Things Clone Troopers do to subtly annoy their Jedi, without it seeming like they’re doing it on purpose:
-Constantly pretend the Jedi got their names wrong and gently correcting them
-(Commanders and ARC troopers): switch which shoulder the pauldron is on, and when questioned, act like it’s always been there
-tell wildly different stories about the meanings of certain hairstyles or tattoos
-clear your throat every time your Jedi says a certain word during a briefing
-yell “YES SIR” as loudly as possible, no matter how close your Jedi is standing
-talk loudly to each other about the Force, getting things as wrong as possible, within earshot of as many Jedi as you can
-whenever a Jedi gives you Sage Jedi Advice ™ turn to the nearest brother, tears in your eyes and go “so wise. So knowing. My life is changed. I am hydrated” etc.
-walk down the hallway past your Jedi, making random absurd mouthsounds to your brothers. Claim it’s a Unique Clone Language. Change the nonsense syllables every time and see how many Unique Clone Languages you can convince them you have.
-Whenever anyone mentions Yoda, say “Force rest his soul”. Keep doing it no matter how many times your Jedi insists that Yoda isn’t dead.
-”99 BOTTLES OF BEER ON THE WALL, 99 BOTTLES OF BEEEEER-”
-choose a random, innocuous phrase, like “extra charge packs”, and whenever anyone says it, for whatever reason, burst into laughter and roll around on the ground like it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever heard in your life. If questioned, say “oh, it’s just a clone joke, sir, you wouldn’t get it”
-Choose a random, less innocuous word, like “cockles” and see how many times you can work it into a mission report, debriefing, or planning session without arousing suspicion
-coordinate with every single other trooper on the ship to simultaneously drop whatever they’re holding at the exact same time
-(Cody): sneak into Obi-Wan’s quarters whenever he leaves and trim off the bottom inch or so of all of his tunics. See if he notices before he ends up wearing crop-tops.
-(Rex): get Hardcase to wire a mouse droid to untie Anakin’s bootlaces and re-tie them together. If you time it right, he doesn’t notice until he tries to take a step.
-constantly confuse Jedi with other Jedi, pretend to be as bad at telling them apart as most non-clones are at telling clones apart.
-fake absurd over-the-top hero worship, for another unit’s Jedi, post fanart in places where your own Jedi will see it regularly
-Convince your Jedi that today is a Special Clone Holiday, and we just can’t work today sir, not on Jango Day. See how many fake Clone Holidays you can convince them to let you take off.
Out there, there’s a trooper who didn’t have a name for the longest time. He went through training, through battles, through campaigns, but nothing ever stuck. One night, his battalion is refueling/debriefing on Coruscant, so he and his squad hit up 79’s. They have a grand old time all night and then stumble their way back toward the barracks in the wee hours of the Coruscant morning. On the way, our intrepid trooper tipsily stumbles into a civilian, and when he spins around to apologize, they brush him off with a scowl and a “watch it, pretty boy!” He blinks, long and slow, before grinning at the civvie (and their three friends) and drawling a coquettish, “You think I’m pretty…?” The trooper and his squad return to the barracks even later than they would have before, proudly sporting many more bruises and split lips than they had left with the previous night. When the wake-up call sounds, they fall out of their cots and fall in for roll call.
Smirking, the previously unnamed trooper glances at his squad before stepping forward and declaring, “Corporal Prettyboy, reporting for duty.”
One last thing to consider before sleep consumes me: chubby!clones
Shinies who get assigned to the 501st/212th/104th/327th and are so confused. Why are their brothers are all so much bigger than they are? They can’t all be from command stock, can they? And then, oh gods above, their General hears them asking about it in the mess hall and basically tells them “Oh, yeah, you’ve been chronically underfed your entire lives.”
Like, what. What does that even mean? The Kaminoans all carefully monitor their rations to make sure they’re functioning at optimum levels, how can they be underfed?
So the medic has to take the shinies all aside and explain about caloric intake and metabolic rates and how human bodies store energy and oh! Is that why everyone in the mess looked like they were pulling double rations? They just figured it was a reward for something before they’d all arrived.
And the medic says, nope, that’s the new standard amount of rations, at least under this jetii who actually cares about the health of their brothers. Turns out the Longnecks’ definition of “optimal levels” is the rest of the galaxy’s definition of “just enough so they don’t keel over and die on the battlefield before the clankers get them.” Turns out fatty tissue is a good thing, health-wise, particularly so their bodies don’t immediately start to eat themselves if they get cut off from supply lines somewhere down the line.
