Wednesday DE: Change

[galen_erso]

 Something needs changing. Will your charrie try and instigate it within the chain of command or will they start an uprising? And how will they go about it in detail?

No, not asking as a Galen Erso apologist (be that as it may), asking because I find myself fronting an uprising at work. It's only about a spreadsheet, but oh myyy are people passionate and entrenched about it!

Comments

[quick_clean_pure]

Canonly, Graverobber's the guy who realizes how shitty everything is and how awful the world's gotten, but really isn't in a position to do anything about it. He just keeps himself alive and doesn't involve himself in any kind of major changes.

Though, in fairness to him, literally nobody does anything to fix how awful things are in Repo! world, and the movie ends with things being mostly more of the same.

[bjornwilde]

CW-era Ahsoka totally works around the system, while being within the system. She learned this from Anakin and so is very good at it. This is most often done by ignoring or stretch orders to do what she knows is the right thing to do.

SWR-era, totally works with the uprising. She does this by being the one to coordinate between the different factions within the Rebel Alliance, arranging supply drops, and drafting new members to the Alliance.

Sabine is a total insurgent. She used to be part of the system, but then got taken advantage of. She tried to speak out to stop what was happening, but that turned out badly as well, so she ran for the stars. She then tried to ignore the problem and live a life, but it never felt completely right. More bad things happened, she was left for dead and then the Ghost Crew found her and showed her what helping people could be like. Now she uses art to show other downtrodden people they can think for themselves and fight back, and engages in direct violent action against the Empire.

Sam feels like a moderate voice to me. He'll try working within the system but will push for change. That said, he will follow Steve where ever, and we know how that goes.

Danny thinks he's beyond the system and so will just do what he thinks is right.

Scrapper adapts to the situation. She might try to work outside of it, or find the loopholes, but she isn't that good at it and ends up stuck in the situation until someone (*cough* Thor) comes along to pull her out.

Hank totally believes in the system, though can accept the system is flawed or doesn't have all the information. Being out in the world, at the ground level at present is teaching him that the system is deeply flawed and actively works to keep itself that way.

Tybalt is the system. Outside of his own Court though, he hates the present monarch of the Bay Area and works around her edicts. He does walk a fine line between openly ignoring her rule and saving Toby, since if he is too obvious about it the Queen could declare war on the Court of Cats. Still, he's broken Toby out of the Qeen's dungeons, so he'll go pretty far.

[cottoncandypink]

Wilford will be as loud and irritating as possible until the thing changes.

[just_cant_lose]

Jim does what he wants. He doesn't care about any chain of command, and he doesn't care about uprisings unless they're either useful for some larger purpose, or amusing.

[varadia]

Ysalwen definitely leads an uprising. Three uprisings? By this point three, yes. Or, you know, finds already-extant uprisings and says 'tell me where you need me'. I suppose it helps a lot that she knows many heads-of-state very well, and also many left-and-right hands of heads-of-state. Heh.

X works locally, on the whole. Though she could probably work at a larger scale, particularly if there were a locally-grown resistance in the wings that needed a high-powered infiltrator/assassin/murdersquad to put a final stop to some atrocities? But she likes building good neighborhoods that help each other much, much better. So. That's where she'd be.

Wonder Woman starts an uprising. Every time. Seriously.

Sombra vanishes from public view and starts upsetting apple carts from behind the scenes by using all the leverage she can find. And she can find a lot.

[childofrebellion]

Cassian and Will S. are in the uprising. Will's worked, Cassian's is currently the hard part where some days it doesn't seem that hopeful.

Quentin, Ivan, Sameth would all lead change from the inside due to the fact that they're actually closer to power. Though Toby does keep accidentally leading uprisings. Quentin doesn't know how he feels about being involved in them.

Demeter is tricky because as a goddess, she holds power but she also doesn't use it like the rest of her family. When she created winter in some ways that was like creating a strike against her family.

Tumnus wished he could have been part of the uprising but ended up caught in between using what was possible and standing up. Then he helped the Pevensies push the White Witch out of power.

