#not even Nemik's theory

[jake-and-amy-are-married]

Andor Appreciation Week @andorappreciation

Day 6: Favourite Quotes/Monologues// Music

My name is Kino Loy.

Special thanks to @staticwaffles and @cal-kestis for being such awesome cheerleaders during my nearly 5-month-long GIF-learning journey. Your patience and enthusiasm have led me here <3.

Also shoutout to the text tutorial by @hiphiphelly

[wychelm]

they were sick for this. i think

[r-osehips]

another thing I love. LOVEEE. about Andor is that over and over it demonstrates (and with Nemik’s manifesto outright says it) that rebellions, uprisings, are the work of thousands of people.

it’s completely against the “great man” theory of history, the mindset that any successes of a mass movement are thanks to a few brave heroes who stand head and shoulders above “normal”/lesser people. and if you’re not one of those heroes then you don’t make a difference.

Andor and Rogue One illuminate the fact that it’s not just Luke who brings down the Death Star — it’s not even just Luke, Han, and Leia. it’s Cassian and the Rogue One team too. it’s Luthen and the Aldhani crew, including the ones who never made it off Aldhani. it’s the nameless kid in the crowd who throws a bomb at the Imperial soldiers; it’s the marching band and Maarva and the people of Ferrix. it’s the prisoners of Narkina 5 who are forced to build parts to the Death Star but while doing so become radicalized and deal the Empire one of the many blows that will eventually bring it down.

it’s people whose names we’ll never know, not because they’re unimportant — they’re essential — but because there are billions of them across the galaxy and it’s impossible for one story to name them all but Andor never lets you forget that they’re there, never fails to honor their efforts and their sacrifices and their triumphs.

it’s the same in real life. a mass movement is a MASS movement. and it’s beautiful to see a show that not only acknowledges that but celebrates it and makes it a central, foundational theme.

[jyndor]

another detail I need to sit with for a bit, because I think it’s another piece in my Cassian-Andor-Has-Been-A-Rebel-Fighter-Before-Now conspiracy theory:

Karis is trying to accept and rationalize “not playing by the rules” and accepting a mercenary’s help in the beginning of the episode from an ideological standpoint. He’s trying to work backwards from a new conclusion: that allowing mercenaries to fight the Imperials is based actually. Cassian tells him he’s “half right” and Karis, perhaps not used to being challenged by his peers on theory, asks “and how am I wrong?” and is actually genuinely listening even though at this point he isn’t sure how to feel about Cassian being there at all.

And Cassian says: “They don’t care enough to learn. They don’t have to. You mean nothing to them.”

And you see Karis sitting there, really absorbing it for a second like real people do in real political/ideological/philosophical conversations, before he responds: “Perhaps I’ll think differently tomorrow,” to which Cassian warns him to be “careful what you wish for.”

And then when Karis talks down to him, assumes Cassian is saying that everyone should just “submit” to the Empire and “be thankful” about it, Cassian has this serious, disgusted look on his face and says, “Do I look thankful to you?”

Karis corrects himself and tells him he’s glad Cassian is here. He looks chastised before Cassian tells him he’ll be fine and that he’ll sleep when it’s done (which is RUDE and TRUE).

Guys. It’s right there. Cassian has been in Karis’s shoes before, except the difference is that Cassian has seen his homeworld colonized and exploited. He has escaped Kenari and Mimban, and who knows where else. Clearly this is Karis’s first (and last RIP </3) bit of praxis, at least on this scale (I’d be shocked if he wasn’t doing little things here and there before joining up - activist circles are often sort of hard to break into unless you know someone - someone gives a name to someone who knows someone else, like with Cassian > Bix > Luthen). The other difference is this: privilege and background. I will bet a lot that Karis is from a relatively privileged (maybe Core World, not likely from the Mid or Outer Rim - a metaphor for the Global North/South) position, not because he’s intellectual and articulate or whatever lol but because he feels like the sort of leftist who spent a lot of time reading and writing theory but not necessarily seeing and experiencing the type of colonialist Imperial oppression he’s fighting firsthand.

