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yukieOh hi. Welcome to episode one of Creepy Tricks What One Can Pull Off With The Dark If One Has Enough Clout With It'. I'm your host, Jan Rosencrantz, a.k.a. the artist formerly known as 'that one guy bisected by Kali-Ma'. It'd probably make more sense to get a guy who can actually DO these things to explain 'em but the naïb thinks I'm the best guy for the job, so I'm giving it a whirl. Why the hell not?
Right. So. Assuming people know what the Dark is; for those unclear I can give a more detailed description in comments. To sum up, it's one of five primal elements that make up the framework of things in general. Its complement is Light. THE DARK IS NOT EVIL. Can we clear that up, now? By extensions USERS OF THE DARK ARE NOT EVIL BY DEFAULT. Can people be idiots with it, yes they can, but painting Prince Ansem as evil on account of because he is Dark is vaaaaaastly stupid. He did idiotic things in the NAME of the Dark; the Dark did not make him do these things. THE DARK ITSELF AS AN ELEMENT DOES NOT CONTROL PEOPLE FROM WITHIN. It can be used as a means of control, but the Dark itself is not possessed of a malevolent will and nor is its Lady. I'd also like to clear up that PEOPLE WHOM THE DARK IS USED SUCCESSFULLY AGAINST ARE NOT DUPES, FOOLS OR WEAKLINGS. Perpetuate that line of crap and I'll defenestrate you for your ig'nance and for vexin' me.
Let me explain. Recollect Losstarot making me think I was waving his arm around? Right. Now consider my personality. Do I look weak-willed or wishy-washy to you? Come on, now, I make mules look like wafflers. I had one whole hell of a damaged heart, BUT I was able to ward it using the Dark myself. So why-oh-why was Losstarot able to work his eerie mojo on me?
Subtlety and strength. He has a lot more power than I and has had a great deal of time to hone his skills. Further, there was an emotion he could use to trip me up - my pride. Dark-users who can see hearts can use this skill to pinpoint the best way with which to affect their target (I won't say victim because in the case of Losstarot and Riot, the point was not to harm). In my case, pride was the point where I had blinkers on.
In the cases of Greene and Hardin it was desire - or more accurately love.
(A CAVEAT LECTOR: beyond this point I'm going to be discussing curses, illusions, and exploitation of people's hearts via unscrupulous, unethical use of the Dark. If you're squicked out or set to flailing by this (which is understandable) you prrrrrobably don't want to read on. If you do want to read on but you become squicked out or set to flailing anyhow, I'm sorry about that and I'll do my best to assuage the "OH MY FUCK, ROSENCRANTZ, YOU DOUCHE HOUND". This is not a happy fun topic, in this post. I swear I'll be discussing non-dick uses of the Dark later!)
This is where things get nasty on the user front (let me remind you, DARK NOT EVIL THOUGH USER CAN PULL EVIL SHIT WITH DARK - it's like fire or lightning thus). Roméo will fully admit he was being an ass and gave me permission to discuss this business, and so did That Man What Goes In The Floor. Both of them possessed the ability to read hearts. Roméo developed it over time as he started to use the Dark as instructed by the church and - what the HELL do I call you man - ehn, we'll go with your god name. Thanatos was born with it. He was strong in that field to begin with and got more so over time. This is part of the reason why his head started to hurt, but I digress.
Two capable heartseers who happened to be ruthless strategists willing to get up to all kinds of naughty malarkey to get what they wanted and who happened to be very capable of using the Dark in its capacity to hide things. Bad cocktail, that.
If one knows what the hell one's doing, one can mimic a person so damned well that it's difficult for even someone who knows that person WELL to discern the difference between the original and the doppelgänger. Honestly, do you think Hardin is a man easily fooled? Come ON now! If you believe that I've got a lovely bridge in Valnain for sale. The successfulness of this illusion-casting depends on the caster's skill with the Dark, both in the sense of using it as a method of hiding oneself and a method of seeing which emotion to play upon in order to get the best result. A Dark user with enough skill and clout and a deep enough mana puddle can imitate someone down to such minutiae as their auric pattern and even their scent. So even if you have a kitten nose and a tough-to-blinker third eye like Greene or you're a sensible down-to-earth stubborn fellow like Hardin - if you're up against someone ready and willing and able to use your emotions as a collar and a chain to yank you around with...you're hosed, friend.
