dead-eyed shell of a memory.

so howzer pushes on. he stands soft-spoken but strong at cham’s side, moving quietly in the new order’s shadows, living for himself, living for rex. and he thinks that it’s only fitting if he dies caught in his quiet subversion, that he would go out the same way he knows rex would have.

#not clonecest #i cannot sleep #i need to get up at 630 hshfjs #captain howzer headcanons #captain howzer #captain rex #the clone wars #yaej.metas

[aenaxes]

thinking thoughts about a jedi and their clone commander becoming so disillusioned with constant war and death that they just defect together, like maybe with a few other clones in their battalion who are tired of being battle fodder

maybe they fake their deaths or set up an mia situation. and afterwards, they find a small faraway outer rim planet to settle on. maybe they start a farm, run small trade, help the locals with repairs, anything to just live a quieter, simpler life

#and o66 doesnt apply bc they cant hear it lol #and this doesnt even have to be in a shippy way either #like just some peace and quiet #bc while i find the jedi harm reduction theory interesting for the moral obligations of a jedi #that has to be exhausting #yaej.metas

[aenaxes]

the morning obsession for today is coming up with other feasible ways for inhibitor chips to malfunction other than physical trauma:

radiation? gas inhalation? certain wavelengths of light? high-pitched noise? idk the possibilities are endless, some clone could get punched in the kidney and fuck up his endocrine system and when o66 rolls around he’s like oops sorry not enough cortisol :/

#if it passes the blood brain barrier :/ #mm brain damage #yaej.metas