#I WANT LONG DIN DIN

[cordysgarden]

LET ME SORT MY BOOKMARKS AS WORDCOUNT

[littledeadling]

Little happy family

[theydjarin]

A continuation of Din Djarin's Facebook files

[thefrogdalorian]

Going to be very off-topic for just a sec, but given how that campaign is all over my dash, I feel like I can't go on ignoring the emotions it provokes in me. Plus, since this is such a common struggle, I hope that maybe some of you can relate and I want you to know that you aren't alone at all.

If you're also struggling with your emotions over this and you need someone to talk to in confidence, I'm here for you. I understand.

Anyway, warning for mentions of alcohol abuse below the cut:

It's always fascinating to me how alcohol is marketed as this positive thing which brings you happiness and a great social life. When in reality, it often destroys relationships and lives and is, by definition, a depressant. It is a substance which often leaves you unhappier, fatter, lonelier, weaker, sicker, poorer...

And also, do you ever notice how it's never marketed around the taste (because it's literally poisonous and due to social pressure, we have to trick our brains by drinking it enough times that we eventually convince ourselves we actually like the taste of poison)?

It's always about sharing a beer with friends at the beach or enjoying a glass of wine with a meal. Never about how delicious it tastes...

While you may crave the feeling of being drunk, do most people really enjoy the taste and that's the primary reason why they drink? Is that the main reason given at AA meetings/rehab clinics? Do you ever hear alcoholics say: "I couldn't stop drinking that beer because it was just so crisp and refreshing!"

No, of course not. Alcohol is primarily used as a social crutch, or as an escape from one's problems. Dutch courage, social drinking where you feel giggly, giddy and tipsy... until one day you realise you can't socialise without it and it transforms from enjoyment to dependency, hopefully before you permanently damaged your organs...

Anyway, this isn't me being puritanical. I'm not mad at these campaigns or those who star in them, because at the end of the day, celebrities will always take cash from questionable sources. Money talks. Always has, always will.

It's merely an observation on the life this campaign 'sells,' as someone who has decided to break the generational cycle of alcoholism in my family and has been sober for 18 months now.

And a way for me to sort through my feelings and vent my own emotions around these kinds of campaigns. I don't miss alcohol and I don't feel tempted to drink whatsoever, but it's everywhere and there will remain a danger for the rest of my life that I could forget everything I've learned about alcohol. I don't want to lose sight of why I walked away from this destructive drug which is so widely accepted. When the truth is it is far more harmful to you than many illegal drugs.

If you enjoy alcohol, I truly hope you have fun with it in moderation. But I hope you can also stop and recognise the risks involved each time you reach for the bottle. The slippery slope you may be on which there is a danger you don't realise you've been sliding down until you're at the bottom, looking back up. And I hope you realise that what these advertising campaigns show are never rooted in the reality of what this substance can do to you.

If you start drinking that beer, it's far more likely you'll end up with kidney damage than you will ever get to share a cold bottle of it on the beach with that actor you love so much...

[iamonlypartlymajestic]

Mirrors by @tatooinetourism

"Amongst the thick fog, they see a light in the distance - a small orb of dim orange that promises safety from the nightmarish storm they’ve found themselves in. With the light as a destination, they urge their pony and trap onwards through the fog; a stone bridge over a raging river are the first signs of the building that they come across - it’s grand enough, made of stone and looking tidy even with the frightful wind and rain. Something lurks in the house unbeknownst to them - whether it be the work of the devil or something even more sinister, neither of them know - until it’s too late. What does the thing want, and what will it do to get it?"

@dinlukebigbang 2024 art for @tatooinetourism 's fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58909864/chapters/150157696

Please read their fanfic, I love reading DinLuke in several genres and spooky gothic is definitely a treat!!

[hai-nae]

somethin somethin casual somethin somethin

[mando-din-lorian]

I was so worried that they were going to full on write Din’s covert off as an actual cult this is season, and I’m so so happy that’s not that case so far.

I think there’s so much more nuance to Din’s covert that a lot of fandom don’t give it credit for. I swear, some of ya’ll act like Din is being held captive by his covert (and Bo too after the recent episode) and it’s like…they’re not.