The shinies are stunned. So… so their rations won’t get slashed if they start to get that layer of squishiness that happens when they eat more than they nee–more than the Longnecks say they need?
Of course not! Their jetii was shocked when they saw how little the brothers were given to eat, particularly for soldiers who use up so much more energy every day than the average civilian!
So the shinies just sort of stumble back to the mess hall in a daze and stare at their older brothers. It slowly starts to dawn on them how, how healthy they all look. Flushed cheeks, no tightness around their eyes, cheekbones and jawlines softened just a little more than what the shinies are used to seeing. They’re not command stock, they’re just well-fed. Damn, now that they understand, the shinies all look positively starved in comparison.
They all shuffle over into line and grab their rations. Pause. Look around quickly. Exchange furtive glances with each other. Grab another helping.
They move to find a table to sit down but their General, their jetii is suddenly right there, again, and this time they’re saying no, no, this just won’t do at all. The shinies all go pale, wondering how to explain that they weren’t trying to be disobedient–
And then the General is gently ushering them all back into the line to grab yet another portion, cheerfully babbling about the shinies needing to “catch up” with their older brothers, to “put some meat on their bones.”
They all look at one another helplessly until the bravest, or perhaps the dumbest, of them pipes up asking if the General was planning on eating them if supply lines got cut off somewhere down the line. Several identical voices try to cut him off, drown out his insubordination, but the General clearly hears the comment and. And laughs.
Well.
The brothers who all came back from the front to visit them on Kamino always did say that life was very different once you were assigned a General…
Bringin’ the chubby!clones back because I made myself sad and need to be cheered up
Like, I know in the Apprentice books they mentioned that his parents were farmers, but that was also the scene where he has a vision of his “brother”, Owen. That has recently been revealed to be a vision of the future, not the past, and he was seeing Owen Lars as a brother because his bond with Anakin would make them sort of family. That makes me wonder whether the parents in his vision were his, or Shmi and Cliegg.
I like to imagine all sorts of crazy variations of “what are Obi’s parents like”. I think my favorite one is “he has a giant network of extended family, all of whom are large, formidable Celts and Obi-wan does not know what to do with this information”.
Imagine it being the middle of the Clone Wars, and Obi-wan and his gang of clones happen to land on Stewjon for whatever reason. Maybe they needed rations or maybe they were hiding from Separatists, who knows. And this absolute giant of a man stomps up out of a glen, looks them over, scratches his gigantic beard, and then nods to himself.
“About time ye showed yer face around these parts, lad,” he thunders, and half the clones jump and put a hand to their blasters while the other half are still in awe of his beard.
Obi-wan senses something familiar about the man, but is a little distracted at the moment, scanning the skies for Separatist scouts, and so he only manages a polite, “I’m sorry?”
And then finds himself staring up at this very rough, weatherbeaten face that is suddenly much closer to him than it was before.
“Well,” says the giant, “Yer mother’ll be pleased to see ye at any rate. Didn’t get very tall, did ye?”
The clones feel they should be slightly insulted by this man so casually remarking on Their General’s height, but at the moment Ghost Company is a little more concerned about this talk of mothers.
And within the next three hours the lot of them have been unceremoniously adopted into the sprawling Kenobi clan, simply by the Old Kenobi throwing open a door in a hill and bellowing, “Welcome to the Warren!”
A few Jedi wonder, when Kenobi and the Ghost Company finally turn up again, why they’re all sporting thick beards and bantering in a regional accent they do not recognize, and some find themselves asking what’s prompted Kenobi to wear his robes over his armor in a fashion more like a kilt at times, but they never quite get a real explanation out of any of them.
The Kenobi-Clan has lived a rather sheltered live (by galatict standard) up to the time Obi and his Clan… eh Vod… eh clone soldiers show up. It’s the first time the Kenobis hear about the war currently going on and one of theirs being in the thick of it.
Of course there’s an uproar about it…
“AH GREAT BATTLE??? SPANNING ALMOST OVER ALL THE KNOWN GALAXY???!!! AND WE WEREN’T INVITED???!!!??? TO THE AMORY!!!”