Karl Marx (who was upper middle class and who I think Karis Nemik is supposed to be referencing lmfao he was working on a damn manifesto after all) is considered hard to read today but back when the Communist Manifesto was first published, it was extremely accessible to everyone of all education levels, which makes sense given what it was suggestion: a working class-led revolution to overthrow all social classes. It was commissioned by the Communist League to spread the word - accessibility to all was the point.

If I’m correct, Karis could have gone about his life as normal without getting involved in the way he did. Cassian had no choice - he was someone who Republic colonizers and later Imperials didn’t even think to learn about. Just in the way, like the Dhani people. Cassian has always known what he’s against because he’s had no choice. He was radicalized by his own experiences, Karis might have been radicalized by the experiences of others.

So that gives Cassian a different perspective - not necessarily that revolution is worthless I don’t believe he thinks that lol, but that the way it’s being done is kind of... not clicking. But it’s a perspective that a ground-up revolution needs front and center, and at the core of it.

I think Cassian believes Nemik will learn more about Imperials from seeing them up close and come to a different conclusion (perhaps one that Cassian has come to before). The correct one obviously. They’re too small to even care about. But that can work to their advantage, as seen in the ISB headquarters.

The irony is that the mission doesn’t make Nemik think differently in the sense that Cassian believed it would. It gives Nemik more insight into Cassian, into a rebel-turned-merc. Because Karis Nemik is the first of the group to believe that Cassian is a true believer. I don’t know that he actually stops believing this, but he definitely dies thinking Cassian is going to continue his manifesto (our manifesto), give it more context from lived experience and eventually pass it on.

In a way he’s like Bix - he believes Cassian is meant for greater things than mercenary work. But also Cassian has to eat. And that’s how he behaves at the end: he doesn’t do the truly mercenary move (like Skeen would have done). In fact he protects the rebellion and kills a threat to the cause without hesitation. And then he asks for his payment and walks away.

I still hold out hope that Cassian was a soldier. Anyway let me know what you think and if you have anything to add.

[elwenyere]

I’ve been working through some ideas about Andor and character, and I’m thinking about the model of character-space and character-system that Alex Woloch presents in The One vs. the Many. 

Woloch argues that fictional characters are animated by the tension between reference (the implication that each character has a deep, perhaps endlessly expansive inner life) and function (the formal constraints that limit each character to a finite amount of narrative space). In other words, we feel like fictional characters are like human beings, and thus we assume they have the potential for infinite complexity, but there’s only so much space in the story in practice, so they’re not all going to get equal development. Some will have to be flattened so that others can become more round, and each narrative builds its own character-system as a matrix for distributing attention asymmetrically among characters. In the nineteenth-century social realist novels Woloch looks at, these character-systems often take the shape as a competition between the protagonist (the one) and minor characters (the many), whom Woloch reads as the proletariat of the novel during an age of industrialization, class stratification, and uncertain attempts at democratization.

I think this is an interesting lens for reading Andor, which might in this sense appear to be a show that is very much driven by character - but by the effort to interrogate how character-systems are shaped rather than by the effort to develop individual characters within a system. That is, I think Andor is not really a show that aims to immerse us in the psychodrama of one protagonist or even in the interwoven inner lives of an ensemble cast; but it is a show that wants us to think about how dynamics like scarcity, asymmetry, functionalization, competition, or collaboration affect the formation of character.

This is especially true for me in the finale. So many characters gather in the same place for 1.12 because they’re looking for Cassian: so many characters have dubbed him a protagonist, placed him in the gravitational center of a narrative they’ve been building about the way the world works. But the events that unfold resist that narrative structure, both in terms of the episode’s content (Cassian, in the end, has a fairly negligible impact on the way the uprising on Rix Road plays out) and its form (Cassian’s screen time dwindles during the climactic events to make space for heroic beats from characters we might otherwise have considered entirely functional - just there to facilitate Cassian’s journey or to make the world around Cassian feel peopled).

