I know satoru had flashbacks all the time
Feeling Normal
Neil Gaiman: Crowley sits alone in the dark listening to Pale Blue Eyes by the Velvet Underground Me: ok, so, within the context of the story, that means
(1/7)
i love this metaphor and it's been driving me nuts
03/20
hbd itadori yuuji the mc of all time!!!!!!
I never said there is absolutely nothing moral to be done about that situation. I also never said there shouldn't be anything immoral to be done about that either.
let's get the first thing out of the way, and i'm gonna hold you hand when i drill this into your brain, this is not something FOR piltover to do. sure they have the jurisdiction, but if you have been paying attention in season one, piltover is NOT FIT to handle the zaun situation. let's talk logistics for a second. assuming you can just safely assasinate every drug lord and chemsbaron, you'd have a humanitary crisis and a massive vaccumn of power on your hand, which - and i'm gonna repeat this again - piltover is not equiped to handle. you'd have a barrage of freshly unemployed impoverished citizens that you'll have to take care of, a shit ton of power-hungry opportunists eager to replace the old mobsters, oh and yeah, TONS OF SHIMMER that can be weaponized. it'll be an open season - which, again, piltover will be scared shit less of. do you think piltover ever cared to learn about how zaun functioned? do you think they made an effort? they didn't have to. they just need to get their factories up and running and collect their wealth. they didn't need to care. which is why, for any sort of punishment to matter, it cannot be piltover who enforced it.
BTW, THIS IS EXACTLY THE REASON WHY WE DON'T OUTRIGHT ASSASSINATE DICTATORS IN REAL LIFE.
so what do we fight authoritarianism with? democracy. duh.
so here's the moral thing piltover could do. first, they could upgrade citizenship of zaunites, give them more political power. second, give zaunites a chance at economic mobility - more zaunites working in piltover, more schools, more shops, more business, which in turn will give them a stabilized enough financial state to stay away from the factories. easier said then done and piltover will have to sacrifice a great chunk of it's economic priviledge - which is why this scenario will never be allowed to play out with the state of piltovian council bruh. third, when people are successfully lifted over the poverty line, that is when you go for the drug lords - or don't even bother, the people will find a way - if they are being oppressed by both the chemsbarons and piltover, but one help lift them out of the grip of the other, who do you think they would support? who do you think they would throw to the pyre?
now, is that an ideal ending in an ideal world? yes. is it hard? fuck yes. but the only immoral thing to do is NOT PUNISHING THE CHEMSBARONS. and before you unclutch your pearls and come at me, think about how your aggressive crack down on drug lords would play out in comparison to this. oh yeah you don't have to, i already told you, vaccumn of power, social unrest, class violence, all that good stuff. but now, because assasination is rarely ever that easy, piltover put their boots down harder on chemsbarons, chemsbarons will put their boots down harder on the already oppressed masses. and when you are on the ground looking up, every one above you is an enemy. you know what that would lead to? google the images of the french revolution, of the bolsheviks, and imagine how that would look on the streets of piltover.
so your choice really, crack down on drug lords and enact the "punishment" you so desire, or foster the growth of democratic sentiment in zaun. pick your poison.
^^^———
It is WILD that you say “selling drugs and engaging in gang turf war does not make you not a citizen” as if that changes the fact that they’re still CRIMES.
I mean, if your logic is that Zaun is technically part of Piltover and thus falls under Piltover’s jurisdiction… committing a CRIME under their jurisdiction means you can suffer consequences from your actions. No? It doesn’t MATTER if you’re a citizen or not. Being a citizen doesn’t give you free rein to do whatever you want! You have to obey laws!
If I’m a citizen of a city in America, and I do a crime, the police of that city are allowed to take away my rights as a citizen. That’s what being a citizen in a functional society MEANS!
whatever you do,
do not imagine nina zenik and jesper fahey, two long-lived, powerful grisha, reunite in ketterdam to visit their friends
do not imagine them holding hands as jesper lifts his free one to trace the words, “wylan van eck, beloved friend, son and husband”
do not imagine nina leaning on a crow-tipped cane while she holds a dagger whose engraved blade says “we never stop fighting” and whispers songs of sailors
do not imagine them staying from dusk until dawn because they’ve dwelled in cemeteries together at night before, all of them together
do not imagine nina watching jesper with a silent question in her eyes
do not imagine them finally getting up, sore from so much time staying still, and heading north where there is someone else who awaits their visit
whatever you do,
do not imagine that
Itafushi writers making Megumi the gold smart class president and Yuji the troublemaker meanwhile it’s the other way around
Megumi was legit fighting bitches on the playground and insulting people meanwhile Yuji was joining clubs to keep it from closing, bringing flowers for his grandpa.
Like yall come on. Megumi was a smart but a delinquent for real he just hides it well and Yuji is just a slow golden child.
The dynamics of them is always reversed in fanfics and it likes breaks my heart cause it’s just ughh how did the fandom just like mess up their characterizations that badly.
