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#also what i said about savage also applies to talzin
stairset · 3 years
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Okay I don’t care WHAT the official Clone Wars character encyclopedia says I refuse to accept that Tech is apparently 6′4
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sl-walker · 3 years
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If I may ask; what is your opinion of Rebel's Era (canon) Maul?
Whilst I didn't feel like he was written out of character per se and I understand that Rebels aired prior to TCW Season 7, I felt like it was somewhat disappointing after what happened during Order 66.
I understand that he has lost hope and is, very reasonably, afraid of Sheev, but there's a few things that confuse me like the fact that whilst running the biggest criminal empire he never looked for Kenobi prior to Rebels (he knew Ashoka survived, so why shouldn't Kenobi?) or how exactly he ended up on Malachor and nobody came to look for him their criminal boss. Now the Dathomir-part was actually interesting, but I do feel, yet again, like it could have used more exposition and explaination considering he was there like 3x times in his entire life and everyone's dead, so who even sustained the Ichor after Talzin's death? Maul wasn't on Dathomir for at least some time.
It just felt like they knew Maul would draw in viewers, not like they had a plan for his character and that was kind of a pity?!
Obviously Maul couldn't interfere with pre-existing canon but at some point I really wondered why he was still in the story considering that Ezra's literal use of the darkside, due to Mauls prior influence & the holocron, for what we can assume to be months never mattered again after a single episode for some reason.
I love seeing Maul but I wished they did more with his character? I mean, it hurts to read e.g. Son of Dathomir, but it's still good and builds his character.
The only major thing I found consistent was him missing Savage, which obviously just broke my heart.
Dying by Kenobi's hand was poetic, but of course really sad and I wished there had been more to this scene - either conveyed through animation/dialouge or by having them part ways differently.
Also I can't believe Maul - a criminal mastermind - didn't manage to figure out that Kenobi was on Tatooine after seeing Twin Suns for almost the majority of a season. You know. The guy who used to track and hunt down whomever Sidious required him too for years. The same zabrak that basically ran a prison into the ground in lockdown whilst not/barely even touching upon his force powers and finding the dealer who managed to stay undercover for probably decades. Also the planet they literally first met.
I know the creators and Sam Witwer have repeatedly liked Maul to Sisyphus, but I don't think this applies to Rebel's Maul. Rebel's Maul, besides his motivation/need to find a new brother apprentice, just seems so hopeless and borderline suicidal? He doesn't know if it's worth trying anymore, which makes the idea of running a criminal empire so odd, seeing as he knows his insignificance to Sidious, whose downfall is all he is really yearning/hoping for. I know that his desperation always rivals his intense need to survive, but I really didn't got the latter from Rebels.
Idk, maybe it's just me, but I'm very keen on your thoughts.
(2/2) I'm asking you in particular about Rebels Maul because I feel like maybe I might be missing something or am lacking a certain insight into his character which you might have.
I think Solo made about as much sense as tits on a boar. I even said that when it came out. Maul's whole purpose to building a criminal empire was to have enough power to get to Kenobi. He had no interest in being rich or anything else, and frankly, even in TCW, he left Almec to run things on Mandalore while he nursed his grudge. So this whole Crimson Dawn crap is just-- weak. It makes no sense. It was fanservice.
I'm sure I've written my opinions on Rebels before, but in brief:
1.) Maul's characterization wasn't terrible, but the writing was super fucking lazy. No kidding. Especially his ending. That was Filoni basically splooging all over himself about how dEeeEEeP he was being without realizing... man, nothing here even makes sense. He took a character he didn't create and didn't want to bring back in the first place and giggled to himself behind his stupid hat because he got to kill him off. Since Disney's shit, they're like, "Oh, sure."
2.) Maul already hurt Kenobi and took his revenge when he skewered Satine. Like you, I think the only reason he would have sought Kenobi out would have been because he wanted closure. Be it death or simply some ending. I explored what would have happened had Kenobi been a proper adult and apologized for his part in Maul's suffering when I wrote In defiance, because I absolutely believe they could have done some considerably more interesting with all of that.
3.) Honestly, like-- every time they've killed Maul off in canon, it's been a dumbass mistake. Because he's popular and once you close-end a character, it becomes a lot harder to do anything meaningful with them in canon. Because they offed him, he will never have a genuinely meaty storyline again and will forever be relegated to cheap cameos that capitalize on his popularity.
