#andor discussion

[skygirlstars]

Ask meme concept: Reverse Unpopular Opinion meme

Ppl send topics and instead of salt or hot takes, you MUST talk abt smth you like about it. Good excuse to gush abt smth you already love, OR think and find smth positive to say. 

Something about Andor?

oooo this one’s easy because I have almost exclusively good things to say about Andor. where do I even start???

the writing is FANTASTIC. it’s a fairly neat, self-contained plot that weaves the separate storylines together so well, manifesting in the last episode where everyone is on Ferrix. speaking of Ferrix, I love how real the location and its community feel because the writers put effort into making all the little connections between characters and establishing traditions and a clear culture. oh and all the parallels to real life events and cultures, particularly the ones Diego Luna has said were inspired by his own experiences.

I love the characters!!! which is definitely also a product of the writing because everyone feels so fleshed out, and it seems like even the random side characters have their own lives and motivations. Cassian is such an interesting protagonist and his development and character arc so far has been so well done. I love how complex his morality is and how we, the viewers, see him realize his responsibility to fight the Empire on behalf of everyone, not just himself. Mon’s storyline is also one of my favorites. I think she’s such an interesting character as well, especially in her relationships with others. messy father-son relationships in Star Wars are great and all, but a messy mother-daughter relationship? holyyy fuck. I’m so unwell about them. Nemik being the revolutionary idealist, Vel and Cinta trying to balance their duty to the Rebellion with their relationship, Syril being the most cringefail loser ever, whatever the hell is going on with Luthen, etc etc it’s all just so interesting. (and not to mention good lord this cast is FINE)

and so so so many other things, I could seriously talk about this show all day. B2EMO is one of my absolute favorite droids now!! he’s so precious. and a canon sapphic relationship?!?!! and don’t even get me started on the MUSIC. Nicholas Britell deserves all the praise omg

so there you go, that’s just a little bit of why I love Andor. I should really make my own posts about it more lol

[coolcattime]

One day Jordan finds Capsize messing around with a flag. That's not exactly unusual for a pirate, but it doesn't look like any pirate flag he's ever seen and the colour scheme doesn't make it look like anything to do with Ianite.

He ends up asking her what it means, and Capsize raises an eyebrow and asks if he genuinely doesn't know to which Jordan affirms that he doesn't. There's a bit of a back and forth as she seems almost sure that he's joking, but when she finally realises that he is being serious she reluctantly goes to tell him. Only for Redbeard to interrupt with:

"Oh that flag represents Capsize's undying loyalty to Ianite and how she just never stops thinking about her ever."

He promptly takes off at a sprint with Capsize chasing him yelling a number of murder threats. When Capsize gets back (one murder and revival spell later) she finds that Jordan is gone, realises he definitely took Red's words as the wholehearted truth and definitely does not feel like sorting out that issue.

Tom later finds Jordan painting some very particular oranges and pinks onto his quiver, and immediately feels the need to ask what he's doing. Jordan tells him about what Redbeard said with the undying loyalty to Ianite which leds to:

"Okay, but you know that isn't actually what that flag means, right."

"No, it is. Skipper said that's why Capsize has one."

Tom proceeds to die of laughter and decides its so much funnier to not tell him.

About six months later in Ruxomar, Jordan is talking with Andor about Ianite and ends up showing the painted quiver and explaining the story. Andor, after a tiny bit of debating, decides to tell him.

"Jordan that's the lesbian pride flag."

Needless to say, Tom is killed several times that day. His defence of having tried to tell Jordan that Capsize liked women really not helping. Though, even with losing most of his stuff and his life several times, Tom stands by that it was worth it and funny.

[psychomusic]

so. I've been reading some posts on the jedi order tag AND i won't talk about my opinion on "are jedi good or bad discourse" BUT i wanna point out some lore to everyone who's complaining about the jedi taking kids into their order: (in the EU) it wasn't always like this.

if you take swtor era (more than 3000 years before the prequels) there were many jedi who joined at an older age. like, for example there was a guy who broke his engagement to become one. most jedi remember their families because they were old enough when they decided to go.

