#i also really like lovecraftian horror and tragic villains who think they’re doing the right thing

[bearforceone3]

my take on parallax hal (that i finished just in time for halloween)

[necropsittacus]

ok this could have been a fun essay if i had actually ever finished it or gone in depth with any of it or really Made it an essay rather than an opinion piece. 

but it’s so old that that’s unlikely to happen at this point, and i did mean to post it eventually, so here it is, under a cut. it’s just sith triumvirate feelings.

i really enjoy the sort of ?not villain decay, i think that’s a different thing, but something in the same like, order of concepts? we get with sion after nihilus is introduced

like, sion is introduced with essentially a survival horror scenario where no one knows what the fuck is going on, as “a perversion of the dark side” more than e.g. malak ever was, “if that’s the new dark lord we should all be scared” kind of deal?

he’s got his own brand of horror, and remains genuinely very threatening in his own right even to the very end, but there’s pretty much always an option to try to talk him down or argue, in a way that there really isn’t with nihilus--he’s fucked up and threatening, yeah, very much not a Nice Person or probably remotely sympathetic to normal people, and also can be argued to fall into the “lovecraftian abomination sith lord” category himself (there’s a good post about that i don’t have the energy to go looking for right now). but relative to darth nihilus, and the amount of cosmic horror shit going on THERE, he’s still fundamentally just a guy with yeah some fucked up supernatural shit going on, but still fairly comprehensible human motivations. say what you will about the morality of things like “revenge” and “trying to prove yourself via murder” or his issues about traya, none of those are wildly outside what most people could plausibly come up with, it’s more about the methods and the supernatural shit being thrown in (i would say that how i interpreted his ideas about the force and his own existence is weird and, yeah, probably outside the realm of what most people would come up with, but it makes sense to me from a mental illness perspective, so, again, not inhuman by any means) 

but nihilus? even visas’s take on nihilus (and i think there’s probably some argument to be had about whether that description is actually reflective of any kind of ideology on his part or if she’s reading what he showed her like that in an attempt to make some kind of sense of it and his Actual motivations are really no more than hunger), that sort of “the world is so ugly and chaotic it should be destroyed, and i am doing a good thing by wiping everything out completely” what i call omnicidal depression occasionally, is NOT within the purview of normal human motivation. in my experience even most of the people irl who talk about wanting the end of the world, if they really mean that, just mean because of humanity or have some misguided ideas equating capitalism to human nature. visas’s description of what was up with nihilus didn’t sound like that, it sounded like the issue was life itself. that’s already getting into “lovecraftian abomination” rather than “nasty human villain” territory, and the fact that he actually has the power to go through with it...

like, of course the sith are scary already, even with only the Standard Set of Force Powers, they’re supposed to be a real threat, and sion’s got his own weird creepy shit, but adding that kind of eldritch abomination factor just raises the stakes so much that by comparison the guy who’s literally too angry to die, whose main motivation is the destruction of the entire jedi order at all costs, who doesn’t care about power or glory or not getting hurt, only about Death and Carnage and Revenge, seems perfectly reasonable to like, argue with, even try to talk to your side 

and the deleted scene where they fight, if it can be called that, reinforces that difference in power level/stakes even more--that even sion who wants to fight Everyone most of the time, and generally believes himself capable of it, doesn’t really want to start shit with nihilus unnecessarily, that even with all the drama and “jesus christ what the fuck how are you not dead” around him nihilus is a lot stronger, enough to not even bother with a lightsaber

and then also the fact that sion has multiple lines that are either obviously referential to vader or just identical to vader lines? i don’t think that’s a coincidence (would be difficult) or purely to point out that this is Star Wars Media™. star wars does have a Tendency to reuse lines, but i think there generally is some actual significance to which ones get copied where

like, that’s got to be deliberate, making him into some sort of parallel to vader--the terrifying Openly Sith face of the empire, but who eventually was redeemed, who chose his son in the end--and of course sion doesn’t get a redemption arc per se, and i’m honestly glad for it, but weren’t there a couple throwaway dialogue options where you could have the exile Want to go in that direction or something? i need to replay this

and even without that--i think even the comparison sets him up as more i guess human? i can’t words this right sorry, in contrast to nihilus, who is utterly beyond comprehension, beyond being reasoned with, for whom even the faintest suggestion of redemption would be impossible, even absurd--the tragic side of what the dark side can do to people, as much as the fear

where nihilus has no OT parallel imagery, he’s just his own thing 

there really isn’t any point to this, no thesis or argument or anything, it’s just a feeling i had more than a year ago cleaned up a little bit