Lit Barriss Offee

The phrase "the Jedi treated the clones very well" sounds disturbingly similar to "slaveholders treated their slaves very well", both of which ignore the operative point, that they are slaves. Until the end of the wars, the clones could not leave the service, and we saw only a few managed to escape the service of the Empire and live independent lives (Rex, Gregor, and Wolffe as an example); but only once they were considered no longer useful to the Empire. The Jedi's participation in this institution does not leave them blameless.

Additionally, the reason the Jedi fought to hold the Republic together was ultimately to maintain the central power of Coruscant, not because the Separatist were inherently evil (while that argument can be made). Windu's conversation with Palpatine confirms this in ATOC.

The Jedi might not have been evil, but they were participants in a long litany of wider evils, which they did little to disavow themselves of. By the end of the TCW series, we see that Yoda himself is coming to this conclusion.

 

In'fila did not object to the Clone Wars, he took a Barash vow before that.

 

Exactly. He sat out the entire conflict. He felt the deaths of the entire Order, and soon afterwards, Darth Vader arrived and killed him too. For Jedi, walking away from the fighting would achieve nothing, save their swift death.

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This is exactly what Palpatine wanted. He wanted the Jedi to go along with all of this to highlight their hypocrisy. Maybe get a few to get used to being darksiders and become inquisitors. I think the only reason he backed down on demonizing the Jedi as slaveholders to the public is because he himself was one (being commander of the military) and planned to continue being one when the clones became stormtroopers. Otherwise he would have played this up to the public for all its worth. As it ended up, Palpatine just had to content himself with the satisfaction that he was turning the Jedi even more into hypocrites without publicizing it.

 

Weren't the Jedi considered slaves to the Republic as well? Miraj Scintel thought so.

They knew the Republic was corrupt but didn't take measures to seize power to remove them and restore the Republic. They despised Palpatine but didn't do anything remotely treasonous to him until the end of the war.

You call the Jedi slavers? What does that make the Republic?

Oh, and the Barriss imposter is merely sprouting propaganda on behalf of her true employers (headcanon).

 

I think part of the issue with the "clones are slaves!" argument is that we still have compulsory military service worldwide. Even in places that have done away with the draft, it's still the case that you can't choose to leave at any time; you have to serve out your term of service, and even then, you could get a stop-loss order and be kept in longer than you were expecting. But even though it hasn't been instituted in decades, the United States still has military conscription on the books, and like 92% of my fellow American males, I signed my Selective Service card when I turned 18; in that light, we're all slaves, just slaves that haven't been given assignments yet. And while there is plenty of (just!) opposition to the draft, I don't think there have been many who have argued that military officers commanding conscripted personnel are the moral equivalent of slaveholders.

 

Selective Service still isn't comparable to breeding an army of people for the sole purpose of being soldiers and stripped of half their life expectancy via accelerated aging. What Republic planet are the clones a citizen of? Can they vote? Why should they care about defending a Republic that considers them property without the full rights of Republic citizens?

 

I keep trying to reply to this, but I think the only reply I have is "I stand corrected."

 

Poor Barriss; I kind of doubt we'll learn her ultimate fate in either continuity. Though given Palpatine's opinion on Force-users not affiliated with him, I can't help but think that Barriss completely coincidentally met with an unfortunate accident in prison shortly after his ascension...

We'll probably never learn Legendsverse!Ahsoka's fate either.

 

Palpatine would probably have offered Barriss the chance to be an Inquisitor. She was able to deceive the Jedi Council and held her own against Anakin Skywalker for a time. Pretty good credentials for a Padawan.

Given her obvious hypocrisy and cowardly nature, Barriss might even have accepted. But then she would have been placed under Darth Vader. At which point her days would have been numbered in the single digits.

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Yeah, piling onto this, it seems like the clone army is the exact opposite of compulsory military service. The draft, at least in a democracy, forces people to put their money where their mouth is - so, you like electing politicians who like to fight wars? Good. Then either you, personally, or someone you know, is going to be fighting that war and risking their life in it. If the war is worth is, surely you won't object.

The concept of a clone army is the complete contrary of that - it's growing a group of soldiers who can do the citizenry's fighting for it, thus freeing them of any responsibility to care one way or another about the war.

