Wednesday DE: cue the thrilling music

[thebattycakes]

Hump-Daaaaaay. GAAAAH, this week has been going so chaotic and fast, I can't believe we're in the middle of it already. Public service announcement: Christmas is in little over a week, better get that shopping and wrapping done!

For today's DE I ask this:

In what situation would your character act heroic?

Obviously we have a lot of heroes in the bar where being heroic is their default setting so flip the question and answer:

In what situation would your character act unheroically and break their morals?

Comments

[bjornwilde]

With Ahsoka, we have either possession by a powerful Dark Side entity (in case of acting actively evil) or the loss of the Jedi and the rise of the Empire (in the case of turning her back on the people of the galaxy and giving in to despair and self-focused survival). I honestly can't see her actively doing anything unheroic beyond that.

Jessica is easy, just harm or kill someone she cares about. The darkness of HYDRA's assassin training is always lurking in her depths.

For Alustin you just have to ignore the continent-spanning threat, taking the long term, like generations long-term approach to eliminating the threat rather than focusing on it directly.

[amiable_horror]

Also, whenever Klaus does stupid shit.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

The easiest way to get Yamato to break with his system of morals is to threaten Takeru. In 01, it only takes Takeru being kidnapped to make Yamato go from 0 to 'needing to be held back from torturing people for information.' The problem, of course, is that everyone who threatens Takeru dies, either because Yamato killed them or because Takeru did.

The only other time Yamato splits with his complicated and arcane system of morals is when Jureimon convinces him to, but that's predicated on a lot of fresh trauma from seeing a bunch of friends be murdered in variously gruesome ways, anger over Taichi's reaction, lingering feelings of helplessness over a previous Takerunapping, and some self-loathing, so it's not a reliable method. Also it ends with Yamato cornering and killing Jureimon's boss, like, half a day later.

The big takeaway here is that it can be done, but anyone who tries to make Yamato break with his morals ends up dying horribly.

[thebattycakes]

All of mine will jump to heroics at the drop of a dime, so it's being turned the other way that's the question.

Barry - Aside from being whammied by guys like Rainbow Raider, it takes Barry being pushed very, Very far in order for him to even consider breaking his morals. Zoom had to murder Barry's father right in front of him before Barry was on the edge of wanting to kill him (he didn't go through with it directly, instead Time Wraiths finished the job), and for all the horrible things Thawne has done to him (including murdering his mother), Barry still time and again stops himself short of ending Thawne.

Cisco - While in most of the rest of the multiverse Cisco ends up being a bad guy, Earth-1 Cisco stays on the side of the angels. He will bend rules and his own moral code when he feels like a situation is desperate enough to warrant it, though. Including things like keeping secrets, building questionable tech, and giving in to bad guys if he thinks it's going to save someone he cares about.

Logan - Logan is pretty steadfast with his honor code, it's just it happens to include the belief that sometimes killing people is the way to go if you're going to make things better. He'll do the dirty work when it comes up because he can, and because sometimes that's how you get shit done.

Matt - Matt struggles constantly with his beliefs and how far he should go to make his city a safer place. He is basically Always toeing the line and seems like one good shove away from crossing it. There is certainly some accuracy to Frank Castle's statement, "You're one bad day away from being me."

That said, Matt controls himself most of the time and it isn't until he's at literal rock bottom (that being the bottom of a big fucking hole in the middle of the city, buried alive, beat to hell and with the woman he loves dead), that he gets the closest to losing his moral compass. He finds it though. Eventually.

Bill - Bill went through a bunch of tragedy and never really properly addressed any of it, and then he drank himself to rock bottom where he wasn't a good guy anymore. He's come back from that, though, with a lot of self-care, work, and help.

[canttrickmeanymore]

Peter: okay, this is the guy who wouldn't even consider killing the man who tried to kill him and all of his friends like 9 times... so, he'd have to be possessed by something so uber!dark that he wasn't in control anymore to do something 'unheroic'

Harry: piss him off right good. just do it. this guy blasted ghouls to smithereens out in the desert after they killed some wizard trainees. also the guy who took out a whole court of vampires - the entire family line - because they kidnapped his kid - they were planning to do the same to him, so his options were maybe limited, but still. he didn't even flinch about 99.9999% of the vampires in that group.