Whenever I see Barrissoka mentioned elsewhere on the internet there are always detractors in the comments, which is pretty typical with a lot of the ships I like and it doesn't bother me. Random commentors on the internet aren't going to stop me liking what I like, obviously.
But what I find really funny is that they always bring up the same two arguments:
"But Barriss framed Ahsoka for treason! How can you ship them?!" My good bitch, that is literally half the appeal. Nothing adds spice to a relationship like a bit of backstabbing.
"Barriss is so much older than Ahsoka!" Firstly; Is she though? Like, yeah she was roughly Anakin's age in the old EU. But how can you watch Barriss in Weapons Factory, Legacy of terror, the Wrong Jedi arc, or even that little bit of her in Forces of Destiny, and still think "Yeah that's a twenty year old woman". Retcons are a fact of life sweetheart. It'll be okay.
Secondly: You think a problematic age gap would stop me, coward?
Let's Call It Love by @StellanSlashGeode (https://archiveofourown.org/works/49209721/chapters/124168009)
What it is: A Modern AU of Ahsoka Tano/Barriss Offee, set in Olympia Washington. They're post-grad school humans trying to build their lives and falling madly in love.
Why I rec it: Just a great author universe! A thoughtful, sweet romance for Ahsoka and Barriss that respects their canon personalities so so well. Their backstories are heartbreaking and real and their process is just the kind of fluff (with a little angst) that I love. And then, bang, a sex scene that advances the plot while also being hot!
A story full of little references to Jedi past and present, wrapped up with the kind of detailed storytelling that makes you feel like you've been to a place.
Start it for recovering scene kid Ahsoka. Stay for Anakin the comic book store employee and Professor Kenobi.
Absolutely worth a read!
OOOOOOOOO a modern AU Barrissoka fic you say??? WITH A SEX SCENE THAT IS HOT AND ADVANCES THE STORY?? As someone that is such a sucker for plot-relevant smut, I ADORE THIS. Also, I just really love the career/character choices for each of these characters in the summary. This fic looks absolutely wonderful! Thanks so much for sending it in!
Participate in Fandom Friday to show your favorite creators from this week some love! :)
The barrisoka dump has to do with Rise or the Old Masters so it involves Ahsoka trying to stop Barriss from leveling Stygian Prime to the ground?
😈😈😈 no, it very much does not
Not entirely at least
I have the bones ready to post with all the pain and some canon divergence to get us there, BUT
barriss falls into the trap to lure Jedi, and the dark side is begging her to use it, she knows how , she knows all the steps , she can kill the grand inquisitor right there and get Luminara out of there, so easy!
But she doesn’t, she stays still, while the inquisitor just keeps talking, because she set him free, all those years ago at the trial, and now he wants to return the favor with promise of reward from the Emperor, with promises of getting it easy once she just let herself Fall.
It takes so much, takes remembering her master and what she needs Barriss to do, to save her, even if it’s just making sure she finally gets the burial she is deserved. The Grand Inquisitor had both of their lightsabers, had been given them by the Empire and he’d held onto them for years, because his obsession with Barriss was unhealthy but he owed his awakening to her. Hoping that one day, he could guide her through bleeding the crystals and then he could guide her to take revenge against the Jedi that did this to her.
(And these new ideas came literally just as I woke up asdfghjkl)
Barriss fights her way out, is sloppy but it’s clear the inquisitor isn’t trying his hardest, and if she would have been as level headed as her master would have once urged, she probably could have noticed it, because she was so sloppy and not good at handling two sabers, and it had been so long since she’d held a saber, not since the trial.
She manages to escape, they don’t follow her, she lets herself believe she’s successful.
She has no idea who to go to, is so sure everyone who may have looked through her past and saw the woman who wanted to change underneath was dead, and she’d been so certain there was only Ahsoka and Barriss who she could ever convince, because Ahsoka believed the best about so many people, but she was killed in the purge (she had to be, even Barriss hadn’t been able to ignore that certain spike of fear she’d felt in the force from her old friend) , so she floats in space, she tries to figure out how she’s going to get back and help her master.
She doesn’t know that there’s now holograms of herself floating through the holonet, of herself being moved through the same simulations they’d moved Barriss in, but Fulcrum does.
And when Fulcrum reaches into the force, searching for a connection that she hadn’t allowed herself to hope for (the force still hurt, even all these years after the purge, but she was learning to navigate past the inky thickness that suffocated it) , she could feel Barriss, could feel that fear , and wasn’t it obvious that these recording were true?
Didn’t Fulcrum need all the help she could get? (Didn’t Ahsoka miss her friend?) so Fulcrum comes out to the Ghost Squadron early, she goes to Kanan and she tries her best to convince him, because he remembers the trial, remembers the bombing , but if Ahsoka, the last living person who had been most effected by the betrayal, was willing to go for her, then he would help. (He’d been meaning to find Ezra a better master, and Ahsoka and Barriss had been trained by the best, if what she said about Luminara was true)
They don’t know it’s a trap, set specifically for Fulcrum, to see if Ahsoka Tano truly lives on (because what kind of movement uses facial markings so clearly recognizable?)
Ahsoka, Kanan, and Ezra fall into the trap, Barriss isn’t there, but Luminara’s desecrated corpse is, and so is The Grand Inquisitor and she is so stupid for leading them into this, she hadn’t messed up this bad since the Citadel, and she can’t figure out what to do.
Barriss wasn’t there, but she was close, and she could feel the fear from three force sensitives, who had fallen into the trap of her master’s body, so she rushes back, and when she steps into that small cell with three Jedi and an inquisitor, she looks at Ahsoka Tano for the first time in years, and there is nothing to be said at the moment, because falling into the movements of fighting back to back is so natural, so them, it’s a a second nature she’d thought had died so long ago.
