hi! idk if you've watched tcw (spoilers ahead), but there's the arc where Angry Teenage Boba takes jango's armor and ship and embarks on a quest to get revenge by killing mace windu, then after breaking out of prison becomes the head of a crime syndicate (at age 12), starts a gang war with cad bane, and proceeds to spend the next 20 years bounty hunting and basically trying to live up to what he sees as jango's legacy. and anyways i have so many Thoughts about Angry Teenage Grogu doing the *exact same thing* - taking his father's armor, a replica of his ship, abandoning almost everyone in his quest to kill gideon, and after breaking out of house arrest he's started bounty hunting because that's one of the major things grogu remembers about din - !!! and it reminded me of that scene where he didnt want to paint his armor because din never did, and how he's trying so hard to be what he thought din was like, strong and fearless and shiny because that's what he remembered as a baby, that he's started losing sight of what din wanted *for him* - a peaceful, non-main-characterish life surrounded by loved ones.
(okay this ask is getting very long and i hope it all shows up right lol)
poor boba's probably sitting in the palace (speaking of, boba's like 70 now right? since he's 10 yrs younger than anakin who i think is about the same age as grogu?) despairing about how grogu, this kid he's raised and rescued, is making Every Single Mistake he ever made, how he tried so hard to be who people remembered his father as, the best bounty hunter in the galaxy, the jedi-killer, et cetera, and in that he only became the person jango was at his lowest, most depressed point, having pushed away everyone who ever cared about him, and how he only dragged himself back out after falling in the Sarlacc and spending the next three(?) years half-dead ;-; and now he's watching grogu going down the same path for the same reasons and he really doesn't want the kid to get mostly-digested in order to reflect on his life!!
but also he's about as socially capable as his rancor and he doesn't know how to explain this all to grogu, and now he left and isn't answering comms, and boba can only hope grogu doesn't push vars away too, because one friend is better than what boba had at that age, at least. and grogu's despairing over the 'clan of two' stuff and boba despairing over how he doesn't know how to tell grogu that he was literally in the exact same position, that jango died and he was left alone. and he doesn't even have his father's actual helmet anymore because he destroyed it in the explosion trying to kill windu, and the metaphors are so obvious!!
anyways just. the parallels here are heartbreaking, and i really do hope grogu de-sithifies himself enough to have an actual Conversation before boba dies, because boba spent 24 years chasing the echoes of his father's ghost and grogu's just started ;-;
-redbean-nom
I LOVEEE THIS ASK. THIS AND THE ONE YOU SENT PREVIOUSLY ALSO ABOUT YOUNG BOBA because you understand EXACTLY what i was going for!!!!! BOBA UNDERSTANDS. More than possibly ANYONE else he understands and he ALWAYS SAYS SO. Everytime Grogu tells him he "can't possibly" understand his grief, Boba's reaction is to almost always say, quietly, that he in fact can
But what Grogu needs isn't actually understanding. Grogu needs to accept. He needs to put it down. He's carried the weight of his father's death, LITERALLY with the helmet on his back, ever since it happened. And it's been preventing him from moving forward and growing and living. He needs to put his grief down and to do that he needs to realise to putting it down won't make him lose it (just like how he tends to fret over leaving his father's helmet outta sight for fear of losing it Grogu cannot imagine a life and a world where he is not drowning in his sorrow). Because Grogu has grown up losing and losing over and over that it's become a part of him. Unintentionally he's cemented himself as that kid who lost his dad
But he could be more. He could be more if only he'd let people in. Dream-din once said to him after he ran away that he was upset Grogu did that and "abandoned the people who cared about him". Because god people do care about him. But Grogu is so enveloped in his grief that he doesn't even know who he would be without it. Every time he thinks about a life after avenging his father he comes up empty
And it's delicious that Boba knows exactly what that's like. He's likely the person who'd understand the most but BY VIRTUE of being able to understand he's also had to live it and damn if it doesnt still hurt to think about, decades and decades after. Damn if Boba wasn't also shaped by his grief. Aurgh these two are so everything to me im so happy you understandddd YOU UNDERSTAND!!!
