#taffycraze

[omkdear]

Had to stop working on this because yayyy my drawing arm is also my injured arm, but pleased with my inks. For the amazing and wonderful @taffingtons who renewed my Maul problem despite me screaming NOOO!! <3<3<3

[taffingtons]

so, i'm reading some of star wars: the clone wars: darth maul: shadow conspiracy tonight (talk about a mouthful of a title), because i miss my wife tails but i can only manage finger food atm. it's a kids-oriented novelization of revival, eminence, shades of reason, and lawless. (i'm very curious to see what it does with lawless)

and i think jason fry, like so many of us, is in love with sam witwer's voice. LOL

from a neutral POV:

this description makes me laugh tbh and i want to steal it. this is so good. the disrepancy of maul's appearance with his in-universe posh accent deserves more attention (especially with what it betrays about his background...)

but then, next chapter, blatantly obi-wan's POV:

STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL, HUH? i mean. i agree. i think it's an accurate statement. maybe not strangely but like. HELLO??? OBI-WAN???

this also reminds me that it would've been the first time obi-wan ever heard him speak. no wonder it threw him off. but still. BEAUTIFUL? MOVIE STAR??

[taffingtons]

i've been rotating the "plagueis was right. i HAVE made him prideful" line from sidious about maul and like. i'm starting to shovel handfuls of wet gravel into my mouth about it

of course maul is prideful. he's been given literally nothing else to hold on to, no other way to define himself, outside of his training and the skills he's developed from it. it's been hammered into him that he has one purpose in life and it's his only avenue for lack-of-suffering, let alone anything akin to praise and approval

so yes: he's going to hold on for dear LIFE to his pride in his training. he is going to be desperate to do his fucking job. it's all he HAS

and of COURSE, even after he's been cut loose after lotho minor, of COURSE he holds to that. it's the only thing he knows. it's the only thing he's been allowed to have. it's literally drilled through his skull that it's the only way he can avoid getting hurt and he has zero support network to be able to break out of his cycle

even if he did seriously look at how he's clinging to revenge as the only actionable thing he can do in a life where he continuously feels powerless, even if he did actually face down the fault lines under his feet, even if he did finally choose to break away and live completely differently -- what would he have left? how could he move forward? he was never given the tools for this. he was never given a chance. he never wanted any of this, but it's the only thing he has

the door to the cage is unlocked and he has tried opening it and got slammed by agoraphobia so he just closed the door back and never tried to leave again because at least this is pain he understands

[taffingtons]

something i want to see MSL address is some particular aspects of maul's character that we frankly haven't seen put directly in text yet

we all know this isn't gonna end well. we all know star wars' favorite sisyphus to kick down the hill and clap as the boulder smashes over him is gonna eat so much shit, one way or another

but we also see that maul is trying to be different. only in some respects, but they really are showing that he is chewing on how he should conduct himself, not just stating it in interviews. despite whatever slow-motion meltdown he's trying to stave off (i suspect currently it's simply good old-fashioned cptsd panic of being trapped in a cage of his master's making, yet again. oh, and the grief. don't forget about the grief), he has been very restrained, contained, actively reigning his temper in, running down his shiny new checklists of How To Leader and How To Persuade. god help him, he is TRYING, even if he's not gaining much ground in getting different reactions out of people about it

what i want to know is --

what does this attempt to change mean to him? who does he envision himself becoming, if he does succeed? who is he trying to be, ultimately? we know what he hopes to gain from it -- power and control, yes, but i think right now, somewhere in there, he knows what he really wants is support and stability and a future -- but how does he understand what he's doing?

and.

when everything starts to fall apart, when his footing slips and he realizes he can't stop the boulder from coming down on him, when he realizes he's TRIED to change, and it isn't creating the outcome he wants, when he's losing everything again --

what is it going to mean to him, internally, to fail this time? how is he going to think about that failure? what conclusions is he going to draw from it? how is maul going to process responsibility for the people devoted to him and failing them, after he already knows he failed savage?

the way a character THINKS about these things is very important, and chances are, we can extrapolate possible answers to this from what we've already seen. but like. i wanna know. i wanna see it

[taffingtons]

and so my new save begins...

and maul is immediately off being... himself, and without me having to tell him to do anything. so naturally, i had to get some pics

maul: /ranting and raving in a dead language savage: 🧍‍♂️

i really felt like i've nailed their character creation when maul bullied a random sim away in order to talk alone with his brother, and was overall cranky af by the time the flea market ended

[taffingtons]

btwwww, i don't know how many of y'all also watch out for the card game, BUT. we have new art of the sonboys!!

[taffingtons]

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...

[taffingtons]

i have a gift for my fellow maulfucker lovelies

mind the timestamp (0:45 if the embed fucks up; you're looking for his Ability 3 lines, specifically)

like, this video is a goldmine for witwer's take on pre-TPM-era maul voice candy in general, but uh. those lines

😳