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“None of this would be here without Luthen” is not Tony Gilroy making his oc into the sole cause of the rebellion, it is Cassian Andor expressing loyalty to the man who recruited him into the rebellion, and whose contributions are downplayed by the rebel leaders he assisted. Cassian exaggerates to counteract the council’s dismissal of a man who should really be among them. A character’s perspective is not equivalent to that of the creator.

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I love the line “I have friends everywhere,”

The first time you hear it you’re really just thinking about how it works well for subtlety identifying yourself. It’s an odd enough thing to say that few are going to say it when they don’t mean it, as well as an implied question: “Are you a friend?”

Then when Luthen confronts Mon about the corruption of Bail’s team it becomes obvious it’s also a threat. The repetition and the emotion while saying it turns the phrase into: “If you don’t do what I say, and you become a problem, one of my many friends will kill you to take care of that problem for me.”

But when Vel says it to Kleya. It’s a promise and a welcome. It says “You’re safe with us. We understand who you are, what you did, and why you did it. You’re safe.”

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Some of you guys would not say half the shit you've said about Dedra Meero if she was a man. (Yes this is about sexism).

The men can be evil and everyone loves them. But gods forbid women do anything, and gods forbid anyone admit to liking evil women without bending over backwards to clarify that they do not subscribe to said evil woman's beliefs and views on society.

Darth Vader can commit heinous crimes against sentience and y'all will go: "woah, so badass with that lightsaber! I love him. He's my precious baby who has never done anything wrong." But if Dedra reluctantly orders "proceed" on a genocide project she never wanted in the first place, y'all suddenly go: "I hope this sick bitch dies a horrible, horrible death," or "I'm not supposed to like her. She's evil and bad and horrible and if I like her that makes me those things too."

Anyway, if Dedra Meero has no fans then I am dead. Be fucked up, queen. You were indoctrinated into the Imperial Machine at the age of 3, babe. You can do no wrong. "But, Hydro, she killed/tortured all those people!" and she looked damn fine doing it! Could have been covered in blood after an interrogation at some point though, I will admit.

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so i am going to need everyone who enjoyed the librarians: the next chapter and the house of cards to watch edgar allen poe's murder mystery dinner party by shipwrecked comedy (available on youtube here!)

have you ever wondered what a dinner party hosted edgar allen poe and attended by great literary authors like emily dickinson, mary shelley, charlotte brontë, oscar wilde, george eliot, louisa may alcott, ernest hemingway, hg wells, and fyodor dostoevsky would be like? well no more! it's an excellent series that answers that very question!

it was written by sean and sinéad persaud (who wrote this episode!) and they also star in it as edgar allen poe and lenore the lady ghost respectively. it is not only hilarious, it's heartfelt. it is such a labor of love for everyone involved and that shines through. and this series is one i cannot recommend enough.

i hope i have convinced you to visit this masterpiece! i am off to rewatch! <3

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There's a fitting element to denying Dedra a glorious end in the service of the Empire. She doesn't get to die taking out a dangerous rebel. She doesn't get to be a martyr for the Imperial cause. She doesn't even get to walk the hallways of the Death Star before it's destruction. Instead, the Empire turns on her the moment she makes an error and consigns her to a labour camp. In the end, she becomes a victim (and yes, victim is an accurate term because no one deserves to be stripped of their personhood and imprisoned no matter what they've done) of the very system she spent her career upholding...or maybe she's returning to the bottom of the same system she's spent her entire life in. Forcibly orphaned as a child and raised in a Kinderblock, she grew up institutionalized. And eventually she rose up in the ISB, got some power, it might have seemed like she had escaped the prison of her childhood. But no one is ever truly free under a fascist system. The bars just become more gilded. And no one, no matter how exceptional or accomplished or dedicated they are, is ever going to break through them alone.

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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.

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ANDOR | 1.11

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I know Mon Mothma is scared after her speech, but if I'd sold my trad-wife daughter to a mobster to fund a covert radical militia, and some guy I met 20 minutes ago said "welcome to the rebellion" to me, I'd slap him.

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all is fair in love and war by @lux-ishii

i literally stopped reading just so i could draw this 😭 not even kidding. plus i got to draw a younger dedra,, and for that, i am happy

bonus:

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I think Syril Karn's days are numbered...

Syril's whole personality is built around a sense of justice and the maintenance of order. We see it in the clone trooper figures still standing in a place of honor in his childhood room, in the way he chose a career in law enforcement, and in the way he was so obsessed with finding Cassian Andor in season one.

To him, the Empire is the way to all peace and order in the galaxy, so anyone who works against the Empire must be stopped, which is why he's on Ghorman undercover to help the ISB quash a group of anti-Imperials. He's doing his duty.

But what happens when someone with such a deeply ingrained sense of justice finds out that the Empire is planning to strip mine Ghorman to the point of making it uninhabitable and destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of people? What does someone with that mindset do when they find out they haven't been given the whole picture and now know that they were unwittingly a key player in the destruction of an entire society?

I've got a bad feeling that the first thing he'll do is confront Dedra Meero with it.

I've got an even worse feeling that she'll arrange to have him killed as a result...for the good of the Empire.

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Scene from my fav episode in watercolor!

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If Haven had come out in 2025 Nathan and Duke would have been together.

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i kind of feel like if you take "don't bomb iran" as an endorsement of the iranian government, you're not intellectually ready to engage in conversations about real-world politics. Go talk about steven's universe instead

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i just fucking yelled so loud my mom had to check if i was okay oh my god

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The Librarians: The Next Chapter S01E05 workprint vs final version SFX comparison.