No, no, I’m being seriously curious here, not just looking for an excuse to criticize the character.
I know about the Aftermath and Last Shot lines that people construed as possibly being signs of Snoke and Palpatine going after him, but I’ve also heard a bunch of people say that his behavior there is easily explained as just being a baby or a toddler scared by a bad droid.
Has there been more explicit explanation for when and how Snoke’s manipulations started?
We know about our differences; I’m trying to see if the parameters for our disagreements have been more clearly defined or if it’s still ambiguous and vague.
Leia sensed darkness in him while he was still in the womb and he overheard conversations his parents had about him about his powers. When Leia sent him away to Luke, he perceived that as her abandoning him.
While he was training with Luke, that's when he had conversations with Snoke and was groomed from the age of 10.
He didn't burn the Jedi Temple. Snoke did. And then his friends tried to kill him so he ran to Snoke.
From TFA novel:
He met her eyes steadily. “We’ve lost our son, forever.” Leia bit her lower lip, refusing to concede. “No. It was Snoke.” Han drew back slightly. “Snoke?” She nodded. “He knew our child would be strong with the Force. That he was born with equal potential for good or evil.” “You knew this from the beginning? Why didn’t you tell me?” She sighed. “Many reasons. I was hoping that I was wrong, that it wasn’t true. I hoped I could sway him, turn him away from the dark side, without having to involve you.” [...] He had trouble believing what he was hearing. “So Snoke was watching our son.” “Always,” she told him. “From the shadows, in the beginning, even before I realized what was happening, he was manipulating everything, pulling our son toward the dark side.
TLJ:
"Ben in adolescence, his face grown lean above a strong jaw. A boy who always seemed alone, a churning storm in the Force. And whose anger had begun to manifest in malfunctions and breakdowns and objects that fell off shelves and shattered with no one near. Ben, her son. Who’d been stolen from her and Han, stolen by Snoke’s wiles and Luke’s mistakes and his own furies.
And so Snoke had drawn upon his vast store of knowledge, parceling it out to confuse Skywalker’s path, ensnare his family, and harness Ben Solo’s powers to ensure both Skywalker’s destruction and Snoke’s triumph.
He had seen his apprentice’s enormous potential when he was still a child—the latent power of the Skywalker bloodline was impossible to miss. And he had also seen how to exploit the boy’s feelings of inadequacy and abandonment, and his mother’s guilt and desperation to contain the darkness within her child. [...] And indeed, Ben Solo had performed the role Snoke had envisioned for him perfectly."
I believe there was also a reference in Aftermath about Ben being turned from in the womb. I can't find it though.