THEN in darth bane's book trilogy (circa 1000 yesrs before the prequels) there is a passage where two sith lords are talking about taking bane, already an adult, to study at korriban. one doubted him because he was too old, ans the other told him he sounded like a jedi, and that ONE DAY jedi will have to accept only kids into their ranks if they really want to find "pure" people that can learn their lessons quicker.

one day!! so it wasn't always like that!! the ongoing wars with the sith, who corrupted and killed many of them, had pressured them into taking always younger people into their ranks.

also, consider a thing that this video explains super well: training to become a jedi is not like exercising, because there is a transformative lesson at the end of the training that changes everything. you can't just do as much as you can, but not finish.

the transformative lesson, as the video explains, is that through the force, everything is the same - from rocks and ships to life and death. at the end of the training you have to understand this fundamental truth.

yoda says "you have to unlearn what you have learned". during times where they were constantly killed off or corrupted by the dark side (and if you haven't learned this lesson you are more susceptible to this corrupting), younger people were taken in to actually finish their training (a training that was ultimately about being a good person AND that you could leave at any point if you weren't sold on that, too)

(remember that for the sith failure = death. like. that was the alternative for force sensitive kids. it's not like sith had any moral problem with taking kids away without consent. sith don't have moral problems: they believe that them being stronger in the force means they can do whatever they want as long as their strong enough to go and do it. there are MANY passages in many different star wars stories, even in different mediums, that say this out loud)

AND (this is more of a critical thought than just stating the lore) the fact that they started doing it out of necessity doesn't mean it's 100% good BUT you know. the whole set up of the prequels is that we're starting off the story in a period of crisis and decadence all around. most of the systems of the times were about to fall. OF COURSE they had problems. if they didn't, we wouldn't have the story to begin with.

that doesn't automatically mean jedi = bad and sith are better, tho. you wouldn't take the last, chaotic and decadent period to jugde something, would you? it's like deciding that the athenian democracy sucked because people at the times of Demosthenes failed at recognizing the new schemes in which the world was evolving into, and still believed that their city would be important as it had been in the previous century. They just didn't fucking expect the Macedons would conquer half the world known and more, and have the subsequent political power. Still, their experiences in the 5th century with democracy were very good, even better than ours on many fronts, if you contextualize a little. the jedi had flaws, and most importantly, they didn't fucking know the future and everything that ever happened, ever, so they made mistakes. that doesn't automatically make the system ill, or bad, or not-working. systems can have setbacks when the world changes. (just like athenian democracy had one when they lost the empire that was funding the democracy. they even had a tyranny for a while and then fixed the problems. that doesn't diminish retrospectively their democracy)

[kazoosandfannypacks]

okay i need to rewatch rogue one like. right now.

[astromechs]

ok i said i'd expand on my tags here, so i'm going to! character meta wednesday, if you will, about cassian and his relationship with death, which informs that very last second we see of him right before he dies.

going by the oxford dictionary definition of death wish, which involves an unconscious desire for one's own death, i do believe that applies to cassian in the vast majority of his canon appearances. i wouldn't say he's actively suicidal in the rogue one novelization, but he's at least passively so on some level — with multiple instances that, as someone with a background in clinical psychology who has been trained in risk assessment, i would consider passive ideation, most notably that time on eadu when he thought about jyn coming to kill him to make him "answer for [his] crimes" and him being like "yeah, that's fine." even without the novelization, the man you see in the film, for the most part, is thoroughly broken down and beaten by the things he's done for the rebellion, for the choices that he's made, for the life that he's lived, and this isn't someone who clearly has much regard for his own life.

even the earliest parts of andor canon, even well before "kill me, or take me in," have this going on with cassian. his death is hanging over the show, and he's a proverbial ghost haunting his own narrative the whole time. yes, he survived mimban because he ran, yes, he's surviving, but that's the keyword — he's surviving. he's going through the motions of surviving. he doesn't particularly care about living that much, he's just doing it. there are choices that he makes that are reckless, that are definitely in blatant disregard of his own safety, that the events that transpire in those twelve episodes getting him to "kill me, or take me in" really isn't a surprise.

and let's be real, a man who walks up to someone who he knows has been trying to kill him and says that isn't exactly well-adjusted.

so taking all of this, that moment where cassian opens his eyes just before he dies and looks panicked hurts even more. what the visual language is saying here is that after all of this, after a whole life of this sort of outlook and behavior, cassian has realized in his last seconds that — wait, he didn't actually want to die. wait, this is terrifying. wait, he might've wanted to actually try to live for something.

but it's too late.

the death of every member of rogue one has its own individual tragedy, and that's cassian's.

