#Salman Paak

[casualavocados]

Gets to you, doesn't it?

ANDOR 1.03 | Reckoning

[hegodamask]

ANDOR - S01E08 Narkina 5

[andorshitdaily]

ROUND TWELVE CATEGORY: Best Bromance

Two groups will win and go into the yearbook. Who's it going to be?

Round Thirteen Category: Most Likely to Spill the Beans

NOMINATE NOW

[andorsnewhope]

Cassian Andor in ANDOR 1.7 “Announcement” Wilmon Paak in ANDOR 1.12 “Rix Road”

[colleybri]

“I’m about to hear the screams of children.

The last time the Empire was here, a boy lost his father and the town did nothing.

When they arrested me and Wilmon screamed the memory flooded back.

This time, I’m going to fight. I’ll try.

I had a fire in me, once. We’d been doing nothing for so long and I wanted to do something. The Separatist meeting. The radio.

I will fight them now. I’ll protect my son. And all our other sons and daughters of Ferrix.

I’ve already heard the screams of children.

I must fight for my boy.”

“They are all over Paak’s yard and it’s not fear that comes over me - it’s horror.

I did this.

All from trying to help. Nothing rebellious at all.

My loyalty betrays me. And others too. True innocents. I glimpse Wilmon now, hear his hoarse cries.

I was only a child too the last time this happened. My parents whisking me away but I could still hear Cass’s cries echoing.

This time, there’s no-one to whisk me away and I know… I did this.

And it’s worse.

I have to run again now.

Won’t get far, before hitting another wall.”

[chipthekeeper]

SALMAN PAAK 2024 BASE CARD THIS IS HOW I WIN

[insanity6666]

Just finished watching Andor’s One Way Out and I have Thoughts.

There are no doubt a bunch of people who can explain it far better, they can jump on this if they like.

Andor, I think, I feel, shows that even if you try to live quietly with your head down, oppression and authoritarian dictatorships will still come for you. You could be living in a far-off planet, a middle-of-nowhere town, a house in the mountains or deep forests, and it will still reach you.

Cassian tries to run. To find a place where the Empire hasn’t touched -as was his plan with Marva- and failing that, finds a nice place on a nice, Emperial planet to have a vacation. Maybe it was a pit-stop to finding an untouched planet, or scouting for a new home? I don’t know.

Point is. He runs, and everywhere he goes, there’s the Empire. There’s the impact it left on people, no matter how brief or long lasting. The pain, the suffering, the loss, that is all permanent. Scars that will never fully heal, even when those who bore them and carry them are long since stardust.

He does literally nothing wrong, just walking, and one guy- paranoid, high on a power trip, a bad day, or looking for a commendation or promotion or whatever, is worth taking in and thrown into prison. The charges are completely different to what was said and done. They lie, blatantly, with no trial or evidence, only hearsay, with no regard for consequences because what consequences are there when you are one whole powerful entity? Above reproach? Above reprimand? Who would dare?

You could be like Bix, who just wanted to run a shop and maybe make a bit of extra money on the side? Stayed quiet, never made a fuss, and she ends up tortured because even if she did tell the truth they wouldn’t believe her. She would be tortured anyways. Why?

Because they can.

And what about Salman Paak? Basically the same, but less involved. Met the buyer, Luthen, once and only had a radio that other people used. He was tortured until his mind was completely gone, it looks like, and has likely already been executed. Hung, and for what? A show of authority. “Show the locals who’s in charge.” A man tortured and killed, and for what crime? For what?

You could be living in the lap of luxury, and still the oppression finds you. You just feel it less because you have enough money to give you leeway. But how long will that last? Dictatorships fear anything they cannot control, anything they do not have their hands in and their eyes on. Even when they are arrogant enough to allow a random person to walk into a military base with only a uniform and the right posture.

