#liminal creatures

My post was apparently really unclear, and I should've let it cook for longer instead being a self-righteous jerk about OP’s post and the tags on the reblog. 

The disconnect between what I meant to write and how people read it seems come from where I segued from the first topic, where I said they weren't all physically adults when they came off Kamino (like Domino and their cohort, or Tup and Dogma) to the rest of the post. What I meant to say was; assuming the first bit is true, it’s unlikely that they'd managed to grow mentally/emotionally 'older' than their physical age. Not under the guidance of the Kaminoans; the Kaminoans were wire mothers from decant. Trauma doesn't make you grow older faster. It just messes you up, and can make being an adult harder. 

Where I think I went wrong is failing to specify where I was only talking about the clones that I’d previously identified as being not physically adult when they graduated, and where I was talking about all the clones, ever, at any and every point in their short lives. 

The result is that I think we're mostly in agreement.

As a digression, I did notice that the OP seems to think of adulthood as an age-related event; they said something like "they're adults so they'll know about adult things like alcohol". For me, adulthood's not really a You Are Level Twenty! You Have Gained The Ability Imbibe Alcohol! thing. It's partly age and experience (knowing what your alcohol tolerance is, and how it can vary), partly a set of behaviors/ability to function (not in the abled/disabled sense, more in the self-awareness sense, ie, not being able to do washing because you're disabled isn’t it, but not being able to do washing because you've willfully stayed a ignorant manchild is). This is highly subjective which might explain where the sturm and drang is coming from.

First of all, just because the clones are all based off the same template doesn’t make them or their experiences uniform. They’re individuals; they have individual personalities, individual lives, and individual reactions to trauma. Are some of them more deeply affected by their upbringing on Kamino than others? Very likely, but it isn’t a universal constant and the idea that ALL of the clones, or at least a vast portion of them, are little more than damaged goods is… not a great take.

Since this entire thing started because I objected to a blanket statement about clones, I absolutely agree about them being individuals, down to how they react about trauma. I do think, however, you're underestimating the long term effects of a childhood (if you can even call it that) on Kamino. Even for the ones that coped more easily than others (and the ones who coped very badly would've been killed) there was quite a lot of trauma going around.

This doesn't make them damaged goods, to me. It's more an acknowledgement that there wasn’t much that was healthy about the way the survivors grew up. They’re not broken, but they’ve had to be resilient.

Victims of trauma are not emotionally stunted and incapable of behaving like adults. Anxiety and depression aren’t exclusive to children. Neither is indecisiveness. Hell, I’m a full-grown adult over the age of 30 and I still have trouble deciding what to order in restaurants. Maybe not at meltdown levels, but that shouldn’t make a difference. I don’t think anyone would imply that Chidi Anagonye on the Good Place is somehow less mature than the others just because he freezes up and has panic attacks when forced to make decisions, even over something as simple as what to order from a food cart. And while we haven’t seen much of his childhood, I’m pretty sure he didn’t suffer “chronic emotional trauma” or face any kind of abuse from his parents (other than possibly some exasperation over his indecisiveness).

We don't disagree about anything here. Of course anxiety, depression, and indecisiveness follow people into adulthood and don't make them less adult. I would say the older you get, the more chance you have (and the more responsibility you have) to be familiar with the way those things manifest in you and to develop coping strategies.  

It’s such a bizarre mindset to think that the clones, in their entirety, would have trouble making the simplest of decisions without someone there to tell them what to do. And why in the world would they’d fear reprisal over a “bad” decision regarding which drink they ordered? It’s so insulting I can’t quite wrap my head around that.  Sure, they’ve been brainwashed and conditioned to be Good Soldiers, but that has nothing to do with day-to-day minor choices.

What I was thinking of here is the way people in institutions are not used to exercising casual autonomy, and how this does affect their day to day minor choices. The link to the Dragon Age fandom meta was about this, but its really, really long, so I didn't embed it to begin with:

I work in disability services, and the people I work with have been part of the system for the majority of their lives in one way or another. Since before they can remember they’ve had most of their decisions made for them, whether it be their medical needs, their food choices, the clothes their wear, their daily schedules, etc. And yeah, some of that is based on necessity. However when you have spent your entire life having someone else choose what happens to you rather than directing the course of your life, you lose the ability to make self autonomous decisions.

Last week I had a twenty minute conversation with a man I work with about whether he wanted one crumpet or two because I was stupid enough to say ‘Are you sure you’re going to fit in two crumpets?’. I then had to explain that no, I was not telling him he couldn’t have two crumpets, I was just asking whether he felt like one or two crumpets, he could have the number of crumpets he want, I can’t tell him how many crumpets he’s allowed to eat, it’s his own damn breakfast he can have whatever the hell he wants, and if he wanted two have to crumpets he should just say to me “Shove it lady, I can have as many crumpets as I damn-well please”, just like anyone else would if someone tried to police their God-given right to crumpet intake.