The Armorer literally told Bo that she’s been redeemed by the way of their Creed and if she WANTS to she can join them (for however long she wants to be there), but she is free to leave any time she desires. No one is going to hold her captive there.

Same with Din. Yes, he broke his creed and became an apostate, but they didn’t hunt him down and strip him of his armor. This is the Way they follow and they’ve survived so long—have been together so long—because they stuck to is to rigidly. I love how faithful Din is to his Way. I love how much it means to him. The covert is his family. Of course he’s going to fight for it.

I don’t know, some peoples relationship with Din’s covert in this fandom is weird. Like yeah, it’s not perfect, but it’s not a full-blown cult keeping all its members locked away from the rest of the galaxy. They’re a people on the brink of extinction and doing what they can to survive.

I just think we’ve gone so long with just fanon content that it’s skewing perception on canon content.

[heirtotheempire]

Here is my gift for @chewyguts / @aroacedindjarin for the @starwars-arttrade-2023 !! A painting of various Boba Fett related things. I like to imagine that Boba has a wall he puts various pictures on to display what he finds important hehe. Believe it or not it was actually pretty difficult to get a decent photo of this, so under the cut are some zoomed in shots for a better look : ]

Translations for the Aurebesh can be found in the Alt Text.

[snow-dragon-rider]

I know this isn’t going to be what happens, but what I want so much is for the after the credits scene of Mandalorian season 3 to be Ahsoka and Sabine meeting Mando in a bar somewhere and offering him some obscene bounty to find Ezra (since obviously nothing else they’ve tried has worked, why not?). Because he’s bored and doing literally anything to avoid ruling Mandalore, he accepts. Then the Ahsoka show is her doing various other stuff and having fun adventures with Rex. The after the credits scene of Ahsoka is Mando walking back into the bar with Ezra and dropping a hog-tied Thrawn on the floor. Mando season four is just one big flashback of him and Grogu straight up bounty hunting Ezra (and Thrawn by accidental extension), while Ezra thinks Mando is actually out to kill him. Thrawn, who has grudgingly grown fond of Ezra, tries to help him escape. Hijinks ensue.

[loveoaths]

prefacing this question with /gen i’m not trying to start anything i’m just a bit flubbered with some of the new discussion around din and the children of the watch and i trust your interest and analysis on the subject

are the children of the watch not a cult? ignoring bo-katan’s history and hypocrisy and general “bo-katan-ness,” the children of the watch do seem like a cult.

now, i don’t have a positive relationship with the religion i was raised in so i’m a bit biased toward the narrative of din no necessarily adapting bo-katan’s version of being mandalorian, and i think din will have to choose between a bunch of mando’s saying “my way is best” before going “fuck it im making my own Way”

looking at fandom, there’s a lot of (justified) anger toward how mandalorian culture (particularly in comparison to the jedi) is celebrated, and for some reason this sentiment isn’t carried over to the Children of the Watch

again, all /gen and /lh i’m not trying to start anything

great question! well, technically, there are a couple of questions in your ask, but let's start with the main one:     

are the children of the watch not a cult? ignoring bo-katan’s history and hypocrisy and general “bo-katan-ness,” the children of the watch do seem like a cult. 

short answer: no, they are not.

long answer: the children of the watch are not a cult, because they do not meet the requirements of a cult. the children of the watch are more akin to a fringe religious group or sect.

but lio, what is the difference between a religious group and a cult?

i’m glad you asked! for simplicity’s sake, this section borrows heavily from this dictionary site.

a common definition of religion is “a set of beliefs about God or the supernatural.”

general characteristics of religions include:

the group worships a higher source of power rather than a single person;

there is a shared, sincere belief system;

the main belief or beliefs are consistent with basic mainstream standards for human dignity;

appropriate forms of conduct between people are defined;

an understanding of evil is established, especially how it impacts humans;

there are sacred ritual acts.

meanwhile, a cult is “a group of people with extreme dedication to a certain leader or set of beliefs that are often viewed as odd by others.”