To take a line from Nemik’s manifesto (and to really stretch the limits of word play lol), I feel like Andor is both about the implications of “the one vs. the many” as a matrix for distributing power and audience attention (as we see the way it distorts the thinking of those characters who use it as a system for predicting or managing or policing others’ behavior) and also about the possibilities of the “one too many” - or those alternative theories of organizing the world and shaping a narrative that would emphasize the effort necessary to generate collectivity instead of absorbing us in the drama of cultivating individualism. 

[vriskarlmarx]

pinned

"We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable."

Karl Marx, "Suppression of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung," May 1849

my name is dani. i was born in the mid-90s if my age matters to you. i'm from the south as in el sur del mundo as in latinoamerica. im a communist (in real life not online). death to america.

i think i still have checkmarks here - someone gifted me those.

i don't have side blogs so everything goes here, from fandom stuff to political stuff to general haterism. i have been on this blog for over ten years so if you scroll back and find something immeasurably cringe no you didn't <3

you can also find me on

twitter

dreamwidth

feel free to ask for my discord. i may or may not give it to you though.

permissions statement: do whatever you want forever. i reject the private ownership of anything i've ever created. if it’s been shared, it belongs to the world, which includes me and you in the exact same measure. "what if i want to—" yes. even that.

links to my writing under the cut. it's mostly fanfic, fandoms are primarily jjk, fma, death note, andor, star wars with a couple of strays (severance, disco elysium/pjol, star trek, others). also now featuring some original works.

I put a little ⭐ next to my personal favorites :3 Drabbles are all at the bottom (not segregated by fandom). Original stuff also at the bottom.

Andor

Separate from Star Wars because as we know Andor is so good I'm not even going to call it a Star Wars TV Show.

⭐ Elegy for the Living | F/F | Cinta/Vel | T | Trauma, grief, colonialism & imperialism

After Ferrix, Vel grows quiet, coiled tight and weighed down by something heavy. Cinta tries her best to hold her.

Akelarre | F/F and M/M | Cinta/Vel and Skeen/Nemik | T | Non-linear narrative, developing relationships, revolutionary militancy

Even as the ax begins to descend, much can flourish in the misty mountains of Aldhani. A study in Cinta & Vel in one direction, and Skeen & Nemik in another.

tether/latch | M/M | Cassian/Luthen | E | Blowjob-flavored character study, dissociation, bad coping mechanisms, dubious consent

Cassian is shaken after a mission. Luthen "helps".

⭐ el corazón de todo invierno | M/M | Cassian/Luthen | M | Revolutionary militancy, bad coping mechanisms, sexpionage, Cassian Andor's big brown sad wet eyes, sexualizing that old man | Title is in Spanish but work is in English

Cassian nods. He’s clearly trying to control his face, but those expressive eyes of his don't help conceal the nerves and confusion in his next question. "And what does being your plus one entail?" Despite himself, Luthen looks Cassian up and down briefly, his relaxed but contorted position on the couch, the way his hair falls on his forehead, his hands slack at his thighs while holding the datapad. He feels every single one of his years and sins on his shoulders as he begins to explain. "Like I said, I have an image to maintain. People in my position are expected to bring, essentially, a trophy spouse or a young escort as company. For me, I'll be expected to bring a pretty young man. And that's where you would come in." -- Luthen needs to maintain his cover at a black market auction, and Cassian is itching for a mission.

Death Note

Powder Keg | F/F | F!Mello/F!Near | E | PWP, gunplay, don't try this at home

Mello stops by Near's room for a late night visit after getting her photo back earlier that day. Near has a certain… fixation.

Prometheus Bound | M/M | L/Light | M | Eroticized cannibalism and gore, dreams, second person POV

In your dream, he hands you a knife.

⭐️ Weird Animals | M/M | L/Light | E | Ryuk POV, being bad at gay sex, humor

This is the most godawful gay sex Ryuk has ever seen.

⭐ discipline & punish | Contains M/M but is character-focused not ship-focused | Beyond Birthday (incl. Beyond/L, Beyond & A, Beyond & Watari) | M | Character study, state and imperial violence, the carceral system, child abuse

Beyond Birthday; or, a life inside a series of cages.

