I’ve been rewatching the I’ll
see you again scene
another
thousand times
and I’m so
overwhelmed. Please
beware, I
am very
passionate and emotional about Din Djarin.
“He
doesn’t want to go with you”.
Din says that
like, “okay
the kid has decided, please leave now
whoever you are”
and it is fucking
heartbreaking because when he says that, he is obviously not
expressing the thoughts of Grogu, but
his own.
Listen
closely to the way
he says it,
there’s something a bit aggressive
in his voice,
he
is the one who doesn’t want Grogu to leave.
And yet, his head is not held high,
and his voice is also hesitant,
he is not completely defying Luke because he knows what he has just
said is not true. “He
doesn’t want to go with you”:
he doesn’t believe that
himself. Otherwise
he wouldn’t have opened the door,
and he
only did so because he saw
Grogu being responsive
to
Luke and pointing at
the door with his little green hand.
This sentence
is just wishful
thinking, what he actually says is “I
don’t want him to go with you”,
this is all I hear and
it
hURTS SO MUCH. For
a short moment, he is
in denial and just wants Luke to believe that and go back where he
came from (oh, sweetheart).
And
then Luke tells him what he
also knows
deep down: “He
wants your permission”.
This brings me back to the last scene in Chapter 13 when Ahsoka tells
Din that he is like a father to Grogu and that she cannot train him.
She communicates with Grogu who seems to thank her at
the very end because 1)
she told Din everything Grogu couldn’t, including his name, she was
the bridge between him and his dad and made their bond even stronger,
and 2)
and most importantly to my opinion, she refused to train him because
she felt he wasn’t ready
to accept his duty and
leave
his father.
She bought
the little guy some time because she
understood that he
was
still confused about what he should do,
and that all he
needed at that time was
to forget a bit about his abilities and the pain he went through
because of them. He needed
stability. “Then
Grogu may choose his path”:
Grogu and Ahsoka looked at each other knowing he will have to make a
decision. Not to
mention the addition, looking straight in Grogu’s eyes
while crossing her
arms: “There
aren’t many Jedi left”.
He has a responsibility he won’t be able to escape forever.
It
is all
different when Luke
appears, because of what has happened
since Ahsoka. Grogu
hasn’t been safe and his dad hasn’t been either, because villains
will always want to take advantage of him if he doesn’t “master
his abilities”. He can no longer ignore his duty and he knows
that this time, he has to go.
But
he won’t unless his daddy tells him that’s it’s okay, that it’s how
things should be. He
looks at him from the black chair and his eyes seem to say:
“Should
I go daddy? What will
happen to me if I go? What
will happen to us if I go?”
The little thing is looking for affection and the guarantee that
this affection
will not go away, which
Din chooses
to interpret as “He
doesn’t want to go with you”,
because he needs this affection as well.
THIS BREAKS ME. Grogu
has made his decision but he is terrified; terrified to be going back
into the unknown, back to being an orphan again, because Luke may be
one of its kind, he is no father to him. He needs his dad to tell him
that it’s gonna be okay, and to
assure him that he won’t give up on him and that he will
still care for
him, even if they are apart.
So Din
has
to do his duty as a dad
but he doesn’t know how to do that,
he’s all awkward about it
because it fucking hURTS
and he surely didn’t see that pain coming.
He has to rip his
broken heart out of his own chest by saying to Grogu that it’s okay,
that he can go, but none
of this is okay for
Din
and Grogu can probably
feel it.
He’s
getting mixed feelings and mixed signals,
his dad encourages him to go but
you can hear there’s no
joy in the way he does so,
his voice is so weak: “Hey,
go on. That’s who you belong with, he’s one of your kind.”
He says all
that because he’s
forced to; all of a sudden, this doesn’t seem like a good enough reason to let his little one go.
The emotions
overwhelming Din
are so intense
he doesn’t know how to
handle them, and Grogu
senses them too and then probably
thinks he should not be going if his daddy is sad or suddenly not so sure about it. This is heartbreaking because this scene is basically only about Din having to let go of Grogu; for the little guy to go, Din actually has to say goodbye and while we would have expected it to be harder for the kid, it’s actually even harder for Din, although both father and
son are torn.
Like, the way Din looks
at Grogu when he puts
him down and the little guy
hangs on at
his feet,
his eyes are like:
“God
this is
not what I signed up
for tougher than what I had imagined, help
me out here buddy,
will ya?”
This
kid has been his priority ever since he’s met him
but for the first time here
when he tells Luke “He
doesn’t want to go
with you”,
he is being selfish and
lies,
he is not able to continue with this priority —which
is bringing this child to his people,
because that means he has to let him go. He is struck by the purest
form of love at that moment, the most unconditional form of love,
and his very first instinct is to hold on to this kid because he
loves him, and because
he’s
become his
family.
Essentially, letting him go means Din’s
gonna be left behind. He has formed a family, a
clan of two with Grogu,
they looked after one another,
and now he’s back to being alone again, he’s back to being aN
ORPHAN again.
And
don’t get me started on the destruction of the Razor
Crest,the
closest thing
he had
to home,
now also gone
forever. Who’s
gonna look after him now? His
attempt to
mislead Luke into thinking that Grogu doesn’t want to go is actually
a gut reaction to protect himself from being hurt.
All along we are presented Din as protecting and guiding Grogu
because he is a Mandalorian,
but you guys know that
all this time,
it was also the
other way around.
It worked both ways.
Grogu gave Din a family and a purpose,
and letting that go equals being abandoned again, and
the pain he had burried under his armor has surfaced again and he
is broken
and this is too much
for me. Look again at
Din’s
face when Luke takes
Grogu away, this is the
face of a little boy.