The four Jedi force sensitives take down the Grand inquisitor, Ahsoka doesn’t wait for Barriss to explain herself.
Instead she wraps her arms around Barriss middle and squeezes, because it had been so long, and while she had a Lot of Feelings about the betrayal, Barriss was there, she’d survived, and she was not a suffocating darkness in the force like she remembered , but she was just… just Barriss, and that was the first time Ahsoka felt like a person again since she’d buried her Vode.
These are just the bones , but I have an entire giant story already starting around just this in my noggin and it looks. Amazing to me . Bouncing around and begging me to put it on paper, so this is happening, probably this weekend, and I hope people get as excited as me for it.
And also thank you for asking I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be able to contain myself
Star Wars AU - LONG SO BE WARNED - Where all sentients have like these little companions of sorts
Whether these companions are animals, pokémon, daemons!AU, glowing orbs or translucent moth-like-things or whatever, all sentients are born on the same days as their companions. Who, by the will of the Force, materialize near infants as babies themselves some days or weeks after their birth. It’s a phenomenon scientists all over the Galaxy marvel at and research but just can’t seem to figure out past ...odd.
Anyways.
Sentients and their companions age at the same rate and each sentients companion tells you nothing about them in reality since every culture assigns different meanings to the animals/pokémon/daemon/whatever. All anyone knows is that these companions are incredibly important to everyone and - unless you are evil upon evil - love them with your everything. If they die, you won’t, or if you die, they won’t but it’s an incredibly traumatic event for whoever survives the ordeal.
They also let secrets out of the bag pretty easy when it comes to emotions since if you like someone, even a little bit, they will adore the other sentient and their companion, and if you dislike someone even a bit ... well then they will hate the other sentients companion and the sentient. This, for the Jedi, means the attachment rule isn’t quite the same since they allow attachment to companions and don’t shy away from companions showing affection or dislike - however, the Sentients are still not allowed to form attachments, unless to companions.
Slaves are lucky if their companions are killed off. That means the master won’t use them against the enslaved/enslave them too. Anakin’s companion has just as many physical and mental scars as Anakin does and it shows much better on the companion than Anakin bc Anakin can hide his trauma better than a companion ever can. (Companions also get bomb chips)
Anyways... Anakin’s and Obi-wan’s companions are never not together. At first, when they met on the Naboo ship Anakin’s Companion (AC) is nice and curious about/toward Obi-wans, acting very much like a child, and Obi-wans companion (OC), also acting like a child, avoids and gets upset whenever AC comes near.
(Qui-gons compainion is a full on parent and simply parents every companion it comes across, older or younger.)
Eventually OC and AC learn to get along, and develop a very very close bond. To the point no master/padawan companions look like theirs - revealing how Anakin and Obi-wan don’t really have a proper master/padawan relationship and it’s more like two friends - one older, one younger - trying to navigate a world neither of them are ready to. By the time the CWs start everyone in the Order just accepts the fact OC and AC are attached at the hip, never seen apart to the point Anakin and Obi-wan can be separated by actual lightyears and their companions just pick one to stay with and then not leave each other.
It becomes so common place that after Obi-wan joins the council, and his companion is never with him, the council removes the designated companion-seat by Obi-wan bc they know OC will always be with AC when Obi-wans in a meeting since AC hates the council room. (Rightfully so. Ki Ad Mundi’s and Eeth Koth’s companions are very nasty toward AC. Mace Windu’s companion wasn’t nice at first, but over the years Windu’s companion grew incredibly fond of AC and treats AC (and sometimes OC) like their own kid. AC also likes Windu’s companion and acts like they are its parent. No one acknowledges this tho.)
Also, senators companions are, by law, required to by hidden from the public. No one but the senator and their trusted friends/allies/family and their companions can know what the senators companion looks like. For this purpose they are not allowed to come to the Senate nor can they be seen near the senator without being disguised as a droid/in a carrying case/concealed on the sentient/etc. This carries over on Naboo for candidates for Queendom and during the Queens reign as well so - for Padme and her handmaidens - their companion has remained secret. (Even to Palpatine.)
Anyways, since this is, of course, an obianidala AU in my brain - though you imagine what you like! - Obi knows about Anidala and starting around the end of the second year of the war he starts getting romantic feels for Anakin and Padme. Padme quickly notices - since OC now acts like AC and Padme’s companion (PC) do toward each other - read: extreme fondness and playfulness to the point of obnoxiousness - Obi’s feelings bc she's awesome like that. Obi and Anakin have been completely oblivious to how their companions have changed toward each other, from the intense bond they had to one that mimicked Anidala’s companions interacting.
PC and AC had always - when together - acted with that obnoxious playful and fondness, but the two were never attached at the hip and so the Jedi had always just figured Anakin had a friend, but nothing more.
Eventually, bc Padme moves quick to snatch up her boys, obianidala is in a secret relationship and everyone just gets used to the mysterious third companion also around AC and OC, since PC now never leaves one or the other alone, and since OC and AC are together all the time, the three are never seen apart. It gets to the point PC has full access to the Temple. Obi-wan and Anakin deny the existence of PC - Obi-wan once looks Yoda dead in the eyes and asks him what companion he is talking about as PC, the only companion that goes into the council room and so brings back the companion-seat for Obi, snuggles on his lap or sits on the seat, you choose.
Ashoka’s companion very quickly gets adopted by AC, like the moment they meet and so undermines Anakin’s whole I-don’t-like-you attitude, OC follows shortly after and once PC gets a hold of Ashoka’s companion they do too.
Anyways, this idea’s been bugging me and im sorry this is so long and I think it has such potential for both a serious fic or just something short and incredibly crack-like.