And while he was laughing at the end of the conversation for the majority of it, he was looking at me with this sad, guarded expression trying to figure out how many crumpets I wanted him to have. Because that’s something he’s had to do for so long. It hasn’t been about him making choices. It’s been about him figuring out the choice other people want him to make, and then agreeing.

Twenty minutes. About freaking crumpets.

#this just gave me a ton of work feelings #as someone whose job is to help folks reconnect with their self-sufficiency and their ability to make choices #i provide options; i help explore natural resources; i support in the making of decisions that will improve quality of life  #but the thing is that honestly the ability to make choices is more important than making a ‘good’ choice #and for people who are divorced from that ability because of their circumstances - whatever they are - rekindling it is the hardest thing. #(if they had it in the first place.)

#and i’ve been in the above position multiple times #where all of a sudden i know i upset the balance; i said something to sway them; maybe i manipulated unintentionally because #they were choosing between a rock and a hard place and i could help with the hard place more #or whatever seemed to matter at the time #and even if i go back to correct my mistake; it might not work.

That, to me, speaks pretty closely to clone life, and it's a testament to how resilient they are that they do give themselves names and paint their armour, and create individuality where they can. I do have some more academic references (mostly about prisoners) if you want those; unsurprisingly, most of them also link the ability to maintain some autonomy with positive mental health outcomes. But it was this post that gave me the framing, and how some of them might have to learn how to make casual decisions.

I used a shiny in 79's on purpose; with the lights, crowding, and music, it's already a lot of new and intense things for them to handle, and now they’ve got to make the 'right' decision - they might never get to come back here, for instance, and what if they never get to drink the thing that they would’ve liked best?

Also, I’m pretty sure they don’t even know about those inhibitor chips in their heads, and I am 100% positive that those chips aren’t there to punish them over every single “wrong” choice they make. I can’t see ANY of them being afraid to make inconsequential decisions all on their own, whether they know about the chip or not. It isn’t some kind of extremist nanny sitting in their heads ready to rap their knuckles every time they order Space Coke instead of Space Pepsi, and other than jokes or hazing, I can’t see any higher-ups being likely to punish them, either. If a trooper/shiny is having trouble figuring out what to order, it’s probably because they’re spoiled for choice and want to try everything.

Are we talking about clones on Kamino or clones off Kamino here? On Kamino, they did have extremist nannies in the KE-8 Enforcers that monitored and punished deviant behavior from a panopticon. 

Regarding the chips, I meant not that the chips controlled them right now, but the people who put control chips in your head are not really people who tend to care very much about your personal wellbeing.

I can see some of them as too afraid to make decisions on their own, because I don't think they can necessarily tell which decisions are inconsequential and which ones aren't. Dogma would be a good example here; he refuses to think for himself, just follows orders and regulations until he snaps. For me, I also headcanon this as because he hasn't had practice; he's a flash-trained half-trained sergeant just off Kamino with very little actual experience in the field. His insecurity means that he doesn’t trust his own judgement. Not yet, anyway. He could have learned.

The clones’ lot in life is a terrible one, yes, and the fact that they were treated as things by galactic society (and some of the Jedi) is not something that should be ignored, but this idea that as a group they were fundamentally incapable of achieving emotional maturity because of their situation is ridiculous, as is the belief that every facet of their lives was some kind of constant struggle and that they somehow needed to claw their way into adulthood, if they could manage it at all before dying.

This is where I should've been a lot clearer, because we mostly agree. I do not think that they were fundamentally incapable of achieving emotional maturity. What I meant to get across is I think that newly graduated clone troopers, especially towards the end of the war, were not emotionally mature, and some had quite a long way to go. Here, I think of them as maybe religiously homeschooled kids who were never allowed much independence, now off to a secular college. 

Think about Domino at Rishi, bored and goofing off, not taking their duty seriously as soon as they got a little autonomy and weren’t subject to all the structure that Kamino provided. The survivors, Echo and Fives, did get the time to grow up, but I’d argue that Cut-Up and Droidbait still weren’t quite ‘adults’ when they died. Hevy, I’m a little on the fence about, but he is also the one that was mentored by another, older clone; 99 helped him reframe what was happening to him, and saw the leader that he could become.

For me, they leave Kamino without even the vocabulary to name many of the things that might be happening to them. For instance, PTSD (if they learned about it at all) could've been something that only happened to defectives who were too weak to handle what they were made for. They learn fast, but first they still need to catch up. This is where the veterans-as-role-models-and-mentors come in; the idea that they've developed effective coping strategies, and can pass it on to the shinies so they don't have to figure it out from first principles. We know cadets look up to the regular troopers, like in Boba Fett's arc when they visit Mace Windu's ship, so this is a natural fit, for me.

When I said “claw out” I meant that there’s no systemic support for any of this in the GAR. They would’ve had to make this up themselves as they went along, in snatched moments of time and access to information. Some people, including Jedi, might have noticed and helped, but by and large I think it would’ve been something the clones had to do for themselves. Mostly, they would’ve had to make their own time and develop their own body of knowledge, and that can’t always have been easy. 