general characteristics of cults include:

followers encouraged or forced to worship a specific group leader who gatekeeps or solicits knowledge to maintain social and emotional control over the congregration;

potential members are hounded into joining and rushed through the process while they are distracted from red flags and concerns by a barrage of community love-bombing, outreach, and promises of support;

questioning beliefs, recruitment tactics, or anything else are discouraged or are met with punishment, social ostracization, or other negative responses;

a belief system stolen from pre-existing religions and social movements and cobbled together to suit the leader’s personal narrative;

can be religious, but are not inherently; cults can also be secular social movements, like the nexium cult

followers’ daily lives are dictated and controlled by the decree of the leader, including, in some cases, mandating when cult members can use the restroom, when they can have sex and with who, which body parts they’re allowed to keep, whether or not they’re allowed to raise their own children, where their money and assets go, what words they may use, and other things that should be decided by human sovereignty and independent choice rather than an external force;

followers are personally monitored to ensure they’re adhering to cult guidelines, and spied upon so the cult leader can collect blackmail material, sensitive personal information, fears and desires, and more to manipulate and control them if they try to leave, start questioning the leader, or display too much independence;

the cult deploys methods of control (financial leans, debt, forced isolation, threat of punishment, kidnapping, corporal/emotional/physical/sexual violence, coercion, etcertera) to keep members close by and obedient. 

pretty nasty stuff, right? right.

but lioooooo, that wasn’t the question! is the children of the watch a cult or not?!

patience, padawan! the rest is below the cut!

cults function by relying on several key tenets, such as: preying on the vulnerable; isolating members from society through financial/philosophical/religious teachings and physical removal; re-ordering members' worldviews to centralize the cult; and worshipping or venerating a single individual or duo.

let’s look at a breakdown central cult tenets, then see whether or not the children of the watch displays these tenets in the mandalorian:

1. total authoritarian control-- cults, like any abusive toxic relationship, fundamentally rely on a membership base that is, at its core, utterly dependent on the cult. the membership must believe like they are incapable of living a distinct life outside of the cult, they must believe that it is the cult that gives them meaning and not the other way around, that the cult is beginning and the end of their selfhood. this control is often achieved by deliberately breaking down the memberships' psyches, physical punishment and harm, slowly pushing their boundaries to accept worse and worse behavior, guilting them into giving up all financial assets "for the good of the cult," and worse, all at the behest of their leader. the control must be so complete that the members begin policing themselves not just to keep themselves out of trouble, but because they truly believe this is how the world should work. authoritarian control is achieved by breaking down the individual and rebuilding them with flaws in the foundation, so they are destined to fail, and fail, and fail, so they will crawl back to the cult each time. this is because cults rely on extreme dependency to work, which is why cults are famous for preying on the sick, the elderly, the weak, the grieving, and the socially vulnerable.

verdict:  the children of the watch do not canonically exhibit signs of total authoritarian control, at least not in the mandalorian. 

for one, there are multiple coverts spread across the galaxy, presumably with multiple armorers guiding said coverts' members. real cults rarely break up the leadership like that; there can only be one godhead at any given time. the armorer never mentions running those coverts. there is a canonical line about "other coverts hearing din was in need" on navarro and coming to save him in season one, but with no implication that the armorer ordered them to respond, or was even in close communication with them.

beyond that, the armorer is designated the covert’s spiritual leader who holds the knowledge of mandalore and the way, but she does not control the movements of covert members. in fact, the visuals of the covert imply that it isn’t, exactly, a home for the children of the watch, but a hub; somewhere members return to after completing missions they choose, for the reasons they choose, and a place to return beskar to its rightful owners. 

we know that din believes in returning beskar to the covert, but since the armorer never orders him to go find more, and since we never see or hear other COTW discussing it, we cannot assume that they are mandated to search out beskar by the armorer. this freedom of movement, sans restraint or mission, and conspicuously absent of din seeking the armorer’s permission to leave, would be very uncommon among most established cults, because most cults only thrive when its members are highly segregated from the rest of society and congregated in a joint environment where cult beliefs can be vigorously reinforced until members forget the outside world is any different.

