A persons fanfic tells you a lot about them, i , a fanfic writer, realize in terror
i don’t think we should be quick to trust anything bo-katan says about the children of the watch.
the main thing i’m suspicious of is her claim that they’re a fringe group. maybe they were in the clone wars era, but they’re clearly the dominant mandalorian faction right now. we know this because literally everyone in the show, not just din, thinks all mandalorians never take off their helmets. that perception wouldn’t be so widespread if the helmet thing were only practiced by a small group of religious zealots. i mean, this is galaxy-wide common knowledge. it’s not just din being sheltered by a cult.
clearly something changed between clone wars and the fall of the empire. i’m guessing most of the mainstream mandalorians were wiped out after the great purge, leaving the children of the watch as the largest group. one reason for that may have been a cultural shift towards the ancient way because the anonymity aspect of it gave them a definite survival advantage. however, the main reason was probably the practice of adopting foundlings.
the mainstream mandalorian culture prior to the purge seemed to view itself as a race rather than a creed. this meant that when the ethnic mandalorians were killed off, the children of the watch kept growing because they adopted outsiders into their group. the armorer alludes to this when she says that “foundlings are the future.”
this is why din getting upset about boba and bo-katan wearing beskar armor doesn’t necessarily mean he’s being sheltered by a cult, as bo-katan claims. notice that he’s okay with them keeping their armor once he knows they’re mandalorian in heritage, if not in creed. he just didn’t consider that was a possibility because if you’re mandalorian and never swore the creed, you’re probably dead.
basically: i don’t think bo-katan is as representative of mandalorians as a whole as she makes herself out to be, and i don’t think din’s tribe is as cultish as she claims.
but anyway, that’s my take. thanks for reading my ramblings. i’ve only just started clone wars so like... let me know if i’m wildly missing the mark in my ignorance.
masks and helmets that hides someone's face in such a way that they become the face themselves my beloved
these are all creatures to me
The Disasters of Sofia, Clarice Lispector // The Old Revolution, Leonard Cohen // Hans Vandekerchkhove// Kyoto, Phoebe Bridgers // Fireworks, Mitski // Insha'Allah, Danusha Laméris // Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin // True Blue, Boygenius // Report From the Besieged City, Zbigniew Herbert // Cool About It, Boygenius // Scenes from Star Wars
I can appreciate a man who's normal but I LOVE a man who's comparatively normal. A man who seems like a mess in a vacuum but as soon as you compare them to their friend circle you're like "oh. Oh wow. You're their idea of sensible."
this reminds me of chapter 8 when it’s revealed that all the mandalorians in din’s covert were forced to take off their helmets after saving din. the armorer, who in the show represents the ultimate moral authority on the creed, appears to approve of their decision because they were prioritizing one aspect of the creed over another (i.e. helping fellow mandalorians > keeping the helmet on). she considers it a tragedy but not a sin. this is evidenced by the fact that she says “we were forced to reveal ourselves” rather than morally separating herself from the others by using they/themselves.
I keep seeing people say that Din broke his Creed in Chapter 15 but I think that is a misread of the scene and the show overall. I think what happened was that Din re-ordered the collection of tenets his follows so that the child’s safety supersedes all else.
The two most important parts of the Creed (as represented in the show) are wearing armour and protecting foundlings. In Chapter 3, Din is faced with a moral problem - does he protect this foundling or reclaim his peoples’ armour? His chooses the latter, and then goes back on that decision to rescue the child. That episode is titled The Sin for this exact reason - he made the incorrect moral decision, but he was no less of a Mandalorian for it.
In Chapter 15, he is then presented with the exact same problem, but this time he chooses the child over the armour. This is why that episode is titled The Believer - Din is in the process of reorganising his religious priorities, not abandoning them. Just as he was a Mandalorian when he decided to forsake the child, so too does he remain a Mandalorian when protecting him.
abbey - mitski
WAIT WAIT WAIT YOU’RE RIGHT
i’ve been hypothesizing since like the beginning of the show that baby yoda’s blood was used to create snoke and/or the resurrected palpatine. is this confirmation??? the conspiracy theorist in me is going WILD right now. idk how kylo ren fits in though unless his theme is just being used as a symbol of the first order in general, foreshadowing how baby yoda’s blood is being used to faciliate its rise.
Why isn’t anyone talking about how Snoke’s theme plays at the beginning of the song Experiment off the Mando season 2 soundtrack and then how it bleeds into Kylo Ren’s theme ?!?!? AND that’s the scene where they talk about Grogu and midichlorians too !!! I NEED ANSWERS
the beginning of rots where obi-wan's starfighter gets shot down and he tells anakin to leave him is 10x funnier when you realize that obi-wan commands every single republic ship in that scene. if obi-wan had died right then the republic would've instantly lost the war