You will feel the sting of the shackles around your wrists, the bite of the rope around your neck, a collar and leash just waiting to become a noose. You may think ‘I have done nothing wrong, so nothing wrong will happen to me’ but you are thinking of a fair and just system. This is a system that incarcerates random passerby’s, burns farms and towns and cities and planets to the ground, all for quick profit and access to resources that they will choke an entire system to get their hands on. Leaving what is left empty, broken, husks and memories of what they once were. Unable to pick up the pieces without help, and who would help them? The Empire that destroyed them? Well, of course!

You need only sign your life away, abandon your dead home, and work yourself to death.

You can’t outrun oppression. Not forever. Sooner or later, you have to make a choice. Live quietly, hoping that it’s never you, that it’s always someone else. Or fight with all you have for whatever you have left. Die quietly, or die loudly. Proudly. Because you will die. It’s just a matter of for what. Because after a while, you will not be able to ignore the boot pinning you down, the rope at your neck or the shackles weighing you down. You cannot live in a society of fear and oppression and exploitation. You can only die in it. In a prison making parts, in a interrogation, on the street as a sign of power (of fear). You can’t outrun it or hide from it or ignore it. Eventually, all you can do is fight, whether you want to or not.

One way out.

[grand-army-radio]

This song is for Salman.

[across-stars]

So I was thinking again about Maarva's monolgue resonating with the character on screen, and...

The eager is not that far-fetched, imo. After all, he seemed rather keen on hanging Salman Paak, to say the least

Now the ''waiting to be inspired''. I didn't find it particularly fitting to Vanis in the context that Maarva uses the word (community, connection, ideas). However, ''inspired'' is also related to taking action, and in the context of this scene, ''waiting to be inspired'' could indicate he was looking for an excuse to intervene, which he deems is given to him once Maarva says she would be ''fighting'', and with this calling to action herself

[e-the-village-cryptid]

I can't stop thinking about how utterly alone Bix is. Even surrounded by the tight-knit community of Ferrix, she is so isolated and lonely in terms of actual human connection.

As far as we can tell, she has no family. She's not older than her late 20s, but her parents are implied to be dead, seeing as she inherited their salyard. She's been running the place on her own for years, hired Timm a little while ago, started dating him probably since she's so busy she doesn't even have the time to meet anyone else. She avoids him as much as possible, she doesn't tell him anything about her life, and she only comes and finds him when she's been drinking and she can't sleep, uses him more as a distraction than a companion.

Her relationship with Cassian, once so close in their youth, has become strained and distant and he only shows up every few months, only when he needs to ask a favor. And in response, she pushes him away too, rejects his attempts to ignore the distance that's grown between them, not with any bitterness or anger, just a deep, exhausted sadness.

She smiles and greets her neighbors as she walks by, but the smile drops as soon as she passes. They all know her, but they don't know her, really.

Salman Paak knows the most about her operation, but even he doesn't know the details. He's not really involved; Bix was the only one to use the radio, and Salman met Luthen only once, then turned the operation over to Bix. Bix and Salman have a friendship that extends beyond just business, but they hardly ever get to talk; the first thing he says when Bix walks into his shop in episode one is that he hasn't seen her lately. She has ties to Brasso and Maarva and others in the community as well, but hardly sees them either.

Whenever we see her, she's perpetually in motion, always busy, always worried, always finding something to do with her hands, or somewhere to go, always having to do something, just to avoid the prospect of being still with her thoughts. She keeps moving to avoid that terrible quiet, keeps the noise dialed up as much as possible, just staying ahead of that crushing loneliness that envelops her life even when she's surrounded by people.

And of course, that's just the beginning.

She may not be thriving, but she's surviving, she's holding herself together, she's keeping an iron grip on whatever stability she can find in her life. But then— Timm's betrayal. And before she has time to process that, his lifeless body is tumbling down the steps before her eyes, and she can't reach him, and she's alone, and there's blood in her eyes and her head is spinning with a fresh concussion, and she's alone, and he's dead, and she's alone.

