here's a question for the fic writers in the maul fandom:
what are your #methods for writing his dialogue? your rules of thumb? your chosen ways of coping with the fact that a large part of maul's vibe and expression comes from witwer's vocal delivery, and so the actual words of a line when put down to purely text don't necessarily read as maul-voice?
i watched a video today where witwer noted that maul's lines (in MSL at least) were "occasionally" in iambic pentameter and just started, like, beating my head against a wall, because OF COURSE, why didn't i pick up on it sooner, but also, aaaaaaghpainintheass. also, the way he manages to speak around even needing a contraction, let alone never using them, is going to be a struggle...
i have a concept for a scene in my head for my "daydream city" aka niche crossover fic that has me, once again, thinking "i should hurry up and write that before MSL season two drops"
namely, kyoko having a minor mental health Moment and coping by trying to torpedo her definitely-not-an-apprenticeship with maul -- specifically, by purposefully stomping on emotional sore spots. by doing that thing she canonically does time and again where she tries to drive someone she cares about away by making herself into a villain. she thinks its for their own good, that they shouldnt be around her, but they wont let her back out and she knows that, and maybe if she makes them hate her, then it wont hurt them so much when she leaves. see, she's a bad kid, a rotten apple, it's all her fault, she fully carries the blame, you dont have to feel bad about this, are you realizing youre better off without her yet? (except personalized. rather than playing an ethics card like she did against mami in different story, she'd lean hard into what she considers to be maul's insecurities, and she's pretty damn perceptive)
................... i just think it'd be fascinating to make maul deal with this LOL. he's sharp enough to see that she's doing this very much on purpose, that she's behaving and speaking contrary to what he knows and understands of her, but even as he likely recognizes that she's trying to self-destruct, is that really going to make it better or worse, easier or harder for him to deal with? that is His (not) Apprentice, he isnt letting go without a fight, but pit that against that hidden streak in him that whispers, "how would i wish i was treated in this scenario?" and the way he can be surprisingly deeply patient with 'his kids' -- versus his genuine trauma responses getting kicked repeatedly in this conversation, his kneejerk issues about feeling betrayed, his godawful personal coping mechanisms, his temper, his sisyphean nature, etc.
this is the shit i really wanna dig into with them. maul seeing himself in kyoko so keenly, across so many parallels, but also having to deal with the, "wow my kid is so much like me! /positive /negative /delighted /pissed off /CONCERNED" experience
........... which, if MSL s2 really wants to roll around in devon and maul's relationship . IS WHY I GOTTA HURRY UP BEFORE THEY BEAT ME TO IT
(featuring my pen, who's been suffering my stimming for months)
the package arrived today!! 🥰 i took some money from my last commission payment and put it towards something i'd been meaning to get for myself for months. ordered from @planetaryartist. THANK YOU SO MUCH, i love it!
i wish i could've used my phone for size comparison, because it's sized perfect for it (both interior and exterior pockets), but of course then i wouldn't have been able to take the picture. and then the main body pocket will have plenty of room for my wallet and then some. so i'm gonna be set for con gophering next week!
despite what MSL showed, i just can't see savage as the eldest. given that savage and maul didn't seem to know each other existed in TCW, i always assumed that maul was born first, taken, and then savage and feral were born afterwards. chronologically, it just made the most sense to me
specifically, i always felt like assuming savage has been assumed to be the oldest just because he's huge (even though that's due to nightsister magic; one of these days i'll sit down and compare savage's natural height to ventress and ventress to maul, i'm curious) and because he slots himself into a bodyguard style role. just because he's bigger than feral and protective of him doesn't necessarily mean that he's older, too. younger siblings can be overprotective and older siblings can be smaller
regardless of what people make out of their behavior / vibes, pre-disney canon says maul was raised in isolation. (and disney didn't acquire SW until after savage's initial episodes and maul's return episodes.) their relationship isn't going to map neatly to stereotypical sibling dynamics as a result, even setting aside how fucked up maul is
my personal opinion is that savage strikes me as a parentified caretaker sibling. this can happen to siblings of any age. zero shade to anyone who feels otherwise, idk, i just think it's more interesting and less stereotypical this way. but it irks me that people treat savage as the eldest sibling as being hard canon, when the only things that suggest as such are 1. the back-of-the-box description from a now-defunct tabletop war game, which is going to be questionable about inserting canon lore anyway and then the actual booklet information doesn't back it up iirc, and 2. MSL episode 8 which also simultaneously heavy-handedly suggests isn't accurate, backed by sam witwer all but outright saying that yeah the inaccuracies were on purpose and for a reason that isn't retconning, but instead maul being an unreliable narrator
clears throat. huh? what/ did anyone hear anything?
not maintagging this save for the spoiler tag, this post may or may not still hang around after tomorrow, but i at least need to vent the following under the cut:
so that's why they spent no time on maul's crew, huh
i would call it lazy writing, but the more i think about it, the more i come down to earth about how star wars is allergic to humanizing villain characters in 99% of circumstances
but like. what the fuck are we supposed to feel here. i genuinely dont know what they want from the general audience
maul lovers are going to mourn for maul's sake. people will be sad about spybot because he was cute humor relief, a bitey dog who loved his master. but like
after spending zero time on rook, icarus, and scorn
they had their moments of badass in combat, and rook got actual screentime and lines, but even still, they've given us absolutely fffffffucking nothing on those three. no exploration of rook's loyalty or demonstration of her personality outside of "lord maul wtf" and girlbossing. no explanation as to where icarus and scorn came from, just enough glimpses at their relationship with maul to see that there was genuine connection and loyalty there on some level
when daki and brander die -- we are obviously meant to be very sad, even if everyone's been pointing at their death flags from day one. but they're the good guys! we're ALLOWED to spend time with them. we're SUPPOSED to care about the good guys!
rook, icarus, and scorn though. are you serious? are we literally getting nothing? if we're lucky, we MIGHT get comics material. MAYBE. but like. the fuck is this writing. the general audience has little to no reason to care that they've died, which sort of makes it feel like they're just cool-looking fodder. coupled with "oh no this could be someone's first star wars, they dont need to watch anything before this, we'll explain everything" [explains exactly shit and fuck] i am like. DEEPLY fucking frustrated when other aspects of the show are pretty fuckin good and fun
the fuck are they thinking.
(not to mention, imo, maul pushing daki was. completely unnecessary. it exists purely to set up devon finding out he did that later and that being the reason she turns on him again -- it exists to remind everyone, hey, just because he's working with the good guys right now, he's still a bad guy. it exists to try to stymie people calling maul a coward, because he could have just turned and ran and left daki to die, but by having him do the push, it turns it into calculation -- except, oh wait, i've already seen someone doing that in the main tag already. but from a practicality standpoint, maul could have literally just walked away and the same result couldve happened and he couldve excused it as "oh i was coming to help devon" or something. i dont know. i think if it wasn't on the heels of [gestures to everything above] i'd be able to roll with it, but since it is, i'm gnashing my teeth about it anyway)
ICARUS AND SCORN DON'T EVEN GET NAMED ON SCREEN THE ENTIRE FUCKING SEASON
