#swcj2025

Star Wars Celebration Japan badges

New logo and still from The Mandalorian and Grogu

Thanking SWCJ for giving us Anidala crumbs 🤧

They even have a dish based off them on the menu:

Ode to the Regs

To us, they were never just clones. They were our heroes, our heartbreak, our favorite lines of dialogue. They mattered in ways no screen time could ever measure– because we saw them deeper than the producers ever intended them to be seen.

Yet– The Empire tossed them aside. The writers forgot them.

Cody walked away from the machine. But the story didn’t follow. Echo left the Batch- the spotlight- because he still had work to do. But the story didn’t follow. Howzer stood tall, defiant in the face of injustice. But the story didn’t follow. Wolffe stayed behind- still in the Empire’s grip when the curtain closed. But the story didn’t follow.

So many threads, left to blow aimlessly in the breeze, Left untied.

Fives never made it to rebellion or retirement. He died in the heart of the Republic he tried to save– a casualty not of failure, but of being too loyal, too loud, too true.

But has his story truly endured? Have the writers carried the weight of his legacy- the truth he died for, the warning he left behind? Or has he been reduced to a footnote- misremembered, misrepresented, and missing from the story- the posters- he helped shape?

Then, there’s Rex. We know he survives, but his survival has not been told. Where is the tale of the choices he made between war and rebellion? Where is the ache of command, the cost of living past your brothers? Where is the conversation with Howzer that turned defiance into a cause? Where is the moment he found Cody? Dead or alive? Where is the night he pulled Wolffe out of the darkness?

It’s a bitter irony. The galaxy discarded them. And now canon does the same.

But even if their names fade from scripts, from screens– We carry them.

In fanworks. In art. In fiction. In whispered ‘stay with me’s and battlefield ghosts. In every story where they still get to matter.

They weren’t built to last. But they will. For us. Read the full version here (AO3).

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Banner art by @spooky-daggers