#the cavalry arrives

[sulkybender]

Do you have any zukka fic recs 🥺 I’ve been starving lately

Yeah! Very happy to.

I wasn’t sure what you were asking for—my fics or stories by other writers? what length or mood?—so I organized a little chocolate box for ya.

Made me cry but in a good way: Boomerangs and Rainbows by mindbending

Modern au: Mark Time by foil Black eyes always watch the clock Sometimes a future I've already had before aka “feral foster kid Izumi”

Amnesia: People you've been before

Fire Lord Zuko: Nightmares and Reveries by HisMomoness the firebender’s guide to living life after destiny by chuffystilton

Older Zukka falling in love and helping each other heal: broken lines series

Zuko comforts Sokka: Better Days by CSHfic, VSfic

Sexy and deranged: A Worthy Sacrifice by anarchycox Self-Taught by QueenDollopHead

Sexy and omegaverse: full by agni_kai

Everybody loves alcoholic Zuko: Pretty burn series If there's a way out, it'll be step by step through the black

That one time I made a legal drama: Burned out, still glowing

[azertyrobaz]

You're our kid, Omega.

[queen-daya]

Free Therapy for Bad Batch Fans

[morethansky]

HUNTER & CROSSHAIR // Protectiveness

[laughhardrunfastbekindsblog]

I cannot believe it didn't dawn on me before...

When Clone Force 99 is first introduced, they save Echo from imprisonment and experimentation on Skako Minor.

In the Bad Batch series finale, Echo saves Clone Force 99 (or what remains of it 💔) from imprisonment and experimentation on Tantiss.

The cavalry first saved Echo; now, he's saving the cavalry.

(If we want to take it one step further: in the series premiere, the cavalry returns to Kamino to save Omega. Now, in the series finale, Omega helps save them.)

Also, I find it rather poetic that, after years of Clone Force 99 being rejected and shunned by the regs, it's regs who agree to help free them from Tantiss.

[rebekadjarin]

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

not to minimize the gravity of war, but i need more people to know about:

Bicycle Warfare

bicycles have several advantages over horses & fuel-powered vehicles, with the result that bicycle infantry has in fact played a significant role in 20th century warfare...

it turns out that warfare sometimes involves battalions of bicycle-riding soldiers. (and while i personally am sick of war films, I'm willing to make an exception here because there really needs to be a movie about this.)

[locitapurplepink]

I know this gifset aren't perfect but I did my best to make. Hunter and Omega have their trust to Crosshair to take Dr. Hemlock down for once and all.

[adh-d2]

*comes out of fugue state*

"...Zaddy..."

*gaze returns to the middle distance*

[keeradaks]

[archivistofnerddom]

That was exactly the ending I wanted!

No one from the Batch died, even if there were some scares along the way. (Well, Hemlock and Rampart were killed, but I’m not that sad about it. Nala Se went out in an honorable fashion.)

The surviving clones and the kids are safe and get to live peaceful lives.

The Batch got to settle down and live a happy life on Pabu.

You know Wrecker finally got to fish full-time, like he was meant to do. After being a big bruiser for so long, he’s finally able to be somewhere his strength can be used to build, not destroy.

Crosshair gets to figure out who he is without his shooting hand, which is honestly the healthiest thing for him. He’s able to heal!

Echo is continuing his work for the clones. (Emerie is going with him as his adopted daughter sister and ally.)

We get to see a grown Omega choosing to leave to help the Rebellion, to help people. She’s going to be a pilot, and she took Tech’s goggles with her as a momento and as a token of good luck. (Not me getting teary and happy at her red headband.)

Also, big shoutout to Gonky for still being around and being a delight.

Older Hunter has a beard and a ponytail. (Hunter girlies, go off and thirst! He aged like fine wine.)

Hunter and Omega end this series being the emotional core connection that we’ve seen from the beginning. Yes, it’s sad to see her leave Pabu, but she’s got another fight in her. Hunter respects that.

And Batcher, of course, is always the best dog!

That ending, while bittersweet, was satisfying as fuck.

It also leaves open the possibility that the surviving members of the Batch (Echo included) fought with Rex to overthrow the Empire during the time of the OT. (That fits Sabine’s narration at the end of Rebels when she mentions clones (plural) fighting with Rex. At that point, the only other surviving Seelos Squad member was Wolffe, so the other clones had to come from somewhere.)

Anyway, the Bad Batch ended so well. I’m teary and very satisfied.

