Star Wars Fandom Addiction Overflow

I’m NERVOUS AS HELL about this, but here goes. So…I’ve been working on this for what feels like forever. I hate my voice, and it was super hard to try to find an instrumental version of this song but…at least it’s something? I hope someone besides me likes it.

I took the song Soldiers by Otherwise, and translated it into Mando’a. There was some slight tweaking of lyrics, as can be expected. I think the only words I invented were haa’gaid, for ‘eye-plate’ or ‘visor’, and akaan’orjor, for ‘war-shout’ or ‘battlecry’. Also the more I look at this the more I want to pick my own grammar apart but I AM RESISTING THAT URGE.

I totally recommend learning the lyrics in Mando’a, playing the song in the background, and singing along yourself. Makes you feel like a badass ^_^

EDIT: I’m just gonna tag everyone who’s been liking my Mando’a stuff generally. reconfemmandoforares nervousmando alreadylost suspendnodisbelief

Mhi Cuy’ Verde

Jii ca'nara nariti cuun cetare, Ib'tuur jatne tuur ash'ad ash'amu, Te'habi be tal cuun haa'gaide.

Nu draar mhi ven'kakovidi, Nu'cuy’ mayen par'cuun su'vaab, Mar'eyi kot bah shukala gar chaab. Cuy’ mhi te adate draar shuk'la, Ti cuun kyr'yc haal, mhi akaani ‘kay kyr'am Mhi cuy’ verde! Mhi cuy’ verde! Mhi cuy’ verde!

Ni moti olar juaan gar, Ibi'ca mhi akaani par cuun oya'se, Copaani susulu gar akaan'orjor.

Gar akaan'orjor!

Cuy’ mhi te adate draar shuk'la, Ti cuun kyr'yc haal, mhi akaani ‘kay kyr'am Mhi cuy’ verde! Mhi cuy’ verde!

Mhi te adate draar nu'ru'partayli (partayli) Mhi ne'nuhoyi, mhi nu'hut'uune Mhi cuy’ verde! Mhi cuy’ verde! Oya!

Mhi moti, eso de eso Mhi moti, eso de eso Mhi moti, eso de eso Gar nu'lise eyayti, gar enteyo akaani!

Mhi moti, eso de eso Mhi moti, eso de eso Mhi moti, eso de eso Gar nu'lise eyayti, gar enteyo akaani!

Cuy’ mhi te adate draar shuk'la, (shuk'la) Ti cuun kyr'yc haal, mhi akaani ‘kay kyr'am Mhi cuy’ verde! Mhi cuy’ verde!

Mhi te adate draar nu'ru'partayli (partayli) Mhi ne'nuhoyi, mhi nu'hut'uune Mhi cuy’ verde! Mhi cuy’ verde!

Mhi cuy’ verde!

ENGLISH (More Literal)

We Are Soldiers

Now is the time to put on our boots Today is a perfect day for someone else to die Remove the blood from our visors

Not never will we cower There isn’t anything for us to still do Find the strength to conquer your fear

We are the people who are never broken With our last breath, we fight ‘til the death We are soldiers! We are soldiers! We are soldiers!

I stand here beside you This night we fight for our lives I want to hear your battlecry

Your battlecry!

We are the people who are never broken With our last breath, we fight ‘til the death We are soldiers! We are soldiers!

We are the people who are never unremembered (remember) We do not sleep, we are not cowards, We are soldiers! We are soldiers! Oya!

We stand, side by side We stand, side by side We stand, side by side You cannot flee, you must fight!

We stand, side by side We stand, side by side We stand, side by side You cannot flee, you must fight!

We are the people who are never broken (broken) With our last breath, we fight ‘til the death We are soldiers! We are soldiers!

We are the people who are never unremembered (remember) We do not sleep, we are not cowards We are soldiers! We are soldiers!

what if the reason mandalorians don't give their kids to the Jedi isn't because the have beef with the jedi because they HAVENT always had beef with the Jedi, it's because they have their own organization of force-users?

now at first, you might IMAGINE this would be an organization of warriors. but unlike the Jedi, Mandalorians are a society built around war and they do not teach self-restraint as a tenet early on. I imagine that it only took one or two little dances with the dark side before Mandalorians figured out that it beehooved them to keep the space psychics OFF the battlefield.

