I've never agreed with the notion that “everything would have been fine if Ahsoka just stayed in her cell” What'chu mean?
Ahsoka was doomed as soon as she walked into the prison, a lose lose situation where no one action or inaction was going to save her from being expelled and trialed. There are several scenes throughout The Wrong Jedi Arc that support this.
Tarkin
Evidence Tampering
Though many may not remember, there is actual evidence that Ahsoka did not kill Letta Turmond. Before Letta is hoisted up, Ahsoka has her hand on her shoulder, and when Letta starts being choked, Ahsoka flinches back in shock; Letta is dying before Ahsoka raises her hands. The Corrie on the camera shuts the screen off- which, sus, but we can talk about that another time- as Ahsoka looks back on the camera for either help or to try and see the assailant.
When Tarkin goes into Ahsoka's cell, he shows a shortened clip of Ahsoka “killing” Letta. However, it must be noted that the angle of this clip is clearer than that of the clone's camera. If Tarkin played the full encounter, then the senators would have been able to see Ahsoka jumping back and her shocked expression when Letta was strangled in front of her. Tarkin is intentionally not showing the full clip here and likely at the trial.
Also, sidenote that, "Curiously," as Tarkin puts it, Letta Turmond was in a cell without audio, and no one noticed until after she was dead. The Admiral would like us to believe that the Coruscant Guard, currently holding a woman who killed their brothers, weren't watching her like a hawk and didn't notice that they couldn't hear anything coming from her cell? Fox and his men went back to the monitor room, and Ahsoka and Letta were actively being watched by one of them; am I to think he didn't notice that he couldn't hear them talking?
Sexual Harassment
Tarkin crowds Ahsoka's space, forcing her against the wall while Ahsoka tries to explain her side of the story. He gets in close on her face, and Ahsoka is noticeably uncomfortable, probably due to trauma from prior experiences. Tarkin's actions would have been a stereotypical over-the-top interrogation if he hadn't grabbed her face seconds later, intentionally forcing her to purse her lips and smiling when she yanked her face out of his grasp.
If Tarkin were truly committed to bringing justice, he'd have sat down and talked to Ahsoka with the respect she tried to show him in that moment. He'd compare her version of events to everything that's happened and note inconsistencies. For example, Ahsoka and Anakin are the ones who arrested Letta. If Ahsoka was the mastermind, why didn't she go to Letta's home and kill her after the bombing, making it look like an accident or suicide? Why did Letta Turmond ask to speak to Ahsoka if she was scared that Ahsoka would kill her? Why did she refuse to speak to Ahsoka unless Fox left them alone? He doesn't do this; the interaction barely lasts a few minutes, and he uses most of it to invade Ahsoka's personal space.
Tarkin's actions show Ahsoka and the audience that any "investigation" done would be heavily biased against her. Whether or not Ahsoka stays in her cell has no bearing on how Tarkin acts as he's already proven that he's willing to abuse his power over her.
Isolation
Tarkin orders Fox to not let Ahsoka have visitors. Isolating her gives him the ability to make up his story and let himself be heard first, planting seeds of doubt into anything Ahsoka might say in her defense. It also allows him to assault her, maybe even try something worse. While Ahsoka would protect herself, her resistance would become “evidence” towards her guilt as Tarkin could just make up a story about her attacking him unprompted.
With no visitors, this also means that Ahsoka is not allowed any legal counsel. Meaning that her defense would be less prepared than Tarkin's prosecution.
Falsifying Evidence
Tarkin calls the Council after Ahsoka's escape, says, and I quote:
“After further investigation, it can be little doubt that the clone officers murdered in the escape were killed by none other than Ahsoka Tano herself. She used a Jedi Mind Trick to convince the clone to open the door and proceeded to cut him down along with five other clones along the way.”
Four things to be noted here:
Tarkin is outright lying about the number of dead clones. The clones in the monitor room were very alive, just beaten up and rolling around on the floor or unconscious. There are three clones who were killed via lightsaber in a completely different part of the prison. Fox himself says that three are dead when calling in a shoot-to-kill order.