[jaqobis]

so are we going to discuss the possibility that kenari was ruined for ores to build the death star or

[tummy-hurts-sad]

for a website that lusts so much about sopping wet brown-eyed boys there's a severe lack of diego luna content

[chipthekeeper]

It will forever haunt me how we really never see Cinta talk to or even interact much with anyone else on the Aldhani crew. She’s got like four lines with “Clem” and obviously more with Vel but aside from the (fully adorable) look she shares with Gorn over Nemik’s infodumping there’s like literally nothing. I hate it. I hate it hate it hate it

[luthienne]

the whiplash pedro pascal must feel going from the last of us script i just know that when i wake up i’ve lost something… i’m failing in my sleep… that’s all i do, that’s all i’ve ever done to the s3 mandalorian script *watches a droid drop a bust onto another droid* now that’s using your head

[psychoblush]

Andor - S1E1 "Kassa" - Structural Analysis

This is a written analysis of the plotting and structure of Andor from a screen/TV writing perspective. I'm an aspiring screenwriter studying TV, film, and theater writing in college and this is my pet-project: to examine the way Andor constructs story in order to achieve certain dramaturgical effects. I hope to do similar analyses for the rest of the season as well. Thank you for reading!

This will contain spoilers for all of episode 1, spoilers for the first arc (E1-E3) and mild spoilers for the rest of the season.

Show premise

Petty-thief Cassian Andor is hunted by the Empire while a revolutionary movement coalesces across the galaxy.

Ferrix Arc (S1E1-S1E3)

Stories (Arc-wide)

A-story: When a pursuit for information regarding the whereabouts of his long-lost sister leads to him being a wanted man, petty-thief Cassian Andor is forced to do anything he can to remove himself from the attentions of corporate security, but the ensuing confrontation leads to death and destruction within his community.

B-story: (in flashback) When a mysterious starship de-orbits over Kenari, young Kassa embarks on a quest to prove himself as a capable member of his community, but the confrontation results in the destruction of his community and his abduction by off-world scavengers, never to see his family or his sister again.

C-story: Deputy inspector Syril Karn seeks to prove himself as a capable officer and a force for justice by apprehending the killer, but does so by disregarding his orders and endangering the lives of his comrades.

D-story: When Timm gets jealous of Cassian’s reentry into Bix’s life, the relationship is strained by mutual secrecy and miscommunication, leading to Timm’s death at the hands of a corporate cop.

S1E1 - “Kassa”

dir. Toby Haynes, wri. Tony Gilroy

streamed September 21st, 2022

Stories

A-story: Petty-thief Cassian Andor seeks to lay low and cover his tracks after a fatal shake-down with two corrupt cops leaves him a wanted man, but finds that his community distrusts him after overdrawing one too many favors.

This A-story is very central to the entire episode and with the exception of the B-story, all other stories causally spring from this story and end up relating to it in some way by the end of the arc.

B-story: In flashbacks, young Kassa wants to prove his worth by embarking on a scouting mission with the other “adults”, but abandons his sister in doing so.

The B-story serves both in the arc and the episode as a way to provide an elegate symmetrical structure. There’s a scene in the beginning of the primary action of Cassian’s pursuit after the opening sequence, one in the middle, and one in the very end. At the same time, the flashback serves to articulate some of the internal dysfunctions of the character, even though it takes a few episodes for it to fully manifest.

C-story: Security deputy Syril Karn wants to solve the murder of the two cops to fulfill his vision of justice, but finds that nobody in his organization, especially his boss, wants to help with his pursuit of the killer.

