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thinking about how a recurring theme for cassian throughout the whole show is how he doesn’t feel in control of his life. that he feels he lacks the autonomy needed to truly make important decisions for himself. and how, at the end of his life his two closest companions are people who only have their own senses of free choice and autonomy because cassian helped give it to them.

kay was liberated from the empire’s control all because cassian decided on a whim to take the k-x that tried to kill him on ghorman back to yavin with him, and melshi was liberated from prison just a month after cass got there after being there for so long it had completely crushed his spirit.

if it hadn’t been for cassian, kay would have never known what it feels like to Feel things, to know what it’s like to say No. melshi very likely would have never seen the sun again, never been reborn in the waters of narkina 5 and on the shores of niamos into the man who would be a sergeant within a year of joining the alliance.

they never would have known what it’s like to play 863 games of rianza in the jungle yurt they’ve lived in for a year, with the man who freed them and someone else he freed along the way.

and i’m not sure cass ever truly recognized the effect he had on those around him, but they sure did.

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I didn’t like the baby reveal ending at first but I started thinking about kleya and suddenly it hits a lot harder and I get it now. it seems a bit cheap on its own maybe, but if you think about the baby as a mirror to kleya it’s really more impactful I feel. we only just found out that luthen and kleya had a father-daughter relationship—that was a baby reveal in its own way—right at the moment of luthen’s death. he really did sacrifice everything (except kleya!) for this rebellion, and he will never see the sunrise, but she will. she’ll know it was all worth it. and she’ll be free. the bix/cassian baby reveal works the same way. right at the moment he’s heading off on the path to his final mission, one that will be instrumental in bringing about that sunrise, one we know he’ll never come back from, we see bix, and their baby, who will not only live to see that sunrise, but will probably not even have any memories of a time before it came. that’s what it’s all for. that’s why all these sacrifices matter. everyone vel and cassian toasted to, and the ones who survived too, like kleya and bix, vel and mon etc. that’s why they’re heroes. so no one else has to be. so others can just live

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i truly think the most torturous thing kleya has to get used to on yavin —aside from the living arrangements, aside from carrying her grief, aside from everyone being nice to her all the time, aside from the gaping space of her control centre— is she has to be sincere in her interactions now.

she has to make small talk with strangers and mean it. she has to give constructive criticism and mean it. she has to take compliments on her work and mean it. she has to make connections with people and have it stick and get to know them beyond their utility, their skills, their discretion, their disposability. she has to do all the things she used to do as a facade and be genuine about them.

for so long it's only been her and luthen and her various masks; the customer-first shop assistant, the unnerved and relentless comms monitor, the collected and headstrong logistics manager who makes sure people are calm and where they need to be. and then luthen's gone and she's kept everyone else at arm's length and all of a sudden cassian's seen her panic and melshi's seen her scared and vel's seen her dissociate and it's the emotional equivalent of a nightmare where you're in your underwear in class. she has to accept kindness and aid and affection, all things that she's never been able to give others because she's never been able to afford the risk, has to let them know that she has shortcomings and blindspots and vulnerabilities.

she has to, gods help her, let herself be known.

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i'm not immune to straight ships...

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refseek.com

www.worldcat.org/

link.springer.com

http://bioline.org.br/

repec.org

science.gov

pdfdrive.com

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Big post about Syril Karn, Tragedy, and Redemption. Star Wars Andor Season 2 episode 7/8/9 spoilers below:

Tragedies, I think, have a higher bar to clear than other stories in order to be good. All stories (one way or another) demand of the reader an emotional investment, and to accept the story being told as what happened, be it good or bad. But, a story with a happy ending makes it easier to suspend your disbelief. Sure some things didn't make complete sense, but it all worked out in the end, didn't it?

A tragedy without emotional connection falls flat on its face, but that's true of all stories. A tragedy that's poorly written is subject to a much worse fate: Breaking its own suspension of disbelief.

"And they die at the end? That's dumb. Why didn't she just put on the oxygen mask? Did the writers forget he's a doctor? Oh, how convenient there just happened to be a loose rock there."

The best tragedies, the truly good ones, will leave you thinking "oh if only they'd gotten there sooner. If only she'd known, if only he saw the message. If only they'd happened to cross paths." They leave you wishing things could have gone differently, but knowing the ending we got was the only way it could have happened.

All this to say, Star Wars does not have a super hot reputation in regards to Tragedy. The prequel films, ostensibly, tell the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker, and I don't need to say much about how well that worked out. Suffice it to say, most of us responded to Anakin ranting about killing not just the men, but the women, and the children with "this guy's jacked up for reals" not "oh, if only things had gone a different way".

That, and as I read in a post earlier today, Star Wars has redemption in its very bones. This is the series that said Darth Vader, a guy who is easily in the top running for greatest movie villain of all time, is worthy of redemption. Star Wars is just littered with redemption arcs: Darth Revan, Kyp Durron, Agent Kallus, Ulic Qel-Droma. Ahmed Best. Half of the Rebel Alliance were former imperials. Your favorite Glup Shitto had a redemption arc at some point.