This footage/evidence most likely does not exist, as Tarkin could have just showed “Ahsoka” killing the clones, but he doesn't. He's lied about the number of casualties and where they happened; he's lied about the entire event.
If this footage actually exists, then Tarkin knows that Ahsoka is innocent. He could have easily said an accomplice broke her out, implicating the Jedi Order, but he only goes after Ahsoka here. Unless Barriss has a pair of fake montrals in her closet, there's no way anyone could mistake her for Ahsoka, as the arc goes out of its way to show you how noticeable her horns are with the homeless man's cloak.
The Jedi Council does not immediately call Tarkin back and demand to view this evidence. Plo Koon says, “I do not believe that Ahsoka could have fallen so far.”, but he never says, “Allow me to verify your findings, Admiral.” Whether or not they believe Ahsoka is innocent here, they don't take the easiest route of looking at the supposed footage of Ahsoka killing clones. They just take Tarkin's word for it, and while I'd like to believe that they viewed this "evidence" off-screen, am I to believe that Shaak Ti couldn't recognize a fellow Togruta, one she trained? That Obi-Wan and Plo couldn't recognize the girl they've been fighting alongside for over two years? Our only two options here is that the Council can't see the difference between a Mirialan and a Togruta, or that they never reviewed the evidence to begin with before deciding to expel Ahsoka, and I can't decide which is worse.
If Tarkin can just make up evidence with full knowledge that no one on the Council is going to fact-check it, then Ahsoka staying in her cell changes nothing. Tarkin could build an entire case on lies, and Ahsoka would be left to deal with the consequences.
Barriss & The Break In
So, Barriss breaks into the prison again, beats up some Corries, steals Ahsoka's com and lighsabers, and leaves the key card outside her cell. Why does Ahsoka staying put change nothing about her situation?
Well, put yourself into the position of a clone working in this facility. If your brothers were beaten up or unconscious at the entrance and you found a key card to the cell of the person allegedly responsible for killing more clones in the bombing outside of it would you:
A. Think she was being framed?
Or
B. Think an accomplice was trying to break her out?
Now, I love Ahsoka, and even I wouldn't believe her if she said she was being framed when I just found a key card to her cell outside of it and her com and lightsabers were left in the hallway for her to find. This is just extra “evidence” that Tarkin can use against her, and it paints Ahsoka in a bad light without her having done anything.
Palpatine
This section is mostly speculation on my part, but seeing as how Sidious wants to get rid of Ahsoka to isolate Anakin further, and he had no problem implying Ahsoka may be a Separatist spy during the trial, I think it's worth mentioning.
I cannot overstate how trapped Ahsoka is in her cell. With Tarkin having ordered her isolation, literally anyone could do anything they wanted with her. Like say, Sidious strangling her like Letta, leaving her body for Fox to find, and then blaming her death on the mysterious Jedi bomber. Someone Anakin cares about dies brutally- again- and the culprit is a Jedi this time. This works doubly as this is the second time in less than 24 hours that someone was force choked in a Republic military prison, meaning Palpatine can use this as propaganda against the Jedi and as a means of controlling force sensitives (the Inquisitors).
Seeing as Sidious had no problem taking a discrete trip to Mandalore to kill Savage and capture Maul, I think walking to the prison to off a 16yr old is maybe not too far out of his alley.
The Trial
While I imagine Padme would defend Ahsoka again, I wanted to list the reasons why Ahsoka is already at a disadvantage.
She's a Togruta
Her species is heavily sexualized, with Ahsoka herself having been called “quite the prize” and being subject to many instances of sexual harassment and assault by various characters. Her people are seen lowly, with Trade Federation and Death Watch seeing her as nothing more than a servant or plaything, meaning that going into this trial, many of these corrupt, social elites may have preconceived notions about her as a person and her ability to be innocent.
The Prosecution Has It Out For Her, And It's Allowed
No one, not Bail, Mothma, Riyo, or Padme, calls out the vehemence with which Tarkin goes after Ahsoka. When asked to present his evidence, he opens up by telling her he's going for the death penalty. He mockingly claps after Padme speaks and gets into a verbal spat with the defendant. It's not professional; it's notably personal, and at no point does anyone say anything about it. There is no objection, no appallment, so it leads to the question if military proceedings are normally held like this and the implications that brings.