So instead i'm imagining some kind of Oracle-of-Delphi type situation where their primary function is more or less providing vibe checks. Young mandalorians identified as force-sensitive are sent to live in a remote temple where they are raised as novices and attendants to the current "oracles" and learn how to use the force (though they have different terms for it) to get a feeling for things. Then, when--for example--the mand'alor comes to them asking about whether or not to undertake a military campaign, they'll either be like "yeah go for it buddy" or "ehhhhh i've got a bad feeling about this."

As someone who's dabbled in black smithing, i think it actually would work well as a training for force users. You hit the metal with a lot of power, but all that power needs to be controlled or you'll ruin the piece you're working on.

Daily work requires both power and also great control? Someone who is seen advising the members of the tribe as well as guiding the alor? Fights with a martial weapon in a galaxy focused on blasters?

Sometimes a clone. If their personality or conduct is deemed untenable for serving their purpose. Whether they're not obedient enough, or they're too eccentric, or admin can't find a unit they mesh with, or they're crumbling noticeably under combat stress, or whatever else, things aren't working out. But the war needs bodies and they're already trained and not easy to replace. That's when they get reconditioned.

Reconditioning is achieved by irretrievably destroying, on a neurological level, all of a clone's acquired memories beyond a desired point. Muscle memory and battle intuition and so on may remain, but their personal narrative is retroactively erased, and they're moved to a new unit so that none of their siblings can tell them about what they used to be like. No one recognizes you. You don't even recognize yourself. What is there to recognize?

From a purely strategic standpoint, it's an absolute win. A freshly reconned clone has all the malleability of a shiny, and all the instincts of a veteran. It's less wasteful than execution and more effective than disciplinary action (it does not occur to the Kaminoans that this is disciplinary action. It's maintenance to them.)

And maybe the Kaminoans don't see this any differently than we see going back to an old save file in a video game. After all, it's not even confirmed they see their customers as people, let alone the product they sell. Maybe they don't bring reconditioning up out of the blue, but it's not like they go out of their way to hide what it is, because they don't see any reason why they should.

A reconned clone doesn't know their old name, but they know they used to have one. They don't know what battles they fought in, but they know they fought. They don't know who (besides themselves) they've lost. They know they used to be someone else, but they don't know who they used to be. And they never will.

And the others, any clone whose unit accepted at least one new member who's post-recon, they know too. They know what was done to their new squadmate, what was taken from him, and they know that could be them next if they act out of line enough.

No one tells their Jedi because it's assumed they already know. If it's normal enough, if it's treated nonchalantly enough where they grew up, what reason would the clones even have to think civilians and Jedi aren't subjected to reconditioning? That it isn't simply a part of living with other living beings? At what point would the question even occur?

There's only one way to heal from something like that, and brothers instinctively know what to do because this has always been part of their lives. Your name was taken? You can pick your new one whenever you're ready. You can't remember who you were? You're still someone now. Your memories are gone? The new ones start here. Who are you? You're about to be one of us.

The personhood you never even legally had was stolen, but you can still be a person (how much of this is consciously thought, let alone said, and how much is only subconscious or implied varies from clone to clone, unless of course there are outsiders- longnecks, Jedi, civs- around who might hear).

So Dogma, he's been reconned, but it was a long time ago (what passes for a long time in this war) now. He's had time to rebuild. He has an identity as an individual again, he has a sense of what kind of person he is and what he's like. He's gotten on about as well as can be expected for someone who's survived that, such that if you weren't there when he first came to the 501st from wherever he was reconned from you may not even be able to tell it happened.

And the thing is that it's totally realistic for him to have just always been like this. You can think about all the other weird or unique traits one brother or another has always had, and conclude that of course, he was just decanted with a stick up his ass. There's no reason to think anything specific happened to shape him, not unless you're already thinking he might have been reconned.

But Dogma knows he was reconditioned. Of course he knows. He was there. He'll never remember Before, but he remembers not remembering. He knows he used to be someone else, someone who was deemed unsuitable to the war effort, and then because of that he was made no one for a bit, and now he is Dogma.

And your whole self, that's a lot to lose for anyone. But when your body and your life and your armor belong to the Republic, when your time isn't your own, when practically everything you've ever used or touched technically belonged to someone else. When even your choices are mostly down to which orders to follow. Then.

