Latest Posts by havoc-7 - Page 4

“Tech told me all about your…SPARKLING personality” I wanna know what Tech told Phee about Crosshair that made her so confidently sarcastic in that moment, like

Tech: oh yes, our brother Crosshair. Best sniper in the GAR, possibly the galaxy. He always kept an eye on us through his scope while we were on the battlefield.

Phee: that’s ni—

Tech: sure, he is cold and unyielding and incredibly stubborn and a little arrogant, but he always means well. He does like to pick fights with regs, but you can’t blame him, after being bullied all his life.

Phee: I guess we all have our—

Tech: there was that time where he got super upset with Hunter for not murdering that Jedi on Kaller. Then he tried to convince us to murder civilians. But he abandoned us for the Empire after that, so it wasn’t really a repeating problem.

Phee: wait—

Tech: that was when he shot Wrecker. Oh, and he tried to roast us alive in a spaceship engine. That was all under the influence of the inhibitor chip, though. Supposedly he’s had it removed since then. So his murderous tendencies have probably chilled out a little bit.

Phee:

Tech: he also used to eat glue.

Dave Filoni and Jennifer Corbett can have all my money, and all I want is a scene where Hunter and Wrecker are teasing Tech about Phee:

Wrecker: Phee and Tech are sitting in a tree, c-i-s-s-s-i-n-g…

Tech: that is NOT how you spell “kissing,” Wrecker

Hunter: he can’t spell it, but at least I bet he can do it better than you can

Wrecker: yeah!! You been practicing on your pillow, Tech?

Tech: absolutely not!

Hunter: then how are you gonna get any good at it?

Tech: *adjusts goggles* with the proper amount of research, I’m sure I would be GREAT at it

Phee: *walks in* great at what???

Tech: *chokes*

Hunter: hey Phee, you wanna do some RESEARCH with Tech??

The Bad Batch on their night to cook:

HUNTER: he’s a breakfast for dinner kind of guy. Pancakes, bacon, eggs, orange juice. He does his best to keep the kitchen mess contained, but somehow pancake batter always ends up splattered on the counter and one thing or other ends up just a little bit burned.

WRECKER: he has a “follow your heart” philosophy when it comes to cooking, which means lots of experimentation with spices and cooking times that has varying levels of success. What he really excels at is grilling. The kitchen is always a disaster when he’s done with it (which drives Crosshair up the wall, but Wrecker is the only one who can make steak exactly the way he likes it, so he never complains).

CROSSHAIR: the exact opposite of Wrecker’s philosophy—he follows the recipe incredibly exactly, with no variation, and he keeps a very close eye on everything while it cooks. Incredibly slow and methodical about it all, plus he cleans and washes up while he cooks, which means it takes him 5x longer to make dinner than the others. It drives them crazy, but it also means his food is the most consistent in terms of quality.

TECH: he also likes to experiment—not quite like Wrecker, but he’s always looking up new recipes and delicacies from the planets they’ve visited to try. He’s usually more invested in authenticity than in what his brothers will actually LIKE, which means he’s served them some of the strangest, goopiest, spiciest, unusual foods they’ve ever eaten for the sake of experience.

ECHO: he doesn’t have time to mess around in the kitchen—he’ll pop a frozen pizza in the oven or reheat some leftovers. But he makes up for it by always being the one to help out with clean up, and always cheerfully putting up with the others’ sometimes questionable cooking (let’s be honest, he probably had worse in the 501st).

I wanna know how Hunter became the leader of the Bad Batch. Like, not saying any of the others would have been better, I just mean, there were only four options: a sassy little iPad kid, a trigger-happy man bear, the problematic guy with the toothpicks, and Space Rambo. We can’t assume it was because he was the least chaotic, because nothing could be farther from the truth. In TCW season 7, Anakin asks him who they report to and he’s just like “idk man, if I knew how to fill out a report maybe I’d try and find out” and when Anakin gets snatched up by that lizard dragon thingy, the first thing his brothers do is get set up so that Hunter can windsurf behind it like a maniac because apparently that’s something he tends to do. In TBB S1 when Omega starts that food fight, Hunter tries to de-escalate the situation for approximately 3 seconds before throwing hands. All of his interactions with any sort of leadership involve a minimum of 70% sarcasm. The man has a blaster to shoot droids and chooses to stab them with a knife instead. He left cadet training and the first thing he did was get a massive face tattoo of a skull.

Like, I’m trying to imagine how that conversation went and all I can think of is, “Sir, it’s time to promote one of the members of Clone Force 99 to sergeant.” “…*long sigh*”

I think something that makes Tech’s death so tragic is the sense of invincibility that we had associated with Clone Force 99 up to that point.

