r/MauLer

Image 1 — Shadow Lord is basically what the Boba Fett show should have been
Image 2 — Shadow Lord is basically what the Boba Fett show should have been
▲ 1.4k r/MauLer+2 crossposts

Shadow Lord is basically what the Boba Fett show should have been

Both Maul and Boba were villains turned crime bosses and yet boba fett acts more like a hall monitor than a crime boss. Him and his power ranger crew don't do anything close to morally bad. Boba doesn't even want to take the pykes spice for himself. He just wants it off his planet like what kind of crime boss doesn't sell drugs or weapons? Or do anything but besides act all tough and stoic?

Compared to maul who actually acts and moves like a crime boss it's not even close.

And no I don't need boba fett to be walter white levels of evil or hell he can still be an anti hero but this is like a not even a kiddy version of being a crime lord. Because boba literally doesn't commit any crimes!

u/JackZ567 — 24 hours ago
▲ 101 r/MauLer

Between Abrams and Johnson, which director do you think had the worse impact on Star Wars overall?

I’d personally choose Abrams because most of the problems with the Sequels originated with TFA rather than TLJ, such as deciding to reboot the state of the galaxy, going back to Empire VS Rebels again, and turning the OT characters into failures.

I don’t like The Last Jedi at all, but I think that at least Johnson tried to make something original, even if it backfired 99% of the time. Thoughts?

u/ChickenWingExtreme — 3 days ago
▲ 82 r/MauLer

{LONG POST} I really feel like I have to say this: Shadiversity's book is not good.

{SPOLIERS for Shadow of the Conqueror below!}

Shadiversity's book, Shadow of the Conqueror, deserves serious criticism, and not for the reasons Shad himself would prefer to believe. He clearly has genuine talent for some parts of worldbuilding and weapon design, and should have stayed in that lane. Writing a compelling story in book form is simply not his strength, and the book's failures run very deep.

The book's central moral argument is deeply disturbing. It essentially argues that you should not hold deeply evil actions against someone if those actions produced some good outcomes. The protagonist is a child rapist. Some of his victims went on to have children from those rapes and, by the story's end, are depicted defending him. They do this because they now have families due to rape babies, and that is framed as beautiful. The victims who have no children, and who still hate him, are implicitly portrayed as simply failing to see the bigger picture or being blinded by personal hubris or hate. This is not moral complexity or grey characters. It is consequentialism taken to its most disturbing logical conclusion, and the narrative treats it as settled wisdom rather than something to interrogate in detail or explore its impact on the human psyche.

The book also undermines itself in subtler ways. Characters occasionally intervene when men are sexually abusing women, executing the abusers on the spot, then immediately leaving. This is framed as righteous or even redemptive. But the world has already made clear that women in these social classes depend entirely on their male partners economically. Executing an abusive husband and flying away might save these women from direct abuse, but it also sentences them to poverty and suffering. The author seems unaware of what this actually reveals about these characters: that their idea of justice is performative, surface-level and not consequential. This could have been explored as intentional characterization. It is not.

Shad has publicly argued that criticism of his book is politically motivated bad faith. This is worth examining, because while the criticisms above are entirely apolitical, his worldbuilding is saturated with his personal politics. The story treats those politics as objective moral truth rather than as one perspective among many or something worthwhile to explore in depth.

The primary antagonist faction is functionally an extreme caricature of modern day progressive politics. They claim to oppose wealth inequality and fight for the lower classes, yet their methods include dropping a floating rock onto a densely populated city. This would kill vastly more poor people than rich ones. No one in the narrative appears to notice this contradiction in a meaningful manner, and the story does not engage with it. Meanwhile, the archknights, a judge-jury-executioner police force with sweeping magical powers and legal authority, are presented as an unambiguous good. There is no meaningful opposition to them from ordinary people, no civil liberties movement, no anarchists, no complex moral relativists (a bit ironic), no popular front or well written separatist uprising. No one who questions whether this level of concentrated institutional power might be dangerous. Nobody who tried to completely unseat them from power, even as a political move, maybe to replace them and expand their own influence. In a world with a long history, that absence is conspicuous. 

Finally, the book falls into the standard traps of the reincarnation power fantasy genre without seeming aware of them. The protagonist repeatedly defeats opponents with vastly more experience and training than him. The most egregious example is a fight where he binds (light) magic to itself. An act framed as something no one in this world's history has done before or ever conceived of! This is done to defeat enemies who have studied magic their entire lives. The hyperspace ram problem from The Last Jedi applies here directly: if this is possible, why has no one in this world's long history ever attempted it? Why does it not transform combat or conflict? The narrative offers no answer, because it has not asked the question.

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u/TheDepressedHydra — 1 day ago
▲ 28 r/MauLer

Maul - Shadow Lord was pretty good

As someone who actually quite likes TCW, and who also hasn't watched much Star Wars in years (though I've recently started checking out some of the media I missed, largely because of this show), this was a pretty fun ride. Honestly, it might actually be the most solid first season of a Dave Filoni show (unless you want to count Avatar: The Last Airbender, as, though he wasn't the creator, he did do a lot of directing and storyboarding).