Your experiences, your name, your individual quirks- they're all you have (had). And how vulnerable, how fleeting are these things that make you you, when they're all stored in a brain that was bought and paid for and made-to-order? That brain can be reconditioned (or reconditioned again) at any time, if it isn't splattered on the soil of some Separatist planet first.

So Dogma, in the horror of those initial days, after he was someone else but before he was himself, he never wanted to go through this again. To grieve like that again. So he became the person that his superior officers and his makers and his owners would never again decide needed to be reconditioned. And that's the conditions his new self develops in, always under the shadow of what he could have to live through if this doesn't work out.

And that's who he is now. These are the traits he's known for now. So before we ever get to Umbara, that's who he's been for (what passes for) a long time. A success story. A damn good soldier. An obedient, competent, manageable, useful to the war effort, worth keeping around clone. And that's who he remains, because the alternative is unthinkable (except he does think it, thinks about it every night, catches himself calculating at critical moments how likely it is to happen again).

He turned out right, the second time. He had to.

And that is the man who pulled the trigger on General Krell.

I've written a lot about Reconditioning and posted none of it woops so I have several headcanons that line up pretty much exactly as yours with small variations. most of them apply to the command-class clones because that's who my clone series was about.

i had Bly reconditioned as a cadet and returned to the command class so everyone knew he got Reconditioned and mourned his past self to his face

because of this experience command-level clones find Reconditioning as a concept pretty harrowing

rank and file clones consider it more like a Hard Reset button, reserved for extreme behavior cases where the usual disciplinary measures don't work

but also for clones who get too much war trauma. if you show enough shell shock symptoms, someone's probably gonna gently recommend Reconditioning.

if that grieves you, wait til you hear that half the time clones volunteer themselves when it all gets to be Too Much

Some very much Do Not volunteer, though, and I had one clone swap his ID microchip (not canon, but i figure Kaminoans Would) with a dead clone and stole his identity to avoid Reconditioning

Bly's also wasn't voluntary, one of his fellow command cadets reported him but no one knows who it was (except me >: ) )

Imagine being a clone who has requested to be reconned due to trauma. Imagine waking up on the last morning of. When depending on how observant of Mandalorian things, one might normally say, "I’m still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal." Except. Well.

In your thoughts, to your dead, saying either afterward or instead, "I'm sorry, but I won't be able to remember you after today." I'm sorry, but it hurts too much. I'm sorry, but it's making me a liability in battle. I'm sorry, but I need to be able to move on.

If your dead hear you, if they know you, you don't expect forgiveness. You don't expect love. But you hope they know it wasn’t that their memory wasn't worthy. That they lived and died no less deserving of being remembered, even though you won't remember them.

The choice is made and the procedure is scheduled and even if you could back out, you won't.

I am a being damned by the narrative and I'm taking you all with me! (But as long as we don't look back at glory days that never happened, we'll make it out of Tartarus alive)

As far as remembrance and Mandalorian-influenced clones: *evil cackle*. I've got one drabble that focuses on the Alpha class' collective refusal to pick up names (if dying once is bad, why would they wanna die twice?) And I made Captain Howzer's backstory as the only known survivor of the Battle of Ryloth, so he can struggle with the choice between condemning an entire Garrison to ignominy and the peace that Reconditioning offers. He got left behind so he cant even act on the choice but it's still a question he faces. (Ends up going with option C: alcoholism)

Remembrance is one reason why clones tend to swap armor bits with those they're especially close with. Since armor/gear tend to retain heat a little longer than the actual body (another headcanon), it's almost like the armor remembers its wearer. Even when bodies can't/won't be recovered, clones make an effort to bring back the armor, especially when a whole unit gets wiped out. They might not know the names of who fell, but the armor remembers the heat of their lives.

Once I figure out how to draw the rest of the bad batch it is OVER for my free time. Just you wait. I will be seen printing pages of them and EATING THEM as a 9 to 5 because I am INSANE and I LOVE THEM so MUCH like CRAZY because ECHO and CROSS and HUNTER and W— gets shot

Rex, resident Domino dadbrother expert and sick of their shenanigans: Absolutely not

Fives: Aw, man

Echo: :( we didn't even say anything!

Rex: And?