Ratonhnhaké:ton/Connor Kenway (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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ways_back_room2015-06-17 01:53 am
lifethatisscratched) wrote in ways_back_room2015-06-17 01:53 am
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Daily Entertainment: Look for the Light
SIX DAYS UNTIL BATMAN ARKHAM KNIGHT COMES OUT YOU GUYS. YES THIS RATES ALL-CAPS.
Ahem. Anyway. Rounding out my trio of DEs is yet another one inspired by The Last of Us:
If your pup isn't a villain, what's the closest they've ever come to the Dark Side (so to speak)? If your pup is a villain, what made them that way?
Ahem. Anyway. Rounding out my trio of DEs is yet another one inspired by The Last of Us:
If your pup isn't a villain, what's the closest they've ever come to the Dark Side (so to speak)? If your pup is a villain, what made them that way?
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Michael is only the villain if you're a devil, and maybe not even then? Closest to dark side for an angel was probably letting Lucifer win combat to get back into Heaven on a technicality. That and having mortals on earth she could work through and help when she really wasn't supposed to. Heh.
Nynaeve -- has used balefire to kill people. That's as close as she's gotten, I think. At least in this Mirror of the Wheel.
Galadan is a villain, do not stop, do not pass go, do not collect $200. His downfall was having the emotional maturity of a 5-year-old and having the woman he loved ('loved') decide to love another guy, and then have his father not stick up for him and punish them. Poor awful genocidal tantrum-throwing idiot. *wince* (I am sarcastic about the 'poor boy' part there, because no.) Now he's just a reasonably amoral dark gray!
Wonder Woman killed Maxwell Lord on live TV by breaking his neck when he was tied up and helpless. This is because he had the power of mind-control and was planning on always using Superman as a weapon against the world. Wondy was like 'no'. So. In the future her body, at least, is potentially used to make a supervillain called 'Genocide', because nothing says awesome respect for horrible real-life genocides than creating a supervillain mythology around them for a throwaway set of issues. Oh, wait. *sigh*
Dean. Uh. Has a real problem with Dark Side behavior and killing innocents these days, insofar as those innocents are possessed by demons and he's killing the demons. *wince* Also Mark of Cain in current canon, but I haven't watched since forever so I only know that by tumblr and twitter comments I've seen. He has an immense capacity for vicious violence, so he worries. Sometimes he's right to.
Ysalwen, well. Some would say letting the soul of the Old God continue to exist in a baby instead of annihilating it with her own soul is Dark Side. Some will also say a choice she is about to make is stupid and foolish and potentially evil. Her way of taking out the conspiracy against her is also morally questionable, at least to her, because there was no trial, but they did attack first. Just. She's aware that is not the way to go forward next time. Probably. Killing Flemeth at Morrigan's say-so was also kind of -- bad. Smidge. Sorry, Flemeth.
Raven is. Well. Raven does horrible things and Raven does awesome things, and they're all designed to teach people to be better. So. There's . . . that?
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Edward Kenway's a pirate because fuck the Man, seriously, that's basically why. Eventually he realizes that this is not a great way to keep people who matter to him alive and part of his life and goes respectable, but for now he's a villain because he hates being poor and a nobody so PIRATE. FOR YOU. TO THE FACE.
If there is a Santo movie where he comes close to the Dark Side I haven't seen it yet.
I am told there is a scene in Snuff where Wee Mad Arthur discovers something awful enough that Sam Vimes later congratulates him on having had enough self-restraint to leave the people responsible alive for prosecution. That's probably the closest he's come, since he's far too easily entertained overall to really go into evil otherwise.
Stacker has spent many, many nights contemplating assassination of various members of the UN council that voted in favor of the Wall rather than the Jaeger program, but Stacker is basically made of 98% self-restraint, 1.5% awesome, and 5% suit, so that's probably as close as it gets.
Fawkes spends a substantial portion of every waking moment holding his own reins tightly enough to keep from letting his supermutant primal nature loose and going animalistic Dark Side. He did take a vengeful kind of joy in caving in other greenskin skulls on his way out of Vault 87, for what that's worth.
Shephard has a disturbing fondness for the time he infiltrated the Gordon impostor's sleeping quarters, held a knife to the man's throat, and threatened him at great length before disappearing. I have no doubt that if things had gone badly, Shephard would have gleefully demonstrated to one and all that 'one shot, one kill' is more than just a Marine Corps motivational slogan and then happily wandered off without so much as a wrinkle in his conscience about it.