Dunno if that's what you're looking for Anon-buddy. Mostly, I just think the ending of Maul in Rebels came down to super lazy writing.
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taule · 6 years
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Maul, part I: Broken Boys - early life trauma, survival & Ben Solo parallels
This is going to be an evolving meta that will be posted in a series of installments as I make my way through the various sources piecing the picture together and also attempt to tackle the various themes that pull at my heartstrings. I haven’t attempted to write anything in quite this way before, so there will be inevitable cross-referencing happening and it’s likely that I will come back to certain things later on.
There is something that stood out to me right away, as I started reading The Wrath of Darth Maul, and those are Ben Solo parallels. That doesn’t mean that I equate them in any way, but it does point to certain circumstantial factors that shaped their lives and I believe that what we know about them individually can inform us about the other. 
In both of them we see the effects of what it means to be a victim of the Dark side. The destruction of an innocent, impressionable mind being subjected to unimaginable, systematic cruelty with no protection and no hope of escape. Being taught that everything happening to them is their own doing, and a just punishment. They are the Lost Boys. Both their lives could have been very different and neither went down a path they laid for themselves through choice. And in Maul, especially, the connection to the Dark side is not an inherent one, and was about his environment and matter of birth, more so than something he manifested independently, in contrast to what we know of Ben, whose internal conflict had been apparent from the beginning. 
My interest and inspiration here is to look at how the loss, trauma, deprivation, enduring compassion and capacity for love come together and fit into place in the making of this man. I don’t plan to descend into proper psychoanalysis, but to try and open Maul’s path and mind through some of what we know about Ben, who has been presented as a much more sympathetic character. In fact, hardly as a villain at all. And although I already said that I don’t equate them, I hope to show that the patterns and psychology of it is very similar, even if circumstances differ.
A major difference between Maul and Ben though, is the age at which they began their training, and the fact that Maul was trained to use the Force as a darksider from the start. But the way that the Dark side methods and cruelty in his training contrast with his curious and accepting nature shows that while Darth Sidious took him for his strength in the Force, the same way that Snoke singled out Ben, the darkness wasn’t inherently dominating over the potential for Light in either of them. The question of age definitely plays into this matter, because Ben started training unusually late, and Maul on the other hand very early, and so he wasn’t old enough to have yet started manifesting the imbalance or struggle between Light and Dark the way Ben did.
Unfortunately a lot of the material that has provided information on Maul’s early life has been pushed to the Legends with the Disney acquisition. Which is a shame. Because that material was a source for a lot of insight. I’m not going to shy away from using it as a source here though, because it still shows the original intention in his depiction. And there is very little material that has come later that has overwritten any of what came before. It has mostly just left a hole.
But there are some inconsistencies that derive from the rebranding and restructuring because of later-established sources that no longer had to be consistent with published material. To me, one of the most important ones is the circumstance of his birth. 
The earlier information ( Darth Plagueis, 2012 ) reveals that Maul was born on Iridonia, as one of two male twins to Kycina, a human Nightsister mother from Talzin’s clan, and a Dathomirian Zabrak father that by Dathomirian tradition was killed soon after she became pregnant. Kycina was desperate to find a way to give at least one of her sons a life of freedom. Thinking Talzin was only aware of one of her twins, she offered Maul to Sidious to take as an apprentice, hoping that this would at least give her son a chance of a life free of the fate that awaited him on Dathomir.
The later version goes into no such detail of the circumstance of his birth that I have been able to discern, and it is merely established that Talzin was mother to all three boys (including Savage). And that Sidious had formed an alliance with Talzin, having promised to take her as his apprentice in return for her knowledge. It is when Sidious met Maul and sensed his strength in the Force that he not only broke his promise to Talzin, but also kidnapped her “son”. 
Personally, I remain loyal to the original version. Not only does it answer more questions, but I believe that it offers us valuable insight. I’m sure it was no small amount of consideration that went into giving such an iconic character a backstory. And for it to be imagined in this way tells us quite a bit about how the creators wanted him to be perceived, at least by those who would seek that understanding.
Not to mention the fact that there is no plausible child-parent relationship depicted between Maul and Talzin. And to insist that he’s her son would also mean to accept that this mother did nothing to aid this son of hers who was withering away on Lotho Minor... not before it became convenient and useful for her at least.
