because my characters are all super corruptible apparently

I saw someone do an analysis type variant on this (I think emiri?) rather than just the 'what do' and I'm doing that cause I just want to talk about all the dark side bullshit. OKAY COOL

first and most obviously, Matt sure is one hell of a villain right now, which um.

I mean, we see shades of anger and manipulation in him all through the show, so it's consistent, but it's also kind of depressing, and it's gone to a whole new extreme in heroes reborn.

cause while future!matt in the alternate future off season one is really cold and ruthless and efficient, you can also really see how he chooses to be that way and just locks down on his feelings to do what he

thinks is right, any means necessary (including execution and feeding people to a serial killer).

ends-justify-the-means, that's my kinda villain. and it works for matt really wel, cause we see him go to increasingly desperate lengths in the show to protect the people he cares about and himself.

NOW IN REBORN HE'S LIKE. he's his dad. he's worse than his dad. IT'S KINDA DIFFICULT TO ME to reconcile with the matt I play, butttt there you go

he mentally tortures people gleefully now, so that's a thing.

I'd be more okay with it if we'd have seen more of a reason and progression for it, but right now he's not really my matt anymore, and it's weird.

anyway, like I said, it's consistent, because he's been on a slow but steady dark path the whole canon, but the way he goes darkside is out of desperation, and wanting to end - permanently - the threats

he comes across.

he just learns to ignore more and more of his morals to do this.

until in reborn when he's apparently snapped completely. we've canonically seen matt all over the morality spectrum, and it's interesting to play with when it doesn't go to either extreme.

Laura, the poor girl, is tormented by Actual Embodiment of Evil, so she has a shitton of darkness in her, and she despises this so much, which makes her even darker, cause her response to her own self

loathing and her problems and the threats she perceives is to lash out to other people and perpetuate the cycle of abuse.

which is of course what Actual Embodiment of Evil wants, so that sucks.

laura's soul is rather untouchable, it's canonically incredibly strong, and so she's a character that won't ever succumb to darkness completely - but she still performs a lot of dark actions.

she, too, does this out of desperation and self-preservance, and in a misguided attempt to protect the people she loves by making sure they stay away from her, so by hurting them.

she's really toxic to be around, especially before her death. she lies and manipulates and pushes and pressures people into things they don't want.

and she does the same things to herself, as an act of self punishment.

and she takes pleasure from having power over other people, which makes her feel rotten inside and like the worst possible person, which just makes the whole thing spiral more and laura breaks my heart

but I still find a lot of hope in her because she never once succumbs to possession, never once lets these malevolent forces in (TAKE A NOTE, MATT)

the things she does are a result of her desperate attempts to try to get away from the darkness, not from embracing any of it.

and I just really like that about her character because it's such a rarely explored narrative, about being a bad person as a result of bad things happening to you, but never once putting the blame on the victim

like, she's held accountable for doing bad things - but we're never told to believe that she was a bad person, because she wasn't. it's an important distinction.

anyway, she struggles a lot with the darkness, and she is very, very close to it, and she'll use it. but she'll never cross over. she dies before she lets this happen. she makes herself get killed to prevent it

but the darkness is there even in her death and after, and it is a part of her because of the things she's seen and done.

Ferus ... literal Dark Side of the Force bullshit goes down with him, ho boy.

he's noted as having been particularly gifted when he was a padawan, 'second only to anakin' (who is the chosen one, so like) and he was strong in the force and good at basically anything so good for him

he loses much of this when he leaves the jedi, but regains his force connection throughout the series, and it'll never be the same but he gets to a point where he's pretty strong again.

Your dark Matt will forever be my favorite.

ahh thanks jeni, I really appreciate that!

what do you think of reborn matt, I miss five years gone matt a lot >> I'd have preferred that take so much.

BUT YEAH so ferus is doing pretty well for himself until darth vader decides to kill his husband in front of him and I seriously ... thsi was the most unfair thing I have ever read

cause ferus was literally in the middle of a sentence trying to defuse the situation and vader was like 'bored now' and struck roan through the heart and there he went

Reborn Matt is terrifying. I guess when they push you and threaten your family enough you'll turn into a bastard. 5yg Matt was better.

ferus had no chance, but naturally beat himself up for not being fast enough or good enough to stop this anyway, but equally much let his feelings boil over into hate and rage aimed at vader for what he did

because hey, he's not a jedi, he hasn't been a jedi for years - he's been allowed his feelings for years and oh boy is he gonna feel them. which, when palpatine is like, 'you know, the dark side is pretty rad'

ferus takes approximately three seconds to be like '..... actually it sounds pretty rad'

and he spends a fair bit of time justifying this to himself, why he'd agree to learn to use the dark side, but they're all excuses; the real reason is cause he wants to just murder vader

so we see him in the last three books feed into his own anger and pain and he uses the dark side a bunch of times and like ... breaks things and feels like murdering people and thinks execution is totally

a good way to handle a situation, which naturally it is not, and thankfully he never goes that far but he comes dangerously close

alarmingly, it seems like his hold on the dark side is stronger than the light side - which makes sense, since he's an emotional creature at this point, and has a difficult time getting them under control

but it means he uses the dark side more and more often and starts losing real touch with the light side, and his attachments, and his own sense of thinking

and while he in the end finally realizes wtf he's doing and turns away from it (and almost gets killed for it, thanks again vader), he's definitely the character I have that comes the closest to

making that choice, who is SO DAMN CLOSE to actually cross over out of his own will, not because he's driven or desperate, but because his own need for revenge and death overshadows everything else

one day I'm gonna bully someone into playing dark side ferus AU with me, because damn, dark side using ferus is something I have a lot of basis for and that would be hella interesting.

I love ferus but he's honestly getting kind of really scary towards the end before he comes to his senses. and I love that.

substituteskull: yeah right? also it just really bugs me that we never got molly acknowledged in all of that mess either. or mohinder or anything. sghs.

matt was always terrifying, in fairness, but that's the thing? they could have made him a really scary guy out of his power alone. they didn't need all the gleeful villain stuff.

just fyg!matt with current!matt's power set is terrible enough, honestly. on its own.

Absolutely. I'm forever sad about Molly. But that is what RP is for. I get to right the wrongs of the writers. :3

yes. that and also fanfic.

speaking of Molly, she definitely grows up with an ends-justify-the-means approach as well, and she becomes very practical and no-nonsense minded - but she keeps much firmer tabs on herself than matt.

TAKE NOTE, MATT.

but molly's not dark siding so much as doing what needs to be done when everybody's out to get you. when she can, she still helps people around her, and she wants to believe in a better world.

who else do I have

Coop is touched by the same Actual Evil that laura is and it messes him up. he doesn't do dark side stuff but it's always around him like a shroud, and sometimes clouds his judgment and soul.

he wouldn't wilfully cross over, cause he's scared to death of the very real darkness he percieves, but there's something fractured in him that the evil forces in that world sadly can take advantage of anyway.

tl;dr on my characters: they all have very real dark side situations going on AND THAT'S SAD.

Lauraaaaaaa. ;;

I cry about laura all the time :c

She makes me so sad.

hello bree are you attracted by the dark side

and sob honestly, toss. just look at her. I'm so sad always.

pats

sighs

also re: ferus I made some quick notes for how I'd write him dark side

cause of course I did

he'd be pretty dangerous but in that .. like ... he's dangerous until he breaks, and he would eventually, really, there's a frailty in that momentum

ThriceWiddershins: might interest you :lb