Mando'a for Beginners - Chapter 13: Geroya - Playtime

Summary: You face a Labyrinth of Trials. And Paz has a little too much fun with it.

Pairing: Paz Vizsla/Earthling!Reader

Wordcount: ~1.4K

This chapter on AO3: Here Previous chapter on tumbler: Here Translations: At the end.

A/N: YES, I'm still working on it - slowly but surely!

---

ZIIOONG!

Something zips past you as soon as you enter, only centimeters away from your cheek and you feel the little breeze in its wake.

FUMP!

Something hits your chest.

You have barely time to look around. You don't see Paz but there's something else flying directly towards you.

FUOMP!

It hits your shoulder!

"Fuck! What-"

FOMP!

This time it's your stomach that's being hit and you bend over.

"Paz!" you shriek. "Stop it!"

ZIIIONG!

Another close miss.

You run and dive behind the next best thing and it is some sort of box. You knock on it. It's metal, seems stable enough for now.

"Paz!" you shout. "What the fuck?!"

You hear something crackle above the box and when you take a look you sure as hell get a

- FUMP! -

right in your face!

But what you also got, is a comlink which you put on with trembling hands.

"DUDE! CAN YOU NOT?!"

"I'll stop when you reach the other end of the room."

"What?!"

"You heard me. Now do something."

The box moves on its own will and you lose your cover.

FUMP!

The chest again.

"Having fun?" Paz' amused voice crackles through the com.

"Gar di'kut!"

He only chuckles at this.

There's a rope hanging down not too far away from you, leading up to some sort of haphazard metal platform pathway suspended from the ceiling that is higher than you'd expected. It would be difficult to hit you up there, but there's no way you could get up there. The last time you did climbing ropes was at school, and... well, you don't wanna think about it.

You lay flat on the ground, wishing you had cartoon character strength in your toes and fingers to just diddle-liddle-liddle away. Or one of these convenient buttons that summon anvils falling from the sky.

But as you bemoan, not for the first time in your life, your non-cartoonishness, you look around. The room is much bigger than it looked from the outside. And there's stuff all over the place.

FUMP!

You groan as another thing hits you on your back. While it does sting a little, it's nothing you can't handle. But, knowing yourself and how quickly you bruise, you are very sure, that by the end of the day you'll look like a blueberry muffin.

Great, and now Frank Zappa starts playing in your mind. Thanks, brain.

Tried painting Din Djarin from the Mandalorian 🧐

Rewatching season 1 and just marvelling at how smart they made Din… without making it showy or unbelievable.

Chapter 6 especially highlights this. When they’re all gathered around the hologram of the ship, laying out their plan, Mayfeld’s very careful to call it a “transport ship” but Din knows by just looking at it that it’s a New Republic prison ship.

When they encounter the patrol droids, Din pulls a clever trick by firing (but missing) first. I used to think he just panicked but I realize now he did that on purpose. He was behind the others, closest to the hall that loops around. By firing first, he pushed the droids to return fire, getting them to focus on the others going on the defensive in front of them and not behind them where he then caught them by surprise.

Both Din and Mayfeld recognized the tracking beacon for what it was at a glance.

I believe a whole dissertation could be written on his strategy in splitting up the crew and using their strengths against them. (Also: I feel we should acknowledge Din’s sleight of hand capabilities more—he slipped that tracker in Qin’s belt without him noticing a thing.)

I just love how they demonstrated that this guy is creative and clever, and they did it without an ounce of cockiness. And it wasn’t effortless: there are so many points, like when he’s trapped in the cell, that you genuinely can’t figure out how he’s gonna get out of this, but he does and it’s a bit messy but it’s still really clever.

