We Love The Most Hated Clones Here, Sir

Clone Trooper Learning Helmet (Odd Class)

Source: The Official Star Wars Fact File #92 (De Agostini, 2003)

@roseflower-hunter’s tags are pretty much my exact thoughts:

I like to think the clones are absolute dogshit at understanding nat-born's ages. Like, that guy looks so old, he has to be...uh... 30 or something. They get completely baffled when someone mentions their 9 year old daughter and get shown a picture of a young child. They find out someone who looks to be the same age as them is turning something twice their age, which they already knew, but still have this instinctive moment of “you've been alive how long???”

Me: [sees cute fanart] My brain: [does some free association] Me: I have a new AU of unprecedented absurdity.

Right so

I saw this post, which is adorable as heck, and my brain went "Dead clones come back as kittens."

This then passed to... uh...

Dead clones become ghost kittens who haunt their living brothers and help them by pointing out coming dangers and doing surreptitious investigation. Only Force Sensitives and living Fett clones can see them, and the ghost kittens can't really communicate in words but they can sort of communicate vibes and vague thoughts and emotions. If they try REALLY HARD they can be felt and interact physically, which means they can cuddle that crying shiny that just lost half his batch in his first battle.

#I didnt need to cry today but here we are crying over Clone Kitten Ghosts#Fives wondering why he never sees Echos kitten#Where is his twin brother? Where is he dammit?#Anakin doesn't have an answer because he hasnt seen Echo either#They figure maybe Echo just got lost at the citedel and will find his was vack eventually#Force kitten Fives doing the hyper aggressive panic purring all around Echo on Skako Minor#He knows now why he never saw his brother#because he never died#Force kitten Fives going with the Batch and Echo and becoming the unofficial mascot#The 332nd Force Kittens splitting themselves evenly between Rex and Ahsoka at the end of the war#Force kittens following their chipped brothers around and watching as they commit atrocities they would never commit under free will#501st Force kittens hissing and swiping at Vader if he tries to get near them#They are here only for their few living brothers and not for you traitor#Force kittens making it hard for Palps to sleep or focus cause they just harrass him constantly#FORCE KITTENS KEEPING AN EYE ON CUT AND SUS KIDS#Su can't see them but other clones shes met tell her about their own kitten brothers and so she trusts his word when he talks about them#Can their kids see them? Maybe#Wolffe refusing to die because he's a dog person and resuses to become a CAT when he dies#he is immortal by shere willpower alone#Gregor has constant zoomies#He knows it doesnt make losing him any easier but at least he can still make them laugh with his antics#He first gains physicality when he pushes a mug off a table#Rex no longer leaves cups unsupervised on surfaces#Ezra had never seen Clone Force Kittens until he meets Rex Wolffe and Gregor#Why are there so many tiny ghosts all perched on the tank?#Kanan is grumpy and does not explain for a while (via @chocolatecustarddanish)

FUCK YEAH

I will note that I imagine this AU to have a semi-happy ending because the kitten ghosts realize Palpatine can see them (and he doesn't realize anyone else can, because the clones and Jedi ignore them in public to avoid appearing delusional), and start to Investigate! with all the energy of tiny kitten soldiers. So a lot of clones still die, but someone does find out about the chips and such, especially since the Kaminoans can't see the kitten ghosts that are very painstakingly getting into their files.

I absolutely agree with Wolffe refusing to die out of sheer distaste for the idea of becoming a cat.

medieval knight raising the visor on his helm just so you can see him rolling his eyes

Okay, so I've read lots of fics where the clones speak mando'a, and actually I kind of liked the idea. But it's come to bother me that I get more and more of the feeling that the clones are presented as mandalorians and not their own culture.

The main problem I see is, that the clones aren't viewed as sentient life by most people, especially the kaminoans and their trainers, who, at the beginning of the whole cloning process, were nearly only mandalorians. Of course there were a few people like f.e. Kal skirata, who, if I remember correctly, actually adopted a bunch of clones, but let's be honest, that's not the case with most of the other trainers and especially not the kaminoans.

So, I've thought about it and I believe that it's not that improbable that the clones actually picked up quite a few words of mando'a. Maybe a few of the older clones were even thought a bit by some of the nicer mandalorian trainers. And imagine a few little clone cadets hearing those mandos talk in their own language - of course they'd want to learn it and share it with their brothers.

But most mandalorians that are on kamino don't even like the clones and definitely don't accept them as some of their own culture. So using mando'a in front of them could be dangerous and be punished. Talking your mind freely was dangerous enough as it is. The clones weren't supposed to have too much of their own free will, after all.

So they start developing their own words, their own language. It could be inspired by mando'a, but not too much. Because they weren't mandalorians, they weren't accepted by those people. They weren't accepted by anyone but their own brothers.

