Chapter 7: What It Makes of Us

Read this entry before Class 7: Season 2, Episode 5 “Ever Been to Ghorman?”

Chapter 7 — What It Makes of Us

It’s been a year since the stolen TIE prototype.

Sometimes it feels longer. Sometimes it feels like it never really ended—that I’m still inside that moment, still wearing someone else’s uniform, still saying the right things at the right time so no one looks too closely. That’s the part you don’t shake. You learn how to move through their systems, how to speak their language, how to stand where they expect you to stand.

And then you keep doing it.

Bix says this is the closest thing we’ve had to a normal life in years. A safe house, regular food, a place where you can sleep without listening for doors. She’s right. There are days where it almost feels like something steady. We talk. We sit. Wilmon’s working again, building things that aren’t meant to hurt anyone. For a few hours at a time, it’s quiet.

But it’s never separate from everything else.

The work is still there. Messages coming in. Instructions moving out. Luthen’s network stretching further, pulling people in from places that used to feel disconnected. It’s not just small jobs anymore. It’s structure. Coordination. Something that’s starting to look like it could hold.

An insurgency.

I didn’t think of it that way before. It was always just surviving, moving from one thing to the next. Now there are patterns. People taking roles. Systems forming underneath it all. Not clean. Not unified. But real.

And like anything real, it changes people.

I think about Brasso more than I expected to. Not the way he died—though that comes back whether I want it to or not—but the way he lived before all of this. He didn’t start out as part of anything larger. Ferrix was enough for him. Work, friends, community. He stood his ground when it mattered, but he didn’t go looking for fights.

The Empire found him anyway.

That’s the part I can’t stop turning over. People like Brasso don’t choose this path because they want to. They’re pushed into it. Pressed until there isn’t another option that makes sense. Stay quiet and lose everything slowly, or push back and risk losing it all at once.

Some people never make that shift. They adjust instead.

The Empire gives them ways to adjust. Better work assignments. Permits. Protection if they follow the rules closely enough. You see it everywhere—people who align themselves just enough to stay safe, to get by, to maybe even get ahead. They don’t think of it as loyalty. They think of it as survival.

And sometimes it is.

There are officers who started as functionaries and ended up believing in what they’re doing. There are workers who enforce rules because those rules keep them fed. There are people who convince themselves the system is necessary because the alternative feels worse.

That’s how control spreads.

Not just through fear, but through incentives. Small advantages that pull people closer. A better position. A little more security. Something to lose if the system changes. Once you have that, you start protecting it. You start seeing threats where you didn’t before.

You start doing the Empire’s work for it.

But it doesn’t work on everyone.

For every person who adjusts, there’s someone else who can’t. Someone who sees too clearly what’s happening or feels it too directly to accept it. Loss does that. So does pressure. You reach a point where the calculation shifts, where staying inside the system feels worse than stepping outside it.

That’s where rebellion starts.

Not as an idea. Not as a speech. As a breaking point.

Brasso reached his. So did Maarva. So did the men on that prison floor. They weren’t looking to become symbols. They weren’t trying to build anything larger. They just stopped accepting what was being done to them.

And once they stopped, everything around them started to move.

I’m beginning to see that both paths—compliance and resistance—come from the same place. The same pressure. The same system pushing on people from all sides. The difference is where that pressure lands, and what it takes from you before you decide you’ve had enough.

Some people bend.

Some people break.

Some people push back.

There’s no clean line between them. I’ve crossed it myself more than once. I’ve worked inside their systems, taken their credits, used their structures when it suited me. Even now, I still do. That hasn’t changed.

What’s changed is what I think that work leads to.

It’s not just survival anymore. It’s part of something building, whether we’re ready for it or not. The network Luthen’s creating isn’t temporary. It’s not just about disruption. It’s becoming something that can challenge the Empire in ways that aren’t easy to contain.

That comes with its own cost.

The more organized we become, the more we start to resemble what we’re fighting. Roles, expectations, decisions made far away that affect people who don’t get a say. There are already choices being made about who matters more, which operations take priority, who gets pulled in and who gets left behind.

No one says it out loud.

But it’s there.

Bix sees it too. We don’t talk about it directly, but it’s in the way she watches me when a message comes in, the way she knows I’m already halfway gone before I stand up to leave. This life we’ve built here—it’s real, but it’s temporary. It exists because the larger fight hasn’t reached us yet.

It will.

It always does.

I used to think the Empire shaped people from the outside, forcing them into roles they didn’t choose. Now I see how much of that shaping happens from within. The decisions you make to get through the day, the compromises that feel small at the time, the lines you tell yourself you won’t cross until you’re already standing on the other side of them.

That’s how they pull people in.

It’s also how they lose them.

Brasso didn’t survive Ferrix, but what he did there didn’t end with him. None of it did. The people who saw it, who felt it, who carried it forward—they’re part of this now, whether they call it that or not.

That’s what the Empire can’t fully control.

What happens after.

— C.A.

Key Terms

Insurgency

An organized movement that uses resistance—often including violence—to challenge or overthrow an existing authority.

• Star Wars Example: Emerging rebel groups operate in secret cells, carrying out missions against the Empire without forming a unified army.
• Real World Example: Insurgent groups in places like Iraq or Afghanistan have used guerrilla tactics to resist state or occupying forces.

Loyalty

The support and allegiance individuals give to a leader, regime, or cause, often shaped by fear, belief, or personal ties.

• Star Wars Example: Characters like Syril demonstrate loyalty to the Empire, even when its actions are questionable.
• Real World Example: Government officials or soldiers remaining loyal to a regime despite corruption or repression, often due to ideology, fear, or career incentives.

Patronage

The distribution of resources, jobs, or benefits by those in power in exchange for support and loyalty.

• Star Wars Example: Imperial officials reward those who serve the system with status, security, or advancement within the bureaucracy.
• Real World Example: Political leaders giving government jobs or contracts to supporters to maintain loyalty and strengthen their power base.

Co-optation

The process by which a regime neutralizes opposition by bringing potential critics into the system and giving them incentives to comply.

• Star Wars Example: The Empire allows certain elites or local leaders to maintain influence as long as they cooperate with Imperial rule.
• Real World Example: Authoritarian regimes offering positions, resources, or privileges to opposition figures to prevent them from challenging the system.