But eventually the Paaks find her and release her and drag her away and she drags herself up and cleans up the mess and tries to piece the shards of her life back together. And when Cassian shows up at her door, even knowing how dangerous it is, how the whole city is crawling with soldiers looking for him, she can't summon urgency or anger or fear. She's just too exhausted. There's only tiredness in her voice when she tells him he can't be here, only blunt resignation as she tells him of the dangers, only sadness and bone-deep exhaustion at this same distance, this same pattern, as he leaves again.

So she keeps going. And she takes care of Maarva and Maarva is dying but she takes care of Maarva and she tries to contact Cassian to tell him and she knows it's a hopeless, dangerous mission but she does it anyway. And so she's cut off from her only off-world connection as the radio is shut down forever, set adrift, but there's no time to think about it, because then she's being dragged into an interrogation room. And there's Salman, tortured and unconscious, being dragged away for execution, and the guilt is enormous, it's all her fault, but how could she have known that the punishment for owning a radio, just owning a radio that someone else used, would be to be tortured and killed, but of course it's still all her fault and the guilt is consuming but there's no time to feel it, she locks it away as she locks eyes with Dedra, channeling everything into the defiance she'll need to make it through this.

But there's no making it through this. There's no way to maintain her resistance or her dignity or even her mind and body, not as they were before. And when she's been alone with this torment for weeks, when can hardly stand, can hardly speak, her only solace is the distant beat of a funeral drum and the words of a dead friend. And then she's on a ship away from the only community she's ever known, her and Brasso and Wilmon and Bee and Jezzi all together but all alone, not looking at one another, not speaking to one another, just exhausted, just processing more than anyone could process in a lifetime.

And now what? Even as she heals physically, even as she can walk and speak again and begin to look forward, how can she possibly explain what she's been through? This torture that no one has heard of before, that left no marks save for the deep scars on her psyche, that sounds so implausible she almost questions the reality of it all herself. How can she possibly explain? Would they even believe her? What if they don't believe her? What if they don't understand? Or maybe it's even worse if they do, if they look at her with pity, if they treat her like she's fragile, if they speak to her like they don't quite know what to say.

Where can she go? She has to go back to Ferrix, there's no other option, she feels the pull of those ties that can never be broken. And yet, even with that deep need to return, what is there to return to? Most of the people she cared about there are dead. The idea of rebuilding her old life is almost laughable, how could anything ever be normal again? Could she even be normal again? This mind, this body hardly feel like her own now.

And yet one thing is always unchanging: she is still alone, always alone, just the same as before.

[rotzaprachim]

one of the most interesting aspects of andor to me is how i think it didn’t decision to alter character timelines so much as make the decision to alter- or rather, cut open and interrogate- the entire timeline of the rebellion, in ways that have fascinating implications for the entire worldbuilding of the starry wars. one of the lingering uncertainties of “andor” comes from the refusal to play any of the cards of the Rebel Alliance as the plucky good-guy army, for whom Joining the Rebellion is as straightforward as enlisting and getting a uniform, who can show up and do army things at any moment. as the episodes build and build and build and the tension and power of the imperial army grows higher, the Rebel Alliance just.... doesn’t appear. there is no Secret Base for Luthen to take Cassian too, only a tiny group of guerillas in the highlands. there is none of the famous iconography of the Rebellion- no orange flight suits (though boy does andor give a new cast to that color choice), no rebel armed rebel bases, no x-wings go swoop in at the last moment. as I watched Andor I felt the lingering stone-drop realisation: the Rebellion, as we know it, simply does not exist. what we get is a hyper-isolated, fragmented rebellion in its infancy, tiny groups and intellligence operations so low on cash that the theft of a single sector’s payroll or access to a single wealthy woman’s family funds. Cassian can’t join the rebel alliance, because it doesn’t exist yet. 