The powerful
contrast between the
imposing, cold, unbreakable armor & the vulnerable, broken man wearing it hits me so hard. He
is a child
again,
his biggest scar wide open, and
he’s gonna
need help and
guidance again,
but no one sees that because he is a grown-up Mando who
surely knows
how to take care of himself.
But DOES HE REALLY?
“I’ll see you again. I promise.” Is he making this promise to Grogu only or also to himself, so that he can hold on to something after he’s gone?
Then the helmet part?? It’s just so pure and so significant. Grogu wanting to see Din’s face, wanting to READ his face so as to find the proof he’s looking for: the fact that they do have a special connection, that his dad loves him and will continue to love him no matter what. He reaches out to him, touching his face like a newborn recognizing its parents. Of course, it is essential for the kid to feel the skin of his father because he never could before, and of course he needs to be reassured, but again, it also looks like Grogu is helping his dad to let go. And let’s not forget that in all likelihood, no one has touched Din’s face in a very very very long time. It is kind of a rebirth for Din as well, as a parent. They are in perfect harmony with one another at that moment. It allows both of them to find some kind of peace. “Don’t be afraid”: he knows what the kid is going through and how violent it can be to lose his bearings. And who knows, maybe Din was told the same thing, when he was himself saved by a Mandalorian as a child and taken away from his home. This is the climax of their bonding, they acknowledge each other as father and son and actually belonging to the same kind: their own. Two orphans who found their way to each other. Din is no longer a Mandalorian protecting a foundling, he has become a father, deeply caring for his child, because he knows what it’s like to be a lost soul looking for a place where he’d belong.
Also, the metaphor of Din taking off his helmet is extremely powerful, Little Grogu cracked the armor and found Little Din hiding beneath. Din got what Kuiil wished for him in Chapter 2, “a handsome reward”, it just didn’t take the form he had expected; it took the form of something he forgot he needed: LOVE ♥. And above all, a place where he belongs. The kid obviously connected with his protector because they are alike, and now he doesn’t want to abandon him because both know how that feels.
Where my parents live there used to be a giant Walmart in a huge strip mall/shopping center. When I was in high school, this Walmart bought a bunch of land, literally two streets over and 4 blocks up to build a brand new SuperWalmart. The residents in the area repeatedly voted against allowing the Walmart to develop that land and eventually Walmart won anyway once they bribed enough local politicians to override voters. They shut down the old one and opened the new one. That old shopping mall area has two businesses left in it that are still open because no one has any reason to go to that place anymore as more and more places went out of business or moved due to the lower volume now that the Walmart moved to a different location. Those two businesses are the only Chili’s in town and tobacco store.
For the better part of 20 years, that Walmart has REFUSED to sell the old building because it doesn’t want another store to move in and take its business. Not only that but Walmart makes a profit from this building because it charges the city to use its parking lot to store massive snow piles from the snow plows and stuff. The completely empty building has electricity running 24/7 and heat because the old fire sprinkler system might freeze and cause water damage that Walmart would then have to pay to fix.
My parents are living somewhere where it is -18 degrees outside and there are rolling black outs every 3 hours because the power grid can’t support all the energy being used for heat.
But guess what? That old closed down Walmart that no one has stepped foot into for nearly 20 years? Is lit up like a goddamn Christmas tree and hasn’t lost power once because it’s considered an essential business.
this is what every social interaction feels like when you’re neurodivergent
I looked up the menu for the restaurant this is based on and i wanted to die.
i actually know abt cafe gratitude, u have to order by SAYING “i am [menu item]” it’s fucking insane
googling this to laugh at the website and finding out that one of the 5 locations of this restaurant is 10 minutes away from where i live is the most horrific feeling i’ve ever experienced.
One of the desserts is just an almond joy bar
$17 for likely under $5 worth of things in a bowl and they still ask for an extra $2 if you want some avocado in it
I’ll tell you a secret: all of the fluffiest animals in the world are domesticated animals that were selectively bred by humans to be wool-producers!
non-domesticated animals just don’t get as fluffy as these fiber-producing friends for the simple fact that humans don’t come around to free them of their fur burden once a year, meaning that there’s only so fluffy that a wild animal can get without risking overheating itself.
anyway to answer your question my vote goes to the angora rabbit
obsessed with this muppet clip where Gonzo breaks a piece of machinery and then just stares at the camera in an empty room and says ‘GUILT’ in the most harrowing way possible
corporations are actively convincing us the reason behind global warming is that you, personally, aren’t reusing your pasta water to make tea and eating the teabag for lunch #vegan and we just let them
no seriously the amount of ppl I see who are genuinely trying to do the right thing and who think global warming is their fault because they have a car or turn the fan on in the summer or eat a goddamn buger is astounding. people are truly brainwashed into thinking anything we do as citizens has an effect on the environment that’s somehow more important than the actions of corporations.
in 2020, when everyone was isolated at home, fossil co2 emissions in the US only dropped by 11%. think about how insane it is that when almost every person living in the second largest GEG emitter was at home for months, the effect they had was a reduction of barely 11%. and yet that fucking carbon footprint calculator is shoved down our throat all day long. a whole 4 years ago when that article came out saying only 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions, everybody just blinked and went “no, thank you. now have you bought enough metal straws?”
and i’m not even addressing the blatant racism, ableism and classism that coats every single one of these “personal responsibility” arguments.
With each I was like “Surely the cat doesn’t actually look like that in the image. surely this is an exaggeration.” but then I scrolled and yes, the cats are liquid