By using the love Hardin has for Losstoarot, Roméo was able to strengthen the effect of his illusion-casting. (Because Hardin was already exhausted and hurting it was easier, too.) Ditto Thanatos exploiting Greene's love for Xavier. It doesn't help that both of them possess some degree of adeptness with what's commonly just dubbed the talent of the Voice. Yes, even when he sounded like a big raspy skellington, Thanatos could pull that nonsense. Though he's ludicrously talented enough that he didn't even need to. And since the dreaming-realm is one of the places quite close to his own? Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha yeah I'm really sorry Greene but you had a snowball's chance in a teakettle. The second you got within several yards of him that night he started to use your enormous amount of affection for his son against you. You wanted to see Xavier more than anything at that point, and because of that, he was able to be sure that you did see Xavier instead of the person who was really there. It has nothing to do with you being weak or stupid or harbouring some hidden desire (pffhahahaahahaaahahaa NO, that's another pathetic myth concocted by people who don't know a damned thing about the Dark or how it works - a hidden desire can be exploited but it's not the root of all successful illusion-casts for fuck's sakes) and everything to do with the fact that he is a sneaky fucking bastard, still, and he was a horribly unethical one then.
Let me reiterate: Hardin saw Losstarot because he wanted more than anything to see the person he loved more than anything. Greene saw Xavier for the same reason.
Love is a great strength but bastards will exploit it as they will any other thing, and a strong Dark-user has a nastily versatile tool with which to do this.
It's damn terrifying and I'm sorry I brought it up and I'm making tea as we speak, Greene. Please don't yowl in my ears. XD
To sum up: The stronger the emotion, the easier it is for the Dark-user to call out to it and get up to heinous fuckery.
Hence Losstarot's impeccable screwing over of yours truly. My ego was the size ofTiegera very big large thing. I was hiding a lot of fear, too.
It has nothing to do with weakness on the part of the target of the illusion (though I was pretty wimpy in some respects) or stupidity (ditto) and everything to do with how adept the Dark-user is at his/her craft. A Sayyadin or Sayyadina is going to be able to fool even someone's parent or child or pet cat. ...Well, maybe not the cat, cats are weird that way, but I digress.
If you're willing to be a bit enough dimwit to dub Hardin a naïf and suggest that it was some character flaw on his part that resulted in his being exploited the way he was, I certainly can't stop you from making that stupid lunk-knobbed clodpated dipshitty assumption.
It has everything to do with the user of the Dark.
Anyone can be bamboozled thus. Even you, o strutty reader.
And if you think that's scary, hold onto your testicles because it's about to get worse! :D
If the Dark-user's the sort of ass who's willing to sling around curses and/or has a ludicrous amount of charisma (as many Dark users tend to even before they take up the Mantle), the effect of past illusions and exploits cast against a target can linger long after the illusions have been dispersed or cancelled by the caster. Those kinds of curses generally have deep roots (see also: Vlad) and are specifically tailored to affect someone's heart.
This is probably how Lord Orlouge's father drove him batshit from beyond the grave but don't take my word as law on this, I'm not sure. I have theories though.
And the more frustrated and agitated you get by the presence of these curses - even DISPELLED curses, hell, and broken curses, even curses you thought LONG DEAD...the worse you're affected. It's like trying to flail your way out of a spiderweb. Usually that's exactly what the caster is after, but even if he's stopped being a colossal dick and/or the curse is pretty much broken, many drifting cat-hairs of mojo remain to bother the shit out of one. If you're sick or tired they get you worse. Two cursed people in the same room are very likely to set one another off.
And again - fighting it aggressively makes it worse. The louder you scream 'oh fuck no' and pull back, the harder it binds you. In this way a dickheaded Dark-user can keep someone imprisoned long after the obvious shackles are off. How d'you think Batistum kept so many people in line for so many years? How d'you think Thanatos did it? How d'you think my poor hapless shadow got screwed over so hard? The harder you fight against it the tighter you become bound by it. Very dickish.
The best way to fight such a curse is with something like the Litany Against Fear or meditation - in short by remaining calm, acknowledging the curse and the weirdness it's stirred up in you, and riding it out - but ohhhhhh do such curses ever make it hard to do so, and they're often designed to do just that. The best way to fight these curses is to be gentle with yourself and they're designed to keep you from being able to do that. This is indeed heinous fuckery most foul.
(A crabby aside: Oh, and people close to the target...for the love of minuscule green apples, don't blame them for being affected? PRETTY fucking please. I know it's difficult to keep your head on level when someone you care for seems to be going utterly batshit in horrible ways, but blaming them makes it WORSE. I have a special distaste for people blaming a hurt person for being hurt anyway. I know no one I'm addressing is stupid enough to pull this but I felt the need to snarl so--ta-da.)
The upside is - it does end. Curses can be broken. These ones take time and effort to excise fully. If you got cursed or exploited, you're not weak - in fact if some asshole used love as a handle, that's proof of the strength of your love and loyalty for the person you saw - even if they were an illusion cast by an ass. Your love for them is unfortunately what caused you to be hosed - but the strength of that love is undeniable if you got hosed. Yes, I know, small relief. But it's helpful to keep that in mind, because it'll help you shake the curse off more and more.
Right. I was tea-making!