And that’s one story. that’s a far, far more complicated story, and a more difficult story to exist within, than the plucky rebel army versus big empire narrative star wars has been living in. how do you join something like that? it really isn’t that easy. BUT! here’s the thing. BUT BUT BUT. andor complicates that further by showing, over and over again, that even if that rebel alliance can’t swoop in and save the day, that even if the number of *official* Rebellion members is a tiny fraction down to their last resources, organised rebellion is, in fact, possible. and it already exists. it exists everywhere, in numerous forms. it is both non violent and violent, and it is often the work of *civillians,* because the fundamental conditions of war, occupation, and totalitarianism make, politicise, designate everyone as a soldier. looking back on andor, there isn’t a single arc that isn’t made possible by some form of organised, collective rebellion. cassian couldn’t have escaped from ferrix if ferrix didn’t already have a system of pounding metal in order to spread the word, if salman and wilmon paak didn’t get set to banging metal, and brasso didn’t weld weights to the police squad car. the rebels couldn’t have pulled off the aldhani heist if hundreds of local aldhani hadn’t continued their cultural rites and kept coming on that pilgrimage even as local imperial agents actively worked to prevent it- because existence can be rebellion, because the continuation of cultural and religious traditions under oppression can be rebellion. the crowning point of the season, for me, is the prison break at narkina five, the five thousand prisoners knowing that there’s only one way out, and that’s by running, shooting, killing, by climbing out together. the series ends on an entire local uprising as a town’s funeral march turns into a riot against armed, shielded cops. 

And it all leads into these much more nuanced things that Andor is saying about the natures of both oppression and resistance. Because it isn’t giving the (individualist, and somewhat defeatest, but sure damn repeated) narrative that rebellion against authoritarianism is about a few Englightened individuals - the luthen’s, the aldhani rebels- versus the mass of Sheeple who just take it. Are thankful for it. That there’s just the Special ones who see the light, and those that.. Haven’t. Nor are there the essentialistly Good Pure Rebels who have all the Right Ideas in a nice Color Coded Format, who have fought Purely and Totally for the Rebellion From the Start, versus the bad guys The structures of empire don’t work like that- they make huge numbers of people complicit because of the way they stack and tier and turn subjugated people against each other when so few individuals, actually are in charge, and they make the alternative to complicity be nothing but death, in horrific ways. The people in Andor have dirt on their hands. It’s about what they do now. The X-wings can’t come to save Cassian from Narkina. The prisoners have to climb their way out. No one can give the Aldhani rebels backup. Only Luthen and Cinta and Vel can come to Maarva’s wake, and when the fighting comes, it isn’t even about them, anyway. Andor asks what happens when there isn’t the golden saviour, the Good Guy army coming in for us, and makes the case for rebellion as something intensely collectivist and intensely local, that rebellion and rebels exist before our very eyes, in more complicated ways. It’s what makes the show both brutal and brutally hopeful - for one of the first times, watching star wars, i get the sense viscerally that better worlds and forms of existence are possible within the star wars world.

As for cassian, the arc I hope they’re going for, and i really do think are going for, is not that he joined the rebellion as we see it in rogue one. It’s that that rebellion as we know didn’t exist yet, and that his arc will be about helping to stitch together the various forms of rebellion that already exist, everywhere. I think we’ll walk into Rogue One now not seeing Cassian as Mon and Draven’s hand- already fascinating - but as one of the rebellion’s quiet powerbrokers and kingmakers whose a big part of why they’re there to begin with.

[andorshitdaily]

Andor characters as Shirts That Go Hard again

[kleyamarki]

HI so i wrote the implied meeting between salman paak and kleya. it's part of my magnum opus eat your young andor concept fic. this is ultimately going to be bix-centered, focused on "throw enough rope till the legs have swung" (pretty on the nose for ya, sorry paak)

anyway, it's below the cut. maybe let me know what you think? idk i'm bored.