[azertyrobaz]

For Tech

[magicandmundane]

Something I really loved about the finale was Omega, Hunter, Wrecker, Crosshair, and Echo saving each other. It wasn’t just her saving the boys or vice versa, but all of them fighting for each other and the future they wanted.

[queen-daya]

Hunter Being Omega’s Dad -> The Cavalry Has Arrived (2/4)

[avalon-knightly]

Each of the CX troopers from TBB finale mirrors a member of the Bad Batch.

The one on the far left is clearly the muscle, mirroring Wrecker. The design of the helmet looks similar, as well--the same can be said for the other CX troopers, especially in the "eyes".

The one holding the spear seemed most likely to have been the lead, and his build and helmet "eyes" look the most like Hunter. He was also the one to catch Omega.

The one with the blades looks the most like Crosshair--mostly in how lanky he looks.

CX-2... well, we all know who that is.

The last one--the one with the visor--appeared after the others, just like how Echo was the last to join the Batch. This was also the only CX trooper to have a visor, rather than those "eyes", and the shape of it looks like Echo's helmet. This also reminded me of Echo's macrobinoculars from "Rookies".

[heyclickadee]

I understand that people are going to cope how they are going to cope, and trying to find meaning in the handling of Tech in season three is part of that, but it’s also okay to criticize the show.

I like a good character death. Tech’s departure was not that. My issue is not that he’s presumed dead, my issue is that it and the handling of it is nonsense. So (I once again get very negative about my favorite show under the cut):

1. When you kill off a main character, you really have to kill them off. How you do so can vary from story to story, but you really have to do four things:

One, you need a good reason to kill them off in the first place. (“Stakes” is not a good reason. A secondary character, sure, but not a main one. More on that in a minute.)

Two, you need to make it perfectly clear that the character is, in fact, dead.

Three, you need to show the other characters processing and accepting that death. This is important because doing so will allow the audience to do the same and let the character go. This is especially important if you’re writing for a young audience.

Four, you need to make it explicitly clear that the character cannot come back. This is especially true in sci fi or fantasy. Especially if you’re the Character Resurrection franchise.

And guess what the show didn’t do?

Any of that. Any of it. What it did instead was ambiguously remove Tech from the story (uniquely in a show that loves making us watch characters die on screen; last time we saw Tech for sure he was alive), never gave a good reason for doing so in or out of the show, never showed us any character working through the impact of his loss (even though there was ample opportunity for Omega, especially, to do so), and ripped the “could he come back?” box wide open by parading CX-2 in front of our faces. It is never, at any point, handled like an actual main character death. It’s handled as a plot point from which the narrative moves fairly quickly, and treated by all parties as an absence. By all the rules of storytelling, Tech isn’t dead. He’s just ambiguously gone. And that means the writing team did a terrible job if what they wanted to do was kill him off. We should not be debating this after the show has ended if he’s actually dead.

2. I understand why some fans are trying to find meaning in losing Tech. I am not, because that meaning is not offered by the text itself. And, if the plan was to never bring him back, it should have been.

We are not, for example, offered a lesson about how not everyone comes home from the war. In order for that to have been the case, we would have needed to see someone, probably Omega, working through that. We would have needed to see her refusing to accept that Tech is gone—like we do in Plan 99, by the way—and slowly coming to terms with the idea that her brother isn’t coming home. But we don’t get that, not even as subtext.

Something else we could have gotten that would have worked with all the little visual reminders of Tech, empty chairs, name-drops, and even the CX-2 leading? The batch being so haunted by losing Tech and not really knowing what happened to him for sure that they start seeing him everywhere. But for that to work we would have needed, again, to see that as an explicit subplot where someone, probably Omega, again, gets really invested in the signs that Tech is coming back and even starts assuming that CX-2 is him, only to realize that she’s seeing what she wants to see and having to accept that Tech isn’t coming back, but that she can still keep Tech’s memory alive by following in his footsteps. That’s something you can kind of project onto what we’re given in the epilogue, but you do have to project it, because it’s entirely absent from the rest of the show.

As is, Tech’s sacrifice isn’t given any weight. From a narrative perspective, it was an incredibly contrived set of circumstances that accomplished nothing except punting Tech off a train, and gave Tech no choice but to remove himself from the story—exit, stage down. Losing Tech doesn’t, even sub-textually, serve as anyone’s motivation. It does nothing to move the plot or anyone’s character development forward. The primary motivators of season three were Omega’s kidnapping, Crosshair’s PTSD, and Hemlock needing to get Omega back.

