#syril

[zekesplayground]

imperial finger hierarchy

[mr-meero]

The way he looks directly at the camera after he knows what he’s done. @hegodamask for the brilliant gif!

[zuranis-artblog]

Imperial Barbie Photo Booth

-...Are you done?

-...May I take just one more...?

-*sighs* I'll allow it.

[charlottcharles]

if i send you this it means i'm spending an extended amount of time with my mother

[kamillahn]

4 days until Andor season 2!

[geedeeswriting]

Syril was always violent.

He bullied his subordinates.

He threatened B2.

He shot at two jawas while searching for Andor.

He blew up at the ISB agents interrogating him with Dedra.

He stalked Dedra.

He grabbed her arm when she tried to walk away.

He grabbed her by the shoulders when she tried to end their conversation.

He wrapped his hands around her throat.

[nervous-writing]

Some thoughts on Syril from Andor (Spoilers for the whole show)

I feel people who call Syril an incel and the like are sort of missing the point of the character or are on purpose projecting something onto him that wasn't intended by the writers/the show and it's deliberately trying refusing things from his perspective or in any other way that doesn't align with the way that they already want to see him.

What I mean by that is that Syril by himself isn't just the typical Right-Wing Fascist that only lives to see others who are different suffer.

When he tries to find Andor in season 1, does he use far too much force, leading to the death of an innocent civilian? Yes (though the death of that civilian isn't directly caused by him, but rather his men going overboard, as per usual for police), but to him, Cassian is someone who murdered two colleagues of his (Syril doesn't at all know that they were the ones being aggressive, again, all he knows is that Cassian murdered two of his co-workers), I think wanting to catch that guy is pretty reasonable.

It should also added that he was even more motivated to do this because his superiors wanted to sweep those deaths under the rug, which is pretty bad, especially if you are someone who believes that the police and authority should always try to uphold "justice".

When Cassian and Luthen manage to escape, leading to the death of several more colleagues of Syril, his reaction doesn't strike me as the show wanting me to go "yeah, get owned!" but instead we see a guy who is just utterly destroyed by the fact that he watched people die rather violently and that he is to blame for it while having gained nothing from it.

When he met Dedra I saw people calling him an incel for being obsessed with her (I also saw people calling her a girl-boss, which is a whole different can of worms that I'm sure I should get into). Again, he shows behavior that can very easily be laid out in the worst of ways and him following her is creepy, but he isn't doing it because he feels like she belongs to him or because he sees her as an object, the way he sees her is being the kind of person that should be in charge and that he wants to work for. For Syril, Dedra is the kind of authority figure that he admires.

I think what bothers me most is when people just call him an incel fascist loser who got what he deserved, even though when looking at him and what he does, it makes perfect sense from his perspective. When he chokes Dedra, he isn't doing that because he is an incel who only knows violence against women. He just realized that the woman he loved and that represented everything he admired, wasn't trying to prevent further crime from happening by snuffing out what he has been taught was a threat, who had used him for two years (constantly lying to him about what he was doing) but instead she was instigating chaos and pushing an entire planet into looking like criminals (to the rest of the galaxy) so that the empire could gain something from the planet without anyone being upset about what would happen to the people of the planet. The very same people that Syril has been living with for years at that point, so it is fair to assume that he was even more attached to them and the culture. (And to make it clear, no I'm not saying violence against women is justified, but this wasn't a case of Syril using violence against a woman because she's a woman, but because he understood that a bunch of innocent people were going to either be killed or at the very least be imprisoned, I think it's reasonable for anyone to get rather worked up about it.)

Now with his death. Some say that he was about to have a redemption, others say that he was blaming Cassian for everything and didn't see himself to blame at all.

Of course he would blame Cassian, as laid out at the beginning, his hatred towards Cassian is rather justified from Syril's perspective, because if Cassian didn't exist (or hadn't murdered those two people), Syril wouldn't be standing amongst a massacre (which he feels very much responsible for, otherwise he wouldn't spent a reasonable amount of time just having the same empty stare that he had when he witnessed several colleagues of his being murdered because of Cassian)

So when he sees Cassian, of course he would use this person who can be argued is responsible for everything that has happened in Syril's life, he would try and murder that man. Only to be then met with the fact that this person, the most important person in Syril's life, doesn't even know who he is. Syril lowers the gun, we don't know if he would have ended up with the rebellion or if he would have still tried to kill Andor or would have just completely crumbled beyond the point of no return. In the end he was killed by someone who also blamed him for everything that had gone wrong (which is once more very reasonable for the character in question).

I think one of my main issues with people just giving Syril the incel label is that they reduce the complexity of this character. To me, when I started Andor, I saw Syril as being the kind of consequence that just never was part of Star Wars. The good guys kill the bad guys and it's never really more than that, we don't see the perspective of the bad guys (not saying that the Empire itself should be made to look like the good guys, I'm talking about having a more human perspective for the randos who get mowed down without mercy) for example, we see Finn be traumatized by watching his friend die in front of him, but no other Storm Trooper is ever given the chance to be seen as a human, they are just canon fodder that can be mowed down without a second thought.

What I love about Syril is the show going "You know what, what if someone was actually emotionally affected by the deaths happening around them" and that leading to him being motivated in a manner that could very easily be framed in such a way that, if the show wanted to be different, could make him out to be the hero of this story (the same could be said with Dedra and her being the one to actually make progress in the ISB while not being taken seriously at the beginning of the show).

Syril (like so many characters in Andor) is complex and tragic in the fact that you can so very easily understand them and also see how their lives could have turned out differently. If he had seen the crimes of the Empire sooner or had he been introduced to Cassian in a different manner, perhaps he could have joined the rebellion or not falling into the trappings of fascism.

I feel people calling him an incel fascist kind of want to forget the fact that at his core, Syril isn't fundamentally evil and how easy it was for someone who wants to do good, to fall into the trap of fascism and the promise of "bringing justice" and "doing the good thing" without him being pro genocide or anything like that.