2.   worship or veneration of a single individual – cults have a godhead, a solitary figure through whom the divine knowledge/prophecy/religious beliefs/bullshit is channelled through, who all cult members must admire, obey, and serve without question or face punishment. this person is sometimes drinking their own flavor-aid and believes they really are a prophet or whatever, but more often than not they are charlatans who knowingly prey on the vulnerable for personal gain: sex, power, money, cheap thrills, fame, and so on.

verdict: din’s covert is not a cult, because its spiritual leader, the armorer, is not worshiped. she is a spiritual leader, and admired, but that is as far as her authority goes. she interprets the text of the creed, but she does not gatekeep it; all the covert members have knowledge of mandalore, and seem free to access however much of it as they want to, because all of them have access to the outside world. her status is more like that of a spiritual guide or teacher: she can tell people when they’ve strayed from the path of the creed and declare whether or not they are considered a mandalorian, but she cannot compel them to obey her. this is crucial, especially in the context of season two, where she reneges din’s mandalorian status. she tells him that according to the creed they both ascribe to, he is no longer a mandalorian; the only way to become a mandalorian again would be by bathing in the living waters beneath the mines of mandalore. she does not command him to do this, or shame him, or berate him, or excommunicate him; he is not bodily thrown out of the covert and commanded to get his shiny ass to mandalore on pain of death. he is simply told of his new status, and told what to do if he wants to fix it, but that’s it. this is precisely the role of a spiritual leader: to guide their congregation back to the path of the faithful when they stumble.

3.  social isolation – when new members join, cults go out of their way to deliberately isolate new folks from friends, family, and society as a whole. cults will assign duties and activities to keep new members busy and under the cult’s thumb, will tell them that their friends and family “just won’t understand”, will encourage them to sell their homes and move into a cult building or into neighborhoods filled with other members, convince them to quit their jobs and work in cult admin or otherwise devote every waking moment to the cult, and remind them again and again how only people within the cult will ever understand and support them, unlike their ignorant friends and family. cults actively discourage deep fraternization with outsiders.

verdict: din’s covert is not a cult, the children of the watch do not police who members talk to.  we know this because din has friends, specifically cara dune. their dialogue implies that they’ve known each other for more than just a few months, presumably much longer, because they know pieces of each other’s histories, are close enough to scuffle for shits and giggles, and have a report together. If COTW were a cult, din and cara would have none of this. and, more notably, when din brings cara, greef, the child, and IT into the covert in season two? that would have been a big no-no if this was a cult.

4.  extremist beliefs – cults are usually guided by extremist beliefs, which (in the most boiled down terms possible) are essentially beliefs that render the believer to reject and become intolerant to alternative beliefs, oftentimes to violent ends. this is another controlling tactic used to isolate members, and teach members to obey without question. think of, like… an intense conspiracy theorist. the intensity and wildness of those theories often push your “average” person away from them, causing these people to dig down even deeper in what they believe out of anger and loss, and then turning to one another and creating an echo chamber to reinforce their choice to believe these things. think about how once someone buys into one wild conspiracy theory, they’re often more likely to by into even wilder ones, until they’re suddenly screaming that the universe is actually a space worm’s dream hallucination and to prove it they’re going to blow something up. it often works like that. (however, this is not uncommon, because most people congregate around others who share their beliefs, outlooks on life, morals, values, and so on. It’s why religious communities form. it’s the human desire for interconnection and a shared knowledge base.) again, this is the most crude bare-bones description i can manage with a migraine, so i’m aware i’m missing a lot, here.

verdict:  din’s covert is not a cult, because its members do not adhere to or exhibit extremist beliefs. they don’t seem to be building toward anything, and they aren’t intolerant of all or even most belief systems outside of theirs. they are not concerned with changing the ways of other mandalorians, even if they disagree with them. their belief in the creed does not translate into violence against other mandalorians who are “being mandalorian wrong.” 

if anything, i’d hazard that the children of the watch are more like… mandalorian fundamentalists, i guess? (but even that doesn’t totally fit imo). 

we don’t know how the armorer and other covert members feel about other mandalorians removing their helmets, but we do know how din feels – in season two, he believes that all mandalorians who remove their helmets “are not real mandalorians.” 

din believes there is a right and a wrong way to be a mandalorian, however the fact that he did not know there were mandalorians who removed their helmets at all implies that he straight up was not taught about other traditions. he was only taught the creed, so it’s straight up possible that he came to that conclusion all on his own, because every mandalorian he’s ever met has been in the convert and they’ve never removed their helmets in front of him. 

but even if the armorer had explicitly told him this was the only way to be a mandalorian, it would not qualify as an extremist belief for the reasons above. this is a theosophical and cultural difference between two mandalorian sects, just as there is a long history of disagreements and arguments within real-world religious groups. 

