the good ship Steadfast

sometimes I post about ocs, mostly I reblog pictures of darth maul // 18+

[randomrobotcircuits]

Drawing r2d2 with shoes is probably one of my favourite things ever

[skraelmasbutboring]

I feel like 93% of Maul’s problems could be solved if he ate more fiber, got at least 6 hours of sleep (which he currently does not do), brushed his teeth, and blocked his mother’s phone number.

Like it ain’t gonna fix everything but you can’t underestimate how the little stuff gets to ya

[gran-maul-seizure]

I mean hey, he blocked his dad's master's number so we're halfway there on the no contact list!

[charmwasjess]

The choice to make Dooku a Master of Makashi, Form II, the Contention Form, is so wonderful and I’m going to tell you why I love it.

Christopher Lee was 6’5 and huge. Adding onto that fact, we can imagine the physical reality of a person who dedicated their life to lightsaber study, who taught it as a Temple instructor for years as a full time job BEFORE blowing off to learn Sith combat arts. They could have easily made him a hulking space tank Gregor Clegane style fighter. Instead, he fights with lightsaber ballet. 

Which, as anyone who has done actual ballet knows, far from being delicate, is incredibly physically intensive and grueling work.  

What’s so interesting to me is that Makashi isn’t even a powerhouse form. Form II was developed before the good defense-as-offense of Soresu or the utility of Niman. It was a form designed by Jedi who were fighting against other lightsabers for the first time in the Sith Wars; it’s designed around disarming instead of killing, and lacks the big moves to fatally finish a fight. You can see a couple times (the end of the Obi-Wan and Anakin portion of his duel in AotC is a good example) where Dooku has to actually stop fighting to try to do a killing blow as opposed to seamlessly working a fatal stroke in. Even as a fully-revealed Sith at the height of his evil powers, he leaves duels, he rarely finishes them. 

And yet, Dooku is tremendously successful with Makashi in the prequels and the Clone Wars series for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the form itself, and everything about how he uses it. One, because he has the size and physical stamina to get hammered through the form’s weaknesses and lack of defenses to stay on his feet. Asajj is a prodigy, but she gets absolutely bounced around using the exact same form with a slighter build. And his reach makes him very dangerous. Two, because of the hallmark Makashi move, Contentious Opportunity, where a Makashi practitioner basically throws the sink at you to give themselves a little breathing room to get the complicated precision of the form back up and running. Dooku throws combatants through windows. He throws architecture at them. He throws dinner tables. His favorite, of course, is throwing lightning; in so many Clone Wars duels, you can see the exact moment a fight stops being fun for Dooku or where he’s feeling cornered or vulnerable by the point where he starts BBQing everyone. Ultimately, even his downfall can go back to the form: in RotS, he gets pinned down by a more burly form (Anakin's absolutely drilling form V) in a situation where he can't manage to buy himself a beat.

I just love this fucking detail so much: the way that lightsaber forms can be completely different depending on the body and personality of the people using them.

[noiralei]

I like this pic so much

[maulsscream]

maul really cannot control his face lmao he's always frowning, squinting, rolling his eyes, side eyeing and raising his brow at people

[o-wise-corvid]

I legitimately think that he went for so long having to either be blank-faced or Sidious would do unspeakable things to him that when he had his whole vacation from existence on Lotho Minor, the man lost like. ACRES of his forced self control. It comes back sometimes, but otherwise it’s just ZERO poker face.

[redbean-nom]

yet another maul detail:

he's apparently left handed- he wears his lightsaber on the right side of his belt and usually fights left handed when using his saberstaff mode

but when fighting with a single blade he uses his right hand

(dual wielding is not really clear because he only seems to dual wield when facing an average of 2 blades per opponent, and there's too many red blades in there to tell which hand he's leading with)

early on in shadow lord, before daki kicks his knee, he opens with the typical left-handed double-bladed stance

but after (re)injuring his right leg he's apparently switched to fighting right handed, presumably to put less weight/movement on his injured leg!

[someoneyoudontreallyknow]

[vaders-georg]

jedi-critical sentiments in universe would be so much more rewarding if they didn’t tend to come from like. sith lords and former sith lords

[vaders-georg]

if i say “the jedi are a net positive and provided necessary resources & community for force sensitives” then the NIMBY core world republic citizen agrees with me but if i say “the jedi are tools of the state” then the guy who committed his life to killing jedi agrees with me

[vaders-georg]

i get what you’re saying but i wouldn’t be caught dead siding with a group as messy as the mandalorians

[asexualmaul]

[kayzean]

idk man I think after all that *gestures to episode 8* he'd be exhausted as fuck. Give him a 42 hour nap or something please?