Here, Tony starts to flex his muscles in devising institutional drama and plotting. The main antagonistic force in the story does not operate unimpeded; he instead is faced with his own antagonism that articulates two key themes: 1) the empire stifles the freedom of those that serve it, and 2) fascist societies generate fanaticism regardless of whether or not it advances their cause or helps to maintain the preferred status quo.

D-story: Cassian’s reentry into Bix’s life prompts friction and secrecy between Bix and her romantic/business partner, Timm.

This almost functions as an addendum to the A-story, but gets its own special attention in how it chooses to articulate the Bix/Timm relationship. But it comes to have a direct causal effect on the A-story in subsequent episodes. Infact, the way causality transcends the stories becomes extremely intricate in its own right. Dramatic action becomes an emergent property of these interactions.

Scene sequences

OPENING/CLOSING IMAGES

OPENING IMAGE: Streetlights moving rapidly in the rain; Cassian in pursuit of his sister.

CLOSING IMAGE: After Kassa leaves his sister for the last time, she watches him as he runs away.

1: I./E. BROTHEL, MORLANA ONE - NIGHT (A-STORY)

Cassian enters an upscale brothel in search of his sister. When he receives special attention from the hostess, two on-duty corporate cops start antagonizing him. Cassian gets too pushy in getting information from the hostess, prompting him to get kicked out of the club and his pursuit thwarted.

2: EXT. MORLANA ONE - NIGHT (A-STORY)

Cassian tries to exit discreetly, but is held at gunpoint and shaken down by the two offended corporate cops. They attempt to rob him, but Cassian is able to outwit them, inadvertently killing one of them in the scuffle, and recovering the gun. With the tables now turned, the remaining cop tries to persuade Cassian to spare him, but Cassian kills him to make his escape.

Let’s talk about these two scenes as a sequence, because they function as one discrete unit of storytelling. Andor doesn’t do cold opens - though this sequence could very easily serve as a riveting cold open if they moved the title card to right after this scene. Being a streaming exclusive without commercial breaks, Andor also doesn’t use hard act structure with distinct act outs, even though we’ll come to see Andor as employing techniques similar to traditional TV act structure at times.

In TV writing, we sometimes encounter this idea of cold opens or opening sequences serving as story microcosms. In the sense that the structure and action of the sequence is representative, in a small way, of the way the world we see in the episode, season, and series functions. Andor’s opening sequence has him engage in a seemingly innocuous pursuit, enter a highly dangerous yet extremely familiar situation of power-tripping LEO, and leads him to make a difficult choice to escape the dangerous situation. It’s telling us that this is a world where good people have to make hard choices to survive because of the danger of the society they live in, which we will come to see in subsequent story units, is a racist, fascist, imperialistic, and capitalist society.

3: I./E. FERRIX / MAARVA’S SHIP - MORNING (A-STORY)

An extremely quick scene introducing us to Ferrix before work-hours, B2’s winning personality, and establishes the pretenses for Cassian’s flashbacks in the B-story. 

This isn’t really a real scene because it doesn’t have conflict, it doesn’t have antagonism, and it doesn’t have pursuit. But it serves as a good framing device and orients us to where we are on Ferrix.

4: EXT. KENARI VILLAGE - DAY (B-STORY)

This scene introduces us to Kenari, Cassian’s sister, and Kassa (the young uncontacted version of Cassian). We don’t get much action or context in this scene, but discerning viewers are able to pick up on the fact that this is a society populated solely by children and teenagers wearing and using old industrial equipment. Something very bad clearly happened here. We also see the mysterious ship de-orbiting, and the reaction the community has tells us this isn’t something they’re used to.

The decision to completely eschew subtitles is a pretty fascinating directorial choice and one that has gotten a lot of attention online. But It does a lot to ground the movement solely on the acting and visual language, as opposed to dialogue construction - though arguably it makes the plotting of this story a bit more sparse.

5: INT. MAARVA’S SHIP - DAY (A-STORY)

We get a short scene with Cassian where he starts to formulate a plan. We also get some indication that Cassian has a community on this planet with Bee mentioning Maarva and Brasso. In some ways, Maarva’s the antagonist in this scene because she’s besmirching Cassian to the others, even though she’s not there and it’s coming from Bee.