Posting 2 versions cuz I like both of them Prints are available here

It’s almost surprising that the mandalorian puts very little effort into depicting Din as an honorable mercenary- his reception is generally that of wholesome dad, but the canon is explicit about him not vetting his targets or his clients, and not caring enough to do so. He changes his mind eventually in the face of a literal baby, but he was fully prepared to do people trafficking for imperials, he generally kills without a flinch, and he says outright to his bounty in tbobf that he doesn’t care who hired him or why, and then… literally delivers a head on a plate, after killing a room full of slaughterhouse workers. That’s… not even between the lines. What did that guy actually do? He clearly has some compassion, and is frequently moved by the people he interacts with, but that’s juxtaposed with his ‘cool’ violence that barely makes an effort to be palatable.

That concession to palatability mostly being that the majority of the people he indiscriminately shoots at in the course of handing over people to anyone who has a grievance and also money, or whenever really, are non human, and the humans he does kill tend to be imperials. and also that whenever he’s in a room with other bounty hunters he comes off better than them because they have no honor™. Normally I would maybe say it was bad faith to look at the aliens he killed when he first took Grogu, or the aliens he killed when he infiltrated that imperial facility and there were local “pirates” trying to destroy the explosives they were transporting (but not steal, despite being “pirates”)(knowing the locals were discontented with imperial presence), but when it’s in the text that he doesn’t think too hard about his work or his kills, and no vetting is involved, well.

This is less present in season three for Din, but Axe was much the same.

Oh, Din’s definitely not just a wholesome dad. I actually really like the mercenary part of his characterization. It’s actually really fun to me to have a story centered around a neutral protagonist, in sharp contrast to the very-much-the-good-guys Jedi.

Din has a very strong moral code, but that moral code is alien. It’s not the moral code the Jedi follow (which is also somewhat alien, but much more aligned with most people’s real-world values), not the moral code most protagonists in media follow, not the moral code that most people in the real world follow, and much of it doesn’t even align with what I personally would consider to be moral. Din is an honorable mercenary, but his definition of honorable is very different from everybody else’s, in universe and out.

I don’t know. I guess it’s just that most of my favorite protagonists in other media have a very strict no-kill policy, or at least an only-kill-bad-guys-in-self-defense policy, and then there’s Din. Who can be mild-mannered and polite, and doesn’t generally kill for fun, and has an incredibly strict moral code he is deeply committed to, but also considers it morally okay to kill whoever tries to stop him doing his job (which is basically to either kidnap or kill people).

And I say he doesn’t kill for fun, but there’s a couple moments in canon where I do think he enjoys it, namely, when he kills people because he or Grogu is insulted/betrayed/threatened. Look at the opening of season 1, where he kills a couple people in a bar because they scratch his armor. Look at the second episode of season 2, when Din agrees to trade the jetpack for Grogu’s life and then doesn’t simply kill the guy but tosses him around a bit first. (Even Grogu gave him a bit of side-eye for that one.)

Basically, Din is honorable by Mandalorian standards, not the wider galaxy’s (or by real world standards). From what we’ve seen of canon, Mandalorian honor (or at least what Din believes is honor) is 1) defending self and clan and 2) keeping your word.

(Seriously, look how many times he’s clearly reluctant to do something, only for somebody to remind him that he gave his word. Ran in The Prisoner to keep Din from killing him immediately, Frog Lady reminding him he agreed to take her to Trassk to make him fix the ship, etc. It seems to actually be common knowledge that Mandalorians keep their word.)

Notice how in the Ahsoka episode, Din tells Ahsoka that he was hired to kill her, but also states that he never actually explicitly agreed to do it. Implying that if he had, regardless of his personal feelings toward Ahsoka or the fact that she was helping him, he would be honor-bound to kill her.

Which is why he’s so good at rules-lawyering! Din is very careful to never explicitly agree to do something he doesn’t want to do, and he’s very careful with what he actually says vs what he implies. (Notice in the opening sequence of season 2, Din says “I promise you will not die by my hand,” and the dude dangling from the lamppost believes him. He’s shocked to realize that while Din did agree not to kill him personally, Din has no qualms whatsoever leaving him to die.)

There is exactly one time in canon where Din goes back on his word, and you could argue he still sort of rules-lawyered his way around it. And that’s when he goes back for Grogu in The Sin.

