#ct-9902

He’s just so dang handsome 🥰

Even when sick, Tech is the walking, talking encyclopedia and by the looks of it, he hit the nail on the head with his theory!

---

This comics takes place in my Kix is the Clone Force 99′s medic AU -> [LINK] <- and was drawn in relation to this post -> [LINK] <- by @warsamongthestars

===

STAR WARS: The Clone Wars © George Lucas/ Dave Filoni/ LucasFilm/ Disney

Fourth of my shirtless clone series.

Tech from the Bad Batch!

Good LORD his hair was so annoying. I was struggling and finally made it good enough. His hands are something.

hi so i wrote out an entire ala essay response to this and it got deleted. from the start i assumed this was bait but i’m going to be less verbose in this iteration because i am not writing all of that over again just for bait and for tumblr to delete my entire discussion.

first of all, he’s a clone of jango fett, a māori man. jango fett is played by temuera morrison, a māori man. the clones are māori. temuera has put tons of māori culture into mandalorian and clone culture- jango and boba themselves are undeniably māori characters and the same goes for the clones. no matter how whitewashed the clones may be (regardless if this is a whitewashing of indigenous features or melanin), they’re still māori and those responsible for this intentional whitewashing should be held accountable.

speaking of whitewashing of indigenous features and melanin, tech is unfortunately a victim of both. his skin color is deliberately lightened to fit his “nerd archetype” (a horribly racist ideal, more on this and his autistic-coding later) and his features are also intentionally made more eurocentric (as if the clones’ models weren’t eurocentric enough) with changes such as the thinning of his face and lips alongside his pointed, skinny nose.

(photos of hot toy’s hunter and tech figures for comparison. tech’s figure is clearly built upon the typically clone face model, but it’s changed to enhance his eurocentric appearance)

this whitewashing has no basis in canon, there isn’t even an attempt to explain HOW the bad batch ended up looking so different from other clones aside from the fact that they’re specifically genetically modified. even though the kaminoans are known eugenicists, this has never been in terms of racial eugenics, rather mental eugenics. the kaminoans would have no reason to change the appearance of the bad batch, especially when clones are even discouraged from having individuality in looks. this whitewashing is a problem intentionally created by lucasfilm alone when developing their models.

you can’t just clone a indigenous guy and get a white man. even if his animated model is supposed to look completely different from other clones, he still has their kiwi accent which is quite literally part of temeura’s indigenous background. if all clones look like jango fett (which again isn’t completely true in regards to the fact that their models are ALSO whitewashed, but they’re certainly better than the bad batch) and sound like him, a simple aberration to dna in an effort to make tech a hyper-intelligent super solider wouldn’t turn him into kiwi tom cruise.

as i was saying earlier, this lightening of the skin is applied to all of the batch, yet tech seems to get the worst of it (aside from echo who’s his own complete disaster). wrecker and hunter actually can be identified as poc, which is of course good in relation to the fact that any poc character should obviously LOOK poc, but also feeds into stereotypes in another way. if tech happens to be the savant of the group, the hyper-genius, and wrecker is the himbo-ish destructive character, what does it say about their personality in regards to their skin tones? having the clone that looks exactly like a white guy as the genius while the clone that’s obviously poc as violent and aggressive is not a good look.

this racial stereotyping also feeds into tech’s autism-coding. within recent media there has been a standard of the rude, savant white guy autistic that has been popularized through characters such as sheldon from the big bang theory. i often see this comparison being drawn between tech and sheldon as a joke, but it’s quite annoying when taken seriously. as someone with autism myself, i really do adore tech as a character and his representation means a lot for me. he doesn’t feel like a shallow representation such as sheldon, whom just exists to be smart and the butt of the joke, as tech’s autism actively disables his relationships with others and severely impacts his life. he of course still does happen to fall into the “genius savant” stereotype of autism, but his relationship with autism was certainly more thought out; personally it doesn’t really happen to bother me as i tend to connect with “genius” autistic characters whom are actually fleshed out. and yet, his skin is white. it’s so unbelievably abhorrent and prejudiced that i have no idea how it was ever allowed. there can be a genius clone, but only under the condition that he’s whitewashed. there can be an autistic clone, but only under the condition that he’s whitewashed. the mere idea that a māori man could be an intelligent autistic nerd seems so foreign to the modelers that tech just had to be white. it’s consciously intentional and i cannot stress enough how repugnant it is. my heart goes out to all of the poc autistics who’s existence is constantly ignored, minimized and denied, with tech’s design being a result of this bigotry. it’s simply just so horrible that there’s an utter refusal to humanize an autistic man if he’s poc, so thus he’s whitewashed with no repercussions. i could go on and on about this for hours, but the knowing decision to make tech white because of the white boy nerd savant stereotype makes me want to rip my eyes out. it’s a blatant denial and dehumanization of poc that just flies under the radar and the fandom shouldn’t continue to perpetuate it by drawing him as white and ignoring the fact that he’s fucking māori.

last but not least, tech IS considered to be poc in canon. though the melanin on his model is practically nonexistent, his skin is still listed as “tan” in official encyclopedias and forums, the exact same as jango fett and the other clones. take the official designations from tech and jango’s wookieipedia articles respectively:

and though it rarely happens, he sometimes is shown as having the same skin tone as the other clones, notably on his lego figure (thank you lego)