final verdict:   the children of the watch, and din’s covert, are not cults, because they do not meet the cult criteria. rather, they are more akin to fundamentalist-lite religious group. 

now, i don’t have a positive relationship with the religion i was raised in so i’m a bit biased toward the narrative of din no necessarily adapting bo-katan’s version of being mandalorian, and i think din will have to choose between a bunch of mando’s saying “my way is best” before going “fuck it im making my own Way” 

knowing your own bias is important, as is being respectfully open to other peoples’ viewpoints, so know that your internal reflection is seen and appreciated.

as for din’s spiritual journey, i am 95% sure that is exactly what will happen. he will see the damage in-fighting has done to the mandalorians, and decide that neither of these ways works for him, because he is a new kind of mandalorian in a new era; he, and his people, need a new way of relating to one another and the GFFA in the wake of the empire’s destruction. he will find a third path to follow and invite others to join him, with a new idea of what it means to be a mandalorian carrying him to the end of his character journey. 

which is, like… definitely a character journey, i guess; just not an interesting one or one that i care for. it’s a very third-act feeling, same-y “twist”, which is about all i expect. if this doesn't happen i’ll either be happily surprised or consumed by irritation. we’ll see. 

looking at fandom, there’s a lot of (justified) anger toward how mandalorian culture (particularly in comparison to the jedi) is celebrated, and for some reason this sentiment isn’t carried over to the Children of the Watch 

now, i have a question for you (the asker, and other people who are in the same boat vis a vis frustration over fandom views on mandalorians versus jedi) – personally, i’m not sure how, or why, the jedi factor into this, or why anyone cares about the two groups getting erroneously pitted against each other at all?

the jedi are regularly vilified by numbskulls who haven’t rewatched the OT or the PT since they were like, nine, and have less collective critical analysis skills than i have in my left nut, so i don’t really give a shit what those people have to say, and i encourage you and everyone else who is bothered by them to take the same stance. It’s like arguing about the ethics of war with an uncritical call of duty lover: they are not here to engage with themes, they’re here to watch big things go boom boom. it’s a losing battle and all the casualties are on your side.

other people i see falling on the “jedi critical” side of things tend to be newer, younger fans who also are not keen on analysis, or are fans who saw the mandalorian first and are now working backwards into star wars without watching the movies. they are going to have an understandably uncharitable view of the jedi versus the mandalorians because of that framing: they are introduced to din djarin as a hero with a (gray) code of ethics, who has all the benefits of sound design and lighting and plot-armor to come across as the good guy. he is depicted as a “traditional mandalorian”, what this new audience will read as a true mandalorian, whereas the likes of bo katan and the viszlas and boba fett (if you want to go there) will always be read by them as outliers/bad mandalorians because they met din first.

pre-existing fans had the opposite framing experience: you met a bunch of gun-toting HOO-RAH assholes who were talented at two things: killing jedi, and killing each other. naturally, you’re going to be less charitable to mandalorians and whatever hype they get than the aforementioned fans. 

so, imo, the new mandalorian fans are shown a noble culture of ass-kicking space knights in a space-knight militia who rescue kids and beat the shit out of bad guys.* they hear that mandalorians don’t like jedi/annoying youtube fanboy critiques of the jedi as “being as rotten as the republic” and they side with them and talk shit about jedi. the irony is that “a noble culture of ass-kicking space knights in a space-knight militia who rescue kids and beat the shit out of bad guys” IS THE JEDI, but because of how they were introduced to it, and potentially because of some of the salt getting sprinkled around by both sides, totally miss that they can love the jedi and the mandalorians for different reasons. 

also, let’s be real: western propaganda is a bitch. a lot of media conditions people to believe that the gun toting violent man who shows up and shoots evil guys is the true hero of the people, and that anything to do with politics, religion, mediating violence, and advocating for peace is not just useless and a waste of time, but somehow, bizarrely, both elitist and the source of the world’s problems in the first place. 

the people who bought into that are the same ones who think the mandalorians are right and the jedi are wrong, and it’s largely in part because the mandalorians shoot people in the face to solve their problems and people wildly mistake that for a perverted kind of direct action, whereas the jedi are cool space monks who get unwillingly drafted into a war who are trying to straight up stop the war from happening, while not knowing that the war, their involvement, their troops, their government, and everything else was literally created to work against them and rope them in so tightly they couldn’t see it was a trap until the noose was around their neck and their legs were kicked out from under them.