Plz dont repost to other socials, thanks!

[clodoveah]

One thing that struck me about Maul episode 8 was how stilted the dialogue Savage & Maul had in Maul’s trauma visions.

A lot of people are treating it as if this happened in objective reality, that Shadow Lord retconned his backstory. But I think this is what Maul wants his backstory to be, and in typical Maul fashion, deluded himself into believing. Honestly, I don’t think he remembers the truth. Anyhoo the dialogue felt oddly canned because it felt so…convenient for Maul.

He wants to believe that he had companionship before Sidious, that he was something before him. He’s a really lonely guy. He wants a benign brother figure that could’ve offered him a different path. All the evidence suggests that he & Savage weren’t even raised together, but since Savage is the closest thing to family Maul’s ever had, it makes sense he would project these desires onto him. Especially the “what have you done with my brother?” line.

Maul (through Savage) is putting all of the agency upon Sidious. Sidious corrupted him, Sidious ruined him, Sidious is responsible for all of the cruelty Maul inflicted upon Savage. Which, in a sense, is partly true, but not in the way Maul thinks it is. Sidious abused and warped him, yes, but Maul makes the choice to emulate him by being similarly cruel. Maul doesn’t want to confront this though. So instead we get Savage (a representation of companionship Maul desperately wants, the perfect life he believes he could’ve had without Sidious) standing up to man. Lets pretend that everything in the visions happened in reality Be honest. If Savage had said that in reality, do you think Palpatine would’ve let him live? He’s not one to take insults lightly. Do you think Savage would’ve had the courage to stick up to a Sith Lord? Or that he would be blaming Sidious for “changing his brother” rather than Maul making the decision to leave?

He didn’t even remember Savage’s last words correctly. In Maul’s vision, he said “Avenge me” but in reality he said “Brother. I'm an unworthy apprentice. I'm not like you. I never was.”

Maul doesn’t want to acknowledge the cruelty he inflicted upon Savage. Savage’s dying words were about how inadequate Maul made him feel. He doesn’t want to remember that. So he doesn’t. Given Maul’s fate, he is doomed to repeat that abuse again. Making a pantomime of the dynamic he had with a brother that never existed, again and again, with Devon, with Ezra, failing to see the truth of it. Which is incredibly sad.

[fandom-sarlacc-pit]

A lot of people say maul wants to be a dad(albeit in a toxic way) but i think his grief points to the idea that he wants a sibling. He wants to be a brother, but he doesnt know how, recreating what he had with savage, because that was his brother, but his brother was also his apprentice. Hes surrounding himself with allies to try to fill the void left by a family he barely knew, in the only toxic maladaptive way he knows how

[vaders-georg]

where the fuck is my post about inquisitor lightsabers having godawful design sense i need to it to talk about that one shadow lord scene

[vaders-georg]

it’s way too lengthy to crosspost but essentially inquisitor sabers absolutely fucking suck on a practical level. the hilt being a standard length, rather than saberstaff length, combined with the iconic two-sided handguard, results in a weapon that severely limits the ways you can grip it, and gives you twice as much business end while making wielding it two-handed nearly impossible. they probably had to come up with their own saber form just to wield these things. which, ultimately, is a predicament that makes sense for state-sponsored race traitors.

there’s no way maul doesn’t recognize this. the guy who we see applying every lightsaber form, who trained in combat doggedly his whole life, who still perfects his craft and calls back on his training as recently as earlier this episode, is absolutely noticing how the empire is perverting and hobbling its force-sensitive charges.

this, among other things, is maul seeing what that “glorious destiny” he was denied would have been.

[victusinveritas]

[rostekhorn]

It's even better than that.

At least according to the old continuity, the Wookiees were skilled explorers, and their Clatuuvac Guild had the secrets to a number of hyperspace routes, especially through the Core (it's why the Separatists were so keen to take the planet in Revenge of the Sith)... And Chewbacca was one of the people who knew these hyperspace routes.

So the Millennium Falcon being the fastest smuggler ship in the galaxy? About half of that is down to Han's modifications, the fact that he drives like crazy, and the fact that he's almost as good as he thinks he is. The other half? Is just Chewie knowing a bunch of shortcuts, which he got from all the classified information he knew when he was a commander.

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

Look, if the respected commander wants to bring his rescue human along, so be it. Even if said rescue is poorly socialized.

[soranatus]

MAUL, ICARUS, & SCORN In STAR WARS: MAUL – SHADOW LORD (2026) Episodes 1 & 2

[blueberry-ry]

Satine and the day she almost kicked someone’s ass

[blueberry-ry]

Satine and the day she almost kicked someone’s ass