“Spectral” antagonist: A representation of the antagonistic force in the story by a character who isn’t that main antagonistic force. Bee’s just passing on information from someone else, but in doing so, he’s softly acting as the antagonist for the moment. We see this technique employed a lot in this episode and this show, especially since shows operating in the prestige mode often go entire episodes without main oppositional characters meeting (i.e. Cass and Dedra still haven’t met).

6: EXT. RIX ROAD - DAY (A-STORY)

Cassian convinces Brasso to spin a lie for him, but in doing so, it becomes apparent that Cassian’s sleaziness has overstayed its welcome in the community.

This is when the main sense of antagonism in the episode starts to crystalize for Cassian. Maybe once, his petty crime and hustler antics were overlooked in the community, but those days are coming to an end as Cassian’s options dwindle. That’s the source of danger, more than the possibility that he’ll be caught for the time being.

7: INT. PRE-MOR SECURITY CHIEF’S OFFICE - DAY (C-STORY)

Syril delivers the report of the double-homicide to Chief Hyne - keen on making a good impression and presenting himself as a dutiful officer, but Hyne sees through the bullshit and orders him not to investigate the murder in an effort to sanitize Pre-Mor’s crime reports under Imperial jurisdiction, leading Syril to be incredulous.

This is a great scene. It works wonderfully schematically, the scripting is stellar, and the acting is spot-on. This is the scene where I was truly convinced of what Andor’s storytelling was capable of. Syril comes in with a pursuit (deliver a report) with a deeper motivation (pursuit of justice) which is fueled by dysfunction (he is deeply insecure about his position as an officer and is desperate to please). The pursuit is met with opposition (Hyne has a completely different perspective on justice, being a pragmatist and someone who doesn’t want to rock the ship) and reversal (Hyne orders him to drop the matter and implies he wants to fire him), which leads us with a clear emotional context from Syril (anger and disbelief) which propels him into action (go behind Hyne’s back) for the rest of the story arc. It’s Emmy-worthy writing in a single scene. And it all happens in 3 minutes.

8: I./E. TIMM AND BIX’S SALVAGE SHOP - DAY (A-STORY) / (D-STORY)

Cassian comes in to convince Bix to contact his black-market dealer so he can sell his Starpath unit for a premium, but it generates friction between him and Bix because Bix assumes he’s been undercutting him. When Bix offers to buy it off him, Cassian refuses and convinces her to make the call. Timm expresses resentment for Cassian’s past with Bix - when Cass tries to dissuade his concerns, Timm gets more jealous of the two of them.

This scene’s also a banger. It has a complex shape - the danger is threefold: Cass doesn’t want Bix to know what trouble he’s in, he’s externally threatened by the sense of fear he has over being caught, and neither Bix nor Cass want Timm to discover the extent of their black market side-hustle. Bix is an antagonist to Cass, Timm is an unknowing antagonist to both Cass and Bix, and Timm thinks Cass is his antagonist. It’s great, and from here the causality gets pretty wild.

9. EXT. KENARI VILLAGE - DAY (B-STORY)

Kassa tries to go on the war march by joining in on the face-painting, even though he knows it means abandoning his sister. An older boy tries to stop him from participating, but the older female leader lets him join, prompting him to paint his face the same way she did.

This is a good scene with sparse plotting befitting the style of this story. The antagonistic force is the sense that Kassa should stay with the community and be with his sister, while the pursuit is that Kassa thinks he’s of more service if he leaves with the war party. The two antagonists are his sister and the older boy. Kassa gets what he wants in this scene, like he does in all the scenes this episode. This is because this story functions on an inverted sense of danger: the closer Kassa gets to what he wants, the more dangerous things will be for him. So the stakes are actually higher if his actions aren’t opposed very firmly. His dysfunction drives the story forward, with opposition deferred until it gets extremely bad in the third episode.

