what a nice fambly
Aaahhhh
ahsoka tano
Beaded doll: Ahsoka Tano
This week’s doll is Ahsoka Tano, first introduced in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars series, and let me just say right from the start please forget everything I’ve ever said about hair being difficult.
Well. In case the above sentence didn’t make it clear, that was quite a tricky one ;) I actually started on this doll several months ago, then got stuck trying to figure out how to shape the head tails, got frustrated put it aside for a while, came back later, and so on, until I finally sat myself down a little while ago and didn’t let up until I found a shape that worked. I probably made five or six “test heads” before I figured out the final version…
Once I had the design finished, the actual construction was a bit of a problem as well, because there’s hardly any room – once I had the head and body finished, I actually had to grab my needle with small pliers at times to attach the arms because my fingers couldn’t fit under the lekku to reach her shoulders and upper back. So all in all, this is definitely the most challenging doll I’ve made so far, and I must say I’m rather proud for finishing it :)
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Materials: 11° and 15° TOHO and MIYUKI seed beads, round beads, bugle beads, felting wool, craft wire, nylon thread
Size: approx. 3.3 inches/8.5 centimetres
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“I was told if I ever needed help, you were the Jedi to contact.”
Okay but.
This line says so much.
And what I feel too many people don’t take away from it is that the wording here is very precise. All the wording in this arc is so careful–so many of Barriss’ lines are just slightly off enough to be red flags without being obvious. (”Nothing will ever change” comes out of the blue–it is in no way even remotely the natural response to the discussion of who should prosecute a prisoner.)
Letta is about to name Barriss and tell Ahsoka everything she knows about the plot. If Barriss, as so much of the fandom seems to think, was planning to frame Ahsoka from the beginning? Letta loses nothing here by saying “I was told to talk to you” or “I was instructed not to speak with anyone but you”. What she says is that Barriss told her to contact Ahsoka if she ever needed help. And the word “ever” says everything, because “if I needed help” would carry a completely different implication, and there is not a single line in this episode that hasn’t been carefully crafted.
This isn’t only related to the bombing. This is a long-standing arrangement.
Barriss told Letta to contact Ahsoka if she ever needed help a long time before the bombing, probably before it was even planned. She could have given her new acquaintance any name. Hell, she could have told Letta to speak to Luminara. But she didn’t, because Luminara is too traditional, too steeped in duty to understand.
(Too careful about attachment, too mindful of controlling her emotions, so proud and trusting of her padawan and too aware of how incredibly easy it would be not to be able to let her go, and Barriss never realized how utterly, how deeply, she was loved.)
Barriss told Letta that if she ever needed help and couldn’t contact her–maybe she would be on assignment, maybe it would just be too suspicious–that Ahsoka Tano would help her. And Letta was arrested, and she was scared, and maybe she was regretting the agreement they’d made while they were bitter and ready to die for the cause, and she remembered that name at the worst possible time.
Barriss never planned on framing Ahsoka. Ahsoka was never supposed to be there. But she was, and Barriss had by this point convinced herself she was acting for the greater good–that this was necessary, even that it was morally right, because the Dark Side never feels evil at first–and, after all.
If she stopped, if she let herself be revealed and sacrificed all chance of making another statement, forcing the Council to listen, all because she wasn’t willing to sacrifice a single friend…
Wouldn’t that be giving in to attachment?
Very close to my own view. I really feel like Barriss got herself in a situation that quickly sun out of her control.
I mean, a great deal of time and effort went into establishing during the Geonosis arc that Barriss’ strength is in planning and preparation–and that she cannot improvise, even if her life literally depends on it.
The trail was supposed to go cold with Letta. Obviously she would have preferred if Letta wasn’t found out–she’s not a monster, even now–but once Letta was captured, well…it was a question of the greater good. Letta Turmond wouldn’t hold up under even GAR questioning, let alone Jedi interrogation, and there was already suspicion that a Jedi was involved.
If Letta hadn’t remembered the name “Commander Ahsoka Tano” when she did? She would have died alone, in a cell with the audio cut to it–but not the video, because a lack of visual would prompt them to fix it or move her to a different cell, whereas without audio unless she scrawls “BARRISS OFFEE” on the walls Letta can’t name her out of spite at the last minute. She would have very clearly been killed with the Force, and no one would know who had done it. Internal investigations of the Jedi and their actions–in Barriss’ mind, at least–would be forced to follow, but more importantly there would be absolutely no way to track the killer.
Ahsoka wasn’t meant to be there–not just because Barriss has no reason to betray her only friend, someone she still obviously trusted until that fateful conversation after the bombing, not just because planning from the start to frame Ahsoka is needlessly cruel to a degree that is inconsistent with the motivation Barriss shows us, but because her plan goes so wildly convoluted and off the rails from the moment Ahsoka’s captured that there’s no way someone as meticulous as Barriss planned it.
If Ahsoka wasn’t there, it would have been the perfect crime.
Yes, all of this! I also see Barriss as maybe hoping Ahsoka will catch her and stop the runaway train and/or open her eyes to what Barriss sees in the Order as well.