The man has Ferrix written all over him. It’s in the way he leaves the seats in the room for those much older and those much younger, the way he genuinely listens to everyone in the room, and the mechanic’s oil he’s tried to wash out of the jacket he wears. Kleya selects him as her mark out of the packed room. A speaker drones on about the injustices the Empire has rought, and Kleya nods along – she agrees, obviously. But speaking to a room of people will ultimately do nothing. It’s her job to pick out people she believes will be willing to take an extra step. She has hope for the man who would come all the way from Ferrix.

[ok itty bitty time skip (because i’m impatient with my writing brain and want to share this anyway), like a matter of a few minutes, think rebel meeting but more like a lecture. kleya looks like she should be part of it, like she could be one of the leaders of this little group, even. but she stands on the outskirts of the room, like she’s the lowest rung of the leader totem pole. in reality she’s not one of them, but she’s there to see if she can get anyone for her & luthen’s purposes. she also introduces herself to paak. obviously with a different name and all that. okay onto the rest]

“You know,” Kleya says over a cup of caf, “If you’re serious about this, you could be our liaison on your homeworld.” She uses ‘our’ lightly in terms of the current surroundings. She hopes he doesn’t notice the leaders of the group aren’t fraternizing with the attendees. Her network needs this. The Separatists here might too, but there’s a reason she’s handpicked him specifically. They don’t need to know that. 

Paak lets a huff of air out of his nose, a laugh, maybe, “Ferrix? They’d rather take the Empire’s money and ignore them.” Kleya’s brow furrows as the words leave his mouth. “They have each other, they can ignore the rest.”

“But you’re here.”

“But I’m here,” he sighs.

Kleya spies her opening. “I can offer more money for the Imperial toys you trade already.”

“You don’t want some uprising?” Paak raises an eyebrow, silently saying what Kleya wants him to realize – you’re not the same as them, the Separatists she’s playing. Maybe he even thinks their arrangement would be less dangerous than an overt uprising. She hopes, for his sake, he doesn’t have to learn the truth of the matter. 

“We know the game you salvagers play,” Kleya says, revealing just enough to reel him in. “And we could put it to better use. A use you’d probably like more, anyway, considering you’re here.” She sips her caf, looks back at the room.

Paak is silent for a moment longer than Kleya would like. He sips his caf too, thinking. She interjects, “You’d get a radio, signal when you have something for my buyer. We’ll catch it, he’ll pay a visit. All fairly simple, if you can get your hands on equipment we need at the right time.”

At that, Paak nods. Although he still looks the slightest bit uneasy, Kleya knows she’s got him. “As long as the radio’s alive, you’ll get a stipend too.” She debates for a split second what she’ll say next, but goes ahead anyway, “All the better for your family, right?”

Paak raises an eyebrow, but there’s something in his eye that says he’s in for the guarantee of a regular income stream. “You said liaison,” he says, finally, “Could I bring someone in, put them in contact with your buyer?”

Kleya doesn’t want to say yes, but they need Ferrix. “Sure, you’re the one on the ground.” A half-truth. He doesn’t need to know that. 

Paak nods, “You have a deal.”

Kleya suppresses a smile. She can still be happy about the small successes. “We’ll send you the radio in the next few weeks. Signal, and the buyer will come.”

[rozecrest]

the aldhani people were right. our ghosts have strong arms and long memories. the thing about andor is there is a wound in the center of the galaxy there is a darkness reaching like rust and it’s the empire creating ghosts every day under the guise of order and justice. it’s all smoke and mirrors of power reinforced by violence and that violence leaves scars, leaves people behind that will dream of vengeance and true justice and freedom! the memories of clem and salman paak, ulaf’s passing creating the chance for escape, cinta’s family, maarva’s funeral, nemiks manifesto and cassian’s family on kenari are all ghosts that haunt the present of this world and had the power to change the future through the people who loved them fighting for them !!!