And as it is a certain development that Im trying to observe here, chronology is relevant to it. So in the following I’m going to look at the backstory that The Wrath of Darth Maul paints us, starting from his early years in captivity on Mustafar. 
Maul was only 3 or even two at the time, considering that he has already been on Mustafar for a while by the time the book starts. Page 1 of chapter I describes where, and importantly how he is being kept. In a small, featureless room, made of metal. With a single polarized viewport overlooking a river of lava leading to a sea of fire. He was completely isolated and left without any meaningful social interaction. A single droid looked after him, simultaneously serving the functions of his caretaker, teacher and punisher. The very second page in chapter I establishes how little Maul wishes he could escape this place.
He was left in complete emotional and social deprivation. Fed bits of raw meat through a slot in the door that remained shut. Then, forced to exercise until point of collapse. Let’snot forget that this is a toddler that we are talking about. Windham repeatedly emphasizes how small he is. For example, how his feet “only extend a few centimeters over the edge of a seat”.
We are introduced to the circumstance through a frightened child’s eyes. Trying to figure out how to behave in the right way that does not grant punishment. He is being actively conditioned in the most awful, cruel ways. Something that has been (with less written evidence) noted about Ben and the way in which it shaped his thinking for years to come, leaving behind marks that he may never entirely recover from.
“Maul hated the Man even more than he hated the droid. The Man frightened him.”
The book doesn’t describe the first few times that Maul met Sidious, but only that his fear of him was greater than that he felt for the droid that routinely hurt him. 
“Usually, the droid brought pain. Once, the droid had delivered a bright green and yellow snake that wasted no time in attacking Maul, sinking its venomous fangs deep into the boy’s arm.”
“One of the first things he learned was not to cry. Crying never made anything better. Crying only made things worse.”
So these two quotes above should give an adequate idea about what his early childhood boiled down to. Not that we can really call this a childhood. Mind you, this is only from the first pages of chapter one so far, and his training, which is in reality conditioning, only became crueler as he grew. The objective was quite clearly to break him down completely, so he could be put back together in ways that served the abuser’s intended purpose. But there’s nothing vague about all the abuse he’s been described to go through. I wont be including the most graphic depictions of abuse here, but let me tell you it wasn’t easy to read.
I feel it’s been somewhat acknowledged that Maul has a backstory, and that there’s certain tragedy to it. But I’m just not sure in what depth it’s been looked at. And there’s the inevitable difference between how the origin story of the hero vs the villain is looked upon. Regardless of whether the dichotomy is really carved into stone in such a way, as long as it is perceived, it is also applied. 
That also extends to the sympathy with which their lives are viewed. I think we have an interesting case in Ben, because people obviously can’t agree on it. We’ve been sent mixed signals, and we can see how that has changed our perception of his becoming, and our willingness to see him as a victim. Because on one hand there’s the way that he has been initially presented as a villain (even though not explicitly defining him that way) and then there’s his ever-expanding backstory that explains how things ended up that way. And it’s the how that has the power to change... everything. Because it has the power to bring understanding which in turn inspires sympathy, that enables a shift in responsibility. Which can change how we view something to the very core.
“More than ever, Maul wished he were the free-floating boy who appeared to exist beyond the window in his own room. He tried very hard not to tremble as he slowly turned and looked up to face the Man.”
His wish to escape has been mentioned multiple times. And it’s more than about setting the tone, the feeling. It’s confirming over and over that this child didn’t choose this path or fate. Depending on whether we follow the original or the later version, he was either given up by his mother in hopes that this would be better than what awaited on Dathomir, or he was kidnapped. In either case, not there by any choice of his own.
“But he survived.”
And I think this is quite clearly establishes that it’s mightily unfair to talk about choices here. What we’re talking about is survival. Once it becomes about survival, it’s what reframes everything else involved, because we’ve stopped talking about choices. I guess what I’m arguing here is that if we can agree that Ben Solo was a victim of the Dark side, of abuse, conditioning and manipulation, Maul most definitely is. Not only were his circumstances likely far more severe, but he had not known a life outside of it. He had no point of reference for what the alternative could even be and no moral framework outside of avoiding cruel punishment. 
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