He agreed he would bring in the bounty. There’s also many mentions of a bounty hunter’s guild code that Din has agreed to follow, although he (uncharacteristically, given Greef’s reaction) starts to push against it by even asking what the Imperials plan to do with Grogu. You can tell even as Din’s turning Grogu in that he doesn’t want to (asking about what will happen to him, “Easy with that” when the stormtrooper jerks the carriage), but he accepted the contract and by his own code (and the bounty hunter’s guild code that he agreed to follow) he is therefore honor-bound to deliver.

And then he goes back, because his moral code has a third tenet: foundlings are the future.

I think over the course of the episode, Din doesn’t want to turn Grogu in but feels he has to. By the end of the episode, he’s either rules-lawyered his way around it (”I did turn in the bounty, so my contract’s fulfilled. No reason I can’t go back and at least make sure he’s okay…Hmmm. They tossed his carriage in the dumpster. He’s definitely not okay.”) and/or has decided that his duty to protect foundlings supersedes the importance of keeping his agreement to abide by the bounty hunter’s guild code.

I also fully believe that if Din had been told up front that the bounty was a child, he would have walked right out of there without taking the bounty at all. (But then there would be no show.)

I love that Din’s like this. I think it makes for a richer, more interesting character. There’s a lot of lawful good/chaotic good protagonists out there, and Star Wars itself is full of them, but I really like for once having a protagonist who’s lawful neutral.

This is a good breakdown of Din’s moral code.

…don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate that his idea of honor is different from mine. It’s interesting viewing. I was a little surprised by how unflinchingly bad he can be, if only because I’d previously been exposed mostly to fandom’s casual uwuification of him- and what does put me off is the persistent use of aliens to give him something to shoot at that won’t make people too uncomfortable. That’s cheap and nasty, and…. i’m here for the creatures! I like them!

It’s just funny how the show -inadvertently or not- drives home the fact that there’s no such thing as a ‘good’ bounty hunter in star wars… here’s Din, the most ‘honorable’ bounty hunter to hunt bounties, kind to children, a general sense of compassion to people who are not his bounties and occasionally for them, polite, follows the code fastidiously, always the nicest bounty hunter in a room of bounty hunters, a sweet and loving dad, bring his earnings home for the orphans, etc etc,. And his job is still people trafficking and murder for hire, no questions asked.

Dush nuhoy'sure - Bad Dreams

Pairing: Paz Viszla x You, Paz Vizsla x Reader

Wordcount: ~1100

Tags: Light Angst, Fluff, Sorta Fix-It? (my little fic world is not canon-compliant anyway), "Mando'a for Beginners" 'verse,

A/N: A while ago I wrote a little thing where Paz needed some comfort after a bad dream, and then S3E7 happened, and Reader from my little Mando'a for Beginners fic suddenly had the worst dream of her life and Paz had to run and comfort her.

You're gonna have to rip Paz from my cold dead hands before I let this di'kut (affectionate) go.

Translations at the end. Also available on AO3 (link in the replies).

---

Ch. 1: Paz

"Can I hold you?"

The familiar deep voice sounds sleepy and choked up. Sitting in the space ship's small common room, you look up from the square you're crocheting and see Paz standing in the corridor. He just woke up, it seems, wearing only his PJs and his helmet. His shoulders are slumped, arms hanging on his sides, but his hands are opening and closing nervously.

"Always." You nod and put your yarny project on the table. A few strides take you over to him. He seems glued to his place but his hands reach out and pull you close as soon as you're within his reach.

You wrap your arms around his waist, squeezing lightly. He sighs and holds you tight, fingers digging into your shirt, bunching the fabric.

You start running slow, calming circles on his back with your hands, and after a while he starts to relax a bit.

Minutes pass.

Eventually you retreat just enough to look up to him. The visor is dark, but you can make out a hint of visor-tinted eyes. You always find them.

"What's up?" you whisper.

He sighs, then grumbles "Bad dream."

You hum acknowledgingly. "You wanna talk about it?"

"No."

"Later?"

"... Mm-hm."