10. INT. PRE-MOR CORRIDOR / AIR TRAFFIC OFFICE - DAY (C-STORY)

Two security workers laugh and greet Syril in the hallway - Syril’s awkward response causes him to feel isolated. Syril corners the air traffic controller into reviewing the logs for him, but when the controller expresses apathy over the matter, Syril threatens him into compliance by invoking his authority.

GREAT LITTLE SCENE. It illustrates dysfunction: Syril is lonely, all he has is his job and a black-and-white view of morality and justice. It shows him acting transgressive to get what he wants, specifically by abusing his power over others. And it articulates the antagonism the same as the previous scene with him: what he perceives as laziness and apathy is what keeps him from getting what he wants.

11: EXT. FERRIX BACKALLEY - DAY (A-STORY)

Cassian is cornered and hustled by Nurchi, a local to whom he’s greatly indebted. Nurchi attempts to intimidate him with the help of Vetch, but Cassian is able call Nurchi’s bluff and escape from the situation.

It’s a good scene, really short and sparse. Thing to track here is that the town is becoming increasingly hostile to him and he’s generally unliked by folks.

12: I./E. TIMM AND BIX’S SALVAGE SHOP / FERRIX STREETS - DAY (D-STORY)

Bix is cagey about where she’s headed when Timm asks. Bix leaves, Timm attempts following her but quickly loses her trail when it’s clear Bix knows the streets better than he does.

13: I./E. PAAK WORKSHOP / RADIO TOWER - DAY (A-STORY)

Bix goes to Salman and Wilmon Paak’s workshop, asking to use the radio. Bix radios the buyer to come to Ferrix.

I put this as A-story because this scene has more to do than the previous one with Cass’ situation than the friction emerging between Timm and Bix.

What’s important about this scene is that it clues us into a larger underground network on Ferrix - Salman, Bix, Cass. It's a community where folks otherwise look the other way at this kind of stuff. Otherwise it’s sparse, no conflict, no antagonism.

14. INT. PRE-MOR SECURITY HQ - DAY (C-STORY)

Syril recruits the main security IT staff to help him apprehend the killer, but the staff express a general unwillingness to help him - both because they don’t care and because Syril doesn’t actually possess the authority to sanction an operation like this. Syril bullies the staff into compliance, telling them to put out a notice for the killer on Ferrix, despite the lack of authority Pre-Mor has there.

I like this scene, it plays slightly double-beaty because Syril is employing the same tactics as before on different staffers, but it also establishes it as a pattern. Syril advances unopposed in this story - especially in the context of later events, we know this is because we need to see him get into danger faster. It's another example of inverted danger.

15: EXT. PEGLA’S JUNKYARD - DAY (A-STORY)

Cassian tries rewire the ship he borrowed’s transponder codes, but in trying to justify his actions, pisses off Pegla and tells him he’s no longer welcome to take out favors from him.

This is a pretty lowkey scene, but it’s the closest we get to a crisis/climax moment for Cass in this episode. I’ll talk more about why that is later; it refers specifically to the way Andor modulates story in ways that work distinctly from other TV shows. Still, it has everything a scene should. A pursuit/tactic, opposition, reversal. And those elements push the story forward in more dangerous ways, as we’ll come to see in the next two episodes.

16: EXT. KENARI VILLAGE - DAY (B-STORY)

His sister tries to plead with him to stay, but Kassa leaves with the other war party members - promising to return for his sister.

Yeah, this bookends the episode. The episode begins with Cass in pursuit of his sister, the episode ends with Cass leaving his sister, never to return for her.

What do we hear Bix say of Cass in the last episode? “Cass always comes back.” It’s a gut-punch.

GENERAL NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

Andor is a show that functions in a strange and specific way compared to a lot of serialized long-form narrative TV. Andor uses episode as building units to articulate larger discrete units of story within the season. In this sense, Andor’s “pilot episode” (I put this in quotes because most streaming dramas don’t have pilots) isn’t really the first episode, but all three of the episodes in its first season story-arc.