Thus endeth the first of many rambling lessons I'm likely to put up here about the Dark and suchlike. If you have any questions, toss 'em my way and I'll do my best to answer.
-J. Rosencrantz
Right. So. Assuming people know what the Dark is; for those unclear I can give a more detailed description in comments. To sum up, it's one of five primal elements that make up the framework of things in general. Its complement is Light. THE DARK IS NOT EVIL. Can we clear that up, now? By extensions USERS OF THE DARK ARE NOT EVIL BY DEFAULT. Can people be idiots with it, yes they can, but painting Prince Ansem as evil on account of because he is Dark is vaaaaaastly stupid. He did idiotic things in the NAME of the Dark; the Dark did not make him do these things. THE DARK ITSELF AS AN ELEMENT DOES NOT CONTROL PEOPLE FROM WITHIN. It can be used as a means of control, but the Dark itself is not possessed of a malevolent will and nor is its Lady. I'd also like to clear up that PEOPLE WHOM THE DARK IS USED SUCCESSFULLY AGAINST ARE NOT DUPES, FOOLS OR WEAKLINGS. Perpetuate that line of crap and I'll defenestrate you for your ig'nance and for vexin' me.
Let me explain. Recollect Losstarot making me think I was waving his arm around? Right. Now consider my personality. Do I look weak-willed or wishy-washy to you? Come on, now, I make mules look like wafflers. I had one whole hell of a damaged heart, BUT I was able to ward it using the Dark myself. So why-oh-why was Losstarot able to work his eerie mojo on me?
Subtlety and strength. He has a lot more power than I and has had a great deal of time to hone his skills. Further, there was an emotion he could use to trip me up - my pride. Dark-users who can see hearts can use this skill to pinpoint the best way with which to affect their target (I won't say victim because in the case of Losstarot and Riot, the point was not to harm). In my case, pride was the point where I had blinkers on.
In the cases of Greene and Hardin it was desire - or more accurately love.
(A CAVEAT LECTOR: beyond this point I'm going to be discussing curses, illusions, and exploitation of people's hearts via unscrupulous, unethical use of the Dark. If you're squicked out or set to flailing by this (which is understandable) you prrrrrobably don't want to read on. If you do want to read on but you become squicked out or set to flailing anyhow, I'm sorry about that and I'll do my best to assuage the "OH MY FUCK, ROSENCRANTZ, YOU DOUCHE HOUND". This is not a happy fun topic, in this post. I swear I'll be discussing non-dick uses of the Dark later!)
This is where things get nasty on the user front (let me remind you, DARK NOT EVIL THOUGH USER CAN PULL EVIL SHIT WITH DARK - it's like fire or lightning thus). Roméo will fully admit he was being an ass and gave me permission to discuss this business, and so did That Man What Goes In The Floor. Both of them possessed the ability to read hearts. Roméo developed it over time as he started to use the Dark as instructed by the church and - what the HELL do I call you man - ehn, we'll go with your god name. Thanatos was born with it. He was strong in that field to begin with and got more so over time. This is part of the reason why his head started to hurt, but I digress.
Two capable heartseers who happened to be ruthless strategists willing to get up to all kinds of naughty malarkey to get what they wanted and who happened to be very capable of using the Dark in its capacity to hide things. Bad cocktail, that.
If one knows what the hell one's doing, one can mimic a person so damned well that it's difficult for even someone who knows that person WELL to discern the difference between the original and the doppelgänger. Honestly, do you think Hardin is a man easily fooled? Come ON now! If you believe that I've got a lovely bridge in Valnain for sale. The successfulness of this illusion-casting depends on the caster's skill with the Dark, both in the sense of using it as a method of hiding oneself and a method of seeing which emotion to play upon in order to get the best result. A Dark user with enough skill and clout and a deep enough mana puddle can imitate someone down to such minutiae as their auric pattern and even their scent. So even if you have a kitten nose and a tough-to-blinker third eye like Greene or you're a sensible down-to-earth stubborn fellow like Hardin - if you're up against someone ready and willing and able to use your emotions as a collar and a chain to yank you around with...you're hosed, friend.
By using the love Hardin has for Losstoarot, Roméo was able to strengthen the effect of his illusion-casting. (Because Hardin was already exhausted and hurting it was easier, too.) Ditto Thanatos exploiting Greene's love for Xavier. It doesn't help that both of them possess some degree of adeptness with what's commonly just dubbed the talent of the Voice. Yes, even when he sounded like a big raspy skellington, Thanatos could pull that nonsense. Though he's ludicrously talented enough that he didn't even need to. And since the dreaming-realm is one of the places quite close to his own? Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha yeah I'm really sorry Greene but you had a snowball's chance in a teakettle. The second you got within several yards of him that night he started to use your enormous amount of affection for his son against you. You wanted to see Xavier more than anything at that point, and because of that, he was able to be sure that you did see Xavier instead of the person who was really there. It has nothing to do with you being weak or stupid or harbouring some hidden desire (pffhahahaahahaaahahaa NO, that's another pathetic myth concocted by people who don't know a damned thing about the Dark or how it works - a hidden desire can be exploited but it's not the root of all successful illusion-casts for fuck's sakes) and everything to do with the fact that he is a sneaky fucking bastard, still, and he was a horribly unethical one then.