⭐ How to Burn Down the Sacred Loom | M/M | Mello/Near | M | Tragedy, codependency, dream sequences, necrophilia, gun kink, four-act structure with interludes

A tragedy in four acts, overseen by a nameless choir.

petite mort | M/M | L/Light | M | Murder kink, L's Kira fetish | Title is in French but work is in English

L knows what's coming for him. He feels it burn like a wildfire under his skin.

Disco Elysium/Püha ja õudne lõhn (The Sacred and Terrible Air)

⭐ No Return Address | M/M | Ignus Nilsen/Kras Mazov | M | Epistolary format, grief, revolutionary militancy, leftist infighting, historical memory, I reached my target audience for this when a Brazilian syndicalist said they really liked it

A compilation of letters found among the belongings of Inayat Khan months before the apocalypse, all signed under the name Ignus Nilsen.

Doctor Who

Step & Reverberate | M/M | Nine/Jack | T | Dancing, fluff, post-The Parting of the Ways AU

The time vortex is more generous than expected: Nine never needs to regenerate, and Rose remembers saving Jack's life, so he comes back to the TARDIS after the battle with the Daleks. After an all-too-close brush with death, Jack and the Doctor share a moment in the TARDIS.

Chiaroscuro | Gen or F/M | Clara & Eleven or Clara/Eleven | G | Second-person POV, ambiguous relationship | I wrote this over ten years ago so I no longer take responsibility for it | Title is in Italian but work is in English

Her light feet carry her across your console room and you want to scream in frustration because you don't understand a thing about her. -- The Doctor reflects on Clara and the mystery she presents, but finds himself thinking of the person she is.

Fullmetal Alchemist (Brotherhood/Manga)

bleed the sand | Gen | Roy Mustang | M | Character study, genocide, PTSD, dream/nightmare sequences

Roy Mustang remembers his dreams.

⭐ Conventional Weapons | M/M | Roy Mustang/Scar | M | Genocide, PTSD, complicated relationships, blind!Roy

Scar has been participating in the reconstruction effort of the Ishvalan capital for a few months. It's a strange kind of chance that gets him to cross paths with Roy Mustang just in time to save him from an attempt on his life.

Homestuck

The Way Down | Gen | John Egbert | T | Character study, depression, PTSD, one must imagine Sisyphus vibing

John runs out of milk and goes on a walk. Character study.

Jujutsu Kaisen

⭐ Hostia | M/M | Ryoumen Sukuna/Itadori Yuuji | M | Dubious consent erotic eating (just trust me), dissociation, loss of bodily agency/autonomy, abuse

Hostia (n.): The body of Christ, or the sacramental bread eaten at communion. In the original Latin, “sacrificial victim”. - After Shibuya, Yuuji has strange dreams.

against the feather of ma'at | M/M | Gojo Satoru/Geto Suguru | M | Counter-chronological, complicated relationships, on-again-off-again, tragedy

Satoru and Suguru, from end to beginning.

orpheus in the night | M/M | Gojo Satoru/Geto Suguru | M | Dreamlike, atmospheric, complicated relationships, ambiguous ending and also beginning and also middle

When Suguru calls, Satoru comes.

Severance

⭐ O, Lazarus! | Gen | Helly R & Helena Eagan | M | Character study, nihilism, body dysphoria, mild psychosexual selfcestuous undertones

Losing oxygen slowly as she hangs in the elevator up from the severed floor, Helly’s fractured mind confronts itself.

Shadow and Bone

Late Harvest | F/M/M | Alina/Nikolai/Mal | T | Pining, feelings realization, getting together, triad

Nikolai Lantsov is the heir to the throne. He can have anyone he wants, except the two people who only have eyes for each other.

Star Trek

Synthesis of Vast Contradictions | F/F | T'Pring/Christine Chapel | Polyamory, cultural differences, emotional tension, erotic hand massage

Christine has... complicated feelings about her boyfriend’s fiancée.

Star Wars

Torque | F/F | Sabine/Ahsoka | E | Unresolved emotional tension, PTSD, aftermath of genocide, sex as a coping mechanism, xeno

There's something off about Sabine at training. Ahsoka tries to help.