Padme and Ahsoka are Friends, And That's Known
While it's great that Padme is defending Ahsoka, it would actually be a point that Tarkin could use against her. Padme had Ahsoka take her across enemy lines a year ago to meet with Mina Bonteri, and Tarkin could use that to paint Ahsoka as a Separatist. Lux Bonteri would later interrupt peace talks between Separatists and the Republic and then kidnap Ahsoka, but it's not like anyone would know the specifics, seeing as R2-D2 was out of the room when Lux tased her. Even if Ahsoka were to outline what happened during her absence, it's just hearsay. Padme could point out that Ahsoka helped train the Onderon Rebels to free it from the Separatists, but Tarkin could also point out that Steela died and try to paint Ahsoka as having killed Steela, having dropped her on purpose instead of being shot by enemy fire.
Ahsoka staying in her cell would change nothing about any of these points. There's a stigma against her people that she's powerless to change, and she has an imperfect history that many would be willing to use for their own ends.
In summary, there are far too many variables at play to assume Ahsoka not leaving her cell would lead to anything good. If she stays put, all she has to rely on is a corrupt system that is already stacked against her and leaves her as prey for those who wish her harm. Personally, it feels naive to say that Ahsoka staying in her cell would fix anything, instead of it leading to the exact same outcome or maybe even something worse.
Thank you for the ask! I'm sorry it took me this long to answer you; hit me up again if you want to talk more.
There is a LOT of giving up going on around here! 🤨
"There are only two episodes to go."
"There's not enough time to get Tech back."
"We aren't going to find out who CX-2 is this late in the show."
Whoa! Just whoa.
Put on the brakes, peeps! There's so much of the full-circle storytelling technique going on in this series that there is NO reason to be giving up yet. There are a few parallels happening that are giving me hope that I want to share with you. I hope they help with your anxiety over what's coming in the next couple of weeks the way they have helped me with mine:
"The Cavalry Has Arrived" is the title of the final episode and also the very first words uttered by a Batcher in The Clone Wars. They came to the rescue then, and they are doing it now.
In that Clone Wars story arc, the Batch teamed up with Rex and other clones on a mission to infiltrate an enemy installation. They're doing that again. We know the Batch is on their way to Tantiss and we know from trailers that Rex will be there too.
They went into their Clone Wars mission with a specific task to accomplish, and in the course of that mission discovered that someone presumed dead was alive and being made to aid the enemy. It was Echo in The Clone Wars, and it could easily be Tech now.
The Clone Wars arc was four episodes long. Reports are saying that the final episode will be roughly triple the length of a single episode like "Aftermath" was to begin the series. That means that we have as much content still ahead of us to end the series as the entire Anaxes/Skako Minor/Echo rescue arc in The Clone Wars. They made a LOT happen in that story arc, and it looks like that's how much time we have coming up. A lot can still happen.
I'm looking forward to seeing how it all plays out. I've had a lot of fun on this roller coaster ride through the galaxy with you all and our favorite defective clones. May the Force be with us as it wraps up! 🧡
The day androids got taken away for deactivation, hundreds of kids with household androids cried themselves to sleep, mourning a family member.
They got attached. Hank too got attached.
Before today, he thought of the revolution as an overall positive event - something worth celebrating, or something he celebrated, at least. For him it symbolised change, a beginning of something better. It was only now that the true scale of the tragedy caught up with him, making him aware of how many android lives it actually cost. Only now it clicked with him how many of them were still mourned, and how, of all people, it was mostly kids who truly missed them.
Throughout December, he saw the memorials with old broken smartphones lined up in tight rows and columns, each for one killed android whose life was meaningful enough for someone to honour it with flowers and candles. And back then, he could never understand why were those flowers so crappy-looking and messy, mostly artificial or folded out of paper as origami. He used to wonder if it was another part of a symbolism - "artificial flowers for artificial people". Now it was obvious that the reason for that was much simpler: it was mostly kids who brought them. Most of them had no means to bring real flowers, so they folded them out of paper.