Let me reiterate: Hardin saw Losstarot because he wanted more than anything to see the person he loved more than anything. Greene saw Xavier for the same reason.
Love is a great strength but bastards will exploit it as they will any other thing, and a strong Dark-user has a nastily versatile tool with which to do this.
It's damn terrifying and I'm sorry I brought it up and I'm making tea as we speak, Greene. Please don't yowl in my ears. XD
To sum up: The stronger the emotion, the easier it is for the Dark-user to call out to it and get up to heinous fuckery.
Hence Losstarot's impeccable screwing over of yours truly. My ego was the size of
It has nothing to do with weakness on the part of the target of the illusion (though I was pretty wimpy in some respects) or stupidity (ditto) and everything to do with how adept the Dark-user is at his/her craft. A Sayyadin or Sayyadina is going to be able to fool even someone's parent or child or pet cat. ...Well, maybe not the cat, cats are weird that way, but I digress.
If you're willing to be a bit enough dimwit to dub Hardin a naïf and suggest that it was some character flaw on his part that resulted in his being exploited the way he was, I certainly can't stop you from making that stupid lunk-knobbed clodpated dipshitty assumption.
It has everything to do with the user of the Dark.
Anyone can be bamboozled thus. Even you, o strutty reader.
And if you think that's scary, hold onto your testicles because it's about to get worse! :D
If the Dark-user's the sort of ass who's willing to sling around curses and/or has a ludicrous amount of charisma (as many Dark users tend to even before they take up the Mantle), the effect of past illusions and exploits cast against a target can linger long after the illusions have been dispersed or cancelled by the caster. Those kinds of curses generally have deep roots (see also: Vlad) and are specifically tailored to affect someone's heart.
This is probably how Lord Orlouge's father drove him batshit from beyond the grave but don't take my word as law on this, I'm not sure. I have theories though.
And the more frustrated and agitated you get by the presence of these curses - even DISPELLED curses, hell, and broken curses, even curses you thought LONG DEAD...the worse you're affected. It's like trying to flail your way out of a spiderweb. Usually that's exactly what the caster is after, but even if he's stopped being a colossal dick and/or the curse is pretty much broken, many drifting cat-hairs of mojo remain to bother the shit out of one. If you're sick or tired they get you worse. Two cursed people in the same room are very likely to set one another off.
And again - fighting it aggressively makes it worse. The louder you scream 'oh fuck no' and pull back, the harder it binds you. In this way a dickheaded Dark-user can keep someone imprisoned long after the obvious shackles are off. How d'you think Batistum kept so many people in line for so many years? How d'you think Thanatos did it? How d'you think my poor hapless shadow got screwed over so hard? The harder you fight against it the tighter you become bound by it. Very dickish.
The best way to fight such a curse is with something like the Litany Against Fear or meditation - in short by remaining calm, acknowledging the curse and the weirdness it's stirred up in you, and riding it out - but ohhhhhh do such curses ever make it hard to do so, and they're often designed to do just that. The best way to fight these curses is to be gentle with yourself and they're designed to keep you from being able to do that. This is indeed heinous fuckery most foul.
(A crabby aside: Oh, and people close to the target...for the love of minuscule green apples, don't blame them for being affected? PRETTY fucking please. I know it's difficult to keep your head on level when someone you care for seems to be going utterly batshit in horrible ways, but blaming them makes it WORSE. I have a special distaste for people blaming a hurt person for being hurt anyway. I know no one I'm addressing is stupid enough to pull this but I felt the need to snarl so--ta-da.)
The upside is - it does end. Curses can be broken. These ones take time and effort to excise fully. If you got cursed or exploited, you're not weak - in fact if some asshole used love as a handle, that's proof of the strength of your love and loyalty for the person you saw - even if they were an illusion cast by an ass. Your love for them is unfortunately what caused you to be hosed - but the strength of that love is undeniable if you got hosed. Yes, I know, small relief. But it's helpful to keep that in mind, because it'll help you shake the curse off more and more.
Right. I was tea-making!
Thus endeth the first of many rambling lessons I'm likely to put up here about the Dark and suchlike. If you have any questions, toss 'em my way and I'll do my best to answer.
-J. Rosencrantz
no subject
Date: 2010-08-14 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-15 02:41 am (UTC)I learn more and more about the Dark from all these guys.