William, hm, I think it depends what he's moving against. Chains of command aren't set in stone out where he is and during canon he often went against how things should be done, but he also wouldn't push back to the same way as others especially after the Civil War.

Moist will be avoiding everything and taking advantage of the confusion to steal.

[i_am_your_host]

Emcee will only get arrested or shot for his efforts or put others at risk, so he's not the type to instigate anything.

Pam may not like the way the Authority runs things, but she would also get arrested or executed if she started anything, and if something happened to her, Eric would take revenge and then he would be executed, so...no, she's not going to do anything.

Cassidy is entirely an outlier and would prefer to extract himself from the situation instead of doing anything about it.

Floki is a subversive little shit. He will go around to everyone and turn them to his side, making sure he has the strength in numbers before making his move.

[iprotectyou]

Baze is the uprising. He armed himself with a cannon and set about picking off stormtroopers by the dozens. He joined the rebellion because he was following Chirrut, who just wanted to beat up their enemies and follow Jyn.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato and co are another instance where they are the uprising: The basic track of 01 is always 'they arrive in some place under the control of one of Apocalymon's people, whether that be a very overt form of control like Etemon's, or a less overt one like Devimon's, and then they overthrow and kill that person.'

Eden is, in most cases, going to be neither, unless the something that needs changing specifically affects his ability to carry out the task of killing Heartless, in which case he'll just murder the problem to death and carry on as he was. He's not a subtle person.

[for_everyone]

Hera and Kanan have both obviously gone the uprising route, but this wasn't necessarily inevitable for either of them. Hera was already bent that way, having grown up with the Twi'lek Resistance to the Separatists and then the Free Ryloth Movement. But this did also expose her to the costs of war. I do have a based-on-one-line headcanon that initially after leaving Ryloth, she tried to be a peaceful activist - though this still meant some rule- and law-breaking, as it wasn't really possible to expose the problems of the Empire otherwise. But the Empire responded with overwhelming violence, convincing her that a wide-scale armed uprising was the only thing that could change it.

For a long time Kanan tried not to get involved in things at all, though he did often end up helping others when he could, not quite able to squash that compulsion no matter what he said otherwise. I actually think he'd generally be more inclined toward a working-within-the-system approach, but that's just not an option. But he does have some misgivings about the eventual Rebellion uprising, after his experiences with the Clone Wars and Order 66. And I'd say that his preferring the smaller-scale work of stealing from the Empire to give those in need reflects that inclination on his part, though it's not the only reason he felt that way. It's obviously not respecting a chain of command, but it does show more of a focus on helping those trapped in a bad system than changing the system itself.

[inlovewithwords]

Eriond: Will possibly change it himself by fiat. If not, depends if there's someone within the chain of command who's reasonable.

Lois: She might use her words to try to persuade the chain of command to take action, but... well, it's Lois. Uprising, definitely.

Evelyn: lol uprising let me explain about the mage rebellion and the inquisition.

R2-D2: Uprising

Anakin: This... depends on situation, honestly. He will do whichever is more tactically sound (although 'cut straight through problem possibly literally' is a common tactic of his). Also, he's way more likely to shrug and not change things, as long as it isn't actually inconveniencing him personally, because he's Anakin sometimes and as much as some Anakin apologists like the idea of him being a radical, like, canonically he explicitly abandons all those leanings. (I strongly dislike Anakin apologia, he had an awful life but he's also an awful person at times.)

Tavi: Only really instigates one uprising, and that was in book one. Even that was kind of nudging a part of someone else's chain of command to start the uprising. Tavi's Process For Things That Need Changing:

- Step One: Is Tavi in the chain of command, or in a position to influence it? If so, he will try to use it. If not, skip directly to Step Five.
- Step One-A: Is the system he is within chain of command for damaging? If so, skip directly to Step Five.
- Step Two: did that work? If so, congratulations. If not, continue to Step Three.
- Step Three: Is the reason it failed to work inherent to the system, or was a person standing in the way? If the former, skip to Step Five. If the latter, Step Four.
- Step Four: Remove person from chain of command or jump chain of command to a rung higher than that person to enforce intended change. (Note: this may require establishing himself at the top of the chain of command.) If this doesn't work, Step Five.
- Step Five: The system is broken. Rip it down and start over.