The lives (and deaths) of the clones are no less tragic by acknowledging that many of the ones we know are full adults. Forced to grow up faster than most, perhaps, but still adults. Sure, there are younger ones, too, and “child soldiers” is still pretty applicable as a whole, but again, the clones are individuals, and they vary in their relative ages and emotional maturity. You can’t just dump them all in the same wastebin of “poor traumatized children who won’t have a chance to grow up.” Cody sure seems like an adult to me. And Rex. Kix. Wolffe. Others. They might lack some of the same worldly experiences as birth-borns like Obi-Wan and Anakin, but it doesn’t diminish them. They aren’t somehow “less mature” just because they had shitty fast-paced “childhoods.” Echo and Fives are probably on the “younger” end and I know of some clone OCs who are more akin to late teens in their behavior and maturity levels, but all they’re lacking is time and a little more experience. There are no physical or emotional blocks stopping them.

Here, again, we mostly agree, although I seem to put more weight on how Kamino would've made them into bonsai versions of themselves, and how they would've grown once they left, like badly home-schooled children. The term "child soldier" is also something one I should've been clearer about. I meant that they were all below the age of eighteen when they were involuntarily involved in an armed force, not that they were all literally child soldiers right now.

I also think that it would've been, in some ways, easier for the later clones to mature, because the veterans had already broken the information cordon around Kamino. Cutup knew about girls and the context in which he should be thinking about them, for instance, while I suspect that poor trooper on Geonosis was rabbit-in-the-headlights about Padme Amidala.

By Umbara, you could even argue that Fives has grown past Rex. Being an ARC trooper and getting used to working on his own would've helped, as would his natural independence, while Rex is used to working at a larger scale, but strictly within the same system he was raised in - I don’t think it’s an accident that Rex identifies with Dogma, the true believer.

Cody is definitely an adult. The OP stated that "all clones were adults", and I was trying to prove is that some of them weren't, not that all of them weren't. The ones that aren't, as you say, need time and experience, but I think some of them didn’t get it.

Heck, if we’re talking about emotional trauma stunting growth, what about Anakin? He was a slave, too (and acknowledged as such, as opposed to the clones). He had a rough upbringing, faced a lot of trauma transitioning to life in the Temple, and has had to deal with all kinds of shit ranging from the death of his mother to his clandestine marriage to Padme and the constant subtle manipulations of his “friend” Palpatine, but he’s considered a full-grown and mature adult. Well, for given values of “mature,” LOL!

I'm not sure why you don't think I'd wouldn't be including non-clone people in trauma-doesn't-make-you-older-it-just-messes-you-up? The OP was talking about "all clones are adults" so I only spoke about clones in my reply.

Anakin was not emotionally mature. He's a seething morass with an barely adequate veneer. As Vader, he was very nearly static, locked in place and unchanging until Luke.

Ahsoka, Caleb Dume, and scores of other padawans literally ARE children being thrust into war and put in charge of men (yes, men) who are older, more mature, and more experienced than they are. Padawans, generally speaking, have a much “softer” life than the clones ever did, but fast forward to the Rebels era and I don’t think anyone would accuse Ahsoka or Caleb/Kanan of being emotionally/developmentally stunted by their experiences, not even after surviving the Jedi Purge. And Rex himself seemed to be pretty stable and coping well with everything despite his own experiences. Same with Wolffe and Gregor.

Wolffe has massive PTSD in Rebels, Gregor has a head injury that affects his mental state, and Rex still wakes from sleep calling for Cody. I don't agree that they're pretty stable, although I also have a lot of problems with how they're portrayed in Rebels to the extent that Gregor's death is why I stopped watching it.

Here I disagree a bit; at the beginning of the war, the clones are more experienced than the Padawans - but only at one very specific thing. As the war goes on, the Padawans gain experience, but the clones get younger as they leave Kamino. The Padawans also have a much greater breath of experience - food, culture, species, planets - than most clones, although the clones will start to catch up soon as they're off Kamino. Eventually, they might have met somewhere in the middle.

So I guess it depends; which clones, which Padawan, and when in the war you're talking about.

The clones may be “young” in a lot of ways (some “younger” than others), but a lot of them are still grown up (or at least growing up) and are fully capable of making their own decisions and expressing their individual personalities. And their inhibitor chips definitely aren’t attempting to control every facet of their lives. Though after Order 66 may be a different story.

As a whole, the troopers, have been through multiple kinds of hell and have certainly suffered a lot, but I wouldn’t say that they’re all broken, that they’re all sent out from Kamino in a permanent state of trauma, or that they are all in any way “lessened” by what was done to them to the point that they aren’t “real” adults/young men. They may not have a LOT of agency, but treating them as shattered and incomplete removes what little autonomy they have.

I don't think of them all as shattered and incomplete in the slightest, and that’s certainly not how I write about them. I don’t mean to rec my own fic so much as that’s the largest body of evidence I’ve got to show how I think about clones.