"'Kay."

You stay put where you are, wrapped up in his arms, worried, but also basking in his warmth and closeness.

The helmet hisses and you feel a kiss pressed on to the top of your head.

"Thank you." It's short, quick and unmodulated, and if it weren't for the helmet-closing hiss you would have thought you dreamt it.

You look up again, once you're sure the helmet is in its proper place again, and with tippy-toes reach to the front of his helmet with your own forehead. He returns the keldabe, lowering his head so you're more comfortable.

"Always," you whisper and he groans and holds you tighter, wishing the pictures from the dream to disappear, but they keep playing again and again in his head:

You, falling into endless blackness and he, skydiving behind you, never reaching you, jetpack fuel running out....

---

Ch. 2: You

"Paz!"

The thick door closes shut with a loud clang and then there is silence. No sound, even as you desparately bang your fists at the ungiving metal. No sound, even as you scream, and claw at it, willing it open.

Willing Paz to get out of there. Willing the assaillants to just fall dead and leave him be. 

But the door is unyielding and you watch in horror as Paz is slowly overwhelmed and you can't do anything and you scream and scream and scream.

And then he falls. Hits the ground. You can feel the thud. It ripples through the door like an earthquake from its epicenter right through to you and your heart stops.

Shatters into a thousand pieces sifting through your bruised bloodied hands.

---

You jerk awake with a gasp, cold sweat clinging to you like the nightmare's claws.

Mandalorian by  Rafater

Dush nuhoy'sure - Bad Dreams

Pairing: Paz Viszla x You, Paz Vizsla x Reader

Wordcount: ~1100

Tags: Light Angst, Fluff, Sorta Fix-It? (my little fic world is not canon-compliant anyway), "Mando'a for Beginners" 'verse,

A/N: A while ago I wrote a little thing where Paz needed some comfort after a bad dream, and then S3E7 happened, and Reader from my little Mando'a for Beginners fic suddenly had the worst dream of her life and Paz had to run and comfort her.

You're gonna have to rip Paz from my cold dead hands before I let this di'kut (affectionate) go.

Translations at the end. Also available on AO3 (link in the replies).

---

Ch. 1: Paz

"Can I hold you?"

The familiar deep voice sounds sleepy and choked up. Sitting in the space ship's small common room, you look up from the square you're crocheting and see Paz standing in the corridor. He just woke up, it seems, wearing only his PJs and his helmet. His shoulders are slumped, arms hanging on his sides, but his hands are opening and closing nervously.

"Always." You nod and put your yarny project on the table. A few strides take you over to him. He seems glued to his place but his hands reach out and pull you close as soon as you're within his reach.

You wrap your arms around his waist, squeezing lightly. He sighs and holds you tight, fingers digging into your shirt, bunching the fabric.

You start running slow, calming circles on his back with your hands, and after a while he starts to relax a bit.

Minutes pass.

Eventually you retreat just enough to look up to him. The visor is dark, but you can make out a hint of visor-tinted eyes. You always find them.

"What's up?" you whisper.

He sighs, then grumbles "Bad dream."

You hum acknowledgingly. "You wanna talk about it?"

"No."

"Later?"

"... Mm-hm."

"'Kay."

You stay put where you are, wrapped up in his arms, worried, but also basking in his warmth and closeness.

The helmet hisses and you feel a kiss pressed on to the top of your head.

"Thank you." It's short, quick and unmodulated, and if it weren't for the helmet-closing hiss you would have thought you dreamt it.

You look up again, once you're sure the helmet is in its proper place again, and with tippy-toes reach to the front of his helmet with your own forehead. He returns the keldabe, lowering his head so you're more comfortable.

"Always," you whisper and he groans and holds you tighter, wishing the pictures from the dream to disappear, but they keep playing again and again in his head:

You, falling into endless blackness and he, skydiving behind you, never reaching you, jetpack fuel running out....

---

Ch. 2: You

"Paz!"

The thick door closes shut with a loud clang and then there is silence. No sound, even as you desparately bang your fists at the ungiving metal. No sound, even as you scream, and claw at it, willing it open.