[authoreeknight]

I keep thinking about what we actually know about Andor. I've spent way too much time speculating about Kenari and I've decided Gilroy purposely left it vague. Even the "industrial accident" story is suspect. That was the official Imperial storyline for Jedha in Rogue One and authoritarian regimes aren't usually imaginative in their lies so I'm betting it's "Atrocity Coverup Story #1". Interesting that the prohibition on travel to Kenari seems strong enough that Maarva didn't want any hint of it in Cassian's paperwork.

We don't even know exactly how old he was when Maarva, Clem, and B2 took him off in their hauler. He looked to me like he was either in or on the edge of his tween years.

The first hard data comes at age 13, when in the aftermath of Clem's hanging he goes after some Stormtroopers. He's subdued, charged with insurrection, destruction of Imperial property, and assault on an Imperial soldier, and sentenced to 3 years in Sipo Youth Center, getting out when he's 16.

He goes "straight into the mud" on Mimban as a cook, according to Luthen, and within six months figures out he's playing Popular Front Battle Simulator on Hard Mode, where your fellow factions can betray you and there are no respawns. Who was he fighting for? No data, though he does call the Separatists "Sep" and he doesn't use abbreviations for any of the other factions, which means to me either he was used to fighting with them or against them, you tend to use verbal shorthand for words you use a lot. Anyway, he decamps in the manner of Pistol in Henry V, stealing home to Ferrix to steal, using the old wreck of a hauler to stash stuff.

At some point he ends up with Clem's Bryar-model blaster. Maarva was smart enough to hide it from him in the aftermath of Clem's death.

Now we don't know when he started up with Bix, either romantically or in the scheme to sell stolen equipment. But we know the stolen equipment bit only goes back two years at most, because that's when Salman Paak got his transmitter. The romantic element has even less for us to go on beyond that fact that it existed. One possibility is before Clem's death and Sipo, but at 12 or 13 it seems more like he'd be sneaking over that wall into her place so he could use her good game controller. I think it's a lot more likely that it was when he was back from Mimban. Say he's 16-19, a toughened teen more or less and pushing all Bix's "bad boy with a heart of gold" buttons and probably adding a few she didn't know she had. Rebel newly without a cause. Whatever it was the evidence is it was pretty intense for both of them. She gets emotional in Ep 7 when she tells him to leave Ferrix ("for good" is implied but I don't remember it being spoken, though "forget about me" sounds pretty damn permanent). At Bix's very lowest point in the hotel after being tortured her brain went to him showing up to rescue her.

*Sniff*

For Cassian's part, when he crept over her wall in Announcement, he was more than a little intrigued at the idea that Timm had suspicions. Then upon his return to Ferrix he's back over that wall straight away and as soon as he learns she's in Imperial hands his only priority is getting Bix out of there, to the point where he'll mostly ignore Maarva's funeral as that distraction gives him his best shot. Brasso has to go spelunking in that tunnel under the hotel to give him Maarva's final message. Once again, we're short on facts, but I think it's safe to say that Bix is the most important romantic relationship in his life up to this point in S1. He sure didn't look up Peezos 'n Green Revnog on Niamos.

To me, Cassian's still enough of a mensch to risk it all to rescue Bix even if there wasn't so much as a romantic ember still glowing.

We also still don't know who told Luthen about him. Bix said it wasn't her and I believe her. That leaves Salman Paak as the only Ferrix person we know for sure met Luthen (according to information from his interrogation). Maybe he gave Luthen a rundown on potentials and Luthen settled on Bix as the most valuable for his current needs while he did his own research into Cassian. But now we're in the speculation weeds again.

I think that's enough for one Saturday night. I'm going to try to cut down my obsessing to an hour or so a week from now on.