Varric hasn't gotten there yet unless you count swearing revenge on his asshole brother for abandoning him in the Deep Roads to die. There will be a moment later in canon where he gets pretty damn nasty and things have to be hashed out on the spot.
Gordon has never tried to cause harm to anyone who didn't try to cause him harm first. However, he did basically march into another species' home dimension and destroy everything they held dear because otherwise they'd just keep coming back. Wait, no, I almost forgot, there was that time he teamed up with Sir Nicholas Fury and Rojhaz to go to the Marvel 1602 universe's future, the one that the Purple Man sent Steve Rogers back in time from, in order to deliberately wreck a lot of schemes and plans of the local government because the local government was being genocidal, even though they'd never lifted a finger against him. He felt he owed Sir Nicholas, but that probably counts for something.
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Plus, you know, [major spoiler] the whole thing where he killed Edgar's mother, killed and ate an indeterminate number of people, and was about three seconds away from killing/eating Edgar before Gilliam intervened. LITTLE THINGS LIKE THAT. Er.[/spoiler]
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(Fallout canon means always having to say you're sorry. Because yeah, it actually is like that.)
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....sdkalfjdlsakfjdsa WELL THEN.
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yay post-apocalyptic post-Resource-War quasi desert hell, I guess.
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Asajj: She actually was a villain and all it took was extreme grief with a dash of vengeance. Funny that what brought her back to the light, so to speak, was being betrayed by Dooku.
Quinlan: Was very convinced he had turned and there's even an entire issue with him and the Jedi Council arguing if he had turned or not. An undercover assignment that went too far, he killed someone who was unarmed. The person totally deserved it but still, the Jedi frown on such things.
Ethan: I don't knwo if he'd say he was the villain but he does think of himself as damned. Being an active part of the USA's subjugation of the Native American tribes will do that. Not to mention the black outs that happen on full moons.
Sam: He's had some dark times but he turned self-negligent rather than evil. I honestly can't see him being evil.
Izana: Same with Izana here. They are just too nice.
Luidaeg: To much of Faerie, she is the villain. As to how she got there, [spoiler]Funny how having your entire bloodline nearly wiped out at the behest of your sister can turn your world around. Of course, the Luidaeg did also take the side of the changelings against the pure Fae.[/spoiler]
Rollo: Well, he jumped at the chance to gain a bit of fame and prestige with the wrong guy, and ended up having to fight his own people to do it. He's still paying the price for that brilliant choice.
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He's not inherently an evil person. But he is mischievous and sly and tricksy like his god counterpart, and also he treats Athelstan badly until he, uh, really treats him badly *cough*
But I think this is a result of his mental problems, which just get worse with his growing paranoia, jealousy, and religious fanaticism.
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But Phoenix's thing is that he's a very amicable, very gregarious, nice person right up until the second when he isn't, and that character ends up the target of some very vicious violence, and is only saved by the intervention of another Greater Phantom.
Eden doesn't have a dark side. He is literally incapable of it, in the same way that it's impossible for him to have a light side - he doesn't have the emotional capacity for it, nor does he really have the personal agency. Chirithy, on the other hand, regularly crosses over into morally awful territory, manipulating Eden and messing with his head.
Chirithy's possibly-worst moment (we don't know how much he's involved in it) is when the Chirithy of Eden's Very First Friend remarks in passing that their friendship is leading Eden towards discovering the truth. That friend is never seen again.
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She eventually got back home somehow, and supposedly she was at least somewhat functional (in her old role as goddess of rebirth), but horrible things kept on happening (due to her own actions, the war still going on, the horrible, horrible help they found on that planet, and probably her father going KABOOM. Yeah... that is how you drive a goddess crazy.
For Fairy Fixit and the rest of the Zanaris fairies, there is no Dark Side. There is only balance and counter-balance.
Evil Chicken has too many damn backstories.
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Cathy has no dark side. Whoops.
Darcy has never done anything obviously evil, but she's probably my character with the most capacity towards actual darkness. She's a deeply idealistic, deeply pragmatic person, who's never had it come back to snap in her face in a way to make her self-police. She's kind of lazy, which is why all of her focus for the span of things in specifically on Jane or Thor's current plans. She's a sidekick!
Melinda May used to be prone to taking out threats immediately. This turned on her when she ended up having a throw-down battle with mind controlled people, and she didn't realize they were controlled so used full force on many of them. It culminated in her killing the child who was controlling everyone. She is much, much more cautious about knowing people are working under their own steam before using lethal power these days. (When she can, obviously -- surviving trumps.)