And yes I’m writing it myself before someone comes at me for complaining, and even if I wasn’t I can still vent.
see, i have always interpreted syril’s motivation as finding a place where he can belong, whether that place is a person, a community or an ideology.
syril never really fits in with his colleagues on morlana one, he feels like “a stranger” and “a tenant” in his own childhood home, he doesn’t even have the same accent as any of his coworkers. sure, this can be because he is very socially awkward, but he sticks out like a sore thumb wherever he is. the only time where he sort of (but not really) blend in is when he works at the bureau of standards, not because he finally found his calling but because working a menial job directly for the empire in coruscant means there is little to no room for individuality.
for more than half of the season, we see that the only thing he CAN attach himself to is his own sense of self-importance. he yearns to be seen and recognized by the people he believes to share his values. at its core, his belief is simple and inoffensive enough: maintaining law, justice and order. humans have a natural inclination towards justice, so it stands to reason that he expects everyone to share his sense of righteousness. but when he becomes disillusioned with the people around him because they don’t care about the same things he does, he immediately feels displaced (and the audience feel that too.)
so we have a character who just doesn’t feel right no matter what situation the story puts him in and suddenly he’s with the isb. even though he doesn’t seem to fit in at first, he feels vibrant. he feels energetic. he feels alive. as if he has found his calling. under the rhetoric of the empire, his faith in justice and order is easily reassured and at the same time easily misconstrued as being of “service to the empire”. in other words, he feels vindicated and thus he conflates serving the empire with the pursuit of justice.
so it comes as a shock to no one that he attaches himself to dedra, or at least the version of dedra he’s made up in his head, because he believes she - and by extension the empire - shares his values. his conversation with her after he stalked her and him saving her at the end of the season are, to me, an indication that he has already been radicalized by the empire and its false sense of order and security. so it will genuinely confuses me if he actually turns to the rebellion in season 2.
I've watched a bunch of videos with people talking about how Syril is a wildcard who could go either way with his allegiances, and seen speculation about how he could have easily been a Rebel instead, if he somehow ended up finding that side more attractive.
Here's why I think this is a shallow interpretation of the Andor show.
As the video 'How to Radicalize a Normie' by Innuendo Studios (link here: https://youtu.be/P55t6eryY3g?si=UxUauetzOETvTg1r) says, the young fascist man is not exactly looking to conservatism for a political ideology, but for 'the cure to his soul-sickness'. Syril needs to feel like he is worth something - and his mother refuses to offer him unconditional love. In fact, she actually refers to him as an investment - berating him for failing to offer her what she considers a sufficient return, and then gushing with praise when he reveals that he has been promoted. There is a void in his heart that needs something or someone to love him without reservation - and here comes the Empire, that tells him that he is good and worthy simply for supporting its vision of order. The Rebellion cannot offer any of its members the same - sure, it believes in equality of all the people who the Empire would otherwise look down upon, but it needs them to prove their worth before giving them value as individuals. The Empire, however, will allow Syril to passively consider himself better than large swathes of the galaxy simply by being.
Cassian, on the other hand, learns over the course of the series that he is loved and an individual by his family and community, without reservation. The final episode reinforces this idea - Maarva, Brasso, B2EMO and Bix retain their affection for him despite all his flaws - as Maarva relays through Brasso, she 'love(s) him more than anything that he could ever do wrong'. Even Pegla, who was grouchy earlier about Cassian taking the ships he is responsible for, is able to offer unconditional empathy to him upon seeing him after Maarva's death. Cassian is therefore not vulnerable to the Empire's rhetoric in the way Syril is.
I hope this thread gets reinforced in Season 2 - it really makes the anti-fascist critique that runs through the show.
and you keep reblogging me. instigation goes both ways.
i said, "let's have a discussion", in good faith.
you asked a question. i answered, in good faith.
then you miscontrued and misinterpreted what i said to make it seem like i agree with you, which i fucking don't. you broke the fucking good faith, and here i was thinking that maybe this might turn into something fruitful. just save me the trouble and tell me from the start that you are a fucking brat who can't take no for a fucking answer ever.
first of all, this post has never been about "ending the circle of violence" or whatever the fuck that shit show of an ending was trying to say. it's an irrelevant point to make that came out of nowhere. do you have a habit of stringing along every thought you have in your head and try to make it fit your narrative or did you never get the chance to learn critical thinking?
secondly, you are assuming that if i'm critical of the show i can't ever agree on any of its message. you assume that just because i don't agree with certain character arcs it means i have to be disagreeable to every single fucking thing said in the show. so basically i can't like something and be critical of it at the same time? so media literacy is dead now? say that again three times in your head, do you not find it fucking ridiculous?
and now, at this point of the conversation, you decide to throw in the "nuanced character" argument and accuse me of being performative, while this fucking conversation has never been about characters to begin with?
and whether or not i agree with how the show ends doesn't invalidate any of the things i just said, and if you can't grow a fucking brain cell big enough to comprehend that, then we're done here.
^^^———
It is WILD that you say “selling drugs and engaging in gang turf war does not make you not a citizen” as if that changes the fact that they’re still CRIMES.
I mean, if your logic is that Zaun is technically part of Piltover and thus falls under Piltover’s jurisdiction… committing a CRIME under their jurisdiction means you can suffer consequences from your actions. No? It doesn’t MATTER if you’re a citizen or not. Being a citizen doesn’t give you free rein to do whatever you want! You have to obey laws!
If I’m a citizen of a city in America, and I do a crime, the police of that city are allowed to take away my rights as a citizen. That’s what being a citizen in a functional society MEANS!
historians would call them best friends
on this site i go by shuu. she/her. if you don't agree with me, blocking me is always an option. ship and let ship.
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