And from the start, Syril Karn has been a prime candidate to earn a redemption.

Syril is a character who is powerfully driven by his own conscience and sense of justice. His hunt for Cassian isn't purely motivated by this (pride is also a huge part it), but when we first meet him in Season 1, his goals are understandable. Admirable, even: Two men were murdered. His boss, a consummate slacker, is covering it up for no reason besides a tidier quarterly report. The murderer is a dangerous man who needs to be stopped.

The two dead men were barely more than government sanctioned thugs, of course. And his boss's apathy was calculated: uneventful reports keep Imperial scrutiny off of Corporate Sector worlds. But that made little difference to Syril in the limited scope of his own moral code. Unlike so many other Imperial characters we meet, he isn't morally bankrupt, or ambivalent towards right and wrong. Quite the opposite, in fact. Rather, his flaw is that his sense of morals is deeply misguided.

He treats being a mid-level corpo-cop with an intensity usually reserved for the Imperial Guard. He desperately seeks approval from those above him. He truly believes the Empire to be a force for good. He prioritizes the deaths of two drunkards shaking someone down for money as an all-hands-on-deck emergency.

Even his success in identifying Cassian is only of value to the Empire by sheer luck. At the time of the killing, Cass wasn't a rebel, wasn't on a mission, and barely knew of Luthen's existence.

Syril's explosive failure to capture Cassian at the end of the first arc of season 1 is of course, the culmination of this. That failure affects him materially, costing him his position and his dignity, but only reinforces his moral judgement: Cassian is dangerous, a threat that needs to be eliminated. His behavior for the remainder of Season 1 is directly driven by this belief.

The Syril we see in Season 2 is in a different situation entirely. His relationship with Dedra fulfills his need for affirmation, his job allows him to serve the Empire. But without the hunt for Cassian, his sense of moral justice isn't being addressed.

In sending him to Ghorman, Dedra and Partigaz wield Syril's conscience like a tool.

There's real exasperation in his voice when he tells his mother to stop watching Fox Imperial News. He attends the town hall meeting with rapt attention, even though he barely speaks the language. His sense of justice, even presented in bad faith, is enough to convince the Ghorman Front he could be a true ally.

And as petty an excuse as it is, he truly believes that his goal in infiltrating the Ghorman Front is to "identify outside agitators," not drive them to violence, or dismantle them.

His final confrontation with Cassian is a farce. Syril has no idea that he's just saved Dedra's life. He barely has a reason to be attacking Cassian at all; He's walked away from Dedra, from his position, and from the Empire itself.

When Cassian, dumbfounded, asks Syril who are you, he doesn't answer. The Syril we met at the beginning of the story might say something like "You ruined my life!" or "This is all your fault!" We can practically see the words forming on his lips. But this Syril is at his absolute lowest, and although it took a literal mass-killing happening around (and partially because of) him, he hesitates. Because he's finally questioning whether hunting Cassian down was the right thing to do.

But it took him FAR too long to realize it. He had two years working directly with resistance fighters to question if maybe- MAYBE what he was doing was wrong. Two years of hearing the rumors, two years of watching Imperial soldiers occupy the city. Two years of collecting tchotchkes and doing paperwork and living his daily life among Ghorman citizens.

And that right there is the tragedy of it all. If only Syril had questioned what he was really doing sooner. If only he'd followed his conscience, instead of his need for praise. If only seeing Cassian hadn't thrown him into a rage. If only his sense of justice had led him to his realization before people were being gunned down in the streets, he'd have a chance to be redeemed. And this is Star Wars! Anyone can make the choice to be redeemed, right?

But he didn't. And he wasn't. And so he died an ignoble death, at the hands of a man he personally betrayed, in the churn of a massacre perpetrated by his lover.

And it couldn't have gone any other way.

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every time massive wildfires break out in Israel, I just remember that the JNF (Jewish National Fund) has been planting non-native pine trees in Palestine for decades now. The JNF has been using greenwashing to disguise the colonial origins and aims of its organization. Sometimes, the trees are planted directly on top of depopulated Palestinian villages. These pine trees, being non-native to Palestine's environment, are very flammable. Just a couple things to think about while we look at the news of these wildfires.

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We know that Facebook is brainscorching your parents and tiktok is brainscorching your cousins, but some of you refuse to admit that you got your brain scorched here. However unlike those sites there isn't an algorithm here you just make bad choices.

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it was not on wheat...

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becoming president just to put lumen, decibel, and size restrictions on vehicles.

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Favorite bird genre has got to be 'that's literally just a dinosaur'

Groove-Billed Ani

Hoatzin

Pheasant Coucal

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“Biden/Kamala would have been better”

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At their core, these people are bullies. The cruelty is the point.