Do you know why Lilo insists on feeding Pudge the Fish a peanut butter sandwich in the opening sequence of the film?

Pudge controls the weather. 1/? https://twitter.com/SquigglyDigg/status/1246984685567143942

Lilo fully believes this, and there's visual storytelling to suggest that she's not wrong. She feeds Pudge, and storm clouds recede. It goes from dark gray storm clouds, to a beautiful blue sunny day.

When her classmates call Lilo crazy for believing this, Lilo loses it. 2/?

But it's silly, right? Why should Lilo believe in this so strongly, and react so violently when someone argues that it's all in her head?

Well.

"It was rainy, and they went for a drive." 3/?

Lilo is obsessed with feeding this fish she believes to control the weather, because it's a way she's been coping with the recent, sudden and senseless death of her parents. She's making sense of it where she can.

4/?

And yeah, Lilo is lashing out. Lilo is angry. Lilo is sad, and scared. Lilo is weird. Lilo is also autistically coded, and actively grieving, and *six years old*. She's one of the most well written children in animated history. 5/?

Lilo is angry that her sister, who was her friend and her sibling, is now her mother and father. That there's a change in dynamics. That the change in how her sister treats her, talks to her, is a reminder that their parents are gone. 6/?

Nani is also not handling this well. Her struggle is more clear- but also, in a lot of ways, more subtle. Nani is SO young.

And also, a semi-professional surfer. Her room is covered in her medals and trophies. There rests a surfboard, unused. 7/?

Do you understand? She was also a child, but now-- she can't be. She can't do this anymore. She has to be an adult. She has to be the grown up. She has to keep this family together, because someone has to, and there's no one else. 8/?

I said before-- Lilo is blatantly autisically coded. Nani knows she'd be tormented if she got kicked around foster care. That's why she's so hard on Lilo, why she's trying so hard to make Lilo understand why she's like this, but it just makes Lilo lash out more. 9/?

I can't make you love this movie, but if you hate it, you just don't understand it, and you don't understand Lilo. It's not a movie about an alien finding a family. It's a movie about an alien helping to mend a little and broken one. 10/10

I gotta mute this but I'm glad this resonates with people. Sanders and DeBlois are very good directors who really understand how to show kids Going Through Shit. I have a lot of respect for their mastery over their craft.