wondering ab the best way to address the age gap between a clone and a jedi pairing + the massively different life experiences (similar in some ways, but wildly different in others... for example, jedi are free to leave the order whereas if clones do the same, they will be tried for treason and killed) .......... I have a lot of convoluted thoughts, I think I'm hoping that typing them out will give me a bit of clarity, so here goes lol
regarding age, I personally wouldn't classify clones as minors because they are fully developed human men; but, even in real life, an age gap of 10 years would be considered kinda weird at best, really creepy at worst. like, if a 30 year old man was dating a 20 year old, I'd have some questions lol. in the case of my ocs, pames (jedi padawan, also that's just a placeholder name until I can come up w something better) is in her 20s, whereas rocky (clone) is going to be around 12 (so, around 24 physically, but that doesn't really count when it comes to life experience). if pames is 21, that's a nine year age gap, which feels weird. even if I cut her age down to 19, that's still seven years, which is I guess not the worst? but also not the greatest imo.
age gap relationships are something I think a lot about, because my own parents are 11 years apart. I don't think they're inherently wicked like a lot of people seem to, but I do think there's a lot of potential for things to go wrong. having more life experience than your partner can really put a strain on the relationship; and, it's a double whammy because the clone is younger AND a slave. which drastically limits the clone's ability to discover who he is/what he wants/what he likes for himself. a relationship when he doesn't even have the freedom to decide anything for himself, or the age/life experience to understand his place in the world would feel... contrived isn't the right word... it would feel insincere? not based on anything real/meaningful?
the only problem is, there aren't really any other options. I REALLY had my heart set on a jedi x clone pairing because I thought the idea of a jedi (trained to let things go) falling in love with a clone (trained to be expendable) was poetic and beautiful, but I may be starting to see why official star wars media has never truly explored that route, because it is fraught with a lot of complications. (it might be worth exploring that dynamic through the lens of a parental figure & child figure? but I am a sucker for a good romance so that was my first thought, until I started thinking about all the aging problems lmfao. but anywooooooo)
on the other hand, star wars as a whole is ALSO fraught with complications. padme is like five years older than anakin and met him when he was nine; luke and leia fucking kiss, for crying out loud. the whole fandom LOVES codywan even though it has the same problems mentioned above, if not WORSE because obi-wan is at least ten years older than my oc is gonna be. I know they're not official but like. you catch my drift lol
the complications and mistakes that characters make in star wars, imo, help really bring out/highlight when someone does something right. I don't think making the poor choice of having a 10~ year age gap would negate the good thing that is loving someone else with your whole being. something something about leftist culture being so unbearable because we are more concerned with doing nothing wrong than doing something right /ref
but if I DID decide to go with the romance route, I would still want to show the realities of an age gap relationship, which if you're not SUPER careful and aware (which I feel like would be a hard thing to do for people as emotionally constipated as jedi and clones), can be rly unhealthy imo. which kind of sucks because I am a big fan of healthy relationships in media :( and I would rather write a healthy relationship. but like........ since when was anything in star wars healthy lmfao. besides, it's more important to me to show consequences to actions in a story than just brush over the reality of a situation just bc I don't want to address it. a lot of aspects of age gap relationships can very easily become unhealthy. like, first thing that pops into my mind is one partner trying to be more of a parent to the other, and another is that the other partner might not know themself well enough to know what they really want out of life or their partner. and I imagine that this is ESPECIALLY true when dealing with traumatized former child soldiers (one of which, and again I cannot stress this enough, being a LITERAL slave).
I guess that's the conclusion to my thoughts, then. If I go down the romance route, I'll just have to show the realities of what an age gap relationship between two very traumatized individuals would look like, and it probably won't be pretty all of the time. but I DO think that it will be pretty sometimes. that's the nature of these things, I think; the bad doesn't necessarily negate the good, but the good doesn't necessarily negate the bad either. they kind of just... co-exist. I do want these characters to genuinely love each other, like REALLY love each other with their whole selves, they're just obviously going to have a lot to work through. and hopefullyyyyyy they prevail. it's too early to tell at this point, I haven't even finished a real outline lmfao
if anyone bothers to read all the way to the end of this, i'd be really interested to hear any additional thoughts. i'm not 100% settled on this being what I do with the story (parental figure & child figure is another really good route I could go down), so feel free to agree or disagree with my thoughts lmaooo