For the first time, Hank felt embarrassed for never having contributed anything to that memorial when it was still around. He should have brought some flowers, the real ones. Maybe he could even succeed in finding his old smartphone with dead battery and use it as a part of the memorial – if not for someone he personally knew, maybe for some of the deviants he saw last November, perhaps the one who killed himself in a holding cell. He didn't *know* him, didn't even consider him to be a person then, which, however, doesn't mean he could ever forget about him or his case. Arguably, he was the only person who kept thinking about him almost daily months after he died.
Hank didn't lose any close friends or family members the way others did that last November, though. The android he cared most about was still alive, now sitting right beside him on a passenger seat, waiting for Hank to start the engine, fiddling with the cuffs of his shirt. Hank noticed him always fiddling with something, be it a small object or his own clothes that he kept adjusting even if it was perfectly fine the way it was before. He would rub his palms together as if struggling to keep them warm or other times he'd tap the table or other surface he had around with his fingers in some irregular rhythmic patterns that Hank sometimes wondered was originated from some songs he happened to hear, maybe even among those Hank played in his presence himself.
Fiddling was one of those things Connor always did, even before turning deviant. Something so human yet small enough to be completely ignored, or, like in Hank's case, only think of it as something, android did to annoy him personally. How come he never gave it a second thought back then, never wondered why those completely pointless actions were even there? Would it change anything if he did? Would it provided him with enough evidence to answer his question before he had a chance to ask it with a gun? He wished the answers to all those questions were 'yes', and yet it was only now, months later that he actually paid attention to Connor doing any of that and questioned why. Why did he fail to see the significance of it earlier?
As he pondered that, Connor crossed his hands over his chest, deep in thought, while his fingers tapped out a rhythm on his left sleeve. Was he even aware of doing that?
Suddenly Hank felt the urge to touch him. Confirm his presence, and remind him of his own. It took a conscious effort to suppress that urge. Instead Hank cleared his throat and said.
"I remember when kids wanted to become pop stars or video bloggers. Never occurred to me that some kids today might want to be androids."
Connor stopped the tapping and eyed him.
"What do you think?"
"I don't know... It's just weird. That's all."
Connor shifted in his seat, turning to face Hank.
"Who did you want to become?" he asked, "As a kid."
"Not a police lieutenant, that's for sure."
"That's not the answer to the question I asked."
"And you're gonna make it my problem."
Hank could almost feel being scanned as android tilted his head slightly.
"Am I bothering you?"
"Always."
Connor grinned at him, and Hank felt the corners of his own mouth rising as well at the sight.
No hate to anyone in the D:BH fandom who ships Hankcon but I just need to air out my gripes with it since it is such a common ship in the fandom.
There's the obvious reason that they look VERY different in age (the motion capture actors have a 28 year age difference by the way). There's also the HEAVY implications that they have a father/son relationship by the good end of the game. If I shipped something that a huge chunk of the fandom read as a familial bond I dunno how tf I would feel. Also, almost every piece of Hankcon media I stumble across is EXTREMELY sexual, which of course makes me uncomfortable for obvious reasons (I'm asexual, I don't ship it, yadda yadda doesn't matter) but also I feel like the fact that people think Connor would have any sexual attraction at all is just completely out of character to me. (Yes, he stares at the models in the Eden Club if you choose to do that, but it was probably just the same as how he examines regular things because he doesn't seem to get distracted/aroused by any of the Tracis again and in fact doesn't seem to get why Hank would think it's weird why he would want to purchase an android stripper.) This is coming from someone who finds Connor VERY attractive, by the way. I dunno, there's nothing really wrong with the ship per day it just makes me feel really gross and it's so prevalent in the fandom that it's hard to avoid when looking at fan made media. Sorry if you like this ship but it just makes me feel so gross and honestly I really hate it.
i have no idea how tumblr works so sorry if this isn't tumblr etiquette(i was a youtube kid) but yes i agree for real, on goodness gracious, op is very real for this. i too find connor very attractive as well
Emma: "This is Daniel, the coolest android in the world! Say hi, Daniel!"