Willing Paz to get out of there. Willing the assaillants to just fall dead and leave him be. 

But the door is unyielding and you watch in horror as Paz is slowly overwhelmed and you can't do anything and you scream and scream and scream.

And then he falls. Hits the ground. You can feel the thud. It ripples through the door like an earthquake from its epicenter right through to you and your heart stops.

Shatters into a thousand pieces sifting through your bruised bloodied hands.

---

You jerk awake with a gasp, cold sweat clinging to you like the nightmare's claws.

I just saw a beautiful explanation of the “Din Grogu” name and I thought I’d pass it along!

Essentially, Din is currently sponsoring Grogu as a Mandalorian apprentice. This is because Grogu cannot yet speak the Creed. That being said, the name “Din Grogu” is showing that Grogu is still too young to have spoken the Creed and still under Din’s sponsorship.

Once Grogu can speak and take the Creed, the “Din” will be dropped and he will become “Grogu Djarin,” seeing as he will no longer require Din’s sponsorship. But having Din’s first name there for right now tells others that Grogu is still young and under his father’s sponsorship.

Mandalorians, Adoption, and Culture. The Issue with Disney's The Mandalorian. Spoiler Alert.

This article WILL contain spoilers for the most recent season finale (Season Three) for The Mandalorian. Read at your own risk.

In the first season of Disney's The Mandalorian, we were introduced to Din Djarin. Din, or "The Mando" was an adopted son of The Children of the Watch. Apart from a brief glimpse into his childhood, we don't see much of this time in The Mando's life. We aren't introduced to his father, don't see any of his upbringing, and aren't aware of how important or unimportant this is, personally, to Din.

In the most recent episode, we finally see Din Djarin adopt Grogu, who is renamed "Din Grogu," and officially made part of his clan. Din swears to raise the little green man in the same way that he was raised. Grogu, after hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of memes about Pedro Pascal being "daddy," is now canonically Din's son.

Unfortunately, the importance of adoption is barely touched upon by the series. Other Legends series, such as the Clone Commando books by Karen Traviss, went to great lengths to express just how important adoption is to a martial society like the Mandalorians. Traviss explores how a society that was meant to be a martial meritocracy would inevitably end in many artificially shortened lives. Often, this meant that children were left parentless. These orphans were to be raised by the clan, and it was seen as one of the highest honors in Mandalorian society to adopt these orphans.

As someone who has partaken in Star Wars books, novels, comics, and games for nearly three decades, I find myself disappointed in the depth of the stories Disney is choosing to bring to the screen. I was excited when The Mandalorian first began airing because I was excited to see the Mandalorian culture that had been hinted at in games and explored in Clone Commando, both the game and book series. Instead what we got has been a drip-feed of story coupled with an increasing reliance on CGI battles and absurd cameos. To that point, Jack Black's character this season even makes a joke along the lines of "You're Mandalorians, isn't your culture weapons and armor?" (No shade to JB, the dialogue this season could get its own article on decaying quality.) What's frustrating, is that feels like it's the truth, as this show presents it.

What is culture? Art, music, sculpture, song, poetry, clothing and jewelry styles, hair styles, food, the list could go on. What is Mandalorian culture? Weapons, armor that is inexplicably the best, T-visored helmets, and a soup that Bo-Katan said earlier this season, "if you'd grown up on Mandalore, you would have been pretty much raised on the stuff." Oh, and the loose idea that some Mandalorians keep their helmet on and some Mandalorians seem to take theirs off every chance they get, safe or not.

Unfortunately, if The Mandalorian continues to go "The Way" that it is, I believe viewership will continue to decline and the reviews will continue to plummet. People want to connect to something and this show is refusing to give us anything to connect to... no songs, no styles, not even the honorable duty of every Mandalorian to raise the next generation.

