With a busted theory and dislike for writing for things as they're currently airing, I'm back harder on my "Barriss gets her nuanced character exploration while working toward accepting her own redemption is possible" Shit.
Is this partially because I want to write Alijah and Barriss Banter? Absolutely.
It'd be so easy to give them a little series of vaguely related ficlets. The two of them (plus rotating extras) fighting against the Galaxy. But, also healing and reforging their connection to the Force and each other. It's not like being initiates or padawans anymore. That ship has sailed, burnt, and sank. Still there's little bits where they once got along and get along again.
Barriss' fighting style seemed to be strongest when she was someone else. It's something with saw with Luminara when fighting with Barriss; she was lacking. Alijah's excellent at saber work. Retraining with her works well and they're together.
Alijah's connection with the Force is still painful. She feels so much with and because of it. Her talents are focused around healing, mind things, and the basics. She gets a tiny bit of Force Visions but they're not useful? There's small snippets with no context. Barriss gives me the impression she's well connected with the Force. Even with it being a broken bond she help.
(Also, having to fight Inquisitior!Barriss is literally what pulled Alijah back to using a lightsaber and the Force.)
There's comparing and contrasting them with each other and then with Ahsoka. All three of them had shifting relationships with the Jedi Order. But, Ahsoka's relationship to the Force stayed positive. Barriss' soured to the point of darkness and Alijah spent years ignoring it entirely. Using the Force saved nothing. Ahsoka also moved quickly into the Rebellion. Alijah avoided it and Barriss...well Barriss sure did pick things.
I also have a detailed ultimately, Dark Side Cult Alijah was born into and grew up around until 6. When she looks at Barriss she sees what she could have been if no one saved her. It makes her want save Barriss more. No, she doesn't have trauma at all about feeling like she failed Depa, Caleb, and the Order by surviving. She knows what it's like to look in the mirror and feel like the worst parts of yourself are looking back to mock you. People have told her that her Force Sensitivity/Jedi Potential made her a corrupted villain by being. Frankly, helping Barriss learn to care for herself and reintegrate into existing helps her do the same.
I haven't fully sorted out why Barriss did what she did. Part of what I think happened does involve the Shitty Sith Vibes Sidious was leeching into the air. The fact she tried to fame Ahsoka is also suspicious to me. She had complete anonymity and could've had anyone but it was Ahsoka. Someone Anakin Skywalker cares deeply about to dangerous extremes. (And it was Ventress she stole sabers from.) It feels like it could've been subtle suggestions via the Force that got pushed to her by Sidious. They preyed on the doubts she had about the Order because of the war. Also the sheer amount of trauma she experienced during said war. She lashes out, freaks out because she lashed out, and it sprails. The deeper she gets the more she tells herself there's no going back. If she stops now it'll be for nothing.
(I also find "Dying Equals Redemption" to be bland. You fucked up, no matter how well intended or not, so you can actively work to unfuck it.)
I'm admittedly not fond that that's the story line they picked for Barriss. I think it was both weak and sus af. It was also quickly tossed aside with no information or conclusion. But, I do have a writer's hubris with a deep love for Star Wars; so, I want to make it make some sense.
We also get Reunion Scenes with Barriss and Ahsoka because they deserve this.
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can y'all please come into my humble abode and imagine something with me i don't yet have the wits to write a full fledged fic out of (yet)?
so, everyone knows how when you get a tattoo, part of the healing process is the itchy phase, right? and for obvious reasons, you can't scratch it. favored method, in my experience and fellow tatted friends, is to just give it a good old slap.
perfect. so now, with this in mind, can you imagine having gotten a large hip/ass piece, and how mortifying it would be to smack your own ass to soothe that itch? and it's just plain painful. you want your new ink to heal properly - it's gorgeous and you put a lot of time, pain, and money into that damn thing - but it just sucks.
enter best friend eddie.
he loves your new ink. thinks it's fucking sick. nearly creamed his damn pants when he found out you were doing a hip/ass tatt (because how can he ask to see it without being weird? how can he react to that without being weird when he's spent the last several years with the world's most pathetic crush on you?) at first, it's fine. you show him the tattoo in a totally friendly, totally platonic way. he hypes you up, he calls you 'the most metal person he knows'. flourishes you with all the compliments and looks at you with starry eyes out of sheer awe at the way he's managed to snag a person into his life who is just so. damn. cool.
but the days pass by, that new ink begins to heal, and it fucking itches.
when you first proposition him, you're even more embarrassed than he is. stumbling over all your words, the request coming out contorted every wrong way. you don't want to make things weird, but is it really that weird for a friend to help a friend? it is really that weird to ask your best friend to smack your tattoo to help with that itch you can't even really properly reach?
it's just friends helping friends.
and that's the mantra you both repeat to yourselves - as you request the embarrassing favor of him, as he agrees almost too eagerly, as you find yourself face-planted in your bed wondering how deeply you can bury down your shame as he tries to make jokes to make it all a bit less awkward.
it's just friends helping friends, until eddie's hand lands down on your ass with a resounding smack, and that first little whimper escapes your lips.
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The thing to me about Kabru's ambiguous eating disorder is that, well, how could you take any pleasure in eating when all your worst memories are of the most violent and taboo acts of eating there are? The desecration of the dead, the mauling and devouring of living bodies, the implication of cannibalism when the dead rose as new monsters to eat their own kin. Humans becoming food. How could eating ever be a source of casual comfort for you after witnessing that? After you watched predators tear into your own mother's body?
The horror of Senshi's past hinges on his fear that he was a cannibal, but he grew up to care deeply about cooking and nutrition and feeding others because the real trauma was starvation, which breaks past the taboo of cannibalism. And so he makes sure that he and the people around him do not starve.
The horror of Kabru's past is one of excess. An entire people wiped out because they were made into food, into piles of corpses and blood soaking the land, with the gluttony of a demon's endless appetite behind it. And Kabru grows up to deprive himself so utterly that he's willing to die for a cause, to make his own life worth something.
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