#It's almost like a huge longform clone suggestion blog post or smth i guess idk lmao

[jacensolodjo]

They’re not interchangeable! A few scream as yet another clone dies, often needlessly. And no one even cares to get his service number right (hah, service number, mutters far too many, try product registration number), causing brothers to think a different vod had died in his place. 

They were born for this exact reason! Another screams back. And it’s true. It really is true. But that doesn’t make it right. They weren’t born to live, they were born to die. Shab, they weren’t even born. Even that was denied them. They grew in a tank, lived in an empty one. 

For some, the clones are the final nail in the coffin of the Republic. Proof the Republic has truly lost its way. They were born out of a diseased state. Democacy is supposed to care for all, to give all a voice. But the clones get no representation.

What about Mandalore? Some ask, now that it’s far more common knowledge the clones are of Mandalorian stock. Satine’s government doesn’t want them, prettying it up with how they were born in blood and death and Mandalore doesn’t stand for that anymore (”we’re a pacifist people now!” and yet some do wonder how the people of Mandalore managed to be so homogeneous to the point a clone of a Fett sticks out like a sore thumb). 

Dar’manda, a state of not being Mandalorian, often comes up, usually by saddened Cuy’Val Dar who remember what life was like before Galidraan. How can one be Mandalorian if they don’t even know it? If they can barely find Mandalore on a star chart? (Oh, but the Alphas and the Nulls can. The Republic Commandos can. They were brought up right. What is right anymore, though?) 

The Empire doesn’t do things any better. It offers no pension funds, no medical benefits, no right to lands or titles or anything, the barracks they sleep in is the maximum benefit given. The clones might as well not even exist off of paper that says they are mere property anyways. 

And so, old far sooner than they should be, clones find themselves barely eking out an existence much less actually living. Some manage (don’t call them lucky. Why should they be considered that? Simply because they happen to survive?) and others of course end their life how it began: in silence. 

The real heartache comes when it’s a clone saying exactly what others do: we were born to do this, we’re just numbers, it’s all for the glory of the Republic! 

But then, eventually, at least once, a clone wonders if he could swap places with a clone in a completely different field of operation and no one would even notice. Why should they? They’re interchangeable, the very same down to their DNA. But oh, the building blocks have constructed such a wondrous array of diversity. Brothers notice when brothers change. Brothers notice when brothers leave. Brothers notice when their brothers are thinking ‘why brother? Am I a brother truly? Must I be?’

When the war ends, and ‘peace’ reigns, every time clones take the initiative in caring for each other even and especially when no one else will, the civilians laugh. Silly clones, you need to just move on. Be good little soldiers, do your duty, then fade away. So much so that even saying you’re there for a brother, a sibling, a sister, is an act of defiance. The clones will not simply fade away. And kriff yourself for thinking they would. 

Yes, the clones were born in death and bloodshed. But they were created from the blood of a Fett just trying to make his way through the galaxy, always defying death. They were created, in a way, from an act of love. And they do not shoulder the guilt of the progenitor but rather the promise to survive. In whatever way possible. And the galaxy only has itself to blame that it broke the clones’ loyalty to a state, to a government, snapped it in half, so they could instead envelope their fellow clones in that loyalty. They are, in the new time of peace, all they have left. 

They are Mandalorian because the Resol’nare is practically embedded in their DNA. They exist entirely because Jango was Mandalorian. In the most convoluted of ways, and yet it doesn’t stop being true. 

Don’t fret over the Fetts. They don’t do it over others anymore. And the galaxy brought it on themselves.