Dush nuhoy'sure - Bad Dreams

Pairing: Paz Viszla x You, Paz Vizsla x Reader

Wordcount: ~1100

Tags: Light Angst, Fluff, Sorta Fix-It? (my little fic world is not canon-compliant anyway), "Mando'a for Beginners" 'verse,

A/N: A while ago I wrote a little thing where Paz needed some comfort after a bad dream, and then S3E7 happened, and Reader from my little Mando'a for Beginners fic suddenly had the worst dream of her life and Paz had to run and comfort her.

You're gonna have to rip Paz from my cold dead hands before I let this di'kut (affectionate) go.

Translations at the end. Also available on AO3 (link in the replies).

---

Ch. 1: Paz

"Can I hold you?"

The familiar deep voice sounds sleepy and choked up. Sitting in the space ship's small common room, you look up from the square you're crocheting and see Paz standing in the corridor. He just woke up, it seems, wearing only his PJs and his helmet. His shoulders are slumped, arms hanging on his sides, but his hands are opening and closing nervously.

"Always." You nod and put your yarny project on the table. A few strides take you over to him. He seems glued to his place but his hands reach out and pull you close as soon as you're within his reach.

You wrap your arms around his waist, squeezing lightly. He sighs and holds you tight, fingers digging into your shirt, bunching the fabric.

You start running slow, calming circles on his back with your hands, and after a while he starts to relax a bit.

Minutes pass.

Eventually you retreat just enough to look up to him. The visor is dark, but you can make out a hint of visor-tinted eyes. You always find them.

"What's up?" you whisper.

He sighs, then grumbles "Bad dream."

You hum acknowledgingly. "You wanna talk about it?"

"No."

"Later?"

"... Mm-hm."

"'Kay."

You stay put where you are, wrapped up in his arms, worried, but also basking in his warmth and closeness.

The helmet hisses and you feel a kiss pressed on to the top of your head.

"Thank you." It's short, quick and unmodulated, and if it weren't for the helmet-closing hiss you would have thought you dreamt it.

You look up again, once you're sure the helmet is in its proper place again, and with tippy-toes reach to the front of his helmet with your own forehead. He returns the keldabe, lowering his head so you're more comfortable.

"Always," you whisper and he groans and holds you tighter, wishing the pictures from the dream to disappear, but they keep playing again and again in his head:

You, falling into endless blackness and he, skydiving behind you, never reaching you, jetpack fuel running out....

---

Ch. 2: You

"Paz!"

The thick door closes shut with a loud clang and then there is silence. No sound, even as you desparately bang your fists at the ungiving metal. No sound, even as you scream, and claw at it, willing it open.

Willing Paz to get out of there. Willing the assaillants to just fall dead and leave him be. 

But the door is unyielding and you watch in horror as Paz is slowly overwhelmed and you can't do anything and you scream and scream and scream.

And then he falls. Hits the ground. You can feel the thud. It ripples through the door like an earthquake from its epicenter right through to you and your heart stops.

Shatters into a thousand pieces sifting through your bruised bloodied hands.

---

You jerk awake with a gasp, cold sweat clinging to you like the nightmare's claws.

I mentioned this in the tags on one of my recent posts, but the one word that I would use to describe this season of The Mandalorian is: cruel.

You advertise this season being about Din Djarin...only to make the show about Bo-Katan's redemption arc.

You advertise this season as being about Din Djarin coming into his own as Mand'alor...only for him to become a damsel in distress and give the Darksaber up to a woman who gave it away to the enemy of her people.

You advertise a redemption arc for Bo-Katan Kryze...only to completely whitewash her history and forget to mention her time in Deathwatch, her role in the death of her sister, and her racism/xenophobia.

You give Grogu a mech suit...only to have it made from the corpse of his former friend.

You introduced Ragnar Vizla...only to orphan him in the most brutal way possible.

You gave us a show about a father and son...and we've seen none of that love.

It's not just inconsistent, or bad writing. It's cruel. To the characters you created, and to the people who've loved them from the start.

Brian Matyas, character design for Paz Vizsla, 2018. Concept art for Star Wars: The Mandalorian. Posted on Instagram, May 27, 2020.

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