Quatre, unlike Darcy, actually had a huge moment where his mixed idealism/pragmatism + psychotic break led to him killing thousands of innocent people. He thinks of the problem being his psychotic break, only, and has put many checks in place to keep him in line. But he could also eventually lead himself to think he was Right about something that he knew other people wouldn't approve of, and end up doing terrible terrible things. Quatre is a sweet, kind, empathetic person, but he is not good. He's pretty stereotypically Dark Side, including needing to be the most powerful person in almost any situation. Lucky for him, he was totally born into a crazy powerful place! So he can be less stressed and be nice instead.
Clint's pretty much a villain in his actual actions -- he kills people, regularly, based not on their deservingness but on their likelihood to be a threat to global peace. I wouldn't say he's Dark side, because there's no self-serving in this. He genuinely thinks he's doing good, and working for the good guys, but there's a reason my preferred trope for him is Affably Evil. (Like, actually, a genuinely super nice person who could and would just murder you.)
Legolas doesn't really ... do Dark side. He's an Elf. He's not really Light side either, except by default. He's an ELF.
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...In his defense, the guy had just murdered a civilian and that kind of rapid response actually was necessary damage control, but Enjolras still has a long speech afterwards condemning himself for it. He still isn't really over it. But in general, uh, Enjolras is a fanatic. He's an idealist who's also extremely pragmatic and willing to do a lot in service of his ideals. What saves him from the Dark Side is the fact that he is 100% aware of the dangers of that, and he holds himself rigidly accountable to a very absolutist moral framework partly because of it. But yeah! That's why Javert calls Enjolras a murderer about once a conversation.
Cosette, hmm. By the morals of her day, inviting a young man into her father's garden to kiss and whisper sweet nothings -- and not telling her father about it, either! -- is huge, and hugely scandalous. (So is being the daughter of an unmarried prostitute, but Cosette doesn't know that part.) All of that makes her less a villain than a fallen woman, but still.
By my assessment, there's nothing she's done that's Dark Side so far, but she ends the novel in a place where she could equally end up staying caring and engaged in the world and learning more about it, oooor she could end up nestling down to become a good little bourgeoise wife oblivious to everyone she doesn't personally know. The latter is probably the closest she could come. (But I plan to make sure it's the former, and that she stays open to knowing and learning from lots of people from many backgrounds.)
Thor, ha. The closest is probably the start of the first Thor movie, when he nearly starts a war between realms because he's reckless and arrogant and wants a fight to relieve his own feelings; he can't imagine the possibility of losing, and it doesn't occur to him to think about the results for people weaker than he is. Because he's a good guy deep down, when he's slapped in the face with the thoughtlessness and accidental cruelty of that, he backs away from it and tries to work on the problem. But it's not too hard to picture him going further down the path of thoughtlessly wielded power, instead.
Kazul is a dragon. She eats people when they annoy her too much. I'm pretty sure some of those people would definitely consider her villainous!
Trowa, uh. Trowa killed a lot of his friends when he was maybe 11 or 12 years old. SO THERE'S THAT.
They were all mercenaries, like he was. They tried to convince the captain to switch sides; he wouldn't; the rest of them did. Trowa mowed them down to protect the captain rather than join the others. The captain was horrified. (He also insisted that the others had a plan, and wouldn't've killed him. To this day, Trowa doesn't know which of them was right on that score.) He wouldn't do it now, but that was really a turning point for him in terms of changing his moral framework with regard to enemies and war to something more nuanced than "if they're on the opposing side, they're enemies."
...Runner-up occasion is the time he infiltrated the other side and talked his commanding officer into a psychological breakdown. They're friends nowadays! She's also pretty darn morally grey! But yeah that happened. Trowa is not a nice guy in a lot of ways, even if he keeps the brakes on himself, and he knows it.
(Edit: I forgot to also mention the fact that he's still using the name of the guy whose murder he helped cover up. The original Trowa Barton was a pretty terrible person, but still! Basically, uh, yeah, Trowa is only just barely on the Good side of the spectrum to start with, even if these days he tries hard to only haul out the old skills when they're really warranted and to keep the damage limited and nonlethal if at all possible.)
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Leela is a warrior. She always carries a darkness about her wherever she goes.
