Stop Saying…

Brennan with the Intrepid Heroes

Brennan when there are guests in the dome

This is hilarous. Gil-galad edit narrated by Ben Walker (the excerpts are from his interview in Rings and Realms). source

More than 1000 people have been killed in a horrific 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar and Thailand, and the devastation is enormous. To help survivors:

World Central Kitchen are en route to the affected areas.

MSF/Doctors Without Borders also have teams on the ground to aid the injured.

...fortunately we live in a democracy.

🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊

We have GOT to stop pathologizing the joy out of life.

Saw someone claim that if you read a lot as a child, you were disassociating. No, you were reading. Because reading is fun.

"I have a problem with maladaptive daydreaming." It's only maladaptive if it negatively impacts your ability to function in the real world. Laughing at a joke you made in your head isn't doing that.

"You seem to do a lot if creative projects. What are you escaping?" I'm escaping this conversation.

Like what is the end goal? Because so far, all this has done has made it harder to enjoy my hobbies because you're turning a mindless process into something I gotta think about.

one of the hundred things I love about Andor is that in the end, all the villains were destroyed not in an epic showdown with the rebels or whoever but by the machine that they worked for. syril was a faceless casualty of the genocide he helped create. dedra was done in for putting ambition over conformity to the machine, and she took down partagaz, who essentially created her, along with her. even heert was quite literally killed by his own droid and his own men. all of them were crushed by the wheel they dedicated their lives to keep turning. it's just so deeply deeply satisfying.

I think the Ghorman Front rebels are a tragic and brutally important exploration of individualism in resistance movements. The thing is, multiple characters from Cassian to Vel and Cinta warn them and us about the Front's approach to rebellion, about their lack of broader thinking and their unwillingness to follow orders. They're caught up in the righteousness of their cause and the terrible wrongs done to them by the Empire, they yearn to be saviours against injustice and specifically the injustice that the Empire has inflicted on them...and they can't see beyond that, beyond their own individual experiences of pain and their own individual desire to resist.

It's important to say here that the pain and injustice which fascism inflicts upon people is real, that in the story the characters' experiences with the cruelty and brutality of the Empire are legitimate and immediate for them. But particularly when it comes to the struggle for liberation (and that's not even getting into collective liberation), I think the Ghorman Front rebels are a painful example of what happens when personal experience becomes your entire movement.

It's true, outsiders may not know what exactly what the people of Ghorman have been through. The horrors of the Tarkin massacre, the individual paths and motivations that led each of them to the struggle. But the issue is that that's where the Ghorman rebels have stopped. They can't connect their very real suffering and concerns to the broader suffering and the broader struggle across the galaxy. Their focus is only ever on their own immediate experience- and so they're disappointed, even offended when people like Cassian and Vel and Cinta warn them that their plan is flawed or that they need to follow orders from people who better understand how the enemy works. It doesn't fit into their idea of rebellion - something out of a heroic story, maybe, where a daring group of local guerillas take on a much larger foe through their commitment to a righteous and personal cause. It hasn't crossed their minds that the Empire has put down many rebellions across the galaxy before, that they themselves are not particularly special or unique in cause or tactics or even suffering.

Or maybe it has crossed their minds, and they think they will be the exception. Isn't that how homegrown rebellions win? They know their home in a way that outsiders never will and they have the support of many of their fellow Ghormans and a strong belief in their cause, aren't those the qualities that make or break a successful revolution?

Season 2 so far has explored what it takes and what it costs to resist fascism. Arc 1 showed us one way resistance movements stumble and dissolve through infighting. In Arc 2, we meet characters who are (mostly) united in cause and leadership - the Ghorman Front, the Partisans, Luthen's network. And within this unity is the immense personal pain experienced by every single person as a result of their involvement in the fight. Characters attempt to cope with this cost in different ways, from substance use to reckless behaviour to lashing out.

Without condemnation (because trauma affects people in many ways), what I think we see with the Ghorman Front rebels is that they've retreated in on themselves. Perhaps once, they were a more collective movement - the hotel bellboy tells Cassian that many people showed up to the protest prior to the Tarkin massacre believing in the power and safety of so many people united together. But now, it's centred on the individual. They are going to show the rest of Ghorman that the Empire is lying. They mean to fight an armed struggle because they aren't spineless. Why should they follow orders, especially those of outsiders who don't know what they've been through, what they live with? It's a struggle entirely focused on the self, on their own feelings perhaps of conviction and guilt and powerlessness.

So they ignore advice that their course of action raises many questions. So they ignore orders to leave their weapons and stay in their assigned positions. So the wheel of tragedy turns and they accomplish their goal of stealing the weapons but at a terrible cost. One that will go with them for the rest of their lives and they will never be able to make up.

Part: 144/?