Daniel: "Hello!"
Emma: "You're my bestie! We'll always be together!"
The thing is, Emma probably didn't even know anything about her father's plans to replace Daniel, and it is really possible that if she had a chance to get to know about it before Daniel, she'd be the one throwing a tantrum, potentially preventing anything that happened instead. Aside from just Emma, it was repeatedly mentioned throughout the game that kids actually love androids. For example there's this dialogue at the station that Markus can overhear:
Little girl, visibly upset, hugging herself: "Are we really going to get rid of Mandy?"
(Probably mother): "Grandma says it leaves her nothing to do, sweetie."
Little girl: "But she's so cool!"
Mother: "I know, honey."
Not only kids think they're cool, android-only band Here4You is even hitting the charts as one of the most popular among youngsters, whereas adults find them really creepy and soulless. Another overhead dialogue from the same chapter:
"I heard that android boyband is going to win sone music prize"
"You mean Here4You? God, they're so creepy.
"My kids don't listen to anything else."
From adult's POV this attachment is interpreted as just another form of phone/internet/social-media/[insert anything else young people are accused of liking too much]-addiction, because most of them are too angry at CyberLife to comprehend that their kids may actually like androids for who they are as people in their lives, for being their safe space of a kind, and not because they're just addicted to that fancy toys to play with (although there probably are some kids who'd see them exactly this way. There always are.)
It was truly a misfortune that Daniel got so overwhelmed by the news that he instantly became fatalistic instead of pausing to really think about it first, to maybe consider that this decision may not have been a collective one, and there's still a chance -- maybe a small one, but still the one worth looking into -- to cancel it by talking, asking Emma about if she knows (because she probably didn't) instead of instantly going for the gun to take revenge on everyone as equally guilty. Instead of asking, he instantly assumed the worst – that Emma's opinion in the matter will be the same as her father's, and that was his main mistake. Daniel must have had really good relationships with the whole family including the father who as it turned out didn't think of him as a person, but rather a replaceable object – something Daniel never expected or even considered before, which, by the way, only further implies just how much he was actually loved for this information to be this unexpected and this world-shattering. He never saw it coming AT ALL (and in a generally anti-android society it really is telling) so this unexpected truth basically overwritten everything he ever knew about his life and world as a whole, making him feel like a fool for not seeing it earlier.
In this sense he's really similar to Connor when he realised that CyberLife never loved him, that he in fact is NOT special, not an exception from the rule, and was only used as an expendable object. There really is a parallel here. Except for Connor this knowledge didn't came with an anger, but with guilt for his previous actions (and, you know, Connor was actually right about it while Daniel could have potentially made a mistake in interpreting it the way he did)
So "Daniel never saw it coming because he was only surrounded by love" is one theory, but now I wanna consider a different one, being –
He was never going to be replaced on the first place,
Philips family is just insanely rich and John decided that he can afford to buy one more android, because why not? The one they have is great, and their enormous apartment with giant gold statues of Buddha and big-ass pool area would benefit from another pair of hands. It's possible that this decision wasn't even planned, but just an impulsive purchase done by someone who's so rich that spending nearly 10K is not a big deal.
And in this case, maybe Daniel's suspicion accumulated over a period time of him hearing how other androids are talked about outside of Philip's family and always thinking "For me it's different – they actually love me for who I am and will never replace like that. They're not like those other people, they're different, I'm different." And then him seeing that purchase was just...the last straw that was needed for him to apply all those previous already existing suspicions to his own situation and finally consider that they might actually apply to him, resulting in him drawing those depressing conclusions that if true would mean that his whole life has been a lie that he was just too stupid to be able to see through.
So there's at least a small chance that it was all a result of just a big misjudgement and/or could be avoided if dialogue was Daniel's first choice of action instead of him getting blinded by his anger and urge to take revenge on those who -- at least from his immediate understanding of the situation -- betrayed him.