They sure didn’t have plot armor—we’ve seen them get injured before, and we all know how Star Wars isn’t afraid to kill off a character—but think of all the things we’ve seen them survive: Hunter literally falling off the side of a mountain, getting shot in the chest; Tech getting hurled into a wall by Wrecker when he was under the influence of the inhibitor chip; Wrecker wrestling a rancor; surviving live rounds in a battle simulator; nearly getting roasted alive in an engine. What’s more, we’ve seen how absolutely UNHINGED their plans are, and yet, during the war, they had a 100% success rate and had never lost a single member of their squad. For a group of clones, that’s about as invincible as it gets.

And yet, in the end, they weren’t invincible. Tech was dangling from a single grappling line off a rail car that was only still dangling from the sky because Wrecker and a single connecting cable were holding it there. Neither he nor Wrecker could move without sending the rail car over. The others couldn’t move to safety unless the rail car miraculously reattached itself or ripped away. If anyone could have seen a miraculous, brilliant, crazy way out, it would have been Tech.

But he couldn’t. He saw the inevitability of what had to happen. And Tech, practical Tech, shot the connection himself when Wrecker couldn’t, because they couldn’t see that inevitability, or they couldn’t accept it—one last time, he had to help them understand.

Crosshair was right—Clone Force 99 DID die with Tech, because Clone Force 99 was invincible. Until they weren’t.

I wasn’t a die-hard Tech Lives believer (more of a “I HOPE Tech Lives” believer) but the end of the show has me grieving hard all over again, so here’s my little ode to Tech based on things I’ve noticed about him from rewatching the show:

Tech LOVES his brothers, and he genuinely misses Crosshair. When he has his heart to heart with Omega in the ipsium cavern, the way that he mentions Crosshair—even though that wasn’t even really what they were discussing—shows how often Crosshair is on his mind, so much so that he can’t really talk about people leaving and changing without bringing him up. When they get the Plan 88 from Crosshair, Tech is vocal and insistent about doing whatever they can to bring Crosshair back—because “he is still our brother.”

Tech is incredibly moral. Not that he’s any more moral than I think generally TBB is, but he’s not afraid to speak up when he sees something that he disagrees with fundamentally. “The systematic termination of the Jedi is a big one for me.” “There’s a fundamental different between taking fire in battle and being used for target practice.” Even in just the first episode, we see how firm his opinions are, based on what he believes: that people are people, that HIS BROTHERS are people, that they deserve better, that there is such a thing as right and wrong.

Tech may be practical, but that doesn’t make him any less crazy than his brothers—in fact, I would argue he is one of the more unhinged members of the bad batch. His plans and ideas see everything factually, factoring in risk not as an emotional factor but as a numerical one. He knows their skills, and what they are capable of, and he pushes them to those capabilities, even if the resulting strategy is absolutely insane. The best part is, as insane as he may be, his brothers trust him, because, as Tech himself said, he is seldom wrong.

Tech has a beautiful sense of wonder and awe for the world around him. How many times do we see him go wide-eyed as he encounters something that absolutely fascinates him—even if that thing is a Zillo beast that just ate an entire Imperial crew.

Tech is INSANE. Not unhinged, like I said earlier, but skill-wise, ability-wise, he is an absolute powerhouse. I will forever be grateful to the writers of TBB who gave us a techy, intelligent character who is not your average scrawny computer guy that we get in action movies. You have to have a lot of guts to be the guy in your squad who turns your back on the fight to bend over a computer and hack into a file or break an encryption or alter the programming—already a delicate operation, but with the added risk of getting shot with your back turned. He frickin wields double blasters so that he can shoot more clankers more efficiently (if that’s not practical Tech, I don’t know what is). He DOESN’T WEAR LEG ARMOR SO THAT HE CAN CARRY HIS TOOLS WITH HIM INTO THE FIELD. In “Faster,” we see his hand inching towards his blaster, ready to defend and protect the second it’s necessary—and you know he would’ve beaten anyone to the draw. He fought a group of Imperial troopers!!! With a broken leg!!!!!

Tech was amazing, and I hate that he’s dead, that we never got to see him grow old, that he never saw Crosshair again. But WHAT A LIFE HE LIVED.

Can’t get over I Am Ready from TBB S3 score, and everything that it represents, with the way it interweaves Omega’s theme with the theme from Tech’s farewell and just hints of the OG Bad Batch theme….

The way the bad batch’s theme is just barely there, but more of just an echo behind Omega’s theme, indicates how they are always a part of her, but how the bad batch as we knew them is no more—they have moved on, become a part of something different and beautiful and hopeful through the life Omega will lead.

Tech’s theme is more obvious, and it shows 1) how Tech’s sacrifice is fundamental in the life that Omega and her brothers have lived, always a part of them, never to be forgotten; and 2) how Omega is making her own heroic sacrifice by going off to join the Rebellion, even though she has earned just as quiet and peaceful a life as her brothers and even though it may cost her everything.

And Omega’s theme, prevalent throughout the piece, is as light and hopeful as ever, and the very last gentle chords of the piece are only the first four notes of her theme—or rather, Omega’s theme remains unfinished, because her story is not over, and her future is ahead.

Poetry isn’t a strong enough word for it.