𝑭𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒐𝒎 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒈

imagine that you’re born in a laboratory, and then your dad ( who plays with you, and carries you around on his shoulders, and leaves you for days on end, and never fully expresses proper emotions in front of you, and comforts you when you’re emotional, and tells you to absolutely never cry or to ever show weakness, and reads you bedtime stories, and shows you how to shoot a gun on your 5th birthday, and takes you fishing, and takes you along with him to watch and learn while he’s working “easy jobs” ) — that man homeschools you in your guys’ little apartment

and then you go “outside” of your apartment, and all of the other kids Look Exactly Like You? But they’re Not your friends, and you’re also Not Allowed to talk to them for too long, or else your Dad will get really upset

and you try to make friends with your occasional babysitter, and with your dad’s favorite co-worker, and with the librarian, but they’re all adults (expect for the robot librarian maybe?) and they always get uncomfortable whenever you try to tell them that you want to be their friend

and you know that Dad didn’t have a partner to give birth to you — he just had the “smart and skinny people” copy his own DNA — and that’s normal. But you honestly do really wish that the other kids weren’t also copies of your dad’s DNA, because you really don’t like looking at them(?), and you also don’t know why they seem to hate you, and you’ve heard pieces of what the other non-scientist adults say…….

maybe everything is okay? That’s just what life is? But then one day Dad comes home and tells you that his friend is dead and won’t be visiting anymore. And you don’t know why she’s dead, and or what’s happening. And then a Strange Man shows up, and you’re scared because you’ve heard the stories. You know that his people killed your Dad’s Family ( Your Family ) so you keep your distance and do what your dad told you to do in order to protect yourself

And then your Dad takes you with him on a job barely a day later, and someone decapitates him in front of you, and then when the battle ends and the dust settles, you crawl out from your hiding spot, and you bury him in a way that maybe contradicts the way that you’re supposed to do it? Will he not reach the ancestors if you bury him underground? But you don’t really know what to do, you’re so scared and alone, and dad never even got to complete the Adulthood Ceremony with you that he always promised he would — he stressed how important it was to Your Shared Culture, the family and life and culture that was taken from him and that you never got to truly experience. And now it’s gone. It’s just……gone

And then you’re Alone — barely surviving on the streets of some foreign city somewhere, scared and desperate. But you meet a lady, and she says she used to know your Dad, and your dad always had friends that acted kind of like this

Merrin is a nightsister. She grew up on Dathomir where nightbrothers are a subordinate caste used for labor and breeding. Merrin grew up inside that system and we see her both benefit and participate in it. Now obviously, the defense is that she was a child, which like. Okay. But that raises the much more interesting question of why do the writers WANT that fact to function as a moral escape hatch? The issue isn't whether a child can be held morally responsible for a society they were born into, most people would agree they can't, the issue is that the games seem fucking determined to prevent the player from even THINKING about the question. That aspect of her background could've been a source of internal conflict, but they don't do that with Merrin. Nightsisters are treated as victims by the narrative and then it just moves on.

I'm so annoyed with the nightbrother slavery issue being constantly sidestepped and never given any of the commentary it actually deserves and I really think Merrin is a good representation of why it both makes no sense and is also really insidious? Her own moral relationship to her own culture is very oddly unexplored and we should all be asking why the fuck the writers are so eager to make sure we never have to ask harder questions about the society she came from

i love how this implies that either:

- maul and savage are twins

- savage is actually older than maul

- there was another opress brother older than savage and feral, and either maul’s twin or older than him, but he died

tears run through my veins

-

! Not my art, my commission !

@maul-appreciation-week Day 5 : "Rainstorm"

Why holding tears in a rainstorm? even if you are not crying, drops of water will fall from your face anyway...just let them fall to the ground.

@maul-appreciation-week Day 4: "Wounded"

Another trial, another corpse that hits the ground.

Another victory, another wound in his skin.

Another sigh, another drop of sweat

Another day to live, another day to kill.