(Mace’s first reaction to seeing over half the Kenobi Clan in their traditional battle amor on the front steps of the temple demanding to be let in on the fun is to take a large gulp of the self brewed brandy he has stashed in his councilor seat)
It was always awkward, guarding the clusters of evacuees while they waited for transport. There was never enough room for everyone at once, no matter how many or how few there actually were. It was a weird, perpetual problem most of them had given up trying to figure out, and by now they were resigned to the hurry-up-and-wait of standing around, being stared at, and answering the occasional question (usually with something useless and canned like
“Just be patient, sir/ma’am.”
“We have search teams out looking for others, if they find your son/daughter/mother/father/assorted relatives/friends, you will be able to meet them at the rendezvous point.”
“No you cannot bring your impractically huge, completely useless, incredibly valuable hunk of crap on board we can put THREE FUCKING PEOPLE in the same space your antique piano/vintage speeder/pedigreed racing bantha would take up, sit the fuck down.”)
Getting biffed in the back of the bucket with a rubber ball is more unusual. Getting taken out at the knees by something like 200 kilos of fur and muscle preoccupied with chasing said ball is something close to terrifying.
Especially when said furpile immediately leaves off its pursuit to stand over him, making anxious, high-pitched noises and stuffing its snout into the gaps in his armor and drooling enough that his blacks are becoming uncomfortably damp.
Someone is swearing off in the distance and getting closer in a patter of sprinting feet, and he tries to shove the furpile off of him, to no avail. Not that he can’t move it, it just goes right back to clambering all over him as soon as he tries.
“Shit, SHIT, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, he’s friendly, promise–!” the runner yells, and the furpile looks up with a distinctly happy-sounding whuff.
“Zee! NEIN. Platz!”
OOF. The furpile takes that as some kind of signal to flop down on top of his chest and stomach. Surprisingly neatly, all things considered, its legs all drawn straight and close to its body. Can animals stand at attention? It’s doing that. Trick snorts loudly into the coms, but manages to keep it together publicly.
“DAMMIT ZEE! FUSS!”
OOF. OW. The beast’s leaping push off his stomach nearly caves his plates in, and by the time he rolls to his feet, it’s sitting neatly at the runner’s (a girl! An ALIEN girl, green and tattooed like General Unduli) heel, panting lightly.
“I’m SO sorry, I missed the throw, are you alright?”
Of course he is, is she crazy? Takes more than that to take one of them down. “Yes ma’am,” he says, instead.
“Oh good. He’s friendly, he just… Doesn’t realize how big he is, y’know?”
“Not really, ma’am.”
“Uhm. Right. I. Er. See, I used to let him sit in my lap when he was little, and he thinks he still fits, I guess? He’s only about as smart as a five-year-old, which is plenty smart for a canid, but, y’know, still kinda dumb.”
She probably means Galactic Standard age-to-intellect ratios, not what they think of as a five-year-old, which are plenty smart and what most species considered preteens.
“If you say so, ma’am.”
She looks nervous, embarrassed. Civvies are so fucking weird.
“You uh… You want to pet him?”
What?
They all look at each other awkwardly. Doesn’t look like much to civvies, but you spend enough time in a bucket and you learn to make your bucket and body as expressive as a face, with small movements.
/“Should we? I mean. We’re supposed to keep them happy…”/ Razor mutters hesitantly.
/“You just want to pet the canid,”/ Trio drawls.
/“Kind of a lot, yeah. Took Catch out like he got hit with a damn freighter, it deserves it.”/
/“Fuck you, too.”/
Trio is obviously rolling his eyes, but shifts a little to block Razor from the eyeline of anyone who might yell at him for screwing around on duty. Squint picks up his other flank, and Razor half-crouches down like one of the civvie idiots in a contraband holonovel, holding his hands out to the canid.
The girl makes a short gesture and the thing gallops up to Razor, shoving its big, meaty head under his hands with its pink tongue lolling out. It seems to like having its huge, tall ears ruffled, and when Razor reaches down to roughly drag his hand through the thick fur on its chest, it immediately flops over onto its side, drooling all over his boot with an expression of utter bliss.
Razor’s startled huff of laughter might actually be loud enough to be heard through his helmet, but who could blame him? Apparently if you rub the right part of a canid’s belly, the back legs kick. The girl is smiling too. That’s good. Evacuees don’t smile much. They did a good.
Pets aren’t usually allowed to be evacuated, due to space constraints, but sometimes there’s exceptions for useful animals. This one is clearly good for morale. They’ll make sure it gets on the transport.
AAAAAAAAH OH MY GOD YES ZEE IS BEST BOY. And poor catch! I;m just going to be rubbing my face in this for an hour or six.
BettSplendens Tumblr Evac 