 

I really wish they'd come out with a novel about Barriss. Whether it focuses on her training with Luminara or whatever might have become from her fate after she was taken away from the court following the framing of Ahsoka, it would make for an interesting story.

 

There are a few Legends novels where she's close to being a protagonist (The Approaching Storm, the MedStar Duology) but it would have been nice to get a newcanon one.

 

Well that's really what I'm referring to; a new canon story.

 

I could get onboard with Barriss initially becoming an inquisitor in the early days but then not lasting long but the new Vader comic is pretty much covering those early inquisitor stories and Barriss is still no where to be seen. So I am really leaning now to that she was just killed in prison during order 66. It would be nice to get a Barriss novel but I don't think that would happen anytime soon (probably within the next five to ten years).

They seem to be structuring their comic and novel releases around time periods. For the first several years they were focusing largely on the OT time period and now it seems like they are planning on moving into the post ROTJ period within the next year. I really don't see them going back into the Clone Wars era for a long while/if ever. After all we got six years of an animation series focusing entirely on that period.

 

"If ever" is such a needlessly pessimistic way of putting it. This machine is going to be grinding out content for a long time, I don't understand the desire to give up on it so quickly.

 

Because I am simply not sure they are ever going to give a confirmed fate for Barriss at this point. She was only in a handful of episodes from TCW anyways so its not like she was ever an important character to begin with. When she was brought into the bombing plot she hadn't been seen in the show for like two or three years. The only reason it seemed she was part of that bombing plot at all was because they just needed a name and it would have been more impactful for Ahsoka (and the audience) for it to be an already existing character than a brand new one that had never been seen on screen before.

 

I could get behind a post-ROTS Barriss story where she is an anti-hero of sorts. Make her survive her time in prison, not get killed during Order 66 and refuse a potential offer to become an inquisitor (because the latter would be an easy story choice to make). Have her on the run during the Dark Times. But, unlike most Order 66 Jedi survivor stories that we've had where the Jedi are still adhering to their principles, Barriss isn't the most relatable Force user in town. I mean, since Bombiss is a thing now (and personally I'm not a fan of), we might as well make the best use of any story potential left to us, instead of leaving her fate a mystery in the new continuity.

 

She took on Anakin. That in it of itself is no small task.

 

I know it is not canon anymore, but in one of the old Legends books she was on the same level as Anakin for the most part. Barris is not the strongest but she is definitely not weak, I think the rest can be said about most, if not all, of the Jedi in the prequel era.

But yeah... I want to go reread the Medstar dual-ology and Approaching Storm now.

 

Reading those now would be like trying to watch the old Mission Impossible series with Jim Phelps. Even though I'm not doing it consciously, I end up looking for clues on how this character ended up so evil despite knowing full well the original works were never written with that fate in mind.

It's a bizarre inversion of watching Anakin Skywalker in the prequels. We all know he's going to go bad, but the prequels are written towards this fate. In watching Barriss or Jim Phelps, this wasn't what was intended at all. Or Jacen Solo.

 

Not to belabor a point I've already conceded, but note that for much of the history of the draft in the United States, a good chunk of draftees in a draft cycle couldn't vote, either. The draft targets 20-year-old men first, and until the Voting Rights Act Amendments kerfluffle in 1970 led to the 26th Amendment's ratification in 1971, the voting age in the United States was 21. Of course, "old enough to fight, old enough to vote" was a big reason WHY the voting age was lowered, and regardless, the implicit choice of "do you choose to risk sending your son off to war" and "do you choose to risk sending an anonymous meat popsicle off to war" are two very different things ...

There's a reason I've never watched the first Mission: Impossible movie, and have mostly avoided watching its sequels except when dragged into it by others. That move was a giant "Kriff you!" to the series and its fans.

 

I'm afraid that if we don't get that book now, we'll never get it.

With all the new SW stuff in the works, I don't think there'll be time to publish books related to old characters.

 

You might be right.

 

Barriss Offee was deliberately left alive by a creative professional (Dave Filoni) who has more influence at Lucasfilm than ever before in his career, but yes, lets give up on that (again, intentionally open) plot thread ever being resolved.