Cassie was once possessed by a corrupted form of Blood Magik. It was brief enough and she's good enough at rolling with the punches of life that she doesn't dwell on it. But she sure as hell doesn't like being reminded of it.
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Charles is fascinating for this because all you need to do is look at him from another angle and he's pretty dark. He can go into people's heads and does more often than he should and rarely feels remorse for this, he believes he can change the world and he's stupidly powerful. Yet he is trying to do good in his own way. I think that's why I love his and Erik's story, depending on where you are in their story and who's explaining them, they both have points of being the one in the right and the one in the wrong. Its why they need each other, they balance each other. If Charles didn't focus so much on balance in his life, he would be more terrifying and darker, he gets that way in Days of Future Past but ends up hurting himself more than anyone else.
Quentin has been beside Toby for some dark side moments like torturing someone to find out where some kidnapped children are. On his own, his romance with Katie is probably it, throughout he lied to her and played faerie bride. When she was kidnapped and tortured, he rescued her and to fully rescue her, erased all memories of him and Faerie from her mind.
Sameth hasn't done that much on the darker side, he's run away from responsibilities and at one point attacked innocent men by reflex though they were safe.
A lot of William's darkest moments came during canon and as result of canon. He almost shoots Ben Wade a couple of times and he's prepared to kill though he doesn't. His gun is fired in the movie but we don't see him kill. When he first enters Milliways and meets Ben again, he draws and is prepared to shoot. His anger is always there though he does control it better but he's so angry at what he can't control, which is why he gets into fights.
Jane hasn't done that much, a lot of her cruelty is tempered by her writing as she puts her sharpest thoughts there or speaks to her sister. She hasn't gone out of her way to be cruel to someone, she'll ignore them or even jibe at them but she wouldn't ruin someone's reputation.
Moist is a villain because he wants to be. He likes living on the edge of trouble and being a conman gives him an excuse to wear nice clothing and choose what he does and where he goes.
Ivan spends a lot of time in that grey area around the dark side because his world is a difficult one where violence is normal. Most of the things on the edge he's done have come from either Barrayar's awful policies or helping Miles out of jam which tends to involve causing more trouble to solve it. He often takes advantage of his privileged place in the military and Vor with women and while he doesn't do it as much in his work, he has some awful moments that are alluded to with women. He does improve but yeah, sometimes he shows both the pretty and the bad of Barrayar.
Demeter, oh Demeter is tricky for this because her morality is weird and not mortal. Its common within her family to use people, change people and the entire world for their purposes. Her reasons are at times better than the rest of her family but she created Winter in her grief.
Tumnus was a spy for the White Witch but he couldn't follow through with it for Lucy and felt huge regret.
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Henry occasionally says or does things that hurt people thoughtlessly because he's a child, but I'm fairly sure that even up through current canon--which I need to catch up on--he's not actually crossed lines (unlike... er, basically every other member of his family).
Lois does a lot of minorly cruddy things--being forthright to the point of insensitivity or bitchiness or going far for a story are the most common failure mode--they are for the most part very normal, very human flaws. And it is almost never a deliberate choice to hurt someone (who isn't Evil). Honestly, I'm not really thinking of one, surprisingly. ...Or possibly unsurprisingly.
Tavi: ...um. There's actual Dark Side versus justifiable if utterly ruthless action. But it's symptomatic of some things which, absent certain ethics, could lead in bad directions. There's coldly manipulating people and deliberately salting their deepest emotional wounds even if they're people he loves deeply, that time he coldly plotted the murder of an innocent as well as a (temporarily) ~Evil~ person--though he did not follow through, thankfully--and the whole 'built a death ray that killed thousands in instants' bit (which was in battle, though, trying to protect his own, and he fairly well makes up for it later).
Book six is where it really surfaces, though. He outright acknowledges that he makes a lot of conscious choices not to go Dark Side because his brain is very good at providing utterly horrific solutions to things. It is also when he crucifies one of his closest friends. Admittedly, the friend was a spy who had committed treason in disguise, and said treason nearly got Tavi's family killed and it was fairly traumatic for him, but, uh. Kitai talks him into changing his mind (thankfully).
EDIT: Oh maaaaaaan Arkham Knight such excite.
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*rolls around cackling*
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Dixie: Nearly killing multiple men while a part of Big Smith's gang.
Juliet: If she had to've, she totally would've killed for Shawn during the Yin and Yang situation.
Pinkie Pie: Anytime she's gotten very very angry or very very sad.
Eponine: Nearly getting Marius killed so they can die together counts.