Tech’s absence does nothing to move anything forward and only really serves to slow the plot down and make the others struggle to do anything because he’s not there to carry the team like he did in the first two seasons—and nothing about that would have played out any differently if Tech spent the season in a coma in a bacta tank. The only part of Tech’s sacrifice that has meaning is that he loved his family enough to offer it. And that is profound, but that’s not something that would be negated by a return because the love and the offer remain. As for his presumed death? His return couldn’t have taken meaning away from that, because the show never gave it any meaning in the first place.

And no, Tech “dying” isn’t something I have to accept. Tech isn’t a real person, he’s an idea, and an idea that didn’t come to fruition. I can point out the ways the handling of his departure didn’t work all day if I want.

3. CX-Tech was not an overly online theory. I need people to understand this. It was an assumption made by most of the casual audience. My sister, who has no contact with the fandom and doesn’t like me discussing the show at all until she’s seen it, assumed he was Tech. My brother-in-law, who was a die-hard Tech-has-to-be-dead-shut-up guy for the entire hiatus and the first half of season three, was convinced he was Tech. Every kid I’ve spoken to who watched the show thought he was Tech and is deeply confused that he got speared like that. My brother, who doesn’t even watch the show but who does walk by when I’m watching it sometimes, thought he was Tech. You can’t get more casual and away from the fandom than that.

The thing is, the answer we get isn’t that he’s not Tech. It’s, “We’re not telling.” Which means that as it currently stands, a season-and-a-half of CX buildup amounted to a five minute boss fight and a non-answer. That’s…not something that works! That’s atrocious writing if that was the whole sum of their intent all along.

And you can say, well, that was a clever misdirect! Plot twist! Except, one, misdirects and twists only work if the real answer is more satisfying than the false one, otherwise it just falls flat. Two, if it was a misdirect, it’s not one the creative team is willing to own. No one will touch the Tech-CX-2 parallels with a twenty-foot pole, except the Kiners, who have incredibly meaningful explanations for every musical choice but then say shit like, “that chord just sounds good in brass” about Battle of the Snipers (…before going on to say that the four note lose motif from “Plan 99” is Tech’s leitmotif…which is also all over Battle of the Snipers…and is only there according because the batch is divided in that scene, a scene in which Crosshair’s leitmotif is entirely absent even though he’s just supposed to be fighting his own dark side represented by a guy who’s totally not Tech. Sure. I’m going to go eat drywall.) Because acknowledging that and saying that was supposed to be Tech will just make the audience angrier, and they may not even be allowed to do so, and saying that it is Tech—you can understand why they can’t do that, right? The implications are horrific. But that horrific implication is probably what at least some of the casual audience who will never interact with the fandom or a single interview is going to walk away with.

4. The thing that bothers me most about all of this is the combined toxicity of the fandom and the leading from the marketing and social media. Part of the fandom saying that there were never any signs Tech could have survived (in Star Wars, no less) is starting to feel like gaslighting; and while I don’t think there was any malice in the leading in the marketing and social media—I’m even willing to give a tiny bit of leeway for the creative team maybe knowing something we don’t yet—it was handled badly, expectations for this season should have been set early and clearly, and as of right now it all feels like an incredibly cruel prank at autistic fans expense, whatever the intent may have been or may still be.

5. And finally, here’s the thing: I’m willing to give the writers a bit of leeway on this. I’m willing to grant that some choices may have been out of their hands for unknown reasons. I’m even willing to say that maybe they’re not really done with this story yet, that The Bad Batch could just be the first chapter of a longer show that was split up for stupid business reasons, and that the finale is the way it is because they had to have an ending of sorts without actually resolving anything. I’m willing to grant a lot of grace there. In fact, I actually think there’s a very good chance we’ll still get Tech back alive in canon, and sooner than later, if only because no one (not even the voice actors) seems happy about this, most fans are coping but disappointed at best, the creative team got asked about Tech non-stop for a solid year and a half, and the writers don’t seem at all committed. We know from the rest of the show that they know how to definitively kill a guy, and, frankly, Tech in the first two seasons comes across as something of a writer favorite. They like using him!

But whatever I’m hoping or suspecting, and whatever leeway I’m willing to grant the creative team here, the final product is all we have right now. And I am going to criticize that final product for badly handling a (presumed) character death and straight up breaking the central conceit of the show in doing so.