that’s not a slight against the jedi; it’s fucking tragic, and is meant to convey that they were always going to lose but that still fighting to save the people they could was the right thing to do, even if it meant they had to go down swinging. 

unfortunately, once again, using anakin as the pov characters for the only movies about that era was a mistake, because people walked away believing that he’s faultless and the jedi are dumb for not seeing a political trap forty plus years in the making that was created specifically with them in mind, while these same people can’t even see that copaganda is real and shitty and insidious. but i won’t get into that because it makes me crazy.

i’m saying all this to say, you aren’t going to win with these people, because they are ideologically invested in wrongness and the “might makes right” mindset because they either think it’s cool, or it makes them feel safe, or some other reason i can no longer be bothered to guess at. 

it sucks that you and parts of the fandom feel like it is unfair that mandalorians are celebrated for the same actions that jedi are vilified for, because that is unfair, but i do not think the answer to that is to… hate the children of the watch or say the covert is a cult (i am actually not sure what the connection between this part of your ask is compared to the top, so i’m just guessing here) solely based on fanon interpretation, fandom anti-religious sentiment and bias, and two lines from bo katan kryze, of all characters, lol. doing that seems like the exact thing you are frustrated with other fandom people about: hating characters you love and want to defend based solely on how they feel and how they want to cherry-pick and twist canon to suit an anti-jedi narrative.

especially when the children of the watch actually seem quite removed from the mandalorians fandom upholds/is angry about: the children of the watch hold no ill-will toward the jedi, they are not concerning themselves with bo katan’s goal of reclaiming mandalore, they are not looking for revenge, they are not engaging in any of the behaviors and schemes that the main mandalorians are. the children of the watch are focused on survival, and following the way, and reclaiming the beskar they view as their birthright. they have the energy of a cluster of doomsday preppers who learned to prepare for the worst and keep their head down to avoid getting slaughtered again. they do not seem, narratively speaking, like the mandalorians to get angry at, because they are fundamentally disengaged from those people.

it seems to me that the only way to contend with this is to block idiots quickly and without mercy, ignore people who are just flat out wrong, and know that you don’t have to pit two bad bitches against each other to prove a point, or drag one girlie through the mud to make the other one shine. 

again, all /gen and /lh i’m not trying to start anything

no worries. i enjoyed the question! thanks for sending it my way.

and, for the record: i’m a pro-jedi, 100% jedi-lover, and i am a fan of the children of the watch. (in general, my interest in mandalorian history – aside from my fascination with mandalorian jedi – bounces between “oooh shiny” and “whatever this is dumb and you’re all losers” so i don’t really talk about them.)  we exist! happily! join us!

*this is an oversimplification for comparative purposes. randoms reading this, do not come for me in my fucking inbox with some “well actually” shit or i will stomp your crotch to dick-dust.

[diamondnokouzai]

the scenario is thus: you are a single parent to an infant/toddler (for whom you love and care), and you need a babysitter. you find someone qualified with reasonable rates, but it later turns out that they WERE a serial killer, but quit the habit four years ago. they've never harmed a child, and you need a sitter tonight.

[obl-1-vion]

and what if i were to make a tlou x star wars crossover then what

[foggysirens]

An interesting contrast between Din and Luke just hit me all of a sudden: we know that in canon Din basically doesn't know how to be in a romantic relationship, right? And we never see him interacting much with any romantic pairs other than his brief time with the Frog couple. But Luke's spent all his life hanging around first Beru & Owen and then Han & Leia, and we know both couples love(d) each other immensely, and were/are devoted to each other and the rest of their family (including him). That has to have had a huge impact on him, on how he sees romantic love and loving relationships. But on the other hand it's not something that Din seems to have been much exposed to, comparatively, and I have to wonder how both experiences would impact their own relationship together.