Not to mention that it was something of their own. Something they could claim and cling to and that belonged to only them when not even their own bodies and especially not their future belonged to themselves.

So in the middle of the night, after a too long, too painful training session, the clones would lie side by side with their brothers and comfort each other with their own words. Words that weren't used day by day to make them feel small and helpless, but words that were spoken softly and in a comforting and loving way.

The clones would also start developing their own sign language very early on. Not the classical military hand signs or something like bsl or asl or something, more like little movements of their heads and fingers. Maybe they'd use something similar to morse code as well.

They were mostly supervised and talking in your own language would be the worst thing you could do. None of the nat borns, especially none on kamino, could know, how much of their own free will they had. They'd risk being reconditioned for it.

So the clones would mostly communicate with very subtle signs. They grow more and more perceptive, especially when it comes to their brothers. For outsiders it might even look like they're barely moving a muscle while they have a full conversation going on.

The spoken language would be reserved for the few times they aren't directly supervised. Maybe older clones would cheer up the younger ones, that they find secretly crying and grieving, after yet another brother has been decommissioned for a stupid reason. They'd whisper softly to them in their own words - not the nat borns words. Never.

Some of the bolder clones might whisper in secret while in the mess hall and eating the same tasteless rations they've eaten for all of their cursed existence.

They'd develop stories to tell each other whenever possible. Stories that are of parents and their children, of flowers and trees, of funny animals that run around on wide fields and high mountains, stories of freedom. Of all the things they didn't have, but wished they did.

#Man I want a clone language #Something similar to amatakka or something #Please someone teach me how to create a language #And a culture #I beg you #All I want is big brother rex sing to his adorable little baby brothers in a super cool clone language <- OP's tags

Me: *Breathing heavily, shaking with anticipation to talk all about my ideas for a clone Galactic Basic-Mando'a Creole language with hundreds of words and phrase unique to clones that could not easily exist in other languages and is clone culture specific*

Me: *Remembers my pages of notes on an original clone sign language that becomes one of the main languages used in clone society in my AU and is a part of everyday language and I'm so proud of it*

Me: *Shaking like a maraca*

Consider: instead of ‘brother from another mother’

Twins from another tube

Oh!

‘Vod from another pod’ was right there and it didn’t occur to me until just now!

My headcannon about tcw is that since all clones are technically minors, 79s doesn't actually serve alcoholic drinks, but the clones sure think they do

Vague silly idea on the Kaminoans being just. Really freaking confused by the clone cadets' behavior because their species needs are very different.

Cadets sneaking into the kitchens for pudding cups? Doesn't make sense to them because little Kaminoans only do things like that when they're lacking nutrients. Since their kids still learning the principal of taking-food-breaks-between-experiments that's not unusual, but the clones get regular meals calculated for their nutrition why are they sneaking the deserts??

Sharing sleeping pods against orders? Kaminoans have a much lower need for physical contact than the average human they do not understand the concept of "cuddling" much less "cuddle piles".

Wrestling while laughing or fighting but immediately turning on anyone who tries to join the fight? They don't have either a Cain instinct or a "he's an asshole but he's my asshole back the fuck off" thing, the concept of flipping off your sibling with love does not register as normal.

Feel free to add any!

Ok so Haunted Clone Week inspired my spouse and I today!

Shinies are given “reused” armour, meaning it was collected from the battlefield

And of course not every set of armour is intact, and non-vode don’t really understand why it would be important to keep a set together

So the armour is haunted. By multiple ghosts.

I had to add @priceofvanilla’s tags 🥲

It’s my personal headcanon that the clones bonk into each other all the time.

You can’t tell me these fuckers aren’t touch starved, and deep-pressure seeking. I wouldn’t be even a little bit surprised if every one of them was autistic and they’ve learned to show affection by bonking. (Bucket bonks, greaves bonks, full body crash, sensory seeking and regulating and generally teaching themselves how to show affection outside of the sterile clinical treatment they’ve known)

As someone who does this and writes the clones doing this…yes. This is beautiful.

I don’t know if you’ve read RepComm, but this also reminds me of the description of Dha Werda Verda (which is purposefully similar to the Māori haka):

“The commandos were layering rhythm upon rhythm, hammering first on their own armor and then turning to beat the complex tempo on the plates of the man next to them. Timed precisely, it was spectacular: timed wrong, a soldier could break the next man's jaw.”

…

“The blows looked real. They were putting all their weight behind every one.

Astonishingly, none of the initiates had yet timed the movements badly enough to receive an accidental blow in the face. Fi and Scorch demonstrated another sequence. Armor clashed. Sev abandoned his feigned disinterest, took off his helmet and joined in.

Then Darman appeared and they formed a line of four in the front.

It was strange to watch Darman actually enjoying himself, oblivious to his surroundings: she had no idea that he had such a powerful voice or that he could-for want of a better word-dance.”