[jyndor]

“So did cassian find bix before he went on hugging another woman and die? BECAUSE DUDE THAT GIRL TORTURED OUTTA HER MIND (because of u) AND STILL TRUSTS YOU” - a very idiot comment someone made under a post of Jyn and Cassian pictures on Twitter. ISTG some people who joined the fandom after Andor don’t have a single working braincell like wtf dude

lol for as smart a show as andor is, I really wonder about some of its viewers 🤣🤣

first off, again I have to remind folks that rogue one was written first and by different people, so if you have a problem with something that happened in the show because it doesn't necessarily track with the film... just because YOU saw the film for the first time after the show doesn't mean the film is wrong for not having perfect continuity with the show.

we can use our brains and recognize that tony gilroy didn't like idk time travel to make cassian fall in love with the main character of the film instead of, what, apologizing to the character he created years after the film came out. it's one thing to criticize the writers of the show for putting bix through a more graphic trauma than almost any singular character in the show (save for cassian but I mean he's the titular character and we knew he was gonna go through shit) and doing it for the sake of a male character's story arc - a criticism of the writers, an out-of-universe analysis. it's another entirely to make an in-universe criticism of cassian for... well let's go through the chain of events:

cassian listens to his mother when she said to leave her behind because he is wanted for killing the mall cops (they don't know that the empire is looking for him bc he is a link to luthen)

he gets profiled and brutalized by the cops on his little vacation, thrown into a labor camp and is unable to go back for her like he said he would because again, he's in a CONCENTRATION CAMP.

maarva is unknowingly inspired by cassian's team on aldhani which is partly why she doesn't want to leave ferrix (it's her home, I can't fault her for that even though she is Not my fave) and decides to rebel by... idk not taking care of herself (actually some interesting commentary on how activists burn themselves out and don't take care of themselves but that's for another post).

because cassian respects maarva's wishes for him, he is not around to help take care of her - which we know other community members like bix have done before anyway

bix and brasso along with the daughters of ferrix etc are trying to get maarva to take care of herself, but maarva is getting ill because she's older and over-exerting herself for a non-existent rebellion - which hey again cool no problem, she's trying to fight the empire even though everyone else is complacent.

bix sees that maarva really needs help, knows that cassian is gone because in part SHE told him to fuck off, wants help from luthen so she can find cassian and uses the secret comms in the paaks' shop to reach luthen.

the imperials arrest salman, torture him and then arrest bix and torture her. salman is executed.

but this is missing a critical first point: the imperial occupation of ferrix. everything else is a response to the empire and to imperialism. everything: cassian kills the mall cops (tools of the empire) in episode one because they are xenophobic and profile him; they are an immediate threat to his life. that brings mr cereal over, who fucks up the "investigation" that no one wanted so badly it ends in a full blown imperial occupation. but the empire is already present in their use of the corporate mall cops to marginalize working class communities like ferrix.

the first violence is the occupation and the imperial machine (and im not even talking about the republic and the cis's colonialism but we can include them too because its all part of the problem). everything else is a reaction to an oppressor. kassa and the kenari kiddos go after the separatist ship and try to attack the people on board because they are the likely reason for the exploitation of their planet and the probable genocide of their people. cassian kills the cops because they threaten him due to their fragile egos and xenophobia. he has to leave ferrix and his mother because as maarva says, he can't stay and she can't leave (I guess although lol I mean she could). and so on.

actions don't just have consequences. actions have reactions. everything cassian does is a reaction to oppression- he tells jyn as much in rogue one ("everything I did, I did for the rebellion"). and for all of my critiques of the show, andor sticks to its thesis that rebellion can look like many things and that cassian does nothing but resist oppression his whole life.

to blame cassian for the empire torturing bix is such a shockingly bad read of the show because the show's very foundation is that the original act of violence is imperialism and fascism, and its victims are not to blame for their reactions to it, no matter how pragmatic or radical or violent.

cassian didn't get bix tortured. the empire tortured bix because it was trying to play divide and conquer with marginalized people, and it didn't work.

lol now I have to go to work but just a side note: I wouldn't trust anyone who has that kind of take on a fictional show about imperialism and fascism to stand with real world marginalized groups when they fight real world oppression.