Within the context of Alera itself, of course, Tavi is less within the chain of command so much as he is the chain of command, so even when he decides to rip the system down and take a do-over, he's doing it from a position of "and I can and will stomp on this." Interestingly, he's explicitly ripping a bunch of things to shreds and more subtly laying the groundwork for upending the class system and power structures that allow him to be a benevolent dictator at the moment--won't bear fruit for probably at least two centuries, but like, he's preparing for the day when Alera has no First Lord. He doesn't like uprisings because they get people killed, but he does believe in addressing the reasons and causes behind uprisings, and if they're valid, trying to heal them without need for more than ideological conflict.

But even in situations where he is not First Lord, that's approximately the sequence.

(PS: Step One-A-plus-Step Five is otherwise known as 'Slavery is wrong and it is ending now I will enforce this as necessary.')

[oldmancreed]

Tess is more behind the scenes of the uprising, but it won't get far without her.

Rose does not want any of this and will hide in the corner. Thorn would join an uprising if she believed in the cause enough, but won't start anything on a grand scale.

Kylo thinks he's part of an uprising, but he didn't start it. He's more of a follower, but [spoiler].

Creed doesn't fucking care.

[genarti]

Enjolras: .....I mean.

He's definitely on the side of community organization to overthrow the system in a grassroots groundswell kind of way, yes! Violent revolution is actually not his go-to and preference, but, like, he will absolutely go that route if he feels it's necessary, and he's quicker than some to see it as definitely necessary.

Cosette: Right now, it's kind of hard to answer, because she's only just starting to come out of a super sheltered background. It's not so much that she trusts in the chain of command (though she does want to believe in the general good intentions of most people) as that she is not emotionally ready to write it off, unless someone she really loves and trusts tells her that it's necessary. Eventually, that will get less true.

However, like X (although in a very different way), what she really wants to do is foster community on a local level and make sure people are happy and supported and provide each other with what they need on a daily basis. So I think she will eventually be capable of and ready to stand up and use all the moral shaming power she can muster from her gender and class on a broader scale, but her first thought will always be local nurturing and face-to-face conversations.

Thor will always start within the chain of command. Whether he'll move on from there to other avenues depends on a lot of situational factors, but he will always start, at least, by presenting the problem to the established leaders and giving them a chance to do what's right. He has no moral problem with overthrowing a sufficiently corrupt or self-serving system, but whether he's actually willing to personally commit to being part of that overthrow depends on the diplomatic considerations involved, the personalities involved, etc, etc. (If Thor Odinson is personally involved in another realm's political squabbles, that can mean a lot of sudden lopsidedness to the situation, and/or that yet other realms will make assumptions based on his presence. And if this is another Milliways world where Asgard doesn't exist, he's setting a first precedent by taking any action. All of those are things he's potentially willing to do, but they're considerations to factor in.) His involvement could take the form of dramatically thunderstorming and punching tanks, or calm diplomatic mediation, or uh the latter followed by the former.

If we're talking about Asgard, uh, Thor is still going to try to instigate change within the existing chain of command for as long as he possibly can. The existing chain of command is his parents, so... that situation is differently complicated! (But if he's going to go the uprising route, it's gonna be in full dramatic family style.)

Kazul thinks that if we're talking the Dragons, she is very approachable and you should definitely instigate it within the chain of command, please and thank you. (She actually is; dragons do not go in for absolute rulers or obedience anyway.) If it's a nearby neighbor, it depends on the circumstance. If it's a distant land or another world, she's pretty open to either option, really, but she tends to be a bigger fan of just eating the problem than anything involving a popular revolution's worth of cat-herding and coordination and strategy meetings.

Doctor Dinosaur's life's work is a one-velociraptor uprising against the existence of mammalkind and the past several billion years. Using C-4 and crystals. It's, uh, going great.