⭐ Necrotic Tissue | M/M | Thrawn/Ezra | M | Abusive/toxic relationships, loneliness, complicated feelings, large age gap

Years after parting ways with Thrawn after crash-landing with him on Peridea, Ezra runs into him again.

Bitter Fruits | Contains M/M but is tone-focused not ship-focused | Sabine & Ezra, Thrawn/Ezra | T | Humor, outsider POV

Good news: Sabine and Ahsoka have found Ezra. Bad news: They've also found Thrawn. Weird news: Ezra and Thrawn are getting along. Perhaps too well for Sabine's liking.

Original

Del Viento | T | En castellano | Latinoamerica, tiempo verbal futuro, primera persona

Dejé mis pulmones en el sur. Recuerdo haber soplado en la quebrada, dejado un aliento en las rocas mojadas del bosque. Casi me tropecé en el musgo, y ahí de seguro se me cayeron al agua. Desde ahí que solo el viento me lleva en su soplido.

Of The Wind | T | English translation of Del Viento | Latin America, future tense, forst person POV

I left my lungs in the south. I remember breathing out on the gorge, leaving my breath behind on the wet rocks of the forest. I nearly slipped on the moss, and that’s surely where I dropped my lungs in the water. From then on, I’ve been carried by the wind’s own breathing.

Drabbles

Cold Rain | Andor/Star Wars | Vel Sartha

Hot Steel | Andor/Star Wars | Cinta Kaz

Orbit | Star Wars OT | Luke Skywalker

[jyndor]

I think it’s very clever to have Cassian say “I know what I’m against” when it comes to his beliefs. I still don’t buy that Cassian hasn’t always been political - I’m a Cassian-was-a-teen-rebel truther - but I do think it is a fair assessment that he might be more conscious of what he is against (imperialism, colonialism, xenophobia, fascism, misogyny, etc) than what he is for. It’s interesting to hear Nemik respond that Cassian is the “ideal reader” because assuming Cassian is actually anti-imperialist (he is obviously lol) but doesn’t know exactly what would be a good replacement (this is why I don’t usually think of him as working in the New Republic because... dude was victimized by the Republic, and I can’t imagine him wanting to support a system that is derived from it).

I see Nemik as the kid who has read a lot of theory or has at least put a lot of thought into ideology, even if he’s still ironing out the kinks. Skeen, by contrast, is someone who hates the Empire and is far more focused on dismantling it than filling the power vacuum.

Cassian is a great listener and seems to find what Nemik has to say compelling. I also think it’s interesting that Skeen is the one to press Nemik to share his manifesto with Cassian; Nemik, who is peak adhd hyperfixation info-dump lad, seems a little less certain about sharing it until he sees that Cassian is active engaged in what he’s saying. I think it’s likely Skeen is just trying to provoke a reaction in Cassian to figure out where he stands (since he doesn’t trust him).

One critique: I would prefer to not have Cassian being “taught” about revolutionary frameworks because I’m sorry it’s a little... off to have a guy with that accent explaining revolution to a guy who is coded as indigenous, so hopefully it isn’t so much that Cassian is being taught but that Nemik is providing another framework for something Cassian already believes or somewhat believes.

That said personally I always imagined Cassian as a bit more invested in the anti-imperialism/anti-fascist part of the rebellion rather than believing in the Republic (since he was a Separatist lol).

(also give me karis’s opinions on landlords before he dies pls)

[jyndor]

I've seen so much theories, oh its in nemiks manifesto, maarva is going to say it while dieing... I think, or at least hope, that no one says to cassian 'rebelions are built on hope' and that phrase is never even spoken in the show, cause its one of underlying themes of the show and cassian needed yo verbalize it only when its strictly necessary to recruit 'mirror' of himself to the rebelion, imho

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

frankly nothing good comes from taking cassian's main motivation away and having it stem from someone else, especially someone who is coded as essentially someone from the global north and white with that accent and who approaches revolution from a mostly academic point of view (nemik) or God forbid someone like maarva who is a white savior and literally stole an indigenous child, anglicized/Basicified idk lol his name, severed his connections to his culture and history and FAMILY.

cassian is a manifesto yall. anon you're totally right and I hate that some fans are doing this. it's really gross.