that's a really interesting thought! i've never really thought about their dynamic that way until just now because... yeah

in the mandalorian, the majority of the relationships that we focus on are platonic friendships and familial bonds- din and grogu and their various friends. the one instance of din having a confirmed romantic relationship is a few off-handed comments from xi'an about their time together and from the looks of things there... it wasn't anything healthy. certainly nothing romantic. i think an interesting thing to look at concerning din too is the romantic relationships he has been privy to all heavily contribute to his overarching character trait of duty. his parents, we know he remembers them some, but the only memory we get to see is of them hiding him. their care for him is so prevalent and emotional even in those scant scenes we see of them before they commit to the ultimate sacrifice of putting his life ahead of their own- yet still as a united, loving front. and then there is omera, who we see din connect with through her duty and determination to protect her own child, her people, and i think seeing that played a big part in din (however briefly) considering to stay with her. and then again, like you mentioned with the frog couple, all these romantic relationships around din center around one thing- the duty and protection of children and i think for a man like din that makes so much sense. not because its what he's been around the most, but also just the very core of his character and how much he devotes himself to the mandalorian way - (and it also plays its hand in very well to the fact that in the context of a dinluke relationship, he'd see that same duty and protection from luke towards grogu as well and... that's very attractive)

and then we have luke! who, again like you said, grew up under the care of owen and breu, two people that we know would do anything for him. luke had a healthy family unit comprised of two adults that loved him as well as each other in a very humble, simple household. working together, taking care of each other. even during his petulant stages like we see in anh, luke is like 'nah sorry i cant join the rebellion i have to go home for dinner' and like- that just shows off the bat the deep respect for family that luke has, something that just becomes more and more of a defining feature of his as the movies progress. and then with leia and han, yeah, luke is around these two that fight like cats and dogs but have each others back no matter what. there is an ease to their way, even when fighting, just like owen and beru. luke is surrounded by couples that click. couples that stand and fight together. i think that would make him, not idealistic when it comes to relationships, but very firm and grounded in what he wants. luke has seen and knows what love looks like, has very well felt it for himself. even i think when he becomes more ingrained in the way of the jedi and is not actively looking for love, those same traits of ease, reliability, joy and just overall respect for your partner would be something that remains important to him

and then i think, even with the vastly different perspectives and exposure to romantic, loving relationships - that's exactly why din and luke would work. the traits of duty and commitment that din values work perfectly with those of family and reliability that luke does (not to mention how like.. it makes them perfect for understanding the importance of each other religions and what that means for their relationship). devotion is big to both of them. and not in the 'give up everything and put this first always way' but in the 'we can build a strong foundation here together' kind of way. that's not to say i don't think there wouldn't be challenges- luke has so many preconceived notions of how a relationship should look and din is a man who has never let himself even dream for longer than a few days. it would be an adjustment and shock period for both of them. i think din would find some of lukes insistences overbearing and confusing and luke would find some of dins pushback disheartening and frustrating, because truly both of them do not have much (if any) experience with serious romantic relationships. but it works. they learn and grow into it together, fostering the connection and thoughts that they share and learning to support and discuss the ones they don't - learning to love in the way the other does alongside their own and its so interesting to think of them going on that journey together- of finding the balance in their love to respect where both are coming from and carve a path together and become the love they both have always wanted

[qkmlh]

[trashquisitor-shirozora]

I just read your mando episode 1 thoughts and I’m really glad you also didn’t like the Nevarro changes like I love Nevarro and I watched the episode and was like hm… Nevarro is… boring now…

Hello there, Anon! Finally getting around to this ask but it's been on my mind. It just really, really bothers me how flat and boring Nevarro is now. I liked the appeal of a grimy, hardscrabble planet that scraped by with work by the Bounty Hunters Guild, trade, and shadier, more illicit activities. It was a fun and fascinating look into the Outer Rim away from the likes of Tatooine, and now that's gone. Now Nevarro looks and sounds like a freaking Renn Faire trying to eat its cake as some cleaned up and respectacle independent trade center, and I feel like a joke watching it.

The entire season premiere was a mixed bag of decisions and the choices made with Nevarro really damped my already low expectations. Really hope the only way now is up.

[sarcasticfemme]

I want to shower my butch with love.

I want to kiss her everytime I brush past her, I want bring her a warm drink on a cold night, fluff her towel in the dryer when she showers, adjust her tie for her before we talk out the door.

I want her to be so saturated in love that even when we are apart she never doubts how my heart beats for her.