The early days of the Empire I always feel are kind of unexplored. As much as I'm kind of mixed on The Bad Batch, it certainly had an interesting premise in showing the transition between Republic and Empire through the eyes of clones and other characters we saw in TCW. We kind of see that as well here, as the Empire hasn't fully cracked down on every planet yet and are still sort of getting their footing.

It's got a pretty solid cast as well. Surprising lack of "glup shittos" in this show, and the past characters that do appear make sense (yes, even the big one at the end). Most of the cast are straight up new characters, and they're all acted really well. Always in support of Wagner Moura getting more voice work, and I like his portrayal of just a cop who is willing to do everything he can to stop the Empire from coming to his planet. His son, however, is just pretty basic. Just your standard kid character. I actually more liked his relationship with his droid partner, who surprisingly kind of gets an arc in this show. The two Jedi are pretty interesting as well, though I'm a little mixed on Daki. He's got a great presence and voice, but I don't really get a lot of the choices he makes, especially in regards to feeling a little too calm when Devon ends up with Maul.

As for Maul himself... it's more Clone Wars Maul. I certainly love that, but I know some people don't. Sam Witwer continues to prove he is the MVP of the Star Wars voice cast. His crime group, however, I honestly don't remember a lot of their names. I guess that Mandalorian girl was in Clone Wars Season 7, and she's just kind of fine (don't know if she's some iconic character in other media, so I might have pissed someone off with that statement). I do like Maul's psychotic pet droid, and the short crime boss he ends up capturing has some funny lines, though his plot armor in this show is a little much. Most of these characters are just there to get killed by the Inquisitors though, because they gotta kill someone.

Speaking of the Inquisitors, this show is probably their best appearance in a while. Their fights really showcase just how great the show's animation is. The animation in general is just some of the best in any Star Wars property. I love how most of the fights in this show aren't pure 1 v 1's, and how a lot of the fights take place while the main cast are trying to escape at the same time, especially the final fight. It's kind of like if the whole hallway scene in Rogue One was extended to episode length. The tension is constant, though, I'll admit, I did kind of lose track of where each character was several times (though I did watch the episode after two in the morning, so maybe that was just me).

And, yeah, Darth Vader does appear in the final episode as the big "final boss." Honestly though, given how big a deal Maul was in TCW, I think it would make less sense if Vader wasn't sent to deal with him. We see in Vader comics that a lot of what he's doing in the early days of the Empire is leading the Inquisitors to hunt down Jedi, so why wouldn't he be sent to deal with a former Sith Lord? Not sure why he wasn't the one on their tail the whole time though. I mean, I know why, since they want the big reveal before the finale, but you could have had still kept that moment and just moved it earlier. Not a huge deal though, as you could just say Vader was only going to step in if the Inquisitors failed.

Overall, yeah, I really enjoyed myself with this one. Granted, if you haven't seen TCW (specifically the Maul episodes), you probably aren't gonna get as much out of this show, but, as someone who has, I'm glad it exists. Though when we get a Season 2, could they at least cast someone who sounds even a little bit like Paul Bettany as that guy from Solo instead of... the new voice of Crash Bandicoot? What?

u/ITBA01 — 4 days ago
▲ 100 r/MauLer

Something interesting Chris Gore said about the original Star Wars trilogy on Nerdrotic's stream the other night.

There are no real heroes anymore. Everyone is either infested by the immortal insight of the shitty writers in most Western Works now or are depressed bums who need to be told to be more heroic by self inserts of the writing staff. There is no more optimism paired with good, solid writing anymore. There's no hope for a long term story about someone who you want to root for, there's no more hero's journey. When you have villains write for the opposite side, at best you get a pathetic imitation of a bygone era like in Resident Evil 9. At worst you get complete assassination, like in.....well, at this point there's too many examples to name off at this point.

u/canis-humurous — 5 days ago
▲ 19 r/MauLer

Most Contagious Laughter Pt 1

Rewatching Efap streams and its always great to hear everyone's enjoyment at certain points. This has led me to wonder who has the most contagious laughter. This is part 1 and part 2 will be posted as soon a possible with other guests who find things funny more often than not. When both polls are closed, the top 3 from both will be combined for a final battle of giggles and chuckles, with the winner earning this uh, *looks around* this Burger King crown I just found.

Many people here are very prominent in appearances, as well as very unique laughter.

Mauler with his wheeze.

Fringy's cackle.

Rags's's's's's gasping for air laughter.

Platoon's chuckling

Az with his unrestrained guffaws

And JLongBone with her shrieks.

... can you tell im running out of synonyms?

Im just trying to get to 200 words.

View Poll

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u/EffectiveJuice7564 — 9 hours ago
▲ 142 r/MauLer

As a liberal, listening to the Noah and Anthony episodes

Not once , in the almost 9 years since
Subscribing to his channel , have I ever heard Mauler, or any of the boys bring political views into their discussions .
It seems like a constant argument from left leaning YouTubers , who never watch their videos or listen to Efap. I don’t know the boys politics views, and I don’t care to. All I care about is the laughs and insight I get from them and I think that’s all we need.
Pisses me off as if they were attacking friends of mine without knowing them .
Hi Rags

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u/RepresentativeNo3365 — 6 days ago