You decide to give Captain Howzer his first ever bouquet of flowers.
Warnings:Fluff, established relationship, kissing, flower giving, not beta read
Word Count:1302
Pairing: Captain Howzer x gn!Reader
a/n: I know I said I would write the next flower fic in my A Blossoming Love series for cobb, but I just couldn’t resist writing one for Howzer!! I love him so much already and just wanna spoil him tbh. So here you go! Enjoy giving captain howzer some flowers for the first time!
I understand that everyone looks at Anakin and Obi-Wan and swoons over the way they look, but I hate the fact that not a single human, (other than Ventress… when she kisses the clone she had just stabbed) acknowledge the beauty that are the clones.
I mean that jawline, the hollow cheeks…
Those legs….
That hair…
That perfectly placed tear-drop tattoo…
Those hands…
That skull tattoo….
The beard…
those moves…
Those eyes…
those eyes guys….
There’s a lot to appreciate. A lot of beauty besides Anakin and Obi Wan. And I just want everyone in the Star Wars Universe to acknowledge these looks as well and see these boys blush at the smallest compliments…
IS THAT HUNTER RESPECTING HOWZER’S SACRIFICE ON HIS ARMOR ?!?!
i definitely like the idea that it’s some sort of (non-fatal) tribute to Howzer, as in “we remember you sacrificing your freedom to let us escape” and “we won’t forget to come back for you one day” etc etc..
but i also think it could be a reminder to Hunter: “They’re good men, I have to try and get through to them.” A reminder, a small hope, that maybe one day he can get through to Crosshair and get him back. Or maybe just a reminder that not all clones are completely pro-Empire and there are others out there, like Howzer and his squad, who are good men who can and should be saved.
Okay, there seems to be a lot of confusion on how the inhibitor chips actually work.
First, people keep on saying “the chip hasn’t been activated” in certain clones. This isn’t correct. The inhibitor chips were always active throughout the clone wars. They make clones less aggressive, and more willing to obey orders. They also influenced them to be loyal to the Republic instead of merely the Jedi they served. This was done so that if the Jedi ever defected, the clones wouldn’t follow them blindly, but remain true to the government. Inhibiting someone’s free will is only effective if you program them to be loyal to you specifically - otherwise, they’ll be so suggestable, they’ll follow anyone and be easily turned. Even with these measures, some clones were a lot less pliable than others - Slick, Cut, Fives, etc.
Now, I think what most people are thinking when they say the chips weren’t activated is referring to Order 66. Order 66 simply activated a sub-program of the chip that caused the clones to prioritize eliminating the Jedi over any mission. And what were they told? That the Jedi had betrayed the Republic…which the clones are programmed to believe is the highest good. If the Jedi betray the Republic, they automatically become its biggest threat and so the clones are especially motivated to follow this order.
However, Order 66 caused some of them to seem to lose their personalities entirely. It’s important to note that this didn’t happen to all the clones - contrary to popular belief, not all the clones became mindless robots. And once the Jedi were all dead, the sub-program that prioritized the mission to kill them was no longer pressing on their minds.
All the clones received Order 66 - they were all told the Jedi defected. Whether or not a clone was directly working under a Jedi was irrelevant - for the program to work, they all had to believe it happened. Rex was quite clear on this when he told Ahsoka “It’s all of us. The entire GAR has been ordered to hunt down and kill the Jedi Knights”. Presumably, clones who didn’t work under Jedi probably didn’t struggle as much with programming because they might not have been pulled from their assignments to hunt Jedi - it was enough that they believed the Jedi betrayed the Republic.
Here’s where I think some of the free-thinkers are starting to pop up again - like Howzer. The Republic was “re-organized” into the Empire. Some of the more pliable clones might have just accepted this without question, seeing it as just another name for the government they were taught to be loyal to. They may be confused, but all they know is how to be soldiers, and they can continue to do that under the Empire. This isn’t so much the chip’s influence as it is just the way they were raised and trained. They’re still needed and they have standing orders to remain…for now.
Except, we know that the Empire is beginning to see the clones as obsolete. They want a new class of soldier. In the books and comics, we saw how many clones (Cody especially) resented “War Mantle”, the directive that started replacing clones with civilian troops. Incidently, that’s the name of the episode after next week, so I’m sure we’ll see more of this play out. Either way, we’re bound to see a lot more clones showing their personality and questioning orders when they realize the Empire is not as worthy of loyalty as the Republic.
Howzer and his team are just some of the first to acknowledge that the Empire is not the Republic. They were programmed to be loyal to the former, and the latter is proving to be quite different in its ideals and methods. The inhibitor chips that made them unswerving loyal to the Republic are less effective at keeping them loyal to the Empire, and with the Order 66 programming fulfilled, the overall effectiveness of the chips may be lessening. They’re still more pliable than other soldiers, but they’re certainly not mindless zombies.
In Crosshair’s case, we know they dialed up his chip to make him more loyal - but I suspect that we’ll find a lot of his behavior has been influenced by his own personality, not just the chip. Sorry, Crosshair stans, but a lot of the ideas about the nature of Crosshair’s character are straight out of fanfiction or headcanons and are not reflected in the actual writing. In any case, time will tell how much of his brutality toward his brothers is the chip and how much is him.
In any case, clones questioning orders is not as impossible as many seem to think. The Jedi are gone, Order 66 isn’t pressing on them, so for any clone who didn’t have his brain permanently altered from the initial override, they are more or less exactly how they were before the war ended. Rex went back to normal after having the chip removed (though he’s still loyal to the Republic even with the chip gone). Many of the others are back to normal too, with the chips back to performing their primary functions…with varying degrees of success, just as they always did.