The way I was taught TV, is that all three-act narrative hinges on the elements of set up, play out, and pay off. Andor’s three tri-episode story arcs - which I will call the Ferrix Arc (S1E1-S1E3), the Aldhani Arc (S1E4-S1E6), and the Narkina Arc (S1E8-S1E10) - all hinge on this principle of modular three-act structure. Kassa doesn’t have a typical hard crisis/climax because it isn’t really a complete self-contained episode of TV. I suspect that’s also why the Ferrix Arc was ultimately aired all at one, as opposed to one episode at a time.

Still, Kassa is a strong and capable episode of TV because it demonstrates the strengths of Andor’s storytelling: the principles of causality, dysfunction, and institutional characterization.

causality: the chain of events in story that facilitate and heighten dramatic action in a linear manner. Andor shows us the investigation of the murders that happened in the first sequence - having the action of earlier scenes spiral into increasingly dramatic and complex action in subsequent scenes. The way the D-story with Bix and Timm loops into stuff that happens in the next two episodes is absolutely exquisitely done. Later in the show, the fallout of the Aldhani Arc is central to all of the action that happens in the second half of the season.

dysfunction: a character’s internal dilemma, ideology, or experiential understanding of themselves and the world that makes them operate transgressively within the world of the narrative. This is sometimes a character flaw, but can also be a sense of righteousness that puts them against unjust actors within the narrative. Cassian’s dysfunctions have to do with his desire for self-preservation and an easy payday, Syril’s dysfunctions relate to his inability to live up to his idealized notions of justice, and Timm’s dysfunctions come from the feeling that he can’t be as close to Bix as someone like Cassian can appear to be.

institution: the man-made structures that characters navigate within the story world and define the shape of the narrative. These institutions function as characters in their own right; Pre-Mor has as much of an effect on the narrative as a character like Cassian, as does Ferrix’s tightly knit working class community. And in subsequent episodes, we’ll look closely at how the empire’s administrations and power structures have material effects on the world. This principle is why Syril and Dedra spend much more time fighting their own institutions than fighting Cassian or the rebels. It’s a story about how highly-motivated actors navigate the challenges of their environments; dramaturgical complexity is almost an inevitable emergent property of this paradigm.

This episode and the one following it are among the least-tightly plotted of the season, but there’s still some intricate stuff. There are little moments in scenes where a single line provides an oppositional reversal that redirects the character’s trajectory for the rest of the episode. This isn’t a testament to Kassa’s weakness, it’s an appraisal of how Andor as a whole is a narrative that benefits from emergent complexity. When things go on for longer, more moving parts are in play, the story can move in unpredictable and highly dynamic ways. It’s a staple of prestige TV as a mode and Andor’s first season executes it exquisitely. With that being said, a lot of fans tend to underwrite the first arc of this season. And while I agree that it is personally my least favorite, it’s still really well-done. In the same way Andor has three tri-episode arcs, this is the “set up” one, and it does a lot of heavy lifting that allows the show to play uninhibited in future episodes. Don’t underwrite this one.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if there are any questions about terminology, theory, or just about the show in general, or my interests as a fan and writer.

[letoscrawls]

By the way yesterday i continued watching Andor since i had nothing to do and i gotta admit it gets so much better after the first three episodes

I saw this edit on tt with all the most aesthetic scenes and i was like "goddddd i gotta finish this"

But i still have some problems grasping some parts of the plot, i'd say it's some levels above the usual star wars in terms of difficulty and my head is all over the place 😭 anyways the cop fuy failing once in his life and going back to live with his mom is a mood

[rotzaprachim]

what i know about the vel and cinta and cassian relationship is. they call him clemencito for the rest of his goddamn life. once a year on his birthday vel buys him some random and mostly useless kitchen gadget from space!williams and sonoma or three months of one of those fruit of the month clubs (she is actually extremely terrible at social interaction) and cinta gets him a box of condoms that she sharpies 4 KLEM onto. 

[e-the-village-cryptid]

when you go to recent posts on a character tag to try to find other people to be feral about them with but 80% of it is just you going feral about them on your own

[cassianandorserver]

Today we decided that Jyn is the dom and Cassian is the sub (and Melshi is the service dom/switch)

[splendiferous-bitch]

ALL OF MY BABIES ARE GETTING PUT UP AGAINST ONE ANOTHER I DONT LIKE IT

[weirdsociology]